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How does one become a national symbol?
A man so important, a nation names its capital for him.
And builds one of the tallest
monuments on Earth to commemorate his life.
We put his face on a mountain
and our money.
We call him the father of our country.
But do we remember why
George Washington deserves this singular honor?
He was a farmer. An architect. A surveyor.
He commanded the Continental Army
against the military power of Great Britain.
He lost more battles than he won,
but still won America's war for independence.
He presided over the Constitutional Convention
which gave us our republican form of government.
He was a citizen politician and our first president.
Earlier generations of Americans grew up
with a portrait of Washington in their schoolrooms.
George Washington defined our understanding of America.
Today, Washington remains ubiquitous.
He's part of our national landscape.
But in many ways, George Washington
has become the most elusive and enigmatic
of our founding fathers.
Well, that's the problem with Washington.
He is everywhere.
He's sort of in everybody's wallet,
but not in their hearts,
because he's so iconic.
And the ivy has grown over his statue in such a way
that it's a real challenge to try to figure out
who is that man behind the monument.
For generations of Americans,
George Washington was essential
to understanding the creation of the United States of America.
Commander-in-chief of the Continental Army,
first president, and father of our country.
Washington was committed
to creating a republic based on liberty and self-government--
the very principles that make us American.
Americans today
need to remember George Washington,
they need to remember him
because he really does have an ongoing legacy for us.
We live today very much in the America
that George Washington helped to make.
And he surely did something
that 10 years later Napoleon never did;
and that is be given power
and then voluntarily give up that power.
He was comfortable in his own skin.
He was never trying to be something that he wasn't.
And so there was an authenticity factor to Washington.
What you saw was what you got.
If he didn't have the blazing intellect
of some of the political figures of that era,
he trumped them in spades
by the respect that he generated among the masses
because he was a doer, not just a thinker.
They pledged their lives,
their fortunes, and their sacred honor.
If they lost, most would be jailed or hanged.
They were taking on
the greatest fighting force in history,
with an amateur army and no navy.
And at the center of this whirlwind of history
was a seemingly providential collection of great minds
unafraid of revolution in the pursuit of liberty,
including Hamilton, Franklin, Adams, Jefferson, Madison,
and Washington.
If you asked all the prominent founders--
and let's just go down a list for a second.
Franklin is probably the wisest,
Madison is probably the most politically acute,
Jefferson is most intellectually sophisticated,
Adams is the best read,
Hamilton is probably the smartest,
but they all said the same thing--
Washington is the greatest of us all.
Washington was the indispensable American
because we can just ask ourselves,
had Hamilton or Jefferson or Adams or Franklin,
could any of them have done what Washington did
and could Washington have done what they did?
It's very hard to see anybody
like Jefferson or Adams or Madison getting on a horse
and leading an army and imbuing them with revolutionary spirit.
And so Washington could do what the other founders could not.
Washington's famous reserve and self control
made him appear aloof
and masked a complex man of deep passions
and a sometimes explosive temper.
While the other founders
enjoyed showing off their intellectual gifts,
Washington preferred to reveal as little as possible.
Washington was the master of the silence.
He kept his mouth shut
while more insecure men were blathering on.
Plus, if you look at his diary,
you'd think, well, there's something
that's going to tell you about the inner man,
but it's all about the weather;
it has nothing to do with the interior storms inside him.
He's unusual for a great man
in that he wasn't an egotist.
There was not a sense of what we call today
of narcissism in him.
There is ample evidence of Washington's humility,
his general kindness, his basic decency,
his ability to be fair to a soldier.
And so, hence, he was a great leader.
A quiet word from George Washington
echoed very loudly;
he simply led by example.
Washington had a commanding presence.
He was sort of intimidating.
He was made of marble even back then.
And people around him sort of joked
about whether or not you'd touch him on the back.
But he was the one who commanded the respect like a general.
He is elusive even in his own time,
and he's a legend in his own time.
So that for all those reasons, as a historian or a biographer
trying to go back and recover the man,
he presents the greatest difficulty
of anybody I've ever tried to write about.
1776 was a year that had started with great promise.
Thomas Paine's enormously popular pamphlet Common Sense
is a radical call to arms.
Thomas Paine was a washed-up businessman,
failed marriage back home.
I think at one point he was a corset maker.
And then he hits his moment.
He writes the very famous pamphlet Common Sense,
which declares this is no longer
about defending our rights as Englishmen,
this is about creating a new nation.
The common sense approach now
must be we must fight for independence.
Patriots throughout the 13 colonies
had had enough
with King George III's taxes and abuses.
A year earlier, after years of humiliation
at the hands of the British,
fighting had broken out at Lexington and Concord.
Now was the time, many felt,
to embrace a commitment to independence, or "the cause."
If you read Washington's battle orders,
and this begins in New York and continues throughout the war,
the word that is the reverential word
is the Cause, capital C-a-u-s-e,
that we all believe in the Cause.
And so in June of 1775 the Second Continental Congress
requests Washington's presence in Philadelphia.
Washington will be appointed general and commander
of the Continental Army.
He was always very meticulous
about how he dressed.
So, famously, when he went to the Continental Congress,
he wore his Virginia military uniform
because he was already showing his willingness
to stand up and fight and to lead the Army.
Washington was an ambitious man,
he was ambitious for himself
and he was ambitious for his country.
When Washington takes command,
it is no sure thing that there's going to be victory
in the American Revolution.
Mr. Washington.
It is resolved that a general be appointed
to command all the continental forces,
raised, or to be raised,
for the defense of American liberty.
Mr. President,
I must declare with the utmost sincerity,
I do not think myself equal to the command I am honored with.
However, as the Congress desires it,
I will enter upon the momentous duty
and exert every power I possess in their service
and for support of the glorious cause.
Washington thought it was very likely
that he would lose,
and yet he was willing to put himself
entirely at the service of this cause
even if he lost his life,
even if he lost his estate,
and even if,
and this terrified Washington more than anything else,
even if he went down in history as a failure,
he still thought it was worth it.
Washington arrives outside of Boston
to find a group of eager but woefully untrained soldiers.
The Continental Army is a bunch of amateurs.
They are not the yeoman farmers.
They are the derelicts,
they are the third sons with no inheritance,
they're recent Irish immigrants,
there are also a lot of African Americans,
about 10% of the Army is African American.
But he has an army that is really incapable
of matching the British on the field of battle.
The next one who leaves...
Washington's goal is to transform these men
into a professional army.
He knows the British have superior troops,
having fought alongside them during
the French and Indian War.
General Washington will need to draw
on that knowledge
and other skills he gained as a young man, or face defeat.
Washington congealed as a young man
in the frontier of Virginia, west of the Alleghenies.
If Jefferson and Adams went to William and Mary and Harvard,
Washington went to war.
And war was his crucible, war is what shaped his values
and the personality that he eventually exhibited.
