George Washington
George Washington commanded the army that won American independence and then twice surrendered power that was his for the keeping, which did more to establish the American republic than any battle he fought. Born in Virginia in 1732 to a planter family, he worked as a surveyor and served in the Virginia militia during the French and Indian War, where an ambush he led in 1754 helped ignite a global conflict and where he acquired a reputation for physical courage and for losing engagements without losing his force. Chosen to command the Continental Army in 1775, he faced professional troops with short-enlistment militia and no reliable supply. His achievement was largely one of endurance: he kept an army in the field for eight years, crossed the Delaware to take Trenton in December 1776 when the cause was near collapse, held it together through Valley Forge in 1777-78, and with the French fleet trapped Cornwallis at Yorktown in October 1781. He resigned his commission in 1783 rather than convert command into rule — an act that astonished contemporary Europe. He presided over the Constitutional Convention in 1787 and was elected president unanimously in 1789, serving two terms. He established the cabinet, put down the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794 to prove federal law enforceable, signed the Jay Treaty, and in his Farewell Address of 1796 warned against permanent foreign alliances and the spirit of party. He then stood down, setting the two-term limit that held for a century and a half. He enslaved more than three hundred people at Mount Vernon and pursued those who escaped. His will freed the people he owned outright on Martha's death, alone among the slaveholding founders, but not the larger group he controlled by marriage. He died in 1799.
- Lived: 1732 CE – 1799 CE
- Nationality: American
- Roles: general, president, founding_father
