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George Washington

By: History.com Editors

Updated: June 25, 2024 | Original: October 29, 2009

George Washington (1732-99) was commander in chief of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War (1775-83) and served two terms as the first U.S. president, from 1789 to 1797. The son of a prosperous planter, Washington was raised in colonial Virginia. As a young man, he worked as a surveyor then fought in the French and Indian War (1754-63). 

During the American Revolution, he led the colonial forces to victory over the British and became a national hero. In 1787, he was elected president of the convention that wrote the U.S. Constitution. Two years later, Washington became America’s first president. Realizing that the way he handled the job would impact how future presidents approached the position, he handed down a legacy of strength, integrity and national purpose. Less than three years after leaving office, he died at his Virginia plantation, Mount Vernon, at age 67.

George Washington's Early Years

George Washington was born on February 22, 1732 , at his family’s plantation on Pope’s Creek in Westmoreland County, in the British colony of Virginia , to Augustine Washington (1694-1743) and his second wife, Mary Ball Washington (1708-89). George, the eldest of Augustine and Mary Washington’s six children, spent much of his childhood at Ferry Farm, a plantation near Fredericksburg, Virginia. After Washington’s father died when he was 11, it’s likely he helped his mother manage the plantation.

Did you know? At the time of his death in 1799, George Washington owned some 300 enslaved people. However, before his passing, he had become opposed to slavery, and in his will, he ordered that his enslaved workers be freed after his wife's death.

Few details about Washington’s early education are known, although children of prosperous families like his typically were taught at home by private tutors or attended private schools. It’s believed he finished his formal schooling at around age 15.

As a teenager, Washington, who had shown an aptitude for mathematics, became a successful surveyor. His surveying expeditions into the Virginia wilderness earned him enough money to begin acquiring land of his own.

In 1751, Washington made his only trip outside of America, when he traveled to Barbados with his older half-brother Lawrence Washington (1718-52), who was suffering from tuberculosis and hoped the warm climate would help him recuperate. Shortly after their arrival, George contracted smallpox. He survived, although the illness left him with permanent facial scars. In 1752, Lawrence, who had been educated in England and served as Washington’s mentor, died. Washington eventually inherited Lawrence’s estate, Mount Vernon , on the Potomac River near Alexandria, Virginia.

An Officer and Gentleman Farmer

In December 1752, Washington, who had no previous military experience, was made a commander of the Virginia militia. He saw action in the French and Indian War and was eventually put in charge of all of Virginia’s militia forces. By 1759, Washington had resigned his commission, returned to Mount Vernon and was elected to the Virginia House of Burgesses, where he served until 1774. In January 1759, he married Martha Dandridge Custis (1731-1802), a wealthy widow with two children. Washington became a devoted stepfather to her children; he and Martha Washington never had any offspring of their own.

In the ensuing years, Washington expanded Mount Vernon from 2,000 acres into an 8,000-acre property with five farms. He grew a variety of crops, including wheat and corn, bred mules and maintained fruit orchards and a successful fishery. He was deeply interested in farming and continually experimented with new crops and methods of land conservation.

George Washington During the American Revolution

Washington proved to be a better general than military strategist. His strength lay not in his genius on the battlefield but in his ability to keep the struggling colonial army together. His troops were poorly trained and lacked food, ammunition and other supplies (soldiers sometimes even went without shoes in winter). However, Washington was able to give them direction and motivation. His leadership during the winter of 1777-1778 at Valley Forge was a testament to his power to inspire his men to keep going.

By the late 1760s, Washington had experienced firsthand the effects of rising taxes imposed on American colonists by the British and came to believe that it was in the best interests of the colonists to declare independence from England. Washington served as a delegate to the First Continental Congress in 1774 in Philadelphia. By the time the Second Continental Congress convened a year later, the American Revolution had begun in earnest, and Washington was named commander in chief of the Continental Army.

Over the course of the grueling eight-year war, the colonial forces won few battles but consistently held their own against the British. In October 1781, with the aid of the French (who allied themselves with the colonists over their rivals the British), the Continental forces were able to capture British troops under General Charles Cornwallis (1738-1805) in the Battle of Yorktown . This action effectively ended the Revolutionary War and Washington was declared a national hero.

America’s First President

In 1783, with the signing of the Treaty of Paris between Great Britain and the U.S., Washington, believing he had done his duty, gave up his command of the army and returned to Mount Vernon, intent on resuming his life as a gentleman farmer and family man. However, in 1787, he was asked to attend the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia and head the committee to draft the new constitution . His impressive leadership there convinced the delegates that he was by far the most qualified man to become the nation’s first president.

At first, Washington balked. He wanted to, at last, return to a quiet life at home and leave governing the new nation to others. But public opinion was so strong that eventually he gave in. The first presidential election was held on January 7, 1789, and Washington won handily. John Adams (1735-1826), who received the second-largest number of votes, became the nation’s first vice president. The 57-year-old Washington was inaugurated on April 30, 1789, in New York City. Because Washington, D.C. , America’s future capital city wasn’t yet built, he lived in New York and Philadelphia. While in office, he signed a bill establishing a future, permanent U.S. capital along the Potomac River—the city later named Washington, D.C., in his honor.

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George Washington’s Accomplishments

The United States was a small nation when Washington took office, consisting of 11 states and approximately 4 million people, and there was no precedent for how the new president should conduct domestic or foreign business. Mindful that his actions would likely determine how future presidents were expected to govern, Washington worked hard to set an example of fairness, prudence and integrity. In foreign matters, he supported cordial relations with other countries but also favored a position of neutrality in foreign conflicts. Domestically, he nominated the first chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court , John Jay (1745-1829), signed a bill establishing the first national bank, the Bank of the United States , and set up his own presidential cabinet . 

His two most prominent cabinet appointees were Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) and Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton (1755-1804), two men who disagreed strongly on the role of the federal government. Hamilton favored a strong central government and was part of the Federalist Party , while Jefferson favored stronger states’ rights as part of the Democratic-Republican Party, the forerunner to the Democratic Party . Washington believed that divergent views were critical for the health of the new government, but he was distressed at what he saw as an emerging partisanship.

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George Washington’s presidency was marked by a series of firsts. He signed the first United States copyright law, protecting the copyrights of authors. He also signed the first Thanksgiving proclamation, making November 26 a national day of Thanksgiving for the end of the war for American independence and the successful ratification of the Constitution.

During Washington’s presidency, Congress passed the first federal revenue law, a tax on distilled spirits. In July 1794, farmers in Western Pennsylvania rebelled over the so-called “whiskey tax.” Washington called in over 12,000 militiamen to Pennsylvania to dissolve the Whiskey Rebellion in one of the first major tests of the authority of the national government.

Under Washington’s leadership, the states ratified the Bill of Rights , and five new states entered the union: North Carolina (1789), Rhode Island (1790), Vermont (1791), Kentucky (1792) and Tennessee (1796).

In his second term, Washington issued the proclamation of neutrality to avoid entering the 1793 war between Great Britain and France. But when French minister to the United States Edmond Charles Genet—known to history as “Citizen Genet”—toured the United States, he boldly flaunted the proclamation, attempting to set up American ports as French military bases and gain support for his cause in the Western United States. His meddling caused a stir between Federalists and Democratic-Republicans, widening the rift between parties and making consensus-building more difficult.

In 1795, Washington signed the “Treaty of Amity Commerce and Navigation, between His Britannic Majesty; and The United States of America,” or Jay’s Treaty , so-named for John Jay , who had negotiated it with the government of King George III . It helped the U.S. avoid war with Great Britain, but also rankled certain members of Congress back home and was fiercely opposed by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison . Internationally, it caused a stir among the French, who believed it violated previous treaties between the United States and France.

Washington’s administration signed two other influential international treaties. Pinckney’s Treaty of 1795, also known as the Treaty of San Lorenzo, established friendly relations between the United States and Spain, firming up borders between the U.S. and Spanish territories in North America and opening up the Mississippi to American traders. The Treaty of Tripoli, signed the following year, gave American ships access to Mediterranean shipping lanes in exchange for a yearly tribute to the Pasha of Tripoli.

George Washington’s Retirement to Mount Vernon and Death

In 1796, after two terms as president and declining to serve a third term, Washington finally retired. In Washington’s farewell address , he urged the new nation to maintain the highest standards domestically and to keep involvement with foreign powers to a minimum. The address is still read each February in the U.S. Senate to commemorate Washington’s birthday.

Washington returned to Mount Vernon and devoted his attentions to making the plantation as productive as it had been before he became president. More than four decades of public service had aged him, but he was still a commanding figure. In December 1799, he caught a cold after inspecting his properties in the rain. The cold developed into a throat infection and Washington died on the night of December 14, 1799, at the age of 67. He was entombed at Mount Vernon, which in 1960 was designated a national historic landmark.

Washington left one of the most enduring legacies of any American in history. Known as the “Father of His Country,” his face appears on the U.S. dollar bill and quarter, and dozens of U.S. schools, towns and counties, as well as the state of Washington and the nation’s capital city, are named for him.

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What is George Washington known for?

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George Washington

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George Washington is often called the “Father of His Country.” He not only served as the first president of the United States , but he also commanded the Continental Army during the American Revolution (1775–83) and presided over the convention that drafted the U.S. Constitution . The U.S. capital is named after Washington—as are many schools, parks, and cities. Today his face appears on the U.S. dollar bill and the quarter.

George Washington did not belong to a political party. He ran as a nonpartisan candidate in the presidential elections of 1789 and 1792 . To this day, Washington is the only U.S. president to have been unanimously elected by the electoral college .

Yes, George Washington owned slaves. Washington was born into a Virginia planter family. After his father’s death in 1743, Washington inherited 10 enslaved people. In 1761 Washington acquired a farmhouse (which he later expanded to a five-farm estate) called Mount Vernon . In 1760, 49 enslaved people lived and worked on the estate; by 1799 that number had increased to over 300. Washington eventually freed the 123 people he owned. In his will he ordered that they be freed “upon the decease of my wife .”

After serving two terms as president, George Washington retired to his estate at Mount Vernon in 1797. Two years into his retirement, Washington caught a cold. The cold developed into a throat infection. Doctors cared for Washington as they thought best—by bleeding him, blistering him, and attempting (unsuccessfully) to give him a gargle of “molasses, vinegar, and butter.” Despite their efforts, Washington died on the night of December 14, 1799.

For years people have shared a story about the first U.S. president involving a hatchet, a cherry tree, and a young Washington who “cannot tell a lie.” The legend attests to George Washington’s honesty, virtue, and piety—that is, if it is true. It is not. The legend was the invention of a 19th-century bookseller named Mason Locke Weems who wanted to present a role model to his American readers . It is one of many legends about Washington.

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George Washington (born February 22 [February 11, Old Style], 1732, Westmoreland county, Virginia [U.S.]—died December 14, 1799, Mount Vernon, Virginia, U.S.) was an American general and commander in chief of the colonial armies in the American Revolution (1775–83) and subsequently first president of the United States (1789–97).

Washington’s father, Augustine Washington, had gone to school in England, tasted seafaring life, and then settled down to manage his growing Virginia estates. His mother was Mary Ball, whom Augustine, a widower, had married early the previous year. Washington’s paternal lineage had some distinction; an early forebear was described as a “gentleman,” Henry VIII later gave the family lands, and its members held various offices. But family fortunes fell with the Puritan revolution in England, and John Washington, grandfather of Augustine, migrated in 1657 to Virginia. The ancestral home at Sulgrave, Northamptonshire , is maintained as a Washington memorial. Little definite information exists on any of the line until Augustine. He was an energetic, ambitious man who acquired much land, built mills, took an interest in opening iron mines, and sent his two eldest sons to England for schooling. By his first wife, Jane Butler, he had four children. By his second wife, Mary Ball, he had six. Augustine died April 12, 1743.

Little is known of George Washington’s early childhood, spent largely on the Ferry Farm on the Rappahannock River , opposite Fredericksburg , Virginia. Mason L. Weems ’s stories of the hatchet and cherry tree and of young Washington’s repugnance to fighting are apocryphal efforts to fill a manifest gap. He attended school irregularly from his 7th to his 15th year, first with the local church sexton and later with a schoolmaster named Williams. Some of his schoolboy papers survive. He was fairly well trained in practical mathematics—gauging, several types of mensuration, and such trigonometry as was useful in surveying . He studied geography, possibly had a little Latin, and certainly read some of The Spectator and other English classics. The copybook in which he transcribed at 14 a set of moral precepts, or Rules of Civility and Decent Behaviour in Company and Conversation , was carefully preserved. His best training, however, was given him by practical men and outdoor occupations, not by books. He mastered tobacco growing and stock raising, and early in his teens he was sufficiently familiar with surveying to plot the fields about him.

