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GEORGE WASHINGTON Abstract George Washington was the son of a father who had gone to school in England and several large Virginia estates. Left fatherless at the age of eleven, the boy was shunted between two half brothers and picked up a little irregular schooling in the intervals of learning how to raise tobacco and stock and manage a plantation. He took to surveying in boyhood and decided that it was to be his profession, one that in those days sent a man roving for weeks on end, improvising his sleeping quarters, shooting wild turkey and chewing it on the bone. In the French and Indian Wars, he had suffered the horrors of Braddock's rout.
He had horses shot from under him and went home to Virginia with a local reputation for being at all times unflappable. Then his health failed him, and he resigned his commission. Simple Early Life At the age of twenty-seven, he married a very rich widow and settled on a majestic stretch of land, at Mount Vernon overlooking the Potomac. His wife had brought him the pleasant dowry of some profitable real estate, fifteen thousand acres near Williamsburg what by todays exchange would be about a quarter of a million dollars and one hundred and fifty slaves, whose condition, he confessed, embarrassed him. But he was an eighteenth-century man, and emancipation was remote and strange doctrine. He assumed he would live out his days as a rich Virginia planter, but then, at the age of forty-three, he received the call.
George Washington was imperious, massively self-sufficient, and he had decided ideas about the relations of rank and rank, class and class. He did not, for instance, like to be touched, and when he became the first President, he laid down a rule that people coming to see him should remain standing in his presence. He arrived for his inauguration with a flourish of outriders and he shook no hands. Thomas Jefferson was greatly offended by the color and pomp of this ceremony and thought it not at all in character with the simplicity of republican governments, and looking as if wishfully to those of European courts. As he took the oath, a by standing Senator whispered to his neighbor: I fear we may have exchanged George the third for George the First. Yet there were several things about him that made him the unquestioned leader of the new nation.
A pervasive sense of responsibility, an unflagging impression of shrewd judgment, and total integrity. It can best be summed up in what the drama critics call presence. But it was nothing rehearsed. It was the presence of nothing but character. The New Government is Launched It was on April 16, 1789 when George Washington started north from Virginia toward New York City to be inaugurated as the first president of the United States. The Electoral College convened under the Constitution had unanimously elected him to the nations highest office.
Washingtons feelings were mixed as he set forth. I bade adieu to Mount Vernon, to private life, and to domestic felicity, he confided to his diary, and with a mind oppressed with more anxious and painful sensations than I have words to express, set out for New York with the best disposition to render service to my country in obedience to its call, but with less hope of answering its expectations. Events would soon show that he had good reason for such foreboding. Washington actually began his Presidential administration with an uncertain future.
The journey of the first President from his home at Mount Vernon on the Potomac River to New York City, the temporary seat of the national government, was filled with triumphant pageant; Washington was cheered and praised by crowds along the way. Yet on March 4, 1789, the date chosen for the official launching of the new government, only a handful of newly elected senators and congressmen had reached New York. Ceremonies had to be delayed. Bad roads and other explainable circumstances had caused most of the delayed arrivals. Pessimists, however, saw in the late arrival of new representatives of the people a bad omen for the new republic.
Even Washington admitted that he embarked upon his career as President with numerous doubts and fears. Nevertheless, President Washington seemed to sense that America was certain to become a great nation, for he saw in her past a destiny which he felt confident would guide her in the future. On April 30, 1789, when the delayed inauguration of the first President finally took place, he told those present to hear his inaugural address because it spoke of his thoughts for the country. President Washington himself was, no doubt from a human standpoint, the new nations greatest guarantee of success. His election to the Presidency met with overwhelming popular support.
No man, before or since, has commanded such trust and respect in the hearts of the American people. His past accomplishments, his courage, and his character inspired confidence that the new nation could succeed. Washington was a man of great common sense and outstanding integrity. Once he made a decision, nothing could stop him from following the course he believed was proper. Always very much aware that each act of his administration was setting precedents for the future, George Washington conducted the Presidency with dignity, courage and resolve. The Governments Financial Woes The most urgent problem facing Washingtons administration was to resolve the financial woes inherited from Second Continental Congress and the Confederation.
