GEORGE WASHINGTON

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French and Indian War, 1754-1763. In 1752 Washington received his first military appointment as a major in the Virginia militia. On a mission for Governor Robert Dinwiddie during October 1753-January 1754, he delivered an ultimatum to the French at Fort Le Boeuf, demanding their withdrawal from territory claimed by Britain. The French refused. The French and the Ohio Company, a group of Virginians anxious to acquire western lands, were competing for control of the site of present-day Pittsburgh. The French drove the Ohio Company from the area and at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers constructed Fort Duquesne. Promoted to lieutenant colonel in March 1754, Washington oversaw construction of Fort Necessity in what is now Fayette County, Pennsylvania. However, he was forced to surrender that outpost to superior French and Indian forces in July 1754, a humiliating defeat that temporarily gave France control of the entire region. Later that year, Washington, disgusted with officers beneath his rank who claimed superiority because they were British regulars, resigned his commission. He returned to service, however, in 1755 as an aide-de-camp to General Edward Braddock. In the disastrous engagement at which Braddock was mortally wounded in July 1755, Washington managed to herd what was left of the force to orderly retreat, as twice his horse was shot out from under him. The next month he was promoted to colonel and regimental commander. He resigned from the militia in December 1758 following his election to the Virginia House of Burgesses.

Member of House of Burgesses, 1759-1774. In July 1758 Colonel Washington was elected one of Frederick County's two representatives in the House of Burgesses. He joined those protesting Britain's colonial policy and in 1769 emerged a leader of the Association, created at an informal session of the House of Burgesses, after it had been dissolved by the royal governor, to consider the most effective means of boycotting British imports. Washington favored cutting trade sharply but opposed a suspension of all commerce with Britain. He also did not approve of the Boston Tea Party of December 1773. But soon thereafter he came to realize that reconciliation with the mother country was no longer possible. Meanwhile, in 1770, Washington undertook a nine-week expedition to the Ohio country where, as compensation for his service in the French and Indian War, he was to inspect and claim more than 20,000 acres of land for himself and tens of thousands more for the men who had served under him. He had taken the lead in pressing the Virginia veterans' claim. “I might add, without much arrogance,” he later wrote, “that if it had not been for my unremitted attention to every favorable circumstance, not a single acre of land would ever have been obtained”.

Delegate to Continental Congress, 1774-1775. A member of the Virginia delegation to the First and Second Continental Congresses, Washington served on various military preparedness committees and was chairman of the commit­tee to consider ways to raise arms and ammunition for the impending Revolution. He voted for measures designed to reconcile differences with Britain peacefully but realized that such efforts now were futile. John Adams of Massachusetts, in a speech so effusive in its praise that Washington rushed in embarrassment from the chamber, urged that Washington be named commander in chief of the newly authorized Continental army. In June 1775, delegates unanimously approved the choice of Washington, both for his military experi­ence and, more pragmatically, to enlist a prominent Virginian to lead a struggle that heretofore had been spearheaded largely by northern revolutionaries.

Commander in chief of Continental Army during Revolution, 1775-1783. With a poorly trained, undisciplined force comprised of short-term militia, General Washington took to the field against crack British regulars and Hessian mercenaries. In March 1776 he thrilled New Englanders by flushing the redcoats from Boston, but his loss of New York City and other setbacks later that year dispelled any hope of a quick American victory. Sagging American morale got a boost when Washington slipped across the Delaware River to New Jersey and defeated superior enemy forces at Trenton (December 1776) and Princeton (January 1777). But humiliating defeats at Brandywine (September 1777) and Germantown (October 1777) and the subsequent loss of Philadelphia undermined Washington's prestige in Congress. Richard Henry Lee, Benjamin Rush, and others conspired to remove Washington and replace him with General Horatio Gates, who had defeated General John Burgoyne at the Battle of Saratoga (October 1777). Washington's congressional supporters rallied to quash the so-called Conway Cabal. Prospects for victory seemed bleak as Washington settled his men into winter quarters at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, in December 1777.

"To see men without clothes to cover their nakedness," Washington wrote in tribute to the men who suffered with him at Valley Forge, "without blankets to lay on, without shoes, by which their marches might be traced by the blood from their feet, and almost as often without provisions as with; marching through frost and snow, and at Christmas taking up their winter quarters within a day's march of the enemy, without a house or hut to cover them till they could be built, and submitting to it without a murmur, is a mark of patience and obedience which in my opinion can scarce be paralleled." Of course, some did grumble— and loudly. "No pay! no clothes! no provisions! no rum!" some chanted. But remarkably there was no mass desertion, no mutiny. Patriotism, to be sure, sustained many, but no more so than did confidence in Washington's ability to see them through safely. With the snow-clogged roads impassable to supply wagons, the men stayed alive on such fare as pepper pot soup, a thin tripe broth flavored with a handful of peppercorns. Many died there that winter. Those that survived drew fresh hope with the greening of spring and the news, announced to them by General Washington in May 1778, that France had recognized the indepen­dence of America. Also encouraging was the arrival of Baron Friedrich von Steuben, who, at Washington's direction, drilled the debilitated Valley Forge survivors into crack troops. Washington's men broke camp in June 1778, a revitalized army that, with aid from France, took the war to the British and in October 1781 boxed in General Charles Cornwallis at Yorktown, thus forcing the surrender of British forces.

General Washington imposed strict, but not punitive, surrender terms: All weapons and military supplies must be given up; all booty must be returned, but the enemy soldiers could keep their personal effects and the officers could retain their sidearms. British doctors were allowed to tend to their own sick and wounded. Cornwallis accepted, but instead of personally leading his troops to the mutually agreed-upon point of surrender on October 19, 1781, he sent his deputy Brigadier Charles O'Hara. As he made his way along the road flanked by American and French forces, O'Hara came face to face with Washington and the Comte de Rochambeau, the latter decked out in lavish military regalia. O'Hara mistook Rochambeau for the senior commander, but the French officer quickly pointed to Washington, and O'Hara, probably somewhat embarrassed, turned to the American. Unwilling to deal with a man of lesser rank, Washington directed O'Hara to submit the sword of capitulation to his aide General Benjamin Lincoln. In his victory dispatch to Congress, Washington wrote with obvious pride, “Sir, I have the Honor to inform Congress, that a Reduction of the British Army under the Command of Lord Cornwallis, is most happily effected. The unremitting Ardor which actuated every Officer and Soldier in the combined Army in this Occasion, has principally led to this Important Event, at an earlier period than my most sanguine Hope had induced me to expect”. In November 1783, two months after the formal peace treaty was signed, Washington resigned his commission and returned home to the neglected fields of Mount Vernon.