At his father’s death, the 11-year-old boy became the ward of his half brother Lawrence, a man of fine character who gave him wise and affectionate care. Lawrence inherited the beautiful estate of Little Hunting Creek, which had been granted to the original settler, John Washington, and which Augustine had done much since 1738 to develop. Lawrence married Anne (Nancy) Fairfax, daughter of Col. William Fairfax, a cousin and agent of Lord Fairfax and one of the chief proprietors of the region. Lawrence also built a house and named the 2,500-acre (1,000-hectare) holding Mount Vernon in honor of the admiral under whom he had served in the siege of Cartagena . Living there chiefly with Lawrence (though he spent some time near Fredericksburg with his other half brother, Augustine, called Austin), George entered a more spacious and polite world. Anne Fairfax Washington was a woman of charm, grace, and culture; Lawrence had brought from his English school and naval service much knowledge and experience. A valued neighbor and relative, George William Fairfax, whose large estate, Belvoir, was about 4 miles (6 km) distant, and other relatives by marriage, the Carlyles of Alexandria, helped form George’s mind and manners.

The youth turned first to surveying as a profession. Lord Fairfax, a middle-aged bachelor who owned more than 5,000,000 acres (2,000,000 hectares) in northern Virginia and the Shenandoah Valley , came to America in 1746 to live with his cousin George William at Belvoir and to look after his properties. Two years later he sent to the Shenandoah Valley a party to survey and plot his lands to make regular tenants of the squatters moving in from Pennsylvania . With the official surveyor of Prince William county in charge, Washington went along as assistant. The 16-year-old lad kept a disjointed diary of the trip, which shows skill in observation. He describes the discomfort of sleeping under “one thread Bear blanket with double its Weight of Vermin such as Lice Fleas & c”; an encounter with an Indian war party bearing a scalp; the Pennsylvania-German emigrants, “as ignorant a set of people as the Indians they would never speak English but when spoken to they speak all Dutch”; and the serving of roast wild turkey on “a Large Chip,” for “as for dishes we had none.”

The following year (1749), aided by Lord Fairfax, Washington received an appointment as official surveyor of Culpeper county, and for more than two years he was kept almost constantly busy. Surveying not only in Culpeper but also in Frederick and Augusta counties, he made journeys far beyond the Tidewater region into the western wilderness. The experience taught him resourcefulness and endurance and toughened him in both body and mind. Coupled with Lawrence’s ventures in land, it also gave him an interest in western development that endured throughout his life. He was always disposed to speculate in western holdings and to view favorably projects for colonizing the West, and he greatly resented the limitations that the crown in time laid on the westward movement . In 1752 Lord Fairfax determined to take up his final residence in the Shenandoah Valley and settled there in a log hunting lodge, which he called Greenway Court after a Kentish manor of his family’s. There Washington was sometimes entertained and had access to a small library that Fairfax had begun accumulating at Oxford.

The years 1751–52 marked a turning point in Washington’s life, for they placed him in control of Mount Vernon . Lawrence, stricken by tuberculosis , went to Barbados in 1751 for his health, taking George along. From this sole journey beyond the present borders of the United States, Washington returned with the light scars of an attack of smallpox . In July of the next year, Lawrence died, making George executor and residuary heir of his estate should his daughter, Sarah, die without issue. As she died within two months, Washington at age 20 became head of one of the best Virginia estates. He always thought farming the “most delectable” of pursuits. “It is honorable,” he wrote, “it is amusing, and, with superior judgment, it is profitable.” And, of all the spots for farming, he thought Mount Vernon the best. “No estate in United America,” he assured an English correspondent, “is more pleasantly situated than this.” His greatest pride in later days was to be regarded as the first farmer of the land.

He gradually increased the estate until it exceeded 8,000 acres (3,000 hectares). He enlarged the house in 1760 and made further enlargements and improvements on the house and its landscaping in 1784–86. He also tried to keep abreast of the latest scientific advances.

For the next 20 years the main background of Washington’s life was the work and society of Mount Vernon. He gave assiduous attention to the rotation of crops, fertilization of the soil, and the management of livestock. He had to manage the 18 slaves that came with the estate and others he bought later; by 1760 he had paid taxes on 49 slaves—though he strongly disapproved of the institution and hoped for some mode of abolishing it. At the time of his death, more than 300 slaves were housed in the quarters on his property. He had been unwilling to sell slaves lest families be broken up, even though the increase in their numbers placed a burden on him for their upkeep and gave him a larger force of workers than he required, especially after he gave up the cultivation of tobacco. In his will, he bequeathed the slaves in his possession to his wife and ordered that upon her death they be set free, declaring also that the young, the aged, and the infirm among them “shall be comfortably cloathed & fed by my heirs.” Still, this accounted for only about half the slaves on his property. The other half, owned by his wife, were entailed to the Custis estate, so that on her death they were destined to pass to her heirs. However, she freed all the slaves in 1800 after his death.

For diversion Washington was fond of riding, fox hunting, and dancing, of such theatrical performances as he could reach, and of duck hunting and sturgeon fishing. He liked billiards and cards and not only subscribed to racing associations but also ran his own horses in races. In all outdoor pursuits, from wrestling to colt breaking, he excelled. A friend of the 1750s describes him as “straight as an Indian, measuring six feet two inches in his stockings”; as very muscular and broad-shouldered but, though large-boned, weighing only 175 pounds; and as having long arms and legs. His penetrating blue-gray eyes were overhung by heavy brows, his nose was large and straight, and his mouth was large and firmly closed. “His movements and gestures are graceful, his walk majestic, and he is a splendid horseman.” He soon became prominent in community affairs, was an active member and later vestryman of the Episcopal church , and as early as 1755 expressed a desire to stand for the Virginia House of Burgesses .

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George Washington

The 1st President of the United States

The biography for President Washington and past presidents is courtesy of the White House Historical Association.

On April 30, 1789, George Washington, standing on the balcony of Federal Hall on Wall Street in New York, took his oath of office as the first President of the United States. “As the first of every thing, in our situation will serve to establish a Precedent,” he wrote James Madison, “it is devoutly wished on my part, that these precedents may be fixed on true principles.”

Born in 1732 into a Virginia planter family, he learned the morals, manners, and body of knowledge requisite for an 18th century Virginia gentleman.

He pursued two intertwined interests: military arts and western expansion. At 16 he helped survey Shenandoah lands for Thomas, Lord Fairfax. Commissioned a lieutenant colonel in 1754, he fought the first skirmishes of what grew into the French and Indian War. The next year, as an aide to Gen. Edward Braddock, he escaped injury although four bullets ripped his coat and two horses were shot from under him.

From 1759 to the outbreak of the American Revolution, Washington managed his lands around Mount Vernon and served in the Virginia House of Burgesses. Married to a widow, Martha Dandridge Custis, he devoted himself to a busy and happy life. But like his fellow planters, Washington felt himself exploited by British merchants and hampered by British regulations. As the quarrel with the mother country grew acute, he moderately but firmly voiced his resistance to the restrictions.

When the Second Continental Congress assembled in Philadelphia in May 1775, Washington, one of the Virginia delegates, was elected Commander in Chief of the Continental Army. On July 3, 1775, at Cambridge, Massachusetts, he took command of his ill-trained troops and embarked upon a war that was to last six grueling years.

He realized early that the best strategy was to harass the British. He reported to Congress, “we should on all Occasions avoid a general Action, or put anything to the Risque, unless compelled by a necessity, into which we ought never to be drawn.” Ensuing battles saw him fall back slowly, then strike unexpectedly. Finally in 1781 with the aid of French allies–he forced the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown.

Washington longed to retire to his fields at Mount Vernon. But he soon realized that the Nation under its Articles of Confederation was not functioning well, so he became a prime mover in the steps leading to the Constitutional Convention at Philadelphia in 1787. When the new Constitution was ratified, the Electoral College unanimously elected Washington President.

He did not infringe upon the policy making powers that he felt the Constitution gave Congress. But the determination of foreign policy became preponderantly a Presidential concern. When the French Revolution led to a major war between France and England, Washington refused to accept entirely the recommendations of either his Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, who was pro-French, or his Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, who was pro-British. Rather, he insisted upon a neutral course until the United States could grow stronger.

To his disappointment, two parties were developing by the end of his first term. Wearied of politics, feeling old, he retired at the end of his second. In his Farewell Address, he urged his countrymen to forswear excessive party spirit and geographical distinctions. In foreign affairs, he warned against long-term alliances.

Washington enjoyed less than three years of retirement at Mount Vernon, for he died of a throat infection December 14, 1799. For months the Nation mourned him.

Learn more about George Washington’s spouse, Martha Dandridge Custis Washington.

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Victorious general of the American Revolution, the first President of the United States, successful planter and entrepreneur. Explore the life and legacies of George Washington.

Biography of George Washington

First American president, Continental Army commander, president of the Constitutional Convention, and more.

Little is known of George Washington's childhood, and it remains the most poorly understood part of his life. His early experiences working as a surveyor and in the Virginia company helped shape the man who would become the first President of the United States.

As a young Virginia planter, Washington accepted slavery without apparent concern. But after the Revolutionary War, he began to feel burdened by his personal entanglement with slavery and uneasy about slavery’s effect on the nation.

George Washington's forays into the Ohio country shaped his career and sparked a global war. Learn more about Washington and the French & Indian War.

Martha Washington was the first first lady of the United States and spent about half of the Revolutionary War at the front with General Washington. She helped manage and run her husbands' estates and raised her children, grandchildren, nieces, and nephews.

Despite having little practical experience in managing large, conventional armies, George Washington proved to be a capable and resilient leader of the American military forces during the Revolutionary War.

Unanimously elected twice, President Washington established many crucial precedents and confronted many domestic and foreign policy challenges.

On the evening of December 14, 1799, at Mount Vernon, George Washington passed away of a throat infection after riding through a wet and snowy wintry mix two days earlier.

George Washington's Resume

What would Washington's resume have looked like if he had applied for a job after the presidency? 

While a private man when it came to his personal religious beliefs, George Washington worked tirelessly to ensure people of all religions had the right to practice within the United States.

Washington had a complicated relationship with Native Americans. Throughout his life, Washington negotiated with and served alongside native peoples, fought against others, and sought their land for his own prosperity.

Washington the Farmer

Washington studied and implemented improved farming methods throughout his life. In fact, he thought of himself first as a farmer.

Born in the Age of Reason, Washington was a part of a new generation of readers who had access to more information. He built a library that would ultimately consist of more than 1,200 titles. 

House of Burgesses

The first time George Washington ran for public office, he lost. Washington is often remembered as an established statesman, leading a new nation. However, his political career began decades early in the Virginia House of Burgesses.

Freemasonry

Freemasonry played a role throughout George Washington's life, joining the Lodge in Fredericksburg, Virginia in 1752, through his death, where brothers of Alexandria Lodge performed Masonic rites at his funeral.

Throughout his life, Washington was concerned he would die young like his father. To prevent this, he tried to live a healthy life but still encountered many illnesses. 

Although Washington isn't particularly known for his sense of humor, the General's correspondence and the stories of those who knew him prove that our Founding Father surely "relished wit and humour."

Food at Mount Vernon

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Washington Facts

What did his voice sound like? Was he really a good dancer? Separate fact from fiction and learn more about the real George Washington.

Washington as Bookkeeper

George Washington personally kept fastidious financial records throughout his life, an impressive feat considering the size of his business enterprise.

Washington in Art

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Author Interviews

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George Washington's Immediate Family

George Washington Quotes

Did George Washington really say that? Find out in our quotable database.

Books on George Washington

'Tis Well...

A Bloodless Victory

Acts of Congress 1789: Special Edition

Dining with the Washingtons - Signed Copy

Feeding Washington's Army: Surviving the Valley Forge Winter of 1778

Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation

Founding Gardeners

General George Washington: A Military Life

George Washington and the General's Dog

George Washington's Farewell Address

George Washington's Hair: How Early Americans Remembered the Founders

George Washington's Leadership Lessons

George Washington's Liberty Key

George Washington's Rules of Civility & Decent Behaviour in Company and Conversation

George Washington's Rules to Live By

George Washington's Socks

George Washington's Spy: A Time Travel Adventure

George Washington, Nationalist

George Washington, Pioneer Farmer

George Washington: The Political Rise of America's Founding Father (Softcover)

His Excellency: George Washington

I am George Washington

Mount Vernon Love Story

My Little Golden Book About George Washington

Quotations of George Washington

Revolution Song: A Story of American Freedom

Revolution: Mapping the Road to Independence

Riding with George

Slavery at the Home of George Washington

Spies At Mount Vernon

The Cause: The American Revolution and its Discontents, 1773-1783

The Founding Fathers Quotes, Quips, and Speeches

The General in the Garden

Washington The Indispensable Man

Washington's Farewell Warning : The Founding Father's Warning to Future Generations

Washington's Spies

Washington: A Life

Where Was George Washington?

Who Was George Washington

Women in George Washington's World

Young Washington

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U.S. Presidents / George Washington

1732 - 1799

George washington.

The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government. But the constitution which at any time exists till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people is sacredly obligatory upon all. Farewell Address

George Washington was born to Mary Ball and Augustine Washington on February 22, 1732. As the third son of a middling planter, George probably should have been relegated to a footnote in a history book. Instead, he became one of the greatest figures in American history.

