See also: Washington, George Washington (homonymy)
George Washington (February 22nd 1732 - December 14th 1799) is the Chief of staff of the continental Armée during the war with Independence (1775-1783) before being the first President of the United States (1789-1797). Born with Pope' S Creek in the British colony from Virginia, it is one of the richest growers of the area on its field of Mount Vernon. Thanks to its participation in the War Seven Year old (1754-1763), it quickly becomes famous on the two sides of the Atlantique and is interested in the political questions. Its engagement in the American Revolution as its reputation carries it to the post of commander of the American troops, than it organizes and leads to the final victory on the metropolis, with the assistance of the French. After the conflict, it takes part in the drafting of the American Constitution and achieves the unanimity at the time of the first presidential election. During its two Mandate S, George Washington shows her qualities of skilful administrator, in spite of the internal difficulties and the war in Europe. He left his print on the institutions of the country and the national history.
Regarded as one of the Founding fathers of the United States by the Americans, George Washington was the subject of many homages since the end of the 18th century: its name was given to the capital of the United States, with a State of the North-West of the Union, like with many sites and monuments. Its effigy is reproduced on the ticket and the part of a Dollar just as on the part of 25 hundreds. Its birthday is a federal bank holiday with the the United States.
Biography
Genealogy
George Washington goes down in right-hand side line from the first French emigrant in Virginia, a Huguenot originating in the Ile de Ré, named Nicolas Martiau (1591 - 1657), who unloaded Francis-Bonaventure , the May 11th 1620, five months before the arrival of the Pères pilgrims of the Mayflower . This French ancestor had exerted the military function of Engineer, of Justice of the Peace and Député at the local assembly of Jamestown, where he was elected representing peninsula of Pamunkey. In 1631, 150 years before the battles decisive of Yorktown during the Guerre of American independence Nicolas Martiau had acquired a ground on which its descendant was going to illustrate in 1781 in “York-town” against the English troops.
Youth and family
George Washington was born the February 22nd 1732, on the field of Pope' S Creek, on banks of the river Potomac, in the south-east of current the Colonial Beach, in the county of Westmoreland in Virginia. His/her parents, Augustine Washington and Mary Ball, belonged to the economic and cultural elite grower S of Virginia, in the south of the thirteen colonies. The father was a grower but also a judge at the court of the county of Westmoreland; he was initially married in Janet Butler which died in 1729 and of which he had three children: Lawrence, Augustine Jr. and Jane. He married Mary Ball in 1731 which gave him several children, whose George Washington was the elder one. In 1735, the family moved into a house on the plantation of Little Hunting Creek, which was going thereafter to become Mount Vernon. Three years later, she moved once again with Ferry Farm, a plantation located on the river Rappahannock: it is here that George Washington passed most of her youth. He undoubtedly attended a local school or he could receive the teaching of a Précepteur. He was gifted for the Mathématique S and familiarized himself with the rudiments of the Topographie.Towards the 16 years age, George Washington became Arpenteur on the properties of Lord Fairfax.
Seven Year old war (1754-1763)
To the autumn 1753, George Washington was sent by the Gouverneur of Virginia, Robert Dinwiddie in the valley of the Ohio, which was then the theater of colonial competitions between the Britanniques and the French. It was charged to bring to a message to the Fort the Ox, requiring the withdrawal of the French of the area of current the Pittsburgh. Confronted with a refusal, Washington tackled and killed a group of 30 scouts carried out by Joseph Coulon de Jumonville (Bataille of Jumonville Glen). May 27th, 1754, it let carry out this officer. The French protested to be taken in ambush, affirming to be come under protection from the white flag and the emissary statute, to deliver a summation of shrinking of the grounds of the king of France Louis XV. Washington was justified thereafter while saying to have taken it for a spy rather than an emissary. Claude of Back-plate reacts by sending a detachment of 500 men charged to capture Washington and the command entrusted some to Louis Coulon de Villiers, the brother of Jumonville. This one made captive Washington with the Fort Necessity, but released it after having obtained consents which he challenged then, pretexting to have signed a French paper, that he had not included/understood. The death of Joseph de Jumonville made scandal in France and the English Horace Walpole even evoked “this discharge drawn by a Virginien young person in the American underwoods put the World on fire”. Established in easily flooded ground and too slightly defended, Fort Necessity appeared useless: the July 3rd, Washington had to go (battles of Great Meadows) and negotiated its return in Virginia by leaving the main French of the valley. These operations constituted the first skirmishes of the Guerre Seven Year old (1754-1763). They were made famous with London and Williamsburg. He saw three horses killed under him and its coat was bored of four balls. It showed its coolness by transforming a rout into organized retirement. That was worth to him later the nickname of “ Hero off the Monongahela ”.
