23/02/2022
George Washington was born February 22, 1732 in Westmoreland County, VA. Because his father died when he was only eleven, he was deprived of the European education given his older brother, Lawrence. Instead, he was self-educated, a fact which caused him great feelings of inadequacy. Still, he became a surveyor, participated in the French and Indian War, and was made Commander in Chief of the Continental Forces during the American Revolution. His election to the Presidency in 1788 was the first and only unanimous election in American history.
Washington felt keenly the pressure of setting proper precedent in a position that had never yet existed. From the clothes he wore, to the carriage he drove, to the form of address, he avoided anything that smacked of royalty. Perhaps his most important legacy was that after two terms, he voluntarily stepped down, making it clear that the Presidency was not a position to be held for life. In his farewell address, he urged Americans to avoid partisan divisions and foreign entanglements. The address is still read aloud each February in the U.S. Senate to commemorate his birthday.
Having grown increasingly uncomfortable with the practice of slavery, Washington chose to emancipate the 123 slaves who belonged to him in his will. (His wife’s slaves were part of the Custis estate and could not be freed by either of them.) He established a permanent fund to provide clothing and food for those too elderly or sick to support themselves and specified that children were to be educated and apprenticed in a “useful occupation.” He freed his personal valet and gave him an annual pension. Richard Allen, formerly enslaved founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, said Washington “dared to do his duty, and wipe off the only stain with which man could ever reproach him…He has watched over us, and viewed our degraded and afflicted state with compassion and pity – his heart was not insensible to our sufferings.”
