The Surprising George Washington

Spring 1994, Vol. 26, No. 1

By Richard Norton Smith

https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1994/spring/george-
washington-1.html
© 1994 by Richard Norton Smith

George Washington, engraving by Charles Willson Peale. (Courtesy of the National Portrait
Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Gift of the Barra Foundation.)

In the autumn of 1787, newly returned from Constitution-making in Philadelphia, the

proprietor of Mount Vernon turned his attention to more prosaic matters. George
Washington needed a gardener, and he approached the job search with the same
psychological insight that had so impressed his fellow delegates. At length he drew up a
contract with a hard-drinking candidate, after solemnly binding him to perform his
duties sober for one year "if allowed four dollars at Christmas, with which to be drunk
four days and four nights; two dollars at Easter, to effect the same purpose; two dollars
at Whitsuntide, to be drunk for two days, a dram in the morning, and a drink of grog at
dinner and at noon."
It was vintage Washington: a fine medley of bemused tolerance for human frailty and the
rigidly methodical demands made upon himself across a lifetime of self-improvement.
Nearly two hundred years after his death, no American is more instantly recognizable
to--or more remote from--his descendants. Standing in a thousand city parks, frozen in
marbled veneration, the Father of His Country inspires more awe than affection.
According to Newsweek, 14 percent of all American preschoolers think that George
Washington is still sitting in the Oval Office. To the rest of us, Washington appears every
February to sell cars and appliances before vanishing into the historical mists, the
Ultimate Dead White Male.
His contemporaries were less willing to let him go. On the last night of his life, having
defied the might of the British empire and planted the seeds of republican government,
the old hero was invited to challenge the very laws of nature. Among those who learned
of Washington's lethally sore throat was his friend William Thornton, a practicing doctor
and amateur architect who had secretly designed the new Capitol building in
Washington city as a final resting place for his friend. In hopes of forestalling that event,
Dr. Thornton hurried to Mount Vernon to perform an emergency tracheotomy.
He arrived too late, or so it seemed to everyone but the good doctor. Refusing to accept
the verdict of death, this quintessential child of the Enlightenment proposed to resurrect
Washington "in the following manner. First to thaw him in cold water, then to lay him in
blankets, and by degrees and by friction to give him warmth, and to put into activity the
minute blood vessels, at the same time to open a passage to the lungs by the trachea, and
to inflate them with air, to produce an artificial respiration, and to transfuse blood into
him from a lamb."
Washington's friends intervened to permit him a peaceful departure. Yet just four years
later, John Marshall would attempt in five ponderous volumes what Dr. Thornton had
only theorized with his blankets and his lamb's blood--to restore George Washington to
life. By most accounts he failed. According to the waspish John Adams, Marshall's work
was not a biography at all but "a Mausoleum, one hundred feet square at the base and
two hundred feet high."

The death of Washington became a subject of popular prints that idealized

the passing of a venerated hero (NARA 148-GW-590). Here an adulatory
verse completes the picture:
Americans behold & shed a grateful Tear
For a man who has gained your freedom most dear
And now is departing unto the realms above
Where he may ever rest in lasting peace & love.

Artists fared no better than writers. Even during Washington's lifetime, family members
complained that his portraits barely did him justice. Gilbert Stuart insisted that
conveying Washington's personality on canvas was the most difficult thing in the world.
In truth, Stuart and Washington did not exactly hit it off during their numerous sessions
together, and the painter's revenge--the so-called postage slot mouth caused by stuffing
cotton in place of the President's badly made dentures--has shaped, or warped, our
image of Washington ever since.
Sooner or later everyone who writes about Washington must come to terms with the
bloodless image stamped upon our currency and our car sales. In an age suspicious of
heroics and squeamish about duty, it is no exaggeration to say that our first President
falls victim to his own well-publicized virtues. Blame it on Parson Weems and his
adulatory imitators, who robbed Washington's life of conflict, tension, and the slowly
gathering forces of character. Since few of us can identify with human perfection, it is
hardly surprising that Weems's Saint George should have inspired the shallow
debunkers of the 1920s or the well-meaning yet distorting "humanizers" of more recent
years. All too often the humanizers wound up merely trivializing Washington, telling us
more than we need to know about his false teeth and expense accounts, his shadowy
passion for Sally Fairfax, or his amply documented lust for land and social status.
In the words of Oscar Wilde, "the only duty we have to history is to rewrite it." From the
beginning, my ambition was not to create a Washington for our times, but rather to live
with the man in his own times and on his own terms. Imagine yourselves in the presence
of George Washington in the spring of 1789. The man before you is fifty-seven years old,
of noble carriage and an almost regal gravitas. At six feet three inches tall, he towers
over most of his contemporaries by at least half a foot. His two hundred pounds are
evenly distributed over a bony, muscular frame hardened by a lifetime of outdoor
exercise and physical adversity. The symmetry of Washington's face is ruined by a blunt
Roman nose and cavernous sockets in which rest eyes variously described as blue or
gray, dull or flashing.
By modern standards Washington would be nearly eighty years old in this, the first
spring of his presidency. The chestnut hair of his youth is turning white; contrary to
popular imagery, he never wore a wig. The President's low, rather indistinct voice
makes him anything but a Great Communicator. In fact, he is painfully awkward when
delivering a speech. Elevating a shortcoming to the level of principle, he advises a
nephew elected to the Virginia Assembly against becoming what he calls "a babbler."
George Washington is no babbler.
Contemporaries find it easier to describe Washington than to explain him. Abigail
Adams made a good start at both when she wrote, "He has a dignity which forbids
familiarity mixed with an easy affability which creates love and reverence." Abigail's
cranky husband was somewhat less generous toward the President, whom he referred
to in a fit of jealousy as Old Muttonhead. In any event, the love of which Mrs. Adams
spoke was bound to be somewhat impersonal, for the hero who would give his name to
one U.S. state, a capital city, thirty-three counties, at least seven mountains, nine
colleges, and 121 post offices was unable to pass it on to another human being.
Washington accepts his childlessness with the same unbending discipline that governs
his whole life, and that has isolated him from all but a handful of people. "Be courteous
to all, intimate with few," he urged his nephew Bushrod, "for true friendship is a plant of
slow growth."
As a result, the most famous man on earth has few intimates. Not even Martha knows all
there is to know about the shrewd giant who prefers farming to politics and loses money
on both; the expansive host who spends every penny of his twenty-five-thousand-dollar
salary and complains that servants are drinking his Madeira; the iron-willed leader who
has intractable ideas of personal honor and justice; the wryly satirical observer with a
cordial, not always concealed dislike of tiresome preachers, financial deadbeats, and
virtually anyone with the effrontery to question his motives or challenge his dignity; the
painfully sensitive public figure who writhes under the criticism of newspapermen he
condemns for "stuffing their papers with scurrility and nonsensical declamation"; the
Spartan eater who favors pineapples, Brazil nuts, and Saturday dinners of salt cod; and
the true stoic who endures near constant toothache caused by ill-fitting dentures that
cause his mouth to bulge and his lips to clamp shut in unsmiling repose.
About those teeth . . . According to John Adams, Washington lost his teeth as the result of
cracking Brazil nuts between his jaws. By the time he became President, he had but a
single tooth left and a set of dentures fashioned from cow's teeth. In hopes of finding
something better, Washington contacted a leading dentist in Philadelphia, who produced
a state-of-the-art set carved, not from wood, but from hippopotamus tusk. The new
dentures were thoughtfully drilled with a hole to fit over his one remaining tooth.
Unfortunately, they also rubbed against this natural tooth, causing more or less constant
pain for which the President took laudanum.
So much for the wooden teeth. What about other Washington legends? We can write off
the cherry tree as a product of Parson Weems's sugary imagination. No Washington
myth is easier to dismiss than the story of his hurling a coin across the Potomac (or
Rappahannock?) if only because no man was less likely to throw away a dollar. "Many
mickles make a muckle" Washington liked to tell anyone who would listen, and he was
as frugal in his personal lifestyle as he was profligate in furnishing an official residence
and projecting the new nation's sense of importance.

