Washington, D. C., is a planned national capital and one of the few founded solely for the purpose of government. Established in 1791 as the District of Columbia, Washington became the seat of power as the result of the “dinner table bargain” between James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, whereby Madison agreed to support the assumption of state debts in exchange for locating the capital on the Potomac River. Thomas Jefferson, who reported that he brokered this deal, said later that he regretted the bargain since it helped solidify the hold by the Federalist Party on the national government in the 1790s. The actual site was chosen by George Washington, and it comprised land near Mount Vernon in both Virginia and Maryland. (In 1846 Congress ceded the Virginia portion of the District of Columbia—Alexandria—back to Virginia.) In the early 1800s, the area selected was swampy, hot, and largely undeveloped. When President John Adams moved to the city in 1800, and when Jefferson became the first president inaugurated there, the “republican city” remained halfbuilt and insignificant.
The city plan reflected the order and balance of the Enlightenment run amuck. The Frenchman Pierre-Charles L’Enfant designed the city in the 1790s. He used a grid with four unequal quadrants overlapped by avenues that meet at different angles, creating a series of strange
The White House as it appeared in 1807 (Library of Congress)
Intersections that often open into traffic circles. L’Enfant’s ambitious plans were beyond the resources available. He had envisioned a city built around grand buildings for each of the three branches of government. However, only the capitol, housing the legislative branch, and the executive mansion were built. A separate building for the Supreme Court would not be constructed until the 20th century. For most of the first half of the 19th century, Washington would have a half-finished look.
L’Enfant’s extravagance created difficulties, and the government had to dismiss him as the city’s architect. Efforts to raise money by selling city lots inevitably fell short—those few people who invested in city real estate seldom gained a profit and often went bankrupt. Moreover, the penny-pinching policies of the Democratic-Republican Party limited the amount of money the government was willing to put into the city. Although the British capture of Washington (August 24-25, 1814) and the burning of many of the public buildings was an embarrassment during the War of 1812 (1812-15), the capital was so insignificant as a population or business center that its destruction had little real impact on the war effort.
The grand city today, with its many public buildings, museums, and monuments, is a product of developments in the 20th century.
Further reading: James Sterling Young, The Washington Community, 1800-1828 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1966).
Washington, George (1732-1799) first U. S. president No one looms larger in the pantheon of national heroes than George Washington, whose service in the Revolutionary War (1775-83) and as the first president of the United States earned him adulation bordering on worship from contemporaries and future generations alike. Abigail Adams said Washington was made of “majestick fabric,” and upon his death in 1799 the House of Representatives proclaimed him “first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.” Americans have named the national capital, an imposing monument, and a state in his honor, while towns such as Stoughtonham Township in Massachusetts paid their respects by changing their name to Washington as well. They did so as early as 1776, while Washington was alive and the outcome of the Revolutionary War remained uncertain. Families rushed to name their children after him years before and long after he became president.
The larger-than-life image of Washington as father of his country has made his more human side difficult to understand. The first president seems cold and aloof to our skeptical age, and we look past his imposing visage on the one dollar bill for cracks in his Olympian legend. Our collective cynicism is fueled by the knowledge that writers such as Mason Locke Weems fabricated stories about Washington, including the famous (and completely fictional) account in which a young Washington confesses his role in destroying a family cherry tree by proclaiming to his father, “I can’t tell a lie Pa; you know I can’t tell a lie. I did cut it with my hatchet.” Similar myths remain prevalent even today, and they combine with facts regarding Washington’s virtues to create a portrait of a man so seemingly great that few people today can relate to him. This is unfortunate, for the real Washington was both more and less heroic than his legend suggests.
He was born on February 22, 1732, at Wakefield, a country home in Westmoreland County, Virginia, near the Potomac River. His father Augustine was a successful farmer and land speculator, and he trained George in the ways of a Virginia planter prior to his death in 1743. Washington learned to ride and shoot, traveled with his father on business, and developed a strong ambition to become a wealthy and successful landowner in his own right. One of seven children, and the oldest son of Augustine’s second marriage, Washington became a land surveyor in 1749 after his mother blocked his plan to join the Royal Navy. He surveyed much of Virginia’s vast western land claims until he inherited Mount Vernon following the death of his brother Lawrence in 1752. Thereafter he lived as a country gentleman.
