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U.S Presidents — George Washington

OVERVIEW Name: George Washington President: # 1 Term Number(s): 1, 2 Term Length: 8 Took Office: April 30, 1789 Left Office: March 4, 1797 Age when Elected: 57 Party: Independent Also Known As: "Father of His Country" BIOGRAPHIC INFORMATION Education: no formal education Occupation: Farmer (Planter), Soldier (Officer) Other Governmental Position: 1st Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army, 6th United States Army Senior Officer. Military Service: General of the Armies of the United States (posthumous), Lieutenant General Religion: Episcopalian Spouse(s): Martha Dandridge Custis Washington (January 6, 1759) Children: John Parke Custis (stepson), Martha Parke Custis (stepdaughter), Eleanor Parke Custis Lewis (step-granddaughter), George Washington Parke Custis (step-grandson) Birthdate: February 22, 1732 Birthplace: Westmoreland County, Virginia Deathdate: December 14, 1799 Deathplace: Mount Vernon, Virginia Age at Death: 67 Cause of Death: pneumonia and throat infection Place of Internment: Washington family vault in Mount Vernon, Virginia Signature FIRST ELECTION Election Year: 1789 Main Opponent: John Adams Voter Participation: N/A   Electoral Popular States Click for larger image Winner 69 (100.00%) 38,818 (100.00%) 10 Main Opponent 34 (24.64%) 0 (0.00%) 0 total 138 38,818 10 SECOND ELECTION Election Year: 1792 Main Opponent: John Adams Voter Participation: N/A   Electoral Popular States Click for larger image Winner 132 (100.00%) 13,332 (100.00%) 15 Main Opponent 77 (29.17%) 0 (0.00%) 0 total 264 13,332 15 CABINET AND COURT APPOINTMENTS Vice President: John Adams Secretary of State: Thomas Jefferson (1790–1793), Edmund Randolph (1794–1795), Timothy Pickering (1795–1797) Secretary of the Treasury: Alexander Hamilton (1789–1795), Oliver Wolcott Jr. (1795–1797) Secretary of War: Henry Knox (1789–1794), Timothy Pickering (1795–1796), James McHenry (1796–1797) Attorney General: Edmund Randolph (1789–1794), William Bradford (1794–1795), Charles Lee (1795–1797) Supreme Court Assignments: John Jay (1789), John Rutledge (1790), William Cushing (1790), James Wilson (1789), John Blair (1790), James Iredell (1790), Thomas Johnson (1792), William Paterson (1793), Oliver Ellsworth (1796), Samuel Chase (1796) PRESIDENT'S BIOGRAPHY On April 30, 1789, George Washington, standing on the balcony of Federal Hall on Wall Street in New York, took his oath of office as the first President of the United States. "As the first of every thing, in our situation will serve to establish a Precedent," he wrote James Madison, "it is devoutly wished on my part, that these precedents may be fixed on true principles." Born in 1732 into a Virginia planter family, he learned the morals, manners, and body of knowledge requisite for an 18th century Virginia gentleman. Washington pursued two intertwined interests: military arts and western expansion. At 16 he helped survey Shenandoah lands for Thomas, Lord Fairfax. Commissioned a lieutenant colonel in 1754, he fought the first skirmishes of what grew into the French and Indian War. The next year, as an aide to General Edward Braddock, he escaped injury although four bullets ripped his coat and two horses were shot from under him. From 1759 to the outbreak of the American Revolution, Washington managed his lands around Mount Vernon and served in the Virginia House of Burgesses. Married to a widow, Martha Dandridge Custis, he devoted himself to a busy and happy life. But like his fellow planters, Washington felt himself exploited by British merchants and hampered by British regulations. As the quarrel with the mother country grew acute, he moderately but firmly voiced his resistance to the restrictions. When the Second Continental Congress assembled in Philadelphia in May 1775, Washington, one of the Virginia delegates, was elected Commander in Chief of the Continental Army. On July 3, 1775, at Cambridge, Massachusetts, he took command of his ill-trained troops and embarked upon a war that was to last six grueling years. He realized early that the best strategy was to harass the British. He reported to Congress, "we should on all Occasions avoid a general Action, or put anything to the Risque, unless compelled by a necessity, into which we ought never to be drawn." Ensuing battles saw him fall back slowly, then strike unexpectedly. Finally in 1781, with the aid of French allies, Washington forced the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown. Washington longed to retire to his fields at Mount Vernon. But he soon realized that the nation under its Articles of Confederation was not functioning well, so he became a prime mover in the steps leading to the Constitutional Convention at Philadelphia in 1787. When the new Constitution was ratified, the Electoral College unanimously elected Washington President. Washington did not infringe upon the policy-making powers that he felt the Constitution gave Congress. But the determination of foreign policy became preponderantly a presidential concern. When the French Revolution led to a major war between France and England, Washington refused to accept entirely the recommendations of either Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, who was pro-French, or Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, who was pro-British. Rather, he insisted upon a neutral course until the United States could grow stronger. To his disappointment, two parties were developing by the end of his first term. Wearied of politics, feeling