For generations of Americans, Parson Weems's cherry tree legend has

colored the popular image of Washington and made him seem not quite
human. (NARA 148-GW-553)

If anything, Washington may have succeeded too well in crafting an image of republican
dignity. Even during his lifetime, Washington was a figure deliberately set apart,
wrapped in a paternal mystique until it became a psychological straightjacket. An
observer writing in the spring of 1790 said that the President wore "a look of habitual
gravity, sobriety that stopped short of sadness." It is not difficult to understand why. At
the height of his fame, Washington was no longer at the peak of his form. His memory
was failing, or so he claimed. His hearing was unreliable. Most of all, he dreaded the
presidency's inevitable toll on his popularity and selfless reputation.
"I fear I must bid adieu to happiness," he blurted out to a close friend only days before
his inaugural, "for I see nothing but clouds and darkness before me; and I call God to
witness that the day which shall carry me again into public life will be a more distressing
one than any I have ever yet known."
Interestingly, Washington had said much the same thing when chosen to command
America's raw military in 1775. He turned to Joseph Addison's popular play Catofor a
favorite epigraph: "Tis not in mortals to command success." It seems an odd credo from
one who would spend a lifetime battling inner conflicts and external enemies, yet George
Washington had always been a man of unsuspected depths, torn between his desire for
fame and his disillusionment over its consequences.

While most Americans think of him as a born aristocrat, he was in fact the eldest son of a
second marriage, whose prospects were far from encouraging. Beyond the accident of
birth, Washington's entire life would be a struggle, first to establish a sense of self
independent of his vinegary mother, and then to subdue his volatile emotions.
"I wish I could say that he governs his temper," wrote Thomas, Lord Fairfax, to Mary Ball
Washington in 1748. "He is subject to attacks of anger on provocation, sometimes
without just cause." Time would cure his sixteen-year-old friend of the vice, predicted
Fairfax, adding that young George was "a man who will go to school all his life." There
was a fair element of prophecy in this, for while Washington's formal education
consisted of a few months' tutoring in geography, composition, the science of numbers,
and the arts of deportment, he would travel more extensively and meet a wider range of
people than any American of his age. From each experience he gained something, and
neither time nor the dulling incense of public adulation would dim his curiosity.
Yet Lord Fairfax was not entirely prescient, for the hot-tempered youth would never
fully succeed in curbing his temper. According to his secretary Tobias Lear, few sounds
on earth could compare with that of George Washington swearing a blue streak. And to
Thomas Jefferson we owe the memorable scene of a redfaced chief executive throwing
his hat on the floor before stomping on it.
Washington's career as a surveyor is another clue to his personality. The surveyor is an
executive of nature, stamping order on chaos by fixing his name on previously
unchartered territory. Not surprisingly, Washington's lifelong need for control
expressed itself through a mastery of nearly everyone and everything around him. Did
these same surveying skills also contribute to the emotional distance Washington put
between himself and less-driven men, coolly taking their measure as if observing a
misplaced tree or errant boulder?
 As a surveyor, seventeen-year-old
Washington foreshadowed his adult
need for control and for creating
order out of chaos. (NARA 148-
GW-391)

The forest was Washington's first classroom, but hardly his only one. Consistent with
Lord Fairfax's prediction, young Washington never stopped learning or putting his
newfound knowledge to practical use. At an astonishingly early age he could ford a river,
clothe a regiment, chart a mountain road, and charm a lawmaker. American
historiography is periodically enlivened by the discovery that among the rights for
which General Washington led a rebellion was that of making money. His faith was
instilled early. While still a teenager, he pocketed five hundred acres of Virginia's
Frederick County as a surveyor's fee. Over the next few years his land holdings tripled,
providing a ticket of admission to the colonial gentry whose esteem he valued at least as
much as their hospitable company.
As a soldier called to the colony's defense, Washington saw the darker side of human
nature, the skulking militia, thieving speculators, and sunshine patriots who at a safe
distance from the front fought the French and Indians with their tongues. More galling
still, he had to endure the toplofty disdain of Britain's military establishment for the
irregular colonials, who refused to dress or fight according to the Old World's time-
honored standards. In the process, his insights into his fellow men deepened.
George Washington harbored none of the modern reformer's illusions about human
perfectibility. Still, if he lived apart from most of his fellows, it was at a distance that lent
surprising charity to his judgment. "It is to be regretted . . . that democratical states must
always feel before they can see," he lamented in the wake of Daniel Shays's pitchfork
rebellion in western Massachusetts. "It is that makes their governments slow, but the
people will be right at last."
The people, yes, he seemed to be saying, based upon long and close observation of
human nature, but hardly vox populi, vox Dei.
Milton said of Oliver Cromwell that he learned to govern himself before he could govern
England. Washington was forced to defeat his own temper and impetuosity before he
ever met a redcoat on the field of battle. Early in the Revolution, the commanding
general was forever devising brash tactics that worked better on paper than in practice.
As he grew in confidence, he held fewer councils of war, stifling the urge for assaults
beyond his meager resources. He came to understand the conflict as a test of political
endurance, and while he might lament missed opportunities, he played the fox more
often than the lion.
"Nothing but disunion can hurt our cause," he argued in the spring of 1776,
foreshadowing the strong central government that would dominate Washington's
political thinking. "Men may speculate as they will," he wrote at an especially bleak
moment in Continental affairs, "they may talk of patriotism; they may draw a few
examples from current story . . . but whoever builds upon it as a sufficient basis for
conducting a long and bloody war will find themselves deceived in the end. . . . For a time
it may of itself push men to action, to bear much, to encounter difficulties, but it will not
endure unassisted by interest."
In common with the other Founders, Washington faced a conundrum: How could a free
society harmonize its competing interests? But he was better prepared than most, for
with his intuitive grasp of the age-old clash between duty and advantage, he did not fear
interest. Far from it. For what else but interest had led him to amass vast land holdings,
not always through the nicest of methods, or pursue youthful fame and adult fortune
with an ardor that would put twentieth-century candidates for office to shame?
But there were interests greater than self-interest, and causes nobler than personal
advancement. Over time, private gain took a back seat to Washington's campaign for
nationhood, rooted in the radical idea that men could be entrusted to govern themselves
without the superintendency of an established church or divinely appointed monarch. At
his best, Washington hoped to demonstrate by force of example that men could love
their country no less than themselves.
This is as good a place as any to confront the burning question of whether George
Washington ever told a lie. He not only told lies, he lived them. Indeed, no small part of
his genius as a political leader was his ability to convince everyone, himself included,
that he was no politician. Washington's capacity for self-deception did not end there.
Painfully sensitive about his lack of formal education, he refused to write his war
memoirs, telling an early biographer, "I had rather glide gently down the stream of life,
leaving it to posterity to think and say what they please of me, than by any act of mine to
have vanity or ostentation imputed to me."
This had a nice ring to it, but the fact remains that among Washington's earliest acts
upon returning home after the Revolution was to unearth youthful letter books and
correct misspellings and faulty grammar. Only after their intellectual sanitization would
he permit his writings to be copied for posterity.
Nor was Washington bashful about manipulating the emotions of an audience when the
good of his country was concerned. Politics is theater, and as America's first actor
President, George Washington was both a symbol of continuity and instrument of
change. Much of his dramatic flair had been perfected on a military stage. For example,
at his greatest moment of wartime triumph, the victorious general forbade his soldiers
from unseemly crowing over the defeated foe. "Posterity will huzzah for us," he
explained, truthfully enough. Still later he staged an emotional confrontation with
rebellious officers angry over Congress's failure to provide back pay or future pensions.
Appeals to their patriotism having failed, the commanding general retrieved from his
pocket a congressional message promising early redress of their grievances. He fumbled
with the paper a few moments before again reaching into his coat to fetch a pair of
eyeglasses. Begging the indulgence of his men, Washington explained to a stunned
audience, "I have already grown gray in the service of my country. I am now going
blind." Instantly, rebellion melted into tears. It was a galvanizing moment, a brilliant
piece of theater and a narrow escape for republican government. Never mind that
Washington had used glasses for years. Who, offered magic, insists on logic?
Sensitive as a tuning fork, Washington regularly inquired into what others said and
thought of him. His uneasiness grew in the first year of his presidency, thanks to
whispered complaints about the allegedly royalist trappings of the executive household.
Democratic elements objected to the President's Tuesday afternoon levees, rigidly
choreographed functions where bows substituted for handshakes and Washington did a
convincing imitation of himself, dressed in black velvet ordered from Europe at five
dollars a yard.
When the presidential bow came in for similar criticism, Washington's feelings were
hurt. His greetings were bestowed indiscriminately, he protested: "would it not have
been better to throw the veil of charity over them, ascribing their stiffness to the effects
of age or to the unskillfulness of my teacher, than to pride and dignity of office, which
God knows has no charms for me?"
This was no exaggeration. Washington submitted to the weekly audiences at the behest
of advisers who warned him that familiarity was subversive of prestige and that even a
republican monarch must cultivate a certain reserve. But in doing so he paid a heavy
emotional price. Washington's adopted granddaughter recalled a man imprisoned by his
own celebrity. At the end of a long day, the old man liked nothing better than to slip into
a room where children were playing; their antics seemed to relax him. Yet no sooner did
the youngsters realize they were in the presence of the looming figure called Great
Washington than they froze. After a while, a visibly upset Washington turned on his heel
and stalked out of the room.
For the President, there was no escaping the consequences of fame. Having carved the
heroic statue of his own reputation, he could not easily climb down from the pedestal.

