| | Born 2/22/1732 in Pope's Creek, Virginia |
| | Political Party: No official |
| | Vice President: John Adams |
| | Nickname: Father of His Country |
| | led America's Continental Army to victory over Britain in the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783) |
| | in 1789 was elected the first President of the United States of America |
| | He served two four-year terms from 1789 to 1797, winning reelection in 1792. |
| | Because of his central and critical role in the founding of the United States, Washington is referred to as father of the nation. |
| | In his youth, Washington worked as a surveyor of rural lands and acquired what would become invaluable knowledge of the terrain around his native state of Virginia. |
| | Washington gained command experience during the French and Indian War (1754–1763). |
| | Due to this experience, his military bearing, his enormous charisma, his leadership of the patriot cause in Virginia, and his political base in the largest colony, the Second Continental Congress chose him, in 1775, as their commander-in-chief of the American army. |
| | In 1776, he victoriously forced the British out of Boston, but, later that same year, was badly defeated, and nearly captured, when he lost New York City. |
| | However, in the bitter-cold dead of night, he revived the patriot cause, by crossing the Delaware River in New Jersey and defeating the surprised enemy units. |
| | As a result of his strategic oversight, Revolutionary forces captured the two main British combat armies, first at Saratoga in 1777 and then at Yorktown in 1781. |
| | He handled relations with the states and their militias, dealt with disputing generals and colonels, and worked with Congress to supply and recruit the Continental army. |
| | Negotiating with Congress, the colonial states, and French allies, he held together a tenuous army and a fragile, nascent nation amid the constant threats of disintegration and failure. |
| | He was also the country's first spymaster |
| | Following the end of the war in 1783, Washington emulated the Roman general Cincinnatus, and retired to his plantation on Mount Vernon, an exemplar of the republican ideal of citizen leadership who rejected power. |
| | Alarmed in the late 1780s at the many weaknesses of the new nation under the Articles of Confederation, he presided over the Constitutional Convention that drafted the United States Constitution in 1787. |
| | In 1789, Washington became President of the United States and promptly established many of the customs and usages of the new government's executive department. |
| | When rebels in Pennsylvania defied Federal authority, he rode at the head of the army to authoritatively quell the Whiskey Rebellion. |
| | Washington avoided the temptation of war and began a decade of peace with Britain via the Jay Treaty in 1795; he used his immense prestige to get it ratified over intense opposition from the Jeffersonians. |
| | Although he never officially joined the Federalist Party, he supported its programs and was its inspirational leader. |
| | By refusing to pursue a third term, he made it the enduring norm that no U.S. President should seek more than two. Washington's Farewell Address was a primer on republican virtue and a stern warning against involvement in foreign wars. |
| | During Washington's funeral oration, Henry Lee said that of among all Americans, he was "first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen." |