Yet financial success as a planter could not satisfy Washington’s desire for renown, and he joined the Virginia militia as a lieutenant colonel in 1754 in the hope of finding fame on the battlefield. His actions on the ERontier helped to bring on the French and Indian War (1754-63). At the head of a small group of Virginians and Indians, Washington beat a smaller French force in what is now western Pennsylvania on May 28, 1754. He then watched helpless as his Indian allies butchered a French officer and the surviving French soldiers. Washington also had his men build Fort Necessity in the same area, in an almost indefensible position, and had to surrender the outpost to the French after a brief siege on July 3-4, 1754. This debacle marked the opening round of the French and Indian War and clouded Washington’s reputation. He subsequently left the militia rather than accept a demotion in rank. Yet Washington quickly sought to redeem himself, volunteering to accompany a British army led by General Edward Braddock in an attack on the French and Native Americans west of the Appalachians. This expedition suffered ambush and virtual annihilation (July 9, 1755), but Washington fought bravely and had two horses shot out from under him. He emerged from the battle a hero, and Virginia governor Robert Dinwiddie rewarded him with promotion to full colonel and command of the Virginia regiment.
George Washington. Painting by Charles Willson Peale (West Point Museum Collections, United States Military Academy)
Washington fought in the ensuing war for 40 frustrating months, pleading for reinforcements and gradually losing one-third of his men. He failed in attempts to gain a commission in the British army, but he accompanied a column commanded by General John Forbes, which finally captured Fort Duquesne in 1758. With the French threat to Virginia’s western frontier eliminated, Washington retired from the militia and married a fabulously wealthy widow named Martha Custis (see also Martha Washington), who owned hundreds of slaves and almost 18,000 acres of land. By 1759 Martha and George were among the most celebrated families in Virginia.
They embraced a comfortable life during the 1760s, hosting countless parties and successfully winning a seat for George in the House of Burgesses. Washington excelled as a horseman and dancer, and he loved wearing fine clothes. He also worked hard as a land speculator and wheat farmer.
While expanding Mount Vernon he devoted himself to his two stepchildren, John and Martha, and served as a justice of the peace even as he acquired more than 20,000 acres of land near the Great Kanawha River as a reward for his war service. Critics accused him of impropriety for scheming to have the House of Burgesses name a good friend surveyor of the land and for buying territory at low prices from other veterans. In 1772 Washington commissioned Charles Willson Peale to paint his portrait and characteristically posed for the painting wearing his militia uniform. Whatever his financial successes, he wanted to be remembered as a soldier.
Washington grew increasingly frustrated with British policy in North America, which blocked westward expansion and prevented him from selling his lucrative western land to settlers. He also believed that the Crown was denying colonial Americans their rights as Englishmen, and he supported the resistance movement (1764-75), serving as a delegate to both the First and the Second Continental Congress. After war began at the Battles of Lexington and Concord (April 19, 1775), he wore his militia uniform to meetings as a not-so-subtle reminder that he deserved command of the new Continental army, and when John Adams nominated him for the post his peers quickly assented. They recognized his military experience, dignified bearing, sense of command, and his reputation as a man of character and high principles. Moreover, as a Virginian, his role as a commander of troops in New England, where the war began, would help bind his colony to the rebellion.
Washington assumed command of the revolutionary army in June, and he surrounded Boston with thousands of eager recruits. However, the British retained possession of Boston until the spring of 1776. Washington ended the stalemate by ordering his troops to seize Dorchester Heights (March 4-5, 1776), compelling the British to evacuate Boston on March 17. In August the British landed an army of 34,000 men commanded by General William Howe near New York City. In a series of contests, beginning with the Battle of Long Island (August 27-30, 1776), Howe battered Washington’s army time and again. Jeering British troops blew fox horns while pursuing the broken Continental army, and only Howe’s tentative advance, the intervention of bad weather, and the onset of winter saved the revolutionary forces from outright destruction. Washington’s inexperience as a field commander led to most of the defeats. In his defense, he learned his lessons well. Washington thereafter avoided risking his entire army in a general engagement, adopting instead a cautious Fabian approach to warfare designed to keep his army intact.
