George Washington

Report GEORGE WASHINGTON Executed Gadjimagomedova H. Examined Akhmedova Z.G. Makhachkala 2001 Contents 1. Introduction 2. Early Career 3. Indian War 4. Life at Mount Vernon 5. Early Political Activity 6. The American Revolution 7. Washington Takes Command 8. Washington Takes Command 9. The Military Campaigns 10. Political Leadership During the War 11. The Confederation Years 12. The Presidency 13. The Executive Departments 14. The Federalist Program 15. The Judiciary System 16. The Western Frontier 17. The British and French 18. Washington Steps Down 19. Last Years George Washington 1732-1799, first PRESIITED STATES. When Washington retired from public life in 1797, his homeland was vastly different from what it had been when he entered public service in 1749. To each of the principal changes he had made an outstanding contribution.

Largely because of his leadership the Thirteen Colonies had become the United States, a sovereign, independent nation.

As commander in chief during the American Revolution, he built a large army, held it together, kept it in a maneuverable condition, and prevented it from being destroyed by a crushing defeat. By keeping the army close to the main force of the British, he prevented them from sending raiding parties into the interior. The British did not risk such forays because of their belief that their remaining forces might be overwhelmed.

The British evacuation of Boston in 1776, under Washingtons siege, gave security to nearly all New England. Drawing from his knowledge of the American people and of the way they lived and fought, Washington took advantage of British methods of fighting that were not suited to a semiprimitive environment. He alternated between daring surprise attacks and the patient performance of routine duties. Washingtons operations on land alone could not have overcome the British, for their superior navy enabled them to move troops almost at will. A timely use of the French fleet contributed to his crowning victory at Yorktown in 1781. ITUTION and the campaign for its ratification. Its success was assured by 1797, at the end of the second term of his presidency.

In 1799 the country included nearly all its present-day territory between the Atlantic coast and the Mississippi River. President Washington acted with CONGRESS to establish the first great executive departments and to lay the foundations of the modern federal judiciary.

He directed the creation of a diplomatic service. Three presidential and five congressional elections carried the new government, under the Constitution, through its initial trials. A national army and navy came into being, and Washington acted with vigor to provide land titles, security, and trade outlets for pioneers of the trans-Allegheny West. His policy procured adequate revenue for the national government and supplied the country with a sound currency, a well-supported public credit, and an efficient network of national banks.

Manufacturing and shipping received aid for continuing growth. In the conduct of public affairs, Washington originated many practices that have survived. He withheld confidential diplomatic documents from the House of Representatives, and made treaties without discussing them in the Senate chamber.

Above all, he conferred on the presidency a prestige so great that political leaders afterward esteemed it the highest distinction to occupy the chair he had honored. Most of the work that engaged Washington had to be achieved through people. He found that success depended on their cooperation and that they would do best if they had faith in causes and leaders. To gain and hold their approval were among his foremost objectives. He thought of people, in the main, as right-minded and dependable, and he believed that a leader should make the best of their good qualities.

As a Virginian, Washington belonged to, attended, and served as warden of the established Anglican church. But he did not participate in communion, nor did he adhere to a sectarian creed. He frequently expressed a faith in Divine Providence and a belief that religion is needed to sustain morality in society. As a national leader he upheld the right of every sect to freedom of worship and equality before the law, condemning all forms of bigotry, intolerance, discrimination, and persecution.

Throughout his public life, Washington contended with obstacles and difficulties. His courage and resolution steadied him in danger, and defeat steeled his will. His devotion to his country and his faith in its cause sustained him. Averse to harsh measures, he was generous in victory. His integrity, wrote Thomas JEFFERSON, was the most pure, his justice the most inflexible I have ever known.

He was, indeed, in every sense of the word, a wise, a good, and a great man.

Early Career

11, 1731, Old Style Feb. His mother once thought of a career for him in the British Navy but wa... The days of his youth had revealed a striving nature. Strength and vig... His bravery under fire spread his fame to nearby colonies and abroad. He also thought that Braddock was too slow in his marches.

Life at Mount Vernon

Resigning his commission late in 1758, he retired to Mount Vernon. On ... As a planter, Washington concentrated at first on tobacco raising, kee... He thought that he was often overcharged for freight and insurance, an... In July 1754, Governor Dinwiddie offered 200,000 acres 80,000 hectares... Washington became entitled to one of these grants. After the war he bo...

Early Political Activity

Washington spent the winter of 1774-1775 in Virginia, organizing indep... In 1775 they divided into three groups. The militants, led by Samuel Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and Richard Hen... Yet Congress, still in an embryonic state, could not provide suddenly ... A working arrangement gave such freedom, while preserving the authorit...

Washington Takes Command

Washington Takes Command When he took command of the army at Cambridge on July 3, 1775, the majority of Congress was reluctant to adopt measures that denoted independence, although favoring an energetic conduct of the war. The government of Lord North decided to send an overpowering army to America, and to that end tried to recruit 20,000 mercenaries in Russia.

On August 23, George III issued the Royal Proclamation of Rebellion, which branded Washington as guilty of treason and threatend him with condign punishment. Early in October, Washington concluded that in order to win the war the colonies must become independent. In August 1775, Washington insisted to Gen. Thomas Gage, the British commander at Boston, that American officers captured by the British should be treated as prisoners of war not as criminals that is, rebels.

