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The Founding Fathers are George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, John Jay, and Alexander Hamilton.

George Washington is the first American president (1789 – 1797) after he had been serving as commander-in-chief during the American Revolution. He was born in Westmoreland County, Virginia, on February 22, 1732, as a son to Mary and Augustine. George Washington is also called ‘the father of his nation’ because of the crucial role he played in creating the United States of America.

George Washington started out as a planter, and later (1749) became a county surveyor. His half-brother Lawrence Washington was also a surveyor, and after Lawrence died in 1752, George was inheriting part of his brother’s estate and he became an assistant of the colony. In 1752, George Washington continued to become a Virginia militia leader, which in the following years brought him a lot of experience

Washington received the rank of colonel (an honorary title) and joined the British Virginian army (under General Braddock) in 1755. Later that year, in August, Washington became the commander of all troops in Virginia at the age of just 23.

He had to patrol and protect some 400 border miles with under 700 badly disciplined and ill-motivated colonial troops while the colonial legislature in Virginia was also not inclined to help him, an unfortunate and frustrating assignment, and in 1757, he was sent home in bad health.

In December of 1758, George decided to give up military service and the following 16 years he lived his life as a planter. In 1759, he married Martha Dandridge, who was believed to be a very distant relative, but also a very wealthy widow. Together they raised the two children she had from the previous marriage, but the couple never had children of their own.

Washington’s real estate holdings had flourished and his social standing had increased. In 1757, he already owned some 6500 acres of land, and in 1758, George was elected to be part of Virginia’s provincial legislature. George was enjoying a pretty luxurious lifestyle and he could often be found fox hunting for leisure.

Through diversification, he managed to survive the sometimes hostile tobacco market, and he made the switch from tobacco to wheat to be his key crop. George turned out to be an excellent entrepreneur as he also set up spinning and weaving activities as well as horse breeding and various other operations.

During those years, George stayed away from politics totally as he was focusing solely on his business. But then in August 1774, George Washington was chosen to attend the first Continental Congress sitting, and in the following year, he was appointed by the Congress as Commander-in-chief.

Under his command played the Continental Army a crucial role when New York was seized from the British troops, and after the American forces were victorious in New Jersey and Trenton, it happened that many young people became enthusiastic and became committed to joining the army.

As commander-in-chief of America’s revolutionary forces was Washington instrumental to force the British Army out of Boston. He managed to hold a weak and fragile army together, and he successfully negotiated with the French to save the young nation from defeat and disintegration. The American Revolutionary War came to an end in 1783, and George Washington subsequently got out of the public eye to settle down at his Mount Vernon plantation, a move that surprised many.

George Washington was crucial for drafting the United States Constitution in 1787. In 1789 he became the first president and he was responsible for setting up many protocols in the executive department of the newly formed government. He was highly committed to creating a strong nation that would not be drawn into the war between France and Britain.

In 1793, his government issued the ‘Proclamation of Neutrality’ underscoring America’s non-involvement stand in foreign nations’ conflicts. More of Washington’s key reforms include the establishment of a national bank, setting up an effective national tax collection method, and building up an economically strong nation by the reduction of the nation’s debt.

George Washington died two years after he resigned from office of an acute pneumonia attack on December 14, 1799, at the age of 67. George was buried on his estate in a tomb. People from all over the world were mourning his death and even Napoleon ordered a 10-day mourning period in France. On December 18, there was an impressive funeral for George in Mount Vernon, Virginia.

All through the years, Washington has been ranked among the greatest and most influential U.S. presidents and he was the very first to receive the Congressional Gold Medal.

 

The U.S. Founding Fathers are George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, John Jay, and Alexander Hamilton.

One of America’s Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson, was an outspoken advocate for democracy. Jefferson, the 3^rd President of the United States (from 1801 to 1809), was also the foremost author of the 1776 U.S. Declaration of Independence.

In 1800, in the turbulent days of party conflicts, Jefferson was writing in a personal letter: “On the altar of God almighty I have sworn everlasting  hostility against any form of tyranny over man’s mind.”

Thomas Jefferson (born in Shadwell, Albemarle County, Virginia, in 1743) was a powerful and outspoken advocate of the concept of Liberty. His father had been a planter and surveyor, and Thomas inherited from him around 5,000 acres of land, and his high social standing was because of his mother, a Randolph family member, and the Randolphs were a highly prominent political family in the state of Virginia.

Thomas Jefferson studied at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, VA, and he went on to specialize in Law as he studied with George Wythe. In 1772, Thomas married widow Martha Wayles Skelton, and together they lived in Thomas’ partly constructed Monticello mountaintop house.

Jefferson, tall, freckled, sandy-haired, and a little awkward, was an eloquent correspondent, but in no way a good public speaker, and he rather used his pen than his voice In Virginia’s House of Burgesses and later in the Continental Congress, to make fierce contributions to the patriot cause. Jefferson was known as the ‘silent member of Congress’, and at the age of 33, he drafted the American Declaration of Independence. In subsequent years, Thomas worked hard to turn the Declaration’s words into reality in Virginia, and in 1786, Jefferson wrote a significant bill to establish the freedom of religion.

In 1785, Jefferson became Benjamin Franklin’s successor as minister to France, but his warm sympathy towards the French Revolution brought him in a highly conflictual situation with Alexander Hamilton at the time that Jefferson’s function in President Washington’s Cabinet was Secretary of State. As a result, Jefferson resigned from this function in 1793.

This was a period of sharp political conflicts, and it was also the time that we could see two key separate parties started to form, the Democratic-Republicans and the Federalists. It wasn’t long before Thomas Jefferson took leadership of the party of the  Republicans, who were sympathizing with the revolutionary cause that was going on in France. Jefferson was strongly attacking the Federalist policies, he was strongly opposing a centralized Government, and he was also a strong advocate of rights of individual states.

