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Today: 04.03.2016
Content
1 George Washington is named after 2 Quotes 3 Biographical information 3.1 Childhood and youth 3.2 On the eve of the Seven Years ' War.
Service in the Colonial Army 3.3 A Virginia gentleman farmer and businessman
4 The writings of George Washington 5 Literature 6 References 6.1 Museums 6.2 Biographies
7 "Around the World" about George Washington 8 Notes
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Washington, George
Gilbert Stewart.
Portrait of George Washington.
1796.
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution in Washington
George Washington (born February 22, 11th Old Style, 1732 in the family estate of Wakefield, Virginia; died December 14, 1799 in his estate of Mount Vernon, Virginia) - the first president of the United States, the most revered national hero of the United States.
He was the commander in chief of the armed forces of all the North American colonies that rebelled against Britain during the era of the struggle for independence.
After achieving victory, he resigned from power, retired and returned to private life in 1783.
After the adoption of the Constitution, the electors unanimously elected Washington as president.
He assumed this position on April 30, 1789, was re elected for a second term in 1792, and retired early on March 3, 1797.[1]
He chose a place on the banks of the Potomac River for the new capital of the country (instead of Philadelphia), where the city bearing his name was built.
Washington is named after numerous geographical objects in the United States (1 state, 33 counties, 15 cities, 15 towns) and beyond.
[edit] The following are named after George Washington
Islands:
Washington Island, Wisconsin
Washington Island, Kiribati
Lakes:
washington Lake, Washington
Mountains:
Mount Washington in the Olympic Mountains, Washington
Mount Washington on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada
Mount Washington in the Cascade Mountains, Oregon
States:
Washington
Cities:
Washington, DC
Washington, Wilkis County, Georgia
Washington, Washington County, Pennsylvania
George, Grant County, Washington
Georgetown, Scott County, Kentucky
Universities:
George Washington University, Washington, DC
Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Virginia
Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, Missouri
University of Washington, Seattle, Washington
Parks:
Washington Crossing State Park, Pennsylvania
Washington Crossing Historical Park, Pennsylvania
Bridges:
George Washington Bridge over the Hudson River, connecting Fort Lee in New Jersey with the city of New York (at the place where Washington's army fought and crossed the Hudson)
[edit] Quotes
When I first approached the chair prepared for the head of the government, my feelings were similar to those experienced by a condemned man when he ascends the scaffold. [2]
I'm walking an untrodden path.
Any move I make later will be considered a precedent.
The election results are directly proportional to the amount of brandy exposed to voters.
It's better to be alone than in bad company.
Be polite to everyone, be frank with a few, and treat these few decently before opening your soul to them.
The government is like fire - a dangerous servant and a monstrous master.
Without freedom of speech, we can be led dumb and quiet, like sheep for slaughter.
[edit] Biographical information
[edit] Childhood and youth
View of George Washington's Mount Vernon estate from the Potomac River.
The house was heavily rebuilt in 1759 and 1774.
The final touch in its appearance - a weather vane in the form of a dove of peace was added by Washington in 1787
George Washington was born into the family of a poor landowner in the British North American colony of Virginia.[3]
His father, Augustine Washington, had 20 slaves, and 5 of them were unable to work.4 At the age of 11, he lost hope of getting an education in England.
where all the men in the Washington family studied.
His mother, Mary Ball Washington, never remarried, and her son George remained the passion of her life.
He later said that he owed all the best traits of character and intelligence to his mother.5 George was educated at home in the house of a neighbor, Lord William Fairfax.
He became friends with Fairfax, they hunted together with hounds at his Belvoir estate.
Having appreciated George's data - sanity, tall stature, enormous physical strength the lord used all his influence to arrange the young man as a midshipman in the Royal Navy.
Things were already packed when Fairfax's plans became known to George's mother.
She was so worried that her son would leave her that she did not let him leave the house.
Then Fairfax sent the 16 year old Washington in the opposite direction: as a surveyor to his possessions on the western border of the colony of Virginia - to the Blue Ridge, in the Shenandoah Valley.
Here George gained experience: he crossed rivers on horseback, overflowed from meltwater, sat by the fire of the Sindei 6, got lost in the mountains of the Blue Ridge, where he met a rattlesnake.
