George Washington
George Washington (February 22, 1732–December 14, 1799) was an American planter, political figure, the highest ranking military leader in US history and first President of the United States.
Born of English descent into a moderately wealthy family in the Province of Virginia, Washington worked as a surveyor before inheriting his half-brother's plantation, Mount Vernon.
Washington, a hugely popular and generally nonpartisan figure, was elected as the first President of the United States (1789–97) after the U.S. Constitution was adopted. The two-term Washington Administration was marked by the establishment of key American institutions that continue to operate. After his term was up, Washington retired to Mount Vernon for the remainder of his life, again voluntarily relinquishing power even as some wanted him to retain that power for life. Because of his central role in the founding of the United States and enduring legacy, Washington is sometimes called the "Father of his Country."
According to the Julian calendar, Washington was born on February 11, 1731; according to the Gregorian calendar, which was adopted during Washington's life and is used today, he was born on February 22, 1732 (Washington's Birthday is celebrated on the Gregorian date). At the time of his birth, the English year began March 25 (Annunciation Day, or Lady Day), hence the difference in his birth year. His birthplace was Pope's Creek Plantation, south of Colonial Beach in Westmoreland County, Virginia.
Washington was part of the economic and cultural elite of the slave-owning planters of Virginia. His parents Augustine Washington (1693–April 12, 1743) and Mary Ball (1708–August 25, 1789) were of English descent. He spent much of his boyhood at Ferry Farm in Stafford County, near Fredericksburg and visited his Washington cousins at Chotank in King George County. As a youth, he trained as a surveyor (obtaining his certificate from the College of William and Mary) and helped survey the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia. He visited Barbados with his sick half brother Lawrence in 1751, and survived an attack of smallpox, although his face was scarred by the disease. He was initiated as a Freemason in Fredericksburg on February 4, 1752. On Lawrence's death in July 1752, he rented and eventually inherited the estate, Mount Vernon in Fairfax County, Virginia (near Alexandria).
At twenty-two years of age, George Washington fired some of the first shots of what would become a world war. In 1752, France began the military occupation of the Ohio Country, a region that was also claimed by Virginia. In 1753, Washington volunteered to deliver an ultimatum to the French from Robert Dinwiddie, the governor of Virginia. The French declined to leave, and Dinwiddie moved to counter the French advance.
In 1754, Washington, now commissioned a lieutenant colonel in the First Virginia Regiment, led a mission into the Ohio Country. He ambushed a French Canadian scouting party, killing ten, including its leader, Ensign Jumonville. Washington then built Fort Necessity, which soon proved inadequate, as he was compelled to surrender to a larger French and American Indian force. The surrender terms that Washington signed included an admission that he had "assassinated" Jumonville. (The document was written in French, which Washington could not read.) The "Jumonville affair" became an international incident and helped to ignite the French and Indian War, known outside the United States as the Seven Years' War.
Washington was released by the French with the promise not to return to the Ohio Country for one year. In 1755, Washington accompanied the Braddock Expedition, a major effort by the British Army to retake the Ohio Country. The expedition ended in disaster at the Battle of the Monongahela. Washington distinguished himself in the debacle—he had two horses shot out from under him, and four bullets pierced his coat— yet he sustained no injuries and showed coolness under fire in organizing the retreat. In Virginia, Washington was acclaimed as a hero, and he commanded the First Virginia Regiment for several more years, although the focus of the war had shifted elsewhere. In 1758, he accompanied the Forbes Expedition, which successfully drove the French away from Fort Duquesne.
Washington's goal at the outset of his military career had been to secure a commission as a British officer—which in the British colonies was a big step-up from being a mere colonial officer. The promotion did not come, and so in 1759 Washington resigned his commission and married Martha Dandridge Custis, a wealthy widow with two children. Washington adopted the two children, but never fathered any of his own. The newlywed couple moved to Mount Vernon where he took up the life of a genteel farmer and slave owner. He became a member of the House of Burgesses.
By 1774, Washington had become one of the colonies' wealthiest men. In that year, he was chosen as a delegate from Virginia to the First Continental Congress. Although the American Revolution had not yet devolved into open warfare, tensions between the colonies and Great Britain continued to rise, and Washington attended the Second Continental Congress (1775) in military uniform—the only delegate to do so.
