C

*Continental Army's encampment at Valley Forge in Pennsylvania during the winter of 1777-1778 was the bleakest time of the American struggle for independence. Hunger and disease compounded the problems of inadequate shelter and lack of adequate winter clothing. More than 2500 men died of typhus, dysentery, and pneumonia. Washington made repeated appeals for aid and supplies, but the Congress was unable to move the states to provide them.

I Introduction

Washington, George (1732-1799), first president of the United States (1789-1797) and one of the most important leaders in United States history. His role in gaining independence for the American colonies and later in unifying them under the new federal government cannot be overestimated. Laboring against great difficulties, he created the Continental Army, which fought and won the American Revolution (1775-1783), and forced Great Britain to grant independence to its richest overseas possession. With victory won, Washington worked for a strong central government, using his immense prestige to help gain ratification of the Constitution of the United States. Washington reluctantly accepted the presidency of the United States. During eight years in office, Washington laid down the guidelines for future presidents.

II Early Career

George Washington was born in Westmoreland County, Virginia, on February 22, 1732. He was the eldest son of a well-to-do Virginia farmer. Washington seems to have received most of his schooling at home. When he was 17 he was appointed surveyor of Culpeper County, Virginia. In 1752 Washington inherited the estate of Mount Vernon, in Fairfax County. The same year he was appointed adjutant of the southern district of Virginia, a full-time salaried appointment, carrying the rank of major. His ambition was to eventually secure a commission in the regular British army. In 1753, Virginia was alarmed when a French expedition from Canada established posts on the headwaters of the Ohio River. Conflict over this area eventually erupted into the French and Indian War, in which Washington played a major military role that established his reputation as a commander. In the fall of 1758 the French were defeated.

Washington resigned his commission and turned to the life of a Virginia planter. In 1759 he married Martha Dandridge Custis, a wealthy young widow. Washington matured into the patriarch of the Washington clan and a solid member of Virginia society. From 1759 to 1774 he served in the House of Burgesses, the lower chamber of the Virginia legislature. By 1774 Washington had become a key supporter of the colonial cause. In 1774 he was elected to the First Continental Congress.

III General of the Continental Army

In 1775 the Second Continental Congress elected Washington commander in chief of its army. In July Washington arrived in Massachusetts, where the battles at Lexington and Concord had been fought, and where the only British army in the colonies was besieged in Boston by local militia. During the winter the revolutionaries dragged 50 heavy cannon to Boston by sled from a captured British fort in northern New York. Washington mounted the cannon on Dorchester Heights, which commanded the city, and British commander Sir William Howe evacuated his troops to Halifax, Nova Scotia, where they awaited reinforcements.

British ships carrying Howe's army arrived in New York Bay during the summer of 1776. The British began operations by landing on Long Island. Howe made a surprise attack on 4000 men in forward positions at Brooklyn Heights, covering the approach to Manhattan Island, and hurled them back. When Howe halted his attack, the entire American force, with all its stores, artillery, and equipment, was ferried at night across the East River to Manhattan without a single casualty. Washington fought delaying actions through October, then withdrew into New Jersey, crossing into Pennsylvania in December just ahead of British troops. Howe proclaimed complete victory and Congress fled south to Baltimore.

The British pulled back most of their troops to winter in New York City, leaving scattered garrisons of German mercenaries in New Jersey. On December 25 Washington led his small army across the ice-clogged Delaware, successfully attacked a garrison at Trenton, and recrossed the Delaware without interference. In January 1777 near Princeton, he defeated three British regiments marching to reinforce General Charles Cornwallis. This forced the British to abandon all but a small corner of New Jersey. In July 1777 Howe loaded his New York troops aboard ship and sailed for Philadelphia, which he occupied in September. Howe's army passed the winter there. Washington's army wintered under conditions of extreme privation at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.

In May 1778 Washington heard that a treaty had been signed between the United States and France. An idea was taking form in Washington's mind: to catch a British army between an American land force and French naval forces. Forewarned of this possibility, General Sir Henry Clinton, who took control of the British forces that spring, withdrew his army to New York City. During 1779 there was little Washington could do to stem British successes in the south. Savannah, Georgia, was lost in 1778 and Charles Town (now Charleston), South Carolina, in 1779. In July 1779 a French force of 6000 arrived, escorted by a naval squadron. After a second fleet arrived in the late summer of 1781, Washington coordinated a sea and land operation that trapped Cornwallis's force in Yorktown, Virginia. The British surrendered in October. After the victory, Washington rejected a plan, which had support in the army, of establishing a monarchy with himself as king.

IV Return Home

Peace was officially proclaimed in 1783. Washington resigned as commander in chief and returned to Mount Vernon, where he spent the summer in 1784 improving his property, entertaining guests, and visiting his lands in the Ohio Valley. During this time Washington's proposal to construct waterways and roads connecting the Potomac with the Ohio Valley were approved by the state legislatures of Virginia and Maryland.

