Who was George Washington?

George Washington was a Virginia planter and surveyor who became commander of the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War, presided over the Constitutional Convention in 1787, and served as the first President of the United States from April 30, 1789 to March 4, 1797. He was born on February 22, 1732 at Popes Creek in Westmoreland County, Virginia and learned surveying as a teenager, completing professional surveys west of the Blue Ridge by age 17.

His military career began in the French and Indian War as a lieutenant colonel of Virginia militia: he carried a critical diplomatic message to the French in 1753, ambushed a French detachment at Jumonville Glen in 1754 (igniting wider conflict), surrendered Fort Necessity in July 1754, and helped extricate British survivors from General Edward Braddock's defeat at the Monongahela in 1755. He commanded the Virginia Regiment from 1755 to 1758, married the widow Martha Dandridge Custis in 1759, and managed the Mount Vernon estate while serving in the House of Burgesses.

Washington was a delegate to the First and Second Continental Congresses, and on June 15, 1775 Congress unanimously chose him to lead the new Continental Army. He took command on July 3, 1775 at Cambridge, Massachusetts. Over the next eight years he held the army together through the disasters of New York in 1776, the Christmas night crossing of the Delaware and surprise victory at Trenton on December 26, 1776, the winter at Valley Forge in 1777 to 1778, the long stalemate around the Hudson, the southern theater under his subordinate Nathanael Greene, and the climactic siege of Yorktown from September 28 to October 19, 1781, where his combined American and French forces compelled Lord Cornwallis to surrender.

Washington resigned his commission to Congress at Annapolis on December 23, 1783, an act that astonished King George III and established the principle of civilian supremacy. He returned to Mount Vernon, then presided over the Constitutional Convention from May 25 to September 17, 1787, lending it his prestige. The Electoral College unanimously chose him as President in 1788 and again in 1792.

As President he established executive precedents including the cabinet, the two term tradition, the Neutrality Proclamation of 1793, and the response to the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794. He delivered his Farewell Address in September 1796 and retired to Mount Vernon, dying there on December 14, 1799 at age 67.