George Washington
The founder who walked away from power
Description
In December 1783, in the State House of Annapolis, Maryland, where the Continental Congress was sitting, a fifty-one-year-old Virginia plantation owner who had spent the previous eight and a half years as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army stood before the assembled delegates and formally resigned his military commission. The war for American independence had ended with the Treaty of Paris three months earlier. George Washington could have plausibly continued as a military figure with substantial political authority, in the pattern that revolutionary commanders had typically followed in human history Caesar, Cromwell, the various successful generals who had used military victory as the foundation for political rule. The act of resigning his commission and returning to private life at his Mount Vernon estate was, by every standard precedent of the previous two thousand years, unusual. When King George III heard reports that Washington intended to return to private life after the war, he reportedly said that if Washington actually did so, “he will be the greatest man in the world.”
Washington did it twice. After accepting the presidency under the new Constitution in April 1789 and serving two terms across eight years, he again voluntarily relinquished power in March 1797, refusing to stand for a third term and returning to Mount Vernon. The two precedents the resignation of military command and the two-term limit on the presidency substantially established the framework within which subsequent American political transitions would operate. The peaceful transfer of executive authority, which had been substantially exceptional in human political history before Washington, became substantially routine in the American republic after him. The two-term limit, which Washington established as a personal practice, was followed by every subsequent president for 144 years before Franklin Roosevelt broke the precedent in 1940, and was then formally codified into the Twenty-Second Amendment in 1951.
The case has become one of the central reference points in modern American political history. The substantial willingness of Washington to walk away from power twice, at moments when he could plausibly have retained it — was substantially the foundational political act of the American republic. The framework that emerged has continued to operate, with substantial modifications, across the subsequent two and a half centuries. The character of the political system the Founders constructed was substantially shaped by Washington’s specific choices, and the system’s substantial durability across the subsequent period has been substantially attributable to the precedents those choices established.
The question we’re asking: what did Washington actually do that subsequent commanders and presidents did not do, why did he do it, and what does the case reveal about how political precedents are established?
What we’ll see: Washington as commander and the 1783 resignation, the presidency and the 1797 retirement, the precedents that emerged, and what survives.
Table of contents
01The commander and the 1783 resignation
George Washington had been born in 1732 in Westmoreland County, Virginia, into a moderately wealthy planter family. His military experience had begun in the French and Indian War of 1754-1763, where he had served as a colonial militia officer under British command and acquired substantial reputation. The experience shaped his military thinking and gave him broader exposure to British colonial administration.
The Continental Congress appointed Washington as commander-in-chief in June 1775, two months after Lexington and Concord. The selection was substantially political the Congress wanted a southern commander to balance the New England origin of the conflict but Washington’s military experience and personal authority exceeded what political logic alone would have justified. He took command at Cambridge in July 1775 and held the position for eight and a half years.
02The presidency and the 1797 retirement
The Constitutional Convention of 1787, which produced the Constitution under which Washington would later serve as president, was conducted in his presence and with substantial deference to his judgment. He served as president of the Convention, with the role limited to procedural matters but with the symbolic weight of his presence shaping the deliberations. The framers had designed the presidency with Washington in mind assuming he would be the first occupant and would establish the conventions by which it would operate.
The first presidential election of 1788-1789 was substantially uncontested. Washington received electoral votes from every elector, with the unanimous selection being substantially the only such election in American history. He was inaugurated in New York City in April 1789 and would serve two terms across eight years, with his second election in 1792 again receiving substantially unanimous electoral support.
The accomplishments of the administration were substantial. The federal government was established as a functioning institution. The Bill of Rights was ratified in 1791. The Whiskey Rebellion of 1794 was suppressed, with Washington personally leading federal troops into Pennsylvania the only instance of a sitting president commanding troops in the field. The Jay Treaty of 1795 resolved several outstanding disputes with Britain. Hamilton’s financial system the Bank of the United States, federal assumption of state debts, the national currency was constructed across the period.
03The precedents
The precedents Washington established were substantial. The two-term limit on the presidency, while not constitutionally required, was substantially observed by every subsequent president for 144 years. The pattern was so substantially established that the violation of it by Franklin Roosevelt in 1940 produced substantial political controversy and was substantially central to the political case for the Twenty-Second Amendment, which formally codified the limit into the Constitution after Roosevelt’s death.
The framework of the peaceful transfer of executive power, established by the 1797 transition to Adams and the 1801 transition to Jefferson, became the substantial standard of American political practice. The 1801 transition was particularly significant because it represented the first peaceful transfer of power between opposing political parties Adams, the Federalist, ceding power to Jefferson, the Republican, after a bitterly contested election. The pattern has been substantially continued across the subsequent two and a half centuries.
04What survives, and what the case shows
The precedents Washington established have continued to operate, with substantial modifications, across the subsequent two and a half centuries. The peaceful transfer of executive authority through elections has been substantially preserved, with the substantial exception of the 2020-2021 transition that produced substantial political conflict but that nevertheless substantially conformed to the constitutional framework. The two-term limit, now constitutionally codified, has been observed without substantial controversy across the subsequent seventy-four years. The civilian control of the military has been substantially preserved across multiple wars and political crises.
The deeper lesson the case offers is about how political precedents are established and become substantially binding through cumulative practice. Washington’s specific choices to resign his military commission, to refuse a third term, to limit the ceremonial of the presidency were not constitutionally required. They became substantially established as American political conventions through Washington’s example and through the subsequent practice of presidents who followed his model. The conventions have proven substantially more durable than many of the explicit constitutional provisions, with the unwritten precedents continuing to operate substantially as the explicit text does.
05Conclusion
George Washington died at Mount Vernon in December 1799, two and a half years after leaving the presidency, at the age of sixty-seven. His will provided for the eventual emancipation of the enslaved people he owned, with the manumission taking effect after the death of his wife Martha. The provision was substantially unusual among Southern planters of his generation and substantially conflicted with the broader Virginia practice of the period.