George Washington

George Washington was the first President of the United States and the commanding general of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. Born in 1732 in Virginia into a plantation family, he developed early experience as a surveyor and militia officer before the Revolution brought him to national prominence. His leadership through the desperate campaigns of 1776 and 1777, his management of a fractious coalition of colonies, and his willingness to relinquish power after two presidential terms set the tone for American republican governance. Washington was not a systematic political philosopher, but his Farewell Address of 1796 — warning against factional party spirit and foreign entanglements — ranks among the most influential documents in American political history. He died in 1799 at his Mount Vernon estate, mourned across the Atlantic world as the exemplary leader of a new kind of republic.

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