WASHINGTON

GEORGE WASHINGTON was born in Westmoreland, Virginia, on February 22, 1732. His great-grandfather, John Washington, settled in Virginia about 1657. John's eldest son, Lawrence, had three children, of whom Augus tine was the second son. Augustine Washington married twice; by the first marriage with Jane Butler there were four children; by the second marriage with Mary Ball in 1730, there were six children, of whom George was the oldest. The father died when George was but twelve years old. The boy's education was but elementary and very defective, except in mathematics wherein he was largely self-taught. A commission as midshipman in the Royal Navy was obtained for him through Admiral Vernon, but owing to the opposition of the boy's mother, it was not accepted. At the age of sixteen, however, George secured the appointment as surveyor of the enormous property of Lord Fairfax, and the next three years of his life were spent in this employment. At the age of nineteen he was appointed adjutant of the Virginia troops with the rank of Major, and in 1753, though he had barely attained his majority, he was made commander of the northern military district of Virginia by the Lieutenant-Governor, Dinwiddie. On the outbreak of the French and Indian War, he was sent to warn the French away from their new forts in Pennsylvania, and his vigorous defence of Fort Necessity made him so conspicuous a figure, that in 1755 he was commissioned Commander-in-Chief of all the Virginia forces. He served in Braddock's campaign, and, though he exposed himself with the utmost recklessness, brought the little remnant of his Virginians out of action in fair order. For a year or two his task was that of defending a frontier of more than 350 miles with 700 men, but in 1758 he commanded the advance guard of the expedition which captured Fort Duquesne. The war in Virginia being then at an end, he resigned his command, married Mrs. Custis, a rich widow, and settled at Mount Vernon, a plantation which he had inherited after the death of his half-brother, Lawrence. For the next twenty years Washington's life was that of a typical Virginia planter. Like others of the dominant caste in Virginia, he was repeatedly elected to the Legislature, but he is not known to have made any set speeches in that body. He took, however, a leading, if a silent part in the struggles of the House of Burgesses against Governor Dunmore. In 1774 the Virginia Convention appointed Washington one of its seven delegates to the Continental Congress. When that body, after the fights at Lexington and Concord, resolved to put the colonies into a state of defence, the first practical step was the unanimous selection, on motion of John Adams of Massachusetts, of Washington as Commander-in-Chief. He reached Cambridge, on July 2,

1775, and within nine months drove the British out of Boston.

After fighting the unsuccessful battle of Long Island, he was compelled to evacuate New York, but made a masterly retreat through the Jerseys into Pennsylvania, after which he turned and struck his pursuers at Trenton and Princeton, and then established himself at Morristown so as to make the way to Philadelphia impassable. The vigor with which he handled his army at the battles of Brandywine and Germantown and the persistency with which he held the strategic position of Valley Forge through the dreadful winter of 1777–78, exhibited the steel-like fibre of his character. The prompt and energetic pursuit of Clinton across the Jerseys and the battle of Monmouth, in which the plan of the American commander was thwarted by Charles Lee, closed for a time Washington's military record, until he planned the conclusive campaign of Yorktown, which he carried out in conjunction with Rochambeau, and which resulted in the surrender of Cornwallis. On December 20, 1783, he returned to Congress his commission of Commander-in-Chief and retired to Mount Vernon. His influence continued to be as powerful as it had been before his resignation. When the Federal Convention met at Philadelphia, in 1787, to frame the present Constitution, he was present as a delegate from Virginia, and a unanimous vote made him its presiding officer. Beyond a few suggestive hints, he took no part in the debates, but he approved the Constitution which was ultimately devised, believing it, as he said, to be the best obtainable at the epoch. All his influence was exerted to secure its ratification, and it probably proved decisive. When the scheme of government provided by the Constitution went into operation, he was unanimously chosen the first President of the United States, and was unanimously re-elected to a second term in 1793. Retiring from the Presidency in 1797, he resumed the plantation life which he loved, but in the following year he was made Commander-in-Chief of the provisional army raised in expectation of a war with France. In the midst of military preparations he was struck down by sudden illness, and died at Mount Vernon on December 14, 1799.

FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS

DELIVERED IN NEW YORK, APRIL 30, 1789

Fellow- Citizens of the Senate and of the House of Representatives:

A

MONG the vicissitudes incident to life, no event could

have filled me with greater anxieties than that of which the notification was transmitted by your order, and received on the fourth day of the present month. On the one hand, I was summoned by my country, whose voice I can never hear but with veneration and love,

from a retreat which I had chosen with the fondest predilection, and, in my flattering hopes, with an immutable decision as the asylum of my declining years; a retreat which was rendered every day more necessary as well as more dear to me, by the addition of habit to inclination, and of frequent interruptions in my health to the gradual waste committed on it by time; on the other hand, the magnitude and difficulty of the trust to which the voice of my country called me, being sufficient to awaken, in the wisest and most experienced of her citizens, a distrustful scrutiny into his qualifications, could not but overwhelm with despondence one who, inheriting inferior endowments from nature, and unpracticed in the duties of civil administration, ought to be peculiarly conscious of his own deficiencies. In this conflict of emotions, all I dare aver is that it has been my faithful study to collect my duty from a just appreciation of every circumstance by which it might be affected. All I dare hope is, that if, in executing this task, I have been too much swayed by a grateful remembrance of former instances, or by an affectionate sensibility to this transcendent proof of the confidence of my fellow-citizens, and have thence too little consulted my incapacity as well as disinclination for the weighty and untried cares before me, my error will be palliated by the motives which misled me, and its consequences be judged by my country, with some share of the partiality in which they originated.

Such being the impression under which I have, in obedience to the public summons, repaired to the present station, it would be peculiarly improper to omit, in this first official act, my fervent supplications to that Almighty Being, who rules over the universe, who presides in the councils of nations, and whose providential aids can supply

every human defect, that his benediction may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the people of the United States a government instituted by themselves for these essential purposes, and may enable every instrument employed in its administration to execute, with success, the functions allotted to his charge. In tendering this homage to the Great Author of every public and private good, I assure myself that it expresses your sentiments not less han my own; nor those of my fellow-citizens at large less than either. No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the Invisible Hand which conducts the affairs of men, more than the people of the United States. Every step by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency. And, in the important revolution just accomplished, in the system of their united government, the tranquil deliberations and voluntary consent of so many distinct communities, from which the event has resulted, cannot be compared with the means by which most governments have been established, without some return of pious gratitude, along with a humble anticipation of the future blessings, which the past seems to presage. These reflections, arising out of the present crisis, have forced themselves too strongly on my mind to be suppressed. You will join with me, I trust, in thinking that there are none under the influence of which the proceedings of a new and free government can more auspiciously

commence.

By the article establishing the Executive Department, it is made the duty of the President "to recommend to your consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient." The circumstances under which I now

meet you will acquit me from entering into that subject further than to refer you to the great constitutional charter under which we are assembled; and which, in defining your powers, designates the objects to which your attention is to be given. It will be more consistent with those circumstances and far more congenial with the feelings which actuate me, to substitute, in place of a recommendation of particular measures, the tribute that is due to the talents, the rectitude, and the patriotism which adorn the characters selected to devise and adopt them. In these honorable qualifications, I behold the surest pledges, that as, on one side, no local prejudices or attachments, no separate views nor party animosities, will misdirect the comprehensive and equal eye which ought to watch over this great assemblage of communities and interests-so, on another, that the foundations of our national policy will be laid in the pure and immutable principles of private morality; and the preeminence of a free government be exemplified by all the attributes which can win the affections of its citizens and command the respect of the world.

I dwell on this prospect with every satisfaction which an ardent love for my country can inspire; since there is no truth more thoroughly established than that there exists, in the economy and course of nature, an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness-between duty and advantage-between the genuine maxims of an honest and magnanimous policy and the solid rewards of public prosperity and felicity since we ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which heaven itself has ordained-and since the preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the