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George Washington was the first president of the United States of America. He was born in Westmoreland County, Virginia, on February 22, 1732. Washington’s father, Augustine Washington, died in 1743 and his older half-brother, Lawrence Washington (1718-1752), was subsequently responsible for George Washington’s upbringing and training as a surveyor and tobacco planter. Lawrence also nurtured Washington’s interest in military service.
Partially because of his protege relationship with Thomas Fairfax (1691-1782), a Virginia planter influential with British nobility, and his replacement of Lawrence as district adjutant in 1752, Washington was promoted to the rank of colonel in the Virginia militia in 1754. Shortly before the outbreak of the French and Indian War (1756-1763), Washington led a military expedition to the westernmost boundaries of Virginia because French troops and their Indian allies threatened British-claimed territory. He ordered his men to build Fort Necessity in this area but soon abandoned the fort because of superior French and Indian forces in 1754. After the arrival of British troops, Washington became an aide to British general Edward Braddock (1695-1755). Washington distinguished himself in combat, especially in the campaign against Fort Duquesne, and was elected to Virginia’s House of Burgesses in 1758.
In 1759 Washington married Martha Custis (1731-1802), a wealthy widow, and increased his ownership of land and slaves. He was active in local politics, but he mostly focused on his agricultural and financial interests. Washington had admired Britain’s army, aristocracy, and mixed system of government since childhood. But he gradually concluded during the 1760s and early 1770s that new British taxes and regulations reflected “taxation without representation” and their implementation by British troops and officials increasingly violated Americans’ legal rights as British subjects. While he was occasionally disturbed by the more extreme rhetoric and behavior of revolutionary leaders in Boston, Washington eventually became committed to the cause of rebellion and then independence. He concluded that the American colonies must become a separate nation in order to protect their liberty, self-government, and economic interests.
In 1774 Washington was elected as a delegate to the first Continental Congress. John Adams (1735-1826), a delegate from Massachusetts, became acquainted with Washington. Adams was impressed by Washington’s military service and political status in Virginia. Wanting to increase national, and especially southern, support for the American Revolution against Britain, Adams secured Washington’s appointment as general and commander-in-chief of the Continental Army in 1775. Washington then traveled to Massachusetts and assumed command on July 3, 1775. After placing artillery to threaten British ships in Boston Harbor, Washington forced the British to evacuate Boston on March 17, 1776.
Until the British surrender at Yorktown, Virginia, in 1781, Washington’s strategy was to continue the American military and political effort until the British government decided to end the war as too costly. Washington generally avoided large-scale, prolonged battles and relied on surprise attacks, like the Battle of Trenton (1776), and tactical retreats to limit American casualties. During the Revolutionary War, Washington gained a national reputation among Americans for his endurance, integrity, and strength of character in the cause for independence. He struggled to maintain discipline, order, and professional military standards among American troops. Although Washington was critical of Congress for not providing enough pay and supplies for his troops, he always yielded to Congress’s civilian supremacy over his military command. After the Treaty of Paris officially ended the war in 1783, Washington voluntarily surrendered his commission as commander-in-chief to Congress and returned to Mount Vernon, his plantation in Virginia.
After the Revolutionary War, Washington struggled to improve his neglected finances. Like other planters, however, Washington suffered from the disruption of prewar trading relationships with the British Empire, high inflation, and trade barriers that states imposed against each other. The weak national government of the Articles of Confederation was unable to solve or alleviate these economic problems. Washington was also troubled by Shays’s Rebellion in Massachusetts in 1786 and other events that indicated that the nation might dissolve into anarchy, disunity, and political radicalism.
In his personal life, Washington had no legally recognized children, although he may have fathered a child with Venus, his half-brother’s slave. He was an Anglican (or Episcopalian) but was not a frequent churchgoer. Like many upper-class Americans in the late eighteenth century, Washington was a deist who perceived God to be impersonal and rational. Nevertheless, his private and public statements reveal his belief that God, or Providence, had a special destiny for the American nation. Later in his life, Washington expressed the need for religion to promote civic virtue.
Washington was known for treating his slaves more humanely than other slave owners. He encouraged marriage among his slaves and refused to break up slave families by selling them to other planters or investing in the “breeding” of slaves. As he became older, Washington became more troubled by the moral dilemma and economic burden of slave ownership. Nonetheless, Washington accepted the institution of slavery, and his wife inherited his slaves after his death.
Washington reluctantly returned to public life and was elected as a Virginia delegate to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787. Washington’s fellow delegates unanimously elected him to preside at the convention. As president of the convention, Washington maintained order during the debates and rarely expressed his political opinions. Washington’s judicious reticence further enhanced his reputation among delegates as a dignified, virtuous, self-restrained national leader who could be entrusted with executive power. Alexander Hamilton (1755/57-1804) was a delegate from New York who served as a staff officer for Washington during the war and revered him. Hamilton shrewdly promoted the common assumption that Washington would be the first president in order to gain delegate support and later ratification for the strong presidency that he explained and advocated in The Federalist Papers.
