page_title: George Washington's political evolution
section_title: Political ascendancy
hierarchical_section_title: George Washington's political evolution / Burgess Washington / Political ascendancy
caption_attribution_description: English: EM1970
context_page_description: George Washington's political evolution comprised the transformation of a young man from a moderately wealthy family in the British colony of Virginia who was motivated largely by self-interest into the first president of the United States and the father of his country. Washington was ambitious for the status and influence with which he had been surrounded in a youth spent around his half-brother Lawrence and the influential Fairfax family Lawrence married into. After working as a surveyor, a position he was able to gain with the patronage of the Fairfaxes, Washington sought to emulate his brother's military career with a commission in the Virginia militia, despite his lack of military experience. With the patronage of more influential people, he was appointed major in 1752. The next year, he was appointed special envoy charged with delivering to the French a demand to vacate territory claimed by the British. His successful completion of this task gained him his first measure of renown. Washington was promoted in 1754 and made second-in-command of the Virginia Regiment.
context_section_description: The situation was defused when London backed down and, with the exception of a tax on tea designed to assert its authority, repealed the Townshend Acts. Other than refusing to serve tea, Washington did not concern himself with the fault lines in British-colonial relations and returned his attention to his business. When he turned forty in 1772, he decided to have his portrait painted for the first time. He commissioned Charles Willson Peale and, despite having resigned his commission 13 years earlier, chose to sit in the uniform of a colonel in the Virginia Regiment.
  In late 1773 and early 1774, Washington's concerns lay closer to home than the events of the Boston Tea Party protest. Although land west of the Alleghenies had been re-opened for settlement in 1768, British procrastination in establishing a provincial government there suppressed the value of Washington's land in the area; few farmers were interested in leasing land that was not yet subject to civil control and military protection. In 1773, British proponents of the policy to constrain colonies to coastal regions again restricted settlement west of the Alleghenies. While this did not affect land already granted to Washington, it limited future speculation to land granted to veterans of the French and Indian War, by which Washington still stood to gain 10,000 acres (40 km²). When this avenue was closed to him by the decision that only regular army officers qualified for the grants, Washington railed at British malice towards colonists.
  Washington's personal interests were further threatened by the Quebec Act of June 1774, designed to abolish Virginia land speculation west of the Alleghenies. The Act was part of the Intolerable Acts, the British response to the Boston protests. Among them was the Boston Port Act, passed at the end of March, which closed the port until reparations were made for the lost tea and stationed 3,000 British troops in Boston. Because of his increasing interaction with the politically sophisticated Mason, Washington – who confessed himself not well versed in politics – became fully radicalized over the following months. The occupation of Boston was, he wrote, "unexampled testimoney [sic] of the most despotic system of tyranny that ever was practiced in a free gov[ernmen]t".
  When Governor Dunmore prorogued the House of Burgesses in May 1774 to forestall any resolution in support of Boston, the burgesses gathered unofficially in the Raleigh Tavern. They ratified a boycott of tea, recommended an annual general congress of deputies from all the colonies, and agreed to reconvene on August 1. To prepare for the next meeting, the burgesses conferred at county level. Fairfax County adopted the Fairfax Resolves, agreed in a committee chaired by Washington. One resolution proposed a fresh round of nonimportation enforced by extralegal committees, followed by an embargo on exports if nonimportation failed to convince the British to back down. Another resolution adopted a more inflammatory version of the 1765 Virginia Resolves' assertion of colonial rights. The final resolution recommended petitioning the king to assert Virginia's rights and privileges and, with expressions of loyalty to the Crown, warn the king "to reflect, that from our Sovereign there can be but one Appeal." Fairfax County proved to be the most militant county, the only one adopting a resolution that plainly threatened that "one Appeal", the resort to arms.
  The First Virginia Convention convened at Williamsburg on August 1, 1774. It agreed the need for a general congress of deputies from all the colonies and a plan of action that conformed closely to the Fairfax Resolves Washington had presented. From a man who dealt little in politics, Washington was emerging as a key political figure in Virginia. He was elected third in the poll for the seven deputies Virginia would send to the First Continental Congress at Philadelphia in September, winning 98 of the 104 votes.
caption: The able Doctor, or America Swallowing the Bitter Draught by Paul Revere
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