He also won election as a delegate to Virginia’s House of Burgesses, the colony’s elected legislative body. He took his seat a month after his wedding, on his twenty-seventh birthday, and served there for fifteen years. He would not do much as a member, but it is significant that he repeatedly stood for public office and was consistently reelected, and then he was chosen to be part of Virginia’s delegation to the First Continental Congress in the fall of 1774. Yes, he later would be a general who became president. But before that, he was an officer who became a local politician. He was a
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