governor, to consider the most effective means of boycotting British
imports. Washington favored cutting trade sharply but opposed a suspension
of all commerce with Britain. He also did not approve of the Boston Tea
Party of December 1773. But soon thereafter he came to realize that
reconciliation with the mother country was no longer possible. Meanwhile,
in 1770, Washington undertook a nine-week expedition to the Ohio country
where, as compensation for his service in the French and Indian War, he was
to inspect and claim more than 20,000 acres of land for himself and tens of
thousands more for the men who had served under him. He had taken the lead
in pressing the Virginia veterans' claim. “I might add, without much
arrogance,” he later wrote, “that if it had not been for my unremitted
attention to every favorable circumstance, not a single acre of land would
ever have been obtained”.
Delegate to Continental Congress, 1774-1775. A member of the Virginia
delegation to the First and Second Continental Congresses, Washington
served on various military preparedness committees and was chairman of the
committee to consider ways to raise arms and ammunition for the impending
Revolution. He voted for measures designed to reconcile differences with
Britain peacefully but realized that such efforts now were futile. John
Adams of Massachusetts, in a speech so effusive in its praise that
Washington rushed in embarrassment from the chamber, urged that Washington
be named commander in chief of the newly authorized Continental army. In
June 1775, delegates unanimously approved the choice of Washington, both
for his military experience and, more pragmatically, to enlist a prominent
Virginian to lead a struggle that heretofore had been spearheaded largely
by northern revolutionaries.
Commander in chief of Continental Army during Revolution, 1775-1783.
With a poorly trained, undisciplined force comprised of short-term militia,
General Washington took to the field against crack British regulars and
Hessian mercenaries. In March 1776 he thrilled New Englanders by flushing
the redcoats from Boston, but his loss of New York City and other setbacks
later that year dispelled any hope of a quick American victory. Sagging
American morale got a boost when Washington slipped across the Delaware
River to New Jersey and defeated superior enemy forces at Trenton (December
1776) and Princeton (January 1777). But humiliating defeats at Brandywine
(September 1777) and Germantown (October 1777) and the subsequent loss of
Philadelphia undermined Washington's prestige in Congress. Richard Henry
Lee, Benjamin Rush, and others conspired to remove Washington and replace
him with General Horatio Gates, who had defeated General John Burgoyne at
the Battle of Saratoga (October 1777). Washington's congressional
supporters rallied to quash the so-called Conway Cabal. Prospects for
victory seemed bleak as Washington settled his men into winter quarters at
Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, in December 1777.
"To see men without clothes to cover their nakedness," Washington wrote
in tribute to the men who suffered with him at Valley Forge, "without
blankets to lay on, without shoes, by which their marches might be traced
by the blood from their feet, and almost as often without provisions as
with; marching through frost and snow, and at Christmas taking up their
winter quarters within a day's march of the enemy, without a house or hut
to cover them till they could be built, and submitting to it without a
murmur, is a mark of patience and obedience which in my opinion can scarce
be paralleled." Of course, some did grumble— and loudly. "No pay! no
clothes! no provisions! no rum!" some chanted. But remarkably there was no
mass desertion, no mutiny. Patriotism, to be sure, sustained many, but no
more so than did confidence in Washington's ability to see them through
safely. With the snow-clogged roads impassable to supply wagons, the men
stayed alive on such fare as pepper pot soup, a thin tripe broth flavored
with a handful of peppercorns. Many died there that winter. Those that
survived drew fresh hope with the greening of spring and the news,
announced to them by General Washington in May 1778, that France had
recognized the independence of America. Also encouraging was the arrival of
Baron Friedrich von Steuben, who, at Washington's direction, drilled the
debilitated Valley Forge survivors into crack troops. Washington's men
broke camp in June 1778, a revitalized army that, with aid from France,
took the war to the British and in October 1781 boxed in General Charles
Cornwallis at Yorktown, thus forcing the surrender of British forces.
