George Washington's Uniform

This uniform consisting of coat, waistcoat, and knee breeches was worn by George Washington from 1789 until his death in 1799. The "small clothes," or breeches and waistcoat, date from the revolutionary period. The coat dates to 1789.

Washington ordered a new coat, with plain yellow metal buttons and a rise-and-fall collar that was popular in the 1790s, to pose for life portraits during this period. He wears this uniform in a watercolor portrait on ivory painted by John Ramage in 1789, and in John Trumbull's famous 1790 painting of him at Verplanck's Point in New York.

Notably, he also wore this uniform when he reviewed troops called up in response to the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794 and when he visited Philadelphia on Provisional Army duty in December 1798.

Washington devised the blue and buff colors of the uniform while serving at the Second Continental Congress in 1775, just prior to being named Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army. In commemoration of his vision, these colors remained the accepted pattern for U.S. Army uniforms until the beginning of the Civil War.

This uniform was initially donated to the Columbian Institute; in 1841, it was transferred to the National Institute and housed in the Patent Office. It came to the Smithsonian in 1883 from the Patent Office collection, and has been on display almost continuously. (From the years 1942 to 1944, during World War II, the Smithsonian packed up many of its treasured artifacts, including this uniform, and sent them to the Shenandoah Valley for safekeeping.)