A series of personal losses changed the course of George’s life. His father, Augustine, died when he was eleven years old, ending any hopes of higher education. Instead, Washington spent many of his formative years under the tutelage of Lawrence, his favorite older brother....

Life In Depth Essays

• Life in Brief
• Life Before the Presidency
• Campaigns and Elections
• Domestic Affairs
• Foreign Affairs
• Life After the Presidency
• Family Life
• Impact and Legacy

Chicago Style

Miller Center of Public Affairs, University of Virginia. “George Washington.” Accessed August 09, 2024. https://millercenter.org/president/washington.

Senior Fellow

Lindsay M. Chervinsky

Dr. Lindsay M. Chervinsky is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University and a Professorial Lecturer at the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University. She received her B.A. with honors in history and political science from George Washington University, her masters and Ph.D. from the University of California, Davis, and her postdoctoral fellowship from Southern Methodist University. Her writing has appeared in the  Wall Street Journal, Ms. Magazine, The Daily Beast, The Bulwark, Time Magazine, USA Today, CNN, NBC Think , and the  Washington Post. 

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George Washington

On February 22, 1732, George was born to Augustine and Mary Ball Washington. He spent most of his childhood at Ferry Farm on the Rappahannock River. All of the homes and plantations where Washington lived were maintained by enslaved labor. When George was eleven, his father died and he became a slave owner. As a result, George did not receive a formal education like his older half-brothers. Instead, he helped his mother on the farm and attended a local school in Fredericksburg. For the rest of his life, Washington supplemented his education with reading and self-guided study. At seventeen-years old, George used his family connections to secure appointment as the surveyor for Culpeper County. This position offered adventure, a steady income, and the opportunity to view and purchase unclaimed land. His surveying experience also instilled in George a firm conviction in the importance of westward expansion to the future of the colonies, and later the United States. In 1753, Lieutenant Governor of Virginia Robert Dinwiddie sent twenty-one-year-old Washington, now a Major in the Virginia Regiment, to deliver a message to the French, demanding they abandon the Ohio Valley. Washington later published his account of the trip, giving him an international reputation. A few months later, Washington again marched out west with 150 men to enforce Virginia’s claim. The mission ended in a humiliating surrender at Fort Necessity, followed by Washington’s resignation of his commission. Two years later, Washington again witnessed fighting in the Ohio Country, this time as an aide-de-camp in British General Edward Braddock’s official family. Braddock’s army suffered an overwhelming defeat near the Monongahela River, but Washington was commended for rallying the survivors in the face of chaos. On January 6, 1758, George married Martha Dandridge Custis, a beautiful and charming widow from Virginia. George acquired significant wealth and a partner for the next four decades through the marriage. Between 1759 and 1775, George served many terms in the Virginia House of Burgesses and devoted himself to improving farming practices at his plantation through the labor of the growing enslaved community. After supporting the colonies’ protests against British tax measures in the 1770s, Washington was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army by Congress in June 1775. For the next eight years, Washington remained with the army, only leaving camp to attend summons by Congress. Under Washington’s command, the Continental Army lost more battles than it won, constantly struggling to obtain the necessary food, supplies, and ammunition. But the army persisted—and the colonies’ fight for independence could not be extinguished. Washington also served a critical role ensuring that military power remained subordinate to civilian government. He never used his authority to challenge Congress and ended potential military coups within the army’s ranks. When the Treaty of Paris ended the Revolutionary War, Washington resigned his commission to Congress. Washington’s relinquishing of power was nearly unprecedented and made him an international hero. In 1787, Washington was again called to serve when Virginia appointed him as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention. The delegates crafted a Constitution that created a government with significantly more authority and centralized power. They hoped the new government would address the economic, diplomatic, and domestic calamities that had besieged the nation for over a decade under the Articles of Confederation. Unsurprisingly, the delegates trusted Washington with the presidency. To this day, he is the only president to be unanimously elected. On April 16, 1789, George Washington left his home at Mount Vernon to travel to New York City to be inaugurated as the first President of the United States. During Washington’s presidency, at least ten enslaved people worked at the president’s houses in New York City and Philadelphia: Ona, Hercules, Moll, Giles, Austin, Richmond, Paris, Joe, Christopher Sheels, and William Lee. They tended the horses and carriages in the stables, escorted Washington and his family when they left the house, cooked in the kitchen, did laundry, cleaned the home, cared for the Washingtons’ grandchildren, helped the Washingtons dress in the morning, greeted guests, and more. Click here to learn more about the enslaved household of President George Washington. During Washington’s presidency, he established countless precedents that guided his successors, including creating the president’s cabinet, asserting executive privilege, and using the veto for the first time. He also expanded executive authority over diplomatic and domestic issues, crafting foreign policy during the Neutrality Crisis in 1793 and subduing the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794. Perhaps most importantly, Washington again relinquished his power when he retired after two terms in office. This precedent was reinforced by Thomas Jefferson and followed by every successive president until Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1951, the states ratified the 22 nd Amendment, which limits presidents to two terms in office. After retiring from public office, Washington returned to Mount Vernon for a few short years. On December 14, 1799, Washington died of a throat infection. His will included a provision to immediately free William Lee, his enslaved valet who served with him during the American Revolution. He also stipulated that the other 122 enslaved people owned by him receive their freedom upon Martha’s passing. While Washington was a slave owner for 56 years, he was the only Founding Father president to free all of the enslaved people he held in bondage.

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Quick facts

• Born: 22 February 1732 at the family Pope Creek Estate (near present-day Colonial Beach, Virgina).
• George Washington served as the first President of the United States from 1789 to 1797 and is widely regarded as the “Father of His Country.”
• He was the Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War, leading the American forces to victory over the British.
• Washington presided over the Constitutional Convention in 1787, playing a crucial role in the formation and ratification of the U.S. Constitution.
• During the American Revolutionary War, George Washington’s leadership at the winter encampment at Valley Forge (1777-1778) was crucial in maintaining the morale and cohesion of the Continental Army, despite severe hardships and lack of supplies.
• Washington engineered the pivotal victory at the Battle of Yorktown in 1781, collaborating with French forces under General Rochambeau and Admiral de Grasse, which led to the British surrender and effectively ended the Revolutionary War.
• Despite owning enslaved people, Washington’s views on slavery evolved over his lifetime, and he eventually freed his slaves, the only Founding Father to do so.
• Died: 14 December 1799 at Mount Vernon.
• Buried with his wife,  Martha , at Mount Vernon.

Introduction

George Washington, Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army during the American Revolution and the first president of the United States, was born at Bridges Creek, Westmoreland County, Virginia, on 22 February 1732. His father, Augustine (1694—1743), married twice. First to Jane Butler, with whom he had four children, then to Mary Ball — descendant of a family which migrated to Virginia in 1657 — with whom he had six children, George being the eldest.

Early years

Of Washington’s early life little is known, probably because there was little unusual to tell. There is nothing to show that the boy’s life was markedly different from that common to Virginia families in easy circumstances — plantation affairs, hunting, fishing, and a little reading making up its substance. From 1735 to 1739 he lived at what is now called Mount Vernon, and afterwards at the estate on the Rappahannock River, near Fredericksburg, where his father usually lived.

His education was only elementary and very defective, except in mathematics, in which he was largely self-taught. And although at his death he left a considerable library, Washington was never an assiduous reader. Throughout his life he had a good deal of official contact with the French, but he never mastered their language. Some careful reading of good books there must have been, however, for in spite of pervading illiteracy in matters of grammar and spelling, he acquired a dignified and effective English style. Washington left school in the autumn of 1747, and from this time we begin to know something of his life.

He was then at Mount Vernon with his half-brother Lawrence, who was also his guardian. Lawrence was a son-in-law of William Fairfax, proprietor of the neighboring plantation of Belvoir, and agent for the extensive Fairfax lands in the colony. Lawrence had served with Fairfax at Cartagena, and had made the acquaintance of Admiral Edward Vernon, from whom Mount Vernon was named. In 1748, through the influence of Thomas, Lord Fairfax — the head of the family, who had come to America to live — Washington was appointed surveyor of the Fairfax property. He was only sixteen years of age, but an appointment as public surveyor soon followed.

The next three years were spent in this service, most of the time on the frontier. He always retained a disposition to speculate in western lands, the ultimate value of which he early appreciated. He seems too, to have already impressed others with his force of mind and character. In 1751 he accompanied Lawrence, stricken with consumption, to the West Indies. There he had an attack of smallpox which left him scarred for life. Lawrence died the following year, making George executor and residuary heir of Mount Vernon; the latter estate became his in 1761.

The French and Indian War

In October 1753, on the eve of the French and Indian War, Washington was chosen by Governor Robert Dinwiddie as the agent to warn the French away from their new posts on the Ohio River in western Pennsylvania. He accomplished the winter journey safely, though with considerable danger and hardship; and shortly after his return was appointed lieutenant colonel of a Virginia regiment, under Colonel Joshua Fry.

In April 1754 he set out with two companies for the Ohio River. On 28 May he defeated a force of French and Indians at Great Meadows (in present Fayette County, Pennsylvania), and his surrender at Fort Necessity shortly afterwards — despite a vigorous defense — was the first opening salvo of the French and Indian War.

When General Edward Braddock arrived in Virginia in February 1755, Washington wrote him a diplomatically worded letter, and was presently made a member of the staff with the rank of colonel. His personal relations with Braddock were friendly throughout, and in the calamitous defeat, he showed for the first time that fiery energy which always lay hidden beneath his calm and unruffled exterior. He ranged the whole field on horseback, making himself the most conspicuous target for Indian bullets, and, despite what he called the  dastardly behavior  of the regular troops, saved the expedition from annihilation and brought the remnant of his Virginians out of action in fair order. Washington was one of the few unwounded officers.

In August, after his return, he was commissioned commander of the Virginia forces. He was 23.

For about two years his task was  defending a frontier of more than 350 men with 700 men,  a task rendered the more difficult by the insubordination and irregular service of his soldiers, as well as irritating controversies over official precedence. To settle the latter question, he made a journey to Boston in 1756 to confer with Governor William Shirley. In the winter of 1757 his health broke down, but in the next year he had the pleasure of commanding the advance guard of the expedition under General John Forbes, which occupied Fort Duquesne and renamed it Fort Pitt (now Pittsburgh).

Marriage and the Mount Vernon Plantation

At the end of the year with the war in Virginia at an end, he resigned his commission. In January 1759 he married  Martha Custis  (née Dandridge; 1732—1802), widow of Daniel Parke Custis. The marriage brought him an increase of about $100,000 in his property, making him one of the richest men in the colonies; and he was able to develop his plantation and enlarge it.

For the next fifteen years Washington’s life at Mount Vernon, where he made his home after his marriage, was that of a typical Virginia planter of the more prosperous sort, a consistent member and vestryman of the Established (Episcopal) Church, a large slaveholder, a strict but generally considerate master, and a widely trusted man of affairs. His extraordinary escape in Braddock’s Defeat had led a colonial preacher to declare in a sermon his belief that the young man had been preserved to be  the savior of his country.  But if there was any such impression it soon died away, and Washington gave his associates no reason to consider him a man of uncommon endowments.

His attitude towards slavery has been much discussed, but it does not seem to have been different from that of many other planters of that day. He did not think highly of the system, but had no invincible repugnance to it, and saw no way of getting rid of it. In his treatment of slaves, he was exacting, but not harsh, and was averse to selling them, except by necessity. His diaries show a minutely methodical conduct of business, generous indulgence in hunting, comparatively little reading, and a wide acquaintance with the leading men of the colonies — but no marked indications of what is usually considered to be  greatness.  As in the case of Lincoln, he was educated into greatness by the increasing weight of his responsibilities and the manner in which he met them. Like others of the dominant planter class in Virginia, he was repeatedly elected to the House of Burgesses, but the business which came before the colonial Assembly was for some years of only local importance, and he is not known to have made any set speeches in the House, or to have said anything beyond a statement of his opinion and the reasons for it.

Conflict with England

Washington was present on 29 May 1765 when Patrick Henry introduced his famous resolutions against the Stamp Act. That he thought a great deal on public questions, and took full advantage of his legislative experience as a means of political education, is shown by his letter (5 April 1769) to his neighbor,  George Mason , communicating the Philadelphia non-importation resolutions, which had just reached him. In this he briefly considers the best means of peaceable resistance to the policy of the ministry, but even at that early date faces, frankly and fully, the probable final necessity of resisting by force, and endorses it — though only as a last resort.

The following May, when the House of Burgesses was dissolved, he was among the members who met at the Raleigh Tavern and adopted a non-importation agreement — which he himself kept when others did not. Though on friendly terms with Governor Norborne Berkeley, Baron Botetourt and his successor, John Murray, Earl of Dunmore, he nevertheless took a prominent part in the struggles of the Assembly against Dunmore, and his position was always a radical one.

As the breach widened, he even opposed petitions to  King George  and Parliament. This, on the ground that the claims to taxation and control had been put forward by the ministry on the basis of right, not of expediency, that the ministry could not abandon the claim of right and the colonies could not admit it, and that petitions must be, as they already had been, rejected.  Shall we,  he writes in a letter,  after this whine and cry for relief?