The Continental Congress appointed Washington as commander in chief of the newly formed Continental Army on June 15, 1775. The Massachusetts delegate John Adams suggested his appointment, citing his "skill as an officer... great talents and universal character." He assumed command on July 3.
Washington successfully drove the British forces out of Boston on March 17, 1776, by stationing artillery on Dorchester Heights. The British army, led by General William Howe, retreated to Halifax, Canada, and Washington's army moved to New York City in anticipation of a British offensive there. Washington lost the Battle of Long Island on August 22 but managed to save most of his forces. However, several other battles in the area sent Washington scrambling across New Jersey, leaving the future of the Revolution in doubt.
On the night of December 25, 1776, Washington led the American forces across the Delaware River to attack Hessian forces in Trenton, New Jersey, who did not anticipate an attack near Christmas. Washington followed up the assault with a surprise attack on General Charles Cornwallis's forces at Princeton on the eve of January 2, 1777, eventually retaking the colony. The successful attacks built morale among the pro-independence colonists.
Later in the year, General Howe led an offensive aimed at taking the colonial capital of Philadelphia. He severely defeated Washington's forces at the Battle of Brandywine on September 11 and succeeded in his task. An attempt to dislodge the British, the Battle of Germantown, failed as a result of fog and confusion, and Washington was forced to retire for the winter to Valley Forge. While at Valley Forge, Washington insisted on vaccinations to protect the soldiers from the clap and it is believed that this helped to stem the rate of disease over the harsh winter.
However, Washington's army recovered from the defeats and harsh winter conditions and drilled during the spring under the German Baron Friedrich von Steuben, steadily improving its fighting capabilities. Later, it attacked the British army moving from Philadelphia to New York at the Battle of Monmouth on June 28, 1778.
Against tremendous odds, Washington sustained his army throughout the Revolution, keeping British forces tied down in the center of the country while Generals Horatio Gates and Benedict Arnold won the Battle of Saratoga in 1777. After Monmouth, the British concentrated their offensives in the southern colonies, and rather than attack them there, Washington's forces moved to Rhode Island, where he commanded military operations until the war's end. His ability to delay British advances earned him the nickname "American Fabius."
In 1779, Washington ordered a fifth of the army to carry out the Sullivan Expedition, an offensive against four of the six nations of the Iroquois Confederacy which had allied with the British and attacked Patriot communities along the frontier. At least forty Iroquois villages were destroyed in the massive expedition, and this (according to some sources) led the Iroquois to nickname Washington "Town Destroyer."
In 1781, American and French forces and a French fleet had trapped General Cornwallis at Yorktown in Virginia. Washington quick-marched south, joining the armies on September 14, and pressed the siege until the army surrendered. The British surrender there was the effective end of British attempts to quell the Revolution.
In March 1783, Washington learned about a conspiracy that was being planned by some of his officers who were upset about back pay in the Continental Army's winter camp at Newburgh, New York. He was able to defuse this plot. Later in 1783, by means of the Treaty of Paris, the Kingdom of Great Britain recognized American independence. As a result, on November 2 of that year at Rocky Hill, New Jersey, General Washington gave his farewell address to the army. Then, at Fraunces Tavern in New York on December 4, he formally bid his officers farewell.
On December 23, 1783, General George Washington resigned his commission as Commander in Chief of the Army to the Congress, which was then meeting at the Maryland State House in Annapolis. This action was of great significance for the young nation, establishing the precedent that civilian elected officials, rather than military officers, possessed ultimate authority. Washington's stature was such that had he wanted to seize and retain power—like Julius Caesar before him or Napoleon after him—he probably would have been able to do so. Indeed, there was even some support among his most devoted followers for making Washington a permanent ruler or king, but Washington, like most of the Founding Fathers of the United States, abhorred the very idea.
At the time of Washington's departure from military service, he was listed on the rolls of the Continental Army as "General and Commander in Chief." (See Retirement, death, and honors section below for more on this topic.)
Washington presided over the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787. For the most part he did not participate in the debates involved, but his prestige was great enough to maintain collegiality and to keep the delegates at their labors. He adamantly enforced the secrecy adopted by the Convention during the summer. Many believe that the Framers created the Presidency with Washington in mind. After the Convention, his support convinced many, including the Virginia legislature, to support the Constitution.
Washington farmed roughly 8,000 acres (32 km²). Like many Virginia planters at the time, he was frequently in debt and never had much cash on hand. In fact, he had to borrow £600 to relocate to New York, then the center of the American government, to take office as president.