General Washington imposed strict, but not punitive, surrender terms:
All weapons and military supplies must be given up; all booty must be
returned, but the enemy soldiers could keep their personal effects and the
officers could retain their sidearms. British doctors were allowed to tend
to their own sick and wounded. Cornwallis accepted, but instead of
personally leading his troops to the mutually agreed-upon point of
surrender on October 19, 1781, he sent his deputy Brigadier Charles O'Hara.
As he made his way along the road flanked by American and French forces,
O'Hara came face to face with Washington and the Comte de Rochambeau, the
latter decked out in lavish military regalia. O'Hara mistook Rochambeau for
the senior commander, but the French officer quickly pointed to Washington,
and O'Hara, probably somewhat embarrassed, turned to the American.
Unwilling to deal with a man of lesser rank, Washington directed O'Hara to
submit the sword of capitulation to his aide General Benjamin Lincoln. In
his victory dispatch to Congress, Washington wrote with obvious pride,
“Sir, I have the Honor to inform Congress, that a Reduction of the British
Army under the Command of Lord Cornwallis, is most happily effected. The
unremitting Ardor which actuated every Officer and Soldier in the combined
Army in this Occasion, has principally led to this Important Event, at an
earlier period than my most sanguine Hope had induced me to expect”. In
November 1783, two months after the formal peace treaty was signed,
Washington resigned his commission and returned home to the neglected
fields of Mount Vernon.
President of Constitutional Convention, 1787. Washington, a Virginia
delegate, was unanimously elected president of the convention. He was among
those favoring a strong federal government. After the convention he
promoted ratification of the Constitution in Virginia. According to the
notes of Abraham Baldwin, a Georgia delegate, which were discovered only
recently and made public in 1987, Washington said privately that he did not
expect the Constitution to last more than 20 years.
ELECTION AS PRESIDENT, FIRST TERM, 1789: Washington, a Federalist, was
the obvious choice for the first president of the United States. A proven
leader whose popularity transcended the conflict between Federalists and
those opposed to a strong central government, the man most responsible for
winning independence, a modest country squire with a winsome aversion to
the limelight, he so dominated the political landscape that not 1 of the 69
electors voted against him. Thus, he carried all 10 states—Connecticut,
Delaware, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey,
Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Virginia. (Neither North Carolina nor Rhode
Island had ratified the Constitution yet. New York was unable to decide in
time which electors to send.) Washington was the only president elected by
a unanimous electoral vote. John Adams of Massachusetts, having received
the second-largest number of votes, 34, was elected vice president.
election as president, second term, 1792: Despite the growing strength
of Democratic-Republicans, Washington continued to enjoy virtually
universal support. Again he won the vote of every elector, 132, and thus
carried all 15 states—Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland,
Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina,
Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Vermont, and Virginia. John
Adams of Massachusetts received the second-highest number of votes, 77, and
thus again became vice president.
INAUGURAL ADDRESS (FIRST): New York City, April 30, 1789. ". . . When I
was first honored with a call into the service of my country, then on the
eve of an arduous struggle for its liberties, the light in which I
contemplated my duty required that I should renounce every pecuniary
compensation. From this resolution I have in no instance departed; and
being still under the impressions which produced it, I must decline as
inapplicable to myself any share in the personal emoluments which may be
indispensably included in a permanent provision for the executive
department, and must accordingly pray that the pecuniary estimates for the
station in which I am placed may during my continuance in it be limited to
such actual expenditures as the public good may be thought to require. ..."
INAUGURAL ADDRESS (SECOND): Philadelphia, March 4, 1793. (This was the
shortest inaugural address, just 135 words.) "Fellow Citizens: I am again
called upon by the voice of my country to execute the functions of its
Chief Magistrate. When the occasion proper for it shall arrive, I shall
endeavor to express the high sense I entertain of this distinguished honor,