The First Continental Congress

On the 5 August 1774, the Virginia Convention appointed Washington as one of seven delegates to the Continental Congress, which met at Philadelphia on 5 September, and with this appointment his national career began (with but two brief intervals until his death). His letters during his service in Congress show that he fully grasped the questions at issue, that he was under no delusions as to the outcome of the struggle over taxation, and that he expected war.  More blood will be spilled on this occasion,  he wrote,  if the ministry are determined to push matters to extremity, than history has ever yet furnished instances of in the annals of North America.

His associates in Congress at once recognized his military ability, and although he was not a member of any of the committees of Congress, he seems to have aided materially in securing the endorsement by Congress of the Suffolk County Massachusetts Resolves, looking towards organized resistance. On the adjournment of the Congress, he returned to Virginia where he continued to be active, as a member of the House of Burgesses, in urging on the organization, equipment, and training of troops, and even undertook in person to drill volunteers. His attitude towards the mother country at this time, however, must not be misunderstood. Much as he expected war, he was not yet ready to declare in favor of independence, and he did not ally himself with the party of independence until the course of events made the adoption of any other course impossible.

The Second Continental Congress

In March 1775, he was appointed a delegate from Virginia to the Second Continental Congress . He served on committees for fortifying New York, collecting ammunition, raising money, and formulating army rules. It seems to have been generally understood that in case of war, Virginia would expect him to act as her commander-in-chief, and it was noticed that he was the only member who habitually appeared in uniform.

History, however, was to settle the matter on broader lines. The two most powerful colonies were Virginia and Massachusetts. The war began in Massachusetts and troops from New England flocked to the neighborhood of Boston almost spontaneously. But the resistance, if it was to be effective, had to have the support of the southern colonies, and the Virginia colonel who was serving on all the military committees of Congress, and whose experience in the Braddock campaign had made his name favorably known in England, was the obvious as well as the political choice.

Commander-in-Chief and first battles

When Congress, after the fights at Lexington and Concord, resolved that the colonies ought to be put in a position of defense, the first practical step — on the motion of  John Adams  of Massachusetts — was the unanimous selection of Washington as Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces of the United Colonies (15 June). Refusing any salary and asking only the reimbursement of his expenses, he accepted the position, asking  every gentleman in the room,  however, to remember his declaration that he did not believe himself to be equal to the command, and that he accepted it only as a duty made imperative by the unanimity of the call. He reiterated this belief in private letters, even to his wife; and there seems to be no doubt that, to the day of his death, he was the most determined skeptic as to his fitness for the positions to which he was successively called.

He was commissioned on 17 June 1775 and set out at once for Cambridge, Massachusetts. Contemporary accounts agree that Washington was an imposing presence. In his prime his height was six feet three inches — as given in his orders for clothes from London. His weight was about 220 pounds. The  marquis de Lafayette  said that his hands were  the largest he ever saw on a man.  Evidently it was his extraordinary dignify and poise — forbidding even the suggestion of familiarity — quite as much as his stature, that impressed those who knew him.

On 3 July he took command of the Continental Army and the levies there assembled for action against the British garrison in Boston. The Battle of Bunker Hill had already taken place, news of it reaching him on his way north. Until the following March, Washington’s work was to bring about some semblance of military organization and discipline, to collect ammunition and military stores, to correspond with Congress and the colonial authorities, to guide military operations in widely separate parts of the country, to create a military system for a people entirely unaccustomed to such a thing (and impatient and suspicious under it), and to bend the course of events steadily towards driving the British out of Boston.

He planned the expeditions against Canada under  Richard Montgomery  and  Benedict Arnold , and sent out privateers to harass British commerce. It is not easy to see how Washington survived the year 1775; the colonial poverty, the exasperating annoyances, the outspoken criticism of those who demanded active operations, the personal and party dissensions in Congress, the selfishness or stupidity which cropped up again and again among some of the most patriotic of his co-adjutors were enough to have broken down most men. The change in this one winter is very evident. If Washington was not a great man when he went to Cambridge, he was both a general and a statesman in the fullest sense when he drove the British out of Boston in March 1776. From that time until his death he was the foremost man of the continent.

The military operations of the war will not be detailed here, but they include Washington’s near defeat in the Battle of Long Island, and his escape through Manhattan to New Jersey. The manner in which he turned and struck his pursuers at Trenton and Princeton, and then established himself at Morristown, so as to make the way to Philadelphia impassable; the vigor with which he handled his army at Brandywine and Germantown; the persistence with which he held the strategic position of Valley Forge through the dreadful winter of 1777—78, in spite of the misery of his men, the clamors of the people, and the impotence and meddling of the fugitive Congress.

These are the times that try men’s souls,  wrote  Thomas Paine  at the beginning of 1776, and the words had added meaning in each year that followed. But Washington had no need to fear the test. The fiber of his public character was soon hardened to its permanent quality.

“The Conway Cabal”

The spirit which culminated in the treason of Benedict Arnold was a serious addition to his burdens — for what Arnold did, others were almost ready to do. Many of the American officers, too, had taken offense at the close personal friendship that had sprung up between the marquis de Lafayette and Washington, and at the diplomatic deference which the Commander-in-Chief felt compelled to show to other foreign officers. Some of the foreign volunteers were eventually dismissed politely by Congress on the ground that suitable employment could not be found for them.

The name of one of them, Thomas Conway, an Irish soldier of fortune from the French service, is attached to what is called the  Conway Cabal,  a scheme for superseding Washington by General  Horatio Gates , who in October 1777 succeeded in forcing British General  John Burgoyne  to capitulate at Saratoga, and who had been persistent in his depreciation of the Commander-in-Chief and intrigued with members of Congress. A number of officers and politicians were mixed up in the plot, while the methods employed were the lowest forms of anonymous slander. But at the first breath of exposure, everyone concerned hurried to cover up his part in it, leaving Conway to shoulder both the responsibility and the disgrace.

The Treaty of Alliance with France (1778) — following the surrender of Burgoyne — put an end to all such plans. It was absurd to expect foreign nations to deal with a second-rate man as Commander-in-Chief while Washington was in the field, and he seems to have had no further trouble of this kind.

Washington’s final battles

The prompt and vigorous pursuit of Sir  Henry Clinton  across New Jersey towards New York, and the Battle of Monmouth (June 1778), in which the plan of battle was thwarted by General Charles Lee, closed the military record of Washington — so far as active campaigning was concerned — until the end of the war. The British confined their operations to other parts of the continent, and Washington, alive as ever to the importance of keeping a connection with New England, appointed General  Nathanael Greene  to lead the Southern Campaign, and devoted himself to administrating the war and watching the British in and about New York City.

It was in every way fitting, however, that he who had been the mainspring of the war from the beginning, and who had borne far more than his share of its burdens and discouragements, should end it with the campaign at Yorktown and the surrender of General Lord  Cornwallis  (October 1781). Although peace was not concluded until September 1783, there was no more important fighting. Washington retained his commission until the 23rd of December 1783, when, in a memorable scene, he returned it to Congress in Annapolis, Maryland, and retired to Mount Vernon.

American Cincinnatus

By this time the popular canonization of Washington had begun. On hearing that Washington would resign his commission and retire from power, the King said if true that made Washington the greatest man in the world. He was compared to Cincinnatus, the Roman who was appointed dictator in 458 — and when the crisis was over, retired to his farm.

He occupied a position in American public life and in the American political system which no one could possibly hold again. He may be said to have become a political element quite apart from the Union, or the states, or the people of either. In a country in which newspapers had at best only a local circulation, and where communication was still slow and difficult, the knowledge that Washington favored something, superseded with many men, both argument and the necessity of information. His constant correspondence with the governors of the states gave him a quasi-paternal attitude towards government in general.

On relinquishing his command, he was able to do what no other man could have done with either propriety or safety: he addressed a circular letter to the governors, pointing out changes in the existing form of government which he believed to be necessary, and urging  an indissoluble union of the states under one federal head,   a regard to public justice,  the adoption of a suitable military establishment for a time of peace, and the making of  those mutual concessions which are requisite to the general prosperity.  His refusal to accept a salary, either as commander-in-chief or as president, might have been taken as affectation or impertinence in any one else; it seemed natural and proper enough in the case of Washington.

It is even possible that he might have had a crown, had he been willing to accept it. The army, at the end of the war, was justly dissatisfied with its treatment. The officers were called to meet at Newburgh, New York, and it was the avowed purpose of the leaders to march the army westward, appropriate vacant public lands as part compensation for arrears of pay, leave Congress to negotiate for peace without an army, and  mock at their calamity and laugh when their fear cometh.  Less publicly avowed was the purpose to make their Commander-in-Chief king, if he could be persuaded to aid in establishing a monarchy. A letter written to him by Colonel Lewis Nicola, on behalf of this coterie, detailed the weakness of a republican form of government as they had experienced it, their desire for  mixed government,  with him at its head, and their belief that  the title of king  would be objectionable to but few and of material advantage to the country.

Washington put a stop to the whole proceeding

His reply was peremptory and indignant. In plain terms he stated his abhorrence of the proposal. He was at a loss to conceive what part of his conduct could have encouraged their address; they could not have found  a person to whom their schemes were more disagreeable ; and, he charged them,  if you have any regard for yourself or posterity, or respect for me, to banish these thoughts from your mind, and never communicate, as from yourself or anyone else, a sentiment of the like nature.  His influence, and his alone, secured the quiet disbanding of the discontented army.

Return to Mount Vernon

Washington’s influence was as powerful after he had retired to Mount Vernon as before the resignation of his command. The Society of the Cincinnati, an organization composed of officers of the late war, chose him as its first president; but he insisted that the Society should abandon its plan of hereditary membership, and change other features of the organization against which there had been a public clamor. When the legislature of Virginia gave him 150 shares of stock in companies formed for the improvement of the Potomac and James rivers, and he was unable to refuse them lest his action should be misinterpreted. He extricated himself by giving them to educational institutions.

His voluminous correspondence shows his continued concern for a standing army and the immediate possession of the western military posts, and his interest in the development of the western territory. From public men in all parts of the country he received such a store of suggestions as came to no other man, digested it, and was enabled by means of it to speak with what seemed infallible wisdom. Despite the burden of letter writing, tree-planting and rotation of crops (as evidenced in his diaries), and his increasing reading on the political side of history, he found time to entertain a stream of visitors from all parts of the United States and from abroad.

Among these, in March 1785, were the commissioners from Virginia and Maryland, who met at Alexandria to form a commercial code for Chesapeake Bay and the Potomac, and then visited Mount Vernon. From that moment the current of events, leading into the Annapolis Convention of 1786 and the Federal Convention of the following year, shows Washington’s close supervision at every point.

The Constitutional Convention

When the Constitutional Convention met in Philadelphia in May 1787, it rapidly disposed of improving the The Articles of Confederation and moved to frame a new constitution. Washington was present as a delegate from Virginia, though much against his will; and a unanimous vote at once made him the presiding officer. Naturally, therefore, he did not participate in debate; and he seems to have spoken but once, and then to favor an amendment reducing to 30,000 — from 40,000 —the minimum population required for representation in the House of Representatives. The mere suggestion, coming from him, was sufficient, and the change was at once agreed to. He approved the constitution, which was decided upon, believing, as he said,  that it was the best constitution which could be obtained at that epoch, and that this or a dissolution awaits our choice, and is the only alternative.  As president of the convention, he signed the constitution, and kept the papers of the convention until the adoption of the new government, when they were deposited at the Department of State.

Washington used all of his vast influence to secure the ratification of the new instrument, and this was probably decisive. When enough states had ratified to assure the success of the new government, and the time came to elect a president, there was no hesitation. The office of president had been  cut to fit the measure of George Washington,  and no one thought of any other person in connection with it. The unanimous vote of the electors made him the first President of the United States; their unanimous vote elected him for a second time in (1792—93); and even after he had positively refused to serve for a third term, two electors voted for him (1796—97).

President of the United States

While the success of the new government was the work of many men and many causes, one cannot resist the conviction that the factor of chief importance was the existence, at the head of the executive department, of such a character as Washington. It was he who gave to official intercourse formal dignity and distinction. It was he who secured for the president the power of removal from office without the intervention of the Senate. His support of Hamilton’s financial plans not only insured a speedy restoration of public credit, but also, and even more important, gave the new government a constitutional ground on which to stand. His firmness in dealing with the  Whisky Rebellion  (1794) taught a much needed and wholesome lesson of respect for the Federal power.

His official visits to New England in 1789, to Rhode Island in 1790, and to the South in 1791, enabled him to test public opinion and at the same time increase popular interest in the national government. He was not a political partisan and he held the two natural parties apart, preventing party contest, until the government had become too firmly established to be shaken by them. It would be a great mistake, however, to suppose that the influence of the president was fairly appreciated during his term of office, or that he himself was uniformly respected. Washington seems never to have fully understood either the nature, the significance, or the inevitable necessity of party government in a republic. Instead, he attempted to balance party against party, selected representatives of opposing political views to serve in his first cabinet, and sought in that way to neutralize the effects of parties.