George Washington was born in 1732
in Westmoreland County, Virginia.
Though the family was prosperous,
they were not considered in the top tier
of Virginia's wealthiest families.
As a young man,
Washington is not to the manor born.
He doesn't have a huge inheritance from his father,
very little indeed.
As a teenager,
Washington undertakes unusual efforts
toward improving all aspects of his character.
He studies life lessons
from Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior,
a popular book on self improvement.
What he's describing is really genteel behavior.
What were the ideals of gentility in the 18th century?
He lays those out and he's going to conform to them,
and speaking with reserve, holding yourself properly,
even learning how to walk into a room in the proper way.
Washington himself was very conscious of the fact
that he had never had any college education.
Unlike Jefferson or Adams,
he had had no refined approach to letters and the humanities.
Though very much the outdoorsman
who loves swimming, hiking, hunting and fencing,
Washington is determined to elevate his social standing.
He is convinced, it seems, that important events await him.
One has to remember that Washington was huge,
that Washington was 6-foot-2, 6-foot-3,
built like an oak tree
in a time when people tended to be shorter.
And so when he walked in the room,
he physically dominated that room.
At 17, Washington secures a profitable job
as a surveyor in Virginia,
including the western frontier.
He gains a unique knowledge of the American landscape--
knowledge that will serve him later in battling the British.
He knew the land,
he knew where the caves were, the creeks.
He also had great instincts how to read the weather.
He understood the sun and the moon
as well as anybody of his era.
He was an expert on the topography
of the eastern United States,
and this allowed him a huge advantage.
George Washington, in many ways, was a guerrilla fighter.
The British would come in, big clumsy army of redcoats,
and Washington knew how to go after them
then disappear into the woods.
So his innate knowledge as a surveyor of the landscape
was, bar none, superior for his age.
In 1753
the lieutenant governor of Virginia,
Robert Dinwiddie,
is ordered to protect British territorial claims
in the Ohio River Basin against their French colonial rivals.
He sends Washington on a dangerous mission
to deliver a message to the French to vacate the area.
Washington successfully
delivers the message.
But the return trip nearly kills him.
On the way back,
they have to walk through frozen rivers.
Everybody else in the group
comes down with frostbite or sickness;
he doesn't come down with anything.
He learns "survive and you shall succeed,"
and he's a survivor in those early years.
Washington publishes a journal about his adventure
and becomes an international celebrity at the age of 22.
But his next trip to the Ohio Valley
ignites a global war.
In 1754, Washington earns a commission as a major
in the Virginia militia representing the British.
On his second journey into the Ohio Valley,
Washington and his men ambush a French scouting party,
striking the first blow in the French and Indian war.
His behavior was that of an inexperienced officer
who bit off more than he could chew.
He learned a great deal from that.
I think one lesson he learned in particular
was don't be too aggressive, be careful what you take on.
The war provides Washington
with valuable military experience.
He begins to learn
that traditional European methods of war
do not necessarily translate to the colonies.
Large columns of men marching at each other
are not effective in the woods.
North America is heavily forested.
It's totally unlike Europe
with its neatly manicured fields and hedgerows.
Washington learns from that don't try to fight straight up,
let the terrain fight for you.
Washington will have another brush with death
at the Battle of Monongahela.
After British commanding officer General Edward Braddock
is mortally wounded,
Washington steps in to help organize a retreat.
Washington has two horses shot from beneath him...
and four musket balls pierce his coat.
Yet he remained unharmed.
This way!
George Washington used the word "providence" a lot
in his writings.
Today, we think of it as meaning good luck or fortune.
But back then, it meant God's presence.
Men were going down to the right and the left of him,
and he knows it's all arbitrary and chance.
You can be standing in the wrong place
and be disemboweled by a cannonball,
and he saw that.
And that had to have had an effect on him.
Why was my life spared
when so many of my fellow Virginians died in this battle?
He's lucky.
By all rights, he shouldn't have survived his twenties,
he should have been killed several times.
He came to believe that he was charmed--because he was.
So this had a strong effect on George Washington
and his belief that maybe my life was preserved
for some greater purpose.
During a sick leave from the French and Indian War,
Washington has a fortunate encounter
with the recently widowed Martha Custis,
the wealthiest woman in Virginia.
Well, Martha Washington was in her late twenties
when George Washington courted her.
In a lot of the paintings that we see of her,
she has white hair and a bonnet.
And she's, you know, in the more senior years of her life.
But when she and George Washington were courting,
she was quite the catch.
Would you care for a stroll?
Certainly.
You have done well, I see.
Oh, thank you.
You should come and visit Mount Vernon.
We are expanding the house, building out the farms.
One day it will be one of the grandest houses in all Virginia.
I will.
George Washington was 6-feet-2, he's very tall.
When Abigail Adams met him for the first time in 1775,
she wrote, "I was quite struck by General Washington.
Citizen and soldier are agreeably blended in him.
Modesty marks every line of his face."
She was just gushing over George Washington.
Oh, it's beautiful.
So he must have been commanding in his appearance
but also very charismatic.
And there was just this mutual attraction between them,
but they also were both ready,
they were both ready to have that family and that security
that they could each bring one another.
And so that's perhaps one reason
why their long-distance relationship
resulted in only three dates and then a proposal.
In 1759, after their wedding,
George and Martha settle into Mount Vernon
with Martha's two children from her first marriage.
During the years leading up to the War of Independence,
Washington expands Mount Vernon
and establishes himself as a political figure
in Virginia's House of Burgesses.
He had been very active,
not in the radical side of revolutionary politics,
but as someone who was
a pragmatic Eisenhower-like figure
that could bring a lot of diverse groups together.
In 1772 Charles Wilson Peale
visits Mount Vernon to paint
the first known likeness of George Washington.
Washington wears his colonel's uniform
from the French and Indian War,
even though he had resigned from the military
some 14 years earlier.
It may have been Martha
who suggested that George pose in his uniform,
the same outfit he wore when he was courting her.
But Washington was also acutely aware
of the image he was promoting-- that of a leader.
So he knew how to dress for an occasion,
he knew how to look,
and that was one of his incredible strengths
as a politician
that made him a great actor.
We have to remember that he loved plays,
he loved to read Shakespeare.
So he liked acting, and he knew how to act.
In the summer of 1775
Washington is a robust 43-year-old
and in the prime of his life.
Just appointed commander of the Continental Army,
he prepares to leave for war.
At risk is everything he holds dear.
Martha, I shall be departing in a few moments.
Yes.
I know not whether it will be in my power
to write to you again until I arrive at camp in Boston.
You will write when you can.
I know that, George.
Come and sit with me, please.
I think they loved each other,
but if you think about it,
he was gone eight years during the Revolutionary War
and returned to Mount Vernon only once.
Just think about that.
I think Martha Washington was very strong.
