No one looms larger in the pantheon of national heroes than George Washington, whose service in the Revolutionary War (1775-83) and as the first president of the United States earned him adulation bordering on worship from contemporaries and future generations alike. Abigail Adams said Washington was made of "majestic fabric," and upon his death in 1799, Henry Lee proclaimed him "first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen." Americans have named the national capital, an imposing monument, and a state in his honor, while towns such as Stoughtonham Township in Massachusetts paid their respects by changing their name to Washington as well. They did so as early as 1776, while Washington was alive and the outcome of the Revolutionary War remained uncertain. Families rushed to name their children after him years before and long after he became president.

The larger-than-life image of Washington as father of his country has made his more human side difficult to understand. The first president seems cold and aloof in our skeptical age, and we look past his imposing visage on the one dollar bill for cracks in his Olympian legend. Our collective cynicism is fueled by the knowledge that writers like "Parson" Mason Locke Weems fabricated stories about him, including the famous (and completely fictional) account in which a young Washington confesses his role in destroying a family cherry tree by proclaiming to his father, "I can't tell a lie, Pa; you know I can't tell a lie. I did cut it with my hatchet." Similar myths remain prevalent even today, and they combine with facts regarding Washington's virtues to create a portrait of a man seemingly so great that few people today can relate to him. This is unfortunate, for the real Washington was both more and less heroic than his legend suggests.

He was born on February 22, 1732 (O.S. February 11, 1731), at Wakefield, a country home in Westmoreland County, Virginia, near the Potomac River. He was one of seven children, and the oldest son of his father Augustine's second marriage. His father was a successful farmer and land speculator, and he trained George in the ways of a Virginia planter prior to his death in 1743. Washington learned to ride and shoot, traveled with his father on business, and developed a strong ambition to become a wealthy and successful landowner is his own right. He became a land surveyor in 1749 after his mother blocked his plan to join the royal navy, and he surveyed much of Virginia's vast western land claims until he inherited the family estate, Mount Vernon, following the death of his brother Lawrence in 1752. Thereafter he lived as a country gentleman.

Yet financial success as a planter did not satisfy Washington's desire for renown, and he joined the Virginia militia as a lieutenant colonel in 1754 in the hope of finding fame on the battlefield. On May 28, 1754, at the head of a small group of Virginians and Native Americans, he beat a smaller French force in what is now western Pennsylvania; he then watched helplessly as his Indian allies butchered a French officer and the surviving French soldiers. He also had his men build Fort Necessity in the same area, though in an almost indefensible position, and had to surrender the outpost to the French after a brief siege on July 3-4, 1754. This debacle marked the opening round of the French and Indian War (1754-63) and clouded Washington's reputation. He subsequently left the militia rather than accept a demotion in rank. Yet he quickly sought to redeem himself, volunteering to accompany a British army led by General Edward Braddock in an attack on the French and Native Americans west of the Appalachians. This expedition suffered ambush and virtual annihilation (July 9, 1755), but Washington fought bravely and had two horses shot out from under him. He emerged from the battle a hero, and Virginia governor Robert Dinwiddie rewarded him with promotion to full colonel and command of the Virginia regiment. He fought in the ensuing war for 40 frustrating months, pleading for reinforcements and gradually losing one-third of his men. He failed in attempts to gain a commission in the British army but accompanied a column commanded by General John Forbes, which finally captured Fort Duquesne in 1758.

With the French threat to Virginia's western frontier eliminated, Washington retired from the militia and married a fabulously wealthy widow named Martha Custis, who owned hundreds of slaves and almost 18,000 acres of land. By 1759 George and Martha Washington were among the most celebrated families in Virginia. They enjoyed a comfortable life during the 1760s, hosting countless parties and successfully winning a seat for George in the House of Burgesses. Washington excelled as a horseman and dancer, and he loved wearing fine clothes. He also worked hard as a land speculator and wheat farmer. While expanding Mount Vernon, he devoted himself to his two stepchildren, John and Martha Custis, and served as a justice of the peace even as he acquired more than 20,000 acres of land near the Great Kanawha River as a reward for his war service. Critics accused him of impropriety for scheming to have the House of Burgesses name a good friend as surveyor of the land and for buying territory at low prices from other veterans. In 1772 Washington commissioned Charles Willson Peale to paint his portrait and characteristically posed for the painting wearing his militia uniform. Whatever his financial success, he wanted to be remembered as a soldier.