The consequence was that the two leading members of the cabinet,  Alexander Hamilton  and  Thomas Jefferson  — exponents for nearly opposite political doctrines — soon fought, to use the words of one of them, like  two game-cocks in a pit.  Consciously or not, Washington had a natural bias for Federalist party; his letters to Lafayette and to  Patrick Henry  in December 1798 and January 1799, make that evident even without the record of his earlier career as president. It is inconceivable that, to a man with his type of mind and his extraordinary experience, the practical sagacity, farsightedness, and aggressive courage of the Federalists should not have seemed to embody the best political wisdom, however little he may have been disposed to ally himself with any party group or subscribe to any comprehensive creed.

Accordingly, about 1793 when the Democratic-Republican party came to be formed, it was not to be expected that its leaders would long submit with patience to the continual interposition of Washington’s name and influence between themselves and their opponents; but they maintained a calm exterior. Some of their followers were less discreet. The president’s proclamation of neutrality, in the war between England and France, excited them to anger and his support of  John Jay ’s treaty with Great Britain roused them to fury. His firmness in thwarting the activities of Edmond Charles Edouard Genet, minister from France, alienated the partisans of France; his suppression of the  Whisky Rebellion  aroused in some the fear of a military despotism.

Forged letters, purporting to show his desire to abandon the revolutionary struggle, were published; he was accused of drawing more than his salary; his manners were ridiculed as  aping monarchy ; hints of the propriety of a guillotine for his benefit began to appear; he was spoken of as the  stepfather of his country.  The brutal attacks, exceeding in virulence even what happens today, embittered Washington, especially during his second term. In 1793 he is reported to have declared in a cabinet meeting that  he would rather be in his grave than in his present situation,  and that  he had never repented but once the having slipped the moment of resigning his office, and that was every moment since.  The most unpleasant portions of Jefferson’s  Anas  are those in which, with an air of psychological dissection, he details the storms of passion into which the president was driven by the newspaper attacks upon him. There is no reason to believe, however, that these attacks represented the feeling of any save a small minority of politicians. The people never wavered in their devotion to the president, and his election would have been unanimous in 1796, as in 1792 and 1789, had he been willing to serve.

Retirement and final years

Washington retired from the presidency in 4 March 1797 and returned to Mount Vernon — his journey marked by popular demonstrations of affection and esteem. At Mount Vernon, which had suffered from neglect during his absence, he resumed the plantation life which he loved, the society of his family, and the management of his slaves. He had resolved some time before never to obtain another slave, and  wished from his soul  that Virginia could be persuaded to abolish slavery;  it might prevent much future mischief ; but the unprecedented profitableness of the cotton industry, under the impetus of the recently invented cotton gin, had already begun to change public sentiment regarding slavery, and Washington was too old to attempt further innovation.

Visitors continued to flock to him, and his correspondence, as always, took a wide range. In 1798 he was made Commander-in-Chief of the provisional army raised in anticipation of war with France; he was fretted almost beyond endurance by the quarrels of Federalist politicians over the distribution of commissions. During these military preparations and following a long ride in a snow storm, he returned to Mount Vernon late. The next morning he came down with a seriously sore throat and had trouble breathing. This was aggravated by such contemporary remedies as blood-letting, gargles of  molasses, vinegar and butter,  and  vinegar and sage tea  — which  almost suffocated him,  — and a blister of cantharides on the throat.

Within 48 hours, on 14 December 1799, Washington died. His last words were only business directions, affectionate remembrances to relatives, and repeated apologies to the physicians and attendants for the trouble he was giving them. Just before he died — according to his secretary Tobias Lear — he felt his own pulse, his countenance changed, the attending physician placed his hands over the eyes of the dying man,  and he expired without a struggle or a sigh.  At age 67, he had lived several extraordinary lives. In his eulogy,  Henry Lee  eloquently summarized that Washington had been  first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.  His remains rest in the family vault at Mount Vernon.

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Biography Online

George Washington Biography

“The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for giving to Mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation.”

– George Washington

George Washington was born in 1732 in Virginia. His family were wealthy and they owned many slaves who worked on the plantations. As a planter, he felt constrained by British regulations and taxes and this proved one factor in encouraging him to fight the British in the later Wars of Independence. As well as working as a planter, Washington was interested in military matters and exploring the Western territories. In May 1775, his military experiences were used as delegates voted Washington to be head of the US Continental Army.

“Let us therefore animate and encourage each other, and show the whole world that a Freeman, contending for liberty on his own ground, is superior to any slavish mercenary on earth.”

– General Orders, Headquarters, New York (2 July 1776).

The War of Independence was to last six years. Especially in the beginning, Washington had to deal with ill-trained and poorly equipped soldiers. In the early days of the war, he adopted a strategy of harassing the British but avoiding them in full-scale war. It was not until 1781 when, with the help of French forces, Washington was able to defeat the British at Yorktown.

After victory had been finalised in 1783, Washington resigned as Commander in Chief. He wanted to make the point that he would not become the  de facto military ruler. Washington wanted the new American constitution and democratic system to be used. To Washington, the new constitution and Declaration of Independence were a chance to institute a new type of government and society based on human rights.

“The foundation of our Empire was not laid in the gloomy age of Ignorance and Superstition, but at an Epoch when the rights of mankind were better understood and more clearly defined, than at any former period.”  – Washington Circular to the States, 8 June 1783 .

As a successful military leader, Washington retained widespread support and, given the difficulties faced by the emerging republic, Washington stood for public office and the Presidency. By a large majority, Washington was elected the first President of America and he served from April 1789 to March 1797. As President, Washington skillfully kept the United States out of conflicts with Great Britain and France. This period of peace enabled the new country to improve its national finances and gain an important period of stability.

“In politics as in philosophy, my tenets are few and simple. The leading one of which, and indeed that which embraces most others, is to be honest and just ourselves and to exact it from others, meddling as little as possible in their affairs where our own are not involved. If this maxim was generally adopted, wars would cease and our swords would soon be converted into reap hooks and our harvests be more peaceful, abundant, and happy.”

In 1791, Washington imposed an excise duty on spirits. The Federal government needed to raise tax revenue for debts incurred by the war. The so-called ‘Whiskey Tax’ was deeply unpopular and many rebelled against tax officials who tried to collect the tax. Washington himself rode out to Western Pennsylvania to negotiate with the rebels. Although the tax was hard to collect, Washington avoided an escalation of the rebellion and helped to establish the principle of federal taxes.

Washington’s presidency helped to establish many protocols and traditions that are still in use today. This included the creation of a cabinet system, the inaugural address and title of Mr President. His Republican values had a lasting impact on American society and government. Despite being a popular president, he had to be persuaded to stand for a second term.  Both Thomas Jefferson (of Democrat-Republicans) and Alexander Hamilton (Federalist Party) put aside their policy difference to encourage Washington to stand for a second term. They believed Washington was the only one who could hold the new country together.

Washington agreed, but towards the end of his second term he grew weary of politics, in particular, he didn’t like the factionalization of politics into different parties. He refused to join the Federalists, despite mostly agreeing with their policies. In some respects, Washington preferred the idea of strong central government. Although he fought the British, he appreciated the strength of a unified political body. However, Washington was keen to avoid the pomp and ceremony associated with Monarchs.

In 1796, he published a Farewell Address which offered his thoughts on civic virtue and political governance. It expressed Washington’s belief in the virtue of the union of states, seeking a peaceful foreign policy and adherence to the constitution and democracy.

“The unity of government which constitutes you one people is also now dear to you. It is justly so, for it is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquility at home, your peace abroad; of your safety; of your prosperity; of that very liberty which you so highly prize.”( Farewell address )

George Washington was widely considered to be an able administrator and person of exemplary character. Washington is considered to embody qualities of integrity, self-discipline, courage, honesty, resolve,  and respect for others.

“Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence. True friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to appellation.”

George Washington died aged 67, on 14 December 1799, three years after his retirement, at his home of Mount Vernon. He succombed to a mystery illness where he felt cold and feverish. Doctors were summonded and they bled up to 40% of his blood – in a vain attempt to reverse the illness. His last words were

“’I am just going! Have me decently buried; and do not let my body be put into the vault less than three days after I am dead. Do you understand me? . . . Tis well!’”

Views on slavery

Washington rarely spoke against slavery in public. He knew how divisive the issue was and feared it could split the emerging union. Washington rarely addressed the issue during his presidency, but he did pass the Slave Trade Act of 1794, which limited America’s involvement in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. On a personal note, he did inherit slaves from his father’s plantations. As a young man he purchased another 8 slaves. During his life, he became more concerned about the issue, and aware of the human cost of the practise.

“The unfortunate condition of the persons, whose labour in part I employed, has been the only unavoidable subject of regret. To make the Adults among them as easy & as comfortable in their circumstances as their actual state of ignorance & improvidence would admit; & to lay a foundation to prepare the rising generation for a destiny different from that in which they were born; afforded some satisfaction to my mind, & could not I hoped be displeasing to the justice of the Creator.” – Comment by George Washington, recorded by David Humphries

He left provisions in his will to free his slaves after his death.

Citation: Pettinger, Tejvan . “Biography of George Washington”, Oxford, www.biographyonline.net. Updated: 8th February 2017. Last updated 13 November 2019.

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How George Washington’s Personal and Physical Characteristics Helped Him Win the Presidency

Although he didn't campaign and didn't want to leave the quiet life of his plantation, Washington was hardly surprised by the news. After all, he was a national hero for engineering the Continental Army's surprising victory in the American Revolution, and he had the full respect and admiration of his fellow statesmen. As Henry Lee later put it, Washington had become "first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen."

Still, there was a man behind the myth, and it was the combination of his characteristics, some innate and others carefully developed, that made Washington the obvious choice to take charge at this stage of the nascent country's history.

Washington had a strong moral character

While the story of young Washington admitting to felling a cherry tree was invented by a biographer, the fable underscores the degree to which he was held as a person of impeccable character.

Learning to control his ambitions and temper as a young man, he impressed colleagues with an even-keeled demeanor and adherence to strong moral values. Observed Abigail Adams , wife of Washington's vice president, John Adams : "He is polite with dignity, affable without formality, distant without haughtiness, grave without austerity; modest, wise and good."

Washington's lofty reputation was upheld by his actions. He refused to be paid for commanding the Continental Army, only requesting to be reimbursed for expenses, and he resigned his military commission after his popularity surged at the close of the Revolution, putting his allegiance to the republic ahead of a desire for personal gain.

He was easy to talk to

Although he was born into the Virginia gentry, Washington did not travel abroad for the private education that was provided to his older half-brothers. So he was acutely aware of his perceived shortcomings and took pains to mold himself into a dignified gentleman.

This involved the memorization of The Rules of Civility and Decent Behaviour In Company and Conversation , a guide written by Jesuit priests 150 years earlier, as well as the study of the noblemen in his life and acquired proficiency in activities like dancing, fencing and horsemanship.

Washington's mastery of social interaction naturally translated to the political arena. For all his authority, he came across as agreeable in conversation and sought to find areas of common ground. His political skill went a long way toward bridging the quarreling sides at the 1787 Constitutional Convention and ratifying the document now held sacred in American law.

Washington was large in stature and presence

As befitting a military hero, Washington cut a formidable presence. A contemporary in the 1750s described him as "measuring six feet two inches in his stockings and weighing 175 pounds. ... His frame is padded with well-developed muscles, indicating great strength." The admirer also praised Washington's "commanding countenance," as well as his "graceful" and "majestic" movements.

By the time he became president, the 57-year-old Washington was certainly less agile but even more imposing at upward of 200 pounds. By then he had survived an array of life-threatening situations, from contracting smallpox as a teenager and baptism by fire in the battlefields of the French and Indian War to the harsh winter of Valley Forge, rendering him a larger-than-life figure.

He dressed fashionably

Washington learned the value of sharp attire while studying the Virginia nobility he so admired, eventually noting that "nothing adds more to the appearance of a man than dress." This produced his devotion to a suitable wardrobe after establishing himself as a surveyor and a landowner, ordering garments from a London tailor to accommodate his height and long limbs.

Washington also understood the symbolic value of clothing: He arrived in full military uniform at the Second Continental Congress in 1775, signaling that he was ready to battle the British, and insisted that his servicemen also dress in a professional manner. As president, he dismissed the idea of appearing in the garish robes of European monarchs for portraits, preferring to be depicted in conservative American-made suits.

Washington studied hard so he could command with ease

While not regarded in the same vein as Thomas Jefferson , Alexander Hamilton and other heralded scholars of the era, Washington was no slouch in matters of intellect. From his early setbacks as a young officer, he studied military books to improve his understanding of battlefield strategies, gaining insights that shaped his directions during the crucial moments of the American Revolution.

Afterward, he became fully versed in principles of government and formed his own strong convictions as to what the burgeoning democracy should become. As a result, when it came time to move forward with the presidency, Washington was prepared to follow the guidance of his Jefferson-Hamilton cabinet and he was ready to lead with his own sense of direction, as he had done while commanding the charge for independence on the battlefield.

