George Washington (1732-1799) was a Virginia planter and surveyor who served in the French and Indian War and in the House of Burgesses before the Second Continental Congress made him commander in chief of the Continental Army in June 1775. He led the army through eight years of war, from the siege of Boston to the victory at Yorktown in 1781, and resigned his commission to Congress at Annapolis in December 1783. He presided over the Constitutional Convention of 1787 and served two terms as the first President of the United States, from 1789 to 1797.
“My God! What can this Writer have in view, by recommending such measures? Can he be a friend to the Army? Can he be a friend to this Country? Rather, is he not an insidious Foe?”
The Newburgh Address is the speech George Washington read to the officers of the Continental Army on 15 March 1783 in the Temple, a large log hall the soldiers had built at their winter cantonment near Newburgh, New York. The fighting had largely ended after Yorktown, and peace with Britain was close, but the officers had gone unpaid for months.
Washington's Farewell Address and selected letters present leadership as restraint, reputation, and institutional precedent. The Farewell Address, published in 1796 near the end of his presidency, warns against sectional division, party spirit, foreign entanglement, public debt, and attacks on constitutional authority.