Starting from the autumn 1755, Washington accepted the mission of defending the Western border with a reduced troop, which enabled him to reinforce its experiment of commander. In 1758, it took part in the forwarding carried out by the general John Forbes who dislodged the French of Fort Duquesne. Once English success ensured in the valley of Ohio, it turned over on its field of Mount Vernon and made publish the account of its mission, which consolidated its notoriety.
Marriage and life with Mount Vernon
January 6th, 1759, Washington married Martha Dandridge Custis, the widow of one of richest Virginiens.
Before the beginning of the American Revolution, Washington was devoted to its field of Mount Vernon while seeking to improve its agricultural productions: it tried out news Semence S, Engrais, farming rotations, tools (it develops a news Charrue. However, if Washington enjoyed a certain prestige and an experiment of the ground, it had never directed several thousands of men. July 2nd, 1775. It was to deal with the British army, famous “the red jackets”, made up of 12 000 trained soldiers, which led it to order the recruitment of free Noirs.
In March 1776, after a length seat, the English evacuated Boston and withdrew themselves with Halifax with the Canada. Washington went then on New York to prepare with the British counter-offensive. The troops of William Howe, arrived by the Atlantic Ocean, took the city after the Bataille Length Island (August 1776). The American commander managed to save his forces which were withdrawn more in north: he undergoes a new defeat with White Plains then, on November 16th, 1776, the rendering of the Fort-Washington marked the retreat of the continental army which had to take refuge in the New Jersey then in Pennsylvania.
But instead of crushing the remainder of an American army in full decomposition, the general William Howe decided to take his winter quarters, defended by two advanced stations with Trenton and Princeton. The evening of Christmas, the forces of Washington crossed the Delaware and gained the Bataille of Trenton, then that of Princeton a few days later. These two defeats, which caused few losses on the English side, however marked a turning, whose Washington included/understood the range quickly: the enthusiasm caused by these successes near the American opinion was to be exploited, the more so as France of Louis XVI had just entered the conflict to the sides of the Insurgents. In 1777, Washington could not prevent William Howe from seizing Philadelphia, the city where met the American Congress, and undergoes two reverses (battles of Brandywine and Germantown). The American army spent the winter 1777-1778 to Valley Forge to the north of Philadelphia, under terrible conditions: : 2500 men on: 10000 died because of the cold and the epidemics.
In 1778, the English general Henry Clinton, who had replaced William Howe, evacuated Philadelphia to defend New York against a French maritime attack. At the time of the Bataille of Monmouth (June 28th, 1778) Washington took with reverse the British forces whereas they left Freehold Short-House. Supported by the French reinforcements, it crushed the army of Charles Cornwallis with the Bataille of Yorktown in 1781. In 1782, Washington created the medal of the “ Purple Heart ” which is, still nowadays, the distinction given to the American soldiers wounded with the combat. In 1783 was signed the treated of Paris which restored peace and recognized the independence of the United States.
In March 1783, Washington prevented a military plot prepared by officers who threatened the Congrès to found a Dictature (Conspiration of Newburgh). November 2nd, Washington made a speech of eloquent good-bye in front of its soldiers. December 23rd, 1783, it presented officially its resignation as a general in front of the Congress joins together with Annapolis and gave up any ambition to reach the public affairs, like had made Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus in the Antiquité: he preferred to devote himself to his plantation of Mount Vernon.
George Washington became president of the Potomac Company , charged to improve navigation on the river Potomac. It noted the blocking of the new American institutions and evoked in its correspondence with James Madison the need for a solid Constitution. It proposed the competitions between the Virginia and the Maryland about navigation on Potomac to join together a convention with Annapolis in 1786. He selected like was delegated of Virginia then like chair Convention of Philadelphia of 1787, joined together to reform the Articles of the Confederation. He governed this occasion the commission of drafting of the Constitution. He really did not take part in the debates but spoke to carry the ratification of certain federated States, of which Virginia. Once the voted constitution, it was elected on March 4th, 1789. April 30th, 1789, since the Federal Hall of New York, city chosen to be used as provisional capital, it took officially its functions of chief of the Executive power. Washington was then at the top of its popularity and became president of an association of war veterans, the company of Cincinnati.