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Beyond cherry trees and wigs, delve into the real George Washington. Explore his military genius, political triumphs, and complex legacy in this comprehensive biography.

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When Was George Washington Born - Where Was George Washington Born

How tall was george washington.

• 6 ft 0 in (1.83 m) - This is the most commonly cited height, based on various accounts and comparisons to furniture and other objects.
• 5 ft 11 in (1.80 m) - Some sources suggest this slightly shorter stature, based on European clothing measurements of the time.
• 6 ft 2 in (1.88 m) - This taller estimate comes from anecdotal accounts and comparisons to portraits and statues.

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If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.

- George Washington

George Washington - The Founding Father

George Washington, fondly referred to as the "father of his country," was the first President of the United States of America, the Commander in Chief of the Continental Army during the American War for Independence, and one of the U.S. Founding Fathers. His life began in the countryside of Westmoreland County, Virginia on February 22, 1732. Born to Augustine and Mary Ball Washington, middle class farmers and plantation owners, George learned about farming at a young age after the early death of his father. Also, the untimely death of his father prevented young George from advancing past an elementary level education. Looking to advance himself vocationally and develop independence from his mother, George Washington became a surveyor for Culpeper County at the age of seventeen. This well-paying job was awarded to George mainly as a result of his connections with the wealthy and influential Fairfax family, a connection that George possessed because of his older brother Lawrence's involvement in both the Ohio Company (a land company funded largely by the Fairfax family) and the Virginia militia. Following a trip to Barbados with Lawrence, George contracted smallpox. He survived, but Lawrence died soon after the trip as a result of tuberculosis. The death of Lawrence opened up leadership positions in the Virginia milia; one of these open positions was given to George. Washington was now the the district adjutant militia leader for the Virginia militia.

Shortly after Washington received his new military position, conflict arose between France and Great Britain over the claim to western lands in North America, specifically, land in the Ohio Country. The British investing company known as the Ohio Company had laid claim to much land in the Ohio Valley. Because of the personal interests of several Ohio Company investors in Virginia and on orders from the government of Great Britain, the governor of the colony of Virginia, Robert Dinwiddie, sent a militia group to the Ohio lands to request the leave of French forces that had gathered there. George Washington graciously received the invitation to lead this expedition. After delivering the notice of claimed British lands to the French forces, Washington returned to Virginia. However, Governor Dinwiddie soon sent him back to the Ohio territory to oversee the building of a British military fort. While on his second expedition, Washington decided to attack a French militia unit under the command of Joseph de Jumonville. With the help of an Indian ally named Tanacharison, Washington's men secured a hasty victory. Either during the battle or afterwards in the taking of prisoners, Jumonville was killed. A retaliation by the French led to the capture of Washington and much of his militia at Fort Necessity; however, he was set free to return to Virginia soon afterwards. There was conjecture that Washington himself murdered the French commander or that he died at the hands of Tanacharison. Regardless, this incident was crucial in beginning the French and Indian War between France and Great Britain in North America in 1756.

During the French and Indian War, Washington saw action in battle at the Battle of the Monongahela. Serving as the chief American aide to the British General Edward Braddock, Washington rallied the British troops after an ambush by French and Indian forces left many of the British officers dead or wounded and the troops in a state of disarray. His bravery and the fact that he narrowly escaped the battle unharmed himself (he was shot four times through his coat and lost two horses from underneath him) helped to bolster Washington's reputation as a war hero. This resulted in Governor Dinwiddie appointing George Washington to Commander in Chief of the Virginia militia. He spent most of his efforts as commander defending the Virginia frontier from hostile Indian attacks. Although he lost many men as a result of these expeditions, he did succeed in making the Virginia frontier one of the safest among the colonies for settlers. Additionally, Washington served alongside the British army as the French and Indian conflict waged on. He was hardly successful in this, blundering his role in the Forbes Expedition to capture the western French Fort Duquesne. He unwittingly led his troops to open fire on a British unit, leading to casualties from friendly fire. George Washington resigned from the Virginia militia after this mistake, but still learned much from his early experiences in war, particularly the tactics of the British military with their strengths and weaknesses. Additionally, many of Washington's later political views were first birthed during this time in his life: he recognized the need for a strong central government that had the ability to act quickly and definitively. Based on this belief, he would later come to espouse the political views of the Federalist Party.

Following his service in the French and Indian War, Washington returned to civilian life with his marriage to Martha Dandridge Custis, a wealthy widow. Not only did George Washington increase his wealth and the size of his estate with this marriage, but also he became a father to Mary's children John Parke Custis and Martha Parke Custis. George and Martha never had any children of their own. Washington acquired even more land because of his service in the French and Indian War; Governor Dinwiddie awarded over 20,000 acres of land in the Ohio territory to George Washington. With this significant increase in land and wealth, Washington rose in Virginian society to the level of an aristocrat and became involved in local politics as a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses in 1758.

Washington's involvement in politics, however, soon landed him back on the battlefield. After actively opposing the Stamp Act of 1765 and the Townshend Acts, Washington drew up a proposal to boycott British goods until the repeal of these unfair taxes on the American colonies. Soon, the fighting with Great Britain became more than political. During the summer of 1775, Washington was appointed the Commander in Chief of the Continental Army by the American colonies' legislative body, the Continental Congress. As Commander in Chief, Washington was responsible for leading the Continental army, training the army, and serving as the public face of the American Revolution.

The American War for Independence began with the two skirmishes at Lexington and Concord. Washington was not directly involved in these preliminary battles, as he became Commander in Chief directly afterwards. Washington's time as the commander of the colonial forces was full of both victories and significant defeats. At the beginning of the war, George Washington drove the British out of the major city of Boston, but then lost the great city of New York shortly after. Following this great defeat, Washington gave life back to the colonial efforts by winning small battles at both Trenton and Princeton, New Jersey in December 1776. The next year, the British, under the command of General Howe, defeated Washington's army at Philadelphia and captured the city that served as the rebel forces political capital. This significant loss prompted several members of the Continental Congress to question Washington's competency as the leader of the Continental Army. Despite the doubts about Washington, enough support remained among the army and the political leaders of the colony for the commander to keep his title. The winter of 1777 saw the colonial army encamped at Valley Forge, where they suffered massive casualties, mainly from disease. Following this bitter winter, Washington followed the British army as they evacuated the recently captured city of Philadelphia to retreat to their stronghold at New York. Washington attempted to attack them at the Battle of Monmouth, but this proved to end in a stalemate. The winter of 1779-1780 was another difficult season for Washington and his men. Supplies ran scarce once again, and the treason committed by Benedict Arnold became public. However, the next summer proved to be more successful. Aided by their ally France with both ground troops and a naval force, George Washington delivered a decisive victory over the British in the Battle of Yorktown. A formal peace treaty was not signed until September 1783, the Treaty of Paris. Shortly thereafter, Washington retired to his estate in Mount Vernon, Virginia to attend to his lands and farms.

George Washington's retirement was brief, as he was called to the Constitutional Convention to assist in crafting a government for the newly independent colonies. Serving as the president of the Convention, he strongly disapproved of the proposed Articles of Confederation, claiming that they would establish a weak central government for the new nation. Following the ratification of the Constitution (the replacement for the Articles of Confederation), George Washington was unanimously elected as the first President of the United States of America in 1789. He reluctantly was elected to a second term in 1792. As the first U.S. President, George Washington set many precedents: he opted to serve only two terms, he removed all royal "flair" from the office of President, he initiated public addresses to Congress, and he formed a cabinet of personal advisers to assist him in making leadership decisions. Additionally, he tended to favor and promote the actions of a strong central federal government. For example, in 1794, Washington sent state militias to suppress what became known as the Whiskey Rebellion, a protest to an excise tax on distilled spirits that had been implemented by Congress three years earlier. Both his show of force and his support of taxation by the central government proved George Washington's support of the Federalist principles of strong federal government. In foreign affairs, Washington adopted a policy of diplomacy and neutrality throughout his presidency. After the end of his second presidential term, Washington penned his Farewell Address, in which he urged the young nation to practice national unity, abide by the Constitution, uphold morality, and adopt international independence in foreign affairs.

George Washington retired to his Mount Vernon home once again in 1797 upon the completion of his presidency and political career. He devoted most of his time to caring for and expanding his estate. However, he did accept a military leadership position the following year as the senior officer of the United States Army as tensions with France heightened. On December 13, 1799, Washington came down with a severe sore throat and other cold-like symptoms. His symptoms rapidly progressed, and doctors were called to his aide at his home. A believer in the ineffective medical practice of bloodletting, in which a sick patient is bled in order to rid the body of disease, Washington allowed the three physicians attending to him to bleed almost half of his body's blood supply. When he died around 10:00 pm on December 14, it was most likely due to shock. George Washington's death was publicly mourned not only in the United States but also in several European nations. The legacy of George Washington is one that will not be soon removed from both the iconic and factual history of the U.S.A. From his title as the "father of his country" to his portrait on the American dollar to a monument constructed to his honor in America's capital city, George Washington was indeed "first in war-first in peace-and first in the hearts of his countrymen." Today, George Washington is recognized as the most admired U.S. president in history, along with Abraham Lincoln .

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Who was george washington.

Owing to Washington’s military experiences and his unrelenting stance against the British, he was elected as the Commander-in-Chief on 16 June 1775. 

As the Commander-in-Chief, Washington led the Continental Army during America’s Revolutionary War against Britain between 1785 to 1783. The war resulted in the North American English colonies’ independence from Britain and the modern-day USA’s eventual formation.

Early Bio and Childhood

Military career.

Spurred by his late brother’s military service as adjutant general, he sought a commission with Virginia’s Lieutenant Governer. The governor appointed him Major and gave him command of one of the four militia districts in Virginia. 

In 1753, for one of his first war assignments, Washington was appointed as the special envoy to Fort LeBoeuf, now known as Waterford, Pennsylvania, to demand the French to leave the territory that the British had initially claimed. The French declined the orders, and thus, this event was to be the first among several critical moments in Washington’s war history. 

French And Indian War

Commanding the virginia militia.

In August 1955, Washington was  appointed  as the commander of the Virginia militia. He was tasked with patrolling and protecting a border of about 400 miles (643 km). 

Washington didn’t serve as the commander for very long as his health deteriorated at the end of 1757. He contracted dysentery and was sent home back for recovery. 

American Revolutionary War

George Washington didn’t initially support the idea of America’s independence from Britain. However, he changed his mind after Britain started imposing unreasonable taxes by making amendments in the law,  including the  Stamp Act 1765  and the   Townshend Acts 1767.

By 1767, Washington was a vocal critic of the growing oppression of American colonists by the crown. Later, in 1769, he filed a motion requesting Virginia to boycott Britain’s goods until they removed the earlier imposed taxes.

Washington was then promoted as the Commander-in-Chief and Major General of the rebel troops on 15 June 1775, nearly two months after the Battles of Lexington and Concord.

Moving Across Delaware

Valley forge.

A unanimous vote was passed, which elected George Washington to the United States’ first presidency on 30 April 1789. On the said day, Washington stood on Federal Hall’s balcony in Wall Street, New York, and swore in on his position.

But, in totality, George Washington was considered to have had two moderately successful Presidential terms. 

During his terms, he set back a war with Britain, established boundaries with Canada, and created an international trade environment.

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The 10 Best Books on President George Washington

Essential books on george washington.

There are countless books on George Washington, and it comes with good reason, beyond serving as America’s first President (1789-1797), he was commander in chief of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War.

“There is nothing which can better deserve your patronage, than the promotion of science and literature,” he believed. “Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness.”

In order to get to the bottom of what inspired one of history’s most consequential figures to the heights of societal contribution, we’ve compiled a list of the 10 best books on George Washington.

Washington: A Life by Ron Chernow

Celebrated biographer Ron Chernow provides a richly nuanced portrait of the father of our nation and the first president of the United States. With a breadth and depth matched by no other one-volume biography of George Washington, this crisply paced narrative carries the reader through his adventurous early years, his heroic exploits with the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, his presiding over the Constitutional Convention, and his magnificent performance as America’s first president.

Washington’s Revolution: The Making of America’s First Leader by Robert Middlekauff

Focusing on Washington’s early years, Bancroft Prize winner and Pulitzer Prize finalist Robert Middlekauff penetrates his mystique, revealing his all-too-human fears, values, and passions. Rich in psychological detail regarding Washington’s temperament, idiosyncrasies, and experiences, this book shows a self-conscious Washington who grew in confidence and experience as a young soldier, businessman, and Virginia gentleman, and who was transformed into a patriot by the revolutionary ferment of the 1760s and ’70s.

Middlekauff makes clear that Washington was at the heart of not just the revolution’s course and outcome but also the success of the nation it produced. This vivid, insightful new account of the formative years that shaped a callow George Washington into an extraordinary leader is an indispensable book for truly understanding one of America’s great figures.

The Return of George Washington: 1783-1789 by Edward Larson

After leading the Continental Army to victory in the Revolutionary War, George Washington shocked the world: he retired. In December 1783, General Washington, the most powerful man in the country, stepped down as Commander in Chief and returned to private life at Mount Vernon. Yet as Washington contentedly grew his estate, the fledgling American experiment floundered. Under the Articles of Confederation, the weak central government was unable to raise revenue to pay its debts or reach a consensus on national policy.

