George Washington had proven his bravery under fire during the French and Indian War.  As a legislator and property owner, he had a reputation for integrity.  When he saw America threatened by increasingly unjust and tyrannical actions of Great Britain in the 1760s and 1770s, he stepped forward to lead the colonies to independence, actions that are celebrated still as the nation approaches its 250th anniversary of independence.

In the years after the French and Indian War, the American colonies saw one right falling after another from a distant government in which the colonists had no vote and no voice.  Taxation without representation, the erosion of the right of trial by jury, invasions of homes and businesses without warrants, arrests for peaceful assemblies, and the closures of colonial legislatures for protesting these actions.  He served in the Virginia House of Burgesses aside Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry.

Washington was more moderate in his approach to the growing problems than a firebrand like Henry and his thundering speeches.  He supported the colonial boycotts against British products in the 1760s to protest taxation without representation and preferred the work of quiet diplomacy.  In 1772, he supported more united action by the colonies with the Committees of Correspondence, in which colonial leaders would communicate with each other to report the actions and abuses of the British.  In 1774, he became a delegate to the First Continental Congress, an attempt to unite the colonies in their protests against British abuses.

When fighting erupted in April 1775, the Continental Congress concluded that the colonies needed their own army instead of the individual militias of the colonies.  On June 14, 1775, the Continental Army was created, a day the US Army still celebrates as its birth.  John Adams nominated Washington to be its commander-in-chief.  Washington accepted but refused to be paid for his service believing his duty to defend his neighbors was more important.  In fact, he would end up paying many army expenses personally.

In March 1776, he forced the British from Boston at the Battle of Dorchester Heights.  As the British approached New York with an army of 37,000 that summer, he rushed to Long Island to meet them.  On July 4, the colonies declared independence.  A copy of the Declaration of Independence was sent to Washington in New York.  Washington had it read to his troops as he wanted to remind them what they were fighting for.  He understood the difficulty they were facing.  Above all, Washington believed the greatest strength of America was in his words "the unconquerable resolve of its citizens."

Washington was outnumbered and lost the Battle of Long Island.  New York City would be held by the British throughout the war.  He was pushed back across New York into New Jersey and then into Pennsylvania.  By December, it looked like the war was lost.  Washington decided they needed to strike back.  On Christmas night, he gathered his troops and crossed the Delaware River back into New Jersey and quietly marched to the nearest garrison, an outpost at Trenton held by German mercenaries working for the British.  At daybreak, he caught them completely off guard and took the post.  The victory in the dead of winter sent a message to the British and to the American people that Washington was not backing down and the cause was still alive.

He would lose more battles than he won, a fact that frustrated some in the heat of the moment, but his determination to keep fighting wore down the British.  Conditions on the battlefield were harsh and dispiriting, but Washington kept the men fighting each year of the war. By 1778, British officials quietly concluded they could not win the conflict, but the fighting would continue.  That same year, France allied with the United States against the British, impressed how the small force fighting for independence was matching one of the most armies in the world.

The final victory would come at Yorktown, Virginia, in 1781.  Knowing that British forces were heading northward from the Carolinas prompted Washington and his French allies to head to Virginia.  After a battle of nearly two weeks, the British surrendered; and the war was won.  Washington could have had anything he wanted after leading the fight against Britain, but he instead quietly returned to his life at Mt. Vernon.

In 1787, he would preside over the Constitutional Convention that gave the new nation the constitution still in use today.  He was elected unanimously to two terms as president starting in 1789.  He stepped down in 1797, believing that no man was indispensable and that the cause of freedom and unity mattered more than one man.

"They wanted another Washington," mused Napoleon during his exile to St. Helena years later.  Even decades after his death, Washington's willingness to give up power astounded European observers.  He preferred to let Americans define themselves and lead themselves than force any vision of his own upon the people. His honesty and his character were upheld as an example to American schoolchildren for generations afterward.  Cities, counties, schools, monuments, universities, and the nation’s capital were dedicated to Washington.