Americans call George Washington “the father of our country.”
Most people know him best as the first president of the United States, from 1789 to 1797. But the list of his accomplishments is long. Washington commanded the Continental Army in the Revolutionary War. He led the American colonists to freedom from British rule. He was also president of the convention that created the U.S. Constitution.
In his private life, Washington owned a large whiskey distillery and thousands of acres of land. He operated a large and successful farm. When the Revolutionary War was over, General Washington wanted to go home to his Virginia estate, called Mount Vernon.
Joseph Ellis is a historian and prize-winning author who wrote a book called “His Excellency: George Washington.”
“He didn’t want to be president. No president in American history did not want to be president more than George Washington.”
But other leaders asked him to become the first president under the Constitution. Every elector voted for him. Washington accepted the job as his duty.
When George Washington was sworn in as president in 1789, the idea of a truly united states was still just an idea. Americans were unconnected social, economic and ethnic groups. For example, a quarter of the people in the state of Pennsylvania spoke only German. The new president would have to establish a social and political union under the Constitution.
But the Constitution did not say in detail how the president could do that. Doug Bradburn, founding director of the Washington Library at Mount Vernon, says George Washington invented the job of president.
“I think that what people don’t estimate in their scale of judging his skill as a political figure is just how fragile the country was, that the chances it would even survive were probably very, very slim.”
Mr. Bradburn says President Washington set many important precedents for all the presidents who followed him. First, he was not just a figurehead but a decision maker.
He established a group of advisors, the cabinet. They became a very important part of the presidency, or executive branch. Washington chose strong people to lead the departments. Sometimes those cabinet members disagreed strongly, but Washington managed them well.
President Washington also established the nation’s official currency and the Department of Foreign Affairs, now called the State Department. He created a six-member Supreme Court. And, Washington said the president should set foreign policy. That responsibility was not clear in the Constitution.
Mr. Bradburn says Washington took his job very seriously and always used the Constitution as his guide.
“He wasn’t just trying to establish an office and then figure out a way to justify it, he was trying to work with his Constitution.”
As president, George Washington travelled around the country.