In this, Washington asserted that the conflict was a war between two separate powers and that the Union was on a par with Britain. He defended the rank of American officers as being drawn from the uncorrupted choice of a brave and free people, the purest source and original fountain of all power. In August-September he initiated an expedition for the conquest of Canada and invited the kings subjects there to join the 13 colonies in an indissoluble union.

About the same time he created a navy of six vessels, which he sent out to capture British ships bringing supplies to Boston. Congress had not favored authorizing a navy, then deemed to be an arm of an independent state. Early in November, Washington inaugurated a campaign for arresting, disarming, and detaining the Tories. Because their leaders were agents of the British crown, his policy struck at the highest symbol of Britains authority.

He urged the opening of American ports to French ships and used his prestige and the strength of the army to encourage leaders of the provincial governments to adopt measures that committed their colonies to independence. His influence was evident in the campaigns for independence in Connecticut, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New York. He contributed as much to the decision for independence as any man. The Declaration of Independence was formally adopted on July 4, 1776.

The Military Campaigns

The evacuation made him a hero by proving that the Americans could ove... Even then his men were outnumbered three to two by the British. Althou... After the setbacks in New York, he retreated through New Jersey, cross... First, in September 1775, he sent an expedition to conquer Canada. Outnumbered, surrounded on land, and cut off by sea, Cornwallis surren...

Political Leadership During the War

He strove to retain the support of the common people, who made up the ... Afterward, he depended increasingly on the conservatives. Horatio Gates, the popular hero of Saratoga. Generals Philip Schuyler, Henry Knox, Nathanael Green, and Henry Lee w... His relations with Horatio Gates became strained but not ruptured. A r...

The Confederation Years

The Confederation Years. Because Congress could not tax, it could not maintain an army and navy. Washington believed that the central government should be strengthened... Washingtons anxieties over events in the 1780s were deepened by his me... In financial matters he insisted on exactitude and integrity. The Fede...

The Judiciary System

24, 1789. He also sought to gain concessions from Britain and Spain that would p... In addition, he desired to keep up the import trade of the Union, whic... At the wars inception Washington had to decide whether two treaties of... Britain acted on a contrary theory respecting wartime trade and seized...

The Western Frontier

The Western Frontier Washingtons diplomacy also had to deal with events in the West that involved Britain and Spain. Pioneers in Tennessee, Kentucky, and the Ohio country, who were producers of grain, lumber, and meats, sought good titles to farmlands, protection against Indians, and outlets for their products via the Ohio and Mississippi rivers and New Orleans.

In the northern area, Britain held, within the United States, seven trading posts of which the most important were Niagara, Detroit, and Mackinac. The determination of the Indians to preserve their hunting lands against the inroads of pioneers seeking farms encouraged the British in Canada in their efforts to maintain their hold on the fur trade and their influence on the Indians of the area north of the Ohio River. The focus of the strife was the land south of present-day Toledo.

The most active Indian tribes engaged were the Ottawa, the Pottawatomi, the Chippewa, and the Shawnee. Two American commanders suffered defeats that moved Washington to wrath. British officials in Canada then backed the Indians in their efforts to expel the Americans from the country north of the Ohio River. A third U.S. force, under Gen. Anthony Wayne, defeated the Indians so decisively in 1794 in the Battle of Fallen Timbers, at the site of present-day Toledo, that they lost heart and the English withdrew their support. Wayne then imposed a victors peace.

By the Treaty of Greenville 1795 the tribes gave up nearly all their lands in Ohio, thereby clearing the way for pioneers to move in and form a new state. In 1796 the British evacuated the seven posts that they had held within the United States. Because Jays Treaty had called for the withdrawal, it registered another victory for Washingtons diplomacy.

The Spanish Frontier On the southwestern frontier the United States faced Spain, then the possessor of the land south of the 31st parallel, from the Atlantic coast to the Mississippi River. Intent upon checking the growth of settlement south of the Ohio River, the Spaniards used their control of the mouth of the Mississippi at New Orleans to obstruct the export of American products to foreign markets. The two countries each claimed a large area, known as the Yazoo Strip, north of the 31st parallel.

In dealing with Spain, Washington sought both to gain for the western settlers the right to export their products, duty free, by way of New Orleans, and to make good the claim of the United States to the territory in dispute. The land held by Spain domiciled some 25,000 people of European stocks, who were generally preferred by the resident Indians Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, and Chickasaw, with 14,000 warriors, to the 150,000 frontiersmen who had pushed into Kentucky, Tennessee, and western Georgia.

The selection of Jefferson as the first secretary of state reflected the purpose of Washington to aid the West. But before 1795 he failed to attain that goal. His task was complicated by a tangle of frontier plots, grandiose land-speculation schemes, Indian wars, and preparations for war that involved Spanish officials, European fur traders, and the Indian tribes, along with settlers, adventurers, military chieftains, and speculators from the United States.

Conditions in Europe forced Washington to neglect the Southwest until 1795, when a series of misfortunes moved Spain to yield and agree to the Treaty of San Lorenzo. The treaty recognized the 31st parallel as the southern boundary of the United States and granted to Americans the right to navigate the whole of the Mississippi, as well as a three-year privilege of landing goods at New Orleans for shipment abroad. When Washington left office the objectives of his foreign policy had been attained.

By avoiding war he had enabled the new government to take root, he had prepared the way for the growth of the West, and by maintaining the import trade he had safeguarded the national revenues and the public credit.

Washington Steps Down

Washington Steps Down. 14, 1799, after an illness of two days. Among Americans, Washington is unusual in that he combined in one care... Curtis P. NettelsCornell University Source 1.www.yahoo.com 2.