Even during his lifetime, the near-

deification of Washington changed him
from man to mythic being. (NARA 148-
GW-583)
In a nation that as yet existed on paper only, without the bonding agents of tradition,
class structure, or state religion, Washington was his country's greatest asset and its
only glue. So in making appointments to the Supreme Court and other departments, the
first President was careful to include candidates from across the geographical and
ideological spectrum. And if it is any consolation to President Clinton, not even the
Father of His Country got his way on everything. On one memorable occasion the Senate
rejected Washington's nomination of South Carolina's John Rutledge to be chief justice of
the Supreme Court on the grounds of insanity.
It is hard to imagine in this day of bloated budgets, but Washington employed more
people at Mount Vernon than he did in the entire executive branch of government. The
first federal budget was around two million dollars, of which ten thousand dollars went
to refurbish an executive residence in New York. The United States Army numbered six
hundred men. At the State Department, Jefferson found a toy bureaucracy of five clerks
spending eight thousand dollars a year to administer the foreign service, oversee
territorial affairs, prepare the census, instruct federal marshals and attorneys in their
duties, recommend executive pardons, and correspond with state officials as the
government's designated intermediary. At thirty-five hundred dollars, Jefferson's salary
was less than the Vice President's but more than Attorney General Edmund Randolph
was paid to head his "mongrel department." If Randolph had a consolation, it lay in his
freedom to compete for private business with New York's 121 other lawyers.
On his own initiative Washington established the cabinet as a sort of privy council.
Inevitably it became an arena of conflict, its protagonists stock figures--or stick figures--
in later history books: led by Jefferson, apostle of the yeoman, versus Hamilton, the
mercantile prophet; one an aristocrat who lived on a mountaintop and considered
himself a friend to man; the other a self-made elitist with a Calvinist belief in original sin.
Like fire and frost, they were temperamental opposites whom not even Washington
could reconcile.

Hoping to delay formal party warfare, Washington had to accommodate the

opposing views of Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton within his
cabinet. (NARA 148-GW-540)
More than a few historians have described Washington as a bit player shunted to the
wings by more dynamic actors like Hamilton and Jefferson--a front for one, a foil for the
other, a thin-skinned, stouthearted figurehead. I think it is more accurate to say that he
was sufficiently sure of himself to allow Hamilton and Jefferson their street brawl. After
all, his chief interest was in delaying the formal start of party warfare as long as possible.
By deferring to both men, he kept each in his official family long after he wished to be
free. The political general had not lost his touch.
In the end, Washington proved more visionary than either of his warring subordinates.
One might even say that his whole presidency can be seen as an exercise in buying time.
Stay out of Europe's murderous quarrels, he reasoned, and given twenty or thirty years
of peaceful development, the United States would be in a position to defy any power on
earth. Many, perhaps most, Americans disagreed with his neutrality. For a while
France's meddlesome envoy Citizen Genet deluded himself into believing that he could
appeal over the President's head and win popular support for war with England.
Once again, however, Washington's policy of watchful waiting, combined with his
instinctive reading of popular opinion, served him and the young republic well. For eight
years he offered himself up as a punching bag to intemperate critics, among them a
newspaper editor hired by Jefferson with State Department funds. Scribbling partisans
called him a dupe of King George, a betrayer of the Revolution. When the
Philadelphia Aurora revealed that he had overdrawn his salary to pay the heavy costs of
official entertaining, Washington suffered the tortures of the damned but he never
complained, publicly.
Washington's private life, though not without its trials, provided a satisfying
counterpoint to the splendid misery of partisan combat. Although content to live in her
husband's shadow, Martha Washington commanded respect from all but the most
frivolous elements of Philadelphia society. Accustomed as an army wife to living in other
people's houses, Martha accepted life in Philadelphia without complaint but also without
enthusiasm.
"I am only fond of what comes from the heart," she explained in the most revealing letter
she ever wrote. "I know too much of the vanity of human affairs to expect felicity from
the splendid scenes of public life. I am still determined to be cheerful and happy, in
whatever situation I may be; for I have also learned from experience that the greater
part of our happiness or misery depends upon our dispositions, and not upon our
circumstances. We carry the seeds of the one or the other about with us, in our minds,
wherever we go."
Washington subscribed to his wife's stoical creed. His advice to a female relation
contemplating marriage speaks volumes: "Experience will convince you that there is no
truth more certain than that all our enjoyments fall short of our expectations; and to
none does it apply with more force, than to the gratification of our passions." There is
sadness distilled in those words, along with rare wisdom. Bleak as it may sound,
Washington's assessment of the most basic human desire--to love and to be loved--tells
us a great deal about what was missing in his life. But it also suggests the coldblooded
realism that made him impervious to the political passions of his day.
Summing up, one is tempted to judge his presidency not so much for what he did as for
what he did not do. He did not make his Vice President a kind of prime minister, as he
could have under the vaguely worded terms of the Constitution. He did not designate
Hamilton as an American chancellor of the exchequer. He did not organize a king's party,
even if he did come to abandon his pretense of strict impartiality between Federalist and
Republican. Most of all, he did not allow himself to be swept up in the war hysteria of
Anglophile and Francophile. Unlike Woodrow Wilson, George Washington actually did
keep us out of war, at considerable cost to his short-term popularity, if not to his
historical reputation.
But of course, he supplied positive leadership as well. Every action he took established a
precedent to guide his successors. So he traveled extensively, in carefully choreographed
tours that reaffirmed the people's devotion to their heroic leader and to the untried
government over which he presided. He asserted a dominant role in foreign affairs,
sending John Jay to defuse a war scare with England and shouldering the blame when
Jay's Treaty enraged Jefferson's followers. The House demanded that he turn over
papers relating to the treaty, and Washington magisterially refused, in the process
establishing the concept of executive privilege as a bulwark against an otherwise
imperial Congress.
In crushing the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794, the President put all his accumulated
prestige behind the principle that in a republic, dissatisfied minorities can protest
peacefully but cannot take arms against even the most unpopular official acts. Finally, in
his famous and often misunderstood farewell address, Washington left behind a
roadmap to genuine national independence and a timeless warning about the excesses
of political factionalism, one that rings especially true in this age of empty gestures, Rose
Garden ceremonies, and a cynical reliance on media manipulation.
In short, George Washington was the strong leader of a weak nation. His vision of the
American republic was in many ways an extension of his own character. Because he
credited harsh self-discipline in realizing his personal destiny, he embraced an energetic
government as the only means of protecting the American union from flying apart.
Because he balanced executive vigor with personal restraint, he gave us a government
strong enough to lead and wise enough to listen.