Washington grew increasingly frustrated with British policy in North America, which blocked westward expansion and prevented him from selling his lucrative western land to settlers. In the belief that the Crown was denying colonial Americans their rights as Englishmen, he supported the resistance movement (1764-75) and served as a delegate to both the First Continental Congress and Second Continental Congress. After war began at the Battles of Lexington and Concord (April 19, 1775), he wore his militia uniform to meetings as a not-so-subtle reminder that he deserved command of the new Continental army, and when John Adams nominated him for the post, his peers quickly assented. They recognized Washington's military experience, dignified bearing, sense of command, and his reputation as a man of character and high principles. Moreover, as a Virginian, his role as a commander of troops in New England, where the war began, would help bind his colony to the rebellion.

Washington assumed command of the Revolutionary army in June 1775 and surrounded Boston with thousands of eager recruits, reinforcing a siege that had begun in April. However, the British retained possession of Boston until spring 1776; Washington ended the stalemate with the seizure of Dorchester Heights (March 4-5, 1776), which compelled the redcoats to evacuate Boston on March 17. In August the British landed an army of more than 30,000 men commanded by General William Howe near New York City. In a series of contests, beginning with the Battle of Long Island (August 27-30, 1776), Howe battered Washington's army time and again. Jeering British troops blew fox-hunting horns while pursuing the broken Continental army, and only Howe's tentative advance, the intervention of bad weather, and the onset of winter saved the Revolutionary forces from outright destruction. Washington's inexperience as a field commander had led to most of the defeats, but in his defense, he learned his lessons well. He never again risked his entire army in a general engagement, adopting instead a cautious Fabian approach to warfare designed to keep his army intact.

After the string of defeats, Washington faced a crisis toward the end of December. With many enlistments expiring, he was afraid he would not be able to gain new recruits without some positive action by the army. He therefore took a chance and launched a foolhardy attack in a snowstorm against an outpost of Hessians at Trenton on December 26, 1776. Amazingly he surprised the garrison and won the battle. A few days later, when he found himself cornered between the Delaware River and a superior British army under Lord Cornwallis, he slipped his troops to the side and won another victory against a smaller force at Princeton on January 3, 1777.

Although Washington did not win many battles during the war, he continued to exhibit an incredible gift for leadership. He managed to keep an army together during the winter of 1776-77 at Morristown, New Jersey, but in spring 1777 he faced defeat again and was compelled to give up Philadelphia to the British. The winter of 1777-78 was spent building the army at Valley Forge. When the British evacuated Philadelphia in June 1778, Washington followed, fighting the Battle of Monmouth (June 28, 1778) and then stationing his army around New York City for most of the rest of the war. In eight and a half years in the field, he slept only three nights at Mount Vernon. He also refused a salary and supported civilian control over his army, even when Congress seemed to have forgotten about his starving and ill-equipped men. Washington confronted mutinies among his troops and conspiracies among his officers to have him replaced, and he struggled with chronic shortages of men and supplies--but he never abandoned hope.

In 1781 Washington made his most brilliant decision of the war when he marched his army south from New York to join combined French and Continental forces besieging a British army commanded by Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown, Virginia. When a French fleet blocked the British from making a seaward escape, a great victory was assured, and Cornwallis surrendered on October 19, 1781. Triumph at Yorktown led to the end of the war and the signing of the Treaty of Paris (1783), which recognized the independence of the United States.

After the British evacuated New York City in November 1783, Washington stunned the world by resigning his commission and returning to Mount Vernon. His resignation became the most admired act of his life, for it demonstrated civic virtue and an unselfish sense of duty, which awed his generation. Washington knew how his resignation would be received, and he acted in large measure to enhance his reputation. He could have been a king or a dictator in North America and used the army for his own ends, or demanded vast rewards for his service to his country. Instead, he went home and expected to live the remainder of his days at Mount Vernon as a modern-day Cincinnatus (a general in ancient Rome who returned to his farm after winning a war and saving the republic).

