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 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 
 

WASHINGTON AND THE PRINCIPLES OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 ORATION 
 
 DELIVERED BEFORE THE 
 
 MUNICIPAL AUTHORITIES OF THE CITY OF BOSTON, 
 
 AT THK CELBBRATION OP 
 
 5ri)e declaration of ^merfcan Kntrepenticnce, 
 
 JULY 4, 1850. 
 
 BY EDWIN P. WHIPPLE. 
 
 SECOND EDITION. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 TICKNOR, REED, AND FIELDS. 
 
i^-t 
 
 ^ i\ 
 
 ^^"^ 
 
 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1850, by 
 
 WILLIAM D. TICKNOR AND CO. 
 
 In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Mass. 
 
 BOSTON : 
 
 PRINTED RY JOHN -WILSON, 
 
 2], Prhool Ptref^t. 
 
CITY OF BOSTON, 
 
 In the Board of Mayor and Aldermen, 
 Monday, July 8, 1850. 
 
 It was unanimously 
 
 Voted, That the thanks of the City Council be pre- 
 sented to Edwin P. Whipple, Esquire, for the very 
 able, eloquent, and appropriate Oration delivered by 
 him, before the Municipal Authorities of the City, at 
 their recent celebration of the Anniversary of the De- 
 claration of American Independence ; and especially, 
 for his bold, discriminating, and just analysis of the 
 Character of Washington. 
 
 Voted, That he be requested to fui-nish a copy of 
 the said Oration for publication. 
 
 Sent down for concurrence. 
 
 JOHN P. BIGELOW, Mayor. 
 
 In Common Council, July 11, 1850. 
 Head and concurred. 
 
 FRANCIS BRINLEY, President. 
 A true copy. 
 
 Attest : S. F. M'Cleaky, City Clerk, 
 
ORATION 
 
 The day, Gentlemen, we have here met to 
 commemorate, in the spirit of a somewhat 
 soberer joy than rings in the noisy jubilee 
 of the streets, is not a day dedicated to lib- 
 erty in the abstract, but a day especially 
 consecrated to American liberty and Ameri- 
 can independence. The true character of 
 that liberty is to be sought in the events 
 of our colonial history, in the manners and 
 laws of our colonial forefathers, and, above 
 all, in the stern, brief epitome of our whole 
 colonial life contained in that memorable 
 Declaration, the maxims of whooe sturdy 
 
6 
 
 wisdom still sound in our ears and linger in 
 our hearts, as we have heard them read 
 in this hall to-day ; a Declaration peculiar 
 among all others of its kind, not merely 
 for the fearless free spirit which beats and 
 burns beneath every decisive sentence, but 
 from its combination of clearness in the 
 statement of particular grievances with au- 
 dacity in the announcement of general prin- 
 ciples ; a Declaration, indeed, abounding in 
 sentiments of liberty so sinewy and bold, 
 and ideas of liberty so exact and practical, 
 that it bears on every immortal feature the 
 signs of representing a people, to whom 
 liberty had been long familiar as a hving 
 law, as an organized institution, as a homely, 
 household fact. The peculiarities which 
 distinguish the whole substance and tone of 
 this solemn instrument are pecuharities 
 of the American revolution itself, giving 
 dignity to its events and import to its prin- 
 ciples, as they gave success to its arms. 
 
Liberty, considered as an element of hu- 
 man nature, would naturally, if unchecked, 
 follow an ideal law of development, appear- 
 ing first as a dim but potent sentiment ; 
 then as an inteUigent sentiment, or idea ; then 
 as an organized idea, or body of institutions, 
 recognizing mutual rights and enforcing 
 mutual duties. But, in its historical devel- 
 opment, we find that the unselfish nature of 
 liberty is strangely intermixed with its sel- 
 fish perversion ; that, in struggling with out- 
 ward oppression, it develops inward hatreds ; 
 that the sentiment is apt to fester into a 
 malignant passion, the idea to dwindle into 
 a barren opinion, and this passionate opinion 
 to issua in anarchy, which is despotism dis- 
 organized, but as selfish, wolfish, and raven- 
 ous under its thousand wills as under its 
 one. These hostile elements, which make 
 up the complex historical fact of liberty, — 
 one positive, the other negative, — one or- 
 ganizing, the other destructive, — are always 
 
