George Washington by painter Gilbert Stuart (1796) • WIKIMEDIA COMMONS The United States did not skimp on the tributes paid to its first president:the federal capital was named after him, as was the 42 th State of the country, seven mountains, eight rivers, ten lakes, more than 30 counties and nine universities have been named in his honor, and the very emblematic one-dollar bill has been adorned with his effigy. Few “Founding Fathers” can lay claim to such a record. George Washington is not, however, exempt from some contradictions, like those of his country, which may explain his great and persistent popularity. The most traditional colonial society However, his origins and his youth did not predestine him to lead the rebellion. This son of an honorable planter, born in February 1732 in Virginia, indeed belonged to the most traditional colonial society. His parents, of English descent, had acquired estates on which several hundred slaves worked. At Mount Vernon and at Ferry Farm, two of the tobacco plantations where the family lived, the young George received an education as an apprentice gentleman, but the early death of his father prevented him from undertaking higher education like his elders. Chaperoned by his half-brother Lawrence, he was introduced to the entourage of the Fairfaxes, the richest landowners in Virginia, acquired a taste for military things and made his debut as a surveyor and planter. Engaged at the age of 20 in the Virginia militia, he was sent to the Ohio Valley, where the French and English were fighting over territory. For five years, he experienced the war there, and even if he did not shine by his feats of arms, he actively participated in stopping French expansion and in the British takeover of New France. Returning to civilian life, Washington married a wealthy heiress in 1759 and, like many gentlemen, devoted himself to novelties and agricultural progress. He was therefore assiduous at the meetings of the Chamber of Burghers, the legislative assembly of Virginia, in which he sat upon his return. It was also during these years that he was initiated into Freemasonry. Hero of Yorktown Hostile like many other Americans to the new taxes levied by London, he was elected as a delegate from Virginia to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, which in 1774 affirmed the rights of the colonies in the face of the arbitrariness of the British government. He did not shine by his eloquence, but his seriousness, his patriotism and his military experience made him a valued delegate. The following year, when the "rebellion" had begun in Massachusetts, the Second Continental Congress offered him to lead the army responsible for defending the interests of the colonists. He held this position for eight years, becoming the main actor in the American Revolutionary War. A long and difficult war, marked by setbacks and advances, but during which the new general endeavored to build a better organized and better equipped army. Forgetting the rivalries of yesteryear, he collaborated with the French troops led by Rochambeau and La Fayette, and emerged victorious from the Battle of Yorktown in October 1781. Two years later, the day after the Treaty of Paris which recognized the independence of the United States, Washington submitted his resignation to Congress, renouncing all public office to devote himself henceforth to his sole domain. The founding father The break, however, was short-lived. Anxious to settle the disputes that kept arising between the states, he took part in the Philadelphia convention in May 1787, which was convened to revise the “Articles of Confederation”, the first constitutional document of the young nation. Appointed president of the convention, Washington therefore presided over the work of an assembly which gave birth a few months later to the Constitution of the United States of America. As a result of which he was unanimously elected, in March 1789, President of the new Republic. This is how the former planter, who became a general and then president, was cheered by the crowd all along the journey that took him from Mount Vernon to New York. His two mandates (1789-1797) marked the appearance of a new State, then its entry on the international scene. The first years were mainly devoted to the reorganization of a country that the war and its aftermath had left bloodless. Surrounded by men who had distinguished themselves during the revolution – John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison – he first focused on consolidating the federal administration and resolving the budgetary crisis. Secretary of the Treasury, Hamilton thus created the federal bank of the United States in 1791. But such an initiative aroused opposition and debate:the conflict between Hamilton, a supporter of a strong federal government, and Jefferson, who defended the opposite and state prerogatives, weakened the presidency and was the source of American bipartisanship. The country also experienced, after the introduction of taxes on alcohol, a strong unrest in Pennsylvania - the famous "whiskey revolt" -, which required the use of military force. The desire for westward expansion also caused the continuation of the Indian wars, in particular against the chief of the Miamis Little Turtle and other tribes of the North-West, which the British pushed against the American colonists. A difficult second mandate Despite this difficult context, George Washington, who had first considered retiring from business, accepted the idea of a second term at Jefferson's suggestion. This was marked by the position of the country in the war that began in 1793 between revolutionary France and Great Britain. Anxious to preserve the country's finances and economic growth, Washington imposed, against Jefferson's advice, American neutrality, thus inaugurating the isolationist tradition. This position allowed him to sign with the former colonial power the Treaty of London in 1794, which settled the disputes that had remained unresolved since independence. He was thus able to promote westward expansion, concluding in 1795 with 11 Indian nations the Treaty of Greenville, by which they gave up their rights to the territories of Ohio and Indiana. Westward settlement also benefited