Saint-Memin sketched this last

portrait of Washington in
Philadelphia in November 1799. (John
Hill Morgan, Life Portraits of George
Washington and Their
Replicas [1931].)

In 1797 Washington became America's first ex-President, and while he savored the
pleasures of rural life, he could not wholly free himself from the demands of conscience
or the lure of personal ambition. When war with France threatened, the old soldier
agreed to don his uniform once more, only to force the first military-civilian
confrontation in our history by insisting on the choice of his subordinates. John Adams
had no choice but to back down. Fortunately, Adams's diplomacy averted war, and in
doing so the squat, sensitive New Englander at last escaped the long shadow of his
illustrious predecessor.
The elderly Washington kept a close watch on the rising city that bore his name,
infested, in the words of one building contractor's wife, with "dolts, delvers, magicians,
soothsayers, quacks, bankrupts, puffs, speculators, monopolizers, extortioners, traitors,
petit foggy lawyers, and ham bricklayers." (So what else is new?) He remained
stubbornly defiant of Virginia's adherence to state's rights, identifying himself in his will
as "GEORGE WASHINGTON, of Mount Vernon, a citizen of the United States." For years
he had struggled to reconcile his ownership of human beings with his professed love of
liberty. Now he gave freedom to his slave population, concurrent with the death of his
wife.
I am often asked to describe Washington's greatest achievement, which I find relatively
simple, unlike the man himself. To me it is not winning the Revolution, remarkable as
that was, nor even establishing the American presidency, during a period in which he
almost never set a foot wrong. George Washington deserves to be remembered for both,
to be sure But we can admire such accomplishments without being emotionally moved
by them.
No: the ultimate significance of George Washington's life lies in the fact that he
singlehandedly redefined our traditional idea of greatness. Before he lived, to be great
was to be triumphant: to conquer an enemy's territory, to kill his soldiers, and subdue
his populace. In an age when divine right held sway over most of the planet, greatness
was measured by the authority vested in one man, and the lengths to which he would go
to keep that authority.
To his everlasting credit, George Washington was ambiguous about power. The man
who could have been king insisted that ultimate sovereignty lay with the people,
however imperfect their judgment. At the end of the war, and again at the end of his
presidency, he calmly walked away from power. This genius for renunciation prompted
the dying Napoleon in his windswept exile to remark, "They wanted me to be another
Washington."
But of course that was impossible. Two hundred years later, our first President remains
that rarest of historical figures, of whom it can be said that in conceding his humanity,
we only confirm his greatness.
Thomas Jefferson Biography
U.S. Governor, Government Official, U.S. President, U.S. Vice President, Diplomat
(1743–1826)
https://www.biography.com/people/thomas-jefferson-9353715

Thomas Jefferson was a draftsman of the Declaration of

Independence and the third U.S. president (1801-09). He was also
responsible for the Louisiana Purchase.

Who Was Thomas Jefferson?

Thomas Jefferson was born on April 13, 1743, in Shadwell, Virginia. He was a draftsman of
the U.S. Declaration of Independence; the nation's first secretary of state (1789-94); second
vice president (1797-1801); and, as the third president (1801-09), the statesman responsible
for the Louisiana Purchase. Jefferson died in bed at Monticello (located near Charlottesville,
Virginia) on July 4, 1826.
Thomas Jefferson

When Was Thomas Jefferson Born?

Thomas Jefferson was born on April 13, 1743 in Shadwell, Virginia, just outside of
Charlottesville.

Jefferson as Vice President

In 1797, despite Jefferson's public ambivalence and previous claims that he was through with
politics, the Republicans selected Jefferson as their candidate to succeed Washington as
president. In those days, candidates did not campaign for office openly, so Jefferson did little
more than remain at home on the way to finishing a close second to then-Vice President John
Adams in the electoral college, which, by the rules of the time, made Jefferson the new vice
president. Besides presiding over the Senate, the vice president had essentially no substantive
role in government. The long friendship between Adams and Jefferson had cooled due to
political differences (Adams was a Federalist), and Adams did not consult his vice president
on any important decisions.To occupy his time during his four years as vice president,
Jefferson authored "A Manual of Parliamentary Practice," one of the most useful guides to
legislative proceedings ever written, and served as the president of the American
Philosophical Society.

Presidency
John Adams' presidency revealed deep fissures in the Federalist Party between moderates
such as Adams and Washington and more extreme Federalists like Hamilton. In the
presidential election of 1800, Hamiltonian Federalists refused to back Adams, clearing the
way for the Republican candidates Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr to tie for first place with
73 electoral votes each. After a long and contentious debate, the House of Representatives
selected Jefferson to serve as the third U.S. president, with Burr as his vice president. The
election of Thomas Jefferson in 1800 was a landmark of world history, the first peacetime
transfer of power from one party to another in a modern republic. Delivering his inaugural
address on March 4, 1801, Jefferson spoke to the fundamental commonalities uniting all
Americans despite their partisan differences. "Every difference of opinion is not a difference
of principle," he stated. "We have called by different names brethren of the same principle.
We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists."

Accomplishments in His First Term

President Jefferson's first term in office was remarkably successful and productive. In keeping
with his Republican values, Jefferson stripped the presidency of all the trappings of European
royalty, reduced the size of the armed forces and government bureaucracy and lowered the
national debt from $80 million to $57 million in his first two years in office. Nevertheless,
Jefferson's most important achievements as president all involved bold assertions of national
government power and surprisingly liberal readings of the constitution.

Jefferson's most significant accomplishment as president was the Louisiana Purchase. In

1803, he acquired land stretching from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains from
cash-strapped Napoleonic France for the bargain price of $15 million, thereby doubling the
size of the nation in a single stroke. He then devised the wonderfully informative Lewis and
Clark Expedition to explore, map out and report back on the new American territories.
Jefferson also put an end to the centuries-old problem of Barbary pirates disrupting American
shipping in the Mediterranean by forcing the pirates to capitulate by deploying new American
warships. Notably, both the Louisiana Purchase and the undeclared war against the Barbary
pirates conflicted with Jefferson's much-avowed Republican values. Both actions represented
unprecedented expansions of national government power, and neither was explicitly
sanctioned by the Constitution.

Although Jefferson easily won re-election in 1804, his second term in office proved much
more difficult and less productive than his first. He largely failed in his efforts to impeach the
many Federalist judges swept into government by the Judiciary Act of 1801. However, the
greatest challenges of Jefferson's second term were posed by the war between Napoleonic
France and Great Britain. Both Britain and France attempted to prevent American commerce
with the other power by harassing American shipping, and Britain in particular sought to
impress American sailors into the British Navy.In response, Jefferson passed the Embargo
Act of 1807, suspending all trade with Europe. The move wrecked the American economy as
exports crashed from $108 million to $22 million by the time he left office in 1809. The
embargo also led to the War of 1812 with Great Britain after Jefferson left office.

Early Life
Thomas Jefferson, author of the American Declaration of Independence and the third U.S.
president, was born on April 13, 1743, at the Shadwell plantation located just outside of
Charlottesville, Virginia — near the western edge of Great Britain's American Empire.

Jefferson was born into one of the most prominent families of Virginia's planter elite. His
mother, Jane Randolph Jefferson, was a member of the proud Randolph clan, a family
claiming descent from English and Scottish royalty. His father, Peter Jefferson, was a
successful farmer as well as a skilled surveyor and cartographer who produced the first
accurate map of the Province of Virginia. The young Jefferson was the third born of ten
siblings.

As a boy, Thomas Jefferson's favorite pastimes were playing in the woods, practicing the
violin and reading. He began his formal education at the age of nine, studying Latin and
Greek at a local private school run by the Reverend William Douglas. In 1757, at the age of
14, he took up further study of the classical languages as well as literature and mathematics
with the Reverend James Maury, whom Jefferson later described as "a correct classical
scholar."

