George Washington
Explore George Washington — the commander-in-chief who won American independence and the first president who established the precedents of republican government.
George Washington (1732–1799) was the indispensable figure of the American Revolution — the military commander who held the Continental Army together through years of defeat and deprivation, and the first president who established the precedents that made American republican government viable.
As commander-in-chief (1775–1783), Washington's greatest achievement was not any single battle but simply keeping the army in the field. Against the world's most powerful military, with poorly supplied, poorly trained, short-term militia, Washington fought a war of endurance, choosing his battles carefully and maintaining the army as a symbol of national resistance. His crossing of the Delaware (1776) and the Yorktown campaign (1781) were decisive, but his leadership through the terrible winter at Valley Forge (1777–1778) may have been more important.
As the first president (1789–1797), Washington established critical precedents: the two-term limit (not formally codified until the 22nd Amendment in 1951), the peaceful transfer of power, the subordination of military to civilian authority, and the role of the president as national unifier rather than partisan leader. His voluntary retirement from power — when he could have been king or president for life — astonished the world and established the principle that republican government required the willingness of leaders to relinquish power.