What was Washington's role in the Revolution?

George Washington led the Continental Army from June 15, 1775 until December 23, 1783 and is generally credited with carrying the colonies to victory through a combination of strategic patience, personal authority, and political restraint rather than tactical brilliance on the battlefield. The Second Continental Congress chose him commander in chief partly because he was a Southerner who could bind Virginia to the New England war effort, partly because he was a known and respected military man from the French and Indian War, and partly because he showed up at Congress in his old colonel's uniform.

His first task in the summer of 1775 was to turn the New England militias besieging Boston into a disciplined Continental Army with shared regulations, uniforms, and pay. He drove the British out of Boston in March 1776 by emplacing captured artillery from Ticonderoga on Dorchester Heights. He then suffered crushing defeats around New York City in August through November 1776, lost Fort Washington and Fort Lee, and retreated across New Jersey, but salvaged the war by crossing the Delaware River on Christmas night 1776 and surprising Hessian forces at Trenton on December 26 and at Princeton on January 3, 1777.

He chose a strategy of attrition based on preserving the army even at the cost of major cities. He withdrew before General William Howe rather than risk catastrophe, accepted defeat at Brandywine on September 11, 1777 and Germantown on October 4, 1777 to avoid losing his force, and wintered the army at Valley Forge from December 1777 to June 1778, where Baron von Steuben drilled the troops into a much improved force.

The French alliance of February 6, 1778, secured by Benjamin Franklin's diplomacy in Paris, transformed the war. Washington coordinated with French commanders Comte de Rochambeau and Comte de Grasse to march from the Hudson to Virginia in summer 1781 and trap Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown, where the British surrendered on October 19, 1781 after a siege that effectively ended the war.

Beyond battles, Washington's role was political. He answered to civilian Congress, preserved the chain of command, suppressed the Newburgh conspiracy in March 1783 with a moving plea to his officers, and resigned his commission to Congress at Annapolis on December 23, 1783. That voluntary surrender of power, more than any victory in the field, made him the model of republican leadership.