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How Did George Washington Influence Our History

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George Washington
Carlos Gallo
George Washington is one of the most important people in our nations history and he helped shape the country we see today. George Washington was born on February 22, 1732, in Westmoreland County, Virginia. His family came to North America when his grandfather left England for Virginia. Washington was home schooled in the early teens and later developed important skills like learning to grow, tobacco. His father died when Washington was 1 and was raised by his brother who was a good influence on him. At 16 George was sent to go look for land in western Virginia, which led to his appointment as an official surveyor. His brother was a naval officer which led to Washington wanting to be the same even thou his mom …show more content…
George Washington was able to lead the United States to a victory against the British at Yorktown, Virginia on ,October 1781 ending the American Revolutionary War. Congress didn't have the power to tax under the Articles, so as a result the army would go without food, clothing , shelter, and pay for long periods of tim . After the war, problems under the weak na government had continued. The American government was failing and Washington was called back to try and help the government. Washington and others had decided the weak government that they had created must be replaced. As a result George Washington went to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1789. George Washington and some other politicians from Virginia started working on a new form of government . Edmund Randolph and James Madison came up with the idea of the Virginia Plan that set the layout for a government that they saw better fit. It was made of three branches which are the , legislative, executive, and judicial. The legislative branch would be made up of two houses but this is a little different then what we have today …show more content…
The convention was ready to fail but Roger Sherman proposed the Great Compromise. It called for a Congress to have two houses , the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Senate would give equal representation to each of the states. Each state would have two senators that would be chosen by the state legislature. The House of Representatives would decide representation on a state’s population and members would be elected by all of the voters in the state. Delegates that went to the Constitutional Convention approved Sherman’s compromise . Since representation in the House of Representatives was to be decided on population, a debate started over whether slaves should be counted in a state’s population. "According to James Madison’s diary, the issue of slavery was the most divisive subject at the convention."(Pbs,3). Many of the Founding Fathers including George Washington viewed slavery as a bad thing but they knew that it was very unlikely ton abolish slavery at the time. If the states that didn't want slavery insisted on its abolition, slave states that wanted slavery could have walked out of the convention and formed their own nation based on pro-slavery

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