To his dismay, however, Washington found that his fame precluded isolation from public life. He emerged from retirement to preside over the Constitutional Convention in 1787 and then served two terms as the first president of the United States, 1789-97. In each case he left Mount Vernon reluctantly, wary of damaging his reputation through association with political endeavors that might have failed, and in each case his role proved vital. His prestige gave credibility to the Constitutional Convention, and it is difficult to imagine the delegates reaching any sort of consensus without his leadership. Moreover, many people in the United States approved the strong, centralized powers of the new federal government only because they believed Washington would be the first president and that he could be trusted not to abuse those powers. He acceded to popular pressure and took the oath of office for his first term on April 30, 1789.

As president, Washington oversaw the creation of the federal government, sided with Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton in disputes over the U.S. Constitution, and noted with dismay the increasing factionalism of his countrymen. He wanted to retire following his first term but was persuaded to stay by supporters and unanimously reelected. He crushed the Whiskey Rebellion (1794), kept the United States neutral after the outbreak of the French Revolution (1789-99) and the ensuing wars between the French and British, and sent an army led by Anthony Wayne to defeat Native Americans in the Ohio River valley in 1794.

Declining a third term in office in 1796, Washington peacefully transferred power to his successor, John Adams, in 1797 and established the tradition that no president should serve more than two terms. In his Farewell Address (1796) he recommended avoiding permanent alliances with foreign countries and warned against the development of political parties. He died at Mount Vernon two years later, on December 14, 1799.

Washington left behind a compelling record of military and political achievement. Almost single-handedly, he held the Continental army together for eight years, battling the British, mutinies, conspiracies, and supply shortages that would have broken lesser leaders. He was not a great field commander, but he learned from his mistakes and bided his time until conditions were ripe for the master stroke at Yorktown. Politically, he proved remarkably astute at discerning the will of Congress and at creating an image of himself that appealed strongly to his generation. Less politically experienced and intellectually gifted than other Founding Fathers, such as Thomas Jefferson or John Adams, he retained a sense of pragmatism and virtue as president that encouraged popular faith in the government and kept the United States out of war in the early years of the republic. Most important, he oversaw the creation of the Constitution, which provided a foundation on which a new form of government could be built.

As a human being, Washington's legacy is more complex. He treated his slaves harshly yet provided for their emancipation following his death (but they were to be freed only after Martha died; wisely, she freed his slaves, but not the ones that had belonged to her estate, before her own death). He proved a loving husband and stepfather, and yet he nurtured an abiding affection for Sally Fairfax, the wife of a good friend, for almost all of his life. He was vain, hot-tempered, and ambitious, but he balanced these qualities with a zealous self-discipline that made him a model of civil and gentlemanly behavior. Less educated than many of the galaxy of great minds that crowd the Revolutionary era, he earned the universal admiration of his peers through force of will and devotion to principle. And though popular to the point of deification in many parts of the country, he struggled to maintain a relationship with his Loyalist mother, who opposed the Revolution all her life.

What the 24 years that followed his nomination to command the Continental army in 1775 cost Washington can never be known. If his popular epitaph as the "Father of His Country" is well deserved, so, too, is the one he unwittingly wrote for himself in a letter to the marquis de Lafayette in 1784. Faced with old age and the prospect of death, Washington said he would not repine, for "I have had my day."

Bibliography:

1)         Marcus Cunliffe, George Washington: Man and Monument (Boston: Little, Brown, 1958)

2)         Joseph J. Ellis, His Excellency: George Washington (New York: Knopf, 2004)

3)         John Ferling, Setting the World Ablaze: Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and the American Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000)

4)         James Thomas Flexner, Washington: The Indispensable Man (New York: New American Library, 1984)

5)         Willard Sterne Randall, George Washington: A Life (New York: Henry Holt, 1997)

Free term papers are not written to satisfy your specific instructions. You can use our professional writing services to buy a custom written research paper, term paper, or essay on Founding Fathers at affordable price. CustomTermPapers is the best solution for those who seek help in writing term papers, essays, and research papers related to Founding Fathers and other relevant topics.