8 
 
 at work in human affairs with beneficent or 
 baleful energy ; but, as society advances, 
 the baser elements give way by degrees 
 to the nobler, and liberty ever tends to real- 
 ize itself in law. The most genial operation 
 of its creative spirit is when it appears as a 
 still, mysterious, plastic influence, silently 
 and surely modifying the whole constitution 
 of a despotic society, stealing noiselessly 
 into manners, insinuating itself into the 
 administration of laws, grafting new shoots 
 upon the decaying trunks of old institutions, 
 and insensibly building up in a people's 
 mind a character strong enough to maintain 
 rights which are also customs. If its most 
 beneficent influence be seen in its gradual 
 organization of liberties, of sentiments root- 
 ed in facts, its most barren effect for good is 
 when it scatters abstract opinions of free- 
 dom, true to nothing existing in a people's 
 practical life, and scorning all aUiance with 
 manners or compromise with fact. This is 
 
a fertile source of disorder, of revolts which 
 end in massacres, of Ages of Reason which 
 end in Reigns of Terror ; and perhaps the 
 failure of most of the European movements 
 comes from their being dther mad uprisings 
 against the pressure of intolerable miseries, 
 or fruitless strivings to establish abstract 
 principles. Such principles, however ex- 
 cellent as propositions, can influence only a 
 small minority of a nation, for a nation rises 
 only in defence of rights which have been 
 violated, not for rights which it has never 
 exercised ; and abstract " liberty, equality, 
 and fraternity," pushed by amiable senti- 
 mentalists like Lamartine, and Satanic sen- 
 timentalists like Ledru Rolhn, have found 
 their fit result in the armed bureau-ocracy, 
 now encamped in Paris, under the ironical 
 nickname of " French Republic." 
 
 Now, it was the peculiar felicity of our po- 
 sition, that free institutions were planted here 
 at the original settlement of the country, — 
 
10 
 
 institutions which De Tocqueville considers 
 founded on principles far in advance of 
 the wisest political science of Europe at 
 that day ; and accordingly our revolution 
 began in the defence of rights which were 
 customs, of ideas which were facts, of liber- 
 ties which were laws ; and these rights, ideas, 
 and liberties, embodying as they did the 
 common hfe and experience of the people, 
 were truly considered a palpable property, 
 an inalienable inheritance of freedom, which 
 the Stamp Act, and the other measures of 
 colonial taxation, threatened with confisca- 
 tion. Parhament, therefore, appeared in 
 America as a spoiler, making war upon the 
 people it assumed to govern, and it thus 
 stimulated and combined the opposition of 
 all classes ; for a wrong cannot but be uni- 
 versally perceived when it is universally 
 felt. By thus starting up in defence of the 
 freedom they really possessed, the colonies 
 vastly increased it. In struggling against 
 
11 
 
 innovation, they '^ innovated " themselves 
 into independence ; in battling against no- 
 velties, they wrought out into actual form 
 the startHng novelty of constitutional Ameri- 
 can liberty. It was because they had exer- 
 cised rights that they were such proficients 
 in principles ; it was because they had known 
 liberty as an institution that they understood 
 it as a science. 
 
