George Washington

This volume covers the middle months of the siege of Boston when George Washington faced the delicate task of disbanding one army and recruiting another, all within musket shot of the British forces. Throughout the fall of 1775, assisted and sometimes thwarted by congressmen, New England officials, and fellow officers, Washington laid plans not merely to keep a besieging force around Boston and provide his men with winter necessities but also to remodel the army to make it more efficient and truly continental, intermixing officers and men without regard to their colonial identity. The numerous official letters Washington wrote and received during this period, his daily general orders, the records of his councils of war, and the minutes of his important October conference reveal a competent military administrator and a committed patriot attempting to create a professional American army which would transcend the narrow localism of the colonial past well in advance of the Declaration of Independence. Unwilling to risk an attack on the main British army in Boston during the fall of 1775, Washington encouraged and monitored two major offensive efforts elsewhere: the outfitting of a small fleet of armed vessels to disrupt the flow of British supplies by sea to Boston and Canada and the two-pronged invasion of Canada led by Richard Montgomery and Benedict Arnold. Washington also dealt with the treasonous intrigues of Benjamin Church and John Connolly and with the burning of the seaport of Falmouth. He also received several unsolicited schemes for attacking the British fleet in Boston harbor, a steady stream of personal pleadings for discharges, and a laudatory verse written by the black poet Phillis Wheatley. Substantial portions of Washington's correspondence for this period concern his personal business and family affairs. Most notable are the fourteen letters from his Mount Vernon manager, Lund Washington. They offer rare views into the daily operations of the plantation as well as into Washington's finances and land dealings. They provide valuable information about plans for remodeling the mansion house, proposals for defending it against British attack, and Martha Washington's travels culminating in her journey to join her husband at Cambridge.

Volume 1 of the Presidential Series covers the months immediately before Washinton's election. Opening in September 1788, at the point when it was certain that the Constitution would be ratified, the documents trace the mounting public pressure upon Washington to agree to accept the presidency. His letters reveal poignantly his own misgivings about leaving Mount Vernon to return to public life. Well before he was offered the presidency he was deluged with applications for public offices. These letters are singularly revealing of economic and social disruption in the aftermath of the Revolution and of the political and social assumptions of Americans at the beginning of the new nation. Letters written to Washington during these months from all over the country report the gradual acceptance of the new government and the progress of the first federal elections in the states. His correspondence with foreign admirers is also extensive.

Volume 2 is concerned largely with Washington's inaugural jouney to New York and his initial activites as president upon his arrival. The documents, with annotations, chronicle the public adulation and the elaborate receptions and public addresses that the new president encountered along his route to the capital. His correspondence with friends and acquaintances at home and abroad concerns a wide range of subjects from politics to agricultural methods. His personal letters confirm his continuing need for money, his continued involvement in the affairs of family members, and his concern with his land interest in Virginia and on the frontier. As the volume closes Washington begins to gather information for his new administration in correspondence with major officers of government on matters affecting their departments.

Volume 1 of the Revolutionary War Series begins with Washington's address of 16 June 1775 accepting command of the Continental army and continues to the middle of September 1775. The focus of the volume is on Washington's initial effort to make an effective fighting force out of the green provincial army that he found besieging the city of Boston. His military letters and orders for these three months deal extensively with his reorganization of the army, the instituting of new administrative procedures and standards of discipline, the teaching of duties to both officers and men, and the measures taken to overcome the army's perplexing supply problems, most notably the alarming shortage of gunpowder. They also touch on matters of strategy and tactics relating to schemes for reducing the British garrison in Boston, the arming of American vessels to intercept enemy supplies at sea, and the planning for Benedict Arnold's bold march to Quebec. Much of the information upon which Washington based his decisions is contained in the letters that he received from his numerous correspondents. Included here are detailed reports of British military activities in and about Boston, along with the New England coast, in Canada, and in Virginia, as well as news of legislative actions and recommendations of men, to fill positions both high and low in the Continental army. Supplementing the portrait of Washington the general provided by his official correspondence are a number of letters to and from relatives and friends in Virginia. These offer a more intimate view of the private man and his personal affairs. Of particular interest are the two letters that he wrote in June 1775 from Philadelphia to Martha Washington, rare survivals of the correspondence that Mrs. Washington destroyed shortly before her death.