from the opening of commercial shipping in the Mississippi Basin. “The maintenance of the Union must be the main object of the wishes of every American patriot. – George Washington in his farewell address in 1797 However, none of this appeased the partisan divisions, which Washington deplored, but which had continued to grow between the Republican Party of Jefferson and Madison, and the Federalists gathered around Hamilton. Strong criticism was leveled by his enemies, who accused him of greed and ambition. Leaving the presidency in March 1797, Washington called on the Americans in a farewell message published in the Pennsylvania Packet to favor unity over partisan struggles and to choose neutrality. “The maintenance of the Union, he wrote then, must be the main object of the wishes of every American patriot. » The scaffolding of the myth Aged 65, the former president retired to his Mount Vernon estate, where he resumed his activities as a gentleman farmer. He was recalled once again, during the international crisis of 1798 which almost led to a war with republican France. Adams, his successor, then entrusted him with the supreme command of the armies. The crisis, fortunately, was short-lived. Washington died shortly thereafter, in December 1799, of suffocation from an infection of the larynx, and was buried in the family vault at Mount Vernon. We then forgot all the criticisms of which he had been the object. "First in war, first in peace and first in the hearts of his fellow citizens" were the words of his eulogy. In 1800 appeared The Life of Washington , a veritable hagiography written by Pastor Mason Weems, which depicts him as a superman, a fearless and blameless knight, kicking off the myth of the Founding Father. The same year, President Adams left Philadelphia to settle in the new federal capital, baptized on this occasion Washington. Find out more Washington, Hero of a New World , by André and Philippe Kaspi, Gallimard, 1986.The Fathers of the American Revolution , by Claude Fohlen, Albin Michel, 1989. DISCOVER OUR SERIES"THE GREAT PRESIDENTS OF THE UNITED STATES" 2/10 - Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)3/10 - Andrew Jackson (1767-1845)4/10 - Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)5/10 - Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919)6/10 - T. Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924)7/10 -Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945)8/10 - Harry Truman (1884-1972)9/10 - Dwight Eisenhower (1890-1969)10/10 - John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) The Intangible Foundation of the Constitution The sources of the American Constitution are the "Articles of Confederation", drawn up by the Philadelphia Convention in May 1777, two years after the start of the War of Independence. They affirmed the perpetual union between the 13 federated states and attributed to the convention exclusive power over war, diplomacy and finance. Once independence had been acquired, however, it appeared that these articles were insufficient to guarantee a common policy. A second convention therefore met in Philadelphia in May 1787 to draw up a new text. The debates were lively and stormy, but the work, chaired by Washington, led to a compromise:strictly separated powers, the executive entrusted to a president, who is both head of state and head of government, the judiciary to a Supreme Court, the legislature with two chambers, one elected by direct suffrage in proportion to the number of inhabitants (the Chamber of Representatives), the other where each State will have an equal number of deputies (the Senate). The project, adopted in September 1787, was subsequently ratified by each of the 13 states. Supplemented by 27 amendments (the last dated May 1992), this text is still in force. Native Americans and Blacks, the big losers “We, the People of the United States”. Thus begins the preamble to the United States Constitution. If the delegates of the convention gathered in Philadelphia to draw it up debated at length the rights and duties of citizens, it hardly occurred to them to elevate the non-white populations of the country to this status. Of the Amerindians, the Constitution does not say a word. On the other hand, the question of slaves was discussed. Should they be included in the calculation of the “properties” taken into account to be an elector or eligible? Should they also be counted in the population of the States, in particular in order to establish the number of deputies in the House of Representatives? It was agreed on this last point to consider that 5 slaves would be equivalent to 3 inhabitants! As for the issues of slavery and the slave trade, they were quickly settled when Georgia and South Carolina declared that they would leave the Union if they were banned. It is therefore on a double exclusion that the history of the United States began. The sequel isn't much better. The new nation's policy of westward expansion sparked the first Indian War in 1790 against the Miamis of Indiana and Ohio, ushering in a century of violence and massacres, most often in defiance of signed agreements. . “American governments signed more than 400 treaties with Native Americans and violated them all,” recalls historian Howard Zinn. It was not until 1924 that the Indian Citizenship Act declared all Native Americans American citizens, and we would still have to wait 20 more years for them to be able to vote in all the States.As for the slaves, they were at the heart of infinite contradictions. George Washington and his wife owned more than 300 slaves, who worked from sunrise to sunset and risked the whipping with every misstep. If Washington took a stand in Congress for gradual abolition, it was mainly because he saw it as a difficulty for the future of the country, and he himself freed his own slaves only by testament, after his death. Most of the northern states, under the influence of the Protestant churches, however abolished slavery, but it flourished in the cotton economy of the southern states. It was only after a violent civil war that the 13 th amendment freed, in December 1865, the 4 million slaves that the country still had. But that was only the beginning of another fight, also centuries old, for equal rights.
