4th. Washington was a visionary.
He learned the vastness of the American landscape during his surveying career and during the French and Indian War. Early on, he realized that the West was a land of opportunity, and he believed that the colonies had more in common with one another than with Great Britain. Washington’s vision of an American nation inspired him to command the Continental army. It gave him the courage to risk his reputation by serving two terms as president. It also gave him a concern for the political and economic survival and success of America, not only for his generation but also for future citizens, whom he called “millions unborn.”
5th. Washington was exceedingly practical.
He had little inclination toward philosophical ruminations; he was a man of action. Whether supplying troops, overseeing his plantations, or guiding his stepchildren and grandchildren, Washington always had in mind some practical end. This quality gave him insight into how to join his personal interests and well-being with those of the emerging nation. It also gave him the greatest moral quandary, in that he could see no way out of participating in the system of slave labor that underpinned his native Virginia. To his credit, wrestling with that quandary eventually led him to free his own slaves, although it meant dismantling his beloved Mount Vernon estate and upending the lives of his wife’s slaves, to whom he could not legally grant freedom.
6th. Washington suffered great failure and loss.
He lost his father when he was 11; his half-brother and mentor when he was 20; his stepdaughter, Patsy; and his stepson, Jacky. He failed to win a British army commission, lost important battles, and survived attempts made on his life. As a president who warned against factions, his popularity waned as partisan bickering turned on him. His farms suffered through years of drought, and his western lands drained time and resources. He endured serious illnesses and was denied the wish of his final years, to “glide gently down the stream of life in tranquil retirement,” when he was struck down with a sudden and fatal illness.
7th. Washington was a family man.
While he had no children of his own, he was the doting father to the two children of his wife, Martha Custis, and a loving grandfather to their offspring. He likewise took a lively interest in his nieces and nephews, the children of his five siblings, with whom he had a lasting intimacy. Washington’s relationship with his mother, Mary Ball Washington, was strained, but he dutifully cared for her. And he and his wife shared a loving relationship. Though we know little of their private thoughts-Martha burned their correspondence before her death-we know that she made extended visits to her husband at his Continental army headquarters each year of the Revolutionary War and never left Washington’s side during his last illness.
8th. Washington greatly valued education.
He thought his own schooling was deficient. Had his father not died when Washington was a child, perhaps he would have attended school in England like his elder half brothers. Washington eagerly supplemented that inadequate education throughout his life by keeping abreast of the latest developments in politics, agriculture, science and the arts. He was adamant that Martha’s children and grandchildren would receive an appropriate education, and he financed the education of the children of siblings and friends. As president, Washington unsuccessfully proposed a national university. In his will, he bequeathed money to schools in Alexandria, Va., and Rockbridge County, Va., the latter of which formed an early endowment for Washington College (now Washington and Lee University). And of all the honors bestowed on him during his lifetime, the degrees from Harvard and other colleges pleased him most.
9th. Washington was America’s “Indispensable Man.”
Perhaps the American Revolution would have succeeded without George Washington. If so, the outcome would have been radically different. The war effort may have failed without his zeal and perseverance. Washington personally held together the Continental army, and no one else even came in second to connecting the chief executives of the states and the factions of the Continental Congress. After the war, as the unanimously elected president of the Constitutional Convention, he worked behind the scenes, discussing differences and forging alliances. Most importantly, Washington was there, a hands-on president. For example, when making federal appointments, he read each application and painstakingly balanced sectional and political rivalries. The reputation and popularity of this indispensable man, as his biographer James Thomas Flexner calls him, propelled him into the presidency; his own inner star, assisted by other able men, guided him through the burdens of eight years’ service. Washington left office with his vision and integrity intact.
10th. Washington left us a valuable political and moral legacy.
With his coherent and sophisticated political philosophy, he set an example for his fellow citizens over the course of nearly half a century. He summed up the lessons he’d learned in his “Farewell Address to the People of the United States,” with its central theme of perpetual union based on the primacy of the Constitution. He buttressed his theme with warnings to steer clear of sectional and political divisions. Washington also advised on foreign relations; on the role of religion, morality and education in public life; and on the need to protect public credit and stabilize commercial and manufacturing interests. “You should properly estimate the immense value of your national Union to your collective & individual happiness,” he said, “that you should cherish a cordial, habitual & immoveable attachment to it.”