You say that you do not want this commission,
yet you are the only one qualified for it.
Martha Washington expected George Washington
to return to her in the fall of 1775;
that was his promise to her.
And then she realized
the war was going to go on for a long time.
So she decided to join him.
Historians at Mount Vernon think that she spent 50% of the war
with George in camp,
which really shows you the bonds that they had
and the dependence that they had
and the strength that they gained and gleaned
from one another by being together.
In Boston, Washington takes command
of 16,000 militiamen.
The logistical challenges are daunting.
He is in desperate need of gunpowder and other resources.
Everything was very strategic with Washington.
He understood that the key to victory
was going to always be supply lines,
that you had to have munitions, that you had to have foodstuffs,
that you had to have blankets,
that you had to have gunpowder that was dry,
and he never liked to act
if he didn't have all of the necessary materials for war
at his disposal.
Before Washington arrives,
the British had seized Bunker and Breed's Hill,
taking heavy casualties.
With no hope of engaging the British head to head,
Washington sends a 25-year-old named Henry Knox
to bring artillery to Boston.
Henry Knox is one of the most fascinating figures
in the entire revolution,
and he ends up being one of Washington's closest comrades
and closest friends.
If you look at Knox's background,
he doesn't seem like much.
He's a Boston bookseller.
But it's Washington's genius
that he's able to see beneath the surface of any individual,
and he sees something in Knox.
Knox is somebody who can think a little bit outside the box,
and that's what Knox does at Boston.
In one of the greatest logistical feats
in the entire war,
Knox delivers cannons captured from Fort Ticonderoga.
It takes him three months to negotiate
over 200 miles of frozen swamps and impassable roads.
Washington places the artillery
high on Boston's Dorchester Heights.
With his forces unable to aim their cannons
high enough to counter,
British General Howe has no choice but to withdraw.
Most people don't realize that ideology
is not really the most important factor in an insurgency;
it's momentum.
So, in Washington's way of thinking,
the fact that he was able to have the high ground
and hold his own
would be very important for people
who had their fingers in the wind
and didn't know whether they should take the risk
of being hanged
or they should just sit tight and be neutral
or they should join the British.
The British reaction
to their defeat in Boston was absolute shock.
How could a rabble lay siege to a major city
with our army and our fleet and finally drive us out?
It was almost incomprehensible.
For his victory in Boston
Washington is hailed as the revolution's hero,
both with the public and his colleagues back in Philadelphia.
The supposedly invincible British force
has just been defeated in an early engagement.
Washington moves south to New York,
certain the British will strike there next.
But he knows his amateur army has yet to be seriously tested.
George Washington, remember,
had been a loyal officer in that army, the British army,
during the French and Indian War.
He knew they were the best trained troops in the world,
along with the Hessians.
And he is throwing a militia force up
with limited combat experience.
He knew he was in for a tough fight.
Riding with Washington is his attendant, Billy Lee.
Billy Lee, well, was a slave.
He was also the personal servant of General George Washington.
He was also Washington's friend and even Washington's protector.
And in numerable battles, Billy Lee would put himself
physically in front of Washington
because of all the shot that was coming in,
that Washington would yell at him,
"Would you get out of the way?"
And which Billy Lee would respond,
"Sir, I'll move
when you get safely back away from enemy fire."
That man was protecting Washington,
he was just not a servant.
Billy Lee will ride alongside Washington
for nearly the entire war
and become one of the most famous
African Americans of his time.
Meanwhile, after the defeat at Boston,
King George III has had enough.
He sends William Howe's brother, Admiral Richard Howe,
with the largest fleet in history--
over 400 ships and 32,000 soldiers--
with orders to crush Washington
and put a quick end to the rebellion.
On June 28th,
the first wave of over 100 British ships
is sighted approaching New York.
Washington is faced with a military impossibility--
Manhattan Island, Long Island, Staten Island, the Jersey coast,
whoever has naval superiority
is going to control that entire region.
Washington is handed an impossible situation.
Politically he has to defend New York,
yet it is obvious, with British naval superiority,
it will be impossible to defend New York.
But he had to make the effort anyhow.
July 4, 1776.
The Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia
signs the Declaration of Independence.
Five days later, on July 9th,
in Lower Manhattan,
Washington has the Declaration of Independence
read to his troops.
We hold these truths to be self-evident,
that all men are created equal,
that they are endowed by their Creator
with certain unalienable Rights,
that among these are Life, Liberty
and the pursuit of Happiness.
Where the Twin Towers once stood
is an iconic spot in American history.
The troops are lined up.
And if you looked straight down the Green
across New York Harbor,
there around Staten Island
was an invasion fleet of almost 200 ships,
the largest transoceanic invasion fleet
in history up to that time,
all floating close to 30,000 troops.
And, yet, our revolutionary forefathers
are standing on the Green,
having the Declaration read to them,
which was their call as to why we fight.
And for the support of this Declaration,
with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence,
we mutually pledge to each other
our Lives, our Fortunes and our Sacred Honor.
George Washington knew
that his troops needed a mission statement,
they needed to know why we were fighting this war.
And he said, "Let facts be submitted to a candid world
that we are doing this for these reasons."
Nearby, a crowd pulls down a lead statue
of King George.
His head is displayed on a pike.
The rest will be melted down for bullets.
Washington now faces
the best trained forces in the world.
The Howe brothers coordinate the British attack--
William on the ground and Richard on the sea.
William Howe is a superb general,
he is an excellent tactician,
he understands how to maneuver armies and troops in the field,
and, indeed, he's superior to Washington in that respect.
He's also a Whig.
And he and his brother, who commands the British fleet,
sympathize with the American cause.
And that's why multiple times, in 1776 and 1777,
Howe holds back
and he decides not to crush the American army
in such a way that will result in its utter annihilation;
but simply to defeat it.
He thinks if he can simply apply a few simple lessons,
that the American people will come to their senses,
rise up and return to the king.
The Battle of Long Island
was the first major battle
after the signing of the Declaration of Independence,
and the largest battle of the entire war.
While his brother, William,
provides cover for the British Navy,
Richard Howe lands 15,000 soldiers on Long Island.
Washington holds the high ground at Brooklyn Heights.
His troops fire down on the advancing enemy.
Howe changes tactics.
He sends half of his men undetected
through the Jamaica Pass.
He has Washington surrounded.
Some of Washington's men
retreat through the Gowanus Marsh
and are slaughtered by the British.
Washington had split his troops
between Manhattan and Long Island,
and British General Howe was closing in
with an enormous army.
Washington would need a miracle to survive.
Most military historians fault Washington
for dividing his troops when he went into New York.
And the reason that they say that
is that he didn't have a concentration of force
against a traditional army
whose forte was firepower, discipline, cavalry troops.
Washington, at this stage of the revolution,
didn't quite understand the extent of the disparity
between British professional troops and his own.