The nation was in debt and had not been able to make significant progress in becoming solvent. Without a sound financial policy, the new government could not hope to gain the respect of either its own people or foreign nations. Washington declares neutrality In 1778, the United States had entered into a treaty of alliance with France. As the French Revolution spread and it became evident that other European powers would be embroiled in the conflict, President Washington had to make a decision whether to consider the alliance still binding or to consider it abrogated by the fact that government in France had changed hands. A final decision was necessitated in 1793 when news reached America that the new French Republic was sending a diplomat to seek aid from America and that France and England had gone to war against each other. Washingtons journey through the countryside resembled a royal procession, for he was the object of constant adulation along the way...
In villages and towns, guns boomed their salutes, children danced in the streets, church bells pealed and dignitaries toasted his arrival. On April 23, the president elect and his entourage reached the New Jersey shore, where awaited an elegant barge, festooned with flowers and attended by 11 ships captains. People crowded the shore as Washington climbed aboard and, accompanied by a flotilla of boats, was rows across the harbor to New York City. There, throngs of citizens and newly elected members of Congress greeted the weary traveler. Over the streets of the city stretched gaily decorated arches. During the parade uptown to the governors mansion, young women in white flowing robes preceded him, strewing flowers in his path.
That night, bonfire illuminated the city. Already, the transition from the old Confederation Congress to the new government was under way. On October 2, the Congress had moved from its home in New Yorks City Hall so it could be redecorated for the new government. On October 10, the old Congress transacted its last official business and adjourned sine die after setting March 4, 1789, as the day for the new Congress to assemble. Inaugural day was April 30. Shortly after noon, on a small balcony overlooking a Wall Street thronged with people, Washington took the oath of office.
It is done, exulted New Yorks chancellor, Robert Livingston. Long live George Washington, President of the United States! With the crowd roaring its approval and 13 guns booming in the harbor, the president bowed his way off the balcony and into Federal Hall. Though hopefulness and excitement surrounded the new governments beginning, those first weeks were not easy, for it was especially important that things begin on a proper footing. Many things which appear of little importance in themselves and at the beginning, the president warned, may have great and durable consequences from their having been established at the commencement of a new general government. When Washington decided to address the first Congress, republican purists complained that it smacked too much of the English monarchs speech from the throne of the opening of Parliament.
His appearance, moreover, confronted Congress with the question of how it should reply and thus opened the sensitive issue of whether titles should be used in a republican government. Some congressmen pointed out that the state governors and foreign ambassadors carried the title of Excellency and argued that the American president should be more exalted than that. The People Divide During its first months in office, Washingtons administration enjoyed almost universal support, both in Congress and among the people. The honeymoon did not last long, however, for within a year, criticism of the administration enjoyed almost universal support, both in Congress and among the people.
The honeymoon did not last long, however, for within a year, criticism of the administrations policies began to mount. By the middle of the decade, opposition groups had come together in a political coalition known as the Jeffersonian Republicans. As they did, the administrations remaining supporters rallied under the name of the Federalists. Disagreements began at the seat of the government in January 1790, when Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton submitted to Congress the first of several major policy statements, the Report on the Public Credit. Seldom in the nations history has a single official so dominated public affairs as Hamilton did during these first years. A man of extraordinary intelligence and ambition, Hamilton preferred to act behind the scenes, where he could shape events beyond the public eye.
His instincts for locating and seizing the levers of political power were unerring. Other Interesting Sidelights It was told that when Washington was 27 years of age, after the fall of Fort Duquesne, Washington hurried home and resigned his commission and was married, He left the army with a well-earned fame and while on his last campaign, he was elected a member of the House of Burgesses. In an honor for him the Speaker of the house thanked him publicly fir his services to the country. Washington was said to be so humbled that he stood there stammering and blushing. The Speaker in a gesture that reflected back Washingtons humility remarked, Sit down, Mr. Washington.
Your modesty equals your valor and that surpasses the power of any language I possess. (Lodge). WORKS CITED Boyer, Paul. The Enduring Vision. Houghton, Mifflin Company. Boston New York 1998. Knopf, Alfred.
Alistair Cooke's America. New York, 1975. Lodge, Henry Cabot. Washingtons Modesty. Retrieved March 16, 2007 at: web Lowman, Michael. United States History.
In Christian Perspective. A Beka Book Publications. 1983. Nash, Gary, and Jeffrey, Julie. The American People. Longman, 1971.
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