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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!

Hip Hip Huzzah! 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.