1732–1799 · Commander in chief and 1st President

George Washington

George Washington led the Continental Army through eight hard years of war, presided over the convention that wrote the Constitution, and became the first President of the United States. Just as important, he gave power back when he could have kept it.

A Virginia boyhood

Washington was born on February 22, 1732, at Popes Creek in Westmoreland County, Virginia. His father died when he was eleven, and much of his schooling came from practical work and from older relatives, especially his half-brother Lawrence. Lawrence had served under the British Admiral Edward Vernon and named the family plantation Mount Vernon in his honor.

As a teenager, Washington copied out 110 "Rules of Civility and Decent Behaviour," short maxims about manners, respect and self-control. The habits they describe, patience, courtesy and command of one's temper, became his public reputation.

Surveyor and frontier officer

At 17 he became the official surveyor of Culpeper County. Surveying taught him the western lands of Virginia and gave him an early stake in them. In 1751 he sailed with Lawrence to Barbados, his only voyage outside the American colonies, and caught smallpox there. Surviving it gave him immunity that would matter during the epidemics of the Revolution.

In the French and Indian War he learned soldiering the hard way. In 1754 he surrendered Fort Necessity, the only surrender of his military career. A year later, at the Battle of the Monongahela, bullets tore through his coat and two horses were shot from under him, yet he rode out unhurt. Many who saw it believed he was protected by Providence.

Marriage and Mount Vernon

In January 1759 he married Martha Dandridge Custis, a young widow, and raised her children, John and Martha ("Patsy"), as his own. For the next fifteen years he farmed, served in the Virginia House of Burgesses and grew increasingly frustrated with British trade policy.

Commander in chief

In June 1775 the Continental Congress, on the nomination of John Adams, named Washington commander in chief. He declined a salary and asked only that Congress cover his expenses, keeping careful accounts for the whole war.

The war went badly at first. On Christmas night 1776 he crossed the icy Delaware River and surprised the Hessian garrison at Trenton, capturing about 900 soldiers and reviving the American cause. The winter of 1777–78 at Valley Forge brought hunger and disease, but the Prussian drillmaster Baron von Steuben used those months to turn the army into a disciplined force. In October 1781, with French troops and ships, Washington trapped General Cornwallis at Yorktown, Virginia, and the surrender effectively ended the major fighting.

Giving power back

In 1783 unpaid officers at Newburgh, New York, talked of defying Congress. Washington met them, fumbled for a pair of spectacles to read a letter, and remarked that he had grown gray and nearly blind in their service. Many officers were moved to tears, and the plot collapsed. That December he resigned his commission to Congress in Annapolis, Maryland, and went home. Giving up power voluntarily astonished the world.

The first President

Washington presided over the Constitutional Convention of 1787, and his presence gave the new plan its credibility. In 1789 he took the oath as the first President at Federal Hall in New York City, then the nation's capital. He set precedents for the cabinet, for foreign policy and for the two-term tradition. In his Farewell Address of 1796 he urged Americans toward unity, religion and morality, and warned against the spirit of party and permanent foreign alliances.

Quick facts

• Born: February 22, 1732, Westmoreland County, Virginia
• Died: December 14, 1799, Mount Vernon, Virginia
• First job: county surveyor at 17
• Spy network: the Culper Ring on Long Island, where Washington was agent 711
• On money: the one-dollar bill and the quarter

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