And it was not just a rout,
it was a stampede by the end of the day.
The Continental Army is no match
for the British Army and Navy.
The British expect Washington will surrender.
Uncharacteristically, Washington isn't certain
of his next move.
A surrender to the British so early in the war
means not only the death of the cause,
but shame as an honor-bound 18th century military commander.
His mood is despondent.
He's really upset at the performance of his troops,
he's mad at himself,
he's been outflanked several times by the Howe brothers.
But he's resilient.
The thought of surrendering never entered his mind.
When we teach about the American Revolution,
we tend to overlook what happened in New York.
And what happened in New York was nothing short of a miracle.
We lost.
We had it handed to us at the Battle of Long Island.
The troops that escaped that day
were huddled down exactly where the Brooklyn Bridge is now.
After consulting with his generals,
Washington orders a retreat from Long Island.
Miraculously, a heavy fog appears
and allows Washington to evacuate all 9,000 of his troops
without loss of life.
They round up some boats,
and throughout the night they evacuate them
under the cover of a fog back to Manhattan.
The British were so confident that they had us beat
that they figured we'll wrap it up come dawn.
Well, come dawn, they saw an empty beach.
And it is firmly believed that George Washington
was the last man off that beach.
And the Revolution would live on for another day.
Though certain of their military superiority,
the British are in utter disbelief
that Washington has somehow escaped with his army.
Well, look, there was a British condescension
to the Yankee Doodle ragtag troops of Washington
that weren't equipped properly,
that did not have coherent uniforms at times,
on and on.
But they knew not to underestimate George Washington.
But had he lost the army,
we probably would have been through at that point.
I think Washington understood
after the successful evacuation from New York
that at least he thought he understood
that there was a divine plan in all this.
There was a deity, that he could receive guidance from God.
This is a very important point, because at this time,
we're right in the middle of the European Enlightenment
where people who were examining the relationship
between logic and science and religion
were trying to suggest
that religion represented a retrogression
back into the Middle Ages,
and the Enlightenment was
the new scientific technological breakthrough.
And Washington was sort of a transitional figure
that could combine the best of both,
but in a way more so
than even Jefferson or Franklin or Hamilton.
Washington is an able man.
But he has no force.
General William Howe next attacks
at Manhattan's Kips Bay,
held by a Continental militia of only 1,500 men.
Howe unleashes a fury of cannon fire
later described by a British midshipman
as "so terrible and so incessant a roar of guns
few even in the army and navy had ever heard before."
Kips Bay is one the worst days
of Washington's entire life.
British troops land, and they begin to march uphill
against positions that the American could have defended
if they had really wanted to,
but the American militiamen,
the American Continentals who were there
have been defeated over and over,
they're beginning to lose confidence,
and they begin to withdraw...
even without firing a shot.
Washington arrives on the scene at that moment,
and it throws him closer to total despair
than he ever was before,
and it's one of the defining moments of his life.
When he sees his troops withdrawing
and he tells them to get back into line,
and they don't listen, they keep withdrawing.
Washington pulls the reins of his horse,
faces towards the advancing British
and begins to ride straight toward them,
knowing that he's going to die.
And General Greene,
one of his best generals, Nathanael Greene,
says he requested death.
He wanted to be a martyr.
He was embarrassed at the behavior of his troops
which reflected on him,
and he wanted to go down in battle.
Fortunately one of his aides de camp reaches out
and grabs the rein of his horse and pulls him back
and pulls Washington off the field.
There is no choice but to order a retreat.
New York is lost.
Unlike Washington,
most members of Congress had no combat experience,
and they tended to think in terms of ideals,
and they didn't really understand
what Washington and his army were going through,
and so for quite some time they are in denial.
For members of Congress,
the defeat at New York was a catastrophe,
and they can't imagine something like this could happen.
And they almost don't know what to do;
they're in a state of paralysis.
In late September,
as Washington prepares the final evacuation
of his troops from Harlem Heights,
he looks back on New York City.
One third of it is on fire,
probably due to patriot arsonists who defied orders
and burned the city as the British approached.
The defeat at Long Island and disaster at Kips Bay
was a devastating blow to Washington,
a humiliation that affected him deeply.
At those darkest moments of the war,
Washington considers the possibility
that he may have been the wrong man for the job.
Not once does he doubt the cause.
Not once does he doubt
that it's a cause worth fighting and dying for.
But he sees him himself as a human being,
and he wonders whether he was the right man for the job.
He took everything personally.
And I think when people deserted the army,
he understood it because they didn't have the right equipment,
many of them had no shoes,
he kept writing voluminous letters to Congress--
we need more money, we need more money--
but he didn't give up.
And the ones that stayed with him knew
that if they stayed with him, eventually they would get paid.
But they believed in the man
because the man believed in the cause,
and the cause was freedom and independence from England.
When news of the great victory in New York
reaches King George,
he expresses his great satisfaction
by making General William Howe a knight.
When we look at the first two years
of our American Revolution
and the changes of what happened
between April of 1775 and December of 1776,
it is a shocking decline.
The fall and winter of 1776
were desperate times for Washington.
By mid-November British General Howe
sends troops, under the command of General Cornwallis,
to pursue Washington across New Jersey.
Colonial refugees flee ahead of the British war machine.
And Washington's men are deserting.
It's 12,000 men, it's 10, it's 6.
Before long, he only has
a couple thousand men at his command.
We were an army
that was so thoroughly routed and demoralized
that when the British were in pursuit,
their cavalry was no longer even using
the standard military calls.
They were blowing fox-hunting horns.
That is the contempt they held us in.
Washington sees the American people losing hope,
and that frightens him more than anything else.
Washington doesn't worry as much about his own army in the field
as he worries about the willingness
of the American people to carry on the struggle.
Washington, not known for his public speaking,
makes a last minute plea
for his men to stay with him for 30 more days.
Those of you who are with me, step forward.
The rest are free to leave.
Washington will lose more than one third
of his able-bodied men that December.
After a series of losses and retreats,
General Washington is in danger of losing the war.
Washington writes the password for a daring attack--
Victory or death.
"It's victory or death.
We fight to be free.
We've got to do this."
And I think he knew.
I think he really believed it would succeed.
And those were the watchwords for that day
of the Battle of Trenton,
and those watchwords were intended to remind the troops
that there was no turning back--
they either won or they died.
We shall attack the Hessian garrison at Trenton
in three days.
You are a mariner, are you not, Glover?
You will find us boats.
Colonel Knox, you will organize the troops.
You gentlemen shall move my army across this river.
He sees Trenton as an opportunity
to focus Americans' minds again on what they're fighting for,
on the cause.
The plan that General Washington created
for Christmas night, 1776,
was to get across the Delaware River
approximately 10 miles north of Trenton,
swing south on a force march at night,
hit Trenton long before dawn,
catch a Hessian garrison of about 800 by surprise,
capture them all.