Political career
First mandate
George Washington was the President of the United States during two mandates is one duration of being able eight years. It had to face the financial problems born of the war of independence and had to affirm the position of the new nation in the International relations. During its first mandate (1789 - 1793), the president worked to make the executive power and the federal administration more solid. For that, it gathered around him a team of men who had illustrated themselves during the revolution: Alexander Hamilton dealt with the Département of the Treasury, Thomas Jefferson was his Secretary of State, Henry Knox his Secrétaire of the war, Edmund Randolphe with justice and John Adams his vice-president. James Madison was one of its principal advisers.In the field of the interior matters, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury Alexander Hamilton endeavoured to solve the budgetary crisis and to reduce the debt of the country. February 25th, 1791, Washington signed the decree instituting a federal bank. It is also at that time that one chooses to build the federal capital in the District of Columbia: the president selected a site on the Potomac and entrusted the responsibility to draw the plans of the city to the French Pierre Charles the Child. During work, the government moved New York with Philadelphia in 1790. Washington posed the first stone of the Capitole in 1793. But he died before the end of work.
The Indian Guerres continued after independence: the American army faced the Miamis, at the beginning of the Amerindian Années 1790 and the of the Territoires of the North-West. The British and the Spaniards blocked the American expansion towards the West. Madison and Jefferson disputed the policy followed by Hamilton. In front of these difficulties, Washington initially wished to withdraw political matters. However, under the pressure of its cabinet and Thomas Jefferson which convinced it in Mount Vernon, it ends up agreeing to present itself for a second mandate (1793 - 1797).
Second mandate
When the war burst between the revolutionary France and the Great Britain (1793), the president decided to remain neutral ( neutrality proclamation , April 22nd, 1793) while waiting for the reinforcement of the country.
In 1794, George Washington sent John Jay, president of the Supreme court in Great Britain in order to regulate the last dispute born of the war of independence. The Treated of London ratified in 1795, made it possible to alleviate the tensions with the old metropolis and to provide the foundations of new commercial relations between the two countries. The treaty however dissatisfied the Républicains and part of the American population. The press criticized John Jay and the president after the signature of the agreement. On the institutional level, it called with the strict respect of the Constitution. Washington left the presidency in March 1797 and was replaced by John Adams. It thus established the habit of a maximum of two mandates which became a constitutional requirement by the 22e amendment voted in 1947. It is under the presidency of Washington that were born the federalistic Parti and the Parti democrat-republican.
Last years and death
After its second presidential mandate, George Washington withdrew himself on her grounds of Mount Vernon. It continued to make thrive its exploitation and made arrange large a Distillerie which produced Whiskey and Brandy. In 1798, the second US president John Adams named it Lieutenant-general with the head of a provisional army which would be raised in the event of French invasion. During several months, Washington was devoted to the organization of the body of officers. But he refused to assume a public role and disallowed the proposal to become again President:
It with the heart, the glance and size of a hero. Born to order, it never appears embarrassed homages that one returns to him.
Today, it is possible to know the aspect of Washington thanks to the mask carried out by the French sculptor Jean-Antoine Houdon in 1785 with Mount Vernon. The mask was then used to carve a terra cotta bust intended for the rotunda of the capitole of Virginia. Washington was then 53 years old and the statue was most realistic according to its entourage.
As much of aristocrats, Washington had Carie S because of an excessive consumption of Cane sugar. It lost its first tooth at the 22 years age and nothing any more but only one in of them 1789 had when he became president. According to John Adams, it lost them because it made use of it to break Brazil nut; but for the historians, it was probably because of the treatment that it had received against the Variole and the Malaria. It was rather about ivory. These dental problems strongly generate the president, which pushed it to take Laudanum.
In its youth, Washington had the russet-red hair. Contrary to the popular legend, it did not carry by Perruque but it powdered the hair, as one can see it on many portraits, of which that of Gilbert Stuart.