Under the Articles of Confederation by which the United States was then governed, Congress could do nothing of much importance without the consent of the states affected. Shays' Rebellion, an insurrection in 1786 led by debt-ridden farmers against the government of Massachusetts, convinced many states that a stronger central government was needed. A convention met in Philadelphia in May 1787 to consider a new constitution. Washington was elected president of the convention, which completed work on the Constitution of the United States in September. Washington threw himself into the struggle for ratification, which succeeded in June 1788 when New Hampshire produced the ninth and decisive ratification.

V President of the United States

Washington was elected president of the United States on February 4, 1789. John Adams of Massachusetts was elected vice president. In April Washington took the oath of office in New York City, where the seat of government was still provisionally maintained. Washington supported adding a Bill of Rights to the original Constitution to specify the rights of individual citizens, but he opposed attempts to eliminate Congress's power to levy taxes and to regulate commerce with foreign nations and among the states. To Washington these provisions formed the basis of fiscal stability and solid national credit.

Congress moved slowly at first. In June it passed a satisfactory tariff (tax on imports) bill, promising to provide the government with an adequate source of revenue. The ten constitutional amendments known as the Bill of Rights were approved for consideration by the states. By September bills had established the three executive departments in the president's Cabinet: state, treasury, and war. Provision was also made for a federal judiciary and an attorney general. As secretary of the treasury Washington chose Alexander Hamilton. As secretary of war he appointed Henry Knox. Both these men had conservative views. For liberal balance, Washington offered the post of attorney general to Edmund Randolph of Virginia. Fellow Virginian Thomas Jefferson was his choice for secretary of state.

The first session of the 1789 Congress saw Washington establish two important foreign policy precedents. He concluded that the chief executive should complete negotiations before submitting a finished treaty to the Senate. This procedure has been followed ever since. Also, Washington used nonpermanent executive agents to conduct preliminary negotiations with foreign powers. When Congress reconvened in 1790, by far the most important business was Hamilton's proposal to pay the national debt and to have the national government assume the war debts of individual states. The plan would be financed by new loans abroad, increased tariffs, and an excise tax on distilled spirits.

In the spring of 1790, Washington was felled by a serious illness. The anxiety it caused underlined Washington's importance to the new nation. During Washington's illness Jefferson and Hamilton began working out an agreement: Jefferson supported Hamilton's financial proposals and Hamilton supported Jefferson's efforts to locate the permanent seat of government on the Potomac River. This harmony was short-lived. In 1790 Hamilton submitted a proposal for the chartering of a national bank and again asked for an excise tax on distilled spirits. A dispute immediately arose over whether Congress had the power to charter a bank. The text of the Constitution did not say so explicitly. Here for the first time was the great question of rigid versus flexible interpretation of the Constitution that has caused heated dispute through much of United States history. The bank bill won passage in 1791.

Washington had hoped to serve only one term, but several factors convinced him to run a second time. Washington regarded partisan contests, which he called faction, with horror, but during 1792 he realized that the deepening differences between Jefferson and Hamilton represented differing factions that were becoming established in American political life. Secondly, France, which was allied with the United States, was now undergoing a revolution, and its future was uncertain. The President's advisers convinced Washington that the times were too perilous for the nation to risk a transfer of the executive power to a new president. Washington again was elected as president in 1792 and Adams was returned as vice president.

VI Second Term as President

Just four weeks after the inauguration in March 1793 news reached Washington that Revolutionary France had declared war on Britain, Spain, and the Netherlands. To avoid being embroiled in the war the president decided to follow a course of strict neutrality. In the last days of 1793 Jefferson retired as secretary of state and was succeeded by Randolph. William Bradford, a Pennsylvanian, took over as attorney general. In the spring of 1794 the danger of war with Britain increased. Washington sent Chief Justice John Jay as a special envoy to London. Meanwhile in western Pennsylvania officers collecting the excise tax on whiskey met with resistance (see Whiskey Rebellion). When Washington ordered the militias of New Jersey, Maryland, and Virginia into the area, resistance collapsed. Meanwhile, a victory over a coalition of northwestern Native American peoples in August broke the power of these nations for a generation.

Jay's Treaty with the British, which Washington received in 1795, provided solid insurance against a disastrous war with Britain, but its concessions to British maritime policy were heavy. Despite public protests the treaty was approved in June. Washington was then confronted with evidence that Secretary of State Randolph had been secretly seeking money from a French diplomat in return for using his influence against Jay's Treaty. Randolph resigned, angrily proclaiming his innocence. He was eventually cleared, but he never again held federal office.

In 1796 Washington concluded treaties with Spain and with Native American tribes. These treaties opened trade and travel on the Mississippi River, establishing the border of Western Florida, and opened vast areas of Ohio and southern Indiana to white settlers. Washington was less happy over a treaty with Algiers, one of the Barbary states, which required the United States to pay an annual tribute of $24,000 as security against piracy in the Mediterranean. Washington announced in September 1796 that he would not serve a third term. He embodied the reasons for his decision, together with much thoughtful advice to his fellow citizens, in his famous Farewell Address.

VII Last Years

Washington attended the inauguration of President John Adams in 1797 and left for Mount Vernon. Early on the morning of December 14, 1799, Washington awoke with an inflamed throat. His condition rapidly worsened. He was further weakened by medical treatment that included frequent blood-letting. He died at 11:30 that night.