3. Presidency (1789–1797)

PLAN:
1. General Information
2. Early life (1732–1752)

3. Presidency (1789–1797)

4. References


George Washington (February 22, 1732^[b] – December 14, 1799) was an American soldier, statesman, and Founding Father who served as the first President of the United States from 1789 to 1797. Appointed by the Continental Congress as commander of the Continental Army, Washington led the Patriot forces to victory in the American Revolutionary War, and presided at the Constitutional Convention of 1787, which established the Constitution of the United States and a federal government. Washington has been called the "Father of the Nation"^[10] for his manifold leadership in the formative days of the country.
Washington's first public office was serving as official Surveyor of Culpeper County, Virginia from 1749 to 1750. Subsequently, he received his initial military training (as well as a command with the Virginia Regiment) during the French and Indian War. He was later elected to the Virginia House of Burgesses and was named a delegate to the Continental Congress. Here he was appointed Commanding General of the Continental Army. With this title, he commanded American forces (allied with France) in the defeat and surrender of the British at the Siege of Yorktown during the American Revolutionary War. He resigned his commission after the Treaty of Paris was signed in 1783.
Washington played an indispensable role in adopting and ratifying the Constitution of the United States. He was then twice elected president by the Electoral College unanimously. As president, he implemented a strong, well-financed national government while remaining impartial in a fierce rivalry between cabinet members Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton. During the French Revolution, he proclaimed a policy of neutrality while sanctioning the Jay Treaty. He set enduring precedents for the office of president, including the title "Mr. President", and his Farewell Address is widely regarded as a pre-eminent statement on republicanism.
Washington owned over a hundred slaves, and he signed measures passed by Congress to protect slavery, as well as measures passed by Congress to curtail slavery. Starting in 1778, he had become troubled with the institution of slavery and freed William Lee, one of his slaves, in his will. He freed the other 123 slaves that he owned upon the death of his wife, Martha Washington. She decided to respect her husband's wishes and freed these slaves on January 1, 1801, before her death. He also freed in his will 33 more slaves that he acquired in a prior debt agreement with his brother-in-law.^[11][12] He endeavored to assimilate Native Americans into the Anglo-American culture but fought indigenous resistance during instances of violent conflict. He was a member of the Anglican Church and the Freemasons, and he urged broad religious freedom in his roles as general and president. Upon his death, he was eulogized as "first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen".^[13]
Washington has been memorialized by monuments, a federal holiday, various media, geographical locations, including the national capital, the State of Washington, stamps, and currency, and many scholars and polls rank him among the greatest U.S. presidents. In 1976, as part of commemorations for the U.S. Bicentennial, Washington was posthumously promoted to the rank of General of the Armies of the United States.
Early life (1732–1752)

The Washington family was a wealthy Virginia planter family that had made its fortune through land speculation and the cultivation of tobacco.^[14] Washington's great-grandfather John Washington emigrated in 1656 from Sulgrave, Northamptonshire, England, to the English colony of Virginia where he accumulated 5,000 acres (2,000 ha) of land, including Little Hunting Creek on the Potomac River. George Washington was born on February 22, 1732, at Popes Creek in Westmoreland County, Virginia,^[15] and was the first of six children of Augustine and Mary Ball Washington.^[16] His father was a justice of the peace and a prominent public figure who had four additional children from his first marriage to Jane Butler.^[17] The family moved to Little Hunting Creek in 1735. In 1738, they moved to Ferry Farm near Fredericksburg, Virginia on the Rappahannock River. When Augustine died in 1743, Washington inherited Ferry Farm and ten slaves; his older half-brother Lawrence inherited Little Hunting Creek and renamed it Mount Vernon.^[18]

Washington did not have the formal education his elder brothers received at Appleby Grammar School in England, but did attend the Lower Church School in Hartfield. He learned mathematics, trigonometry, and land surveying and became a talented draftsman and map-maker. By early adulthood he was writing with "considerable force" and "precision";^[19] however, his writing displayed little wit or humor. In pursuit of admiration, status, and power, he tended to attribute his shortcomings and failures to someone else's ineffectuality.^[20]
Washington often visited Mount Vernon and Belvoir, the plantation that belonged to Lawrence's father-in-law William Fairfax. Fairfax became Washington's patron and surrogate father, and Washington spent a month in 1748 with a team surveying Fairfax's Shenandoah Valley property.^[21] He received a surveyor's license the following year from the College of William & Mary.^[c] Even though Washington had not served the customary apprenticeship, Fairfax appointed him surveyor of Culpeper County, Virginia, and he appeared in Culpeper County to take his oath of office July 20, 1749.^[22] He subsequently familiarized himself with the frontier region, and though he resigned from the job in 1750, he continued to do surveys west of the Blue Ridge Mountains.^[23] By 1752 he had bought almost 1,500 acres (600 ha) in the Valley and owned 2,315 acres (937 ha).^[24]
In 1751, Washington made his only trip abroad when he accompanied Lawrence to Barbados, hoping the climate would cure his brother's tuberculosis.^[25] Washington contracted smallpox during that trip, which immunized him and left his face slightly scarred.^[26] Lawrence died in 1752, and Washington leased Mount Vernon from his widow; he inherited it outright after her death in 1761.^[27]