People have always questioned
why did Washington make this radical decision
to attack Trenton.
It was the equivalent
of Washington picking up the dice and shaking,
and he better come up with two sixes.
That's what the odds were.
Now, let's look at the numbers who crossed with him.
About 2,500 men left.
During the battles around New York,
there was close to 30,000.
Who were those 2,500 men that were left?
That was the hard core.
And on the day that was to be launched,
a true nor'easter came up the coast.
A real nor'easter.
Winds 30, 35 miles per hour, sleet, rain, snow.
On Christmas night,
as his troops prepare in the cold,
Washington orders Thomas Paine's The American Crisis
to be read throughout the entire camp,
with its famous first sentence:
"These are the times that try men's souls."
And it was a challenge
to every man and woman in America.
Are we going to stand up,
or are we going to lay down and submit?
"Tyranny, like hell," Paine writes,
"is not easily conquered.
The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph."
These words encourage Washington's men.
He could read the morale of men like nobody else.
And what he would do is use oratory
to incite those thousands
and to recruit more to the cause.
And that inspired men.
Every time you thought the Continental Army had dwindled,
he was able to bring a new life back into it.
Washington's plan calls
for multiple assaults on Trenton.
Most of his offensive plans
were too complicated, too intricate,
and he didn't have troops capable of carrying them out.
It wasn't until Washington
actually started his own move
that word came to him that the other two commanding generals
said sorry, sir, river's too high.
You're on your own.
And so when he knows that,
it's, okay, should we go forward with this
with a much smaller force and risk defeat,
or should we recognize that it's not going to happen?
He goes forward.
General Washington crosses early
to organize his troops for the attack.
But moving 2,500 men, artillery, horses and supplies
across the Delaware
takes far longer than Washington anticipated.
What should have been a one to two-hour river crossing
takes nine hours.
Just before dawn,
the last boats unload Washington's troops
on the New Jersey side of the Delaware.
The men are cold, tired
and now face a grueling 8-mile march to Trenton.
The roads were so badly iced over
that the men could barely get their footing.
And when we're talking about footing,
most of them were barefoot.
You could easily follow the track of the army
because the road was covered in blood.
Bleeding feet staggering through the winter night.
Ahead are 1,400 Hessians,
professional soldiers whom the British have hired
to supplement their troops.
General Washington fears
the Hessians will have sentries on watch.
But he also knows some will be sleeping off
their Christmas night celebrations.
Many would later say that storm was heaven sent
to cover the approach of the army,
because the Hessian commander was thinking
nobody is that crazy to be out there in a storm like this
in the middle of the night.
And so there's that sense among the troops
of despite their physical hardships,
despite the elements, that they're marching toward destiny.
Washington and his troops
arrive outside of Trenton hours behind schedule.
With daybreak, they've lost the element of surprise.
But Washington is committed.
At 8 a.m. he orders the attack.
Fix bayonets.
Fix bayonets!
Washington went into that battle
wearing his formal uniform.
He did so because he half expected to die that day.
But he was going to die with honor.
March.
The Hessian colonel, Johann Rall,
is unprepared for the attack.
He had reportedly spent Christmas night playing cards.
One account says an aide handed Rall a message
warning of a surprise attack,
but that Rall put the note in his coat pocket
without reading it.
Rall does not survive the attack.
The note was later found in his pocket.
The ending of the Battle of Trenton, I think,
is one of the finest moments in American history
and sets a precedent in American history.
Because the Americans facing them
had witnessed the Hessians executing prisoners
in Manhattan and on Long Island.
This was a moment that could have spun out of control,
but blessedly with the American troops
were some of German descent.
And these American troops started shouting in German--
Kamerad, Kamerad, lay down your arms,
we will take your surrender.
And with that, the Hessians all started to drop their weapons,
put their hands up, there was no massacre.
On New Year's Eve, 1776,
Washington again asks his men to stay with him.
The inspiring victory at Trenton
and a promised 10-dollar bonus
convinced many to stay and fight.
Hip Hip Huzzah!
Washington follows up
with another surprise victory at Princeton.
He makes the British believe he is still in his camp
by ordering his men to leave their campfires ablaze,
then marches his men to Princeton
to attack Cornwallis' flank.
At Princeton and the campaign that follows,
Washington drives the British
almost entirely out of New Jersey.
He wipes out all the gains that they made
in that previous autumn of 1776.
In an incredibly short time, less than two weeks,
Washington has completely changed the course of the war.
Washington has restored hope.
Washington has restored
the American people's belief in victory.
General Washington winters with the Continental Army
at Morristown.
There, he begins to discover a strategy to survive.
Washington believes in continuing to maintain
constant pressure on the enemy
so that when he withdraws to winter quarters,
he doesn't just sit there and observe things.
He's sending out cavalry, he's sending out militia
to pressure the British and their German allies
at every possible point, constantly,
throughout the remains of the winter
and into the spring.
He doesn't give Howe a moment to rest.
Washington had to survive
and he had to tell people in America
that I'm not losing and we're going to gain strength,
and the British can't do this indefinitely.
And he was right about that.
You know, when we deal with the Continental Congress,
we're dealing with the creation of the United States in 1776,
well, these politicians-- Jefferson, Adams and the rest--
you know, they sign their names, they go back home.
Adams goes to Massachusetts, Jefferson to Virginia.
The Revolution was a marathon.
Okay, he's on horseback for 7 1/2 years.
I mean, he's out there all that time.
Washington has to find how to fund this army,
how to keep them equipped.
He's the star of the American Revolution,
not because of his cunning on the battlefield,
but he kept the spirit of the Continental Army alive
even in its darkest moments.
By the spring of 1777,
Washington has grown the Continental Army
back to a force of 9,000 men.
But in September, at the Battle of Brandywine,
Washington is defeated,
and British General William Howe takes control of Philadelphia,
the American capital.
Losing Philadelphia is another devastating blow
to General Washington.
Coupled with General Gates' victory at Saratoga,
some question Washington's ability to lead and to win.
Washington was very much revered
by the men who served underneath him,
especially the officers.
His fate was going to be their fate.
Now, not everyone loved George Washington.
There were some generals who competed
and wanted to have his job:
General Gates, General Charles Lee,
General Conway.
But one by one, each of those generals
in their attempts for personal glory
kind of fell away.
And George Washington was the last one standing.
In December of 1777
Washington and his troops arrive at Valley Forge for the winter.
Washington had been told
there would be 8 months' worth of food in storage.
In reality, there were just 8 days' worth of supplies.
At Valley Forge, Washington's troops suffer
from hunger, disease and exposure.
2,500 soldiers die by the end of the winter.
Valley Forge was indeed the terrible winter.
Disease spread through the Army.