After the string of defeats, Washington faced a crisis toward the end of December. With many enlistments expiring, he was afraid he would not be able to gain new recruits without some positive action by the army. Washington therefore took a chance and launched a foolhardy attack in a snowstorm against an outpost of Hessians at Trenton on December 26, 1776. Amazingly, he surprised the garrison. Then, a few days later, when he found himself cornered between the Delaware River and a superior British army under Charles, Lord Cornwallis, he slipped his troops to the side and won another victory against a smaller force at Princeton on January 3, 1777 (see also Battles of Trenton and Princeton).
Although Washington did not win many battles during the war, he continued to exhibit an incredible sense of leadership. He managed to keep an army together during the winter of 1776-77 at Morristown, New Jersey, but that next spring faced defeat again and was compelled to give up Philadelphia to the British. The winter of 1777-78 was spent building the army at Valley Forge. When the British evacuated Philadelphia in June 1778, Washington followed, fighting a battle at the Battle of Monmouth (June 28, 1778) and then stationing his army around New York City for most of the rest of the war. In eight and a half years in the field he slept only three nights at Mount Vernon. He also refused a salary and supported civilian rule over his army, even when Congress seemed to have forgotten about his starving and ill-equipped men. Washington confronted mutinies among his troops and conspiracies among his officers to have him replaced. He also struggled with chronic shortages of men and supplies. But he never abandoned hope.
In 1781 Washington made the most brilliant decision of the war when he marched his army south from New York to join combined French and Continental forces besieging a British army commanded by General Cornwallis at Yorktown, Virginia. When a French fleet blocked Cornwallis’s seaward escape a great victory was assured, and the British surrendered on October 19th. Triumph at Yorktown led to the end of the war and the signing of the Treaty of Paris (1783), which recognized the independence of the United States. After the British evacuated New York City in November 1783, Washington stunned the world by resigning his commission and returning to Mount Vernon.
His resignation became the most admired act of his life, for it demonstrated civic virtue and an unselfish sense of duty that awed his generation. Washington knew the way in which his resignation would be received, and he acted in large measure to enhance his reputation. Yet he could have been a king or a dictator in North America and used the army for his own ends, or he might have demanded vast rewards for his service to his country. Instead, he went home and expected to live the remainder of his days at Mount Vernon as a modern-day Cincinnatus. (A general in ancient Rome who returned to his farm after winning a war and saving the Roman Republic.)
To his dismay, Washington found that his fame precluded isolation from public life. He emerged from retirement to preside over the Constitutional Convention in 1787, and he then served two terms as the first president of the United States, 1789-97. In each case he left Mount Vernon reluctantly, wary of damaging his reputation through association with political endeavors that might have failed, and in each case his role proved vital. His prestige gave credibility to the Constitutional Convention, and it is difficult to imagine the delegates reaching any sort of consensus without his leadership. Moreover, many of them approved the strong, centralized powers of the new federal government only because they believed Washington would be the first president, and that only he could be trusted not to abuse those powers. Washington acceded to popular pressure and became the first president of the United States in April 1789.
As president he oversaw the creation of the federal government, sided with Alexander Hamilton in disputes over the United States Constitution, and noted with dismay the increasing factionalism of his countrymen. He wanted to retire following his first term, but he was persuaded to stay by supporters and was unanimously reelected. Washington crushed the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794, kept the United States neutral after the outbreak of the French Revolution (1789-99) and the ensuing wars between the French and the British, and sent an army led by Anthony Wayne to defeat Native Americans in the Ohio River valley in 1794.
He declined a third term in office in 1796, peacefully transferred power to his successor, John Adams, in 1797, and established the tradition that no president should serve more than two terms. In his Farewell Address he urged the nation to avoid permanent alliances with foreign countries and warned against the development of political parties. He died two years later on December 14, 1799.
Washington left behind a compelling record of military and political achievement. He almost single-handedly held the Continental army together for eight years, battling the British, mutinies, conspiracies, and supply shortages that would have broken more ordinary leaders. He was not a great field commander, but he learned from his mistakes and bided his time until conditions were ripe for the master stroke at Yorktown. Politically, he proved remarkably astute at discerning the will of Congress and at creating an image of himself that strongly appealed to his generation. Less politically experienced and intellectually gifted than founders such as Thomas JeffERson or John Adams, he retained a sense of pragmatism and virtue as president that encouraged popular faith in the government and kept the
United States out of war in the early years of the republic. Most important, he oversaw the creation of the Constitution, which provided a foundation on which a new form of government could be built.