Student at the College of William and Mary

In 1760, having learned all he could from Maury, Jefferson left home to attend the College of
William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia's capital. Although it was the second oldest
college in America (after only Harvard), William and Mary was not at that time an especially
rigorous academic institution. Jefferson was dismayed to discover that his classmates
expended their energies betting on horse races, playing cards and courting women rather than
studying. Nevertheless, the serious and precocious Jefferson fell in with a circle of older
scholars that included Professor William Small, Lieutenant Governor Francis Fauquier and
lawyer George Wythe, and it was from them that he received his true education.

Becoming a Lawyer
After three years at William and Mary, Jefferson decided to read law under Wythe, one of the
preeminent lawyers of the American colonies. There were no law schools at this time; instead
aspiring attorneys "read law" under the supervision of an established lawyer before being
examined by the bar. Wythe guided Jefferson through an extraordinarily rigorous five-year
course of study (more than double the typical duration); by the time Jefferson won admission
to the Virginia bar in 1767, he was already one of the most learned lawyers in America.

From 1767-'74, Jefferson practiced law in Virginia with great success, trying many cases and
winning most of them. During these years, he also met and fell in love with Martha Wayles
Skelton, a recent widow and one of the wealthiest women in Virginia. The pair married on
January 1, 1772. Thomas and Martha Jefferson had six children together, but only two
survived into adulthood: Martha, their firstborn, and Mary, their fourth. Only Martha survived
her father.

Political Beginnings
The beginning of Jefferson's professional life coincided with great changes in Great Britain's
American colonies. The conclusion of the French and Indian War in 1763 left Great Britain in
dire financial straits; to raise revenue, the Crown levied a host of new taxes on its American
colonies. In particular, the Stamp Act of 1765, imposing a tax on printed and paper goods,
outraged the colonists, giving rise to the American revolutionary slogan, "No taxation without
representation."

Eight years later, on December 16, 1773, colonists protesting a British tea tax dumped 342
chests of tea into the Boston Harbor in what is known as the "Boston Tea Party." In April
1775, American militiamen clashed with British soldiers at the Massachusetts towns of
Lexington and Concord, the first battles in what developed into the American Revolutionary
War.

Thomas Jefferson was one of the earliest and most fervent supporters of the cause of
American independence from Great Britain. He was elected to the Virginia House of
Burgesses in 1768 and joined its radical bloc, led by Patrick Henry and George Washington.
In 1774, Jefferson penned his first major political work, "A Summary View of the Rights of
British America," which established his reputation as one of the most eloquent advocates of
the American cause. A year later, in 1775, Jefferson attended the Second Continental
Congress, which created the Continental Army and appointed Jefferson's fellow Virginian,
George Washington, as its commander-in-chief. However, the Congress' most significant
work fell to Jefferson himself.

Drafting the Declaration of Independence

In June 1776, the Congress appointed a five-man committee (Jefferson, John

Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman and Robert Livingston) to draft a Declaration of
Independence. The committee then chose Jefferson to author the declaration's first draft,
selecting him for what John Adams called his "happy talent for composition and singular
felicity of expression." Over the next 17 days, Jefferson drafted one of the most beautiful and
powerful testaments to liberty and equality in world history.

The document opened with a preamble stating the natural rights of all human beings and then
continued on to enumerate specific grievances against King George III that absolved the
American colonies of any allegiance to the British Crown. Although the Declaration of
Independence adopted on July 4, 1776 had undergone a series of revisions from Jefferson's
original draft, its immortal words remain essentially his own: "We hold these truths to be self-
evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable Rights; that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."

After authoring the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson returned to Virginia, where, from
1776 to 1779, he served as a member of the Virginia House of Delegates. There he sought to
revise Virginia's laws to fit the American ideals he had outlined in the Declaration of
Independence. Jefferson successfully abolished the doctrine of entail, which dictated that only
a property owner's heirs could inherit his land, and the doctrine of primogeniture, which
required that in the absence of a will a property owner's oldest son inherited his entire estate.
In 1777, Jefferson wrote the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, which established
freedom of religion and the separation of church and state. Although the document was not
adopted as Virginia state law for another nine years, it was one of Jefferson's proudest life
accomplishments.

Governor of Virginia

On June 1, 1779, the Virginia legislature elected Jefferson as the state's second governor. His
two years as governor proved the low point of Jefferson's political career. Torn between the
Continental Army's desperate pleas for more men and supplies and Virginians' strong desire
to keep such resources for their own defense, Jefferson waffled and pleased no one. As the
Revolutionary War progressed into the South, Jefferson moved the capital from Williamsburg
to Richmond, only to be forced to evacuate that city when it, rather than Williamsburg, turned
out to be the target of British attack.

On June 1, 1781, the day before the end of his second term as governor, Jefferson was forced
to flee his home at Monticello (located near Charlottesville, Virginia), only narrowly escaping
capture by the British cavalry. Although he had no choice but to flee, his political enemies
later pointed to this inglorious incident as evidence of cowardice. Jefferson declined to seek a
third term as governor and stepped down on June 4, 1781. Claiming that he was giving up
public life for good, he returned to Monticello, where he intended to live out the rest of his
days as a gentleman farmer surrounded by the domestic pleasures of his family, his farm and
his books.

To fill his time at home, in late 1781, Jefferson began working on his only full-length book,
the modestly titled Notes on the State of Virginia. While the book's ostensible purpose was to
outline the history, culture and geography of Virginia, it also provides a window into
Jefferson's political philosophy and worldview. Contained in Notes on the State of Virginia is
Jefferson's vision of the good society he hoped America would become: a virtuous
agricultural republic, based on the values of liberty, honesty and simplicity and centered on
the self-sufficient yeoman farmer. The book also sheds light on Jefferson's contradictory,
controversial and much-debated views on race and slavery. Jefferson owned slaves through
his entire life, and his very existence as a gentleman farmer depended on the institution of
slavery.

Like most white Americans of that time, Jefferson held views we would now describe as
nakedly racist: He believed that blacks were innately inferior to whites in terms of both
mental and physical capacity. Nevertheless, he claimed to abhor slavery as a violation of the
natural rights of man. He saw the eventual solution of America's race problem as the abolition
of slavery followed by the exile of former slaves to either Africa or Haiti, because, he
believed, former slaves could not live peacefully alongside their former masters. As Jefferson
wrote, "We have the wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold him nor safely let him go.
Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other."

Minister to France & Secretary of State

Thomas Jefferson was spurred back into public life by private tragedy: the death of his
beloved wife, Martha Jefferson, on September 6, 1782, at the age of 34. After months of
mourning, in June 1783, Jefferson returned to Philadelphia to lead the Virginia delegation to
the Confederation Congress. In 1785, that body appointed Jefferson to replace Benjamin
Franklin as U.S. minister to France. Although Jefferson appreciated much about European
culture — its arts, architecture, literature, food and wines — he found the juxtaposition of the
aristocracy's grandeur and the masses' poverty repellant. "I find the general fate of humanity
here, most deplorable," he wrote in one letter.

In Europe, Jefferson rekindled his friendship with John Adams, who served as minister to
Great Britain, and Adams' wife, Abigail. The brilliant Abigail Adams, with whom Jefferson
maintained a lengthy correspondence on a wide variety of subjects, was perhaps the only
woman he ever treated as an intellectual equal. Jefferson's official duties as minister consisted
primarily of negotiating loans and trade agreements with private citizens and government
officials in Paris and Amsterdam.

After nearly five years in Paris, Jefferson returned to America at the end of 1789 with a much
greater appreciation for his home country. As he wrote to his good friend, James Monroe,
"My God! how little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession
of, and which no other people on earth enjoy."

Jefferson arrived in Virginia in November 1789 to find George Washington waiting for him
with news that Washington had been elected the first president of the United States of
America, and that he was appointing Jefferson as his secretary of state. Besides Jefferson,
Washington's most trusted advisor was Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton. A dozen
years younger than Jefferson, Hamilton was a New Yorker and war hero who, unlike
Jefferson and Washington, had risen from humble beginnings.

