George Washington

George Washington (February 22, 1732 – December 14, 1799) was the first president of the United States from 1789 to 1797. Before he became president, he had been the commander-in-chief of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States.

George Washington was born on February 22, 1732 at his family’s plantation on Pope’s Creek, in Westmoreland County, in the British colony of Virginia, to Augustine Washington (1694–1743) and his second wife, Mary Ball Washington (1708–89). George, the eldest of Augustine and Mary Washington’s six children, spent much of his childhood at Ferry Farm, a plantation near Fredericksburg, Virginia. As a teenager, Washington, who had shown a talent for mathematics, became a successful surveyor. His surveying expeditions into the Virginia wilderness earned him enough money to begin buying land of his own.

In 1751, Washington made his only trip outside what whould become the United States, when he traveled to Barbados with his older half-brother Lawrence Washington (1718–52), who was suffering from tuberculosis and hoped that the warm climate would help his health. Shortly after their arrival, George contracted smallpox. He survived, but the illness left him with permanent facial scars. In 1752, Lawrence, who had been educated in England and served as Washington’s mentor, died.

In December 1752, Washington was aged 20 and had no previous military experience, but he was still made commander of a small part of the Virginia militia. He went to Pittsburgh in 1753 with a Seneca leader, named Tanacharison, to tell the French to go away. The French decided not to go and sent him home. He returned to Pittsburgh a few months later as second in command of a much larger number of troops to force the French out.

The French ambushed his troops and killed his commander and many other men. Washington brought the rest of them home, which started the French and Indian Warand helped draw Britain into the Seven Years' War.

In 1758, he was elected to the Virginia legislature.

On January 6, 1759, aged 26, he married Martha Dandridge Custis (1731–1802), a rich 27-year-old widow who had two children. Washington never had any children himself.

By the late 1760s, Washington had experienced firsthand the effects of rising taxes imposed on the American colonists by the British and came to believe that it was in the best interests of the colonists to declare independence from Britain.

Washington was a delegate to the First Continental Congress, which was created by the Thirteen Colonies to respond to various laws passed by the British government. The Second Continental Congress chose him to be the commanding general of the Continental Army. Washington led the army from 1775 to 1783, when the American Revolutionary War ended. After losing the large Battle of Long Island and being chased across New Jersey, Washington led his troops back across the Delaware River on Christmas Day in 1776 in a surprise attack on the Hessians, who had been sent from Germany by its princes to help Britain, at the small Battle of Princeton and Battle of Trenton. The British had more troops and supplies than Washington, but he kept his troops together and won both small battles.

Washington proved to be a better general than a military strategist. His strength lay not in his tactics on the battlefield but in his ability to keep the struggling colonial army together His troops were poorly trained and did not have food, ammunition, or other supplies (soldiers sometimes went without shoes even in the winter). However, Washington gave them direction and motivation. His leadership during the winter of 1777–1778 at Valley Forge showed his power to inspire his men to keep going.

Overall, Washington did not win many battles, but he never let the British destroy his army. With the help of the French army and navy, Washington made the British Army surrender at Yorktown, Virginia, in 1781, after the Americans and the French won the final major battle of the war. The Treaty of Paris officially ended the war in 1783.

When the war ended, Washington was considered a national hero. He was offered a government position that would have been considered a dictatorship over the colonies, but in a surprising move, Washington refused the offer, left the army, and returned to his home in Mount Vernon. He wanted the colonies to have a strong government but did not wish to head that government or the colonies to be run by a tyrant.

Washington was one of the men who said the country needed a new constitution to replace the Articles of Confederation, which gave too little power to the central governemnt. The Constitutional Convention met in 1787, with Washington presiding. The delegates wrote the Constitution of the United States, and all of the states eventually agreed to it and joined the new government.