 Thus it was not the perception of abstract 
 opinions, but the inspiration of positive insti- 
 tutions, which gave our forefathers the heart 
 id brave, and the ability successfully to defy, 
 the colossal power of England ; but it must 
 be admitted that in its obnoxious colonial 
 policy England had parted with her wisdom, 
 and in parting with her wisdom had weak- 
 ened her power ; falhng, as Burke says, 
 under the operation of that immutable law 
 '' Avhich decrees vexation to violence, and 
 poverty to rapine." The England arrayed 
 as^ainst us was not the Endand, which, a 
 
12 
 
 few years before, its energies wielded by the 
 lofty and impassioned genius of the elder 
 Pitt, had smitten the power and humbled the 
 pride of two great European monarchies, 
 and spread its fleets and armies, animated 
 by one vehement soul, over three quarters 
 of the globe. The administrations of the 
 English government, from 1760 to the close 
 of our revolutionary war, were more or less 
 directed by the intriguing incapacity of the 
 king. George the Third is said to have pos- 
 sessed many private virtues, — and very 
 private for a long time he kept them from 
 his subjects, — but, as a monarch, he was 
 without magnanimity in his sentiments, or 
 enlargement in his ideas ; prejudiced, un- 
 cultivated, bigoted, and perverse; and his 
 boasted morahty and piety, when exercised 
 in the sphere of government, partook of the 
 narrowness of his mind and the obstinacy of 
 his will ; his conscience being used to trans- 
 mute his hatreds into duties, and his religious 
 
13 
 
 sentiment to sanctify his vindictive passions ; 
 and as it was his ambition to rule an empire 
 by the petty pohtics of a court, he preferred 
 rather to have his folly flattered by parasites 
 than his ignorance enhghtened by statesmen. 
 Such a disposition in the king of a free 
 country was incompatible with efficiency in 
 the conduct of affairs, as it split parties into 
 factions, and made established principles 
 yield to mean personal expedients. Bute, 
 the king's first minister, after a short admi- 
 nistration unexampled for corruption and 
 feebleness, gave way before a storm of 
 popular contempt and hatred. To him suc- 
 ceeded George Grenville, the originator of 
 the Stamp Act, and the blundering promoter 
 of American independence. Grenville was 
 a hard, sullen, dogmatic, penurious man of 
 affairs, with a complete mastery of the details 
 of parliamentary business, and threading 
 with ease all the labyrinths of English law, 
 but hmited in his conceptions, fixed in his 
 
 2 
 
14 
 
 opinions, without any of that sagacity which 
 reads results in their principles, and chiefly 
 distinguished for a kind of sour honesty, not 
 infrequently found in men of harsh tempers 
 and technical intellects. It was soon disco- 
 vered, that though imperious enough to be a 
 tyrant he was not servile enough to be a tool ; 
 that the same domineering temper which 
 enabled him to push arbitrary measures in 
 Parliament, made him put insolent questions 
 in the palace ; and the king, in despair of a 
 servant who could not tax America and per- 
 secute Wilkes, without at the same time 
 insulting his master, dismissed him for the 
 Marquis of Rockingham, the leader of the 
 great Whig connection, and a sturdy friend 
 of the Americans both before the revolution 
 and during its progress. Under him the 
 Stamp Act was repealed ; but his adminis- 
 tration soon proved too liberal to satisfy the 
 fawning politicians who governed the under- 
 standing of the king; and the experiment 
 
15 
 
 was tried of a composite ministry, put toge- 
 ther by Chatham, consisting of members 
 selected from different factions, but without 
 any principle of cohesion to unite them ; and 
 the anarchy inherent in the arrangement be- 
 came portentously apparent, when Chatham, 
 driven by the gout into a state of nervous 
 imbecility, left it to work out its mission of 
 misrule, and its eccentric control was seized 
 by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the 
 gay, false, dissipated, veering, presumptuous, 
 and unscrupulous Charles Townsend. This 
 man was so brilliant and fascinating as an 
 orator, that Walpole said of one of his 
 speeches, that it was like hearing Garrick 
 act extempore scenes from Congreve ; but 
 he was without any guiding moral or politi- 
 cal principles ; and, boundlessly admired by 
 the House of Commons and boundlessly 
 craving its admiration, he seemed to act ever 
 from the impulses of vanity, and speak ever 
 from the inspiration of champagne. Gren- 
 
