Presidential Biographies | Washington Administrations - Career

Career

Washington was sufficiently wealthy to be able to spend extended periods of time away from the plantation, allowing him to concentrate his attention on politics and war. But in slack times he reveled in the routines of the gentleman farmer. His reputation for energy and attention to detail grew throughout Virginia. He tended corn and wheat, becoming one of the first farmers in the region to abandon tobacco as his main crop.

Early Military Service

Washington was awarded his first military appointment in 1752 as a major in the Virginia militia. Within two years he was participating in skirmishes that led to the French and Indian War (1754–63), a struggle between Britain and its American colonists on one side, and French forces and their American Indian allies on the other. Washington learned at least one valuable, if humiliating, experience as a...