Incredibly rancorous partisan battles emerged to divide the new American government during
Washington's presidency. On one side, the Federalists, led by Hamilton, advocated for a
strong national government, broad interpretation of the constitution and neutrality in
European affairs. On the other side, the Republicans, led by Jefferson, promoted the
supremacy of state governments, a strict constructionist interpretation of the constitution and
support for the French revolution.

Washington's two most trusted advisors thus provided nearly opposite advice on the most
pressing issues of the day: the creation of a national bank, the appointment of federal judges
and the official posture toward France. On January 5, 1794, frustrated by the endless conflicts,
Jefferson resigned as secretary of state, once again abandoning politics in favor of his family
and farm at Monticello.

Relationship with Sally Hemings

At home, Jefferson spent his time farming, managing his finances and making improvements
to the estate. It was also at this time that Jefferson most likely had an affair with a slave
named Sally Hemings, who was in fact Martha Jefferson's half-sister. Sally's mother, Betty
Hemings, was a slave owned by Jefferson's father-in-law, John Wayles, who was the father of
Betty's daughter Sally. While there is no definitive proof that Thomas Jefferson had children
with Sally Hemings, the circumstantial evidence is all but conclusive: Jefferson was with
Sally (either in France or at Monticello) nine months before the birth of all six of her children.

Furthermore, historical records corroborate the stories passed down orally through the
Hemings family. Most compelling is recently produced DNA evidence showing that some
male member of the Jefferson family fathered Hemings' children, and that it was not Samuel
or Peter Carr, the only two of Jefferson's male relatives in the vicinity at the relevant times. It
is therefore overwhelmingly likely, if not absolutely certain, that Thomas Jefferson fathered
Sally Hemings' children.

Post Presidency

On March 4, 1809, after watching the inauguration of his close friend and successor James
Madison, Jefferson returned to Virginia to live out the rest of his days as "The Sage of
Monticello." Jefferson's primary pastime was endlessly rebuilding, remodeling and improving
his beloved home and estate. A Frenchman, Marquis de Chastellux, remarked, "it may be said
that Mr. Jefferson is the first American who has consulted the Fine Arts to know how he
should shelter himself from the weather."

Jefferson also dedicated his later years to organizing the University of Virginia, the nation's
first secular university. He personally designed the campus, envisioned as an "academical
village," and hand-selected renowned European scholars to serve as its professors. The
University of Virginia opened its doors on March 7, 1825, one of the proudest days of
Jefferson's life.

Jefferson also kept up an outpouring of correspondence at the end of his life. In particular, he
rekindled a lively correspondence on politics, philosophy and literature with John Adams that
stands out among the most extraordinary exchanges of letters in history. Nevertheless,
Jefferson's retirement was marred by financial woes. To pay off the substantial debts he
incurred over decades of living beyond his means, Jefferson resorted to selling his cherished
personal library to the national government to serve as the foundation of the Library of
Congress.

Death and Legacy

Jefferson died on July 4, 1826 — the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence —
only a few hours before John Adams also passed away in Massachusetts. In the moments
before he passed, John Adams spoke his last words, eternally true if not in the literal sense in
which he meant them, "Thomas Jefferson survives."

As the author of the Declaration of Independence, the foundational text of American

democracy and one of the most important documents in world history, Thomas Jefferson will
be forever revered as one of the great American Founding Fathers. However, Jefferson was
also a man of many contradictions.
Jefferson was the spokesman of liberty and a racist slave owner, the champion of the common
people and a man with luxurious and aristocratic tastes, a believer in limited government and
a president who expanded governmental authority beyond the wildest visions of his
predecessors, a quiet man who abhorred politics and the most dominant political figure of his
generation. The tensions between Jefferson's principles and practices make him all the more
apt a symbol for the nation he helped create, a nation whose shining ideals have always been
complicated by a complex history.

Jefferson is buried in the family cemetery at Monticello, in a grave marked by a plain gray
tombstone. The brief inscription it bears, written by Jefferson himself, is as noteworthy for
what it excludes as what it includes. The inscription suggests Jefferson's humility as well as
his belief that his greatest gifts to posterity came in the realm of ideas rather than the realm of
politics: "Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of American
Independence of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, and father of the University Of
Virginia."

https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/founding-fathers

Benjamin Franklin, Pennsylvania

Franklin was born in 1706 at Boston. He was the tenth son of a soap and
candlemaker. He received some formal education but was principally self-taught. After
serving an apprenticeship to his father between the ages of 10 and 12, he went to work
for his half-brother James, a printer. In 1721 the latter founded the New England
Courant, the fourth newspaper in the colonies. Benjamin secretly contributed 14 essays
to it, his first published writings.
In 1723, because of dissension with his half-brother, Franklin moved to Philadelphia,
where he obtained employment as a printer. He spent only a year there and then sailed
to London for 2 more years. Back in Philadelphia, he rose rapidly in the printing
industry. He published The Pennsylvania Gazette (1730-48), which had been founded by
another man in 1728, but his most successful literary venture was the annual Poor
Richard 's Almanac (1733-58). It won a popularity in the colonies second only to the
Bible, and its fame eventually spread to Europe.
Meantime, in 1730 Franklin had taken a common-law wife, Deborah Read, who was to
bear him a son and daughter, and he also apparently had children with another
nameless woman out of wedlock. By 1748 he had achieved financial independence and
gained recognition for his philanthropy and the stimulus he provided to such civic
causes as libraries, educational institutions, and hospitals. Energetic and tireless, he also
found time to pursue his interest in science, as well as to enter politics.
Franklin served as clerk (1736-51) and member (1751-64) of the colonial legislature
and as deputy postmaster of Philadelphia (1737-53) and deputy postmaster general of
the colonies (1753-74). In addition, he represented Pennsylvania at the Albany Congress
(1754), called to unite the colonies during the French and Indian War. The congress
adopted his "Plan of Union," but the colonial assemblies rejected it because it
encroached on their powers.
During the years 1757-62 and 1764-75, Franklin resided in England, originally in the
capacity of agent for Pennsylvania and later for Georgia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts.
During the latter period, which coincided with the growth of colonial unrest, he
underwent a political metamorphosis. Until then a contented Englishman in outlook,
primarily concerned with Pennsylvania provincial politics, he distrusted popular
movements and saw little purpose to be served in carrying principle to extremes. Until
the issue of parliamentary taxation undermined the old alliances, he led the Quaker
party attack on the Anglican proprietary party and its Presbyterian frontier allies. His
purpose throughout the years at London in fact had been displacement of the Penn
family administration by royal authority-the conversion of the province from a
proprietary to a royal colony.
It was during the Stamp Act crisis that Franklin evolved from leader of a shattered
provincial party's faction to celebrated spokesman at London for American rights.
Although as agent for Pennsylvania he opposed by every conceivable means the
enactment of the bill in 1765, he did not at first realize the depth of colonial hostility. He
regarded passage as unavoidable and preferred to submit to it while actually working
for its repeal.
Franklin's nomination of a friend and political ally as stamp distributor for Pennsylvania,
coupled with his apparent acceptance of the legislation, armed his proprietary
opponents with explosive issues. Their energetic exploitation of them endangered his
reputation at home until reliable information was published demonstrating his
unabated opposition to the act. For a time, mob resentment threatened his family and
new home in Philadelphia until his tradesmen supporters rallied. Subsequently,
Franklin's defense of the American position in the House of Commons during the
debates over the Stamp Act's repeal restored his prestige at home.
Franklin returned to Philadelphia in May 1775 and immediately became a distinguished
member of the Continental Congress. Thirteen months later, he served on the committee
that drafted the Declaration of Independence. He subsequently contributed to the
government in other important ways, including service as postmaster general, and took
over the duties of president of the Pennsylvania constitutional convention.
But, within less than a year and a half after his return, the aged statesman set sail once
again for Europe, beginning a career as diplomat that would occupy him for most of the
rest of his life. In the years 1776-79, as one of three commissioners, he directed the
negotiations that led to treaties of commerce and alliance with France, where the people
adulated him, but he and the other commissioners squabbled constantly. While he was
sole commissioner to France (1779-85), he and John Jay and John Adams negotiated the
Treaty of Paris (1783), which ended the War for Independence.
Back in the United States, in 1785 Franklin became president of the Supreme Executive
Council of Pennsylvania. At the Constitutional Convention, though he did not approve of
many aspects of the finished document and was hampered by his age and ill-health, he
missed few if any sessions, lent his prestige, soothed passions, and compromised
disputes.
In his twilight years, working on his Autobiography, Franklin could look back on a
fruitful life as the toast of two continents. Energetic nearly to the last, in 1787 he was
elected as first president of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of
Slavery-a cause to which he had committed himself as early as the 1730s. His final public
act was signing a memorial to Congress recommending dissolution of the slavery
system. Shortly thereafter, in 1790 at the age of 84, Franklin passed away in
Philadelphia and was laid to rest in Christ Church Burial Ground.
Image: Courtesy of National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