16 
 
 ville, smarting under his recent defeat, but 
 still doggedly bent on having a revenue 
 raised in America, missed no opportunity of 
 goading this versatile political 7'oue with his 
 sullen and bitter sarcasms. '' You are 
 cowards," said he on one occasion, turning 
 to the Treasury bench ; ^' you are afraid of 
 the Americans ; you dare not tax America." 
 Townsend, stung by this taunt, started pas- 
 sionately up from his seat, exclaiming, 
 " Fear ! cowards ! dare not tax America ! 
 I do dare tax America ! " and this boyish 
 bravado ushered in the celebrated bill, which 
 was to cost England thirteen colonies, add 
 a hundred milHons of pounds to her debt, 
 and affix an ineffaceable stain on her public 
 character. Townsend, by the grace of a 
 putrid fever, was saved from witnessing the 
 consequences of his vainglorious presump- 
 tion ; and the direction of his policy even- 
 tually fell into the hands of Lord North, a 
 good-natured, second-rate, jobbing states- 
 
17 
 
 man, equally destitute of lofty virtues and 
 splendid vices, under whose administration 
 the American war was commenced and con- 
 summated. Of all the ministers of George 
 the Third, North was the most esteemed by 
 his sovereign ; for he had the tact to follow 
 plans which originated in the king's unrea- 
 soning brain and wilful disposition, and yet 
 to veil their weak injustice in a drapery of 
 arguments furnished from his own more en- 
 larged mind and easier temper. Chatham 
 and Camden thundered against him in the 
 Lords; Burke and Fox, Cassandras of 
 ominous and eloquent prophecy, raved and 
 shouted statesmanship to him in the Com- 
 mons, and screamed out the maxims of 
 wisdom in ecstasies of invective ; but he, 
 good-naturedly tolerant to political adversa- 
 ries, blandly indifferent to popular execra- 
 tion, and sleeping quietly through whole 
 hours of philippics hot with threats of im- 
 peachment, pursued his course of court- 
 
 2* 
 
18 
 
 ordained folly with the serene composure of 
 an Ulysses or a Somers. The^war, as con- 
 ducted by his ministry, was badly managed ; 
 but he had one wise thought which happily 
 failed to become a fact. The command in 
 America, on the breaking out of serious dis- 
 turbances, was offered to Lord Clive ; but, 
 fortunately for us, Clive, at about that time, 
 concluded to commit suicide, and our rustic 
 soldiery were thus saved from meeting in 
 the field a general, who, in vigor of will and 
 fertility of resource, was unequalled by any 
 European commander that had appeared 
 since the death of Marlborough. It may 
 here be added, that Lord North's plans of 
 conciliation were the amiabilities of tyranny 
 and benignities of extortion. They bring to 
 mind the little French fable, wherein a 
 farmer convokes the tenants of his barnyard, 
 and with sweet solemnity says, — "Dear 
 animals, I have assembled you here to ad- 
 vise me what sauce I shall cook you with." 
 
19 
 
 " But," exclaims an insurrectionary chicken, 
 " we don't want to be eaten at all ! " — to 
 which the urbane chairman replies, — " My 
 child, you wander from the point ! " 
 
 Such was the government whose policy 
 and whose arms were directed against our 
 rights and liberties during the revolutionary 
 war. As soon as the struggle commenced, 
 it was obvious that England could hold 
 dominion over no portion of the country, 
 except what her armies occupied or wasted 
 for the time ; and that the issue of the con- 
 test turned on the question as to which 
 would give out first, the obstinacy of the 
 king or the fortitude of the Americans. It 
 was plain that George the Third would 
 never yield except under compulsion from 
 the other forces of the English constitution ; 
 that, as long as a corrupt House of Com- 
 mons would vote supplies, he would prose- 
 cute the war, at whatever expense of blood 
 and treasure to England, at whatever in- 
 
