George Washington Dies: The Father of a Nation

George Washington died on December 14, 1799, at Mount Vernon, Virginia. He was sixty-seven. Two days earlier, he had ridden out on horseback to inspect his farms in sleet, snow, and freezing rain. He came back with a sore throat. By the next morning, he could barely speak or breathe. His doctors came and bled him. They bled him repeatedly over the course of the day, removing an estimated five pints of blood, roughly a third of his total supply. They also applied blistering agents to his throat and gave him calomel (mercury chloride) and tartar emetic. By modern standards, the treatment almost certainly accelerated his death. The underlying condition was likely acute epiglottitis or a severe peritonsillar abscess, either of which could be treated with antibiotics today. He died at around ten in the evening, with Martha at the bedside. His last words, according to his secretary Tobias Lear, were: "Tis well." Born in Westmoreland County, Virginia on February 22, 1732, Washington was a planter, a surveyor, and a soldier before he became the indispensable man of the American Revolution. He took command of the Continental Army in June 1775 and kept it in the field for eight years, through Valley Forge, through defeats that would have broken most commanders, through desertions and lack of pay, until Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown in October 1781. He resigned his commission in December 1783, an act that stunned the world. King George III reportedly said that if Washington gave up power voluntarily, he would be the greatest man in the world. He did. He went home to farm. He was called back to preside over the Constitutional Convention in 1787 and served two terms as the first president, from 1789 to 1797. He could have served a third term, or for life. He stepped down. Again, the world held its breath. Again, he walked away. His willingness to relinquish power, twice, became the template that every American president since has had to answer to. The precedent of the peaceful transfer of power, so fundamental that it is almost invisible, began with Washington's decision that leaving was more important than staying.