George Washington, born in 1732 into a Virginia planter family, learned the morals, manners, and knowledge expected of an 18th century Virginia gentleman and pursued the intertwined interests of military arts and western expansion. At age 16, he helped survey Shenandoah lands for Thomas, Lord Fairfax. Commissioned a lieutenant colonel in 1754, he fought the first skirmishes of what became the French and Indian War, and in 1755, as an aide to Gen. Edward Braddock, he escaped injury although four bullets ripped his coat and two horses were shot from under him. When the Second Continental Congress assembled in Philadelphia in May 1775, Washington, one of the Virginia delegates, was elected Commander in Chief of the Continental Army. On July 3, 1775, at Cambridge, Massachusetts, he took command of his ill-trained troops and began a war that lasted six grueling years. Although he longed to retire to his fields at Mount Vernon, he came to see that the Nation under the Articles of Confederation was not functioning well, and he became a prime mover in the steps leading to the Constitutional Convention at Philadelphia in 1787. After the new Constitution was ratified, the Electoral College unanimously elected him President, and on April 30, 1789, standing on the balcony of Federal Hall on Wall Street in New York, he took the oath of office as the first President of the United States. By the end of his first term, two parties were developing, and, wearied of politics and feeling old, he retired at the end of his second. In his Farewell Address, he urged his countrymen to reject excessive party spirit and geographical distinctions and warned in foreign affairs against long-term alliances. He enjoyed less than three years of retirement at Mount Vernon before dying of a throat infection on December 14, 1799, after which the Nation mourned him for months.