For years people have shared a story about the first U.S. president involving a hatchet, a cherry tree, and a young Washington who “cannot tell a lie.” The legend attests to George Washington’s honesty, virtue, and piety—that is, if it is true. It is not. The legend was the invention of a 19th-century bookseller named Mason Locke Weems who wanted to present a role model to his American readers. It is one of many legends about Washington.
George Washington is often called the “Father of His Country.” He not only served as the first president of the United States, but he also commanded the Continental Army during the American Revolution (1775–83) and presided over the convention that drafted the U.S. Constitution. The U.S. capital is named after Washington—as are many schools, parks, and cities. Today his face appears on the U.S. dollar bill and the quarter.
Yes, George Washington owned slaves. Washington was born into a Virginia planter family. After his father’s death in 1743, Washington inherited 10 enslaved people. In 1761 Washington acquired a farmhouse (which he later expanded to a five-farm estate) called Mount Vernon. In 1760, 49 enslaved people lived and worked on the estate; by 1799 that number had increased to over 300. Washington eventually freed the 123 people he owned. In his will he ordered that they be freed “upon the decease of my wife.”
After serving two terms as president, George Washington retired to his estate at Mount Vernon in 1797. Two years into his retirement, Washington caught a cold. The cold developed into a throat infection. Doctors cared for Washington as they thought best—by bleeding him, blistering him, and attempting (unsuccessfully) to give him a gargle of “molasses, vinegar, and butter.” Despite their efforts, Washington died on the night of December 14, 1799.
The American Revolution—also called the U.S. War of Independence—was the insurrection fought between 1775 and 1783 through which 13 of Great Britain’s North American colonies threw off British rule to establish the sovereign United States of America, founded with the Declaration of Independence in 1776. British attempts to assert greater control over colonial affairs after a long period of salutary neglect, including the imposition of unpopular taxes, had contributed to growing estrangement between the crown and a large and influential segment of colonists who ultimately saw armed rebellion as their only recourse.
On the ground, fighting in the American Revolution began with the skirmishes between British regulars and American provincials on April 19, 1775, first at Lexington, where a British force of 700 faced 77 local minutemen, and then at Concord, where an American counterforce of 320 to 400 sent the British scurrying. The British had come to Concord to seize the military stores of the colonists, who had been forewarned of the raid through efficient lines of communication—including the ride of Paul Revere, which is celebrated with poetic license in Longfellow’s “Paul Revere’s Ride” (1861).
