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Edward Vernon was an English admiral. He was born in 1684 and died in 1757. He obtained command of the expedition against Spanish South American possessions and took Porto Bello with a squadron of six ships. In 1740 he attacked Cartagena without success and in 1746 he was dismissed from service.
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George Washington was an American soldier, statesman and the first president of the USA. He was born in 1732 at Briges Creek, Virginia and died in 1799. Some of the familiar anecdotes of his early life rest on the more than doubtful authority of Weems, one of his first chroniclers. At the age of sixteen he was compelled to leave school, and he became a surveyor. His appointment as adjutant-general and major at the early age of nineteen was preparatory to his selection for the first striking public event of his life, his service as messenger from the Virginian to the French Governor in 1753-1754. The following summer at the Battle of Great Meadows fought by his small force ushered in the long French and Indian War. George Washington was obliged to surrender Fort Necessity. He resigned, but the next year served on Braddock's staff at the defeat of the Monongahela, and had a miraculous escape. George Washington continued in the army as a colonel until 1759, and had a part in the taking of Fort Duquesne in 1758.
He married in 1759, and the same year entered the Virginia House of Burgesses. For several years he led the life of a Virginia planter, at Mount Vernon. He was a delegate to the first and second Continental Congresses; by the latter body he was appointed commander-in-chief, on June the 17th, 1775, and took command of the army under the historic elm at Cambridge, on July the 3rd. It was his task to put into the form of an organized force the raw and ill-equipped soldiers. His first enterprise succeeded; Boston was evacuated by the British, on March the 17th, 1776, and the army was transferred to New York.
After the Declaration of Independence, a disheartening series of reverses marked the half year: the battle of Brooklyn, the withdrawal from New York, White Plains, the fall of Fort Washington, and the melancholy retreat of the diminishing army across New Jersey. The morale of the troops and of the country was suddenly raised by George Washington's brilliant surprise of Trenton and victory of Princeton. In
the autumn of 1777 his army, though defeated at Brandywine and German-town, kept a large British force occupied, and so contributed to the denouement of the year, at Saratoga. Then came the gloomy winter at Valley Forge, and the cabal of Conway and Gates.
The Battle of Monmouth was won in the summer, but thereafter George Washington's part was for some years in other phases of the war than in battles, and active hostilities drifted away principally to the south. The treason of Benedict Arnold in 1780 was a severe blow. In the following summer George Washington showed the qualities of a great general by his secret and rapid march from the Hudson to Chesapake Bay, a march which resulted in the fall of Yorktown.
His significance in the American War of Independence was largely moral; there was a widespread confidence in his thorough devotion to the cause. He replied severely to the Newburg address of 1783 (which had hinted at monarchy). After a letter to the State Governors he took leave of the army and officers, and, on December the 23rd, 1783, resigned to Congress at Annapolis his commission.
Deeply impressed with the need of a more efficient government, he presided over the Federal Convention of 1787. He was the unanimous choice for President, and was inaugurated at New York on April the 30th, 1789. Elected again without opposition, he served until 1797. Of his Cabinet, Jefferson was Secretary of State, Hamilton of the Treasury, Knox of War, and Randolph Attorney-General.
George Washington made tours to the North and South. In 1793 he issued a neutrality proclamation. His part in Jay's treaty of 1795 caused a temporary loss of his popularity. On September the 19th, 1796, he issued his Farewell Address.
Perhaps his greatness was even better shown by his conduct as President than by his generalship. When war with France seemed imminent in 1798, he was appointed lieutenant-general, but he died soon after at Mount Vernon. He has been universally deemed the greatest of Americans, and one of the noblest public characters of all time.
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James Madison was the fourth president of the USA from 1809 to 1817. He was born in 1751 at Port Conway in King George County, Virginia and died in 1836. Educated at Princeton, he graduated in 1772, and was early distinguished for sound judgment, discretion, acquirements, industry and patriotism.
In 1774 he was a member of the Committee of Public Safety of Orange County, and in 1776 became a member of the Virginia Convention. From 1780 to 1784 he was a member of the Continental Congress, and, in spite of his youth and modesty, had a leading share in its deliberations, and especially its committee work, for which his sensible and methodical mind was peculiarly apt.
In the Virginia Assembly from 1784 to 1787 he did great service in securing religious liberty and in promoting the movement toward a better union of the States. Probably no one else contributed more to this end in all America. He advocated acceptance of the impost law by the states, suggesting the famous compromise known as the 'three-fifths rule' by which (in taxation) five slaves were rated as three freemen.
He was a member of the Alexandria-Mount-Vernon Conference of 1785, of the Annapolis Convention of 1786, and of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, in which he had the most influential part, through his own talents for constructive statesmanship and also through his persuasive and conciliatory spirit. His was the 'Virginia Plan' of federation in 1787.
In 1788 he wrote a portion of the Federalist and did more than any one else to secure the ratification of the Constitution by Virginia. From 1789 to 1797 he was a leading member of Congress, inclining more and more to the doctrines and party of Jefferson. He wrote the Virginia resolutions of 1798.
From 1801 to 1809 he was Secretary of State in Jefferson's Cabinet, and from 1809 to 1817 he was President of the United States, being elected over C C Pinckney in 1808, and over DeWitt Clinton in 1812. The chief event in his administration was the War of 1812, which he managed feebly. From 1817 to his death Madison lived in retirement at Montpelier, Virginia.
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Vernon W Thomson was an American politician. He was a Republican governor of Wisconsin from 1957 until 1959.
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Sir William George Granville Venables Vernon Harcourt was an English lawyer and politician. He was born in 1827 and died in 1904. The son of William Vernon Harcourt, he was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, was called to the bar in 1854 and became Queen's Counsel in 1866. He frequently contributed to the press, in particular the letters to the Times signed 'Historicus' and was returned as a Liberal member of parliament for Oxford city in 1869. He distinguished himself by his powers of satire and ridicule in debate and was made solicitor-general in William Gladstone's ministry, in November 1873 and was made home secretary in 1880, when he lost his seat for Oxford but was returned for Derby. He introduced the Arms Bill (Ireland) 1881, the Prevention of Crimes Bill , 1882; an Explosive Bill, 1883. In February 1886 he became chancellor of the exchequer under William Gladstone, a post he held again from 1892 until 1895.
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Art Carney was an American actor. He was born in 1918 at Mount Vernon, New York and died in 2003.
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Denzel Washington is an American actor. He was born in 1954 at Mount Vernon, New York. While studying to be a doctor at Fordham University he switched to studying journalism and then switched to acting, going on to join the America Conservatory Theatre in San Francisco.
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John Vernon is a Canadian actor. He was born in 1935.
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Richard Vernon was an English actor. He was born in 1925 at Reading, Berkshire and died in 1997 of parkinson's disease.
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Vernon Wells is an Australian actor and film producer. He was born in 1945 at Rushworth, Victoria. His first film role was a bit part in the 1979 'Felicity', followed in 1981 by the part of 'Wez' in 'Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior'.
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The Probert Encyclopaedia was designed, edited and programed by
Matt and Leela Probert
©1993 - 2009 The Probert Encyclopaedia
Southampton, United Kingdom
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