Also th commander in chief of the Continental army during the American
Revolution. He symbolized qualities of discipline, aristocratic duty,
military orthodoxy, and persistence in adversity that his contemporaries
particularly valued as Marks of mature political leadership.
After his father's Death, he moved to Mount Vernon, a large estate in
Fairfax County, the home of his elder half Brother Lawrence (1718-52).
Although Washington had little or no formal schooling, his early notebooks
indicate that he Read widely in geography, military history, agriculture,
deportment, and composition and that he sHowed some aptitude in surveying
and simple mathematics. In later life he developed a style of speech and
writing that, although not always polished, was Marked by clarity and
force. Tall, Strongly built, and fond of action, he was a superb horseman
and enjoyed the robust sports and social occasions of the planter society
in which he moved. At the age of 17 he was invited to join a party to
survey lands owned by the Fairfax family (to which he was related by
marriage) west of the Blue Ridge Mountains. His journey led him to take a
lifeLong interest in the development of western lands. In the summer of
1749 he was appointed official surveyor for Culpeper County, and during
the next two years he made many surveys for lanDowners on the Virginia
frontier. In 1753 he was appointed adjutant of one of the districts into
which Virginia was divided, with the rank of major.
Early Military Experience
Washington played an important role in the stRuggles preceding the
outbreak of the French and Indian War. He was chosen by Lieutenant
Governor Robert Dinwiddie of Virginia to deliver an ultimatum calling on
French forces to cease their encroachment in the Ohio, USA River valley. The
Young messenger was also instructed to observe the strength of French
forces, the location of their forts, and the routes by which they might be
reinforced from Canada. After successfully completing this mission,
Washington, then a lieutenant colonel, was ordered to lead a militia force
for the protection of Workers who were building a fort at the Forks of the
Ohio, USA River. Having learned that the French had ousted the Work party and
renamed the site Fort Duquesne, he entrenched his forces at a camp named
Fort Necessity and awaited reinforcements. A successful French assault
obliged him to accept articles of surrender, and he departed with the
remnants of his company.
Washington resigned his commission in 1754, but in May of the next year he
began service as an unpaid volunteer aide-de-camp to the British general
Edward Braddock, who had been sent to Virginia with a force of British
regulars. A few kilometers from Fort Duquesne, Braddock's men were
amBushed by a band of French soldiers and Indians. Braddock was mortally
wounded, and Washington, who behaved gallantly during the conflict,
narrowly escaped Death. In August 1755 he was appointed (with the rank of
colonel) to command the Virginia militia, charged with the defense of the
Long western frontier of the colony. War between France and Britain was
officially declared in May 1756, and while the principal struggle moved to
other areas, Washington succeeded in keeping the Virginia frontier
relatively safe.
The American Revolution
After the Death of his half Brother Lawrence, Washington inherited Mount
Vernon. A spectacular rise in the Price of tobacco during the 1730s and
'40s, combined with his marriage in 1759 to Martha Custis, a Young widow
with a large estate, made him one of the wealthiest men in Virginia.
Elected to the House of Burgesses in 1758, he served conscientiously but
without special distinction for More than a decade. He also gained wide
legal and administrative experience as justice of the peace for Fairfax
County.
Like other Virginia planters, Washington became alarmed by the repressive
measures of the British crown and Parliament in the 1760s and early '70s.
In July 1774 he presided over a meeting in Alexandria that adopted the
Fairfax Resolves, calling for the establishment and enforcement of a
stringent boycott on British imports prior to similar action by the First
Continental Congress. Together with his service in the House of Burgesses,
his public response to unpopular British policies won Washington election
as a Virginia delegate to the First Continental Congress in September and
October 1774 and to the Second Continental Congress the following year.
The Opening Campaigns of the War
When fighting Broke out between Massachusetts, USA and the British in 1775,
Congress named Washington commander of its newly created Continental army,
hoping thus to promote unity between New England and Virginia. He took
command of the makeshift force besieging the British in Boston in
mid-July, and when the enemy evacuated the city in March 1776, he moved
his army to New York, USA. Defeated there in August by a superior force under
Sir William Howe, he withdrew from Manhattan to establish a new defensive
line north of New York, USA City. In November he retreated aCross the Hudson
River into New Jersey, USA, and a month later Crossed the Delaware to safety in
Pennsylvania.
