George Washington’s Birthday: ‘First in the Hearts of His Countrymen’

“Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth.” —Washington

Today, Feb. 22, is the anniversary of the birthday of the greatest American, the Father of our Country, George Washington.

Washington was born on his family’s Popes Creek estate in Virginia on what (in the reformed calendar) was Feb. 22, 1732, to planter Augustine Washington and his second wife, Mary Ball.

Despite his strong-minded mother’s desire to keep him home, adventurous George became a surveyor and then a soldier, gaining fame and honor with his exploits during the French and Indian War. But later, even as Washington happily lived with his wife Martha and her children at his beloved Mount Vernon estate (he was an excellent farmer and businessman), a prominent and well-respected figure in local Virginia politics and society, he began to recognize how dangerous and authoritarian were many of the actions of the British imperial government.

George Washington became the Commander-in-Chief of the Revolutionary Army. He led his rag-tag army through the defeats and trials of 1775 and 1776, engineered their stunning victories, inspired them when they were almost in despair, and put down their rebellions. He took a group of farmers and shopkeepers and “ne’er-do-wells” and made them a successful fighting force, he helped turn them into the heroes who won the Revolution. Without Washington, the Revolution would have failed early on. Without Washington to pull them through the hard, hungry times as well as the hopeful times, the army would have fallen apart. Every Revolutionary soldier was an admirable freedom fighter, but George Washington was the indispensable man. He took on the world’s most powerful empire and defeated it.

His fellow countrymen knew he had done what no one else could do, and so he was appointed to head the Constitutional Convention. And when he had helped craft the U.S. Constitution, he was unanimously elected to be the first U.S. President, once again to do what no man had done before, to set the precedent for all future presidents. Yet just as he did when he was military Commander-in-Chief, Washington voluntarily surrendered his power.

Without George Washington, there would be no United States of America, and we can truly say of him as Henry Lee said, that he was “First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.”