While working as a surveyor, he discovered extreme physical endurance and received a salary for the first time in his life.
Being the poorest of the Fairfax employees, 7 he did not spend the money he earned, but bought 1,459 acres of land near the Bullskin Creek, which flows into the Shenandoah.
In part, George was replaced by his father by his older half brother Lawrence Washington (1718 - 1752).
In 1741, as a marine captain, Lawrence participated in an expedition to Cartagena (Spanish New Granada, now the most important port of Colombia) and landed in Cuba as part of a squadron under the command of Admiral Vernon.8 In honor of his commander, Lawrence named his own estate Mount Vernon, Mount Vernon.
After his death from tuberculosis, 9 George inherited the estate and became a wealthy gentleman farmer.
But since the campaign in Cartagena, he dreamed of a military career.
[edit] On the eve of the Seven Years ' War.
Service in the colonial army
In the early 1750s, the rivalry between Britain and France intensified around the world, including in America.
France threatened the North American colonies from the north, from Canada, and from the west, inciting Indians who were under the influence of experienced French scouts against the English speaking colonists.
Washington enlisted in the militia and, thanks to Fairfax, received the rank of major.
In October 1753, as an officer of the colonial troops with the most impressive appearance, he was instructed by the governor of the state to go to the frontier to the nearest French fort south of Lake Erie [10] and deliver an ultimatum on behalf of King George II of Great Britain to King Louis XV of France that Britain claims the lands that are now the western part of the state of Pennsylvania, the states of West Virginia and Ohio.
The place where the city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania stands: at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers, the Ohio River begins.
This place was chosen by Washington, and then by the French, for the construction of a fort on the land of the Iroquois Confederacy
Accompanied by an Indian who performed the duties of proconsul in the Iroquois confederacy in this territory, Washington and the fur trader Christopher Gist arrived at the commandant of Fort Le Boeuf, the Chevalier Legardere de Saint Pierre, who received them with truly Versailles ceremonies.
He promised to deliver the letter to his superior, the Marquis Duquesne, but politely refused to comply with the terms of the ultimatum.
Washington was shown both the fort itself and the 230 boats prepared for rafting on the river, on which the French were going to go down to the Ohio River to build a fort there and garrison it.
In November 1753, Washington and Gist set out on their return journey to warn the authorities of their colony about the plans of the French.
The trip turned into an adventure: the horses had to be abandoned because of snow and frost, a hired Indian guide tried to shoot two Americans and point robbers from his tribesmen at them, during the crossing, Washington fell from a raft into the river during an ice break and spent the night in the cold in wet clothes.
On New Year's Day, 1754, he reached Virginia and wrote a very sensible account of his mission.
The report was printed, the intentions of the French became obvious.
The authorities of the colony recruited a self defense detachment of 300 people and equipped an expedition to the Ohio to build a fort.
The command of the detachment was eventually taken by Washington, who received the rank of lieutenant colonel.
He performed in April 1754.
Using the tactics of the Indians, Washington decided to attack the French at dawn.
The Americans got close to the French camp on a rainy night and suddenly attacked them, killing the commander of the detachment and 9 more people, taking 22 prisoners.
One of the dead was an envoy who was carrying an ultimatum to the British.
Due to a misunderstanding, Washington attacked a peaceful diplomatic mission and killed the envoy.
The French had 800 soldiers, enough to destroy Washington's small army.
Fort Nessity, Necessity, where the retreating detachment of Virginians took refuge, was built unsuccessfully.
It was fired from the commanding heights and was cramped.
Having lost more than a third of its men in battle, Washington continued to fight.
Respecting the valor of the Americans, the French offered surrender on honorable terms: Washington's people can go home, giving up the French prisoners; the reason for the conflict was the murder of a French diplomat (Washington did not understand the French word l'assasinat - "murder").
The conditions indicated that the French were only taking revenge for the death of the diplomat.
The paper got to Paris, and the "insidious murder" of a French diplomat (about the essence of whose mission the Americans did not suspect) became the reason for the beginning of the World Seven Year War: Britain and its ally Prussia against France, Austria and Russia.
Washington's army, the Virginia Regiment, was disbanded, but he was not promoted to colonel in the active army: the rank of colonel cost hundreds of pounds.