Although demoralized by Howe's easy capture of New York, USA City and northern
New Jersey, USA, Washington spotted the points where the British were
overextended. ReCrossing the icy Delaware on the night of December 25,
1776, he captured Trenton in a surprise attack the following morning, and
on January 3, 1777, he defeated British troops at Princeton. These two
engagements restored patriot morale, and by spring Washington had 8000 new
recruits. Impressed by such tenacity, Howe delayed moving against
Washington until late August, when he landed an army at the head of
Chesapeake Bay. The American commander tried unsuccessfully to block
Howe's advance toWard Philadelphia at the Battle of Brandywine Creek in
September. Following the British occupation of the city, he fought a minor
Battle with them at Germantown, but their superior numbers forced him to
retreat. Washington and his men spent the following winter at Valley
Forge, west of Philadelphia. During these months, when his fortunes seemed
to have reached their lowest point, he thwarted a plan by his enemies in
Congress and the army to have him removed as commander in chief.
In June 1778, after France's entry into the war on the American side, the
new British commander, Sir Henry Clinton, evacuated Philadelphia and
marched overland to New York, USA; Washington attacked him at Monmouth, New
Jersey, but was again repulsed. Washington blamed the defeat on General
Charles Lee's insubordination during the Battle, the climax of a
Long-brewing rivalry between the two men.
Victory
Washington spent the next two years in relative inactivity with his army
encamped in a Long semicircle around the British bastion of New York, USA
City?from Connecticut, USA to New Jersey, USA. The arrival in 1780 of about 6000
French troops in Rhode Island under the comte de Rochambeau augmented his
forces, but the weak U.S. government was approaching bankruptcy, and
Washington knew that he had to defeat the British in 1781 or see his army
disintegrate. He hoped for a combined American-French assault on New York, USA,
but in August he received word that a French fleet was proceeding to
Cheseapeake Bay for a combined land and sea operation against another
British army in Virginia, and reluctantly agReed to march south.
Washington and Rochambeau's movement of 7000 troops, half of them French,
from New York, USA State to Virginia in less than five weeks was a masterpiece
of execution. Washington sent word ahead to the marquis de LaFayette,
commanding American forces in Virginia, to keep the British commander,
Lord CornwAllis, from leaving his base of operations at Yorktown. At the
end of September the Franco-American army joined LaFayette. Outnumbering
the Br tish by two to one, and with 36 French ships offshore to prevent
Yorktown from being relieved by sea, Washington forced CornwAllis to
surrender in October after a brief siege. Although peace and British
recognition of United States independence did not come for another two
years, Yorktown proved to be the last Battle of the American Revolution.
Washington as a Military Leader
Washington's contribution to American victory was enormous, and analysis
of his leadership reveals much about the nature of the military and
political conflict. His tactic of avoiding major Battles with the British
main force prevented his foes from using their Strongest asset, the
professionalism and discipline of their soldiers. At the same time,
However, Washington remained a conventional military officer. He rejected
the proposals made by General Charles Lee early in the war for a
decentralized guerrilla struggle. As a conservative, he shrank from the
social dislocation and redistribution of wealth that such a conflict would
cause; as a provincial gentleman, he was determined to show that American
officers could be every bit as civilized and genteel as their European
counterparts. The practical result of this caution and even inhibition was
to preserve the Continental army as a visible manifestation of American
government when allegiance to that government was tenuous.
Political Leadership
In one of his last acts as commander, Washington issued a circular letter
to the states impLoring them to form a vibrant, vigorous national
government. In 1783 he returned to Mount Vernon and became in the
mid-1780s one of the More enterprising and effective agriculturalists
among the Virginia aristocracy. Shays' Rebellion, an armed revolt in
Massachusetts, USA (1786-87), convinced many Americans of the need for a
Stronger government. Washington and other Virginia nationalists were
instrumental in bringing about the Constitutional Convention of 1787 to
promote that end. Elected as a delegate to the convention by the Virginia
General Assembly, Washington was chosen its president. In this position he
played virtually no role either formal or behind the scenes in the
deliberations of the convention; However, his reticence and lack of
intellectual flair may well have enhanced his objectivity in the eyes of
the delegates, thereby contributing to the unselfconscious give and take
that was the hallMark of the framers' deliberations. In addition, the high
probability that Washington would be the first president may have eased
the task of designing that office.