The states bickered and grew apart. When a Constitutional Convention was established to address these problems, its chances of success were slim. Jefferson, Madison, and the other Founding Fathers realized that only one man could unite the fractious states: George Washington. Reluctant, but duty-bound, Washington rode to Philadelphia in the summer of 1787 to preside over the Convention.

Although Washington is often overlooked in most accounts of the period, this masterful new history from Pulitzer Prize-winner Edward J. Larson brilliantly uncovers Washington’s vital role in shaping the Convention – and shows how it was only with Washington’s support and his willingness to serve as President that the states were brought together and ratified the Constitution, thereby saving the country.

His Excellency: George Washington by Joseph J. Ellis

To this landmark biography of our first president, Joseph J. Ellis brings the exacting scholarship, shrewd analysis, and lyric prose that have made him one of the premier historians of the Revolutionary era. Training his lens on a figure who sometimes seems as remote as his effigy on Mount Rushmore, Ellis assesses George Washington as a military and political leader and a man whose “statue-like solidity” concealed volcanic energies and emotions.

Here is the impetuous young officer whose miraculous survival in combat half-convinced him that he could not be killed. Here is the free-spending landowner whose debts to English merchants instilled him with a prickly resentment of imperial power. We see the general who lost more battles than he won and the reluctant president who tried to float above the partisan feuding of his cabinet.

Washington’s Crossing by David Hackett Fischer

Six months after the Declaration of Independence, the American Revolution was all but lost. A powerful British force had routed the Americans at New York, occupied three colonies, and advanced within sight of Philadelphia.

Yet, as David Hackett Fischer recounts in this riveting history, George Washington and many other Americans refused to let the Revolution die. On Christmas night, as a howling nor’easter struck the Delaware Valley, he led his men across the river and attacked the exhausted Hessian garrison at Trenton, killing or capturing nearly a thousand men. A second battle of Trenton followed within days.

The Americans held off a counterattack by Lord Cornwallis’s best troops, then were almost trapped by the British force. Under cover of night, Washington’s men stole behind the enemy and struck them again, defeating a brigade at Princeton. The British were badly shaken. In twelve weeks of winter fighting, their army suffered severe damage, their hold on New Jersey was broken, and their strategy was ruined.

This gem among books on George Washington reveals the crucial role of contingency in these events. We see how the campaign unfolded in a sequence of difficult choices by many actors, from generals to civilians, on both sides.

Washington: The Indispensable Man by James Flexner

After more than two decades, this dramatic and concise single-volume distillation of James Thomas Flexner’s definitive four-volume biography of George Washington, which received a Pulitzer Prize citation and a National Book Award for the fourth volume, has itself become an American classic.

The author unflinchingly paints a portrait of Washington: slave owner, brave leader, man of passion, reluctant politician, and fierce general. His complex character and career are neither glorified nor vilified here; rather, Flexner sets up a brilliant counterpoint between Washington’s public and private lives and gives us a challenging look at the man who has become as much a national symbol as the American flag.

An Imperfect God  by Henry Wiencek

When George Washington wrote his will, he made the startling decision to set his slaves free; earlier he had said that holding slaves was his “only unavoidable subject of regret.” In this groundbreaking work, Henry Wiencek explores the founding father’s engagement with slavery at every stage of his life – as a Virginia planter, soldier, politician, president and statesman.

Washington was born and raised among blacks and mixed-race people; he and his wife had blood ties to the slave community. Yet as a young man he bought and sold slaves without scruple, even raffled off children to collect debts (an incident ignored by earlier biographers). Then, on the Revolutionary battlefields where he commanded both black and white troops, Washington’s attitudes began to change. He and the other framers enshrined slavery in the Constitution, but, Wiencek shows, even before he became president Washington had begun to see the system’s evil.

Wiencek’s revelatory narrative, based on a meticulous examination of private papers, court records, and the voluminous Washington archives, documents for the first time the moral transformation culminating in Washington’s determination to emancipate his slaves. He acted too late to keep the new republic from perpetuating slavery, but his repentance was genuine.

George Washington’s heroic stature as Father of Our Country is not diminished in this superb, nuanced portrait: now we see Washington in full as a man of his time and ahead of his time.

George Washington: A Biography by Washington Irving

Washington Irving’s  Life of George Washington (published in five volumes in 1856-59) was the product of his last years and remains his most personal work. Christened with the name of the great general, Irving was blessed by Washington while still a boy of seven, and later came to know many of the prominent figures of the Revolution. In these pages he describes them using firsthand source material and observation. The result is a book which is fascinating not only for its subject (the American Revolution), but also for how it reveals in illuminating detail the personality and humanity of a now remote, towering icon.

But one cannot read Irving’s  Life  without marveling at the supreme art behind it, for his biography is foremost a work of literature. Charles Neider’s abridgment and editing of Irving’s long out-of-print classic has created a literary work comparable in importance and elegance to the original.   George Washington, A Biography , Neider’s title for his edition of Irving’s  Life , makes the work accessible to modern audiences.

Founding Friendship by Stuart Eric Leibiger

Although the friendship between George Washington and James Madison was eclipsed in the early 1790s by the alliances of Madison with Jefferson and Washington with Hamilton, their collaboration remains central to the constitutional revolution that launched the American experiment in republican government. Washington relied heavily on Madison’s advice, pen, and legislative skill, while Madison found Washington’s prestige indispensable for achieving his goals for the new nation.

Observing these two founding fathers in light of their special relationship, this gem among books on George Washington argues against a series of misconceptions about the men. Madison emerges as neither a strong nationalist of the Hamiltonian variety nor a political consolidationist; he did not retreat from nationalism to states’ rights in the 1790s, as other historians have charged. Washington, far from being a majestic figurehead, exhibits a strong constitutional vision and firm control of his administration.

1776 by David McCullough

In this masterful book, David McCullough tells the intensely human story of those who marched with General George Washington in the year of the Declaration of Independence – when the whole American cause was riding on their success, without which all hope for independence would have been dashed and the noble ideals of the Declaration would have amounted to little more than words on paper.

Based on extensive research in both American and British archives,  1776  is a powerful drama written with extraordinary narrative vitality. It is the story of Americans in the ranks, men of every shape, size, and color, farmers, schoolteachers, shoemakers, no-accounts, and mere boys turned soldiers. And it is the story of the King’s men, the British commander, William Howe, and his highly disciplined redcoats who looked on their rebel foes with contempt and fought with a valor too little known.

If you enjoyed this guide to books on George Washington, be sure to check out our list of The 10 Best Books on President John Adams !

U.S. Constitution.net

George Washington Biography

Early life and military beginnings.

Born in 1732 in Westmoreland County, Virginia, George Washington was introduced early to the expectations and challenges of the Virginia planter elite. His family had notable connections, with his father, Augustine Washington, involved in agriculture and iron mining, and his mother, Mary Ball Washington, hailing from a similarly well-placed lineage.

As a young boy, George Washington's education was modest, fitting the standard plantation owner's child without extravagance. Themes like mathematics and the basics of surveying captured his attention more than classical languages or literature. By age 16, his alignment to practical skills manifested as he secured a job surveyor for the then vast and relatively uncharted territories of the Culpeper family in Virginia.

His surveying career was more than mapmaking; it was a doorway to the unbridled frontier, full of potential land acquisitions which were paramount in colonial Virginia's economy. It was here, amidst the demanding elements of wilderness and risk, that Washington revealed early indications of steadfastness and initiative.

Transitioning from boundaries to battlefields, Washington's first substantial military role came during the French and Indian War. At just twenty-two, he was appointed as the official Surveyor of Culpeper County. This role would be brief as military duties soon escalated his participatory role.

In 1754, military engagement beckoned and Washington stepped into his uniform as a lieutenant colonel in charge of about one hundred fifty men set to challenge French encroachments in the Ohio Valley—a mission essential for British interests against French territorial claims.

His youthful military missions introduced harsh lessons. Most notably, his command during the debacle at Fort Necessity where his troops were compelled to surrender to French forces—a veritable school of military learning through misstep and humiliation. This episode emphasized his then-limited warfare experience but also initiated a deeper grit for victory and understanding military intricacies.

The proceeding twilight years before the holistic outbreak of the revolutionary flames were moments of learning and tightening authority for Washington. Contributions during the Fort Duquesne skirmish further affirmed his resilience. Despite being outnumbered, his resistance marked his presence, elevating his status among colonial forces.

These early instances of leadership coated with challenges of diverse magnitude harnessed a commander adept at maneuvering both the maps of wilderness and those of battle strategies. Washington's onset narratives and experiences support not just a biography of positions held but a spirit fortified with envisioning American ideals yet to come in his journey toward founding fatherhood.

Revolutionary War Leadership

George Washington's role as the Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army, which he held from 1775 until the cessation of hostilities in 1783, was as fraught with challenges as it was crucial to the outcome of the American Revolutionary War. His appointment by the Second Continental Congress itself was an indication of the pivotal influence he would soon command across the profoundly transformative years of the rebellion.

Facing a sizeably better-supplied and seasoned British military, Washington's strategic acumen was awarded an unyielding test. His legendary crossing of the Delaware River in 1776 , pivotal to the surprise attack against the Hessian forces at Trenton, remains emblematic of his audacity and strategic creativity. The victory at Trenton ensured a much-needed uplift in patriot morale and elicited new support from skittish Continental recruits.

Washington's handling of the war was marked not only by moments of tactical spark but also exemplified by persistent endurance under adverse continuums. His management during the despairing winter at Valley Forge, where his army was molded into a more competent fighting force by Baron von Steuben, narrated less about immediate battle-winning tactics and more about building resilience and affiliation among distraught troops.

His leadership was also perceptible in his diplomatic tact which maintained fragile French alliances that were essential both financially and militarily. Washington's infantry was profoundly encumbered by stark shortages; he had to continually appeal, sometimes furiously, to Congress for provisions and ammunition while also soothing interstate disputes between militias.

Whether rallying his aggrieved soldiers against seemingly insuperable odds or personally courting potential loyalists' involvement, Washington's presence was of boundless consequence. His unembellished communication, an extension of his straightforward military measures, reinforced continuity among colonial forces whereby proposing shared resolve amidst their sundry hardships.

Finally, it was Washington's iron-clad grasp on longer strategic goals that prompted his audacious yet decisive movement to Yorktown in 1781. Through what was a bold reallocation of men accompanied by the crucial French naval alliance, Washington encircled Lord Cornwallis, precipitating British capitulation and subsequently meriting pivotal global recognition of America's resurgence.

In evaluating George Washington's wartime leadership, it is his blend of modest pragmatism, ardent nationalism, and unshakable fixation on a considerably improbable triumph that dictated his strategy. Not one easily rivaled, Washington ceaselessly engaged in battle tactics and laid groundwork for raising an insurgent nation poised for the rudiments of self-governance — all hallmarks that sowed seeds for enduring constitutional paradigms.

Constitutional Influence and Presidency

George Washington's imprint on the Constitutional Convention was pivotal, not only because of his role as President of the Convention but also because his towering integrity and consensus-building facade provided a critical balance among varying political voices. His silent guardianship and subtle yet influential guidance helped steer the convention through tumultuous debates and sectional disagreements which otherwise might have stalled the nascent nation's progress.

During the weeks of heated discussions in that summer of 1787, while Washington himself was often strategically reticent — speaking less but presenting an authoritative resonance — his mere presence acted as a keel to stabilize the incipient constitutional framework. Many looked to his judgment as foundational, adhering to the force of his character as much as to the gravity of his role. By inciting a meditative rather than confrontational air at the convention, he aided in the orchestration of compromises essential to the constitution's existence, such as:

• The Great Compromise which sculpted the bicameral structure of Congress
• The Three-Fifths Compromise which, albeit controversially, resolved immediate disputes over congressional representation and taxation based on population

Creating a sturdy yet flexible guide through this new governing document, Washington fostered not only the realization of a federal government but imbued a resilient directive for states' cooperation under a central authority. These reflections of thoughtful governance directed Washington into his presidency, laying foundational precedents that deeply embedded in the roots of American political traditions.

Commencing his first term as president following an unequivocal electoral endorsement, Washington found himself sketching the broad strokes of what the executive role entailed — no predecessor templates at hand. He approached his role as Chief Executive with cautious stewardship, keenly aware of the precedental weight his decisions carried. His execution of duty balanced astute administrative foresight with constitutional fidelity, setting benchmarks for presidential conduct reflective of sovereign responsibility and not of monarchy mimicry.

For instance, his decision to assemble a Cabinet, though not explicitly outlined in the Constitution, became an executive standard for collaborative governance. This Cabinet, comprising department heads like Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, although ideologically distinct, manifested Washington's prerogative for a balanced advisory mechanism reflecting distributed opinions. Here too, his managerial acumen was to employ vigorous debate but guide such discussions to coherent administrative outputs, contributing to a unified executive direction despite internal dissensions.