On January 7, 1789, aged 56, Washington was elected as the first president of the United States. He did not want the job but thought that the country might fall apart unless he took it. John Adams (1735–1826), who received the second-largest number of votes, became the first vice president. Washington was inaugurated on April 30, 1789 in New York City at the age of 57. Because Washington, D.C., America’s future capital city, had not been decided on as the capital, let alone built, Washington lived in New York City and Philadelphia.

While Washington did not belong to any political party, he agreed with most Federalist Party policies such as that the country should have a standing army, a national bank, and strong federal government. While in office, he signed a bill establishing a future, permanent U.S. capital along the Potomac River, and the city was later named Washington City, in his honor. He was re-elected to a second term. After his second term, Washington decided not to run for re-election although he likely would have won. His choice to stop after two terms set a pattern that every president followed until Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1940.

In Washington's Farewell Address in 1796, which was written by Alexander Hamilton, he warned the country not to divide into political parties and not to get involved in unnecessary foreign wars. Washington's non-interventionism was supported by most Americans for over 100 years. His advice to avoid political parties was completely ignored, and two parties were already active based on support or opposition to Washington's policies..

Washington returned home to Mount Vernon after his second term ended in 1797.

In December 1799, Washington caught a cold after he looked at his properties in the rain.^[3] The cold turned into a throat infection, called epiglottitis, and Washington died on the night of December 14, 1799 at the age of 67. He was buried at Mount Vernon, which in 1960 was designated a national and historic landmark.

Some think that the main cause of his death was bloodletting,^[3] a treatment that was common at the time. For hundreds of years, it was believed that the best way to make a person's life longer or heal them was to "balance the humors."^[3]

From his marriage, Washington owned a large amount of farmland, which he used to tobacco, wheat, and vegetables. Washington also owned more than 100 slaves, who were freed after his death. He did not have much money in cash and had to borrow money while he was president. At his death, Washington's estate was worth over $500,000.^[4]

It is a common error to say that Washington had wooden teeth as false teeth.^[5] He, however, tried many different ways to replace his teeth, including having teeth carved from elk's teeth or ivory.^[6][7] Both ivory and bone have hairline fractures in them, which normally cannot be seen. The fractures started to darken because Washington drank wine. The thin darkened fractures in the bone made the lines look like the grain in a piece of wood.^[8]

Washington's teeth started falling out when he was about 22 years old, and he had only one tooth left by the time he became president.^[6][7] It was hard for him to talk or to eat. At some point, he had false teeth with a special hole so that the only tooth that he still had could poke through.^[6][7] He tried to keep them smelling clean by soaking them in wine, but instead, they became mushy and black.^[6][7] In 1796, a dentist had to pull out Washington's last tooth and kept his tooth in a gold locket attached to his watch chain.^[6] When the time came for the president to have his portrait painted, cotton was pushed under his lips to make him look as if he had teeth.^[6][7] The cotton made his mouth puff out, as is seen on the picture on the country's one-dollar bill.^[7]

• Nettleton, Pamela Hill (2004). George Washington: Farmer, Soldier, President. Capstone. ISBN 978-1-4048-0184-4.
• Santrey, Laurence (January 1, 2002). George Washington: Young Leader (Easy Biographies). Troll Communications Llc. ISBN 978-0816774340.
• Usel, T. M. (1996). George Washington: A Photo-Illustrated Biography. Bridgestone Books. ISBN 978-1-56065-340-0.
• Polack, Peter (2018). Guerrilla Warfare: Kings of Revolution. Casemate Short History. ISBN 978-1-61200-675-8.
• Randall, Willard Sterne (1997). George Washington: A Life. Henry Holt & Co. ISBN 978-0805027792.
• Ferling, John E. (2009). The Ascent of George Washington: The Hidden Political Genius of an American Icon. Bloomsbury Press. ISBN 978-1608191826.
• Taylor, Alan (2016). American Revolutions: A Continental History, 1750–1804. W.W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-0393354768.
• Washington's White House biography Archived 2007-10-11 at the Wayback Machine