Washington always regretted not having made an higher learning, this is why it read and learned much by itself in its life from adult. In its youth, it was baptized in the faith Anglican, which was the official religion of the colony of Virginia. After the American Revolution and independence, it joined the rows of the épiscopaliens, heirs to the Anglicanism. But the historians always discuss his Christian engagement; some think that it was deist. At all events, he was a partisan convinced of the principle of the religious Tolérance and Freedom of worship, initially within the continental Armée that he directed during several years, in which he saw already the problems for the future of the country. He considered that freedom could be given only the people able to assume it. In a letter addressed to his/her friend Fayette in 1786, it expressed its wish to take measures making it possible “to abolish slavery per degrees, in a slow way, sure and unperceivable”. It was thus in favor of a transitional stage during which the black slaves would be under supervision. When he wrote his will, he decided to free his slaves after his death and that from his wife.
It is possible that it had a son called West Ford with a named slave Venus. Washington is one of the four presidents whose face is carved in the Mont Rushmore, a national memorial finished in 1941. At the time of the bicentenary of the Declaration of Independence (1976), George Washington was high in a posthumous way to the rank of General off the Armies by a resolution of the American Congrès approved by the president of the time Gerald Ford.
Become national hero after his death, his admirors made circulate quickly of the accounts apocryphal books on its virtues, in particular on its legendary honesty. As of the year which followed its death, Mason Locke Weems wrote true a Hagiographie which set it up with the row of national myth. According to a classification drawn up by historians for the magazine The Atlantic Montly , he is the second most influential American of the History, behind Lincoln and in front of Jefferson.
Washington in the culture
There exist many artistic representations of George Washington, in the United States as in Europe. Since 1786, the French Jean-Antoine Houdon (1741-1828) had carried out a Buste of George Washington, according to a mask and a Terra cotta made in 1785 in Mount Vernon. It gave place to 36 counterparts of Hiram Powers (1805-1873). Giuseppe Ceracchi (1751-1802) worked another bust in Marbre in 1795 off, preserved at the Metropolitan Museum Art. But one of the largest statues and most famous is that high in Federal Hall with New York, where the character had made its first presidential discourse in 1789. Work in Bronze, installed in front of the entry, looks towards Wall Street. With Chicago, a group out of bronze of Lorado Taft (1941), represents George Washington, Robert Morris and Hyam Solomon with the angle of North Wabash Avenue and East Wacker Drive. Abroad, there exist many statues of Washington, like that of the place of Iéna with Paris.
The most famous portraits of George Washington are the work of the American painter Gilbert Stuart (1755-1828): this last carried out a hundred during its career of it. All these copies rise from three portraits carried out from living of George Washington: that of 1795 (Vaughan type, exposed to Metropolitan Museum off Art); the portrait known as “of Athenaeum” (1796); finally the portrait known as “of Lansdowne” (1796), preserved at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington. The second portrait ( Athenaeum Portrait ) was carried out with Philadelphia and remains unfinished: the face of Washington is turned towards the left. Acquired by the library of Boston after the death of the painter, it inspired the figure of the ticket of a dollar.
Other painters represent George Washington by ordering continental army: Charles Peale Polk (1767-1822), for example. Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze (1816-1868) chose to paint a heroic episode of the war of independence, George Washington crossing Delaware (1851, Metropolitan Museum off Art) (MET). Charles Wilson Peale (1741-1827) watch George Washington in Princeton , Tompkins H. Matteson (1813-1884) in Valley Forges. On the table of John Trumbull (1756-1843), the rendering of Cornwallis with Yorktown (1797), Washington is on the right with the head of a regiment. Rembrandt Peale (1778-1860) carried out some 75 counterparts of the Porthole Portrait between 1823-1860 which show Washington in military costume (see the illustration of the infobox).
George Washington was also represented in paragon of virtue, hero or a founding father of the United States: Frederick Kemmelmeyer (about 1755-1821), The American Star (George Washington) , (about 1803, PUTS), Rembrandt Peale, George Washington (Patriae Pater) (1824) are some examples. Constantino Brumidi (1805-1880) carried out the Fresque Coupole of the federal capitole by a apotheosis of Washington (1865).
Lastly, the foreign painters were also interested in George Washington: Jean-Baptiste the Peacock painted a Georges Washington, President of the United States of America and General as a Chief since 1779, according to a table of Charles Wilson Peale.
The oldest film putting in scene George Washington is Washington Under the American Flag produced in 1909 by J. Stuart Blackton. It also appears in many films devoted to the war of independence like The Patriot, the way of the freedom (2000) where it is incarnated by the actor Terry Layman.
See too
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