Washington resigned and decided to live as a planter in Mount Vernon.
At first, there was an undeclared war: regular British troops arrived in America, they participated in the fighting, removing the colonial units and the militia from the main operations, but the command hoped to get rid of several expeditions.
Washington, a recognized expert on movement in the mountains and forests beyond the frontier, voluntarily took part in the expedition of Major General Edward Braddock as an aide de camp to the commander.
In the summer of 1755, British regiments crossed the Monongahela River and approached the French Fort Duquesne, built on a disputed site in the center of modern Pittsburgh.
On July 9, the Indians began to shoot the British column from an ambush.
Braddock was mortally wounded, Washington took command, although he was so ill that day (dysentery) that he had to tie a pillow to the saddle to preserve the ability to move.
For this reason, the Indians fired less at him than at the other officers (thinking that he was wounded), and Washington remained the senior officer.
He managed to organize a crossing under fire and a retreat in battle order.
In this expedition, Washington realized the main weakness of the British infantry: it did not know how to fight out of formation.
When Washington offered to lead his Americans into the forest and attack the enemy in his own style, Braddock indignantly refused.
Washington has not won military laurels.
During the battle on July 9, two horses were killed under him, a bullet knocked off his hat.
Putting General Braddock in a covered carriage, Washington led the retreat.
The British command laid all the blame for the defeat on provincial officers like Washington.
They said that they told the soldiers that if they continued to walk through the clearing in formation, they would be killed, and that's why the soldiers ran.
The command moved military operations to the north, to the area of the current state of New York, leaving the western border of Virginia undiscovered.
The colony created its own army, in which Washington took a prominent place.
He did not always have good relations with the authorities of the colony.
His strength was in the affection of the officers for him.
He rejected the British system, when the rank of an officer corresponded to the influence of his family, and nominated people only on merit.
Washington created a network of fortified forts, which, in theory, was supposed to secure the frontier.
But the French armed Indians passed between the forts, killed and scalped the farmers.
Washington proposed to the new commander in chief of the British armed forces in North America, Lord Loudon, to save the frontier in the only way: to go to Fort Duquesne and drive the French out of there.
Washington undertook to do this by the forces of the army of Virginia without regular British troops.
The reception was brief and cold.
Washington was not allowed to open his mouth, Loudon sorted out all his mistakes, smashed his tactics and sent him away.
After the conversation, Washington concluded: "To be an American means to lose all the advantages that British citizenship gives." [11]   [edit]
A Virginian gentleman farmer and businessman
After parting with the army and his mistress, the wife of a neighboring landowner, Washington decided to marry and take up farming on the Mount Vernon estate.
He married in 1759 for convenience to a widow named Martha Kestis, Martha Dandridge Custis.
She was the opposite of his temperamental mother.
Thanks to Martha's common sense, the marriage turned out to be happy, although Washington did not have any children of his own.
He took care of Martha's children from her first marriage (Jackie and Patsy), and then their children - Martha's grandchildren.
Washington became rich in the war, receiving payment and commission for the purchase of supplies for the army.
He invested his spare money in a farm where hundreds of slaves worked.
The main commodity that was exported to England was tobacco.
In addition, many thousands of pigs were raised on the farm, strong alcoholic beverages and cider were made from apples from their own garden, fish was caught in the Potomac.
Mount Vernon had a blacksmith shop and a mill, and a ferry on the Potomac River brought in income.
By all accounts, it was one of the best estates in Virginia.
But the debts to English factors (intermediaries) in the resale of tobacco grew from year to year.
For 5 years, Washington has been making desperate efforts to increase yields.
He studied all the new literature on agricultural technology.
Slaves dug up silt from the bottom of the Potomac and scattered it in the fields.
In a large box near the main estate, soil samples were collected from different parts of the estate with various fertilizers applied to them.
The yield of each sample was carefully measured.
But it was not possible to catch patterns in the growth of productivity.
In rainy years, fertilizers, along with the top layer of soil, were washed into the Potomac and had to borrow from English partners.
In such years, instead of money for the supplied tobacco, ready made goods were sent from Britain.
Often they were defective, and clothes and shoes never fit in size.