James Madison, Virginia

The oldest of 10 children and a scion of the planter aristocracy, Madison

was born in 1751 at Port Conway, King George County, VA, while his mother was visiting
her parents. In a few weeks she journeyed back with her newborn son to Montpelier
estate, in Orange County, which became his lifelong home. He received his early
education from his mother, from tutors, and at a private school. An excellent scholar
though frail and sickly in his youth, in 1771 he graduated from the College of New Jersey
(later Princeton), where he demonstrated special interest in government and the law.
But, considering the ministry for a career, he stayed on for a year of postgraduate study
in theology.
Back at Montpelier, still undecided on a profession, Madison soon embraced the patriot
cause, and state and local politics absorbed much of his time. In 1775 he served on the
Orange County committee of safety; the next year at the Virginia convention, which,
besides advocating various Revolutionary steps, framed the Virginia constitution; in
1776-77 in the House of Delegates; and in 1778-80 in the Council of State. His ill health
precluded any military service.
In 1780 Madison was chosen to represent Virginia in the Continental Congress (1780-83
and 1786-88). Although originally the youngest delegate, he played a major role in the
deliberations of that body. Meantime, in the years 1784-86, he had again sat in the
Virginia House of Delegates. He was a guiding force behind the Mount Vernon
Conference (1785), attended the Annapolis Convention (1786), and was otherwise
highly instrumental in the convening of the Constitutional Convention in 1787. He had
also written extensively about deficiencies in the Articles of Confederation.

Alexander Hamilton, New York

Hamilton was born in 1757 on the island of Nevis, in the Leeward group,
British West Indies. He was the illegitimate son of a common-law marriage between a
poor itinerant Scottish merchant of aristocratic descent and an English-French
Huguenot mother who was a planter's daughter. In 1766, after the father had moved his
family elsewhere in the Leewards to St. Croix in the Danish (now United States) Virgin
Islands, he returned to St. Kitts while his wife and two sons remained on St. Croix.
The mother, who opened a small store to make ends meet, and a Presbyterian clergyman
provided Hamilton with a basic education, and he learned to speak fluent French. About
the time of his mother's death in 1768, he became an apprentice clerk at Christiansted in
a mercantile establishment, whose proprietor became one of his benefactors.
Recognizing his ambition and superior intelligence, they raised a fund for his education.
In 1772, bearing letters of introduction, Hamilton traveled to New York City. Patrons he
met there arranged for him to attend Barber's Academy at Elizabethtown (present
Elizabeth), NJ. During this time, he met and stayed for a while at the home of William
Livingston, who would one day be a fellow signer of the Constitution. Late the next year,
1773, Hamilton entered King's College (later Columbia College and University) in New
York City, but the Revolution interrupted his studies.
Although not yet 20 years of age, in 1774-75 Hamilton wrote several widely read pro-
Whig pamphlets. Right after the war broke out, he accepted an artillery captaincy and
fought in the principal campaigns of 1776-77. In the latter year, winning the rank of
lieutenant colonel, he joined the staff of General Washington as secretary and aide-de-
camp and soon became his close confidant as well.
In 1780 Hamilton wed New Yorker Elizabeth Schuyler, whose family was rich and
politically powerful; they were to have eight children. In 1781, after some disagreements
with Washington, he took a command position under Lafayette in the Yorktown, VA,
campaign (1781). He resigned his commission that November.
Hamilton then read law at Albany and quickly entered practice, but public service soon
attracted him. He was elected to the Continental Congress in 1782-83. In the latter year,
he established a law office in New York City. Because of his interest in strengthening the
central government, he represented his state at the Annapolis Convention in 1786,
where he urged the calling of the Constitutional Convention.
In 1787 Hamilton served in the legislature, which appointed him as a delegate to the
convention. He played a surprisingly small part in the debates, apparently because he
was frequently absent on legal business, his extreme nationalism put him at odds with
most of the delegates, and he was frustrated by the conservative views of his two fellow
delegates from New York. He did, however, sit on the Committee of Style, and he was the
only one of the three delegates from his state who signed the finished document.
Hamilton's part in New York's ratification the next year was substantial, though he felt
the Constitution was deficient in many respects. Against determined opposition, he
waged a strenuous and successful campaign, including collaboration with John Jay and
James Madison in writing The Federalist. In 1787 Hamilton was again elected to the
Continental Congress.
When the new government got under way in 1789, Hamilton won the position of
Secretary of the Treasury. He began at once to place the nation's disorganized finances
on a sound footing. In a series of reports (1790-91), he presented a program not only to
stabilize national finances but also to shape the future of the country as a powerful,
industrial nation. He proposed establishment of a national bank, funding of the national
debt, assumption of state war debts, and the encouragement of manufacturing.
Hamilton's policies soon brought him into conflict with Jefferson and Madison. Their
disputes with him over his pro-business economic program, sympathies for Great
Britain, disdain for the common man, and opposition to the principles and excesses of
the French revolution contributed to the formation of the first U.S. party system. It pitted
Hamilton and the Federalists against Jefferson and Madison and the Democratic-
Republicans.
During most of the Washington administration, Hamilton's views usually prevailed with
the President, especially after 1793 when Jefferson left the government. In 1795 family
and financial needs forced Hamilton to resign from the Treasury Department and
resume his law practice in New York City. Except for a stint as inspector-general of the
Army (1798-1800) during the undeclared war with France, he never again held public
office.
While gaining stature in the law, Hamilton continued to exert a powerful impact on New
York and national politics. Always an opponent of fellow-Federalist John Adams, he
sought to prevent his election to the presidency in 1796. When that failed, he continued
to use his influence secretly within Adams' cabinet. The bitterness between the two men
became public knowledge in 1800 when Hamilton denounced Adams in a letter that was
published through the efforts of the Democratic-Republicans.
In 1802 Hamilton and his family moved into The Grange, a country home he had built in
a rural part of Manhattan not far north of New York City. But the expenses involved and
investments in northern land speculations seriously strained his finances.
Meanwhile, when Jefferson and Aaron Burr tied in Presidential electoral votes in 1800,
Hamilton threw valuable support to Jefferson. In 1804, when Burr sought the
governorship of New York, Hamilton again managed to defeat him. That same year, Burr,
taking offense at remarks he believed to have originated with Hamilton, challenged him
to a duel, which took place at present Weehawken, NJ, on July 11. Mortally wounded,
Hamilton died the next day. He was in his late forties at death. He was buried in Trinity
Churchyard in New York City.
Image: Courtesy of The National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

John Adams Biography

U.S. President (1735–1826)

https://www.biography.com/people/john-adams-37967

John Adams was a Founding Father, the first vice president of the
United States and the second president. His son, John Quincy
Adams, was the nation's sixth president.
Synopsis

John Adams was born on October 30, 1735, in Quincy, Massachusetts. He was a direct
descendant of Puritan colonists from the Massachusetts Bay Colony. He studied at Harvard
University, where he received his undergraduate degree and master's, and in 1758 was
admitted to the bar. In 1774, he served on the First Continental Congress and helped draft the
Declaration of Independence. Adams became the first vice president of the United States and
the second president.