It's said that approximately 20% of the entire army
died of disease that winter.
The troops didn't have adequate clothing to wear,
they were still wearing their old summer uniforms.
They were down to just a few barrels of flour.
They didn't have any meat,
and their suffering was incredible.
Washington realizes that the morale of his men
is part of that preservation.
He inspires his troops by appealing to their emotions,
like he had before the crossing of the Delaware.
He has Joseph Addison's play Cato read to his troops.
It tells the story of a selfless patriot
who holds to his belief of liberty in the face of death.
A day, an hour, of virtuous liberty...
is worth a whole eternity in bondage.
What pity is it
that we can die but once to serve our country.
Washington had a genius
for keeping the morale high of his troops.
He knew just how far a human spirit could go
and when they would need
a kind of a different type of fellowship.
And he was able to provide that.
And Washington was trying to remind them
that they were republicans,
that they believed in the idea that people had the right
to elect their own leaders and make their own laws.
That's a kind of an abstract thought for an army
in the field of battle;
so he was trying to imbue it,
I guess the word would be revolutionary fervor.
Part of that revolutionary fervor came back
to the basic necessity of a well-trained army.
In February of 1778,
an unemployed Prussian army officer
arrives at Valley Forge
with a letter of introduction from Benjamin Franklin.
He is Baron von Steuben,
and he is offering his military skills to the cause.
When Baron von Steuben arrived at Valley Forge,
he was very well trained in European military tactics.
But it didn't take long
for von Steuben to realize in his inspections
that these men really needed some skill sets
to be a better fighting force.
When Benjamin Franklin was in Paris,
he corresponded often with Washington.
Occasionally they had sort of a bit of run-ins
because Franklin was always recruiting people
to come help Washington fight,
and Washington wasn't sure he needed
all these commissioned officers
that would run into Ben Franklin in the courts of Paris.
We get all sorts of people,
including Lafayette and von Steuben,
but there are a few riffraff
that I think Ben Franklin sent over.
And at one point, Washington is saying, hey,
vet these people a little bit more carefully.
Von Steuben speaks little English.
His translators struggle with his frequent expletives.
He trains Washington's men into a professional army.
Fire!
First rank!
Within a couple of months,
you had a very confident fighting force.
What's great about the story of Valley Forge
is that it's an organic, natural, true story.
A bedraggled, hungry, starving, naked army
goes into Valley Forge;
but a confident, fearless fighting force emerges.
Over and over again, you see George Washington
looking for that right moment to strike.
His army left Valley Forge,
he knew that the British were evacuating Philadelphia,
and they converged at the Battle of Monmouth.
I think at Monmouth that was the first time
that Washington saw that in a classical set battle
they would not lose;
not that they would win easily,
but the Continental Army at least could hold its own
against regular British forces.
And though neither side really won
the Battle of Monmouth,
the British realized they were dealing with a different army
than they had been prior to that point.
Washington is one of the greatest military leaders
in American history and in world history.
But most of the great generals in world history end up losers--
Hannibal, Napoleon, Robert E. Lee.
Washington was not tactically a good general.
He does begin to learn the lesson
that's going to be so significant,
the strategic lesson, not the tactical lesson,
the strategic lesson that the British have to win;
all I have to do is not lose.
But it takes him a while.
This goes against every instinct in his body.
He's a fighter.
Fire!
France enters the war in 1778
on the side of the Americans,
convinced in part by Ambassador Benjamin Franklin
and the Americans' stunning victory
at the Battle of Saratoga.
The French Navy
and a young French aristocrat, the Marquis de Lafayette,
finally help turn the tide
to an American victory at Yorktown in 1781.
Everybody knew George Washington wanted
to defeat the British in New York
because he had been so badly beaten
by the British there in 1776,
and the Marquis de Lafayette wrote him a letter and said,
look, I know you really have your eye on New York,
but I'm telling you, the British General Cornwallis,
he's building up a fortification here in York, Virginia--
I don't think he's going anywhere.
Washington has a choice.
He can continue to pursue his fixation on New York City,
or he can recognize an opportunity.
Washington lets go of his pride.
Washington lets go of his fixation.
That decision that Washington makes,
decides the fate of the United States of America.
Washington tricked the British,
he made them think he was going to attack in New York,
but instead they surrounded Cornwallis
and defeated him at the Battle of Yorktown,
the last major battle of the war.
Washington and his Continental Army
have won the War for Independence.
Washington defeated the British by outlasting them.
Plain and simple.
He defeated the British Army by staying alive,
by keeping his troops moving,
by not giving in, a war of attrition.
And we see pictures of these guys
with bloodstained bandanas--
it's all true.
They're all starving to death. They're not fed.
Those are the guys that won the war.
And let us also give credit where credit is due.
The French intervention was crucial.
And one can almost say it was not so much that we won,
it's that they lost.
Anytime an army lands on foreign soil,
there's only a finite period they have to win,
and we don't know what that finite period is.
But it's usually predicated on how much money they spend,
how many troops they lose,
and whether they have a perception of winning
and bringing definite benefits to the population back home.
But as two years of peace talks drag on in Paris,
Washington's troops and officers go without pay.
There are even rumors of a military coup
unless Washington is more forceful
in demanding funds from Congress.
In the winter of 1782,
our army was encamped in Newburgh, New York,
starving, unpaid--
not unlike the winter at Valley Forge.
We know that Yorktown is the last battle in the war.
They didn't know that.
Washington assumed the war was going to continue.
The British still had 25,000 troops in country.
And the officer corps,
many of them decided to rebel.
At a gathering of officers led by General Gates,
Washington makes a surprise appearance.
He denounces the threat of a coup
and implores the men to remember the liberty they had fought for.
Washington drew a speech out of a pocket,
looked at it, and then did something unimaginable.
In his pocket, he also pulled out his spectacles,
something a military man did not wear in the 18th century.
I have grown gray in the service of my country.
Now I find I am growing blind.
Reportedly some of the officers in the room wept,
so moved by General Washington's total commitment
and personal sacrifice to his men and the cause.
What he had said to all of his officers was
I am loyal to the last drop of my blood to this Congress,
to this government, to this republic--
and you should be, too.
And at that moment in the room,
you could almost have heard the air going out of any plan
to threaten, intimidate, or mutiny against Congress.
And in that one statement, Washington did it all.
What a moment.
And what an extraordinary man to be able to do that.
Seven years after his retreat from Manhattan,
General George Washington rides triumphantly back into the city.
Washington's liberation of Manhattan in 1783
was really the capstone of the Revolutionary War
and a moment of great relief and exhilaration
by the American people.
It was so because they had suffered so long
during the revolution.
And so when word finally came
that the British were relenting and evacuating New York City,
the whole sky broke loose.
The people rejoiced.
The city went wild.
Fireworks were shot off at night.
A week later, at Fraunces Tavern,
his former New York headquarters,
Washington says goodbye to his officers.
