On April 30, 1789, George Washington stood on the balcony of Federal Hall on Wall Street in New York and took his oath of office as the first President of the United States. Born in 1732 into a Virginia planter family, he learned the morals, manners, and knowledge expected of an 18th century Virginia gentleman and pursued 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 the next year, 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. Though he longed to retire to his fields at Mount Vernon, he concluded that the nation under the Articles of Confederation was not functioning well, so 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. 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 term. In his Farewell Address, he urged Americans to forswear excessive party spirit and geographical distinctions and warned against long-term alliances in foreign affairs. He enjoyed less than three years of retirement at Mount Vernon before dying of a throat infection on December 14, 1799, and the nation mourned him for months.