Early Life

John Adams was born on October 30, 1735, in Braintree (now Quincy), Massachusetts. His
father, John Adams Sr., was a farmer, a Congregationalist deacon and a town councilman, and
was a direct descendant of Henry Adams, a Puritan who emigrated from England to the
Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1638. His mother, Susanna Boylston Adams, was a descendant
of the Boylstons of Brookline, a prominent family in colonial Massachusetts.
At age 16, Adams earned a scholarship to attend Harvard University. After graduating in
1755, at age 20, Adams studied law in the office of James Putnam, a prominent lawyer,
despite his father's wish for him to enter the ministry. In 1758, he earned a master's degree
from Harvard and was admitted to the bar.

Political Career

Adams quickly became identified with the patriot cause, initially as the result of his
opposition to the Stamp Act of 1765. He wrote a response to the imposition of the act by
British Parliament titled "Essay on the Canon and Feudal Law," which was published as a
series of four articles in the Boston Gazette. In it, Adams argued that the Stamp Act deprived
American colonists of the basic rights to be taxed by consent and to be tried by a jury of
peers. Two months later Adams also publicly denounced the act as invalid in a speech
delivered to the Massachusetts governor and his council.

In 1770, Adams agreed to represent the British soldiers on trial for killing five civilians in
what became known as the Boston Massacre. He justified defending the soldiers on the
grounds that the facts of a case were more important to him than the passionate inclinations of
the people. He believed that every person deserved a defense, and he took the case without
hesitation. During the trial Adams presented evidence that suggested blame also lay with the
mob that had gathered, and that the first soldier who fired upon the crowd was simply
responding the way anyone would when faced with a similar life-threatening situation.

The jury acquitted six of the eight soldiers, while two were convicted of manslaughter.
Reaction to Adams's defense of the soldiers was hostile, and his law practice suffered greatly.
However, his actions later enhanced his reputation as a courageous, generous and fair man.

That same year, Adams was elected to the Massachusetts Assembly and was one of five to
represent the colony at the First Continental Congress, in 1774. When Congress created the
Continental Army in 1775, Adams nominated George Washington of Virginia as its
commander-in-chief.

In May 1776, Congress approved Adams's resolution proposing that the colonies each adopt
independent governments. He wrote the preamble to this resolution, which was approved on
May 15, setting the stage for the formal passage of the Declaration of Independence. On June
7, 1776, Adams seconded Richard Henry Lee's resolution of independence, and backed it
passionately until it was adopted by Congress on July 2, 1776. Congress appointed Adams,
along with Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Robert R. Livingston and Roger Sherman,
to draft the declaration. Jefferson would write the first draft, which was approved on July 4.

Adams was soon serving on as many as 90 committees in the fledgling government, more
than any other Congressman, and in 1777, he became head of the Board of War and
Ordinance, which oversaw the Continental army. In 1779, Adams was one of the American
diplomats sent to negotiate the Treaty of Paris, which brought an end to the Revolutionary
War. After the war, Adams remained in Europe, and from 1784 to 1785 he arranged treaties
of commerce with several European nations. In 1785 he became the first U.S. minister to
England.

In 1788, Adams returned home after nearly 10 years in Europe. In 1789, he was placed on the
ballot for America's first presidential election. As expected, George Washington received the
highest number of electoral votes and was elected president. In accordance with the
Constitutional provision set for presidential elections at that time, Adams was designated Vice
President. The same result occurred in the 1792 election. During both terms, Adams grew
increasingly frustrated with his position as he did not have much sway with Washington on
political or legal issues.

Presidency

In 1796, Adams was elected as the Federalist nominee for president. Thomas Jefferson led the
opposition for the Democratic-Republican Party. Adams won the election by a narrow
margin, becoming the second president of the United States.

During Adams's presidency, a war between the French and British was causing political
difficulties for the United States. Adams's administration focused its diplomatic efforts on
France, whose government had suspended commercial relations. Adams sent three
commissioners to France, but the French refused to negotiate unless the United States agreed
to pay what amounted to a bribe. When this became public knowledge, the nation broke out in
favor of war. However, Adams did not call for a declaration of war, despite some naval
hostilities.

By 1800, this undeclared war had ended, and Adams had become significantly less popular
with the public. He lost his re-election campaign in 1800, with only a few less electoral votes
than Thomas Jefferson, who became president.

Personal Life

On October 25, 1764, five days before his 29th birthday, Adams married Abigail Smith, his
third cousin. They had six children, Abigail (1765), John Quincy (1767), Susanna (1768),
Charles (1770), Thomas Boylston (1772) and Elizabeth (1777).

Adams found himself regularly away from his family, a sacrifice that both he and Abigail saw
as important to the cause, though Abigail was often unhappy.

After his presidency, Adams lived quietly with Abigail on their family farm in Quincy, where
he continued to write and to correspond with his friend Thomas Jefferson. Both Adams and
Jefferson died on July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of American independence. Adams's last
words were, "Thomas Jefferson survives."
John Quincy Adams, Adams's son, would eventually become the sixth president of the United
States, though he was a member of the opposition party, the Democratic-Republicans.

John Jay Biography

Supreme Court Justice, U.S. Representative, U.S. Governor, Journalist, Diplomat (1745–
1829)

https://www.biography.com/people/john-jay-9353566

One of the Founding Fathers of the United States, John Jay is

known as a writer of The Federalist Papers and for being the
nation's first chief justice.
Synopsis

John Jay was born in New York City on December 12, 1745. Initially wary of the disruption
that independence would bring, he soon devoted himself to the American Revolution. Jay
served in the Continental Congress, was a diplomat, wrote some of The Federalist Papersand
became the first chief justice of the United States. He died in Bedford, New York, on May 17,
1829, at the age of 83.

Early Life
Born in New York City, on December 12, 1745, John Jay spent his childhood in nearby Rye,
New York. Jay had established himself as a successful lawyer by the time that rifts with Great
Britain and calls for independence erupted in the colonies.

During the Revolutionary War

Jay represented New York at the Continental Congress in 1774. His conservative nature
initially had him searching for a way to maintain ties with Great Britain, something many
other colonists also desired. However, wanting to ensure that colonists' rights would be
respected, Jay soon wholeheartedly supported the revolution.

In 1776, Jay went back to New York. After working as the state's chief justice and helping to
write the state constitution, he returned to the Continental Congress in 1778. Jay became
president of the Congress, but would soon take on his most prominent role during the war—
that of diplomat.

As minister plenipotentiary, Jay traveled to Spain in an attempt to garner more support for
American independence—a visit that was largely unsuccessful. Jay next joined Benjamin
Franklin in Paris, France, where they negotiated an end to the Revolutionary War with the
Treaty of Paris (1783).

Working Toward a New Constitution

With peace secured, Jay became foreign affairs secretary under the Articles of Confederation.
Frustration with the limited power of the state he represented led Jay to support a stronger
central government, and thus a new Constitution.

Jay put pen to paper to show his support, joining Alexander Hamilton and James Madison to
write five of the essays that became known as The Federalist Papers. The Federalist
Papersdiscussed, and argued in favor of, the principles of government laid out in the
Constitution. Jay also authored a pamphlet, "An Address to the People of New York," which
helped the Constitution attain ratification in New York.

Service to the United States

In 1789, George Washington appointed Jay as the Supreme Court's first chief justice,
a role he held until 1795. Jay took a break from judicial duties in 1794, when he went
to Great Britain in order to address contentious issues such as exports, seizures and
occupation. The resulting "Jay Treaty" sparked protests because it was considered
too favorable for the British. However, the treaty averted a war that the United States
was then ill-equipped to fight.
Upon his return to the United States, Jay learned that he had been elected governor
of New York. He resigned his seat on the Supreme Court to take office. Jay refused a
reappointment to the Supreme Court in 1800, citing his poor health and a reluctance
to resume life on the judicial riding circuit.

Death and Legacy

In 1801, Jay stepped away from public life to retire to his farm in Bedford, New York.
He died at his farm on May 17, 1829, at the age of 83. Having served his country for
years as a judge, Constitutional advocate and diplomat, and in elected office, Jay
merits a place of honor among the Founding Fathers of the United States.