|
George
Washington, commander in chief of the Continental army during the
American Revolution, and later the first president of the United
States. He symbolized qualities of discipline, aristocratic duty,
military orthodoxy, and persistence in adversity that his
contemporaries particularly valued as marks of mature political
leadership.
Washington was
born on February 22, 1732, in Westmoreland County, Virginia, the
eldest son of Augustine Washington, a Virginia planter, and Mary
Ball Washington. Although Washington had little or no formal
schooling, his early notebooks indicate that he read in geography,
military history, agriculture, deportment, and composition and that
he showed some aptitude in surveying and simple mathematics. In
later life he developed a style of speech and writing that, although
not always polished, was marked by clarity and force. Tall, strong,
and fond of action, he was a superb horseman and enjoyed the robust
sports and social occasions of the Virginia planter society. At the
age of 16 he was invited to join a party to survey lands owned by
the Fairfax family (to which he was related by marriage) west of the
Blue Ridge Mountains. His journey led him to take a lifelong
interest in the development of western lands. In the summer of 1749
he was appointed official surveyor for Culpeper County, and during
the next two years he made many surveys for landowners on the
Virginia frontier. In 1753 he was appointed adjutant of one of the
districts into which Virginia was divided, with the rank of major.
Washington played an important role in the struggles
preceding the outbreak of the French and Indian War. He was chosen
by Lieutenant Governor Robert Dinwiddie of Virginia to deliver an
ultimatum calling on French forces to cease their encroachment in
the Ohio River valley. The young messenger was also instructed to
observe the strength of French forces, the location of their forts,
and the routes by which they might be reinforced from Canada. After
successfully completing this mission, Washington, then a lieutenant
colonel, was ordered to lead a militia force for the protection of
workers who were building a fort at the Forks of the Ohio River.
Having learned that the French had ousted the work party and renamed
the site Fort Duquesne, he entrenched his forces at a camp named
Fort Necessity and awaited reinforcements. A successful French
assault obliged him to accept articles of surrender, and he departed
with the remnants of his company.
After the death of his elder half brother Lawrence,
Washington inherited the plantation known as Mount Vernon. A
spectacular rise in the price of tobacco during the 1730s and '40s,
combined with his marriage in 1759 to Martha Custis, a young widow
with a large estate, made him one of the wealthiest men in Virginia.
Elected to the House of Burgesses in 1758, he served conscientiously
but without special distinction for 17 years. He also gained
political and administrative experience as justice of the peace for
Fairfax County.
When fighting broke out
between Massachusetts and the British in 1775, Congress named
Washington commander of its newly created Continental army, hoping
thus to promote unity between New England and Virginia. The outbreak
of war between revolutionary France and a coalition led by Britain,
Prussia, and Austria in 1793 jeopardized American foreign policy and
crippled Jefferson's rival foreign policy design. When the French
envoy, Edmond Genęt, arrived in Charleston in April 1793 and began
recruiting American privateers—and promising aid to land speculators
who wanted French assistance in expelling Spain from the Gulf
Coast—Washington insisted, over Jefferson's reservations, that the
U.S. denounce Genęt and remain neutral in the war between France and
Britain. Washington's anti-French leanings, coupled with the
aggressive attitude of the new regime in France toward the U.S.,
thus served to bring about the triumph of Hamilton's pro-British
foreign policy—formalized by Jay's Treaty of 1795, which settled
outstanding American differences with Britain.
The treaty—which many Americans felt
contained too many concessions to the British—touched off a storm of
controversy. The Senate ratified it, but opponents in the House of
Representatives tried to block appropriations to establish the
arbitration machinery. In a rare display of political pugnacity,
Washington challenged the propriety of the House tampering with
treaty making. His belligerence on this occasion cost him his prized
reputation as a leader above party, but it was also decisive in
securing a 51-48 vote by the House to implement the treaty.
Conscious of the value of his formative role in shaping the
presidency and certainly stung by the invective hurled at advocates
of the Jay Treaty, Washington carefully prepared a farewell address
to mark the end of his presidency, calling on the U.S. to avoid both
entangling alliances and party rancor.
After leaving office in 1797, Washington retired to Mount Vernon, where
he died on December 14, 1799.
Washington's place in the American mind is a fascinating
chapter in the intellectual life of the nation. Washington provided
his contemporaries with concrete evidence of the value of the
citizen soldier, the enlightened gentleman farmer, and the realistic
nationalist in stabilizing the culture and politics of the young
republic. Shortly after the president's death, an Episcopal
clergyman, Mason Locke Weems, wrote a fanciful life of Washington
for children, stressing the great man's honesty, piety, hard work,
patriotism, and wisdom. This book, which went through many editions,
popularized the story that Washington as a boy had refused to lie in
order to avoid punishment for cutting down his father's cherry tree.
Washington long served as a symbol of American identity along with
the flag, the Constitution, and the Fourth of July. The age of
debunking biographies of American personages in the 1920s included a
multivolume denigration of Washington by American author Rupert
Hughes, which helped to distort Americans' understanding of their
national origins. Both the hero worship and the debunking miss the
essential point that his leadership abilities and his personal
principles were exactly the ones that met the needs of his own
generation. As later historians have examined closely the ideas of
the Founding Fathers and the nature of warfare in the Revolution,
they have come to the conclusion that Washington's specific
contributions to the new nation were, if anything, somewhat
underestimated by earlier scholarship.
|
|
