Happy Birthday to George Washington, a Model for All Americans

FRIDAY IS GEORGE WASHINGTON'S BIRTHDAY. America's first President was born on February 22, 1732, at his family's plantation in Westmoreland County when it was still the British colony of Virginia. Few people ever born have made such an indelible mark on history. • • • WASHINGTON, AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN. George Washington was the son of prosperous planter Augustine Washington (1694-1743) and his second wife, Mary Ball Washington (1708-89). George, the oldest 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. • We have few details about Washington’s early education, 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 travelled to Barbados with his older half-brother Lawrence (1718-1752), 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. • 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 the children; he and Martha never had any children of their own. • In the years after Lawrence's death, 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. • By the late 1760s, Washington knew 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. • By most accounts, Washington's genius as a general was more in his ability in leading his troops than in creating a grand military strategy. 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 the direction and motivation to keep going. 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 Yorktown, Virginia. This action effectively ended the Revolutionary War and Washington was declared a national hero. That final victory was possible because Washington’s men were willing to sacrifice and press on even when their cause appeared hopeless because they saw in their general a compelling moral excellence. He deeply cared for his men’s well-being, led by example, and continuously put his life on the line -- unhesitatingly and calmly charging to the front -- seemingly oblivious to fear. But Washington also knew when to protect his troops in retreat so as to be able to fight another day. In the end, his execution of key strategic victories and his will to wear down, outlast and demoralize the more numerous and professional British forces paid off. More than six years after he first engaged the British in Boston, the stage was set, with the help of the French army and navy, to deliver a final knockout blow and victory at Yorktown, Virginia in October of 1781. General Washington had pulled off the impossible : that of leading the inexperienced and poorly equipped Continental Army to defeating Great Britain -- then the world’s most powerful empire and advanced military power. Washington overcame the overwhelming odds on the ground with a spiritual power that combined faith in the cause of American independence with unwavering perseverance, making possible a final victory little short of miraculous. • In 1783, with a peace treaty signed between Great Britain and the US, 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, DC, America’s future capital city wasn’t yet built, he lived in New York and Philadelphia. • 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 US Supreme Court, John Jay (1745-1829), signed a bill establishing the first national bank 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, while Jefferson favored stronger states’ rights. 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. • In 1796, after two terms as President and declining to serve a third term, Washington finally retired. In his 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 US Senate to commemorate Washington’s birthday. In a sense, Washington’s final gift of himself to his country was his Farewell Address, calling it “a warning from a departing friend.” Prophetic in nature, it was a decisive articulation of the key threats to freedom and the republican form of American democracy -- the failure of institutions to keep people informed and enlightened, the problems of factions and hyper-partisanship, and the decline of religious obligation and national morality. It was so impressive that Washington’s Farewell Address was more widely printed than the Declaration of Independence. Washington specifically described the problems facing the American Republic in the need “for enlightened public opinion,” and the harm from “the alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge...[which] serves always to distract the public councils...enfeeble the public administration...agitate the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms.” Washington also believed that the inner strength and morality of the nation could not be sustained without religion. On this, the Farewell Address is as relevant today as it was 222 years ago -- Washington asked : “Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice?” • 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. But, 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 at the age of 67. He was entombed at Mount Vernon, which in 1960 was designated a national historic landmark. • George Washington left one of the most enduring legacies of any American in history. Known as the “Father of His Country,” Washington had been a commanding part of America's creation and of its shaping as a constitutional Republic. To list his accomplishments hardly tells the tale -- he fought in the French and Indian War (1754-63); in 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 US 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. Truly, George Washington was "First in War, First in Peace, and First in the Hearts of His Countrymen."