The Virginia planter and Continental Army commander who won American independence, presided over the Constitutional Convention, and served as the first President of the United States — and whose most consequential act was relinquishing power — resigning his commission in 1783 and declining to seek a third term before stepping down in 1797 — and thereby establishing that the republic's military commander and its chief executive would answer to law rather than to personal ambition.
When George Washington resigned his military commission in Annapolis in December 1783, a watching world drew a sharp breath. The victorious general of a new nation was handing power back — not to a king, not to a successor he had chosen, but to a Congress. King George III, told that Washington planned to resign, reportedly said: 'If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world.' He did. The precedent he set — that power over a republic belongs to the office, not the officer — was not inevitable. It was chosen.