As a human being, Washington’s legacy is more complex. He treated his slaves harshly yet provided for their emancipation following his death. (However, they were to be freed only with Martha’s consent or after she died. Wisely, she freed his slaves, but not the ones that had belonged to her estate, before her own death.) He proved a loving husband and stepfather, yet nurtured an abiding affection for Sally Fairfax, the wife of a good friend, for almost all of his life. He was vain, hot-tempered, and ambitious, but he balanced these qualities with a zealous self-discipline that made him a model of civil and gentlemanly behavior. Less educated than any of the galaxy of great minds that crowd the revolutionary era, he earned the universal admiration of his peers through force of will and devotion to principle. And though popular to the point of deification in many parts of the country, he struggled to maintain a relationship with his Loyalist mother, who opposed the Revolution all of her life
What all this effort—24 years that followed his nomination to command the Continental army in 1775—cost him can never be known. If his popular epitaph as the “Father of His Country” is well deserved, so, too, is the one he unwittingly wrote for himself in a letter to the MARQUiS DE Lafayette in 1784. Faced with old age and the prospect of death, Washington said, he would not repine, for “I have had my day.”
See also Continental army, mutinies of; Conway Cabal.
Further reading: Marcus Cunliffe, George Washington: Man and Monument (Boston: Little Brown, 1958); Joseph J. Ellis, His Excellency: George Washington (New York: Knopf, 2004); John Ferling, Setting the World Ablaze: Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and the American Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); James Thomas Flexner, Washington: The Indispensable Man (New York: New American Library, 1984); Henry Wiencek, An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves and the Creation of America (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003).
—Lance Janda
Washington, Martha (1731-1802) first lady Martha Dandridge Custis Washington was the wife of George Washington, the first president of the United States and commander in chief of the Continental army during the Revolutionary War (1775-83). Although she had no role model to follow, Martha diligently and graciously served her country in her capacity as First Lady. Embracing her domestic responsibilities, she proved to be a dutiful wife and attentive mother to both her children and her grandchildren.
Martha Dandridge was born at Chestnut Grove in New Kent County, Virginia, on June 2, 1731. She received a traditional education for young women in the 18th century, which emphasized such domestic skills as sewing, housekeeping, cooking, as well as reading, writing, dance, and Music. At the age of 18, Martha married Daniel Parke Custis, a wealthy plantation owner who was 20 years her senior. The couple had four children, although two died in infancy. In 1757 Custis died, leaving Martha with a substantial estate and two small children, John Parke (Jacky) and Martha (Patsy).
On January 6, 1759, after a short courtship, Martha married George Washington, a young colonel in the Virginia militia, who had served in the French and Indian War (1754-63). The couple and Martha’s two small children moved to Washington’s plantation, Mount Vernon, in April 1759. Although Mount Vernon remained the Washington’s family home, future events dictated that the couple spend a number of years living elsewhere. During the Revolutionary War, Martha joined her husband at Valley Forge (1777-78). She also joined him on some of his later campaigns, including in New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania, living simply and doing all she could to support the war effort. When her last surviving son, John Parke, died of “camp fever” in 1781, Martha and George adopted his two youngest children, Eleanor Parke Custis (Nelly) and George Washington Parke Custis (Wash or Tub).
After the inauguration of her husband as president on April 30, 1789, Martha and her grandchildren uprooted themselves from their home in Mount Vernon and moved to New York, then the national capital. Shortly thereafter, the family moved to the new capital in Philadelphia, until the end of George’s presidency. While in Philadelphia, Martha, or “Lady Washington” as she came to be known, diligently performed her duties as a hostess for the weekly receptions held by the first couple. Although cast in a very public role, Martha confided to friends her preference for a more private life. She gladly returned home to Mount Vernon with her family on March 15, 1797, after the completion of George’s second term. The couple enjoyed two short years surrounded by their loved ones at Mount Vernon before George’s death in 1799. Martha burned all but two of the letters written between the couple over the course of their courtship and marriage, again reaffirming her desire for privacy. Martha Dandridge Custis Washington died on May 22, 1802, in the presence of her beloved granddaughter Nelly. Fittingly, she was buried next to her husband at Mount Vernon in a family tomb.
Further reading: Joseph E. Fields, “Worthy Partner:” The Papers of Martha Washington (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press 1994).
—Linda English
World History