old, Washington retired at the end of his second. In his farewell address, he urged his countrymen to forswear excessive party spirit and geographical distinctions. In foreign affairs, he warned against long-term alliances. Washington enjoyed less than three years of retirement at Mount Vernon, for he died of a throat infection on December 14, 1799. For months, the nation mourned him. FIRST LADY'S BIOGRAPHY Martha Dandridge Custis Washington "I think I am more like a state prisoner than anything else, there is certain bounds set for me which I must not depart from..." So in one of her surviving letters, Martha Washington confided to a niece that she did not entirely enjoy her role as first of first ladies. She once conceded that "many younger and gayer women would be extremely pleased" in her place; she would "much rather be at home." But when George Washington took his oath of office in New York City on April 30, 1789, and assumed the new duties of president of the United States, his wife brought to their position a tact and discretion developed over 58 years of society life in Tidewater, Virginia. Oldest daughter of John and Frances Dandridge, Martha was born June 2, 1731, on a plantation near Williamsburg. Typical for a girl in an 18th-century family, her education was almost negligible except in domestic and social skills, but she learned all the arts of a well-ordered household and how to keep a family contented. As a girl of 18—about five feet (152 cm) tall, dark-haired, gentle of manner—she married the wealthy Daniel Parke Custis. Two babies died; two were hardly past infancy when her husband died in 1757. From the day Martha married George Washington in 1759, her great concern was the comfort and happiness of her husband and children. When his career led him to the battlegrounds of the Revolutionary War and finally to the presidency, Mrs. Washington followed him bravely. Her love of private life equaled her husband's; but, as she wrote to her friend Mercy Otis Warren, "I cannot blame him for having acted according to his ideas of duty in obeying the voice of his country." As for herself, "I am still determined to be cheerful and happy, in whatever situation I may be; for I have also learned from experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends upon our dispositions, and not upon our circumstances." At the president's house in thetemporary capitals of New York and Philadelphia, the Washingtons chose to entertain in formal style, deliberately emphasizing the new republic's wish to be accepted as the equal of the established governments of Europe. Still, Mrs. Washington's warm hospitality made her guests feel welcome and put strangers at ease. She took little satisfaction in " formal compliments and empty ceremonies" and declared, "I am fond of only what comes from the heart." Abigail Adams, who sat at her right during parties and receptions, praised her as "one of those unassuming characters which create Love and Esteem." In 1797 the Washingtons said farewell to public life and returned to their beloved Mount Vernon in Virginia, to live surrounded by kinfolk, friends, and a constant stream of guests eager to pay their respects to the celebrated couple. Martha's daughter Patsy and son Jack had died, but Jack's children figured in the household. After George Washington died in 1799, Mrs. Washington assured a final privacy by burning their letters; she died of "severe fever" on May 22, 1802. Both lie buried at Mount Vernon, where Washington himself had planned an unpretentious tomb for them. MAJOR EVENTS 1789: George Washington is inaugurated as the first president of the United States in the nation's capital of the time, New York City. 1789: Judiciary Act of 1789 establishes the U.S. federal judiciary and the Office of Attorney General. 1789: North Carolina joins the Union. 1790: Rhode Island joins the Union.1791: The federal Capitol is established on the Potomac River. 1791: The Bill of Rights comes into effect on December 15, 1791. 1791: Vermont joins the Union. 1792: The Post Office is established by Congress. 1792: The New York Stock & Exchange Board (later called the New York Stock Exchange) is formed. 1792: With the Coinage Act, the dollar is born. This act defined coinage standards and established the U.S. Mint. 1792: Kentucky joins the Union. 1793: The French Revolution leads Britain and France to go to war. President Washington issues a proclamation of neutrality. 1794: Washington orders federal troops to suppress the "Whiskey Rebellion," a violent reaction by citizens over an excise tax in western Pennsylvania. 1794: The Jay Treaty is signed by the United States and Great Britain to avert war, resolve issues from the American Revolution, and open trade between the two countries. 1795: Pinckney's Treaty is signed. This agreement with Spain guaranteed the United States navigation rights on the Mississippi River. 1796: Tennessee joins the Union. TRIVIA 1. While he was nicknamed "Conocotarious" meaning "Taker of Towns" by the Iroquois, George Washington had a good relationship with the Iroquois in the United States. A Seneca religious leader stated that Washington was the only white man allowed to enter the Indians' heaven. 2. Washington was a Freemason and laid the cornerstone of the U.S. Capitol dressed in full Masonic Grand Master attire. 3. After the Revolutionary War was over, some of Washington's officers wanted to make him king of the new republic. 4. When he was elected, Washington carried all ten states, making him the only president so far to receive 100% of the electoral votes.