The ten-volume Colonial Series, covering the years 1748-1775, takes the young Washington through his command of the Virginia Regiment during the French and Indian War and then focuses on his political and business activities as a Virginia planter during the fifteen years before the American Revolution.

The ten-volume Colonial Series, covering the years 1748-1775, takes the young Washington through his command of the Virginia Regiment during the French and Indian War and then focuses on his political and business activities as a Virginia planter during the fifteen years before the American Revolution.

The ten-volume Colonial Series, covering the years 1748-1775, takes the young Washington through his command of the Virginia Regiment during the French and Indian War and then focuses on his political and business activities as a Virginia planter during the fifteen years before the American Revolution.

The ten-volume Colonial Series, covering the years 1748-1775, takes the young Washington through his command of the Virginia Regiment during the French and Indian War and then focuses on his political and business activities as a Virginia planter during the fifteen years before the American Revolution.

Washington was rarely isolated from the world during his eventful life. His diary for 1751-52 relates a voyage to Barbados when he was nineteen. The next two accounts concern the early phases of the French and Indian War, in which Washington commanded a Virginia regiment. By the 1760s when Washington's diaries resume, he considered himself retired from public life, but George III was on the British throne and in the American colonies the process of unrest was beginning that would ultimately place Washington in command of a revolutionary army. Even as he traveled to Philadelphia in 1787 to chair the Constitutional Convention, however, and later as president, Washington's first love remained his plantation, Mount Vernon. In his diary, he religiously recorded the changing methods of farming he employed there and the pleasures of riding and hunting. Rich in material from this private sphere, The Diaries of George Washington offer historians and anyone interested in Washington a closer view of the first president in this bicentennial year of his death.

Washington was rarely isolated from the world during his eventful life. His diary for 1751-52 relates a voyage to Barbados when he was nineteen. The next two accounts concern the early phases of the French and Indian War, in which Washington commanded a Virginia regiment. By the 1760s when Washington's diaries resume, he considered himself retired from public life, but George III was on the British throne and in the American colonies the process of unrest was beginning that would ultimately place Washington in command of a revolutionary army. Even as he traveled to Philadelphia in 1787 to chair the Constitutional Convention, however, and later as president, Washington's first love remained his plantation, Mount Vernon. In his diary, he religiously recorded the changing methods of farming he employed there and the pleasures of riding and hunting. Rich in material from this private sphere, The Diaries of George Washington offer historians and anyone interested in Washington a closer view of the first president in this bicentennial year of his death.

Washington was rarely isolated from the world during his eventful life. His diary for 1751-52 relates a voyage to Barbados when he was nineteen. The next two accounts concern the early phases of the French and Indian War, in which Washington commanded a Virginia regiment. By the 1760s when Washington's diaries resume, he considered himself retired from public life, but George III was on the British throne and in the American colonies the process of unrest was beginning that would ultimately place Washington in command of a revolutionary army. Even as he traveled to Philadelphia in 1787 to chair the Constitutional Convention, however, and later as president, Washington's first love remained his plantation, Mount Vernon. In his diary, he religiously recorded the changing methods of farming he employed there and the pleasures of riding and hunting. Rich in material from this private sphere, The Diaries of George Washington offer historians and anyone interested in Washington a closer view of the first president in this bicentennial year of his death.

Washington was rarely isolated from the world during his eventful life. His diary for 1751-52 relates a voyage to Barbados when he was nineteen. The next two accounts concern the early phases of the French and Indian War, in which Washington commanded a Virginia regiment. By the 1760s when Washington's diaries resume, he considered himself retired from public life, but George III was on the British throne and in the American colonies the process of unrest was beginning that would ultimately place Washington in command of a revolutionary army. Even as he traveled to Philadelphia in 1787 to chair the Constitutional Convention, however, and later as president, Washington's first love remained his plantation, Mount Vernon. In his diary, he religiously recorded the changing methods of farming he employed there and the pleasures of riding and hunting. Rich in material from this private sphere, The Diaries of George Washington offer historians and anyone interested in Washington a closer view of the first president in this bicentennial year of his death.