It is with a heart full of love and gratitude
that I take my leave of you.
We forget what a sentimental man Washington was,
how close he was especially to his men
with whom he'd fought for so long.
We think of him as that wax figure on the dollar bill,
but he was, he was very close to these men,
and this was his chance to say goodbye.
He raised a toast to them,
he raised a toast to their future--
not his own, but their future.
And Washington, choked with emotion, left.
In late December 1783,
Washington sets out on horseback to Annapolis, Maryland,
where he will offer his resignation
as Commander of the Continental Army.
His travels take him through many of the areas
where he had fought the War of Independence.
Second rank! Make ready!
These were key sites of the war,
where the people had felt the battles,
and they all looked to Washington,
who had led battles in those places,
as their liberator.
So, at every stop, he was greeted with salutes,
with balls in the evening.
He loved to dance.
Every woman wanted to dance with him,
and he made a point of staying until each had a chance to.
It was step by step by step
through New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland--
a moment of triumph for Washington,
but even more so a shared triumph for the country.
December 23, 1783.
Washington arrives at Annapolis.
He is eager to return to Mount Vernon by Christmas,
but is compelled to perform one last act for his country.
At the end of the war,
Washington could have become king,
but here at the Maryland State House,
he resigns as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army
and returns happily to civilian life
at Mount Vernon.
This is another beautiful moment
in American history.
In some ways, it's choreographed.
Congress fully expected Washington
to resign his commission.
That was one reason that the delegates to Congress
don't get up and applaud Washington,
because they want to be careful to show
that they're not accepting a favor from Washington,
but that Washington is performing his duty
as an American.
I here offer my commission
and take my leave of all the employments of public life.
No man has ever been trusted more in American history
than Washington is trusted now.
Washington gives control of the military
back to the people
and is hailed as a hero.
King George III said the act made him
"the greatest man in the world."
Now, if you think about it, see,
Julius Caesar didn't do this, Oliver Cromwell didn't do this,
Napoleon's not going to do this.
National leaders had often been military leaders.
Generals became presidents, prime ministers,
despots, tyrants.
When Washington handed over his sword
and resumed civilian life,
it signaled this country was going to be different.
He resigns, walks out the door,
gets on his horse and rides off.
It is almost-- almost fiction.
Like Cincinnatus, the hero from antiquity
who put down his plow, fought for his country,
and declined personal power, Washington rides home.
He has no intention of ever again serving in public life.
When he goes back to Mount Vernon,
he never thinks he's leaving.
I want to stay here and live out my days
under my vine and fig trees.
He feels he's done what he said he would do.
And so in the Continental mind,
Washington is a Cincinnatus in the sense
that he didn't really ask for the job,
he had a life before.
And after the crisis had passed, he went back to his farm.
And it really resonated
because the natural inclination of all people is...
is not to do that.
He arrives at Mount Vernon as promised, on Christmas Eve.
After tending to Mount Vernon,
which had suffered in his absence,
he ventures west to the land he purchased
during the French and Indian War.
Perhaps the most significant event
of Washington's entire retirement
was his trip to visit his frontier properties.
Washington had always realized
that what made Americans different was the frontier,
that in Europe people were basically trapped
in their hometown.
The country was full,
they could basically be what their parents had been.
What made America different was the frontier,
the fact that Americans with initiative and ambition
could always move west
and create a new life for themselves.
He had, of course, covered these territories as a youth,
alone on horseback, as a surveyor.
And he loved those days.
Now he was going back
as the most famous person in the world,
and America's leading celebrity.
And so he just wore his coat,
had a saddlebag and his great horse.
He would try to find a settler's home to stay with at night.
And could you imagine the surprise of a person
living in a broken-down cabin in the frontier
who hardly ever has any guests,
suddenly knock on the door and you open the door,
and here is George Washington standing there
asking for a place to stay.
But other nights, he would literally sleep under the stars
or under a bush with only his coat thrown over him.
And from reading his diary,
I think in his own way he loved every minute of it.
And though he is determined in his retirement,
he is persuaded to attend the Constitutional Convention
in Philadelphia in 1787.
He didn't want to do it, and they begged him
because they knew they needed his gravitas
when he entered the room, that he was the hero,
and with him in the room, it might happen.
And, finally, he said, "I'll do it,
but only if we succeed."
Washington is elected as President of the Convention.
For the next three months, in the hot Philadelphia summer,
he attends every session.
Washington understood
that the American experiment in self-government
had depended on American success in the Revolutionary War;
but that was just achieving independence.
Now putting independence into effect
required getting the new government up and running.
America's first attempt at a government of independence,
the Articles of Confederation, had been a failure,
and that's why there was a Constitutional Convention.
Our founders understood the importance
of the document they were designing.
It was a blueprint for a system of government
that would create a country unique in human history,
a great experiment in human liberty.
There's something very deep
about understanding the people who founded our country,
because they're the ones who imprinted our DNA,
they're the ones who said here are our values.
And we've become the greatest republic
in the history of the earth,
and it's because of the values that they imparted to us.
They also knew their goal of "a more perfect union"
would be a constant work in progress.
The framers of the Constitution
understood that there were some big holes
that were left in this charter.
The two most important were
what do we do about slavery in a republic,
what do we do about the balance between the states
and the federal government?
George Washington changed over his lifetime
on the issue of slavery.
When he was a child, his father died,
and he inherited slaves.
The revolution was a transformative experience
for Washington.
He travels in the north,
he sees blacks fighting in the Continental Army,
he's got Billy Lee with him all that time,
his closest associate,
and he comes to realize that slavery as an institution
is incompatible with the values
with which the American Revolution is based on.
He has no problem with that.
But how do you end it?
The only way to end it he thinks is by gradual emancipation.
He sits in the Constitutional Convention
and listens and he understands
that if you raise the issue of slavery frontally,
it means the end of the union.
Let's get the republic established
before we raise this issue.
If he had, we wouldn't be here
because we wouldn't have had a republic.
And he's the only one of the Virginia dynasty
that frees his slaves in his will.
After the convention,
Washington's long-time aide, Alexander Hamilton,
along with James Madison and John Jay,
help get the United States Constitution ratified
through a brilliant series of anonymously published essays,
known as the Federalist Papers.
And, per the new constitution,
a president, our first, is elected.
The vote is unanimous.
Yes, he expected to be named president;
that doesn't mean he wanted to be president.
He wanted nothing better than simply to return to Mount Vernon
and work on his farms.
He doesn't grasp for it. He accepts it.
I would say that no president in American history
did not want to be president more than George Washington.
He didn't think of the presidency
as a capstone to his career;
he thought of it as an epilogue.
And if he could have gotten out of doing it, he would have.
The ride of Washington from Mount Vernon
to New York City to Wall Street
where he gets sworn in as president,
it's remarkable--
people pouring out of the countryside
just to have a glimpse of General Washington.