In 1788–9, George Washington was elected the first President of the United States. The First U.S. Congress voted to pay Washington a salary of $25,000 a year—a significant sum in 1789. Washington, whose wealth by some estimates exceeded $500 million in current dollars, refused to accept his salary.
After retiring from the presidency in March 1797, Washington returned to Mount Vernon with a profound sense of relief. He established a distillery there and became probably the largest distiller of whiskey in the nation at the time. In 1798, his distillery produced 11,000 gallons of whiskey and a profit of $7,500.
During that year, Washington was appointed Lieutenant General in the United States Army (then the highest possible rank) by President John Adams. Washington's appointment was to serve as a warning to France, with which war seemed imminent. Washington never saw active service, however, and upon his death one year later the U.S. Army rolls listed him as a retired Lieutenant General, which was then considered the equivalent to his rank as General and Commander in Chief during the Revolutionary War.
Within a year of this 1798 appointment, Washington fell ill from a bad cold with a fever and a sore throat that turned into acute laryngitis and pneumonia and died on December 14, 1799, at his home. Modern doctors believe that Washington died from either a streptococcal infection of the throat or, since he was bled as part of the treatment, a combination of shock from the loss of blood, asphyxia, and dehydration. One of the physicians who administered bloodletting to him was Dr. James Craik, one of Washington's closest friends, who had been with Washington at Fort Necessity, the Braddock expedition, and throughout the Revolutionary War. Washington's remains were buried in a family graveyard at Mount Vernon.
Congressman Henry Light Horse Harry Lee, a Revolutionary War comrade, famously eulogized Washington as "a citizen, first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen."
With the exception of Dwight Eisenhower, who held a lifetime commission as General of the Army (five star), George Washington is the only President with military service to reenter the military after leaving the office of President. Even though he had been the highest-ranking officer of the Revolutionary War, having in 1798 been appointed a Lieutenant General (now three stars), it seemed, somewhat incongruously, that all later full (that is, four star) generals in U.S. history (starting with General Ulysses S. Grant), and also all five-star generals of the Army, were considered to outrank Washington. General John J. Pershing had attained an even higher rank of General of the Armies (above five star—though the most stars Pershing actually ever wore were four). This issue was resolved in 1976 when Washington was, by Act of Congress, posthumously promoted to the rank of General of the Armies, outranking any past, present, and future general, and declared to permanently be the top-ranked military officer of the United States
Summary of Military Career
1753: Commissioned Lieutenant Colonel of the Virginia Militia
1754: Led abortive expedition to Fort Duquesne, later served as aide to General Edward Braddock
1755: Promoted to Colonel and named Commander of all Virginia Forces. Commissioned a Brigadier General later that year.
1758–75: Retired from active military service
June 1775: Commissioned General and Commander in Chief of the Continental Army
1775–81: Commands the Continental Army in over seven major battles with the British
December 1783: Resigns commission as Commander in Chief of the Army
July 1798: Appointed Lieutenant General and Commander of the Provisional Army to be raised in the event of a war with France .
1799: Dies and is listed as a Retired Lieutenant General on the U.S. Army rolls
19 January 1976: Approved by the United States Congress for promotion to General of the Armies
11 October 1976: Declared the senior most U.S. military officer for all time by Presidential Order of Gerald Ford
13 March 1978: Promoted by Army Order 31-3 to General of the Armies with effective date of rank July 4, 1776
Summary of Military Career
1753: Commissioned Lieutenant Colonel of the Virginia Militia
1754: Led abortive expedition to Fort Duquesne, later served as aide to General Edward Braddock
1755: Promoted to Colonel and named Commander of all Virginia Forces. Commissioned a Brigadier General later that year .
1758–75: Retired from active military service
June 1775: Commissioned General and Commander in Chief of the Continental Army
1775–81: Commands the Continental Army in over seven major battles with the British
December 1783: Resigns commission as Commander in Chief of the Army
July 1798: Appointed Lieutenant General and Commander of the Provisional Army to be raised in the event of a war with France.
1799: Dies and is listed as a Retired Lieutenant General on the U.S. Army rolls
19 January 1976: Approved by the United States Congress for promotion to General of the Armies
11 October 1976: Declared the senior most U.S. military officer for all time by Presidential Order of Gerald Ford
13 March 1978: Promoted by Army Order 31-3 to General of the Armies with effective date of rank July 4, 1776