Also noteworthy were Washington's foreign policy designs; his issuance of the Proclamation of Neutrality in 1793 exemplified his prudent diplomatic stance — prioritizing a path of peace amidst escalating European conflicts. This policy reflected Washington's foresight in stabilizing America's domestic capabilities before engaging in international hostilities — a precedent for foreign relations that underscored a fledgling nation's intent for sovereign integrity and deliberative engagement on the global stage.

Domestically, during his two terms from 1789 to 1797, he fortified federal authority through enactments like the controversial implementation of the Whiskey Tax and its subsequent enforcement against the Whiskey Rebellion. This latter episode particularly emphasized the tactical and practical literacy of Washington's governance, demonstrating federal rights to impose and extract excise duties and strengthening national law precedency over individual states' dissent.

Washington's voluntary relinquishment of the presidency after two terms set an influential pattern for executive tenure, lauded later as a defense against potential autocracy. This decision underscored his persona as a democratically attuned leader whose obligations to civics overshadowed any tendrils of authoritarian refurbish.

In assessing George Washington's legacy as anchored in constitutional philosophy and presidential undertakings, a judicious amalgamation of cautionary leadership, strategic brilliance, and constitutional allegiance is evident. His tangible influence sculpted governance schemas and codified early precedents, ensuring that America's constitutional democracy had a calibrated yet humane architect at its genesis—an exemplary paradigm for successors threshing the republic's trails.

Legacy and Cultural Impact

George Washington's legacy endures, transcending the boundaries of his time and still prominently shaping modern American society, culture, and the political landscape. As a foundational figure of the United States, his life and leadership style have imparted timeless values that continue to influence generations.

In the realm of societal impact, Washington's adherence to integrity, humility, and public service established the ethos for American civic responsibility. His decision to voluntarily step down after two presidential terms unveiled a new standard for democratic governance and leadership relinquishing power that has influenced the political doctrines of not just America but numerous emerging republics. This act alone has been a cornerstone in U.S. Presidential history, reinforcing a tradition of peaceful transitions of power that underscores the United States as a beacon of democracy.

Washington's impact on American culture is profound and multifaceted. He is a figure of monumental historical reverence and has been immortalized in countless forms of art and literature. As the subject of iconic portraits by Gilbert Stuart , Washington's visage is one of the most recognizable symbols of American history. These works encapsulate his persona and enrich the narrative of American independence and its values.

Literarily, Washington has been portrayed as both a stoic hero and a complex, introspective leader—elements captured beautifully in biographies such as "Washington: A Life" by Ron Chernow , which paints an intimate portrait of his character and transformation into a national icon. Additionally, his presence in contemporary works such as Lin-Manuel Miranda's "Hamilton" articulates his enduring relevance and his fundamental role in shaping the nation, emphasizing his military and presidential leadership through a modern artistic lens.

Moreover, Washington's contributions are embedded in national landmarks such as the Washington Monument and Mount Vernon , each serving as relics of his legacy while promoting the educational discourse on his life and leadership. These sites, coupled with his depiction on the currency and state namesakes, engrain his memory in daily American life and landscape, reaffirming his perennial influence.

His likeness and the narratives of his leadership inform educational curricula, continually serving as foundational lessons for leadership ethics in American schools. Washington's enduring image as an iconic leader manifests in political discussions and analogies where qualities of leadership are deliberated – testament to how ingrained he is in the national consciousness.

Historical commemorations such as Presidents' Day celebrate Washington's birthday, reflecting ongoing national homage to his leadership and contributions. These observances deepen collective memory and underscore how integral his leadership wisdom remains pertinent to contemporary discussions on governance, citizenship, and moral responsibility.

In encapsulating the vibrancy of George Washington's legacy, one must reflect on how aspects of his life—his character, decisions, and moral rectitude,—remain emblematic of the civic virtues upon which America was founded and has continued to aspire. As a pivotal archetype of selflessness in public service, Washington shaped the early American political landscape and crafted a legacy of enduring governance principles that resonate through the annals of time, reflecting a continuous spotlight on his profound impact on a nascent nation that venerates its democratic underpinnings.

Photo by itsbrianerickson on Unsplash

• Chernow R. Washington: A Life. New York: Penguin Press; 2010.
• Miranda LM. Hamilton: An American Musical. New York: 5000 Broadway Productions; 2015.

U.S. Presidents

George washington.

President George Washington Biography

George Washington was the nations first and possibly most important President. After serving as the Commander of the Continental Army, Washington won the election of 1789 by a landslide. His leadership skills on the battlefield translated into a successful presidency as he led a brand new nation for eight years. To this date he remains one of the most popular presidents, who’s mark on the country is celebrated in the form of his face on the one dollar bill.

Washington spent his entire adult life involved in military endeavors for the newly formed colonies and later during the fight for independence. His career started during the French and Indian War that spanned from 1754-1762. These early conflicts helped define the territories and protect the properties that would later be the United States. Washington also received his first major recognition as a general when he was named Commander of the Virginia Regiment, which was the first major military formed in the colonies.

It was his military foundation that led to Washington’s major role in the American Revolution. In 1774 was named as a delegate to the first continental congress. By this time it was clear to Washington that there was a war with the British on the horizon. The young colonies would go on to win the Revolutionary War after hard fought Washington victories such as Valley Forge and Yorktown.

​In 1789 Washington was elected the first President of the United States by the electoral college. He was the first and only president elected unanimously. Many of the things that Washington did during his two terms set precedent for what future presidents would do in office. The Residence Act of 1790 that Washington signed designated the official location of the United States government. As a way of celebrating his contributions to the forming of the new nation, the territory was named the city of Washington in the District of Columbia.

Time in Office (1789-1797)

B​orn:  February 22, 1732

​Died:  December 14, 1799

Wife:  Martha Dandridge Custis

Party:  Federalist

​Vice President:  John Adams

​ Religion:  Episcopalian

​ Reference Links

George Washington presidential library

​George Washington on Whitehouse.gov

Farewell address in 1796

Papers of George Washington

Library of Congress archive of Washington documents

George Washington quotes

​ George Washington biography

​ Fast facts on George Washington

A Detailed Timeline of George Washington’s Presidency

President George Washington

• He was the only president unanimously elected. Meaning all of the state representatives voted for him.
• He never served as president in Washington D.C., the capital that was named for him. In his first year the capital was in New York City, then moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
• He was six feet tall, which was very tall for the 1700s.
• The story of George Washington chopping down his father's cherry tree is considered fiction and likely never happened.
• George Washington did not have wooden teeth, but did wear dentures made from ivory.
• Washington gave freedom to his slaves in his will.
• Listen to a recorded reading of this page:

Search: A LIBRARY OF ONLINE BOOKS and BOOK PREVIEWS Most Recent Comments 2020-05-20 George Washington is intristing Thea Clarckerson 2017-02-19 Thanks for sharing this , it's very useful and best knowledge ! More detail please visit my blog :http://www.10bestproduct.com/ daniel 2016-06-27 The President of the United States is both an honor and considered one of the world's most powerful people. <a href="www.theuspresidents.org/all-presidents-in-order/">The US Presidents List</a> responsibilities include being the commander-in-chief of the military and leading the nation with the largest economy. Josh 2016-04-14 Awesome! Peter 2015-04-05 Awesome website. This is a fantastic source for President George Washington www.theuspresidents.org 2014-07-24 Great site! I recommend moving the Williamsburg link down the page and featuring the MountVernon.org website in a more prominent position. 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As part of Sunday’s announcement, the Harris campaign said it will unveil a digital campaign where Republican Harris supporters make “their case online to fellow Republicans.” Republican surrogates will also join Harris at events during her seven-state campaign blitz this week, though the campaign did not specify which ones are slated to appear. During the 2020 election, the Biden-Harris campaign relied on independent, never-Trump groups to court GOP voters. This time around, the 2024 campaign created a specific position to court them, hiring former Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois’ former chief of staff, Austin Weatherford, a few months ago. “Donald Trump’s MAGA extremism is toxic to the millions of Republicans who no longer believe the party of Donald Trump represents their values and will vote against him again in November,” Weatherford, the Harris campaign’s national director of Republican outreach, said in a statement. “Donald Trump said he doesn’t want these voters, but Vice President Harris and our campaign are working overtime to earn the support of my fellow Republicans who care about defending democracy and restoring decency.” Allie Raffa is an NBC News White House correspondent based in Washington, D.C. Megan Lebowitz is a politics reporter for NBC News. 450 COMMENTS George Washington George Washington, a Founding Father of the United States, led the Continental Army to victory in the Revolutionary War and was America's first president. George Washington's Life Discover the life of George Washington, America's first president and commander of the Continental Army in the Revolutionary War. George Washington George Washington (February 22, 1732 - December 14, 1799) was an American Founding Father, military officer, and politician who served as the first president of the United States from 1789 to 1797. Appointed by the Second Continental Congress as commander of the Continental Army in 1775, Washington led Patriot forces to victory in the American Revolutionary War and then served as president ... George Washington Biography George Washington Biography George Washington, the first American general, president, and national hero was born in rural colonial Virginia on February 22, 1732. After the early death of his father, a young George Washington (only seven years old at the time) learned the ways of farming and planting as he became the primary owner of his family's plantation farm. He stayed at home throughout ... George Washington: Facts, Revolution & Presidency George Washington (1732‑99) was commander in chief of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War (1775‑83) and served two terms as the first U.S. president, from 1789 to 1797. George Washington George Washington was an American general and commander-in-chief of the colonial armies in the American Revolution (1775-83) and subsequently first president of the United States (1789-97). He is known as 'the Father of His Country.' Learn more about Washington's life and career. George Washington The biography for President Washington and past presidents is courtesy of the White House Historical Association. On April 30, 1789, George Washington, George Washington Biography of George Washington First American president, Continental Army commander, president of the Constitutional Convention, and more. George Washington George Washington was born to Mary Ball and Augustine Washington on February 22, 1732. As the third son of a middling planter, George probably should have been relegated to a footnote in a history book. Instead, he became one of the greatest figures in American history. A series of personal losses changed the course of George's life. George Washington George Washington. On February 22, 1732, George was born to Augustine and Mary Ball Washington. He spent most of his childhood at Ferry Farm on the Rappahannock River. All of the homes and plantations where Washington lived were maintained by enslaved labor. When George was eleven, his father died and he became a slave owner. Presidency of George Washington The presidency of George Washington began on April 30, 1789, when Washington was inaugurated as the first president of the United States, and ended on March 4, 1797. Washington took office after the 1788-1789 presidential election, the nation's first quadrennial presidential election, in which he was elected unanimously by the Electoral College. Washington was re-elected unanimously in the ... George Washington Biography & Facts Learn about George Washington, Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army during the American Revolution, and Founding Father of the United States. George Washington Biography George Washington Biography George Washington (1732-1799) was Commander in Chief of the Continental Forces during the American Wars of Independence. (1775-1783) He also became the first president of the US, serving from 1789-1797. Washington is often referred to as the 'Father of the Nation' and symbol of Republican democracy. His image is widely displayed on coins and statues throughout ... How George Washington's Personal and Physical ... How George Washington's Personal and Physical Characteristics Helped Him Win the Presidency Physical strength and courage made him a battlefield hero, but the Founding Father also impressed with ... George Washington Beyond cherry trees and wigs, delve into the real George Washington. Explore his military genius, political triumphs, and complex legacy in this comprehensive biography. George Washington Biography, History, and Facts George Washington, fondly referred to as the "father of his country," was the first President of the United States of America, the Commander in Chief of the Continental Army during the American War for Independence, and one of the U.S. Founding Fathers. His life began in the countryside of Westmoreland County, Virginia on February 22, 1732. George Washington Age, Death, Family, Legacy & Career-Biography George Washington | Biography George Washington is the first President of the United States of America and one of the seven founding fathers. The 10 Best Books on President George Washington From award-winning biographies to texts covering his military exploits, we bring you a guide to the best books on George Washington. George Washington Biography Early Life and Military Beginnings Born in 1732 in Westmoreland County, Virginia, George Washington was introduced early to the expectations and challenges of the Virginia planter elite. His family had notable connections, with his father, Augustine Washington, involved in agriculture and iron mining, and his mother, Mary Ball Washington, hailing from a similarly well-placed lineage. […] George Washington George Washington was the nations first and possibly most important President. After serving as the Commander of the Continental Army, Washington won the election of 1789 by a landslide. Biography of President George Washington George Washington was the 1st president of the United States. Learn about his biography and life story. George Washington: American Revolutionary The story of the very human George Washington that they didn't tell us about in school. Longing for acceptance and respect, Washington struggled with feeling... Garden of Praise: George Washington Biography Biographies for children. Biography of George Washington for elementry and middle school students. Fun online educational games and worksheets are provided free for each biography. Harris unrolls dozens of GOP endorsements The campaign's announcement comes alongside a slew of endorsements from Republicans, many of whom have been openly critical of former President Donald Trump. Who is Tim Walz? From teacher, high school ... Walz, formerly a little-known Midwestern governor, faces the urgent task of introducing himself to the country with only about three months until Election Day. assignment essay homework paper phd report resume review speech thesis