Although Jefferson was reluctant as a presidential candidate in 1796, he had come within 3 votes of getting elected President. He had been President Adams’ opponent, but a flaw in the U.S. Constitution caused him to become Vice President. This constitutional defect led to a more significant problem in 1800 when the Republican party establishment was casting a tied vote between Aaron Burr and Thomas Jefferson when they attempted to get as well a President as a Vice President that came from their own ranks. The House of Representatives needed to settle the tie, and although Hamilton disliked both Burr and Jefferson, he endorsed Jefferson’s election.

When Jefferson became President, the revolutionary struggle in France already was over. He drastically slashed the expenditures for Army and Navy, he cut the federal budget immensely and eliminated the highly unpopular tax on whiskey. All his measures resulted in a reduction of the national debt by some 35 percent.

Jefferson also directed a naval squadron to the Mediterranean in order to eliminate the Barbary pirates who were threatening and destroying American commerce in that region. Jefferson additionally was responsible for the Louisiana Purchase. Though the U.S. Constitution did not include any provisions to acquire new land, he overcame his reluctance over constitutionality issues as soon as he had  the chance to acquire the Louisiana Territory in 1803 from Napoleon

During Thomas Jefferson’s second term as President, he was more and more busy with keeping America from getting involved in the terrifying Napoleonic wars, although both France and England had been interfering with American merchantmen’s neutrality rights. As a solution, Jefferson came up with an embargo on American shipping, but this didn’t work properly and it was highly unpopular.

After his Presidency, Jefferson returned to Monticello to work on projects such as founding the University of Virginia which happened in 1819. There was a French aristocrat who rightly observed that Thomas Jefferson had placed his mind and his house “on a highly elevated location which allowed him to contemplate the mighty universe.” Thomas Jefferson died on the 4^th of July, 1826.

 

The Founding Fathers are George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, John Jay, and Alexander Hamilton.

John Adams Jr. was born on October 30, 1735, in Braintree (now Quincy), Massachusetts. Adams was the first Vice-President and the second President of the United States, from 1797 to 1801.

His son, John Quincy Adams, later became America’s sixth President. John Adams was author, lawyer, diplomat, and statesman, and was one of the leaders of the American movement to gain independence from Great Britain.

John Adams was a descendant of the Massachusetts Bay Colony Puritan colonists and he graduated from Harvard University in 1755, just 20 years old. He subsequently studied law in the law offices of prominent lawyer James Putnam, although his father had wished he became active for in the ministry.

In 1758, John was admitted to the bar after he had earned a Master’s degree from Harvard University. He married Abigail Smith on October 25, 1764, just before he turned 29, and the couple had six children. John Adams was a member of the First Continental Congress (1774) and he helped draft the United States Declaration of Independence.

It wasn’t long before Adams Jr. became an advocate for the patriot cause. He opposed the 1765 British Stamp Act. He publicly denounced the Act as invalid when he delivered a speech to the governor’s Council of Massachusetts. When the British Parliament imposed the Act, he wrote an essay titled ‘Essay on the Canon and Feudal Law,’ which appeared in the Boston Globe.

Later, in 1770, John Adams represented British soldiers that were on trial for the so-called Boston Massacre where 5 civilians were killed. Adams justified his actions saying he felt that a case’s facts and juridical aspects were more important than the passionate beliefs of the people. Though Adams’s defense made his law practice suffer, in a later stadium these actions enhanced Adams’ standing as a righteous, courageous, fair, and generous man.

It was also in 1770 that John Adams became an elected member of the Massachusetts Assembly and he was among the five men who, in 1774, represented the British colony at the 1^st Continental Congress. When Congress decided to form the American Continental Army (1775), John Adams appointed Virginia’s George Washington as its first commander-in-chief. Adams went on to draft the Declaration of Independence together with Roger Sherman, Thomas Jefferson, Robert R. Livingston, and Benjamin Franklin which was approved on July 4, 1776.

Adams subsequently served on more committees in the newly formed government than any other member of Congress, and he was appointed head of the Board of War & Ordinance in 1777 overseeing the Continental army. Adams was also part of the American diplomatic group that negotiated the 1779 Treaty of Paris, the end of the Revolutionary War.

Adams stayed in Europe after the war, to become the first United States Minister to England in 1785. After some ten years in Europe, Adams returned to America in 1788, to take part in the first U.S. presidential elections of 1789. George Washington became (as expected) the first president, and in line with the Constitutional provision in those days, Adams became Vice President. The same thing occurred in 1792. And Adams became increasingly frustrated with this position.

In 1796, Adams won the presidential elections by a narrow margin as the Federalist nominee, to become the 2nd president of the United States. Thomas Jefferson had led the Democratic-Republican Party opposition and became Vice President.

During his presidency, Adams was confronted with a French – British war that caused quite some political difficulties for the young American nation. Adams’ diplomatic efforts to restore commercial relations with France failed which led to several naval hostilities though Adams had not declared war. The undeclared war ended in 1800, but Adams’ popularity had suffered, so he lost the 1800 elections to Thomas Jefferson, his Democratic-Republican party rival.

When his presidency was over, John Adams went back to the family farm in Quincy with Abigail, and he corresponded intensely with his dear friend Thomas Jefferson. Isn’t it remarkable that both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died on the same day in 1828, July 4, the 50th anniversary of American independence?

The last words Adams spoke were: ‘Jefferson survives.’ Adams’ son, John Quincy, eventually became America’s sixth President, although he had become a member of the Democratic-Republicans, the opposition party.