George Washington was unanimously elected president in 1789 and inaugurated in New York City, the nation’s first capital under the Constitution. John Adams was elected vice president, and Washington’s first cabinet included Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) as secretary of state and Alexander Hamilton as secretary of the treasury. Washington was unanimously reelected in 1792 and inaugurated in Philadelphia in 1793. He disliked the growing partisan and policy conflicts between the Federalists and Anti-Federalists, especially between Hamilton and Jefferson, and warned the nation of the dangers of partisanship in his farewell address of 1796. Washington struggled to be nonpartisan during his first term but became a Federalist during his second term, partially because of the criticism of his presidency and policies from Anti-Federalist newspapers and politicians.
George Washington’s interpretation and use of presidential powers established several important precedents for the American presidency. First, Washington established the belief that a president should limit himself to two terms of office, a practice that continued until President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945) was elected to a third term in 1940. The Constitution was amended in 1951 to formally limit a president to two elected terms. Washington had previously rejected the suggestion that he be appointed as a monarch or president with a life term of office. He later rejected a request that he run for a third term.
Second, Washington believed that a president should only veto bills that he regarded as unconstitutional. Consequently, he vetoed only two bills during his presidency. It was not until the presidency (1829-1837) of Andrew Jackson (1767-1845) that a president actively vetoed bills because of political or policy differences with Congress.
Third, while Washington believed that a president should be self-restrained and generally defer to Congress on domestic legislation, he also asserted that a president should exercise more discretionary and dominant power in foreign and defense policies. He interpreted the president’s power to “receive Ambassadors” in Article II of the Constitution to mean that the president alone can decide whether to recognize a new foreign government as legitimate for a regular diplomatic relationship with the U.S. government. Fourth, after a frustrating experience with the Senate in negotiating a treaty with the Creek Indians, Washington began the precedent of a president initiating and conducting treaty negotiations and only seeking the Senate’s “advice and consent” afterward for ratification. Likewise, he refused to provide diplomatic correspondence pertaining to the Jay Treaty to the House of Representatives because the Constitution did not require him to do so. This was an early example of executive privilege, that is, the president’s limited, unwritten constitutional right to withhold information from Congress.
Washington also developed the president’s symbolic role as the head of state who represents all Americans both nationally and internationally. He contributed to this role by occasionally visiting the various states and issuing proclamations. He proclaimed Thanksgiving as a national holiday in 1789. More importantly, he proclaimed American neutrality between the warring governments of Britain and France in 1793. Washington also insisted that all of his cabinet members publicly support his policies. For example, Washington forced the resignation of Secretary of State Edmund Randolph (1753-1813) in 1795 because he suspected Randolph of being pro-French, despite American neutrality.
Although Washington usually deferred to Congress on domestic legislation, he relied on Alexander Hamilton, his first secretary of the treasury and closest adviser, to formulate and promote legislative passage of his economic program, which included a national bank, a hard currency, and tariffs and excise taxes to liquidate Revolutionary War debts and provide adequate revenue to maintain a national army. Because of Article II’s “take care” clause, Washington believed that a president should exercise broad, discretionary powers to enforce federal laws. This belief was especially evident in Washington’s firm, decisive suppression of the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794. Washington personally led troops during part of their expedition to western Pennsylvania to end mob violence against the collection of the federal excise tax on whiskey.
Despite the efforts of Hamilton to persuade Washington to remain in office, Washington publicized his farewell address on September 19, 1796. In addition to warning the public about how partisan conflict threatened liberty, order, civic virtue, and national unity, Washington stated that future American foreign policy must continue to avoid “permanent alliances” with foreign governments that endangered American independence, liberty, and peace. Shortly after John Adams was inaugurated as president on March 4, 1797, Washington returned to Mount Vernon.
During his retirement, Washington busied himself with improving his finances and repairing buildings on his plantation. In 1798 Washington accepted a commission as a lieutenant general from President Adams and the Senate. He avoided public statements on politics and refused to undermine Adams’s authority as president. He was dismayed that the Federalist Party became bitterly divided between pro-Adams and pro-Hamilton factions and that war with France seemed more likely.
Washington returned home after inspecting his fields on December 12, 1799, and became ill with a severe cold. Further weakened by the use of bloodletting as a medical treatment, Washington died on December 14, 1799. General Henry Lee’s (1756-1818) funeral oration, delivered before Congress on December 26, 1799, popularized Washington’s historical and patriotic reputation as “the father of his country.” The nation’s new capital city was named after Washington, as were many towns, counties, schools, and a state. The most nationally prominent artistic dedications to George Washington include the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C., and an enormous sculpture of his face on Mount Rushmore in South Dakota. His birthday was celebrated as a separate national holiday but was more recently incorporated as part of Presidents’ Day in February.
Bibliography:
- Flexner, James T. 1974. Washington: The Indispensable Man. New York: Mentor.
- McDonald, Forrest. 1974. The Presidency of George Washington. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.
- Phelps, Glenn A. 1993. George Washington and American Constitutionalism. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.
- Wiencek, Henry. 2003. An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America. New York: Farah, Straus and Giroux.
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