After 5 years, Washington came to the conclusion that the Virginia economic system is doomed.
The tobacco monoculture is killing agriculture, leaving the farmer at the mercy of the weather.
Exports leave it in the hands of foreign factors, which only increase debts and supply it with useless goods at inflated prices in return.
Tobacco cultivation required too many workers, forcing the import of slaves, of which only a third is economically efficient, and the rest remain freeloaders for health reasons or age.
In 1766, Washington stopped planting tobacco altogether.
He switched to bread and corn, naho d) sales on the spot.
These crops required fewer workers.
Washington retrained the slaves who had previously been engaged in tobacco cultivation, making them weavers and builders of a new mill, in which they ground the neighbor's bread for money.
The grinding was automated according to the method invented by the Philadelphia Oliver Evans.
Instead of European goods, Washington gradually began to buy more and more products of Philadelphia industrialists.
This was especially true of clothing.
In doing so, he joined a spontaneous movement among the landowners, whose main goal was to encourage the development of their own, American industry.
In response to the decision of the British Parliament to tax the colonies without representation in parliament, Americans began to buy much less British goods.
Washington hoped that more capable heads would find a balance between the interests of the colonies and the mother country.
After the "Boston Tea Party" of 1773, the retaliatory measures of the British, who closed the port of Boston and repealed the laws of the colony of Massachusetts, attracted Washington to the ranks of the opposition.
[edit] The writings of George Washington
Essays, 38 volumes
The Manuscripts of George Washington
[edit] Literature
J.T. Flexner.
George Washington.
The Indispensable Man.
London, 1976 (the best English language biography of George Washington; the author created it based on his own four volume book about Washington)
[edit] Links
[edit] Museums
Native places of Washington.
National Park Reserve
Mount Vernon Estate
Library of Congress, documents relating to George Washington
About the ceremonial portrait of George Washington by Gilbert Stewart
[edit] Biographies
Chronology of the life of George Washington
Official biography on the White House portal
Biography and biographical notes on the portal of the museum in Mount Vernon
Biographical information on the portal of the US Congress
[edit] "Around the World" about George Washington
Articles
January 2001 Child of the Deep and Fear (George Washington financed the construction of the first American submarine)
February 2002 Large original (a place for the Statue of Liberty was allocated at a meeting of Congress held on the birthday of George Washington)
May 2006 Running Diagonal of New York (George Washington related places in New York)
TV programs
21.4.2002 Barbados.
Slavery (A trip to Barbados is George Washington's only trip abroad)
[edit] Notes
↑ Biographical information portal of the United States Congress ↑ From a letter to a friend: “In confidence I can assure you — with the world it would obtain little credit that my movements to the chair of Government will be accompanied by feelings not unlike those of a culprit who is going to his place of execution.”
↑ George Washington was born on February 11 1732, when Britain have not yet switched to the Gregorian calendar.
According to the new style - February 22.
The Wakefield Estate was located near the mouth of Pope's Creek at its confluence with the Potomac.
The first Washington American, impoverished adventurer John Washington, arrived in America in 1675.
Even when he was commander in chief and president, Washington's mother complained that he paid her little attention.
After the Indians were given rum, they performed a war dance at the request of the young man.
Washington loved to dance very much, but he had nothing to feed his horse to go to the ball.
Edward Vernon (1684 - 1757) became famous for the introduction of a special drink - grog in the navy: rum diluted with water with lemon juice, which prevented colds and scurvy.
In 1751, George Washington accompanied the sick Lawrence to Barbados - this was his only trip abroad.
The climate of the island did not bring recovery to the patient, and George was ill with smallpox.
Later, during the American Revolution and the War of Independence of 1776 - 1783, many commanders of the troops of the rebellious colonies died of smallpox, but Washington already had immunity.
Форт Fort Le Boeuf, Le Boeuf, near modern Waterford, Pennsylvania.
↑ We canot conceive that being Americans should deprive us of the benefits of being British subjects.
Received from http://www.vokrugsveta.ru/encyclopedia/index.php?title=%D0%92%D0%B0%D1%88%D0%B8%D0%BD%D0%B3%D1%82%D0%BE%D0%BD%2C_%D0%94%D0%B6%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%B4%D0%B6
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