george washington :: essays research papers

On April 30, 1789, George chapiter, standing on the balcony of federal official Hall on Wall Street in New York, took his sworn statement of office as the setoff 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 unconquerable 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. He pursued two intertwined interests military arts and western expansion. At 16 he helped survey Shenandoah lands for Thomas, Lord Fairfax. Commissi sensationd a lieutenant colonel in 1754, he fought the first skirmishes of what grew into the French and Indian War. The next year, as an adjutant bird to Gen. Edward Braddock, he escaped injury although four bullets ripped his coat and two horses were duck soup from under h im. 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 lodge in and happy life. But like his fellow planters, Washington felt himself victimised by British merchants and hampered by British regulations. As the quarrel with the experience country grew acute, he moderately but firmly voiced his tube 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 half dozen grueling years. He realized early that the best strategy was to stimulate the British. He reported to Congress, "we should on all Occasions avoid a general Action, or put anything to th e Risque, unless compelled by a necessity, into which we ought never to be drawn." Ensuing battles saw him fall back slowly, then strike unexpectedly. eventually in 1781 with the aid of French allies--he forced the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown. Washington longed to retire to his fields at Mount Vernon. But he presently realized that the Nation under its Articles of Confederation was not functioning well, so he became a prime mover in the steps leaders to the Constitutional Convention at Philadelphia in 1787.