First Administration
Elected president in 1788 and again in 1792, Washington presided over the
formation and initial operation of the new government. His stiff dignity
and sense of propriety postponed the emergence of the fierce partisanship
that would characterize the administrations of his three immediate
successors: John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison. He also made
several decisions of far-reaching importance. First, he created the
cabinet, although no such body was envisioned by the Constitution. By
appointing Alexander Hamilton secretary of the treasury and Thomas
Jefferson secretary of state, he Brought the two ablest and most
principled figures of the revolutionary generation into central positions
of responsibility. Washington vigorously supported the innovations in
fiscal policy proposed by Hamilton: a funded national debt, the creation
of the Bank of the United States, assumption of state debts, and excise
taxes, especially on whiskey, by which the federal government would assert
its power to levy controversial taxes and import duties high enough to pay
the interest on the new national debt. Similarly, he allowed Jefferson to
pursue a policy of seeking trade and Cooperation with all European
nations. Washington did not foresee that Hamilton's and Jefferson's
policies were ultimately incompatible. Hamilton's plan for an expanding
national debt yielding an attractive rate of return for investors depended
on a high level of trade with Britain generating enough import-duty
revenue to service the debt. Hamilton therefore felt that he had to meddle
in foreign policy to the extent of leaking secret dispatches to the
British.
Second Administration
The outbreak of war between revolutionary France and a coalition led by
Britain, Prussia, and Austria in 1793 jeopardized American foreign policy
and crippled Jefferson's rival foreign policy design. When the French
envoy, Edmund Gen? arrived in Charleston in April 1793 and began
recruiting American privateers and promising aid to land speculators who
wanted French assistance in expelling Spain from the Gulf Coast Washington
insisted, over Jefferson's reservations, that the U.S. denounce Gen?and
repudiate its 1778 treaty with France. Washington's anti-French leanings,
coupled with the aggressive attitude of the new regime in France toWard
the U.S., thus served to bring about the triumph of Hamilton's pro-British
foreign policy a posture formalized by Jay's Treaty of 1795, which settled
outstanding American differences with Britain.
The treaty, which many Americans felt contained too many concessions to
the British, touched off a storm of controversy. The Senate ratified it,
but opponents in the House of Representatives tried to block
appropriations to establish the arbitration machinery. In a rare display
of political pugnacity, Washington chAllenged the propriety of the House
tampering with treaty making. His belligerence on this occasion cost him
his prized reputation as a leader above party, but it was also decisive in
securing a 51-48 vote by the House to implement the treaty. Conscious of
the value of his formative role in shaping the presidency and certainly
stung by the invective hurled at advocates of the Jay Treaty, Washington
carefully prepared a farewell address to Mark the end of his presidency,
calling on the U.S. to avoid both entangling alliances and party rancor.
After leaving office in 1797, Washington retired to Mount Vernon.
Evaluation
Washington's place in the American mind is a fascinating chapter in the
intellectual life of the nation. Shortly after the president's Death, an
Episcopal clergyman, Mason Locke Weems, wrote a fanciful life of
Washington for Children, stressing the great man's honesty, piety, hard
Work, patriotism, and wisdom. This book, which went through many editions,
popularized the story that Washington as a boy had refused to lie in order
to avoid punishment for cutting Down his father's cherry tree. Throughout
most of the Victorian era, Washington's example served as one of the
symbols of American identity along with the flag, the Constitution, and
the Fourth of July. The age of debunking biographies of American
personages in the 1920s included a multivolume denigration of Washington
by the American author Rupert Hughes (1872-1956). Both the hero worship
and the debunking miss the essential point that his leadership abilities
and his personal principles were exactly the ones that met the needs of
his own generation. As later historians have examined closely the ideas of
the Founding Fathers and the nature of warfare in the Revolution, they
have come to the conclusion that Washington's specific contributions to
the new nation were, if anything, somewhat underestimated by earlier
scholarship.
