page_title: George Washington's political evolution
section_title: Independent
hierarchical_section_title: George Washington's political evolution / General Washington / Independent
caption_attribution_description: George III of the United Kingdom
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: In October 1775, Washington conferred with a congressional committee on the reorganization of the army. Among the measures adopted on his recommendation was the death penalty for acts of espionage, mutiny and sedition. The imposition of capital punishment was an implicit act of sovereignty by an independent nation. Washington, having once served in the French and Indian War without pay out of a "laudable desire" to serve "my King & Country", was now leading the revolution away from what was still, at this point, a struggle to redress grievances and towards a war of independence. Throughout the crisis, the revolutionaries had made a distinction between Parliament and King George III. It was the king's ministers who had deceived the king and sought to oppress the colonies, and it was the king on whom the revolutionaries pinned their hopes for redress. Even as Congress discussed the establishment of the Continental Army, a majority supported petitioning the king to restore relations by rebuking Parliament.
  Although Washington had come to doubt the king's willingness to support the colonial cause as early as February 1775, until November he remained careful to maintain the distinction between ministry and king; in his exchange with Gage, who as an officer in the British Army was acting on the commission of the king, he had pointedly referred to "those Ministers" under whom Gage acted. The king's spell over the revolutionaries was finally broken in October 1775 after he had made clear his view that they were in open revolt aimed at independence and his determination to put that revolt down by force. The revolutionaries began to heap on King George III all the charges they had previously laid at the door of his ministry. As the colonies moved towards the Declaration of Independence the next year, Washington's nationalism intensified. He began to explicitly refer to his enemy not as ministerial troops but the king's troops, and he took a harder line against Loyalists, directing that they be disarmed and supporting their detention as traitors.
caption: King George III
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