There he goes, that journey
was sort of the founding of our country.
You can feel how strong
the institution of the president was going to be
as a symbol for the nation when Washington took that ride.
On April 30, 1789, George Washington is sworn in
as President of the United States
at Federal Hall in New York City.
As our first president,
Washington realized he was establishing precedents
for how future presidents would govern,
including the appointment of the first cabinet.
Washington understood that in some ways
it was up to him to define the presidency.
He understood that the American people
would follow his example for good or for ill.
The Constitution was vague enough
on how the executive should be organized.
So Washington put pillars into the building.
He's the reason why Washington, D.C.,
is located between Maryland and Virginia.
That was George Washington's desire.
And so the vision of having this district
was really George Washington's vision for the nation's capital
to be geographically at the center of the 13 states.
The symbolism of the presidential office
was also important.
John Adams suggested that President Washington
be addressed as "your highness."
But Washington felt that echoed of European royalty
and preferred "Mr. President."
Washington was aware that there were those
who wanted the presidency
to be essentially a monarchy in republican guise.
They were talking of a presidency for life.
Washington serves a four-year term
and reluctantly serves another,
when fighting between the newly created Federalist Party,
led by Alexander Hamilton,
and Democratic Republican Party, led by Thomas Jefferson,
threatens the future of the country.
I, George Washington, do solemnly swear.
I, George Washington,
do solemnly swear.
That I will faithfully...
But during his eight years as president,
Washington shapes the very institutions
that make us American.
He establishes the United States Navy,
the State Department, and the Supreme Court.
And his Treasury Secretary,
Alexander Hamilton,
creates a visionary system
enabling the new nation to handle its debts
and establishes a federal banking system.
I think Washington surprised people perhaps
by his vision as president,
and he had a very powerful economic vision.
He believes his role is to remove barriers,
to create opportunities.
He saw himself in some ways as a facilitator
for liberty, for prosperity,
which he felt would naturally grow
if the American people were given the opportunity.
After two terms as president,
to the surprise of many,
Washington once again sets a precedent.
In Washington's farewell address,
he refuses a third term as president
and warns about the dangers of factions or political parties
that put their own interests ahead of the nation's.
Washington was representative
of the founding generation in the sense
that the word "political party" was an epithet.
They thought of parties
in the same way we think of partisan lobbyists.
They distort the conversation, the political conversation
in ways that are not in the public interest.
In some ways, the most important thing
that George Washington did was to leave office after two terms.
Washington could have remained in office as long as he wanted,
but by voluntarily stepping down,
and this at a time
when the Constitution did not require that.
He said two is enough, and this set a precedent
for presidents right down to the 20th century.
Washington also stresses
the importance of religion and morality.
He writes, "Of all the dispositions and habits
that lead to political prosperity,
religion and morality are indispensable supports."
And Washington helps to establish the American view
of religious tolerance...
in a short but enormously impactful letter
to the Jewish congregation at Newport, Rhode Island.
Washington writes,
"May the children of the stock of Abraham
who dwell in this land
continue to merit and enjoy the good will
of the other inhabitants."
Washington was a man who was profoundly convinced
of the virtue of religious tolerance.
Because it is religious tolerance
which makes for peace, and peace is what he wanted.
He promotes tolerance, but yet he also sees
that religion has a major role to play
in the lives of Americans,
because what, after all, holds together a republic?
A monarchy is held together by corruption and patronage.
But a republic is held together by virtue.
Where is virtue to come from?
He could find virtue arising really only from one source,
and that was from religion.
Washington spent the last years of his life
here, at his beloved Mount Vernon.
He rose early each morning
to actively manage every aspect of his farm.
During the daytime he was helping to create
innovative ways of farming,
including new methods of crop rotation.
In the evening,
he and Martha entertained an endless stream of visitors.
On the morning of December 12, 1799,
Washington goes out for his daily ride to inspect his farms.
It is freezing and raining.
It will be his last ride at Mount Vernon.
Washington arrives home five hours later
and finds visitors.
Not wanting to keep them waiting,
he decides against changing out of his wet clothing.
That night Washington falls ill.
His throat swells with infection
and he begins a three-day process
of suffocating to death.
He couldn't breathe, he was choking,
he had been bled repeatedly by his doctors.
He had done one thing, however.
He had prepared two wills,
and he asked that those wills be brought to him.
And he looked at them, and he tore up one.
We don't know what it says, but he tore up one,
and he said this was the one.
This was the one that freed his slaves,
this is the one that went down to posterity.
Then in the end, he said, "'Tis well," and died.
Washington dies on December 14, 1799, at age 67.
A funeral is held at Mount Vernon four days later,
and memorial services are held
in many cities throughout the nation.
Washington's trusted friend Alexander Hamilton
helps stage some of these tributes.
Hamilton writes, Washington was
"a character unrivaled on the list of true glory."
In Philadelphia, church bells toll,
alongside cannon and gunfire salutes.
Thousands of Americans wear mourning clothes for months.
In France, Napoleon orders a funeral oration.
In England, flags of the English fleet
are lowered to half mast.
Back at Mount Vernon, to protect their privacy,
Martha Washington burns almost all of the letters
the couple had exchanged over the years.
Their innermost thoughts during the War for Independence
and creation of the country are lost to us,
but Washington's legacy remains:
that of citizenship, sacrifice, honor, and integrity.
After his death,
Americans marveled at Washington's dedication
to creating and preserving our republic.
In his eulogy he was remembered
as "first in war, first in peace,
and first in the hearts of his countrymen."
More than any other person,
George Washington enabled us to better understand who we are
as a people and a nation.
He remains the greatest figure in American history.
This is what Americans need to understand,
to go back to the beginning.
The statue was a living, breathing human being
who went through all of these incredible sacrifices
and experiences, dangers, and succeeded.
Fire that weapon!
There are two founding moments in American history--
when we declare our independence
and when we declare our nationhood--
Washington is the central figure in both of those moments.
In further support of this declaration...
He is more important for us
in the 21st century as an example
than he was perhaps at any time since he was alive.
I think Americans need him now as a unifying force
of what it means to serve,
what it means to sacrifice for the nation.
If you don't understand George Washington,
you don't understand what's important about America.
And nowadays, I don't think children
are being taught in schools the original founding history.
It is Washington more than anybody else--
more than Jefferson, more than Franklin,
more than Adams, more than any of the others--
who makes the American experiment,
as he called it, a success.
And without him, it is simply incomprehensible
to think of the United States
surviving more than a decade or two decades
in the environment in which it was born.
He's the father of our country
because at a time when we were being torn apart
and we needed to be led,
he held us together with his rectitude and his honor.
It's easy to be smart, it's easy to be clever,
but what's important is to be wise,
and that's what you found in George Washington.