20 
 
 fliction of misery upon America. Conquest 
 was hopeless ; and Lord North, before the 
 war was half concluded, was in favor of 
 abandoning it ; but all considerations of 
 policy and humanity were lost upon the 
 small mind and conscientiously malignant 
 temper of the king. The peculiarity of 
 our struggle consisted in its being with an 
 unwise ruler, who could not understand 
 that war, Avaged after the objects for which 
 it was declared have utterly failed, becomes 
 mere rapine and murder ; and our energy 
 and endurance were put to this terrible 
 test, of bearing up against the king's armies, 
 until the English nation, humbling its irri- 
 tated pride, should be roused in our behalf, 
 and break down the king's stubborn pur- 
 pose. We all know, and may we never 
 forget, that this resistance to tyrannical 
 innovation was no fiery outbreak of popu- 
 lar passion, spending itself in two or three 
 battles, and then subsiding into gloomy 
 
21 
 
 apathy ; but a fixed and reasonable resolve 
 rooted in character, and proof against cor- 
 rupt and sophistical plans of conciliation, 
 against defeats and massacres, against uni- 
 versal bankruptcy and commercial ruin, — a 
 resolve, Avhich the sight of burning villages 
 and cities turned into British camps, only 
 maddened into fiercer persistence, and which 
 the slow consuming fever of an eight years' 
 war, with its soul-sickening calamities and vi- 
 cissitudes, could not weaken into submission. 
 The history, so sad and so glorious, which 
 chronicles the stern struggle in which our 
 rights and liberties passed through the awful 
 baptism of fire and blood, is eloquent with 
 the deeds of many patriots, warriors, and 
 statesmen ; but these all fall into relations 
 to one prominent and commanding figure, 
 towering up above the whole group in un- 
 approachable majesty, whose exalted cha- 
 racter, warm and bright with every public 
 and private virtue, and vital with the essen- 
 
22 
 
 tial spirit of wisdom, has burst all sectional 
 and national bounds, and made the name of 
 Washington the property of all mankind. 
 
 This illustrious man, at once the world's 
 admiration and enigma, we are taught by 
 a fine instinct to venerate, and by a wrong 
 opinion to misjudge. The might of his 
 character has taken strong hold upon the 
 feelings of great masses of men ; but, in 
 translating this universal sentiment into an 
 intelligent form, the intellectual element of 
 his wonderful nature is as much depressed 
 as the moral element is exalted, and conse- 
 quently we are apt to misunderstand both. 
 Mediocrity has a bad trick of idealizing 
 itself in eulogizing him, and drags him down 
 to its own low level while assuming to 
 lift him to the skies. How many times 
 have we been told that he was not a man of 
 genius, but a person of " excellent common 
 sense," of <' admirable judgment," of " rare 
 virtues " ! and, by a constant repetition of 
 
23 
 
 this odious cant, we have nearly succeeded 
 in divorcing comprehension from his sense, 
 insight from his judgment, force from his 
 virtues, and Hfe from the man. Accord- 
 ingly, in the panegyric of cold spirits, 
 Washington disappears in a cloud of com- 
 monplaces ; in the rhodomontade of boiling 
 patriots, he expires in the agonies of rant. 
 Now, the sooner this bundle of mediocre 
 talents and moral quahties, which its con- 
 trivers have the audacity to call George 
 Washington, is hissed out of existence, the 
 better it will be for the cause of talent and 
 the cause of morals : contempt of that is 
 the beginning of wisdom. He had no ge- 
 nius, it seems. O no ! genius, we must 
 suppose, is the peculiar and shining attri- 
 bute of some orator, whose tongue can 
 spout patriotic speeches, or some versifier, 
 whose muse can " Hail Columbia,*' but 
 not of the man who supported states on 
 his arm, and carried America in his brain. 
 
24 
 
 The madcap Charles Townsend, the mo- 
 tion of whose pyrotechnic mind was like 
 the whiz of a hundred rockets, is a man of 
 genius ; but G eorge Washington, raised up 
 above the level of even eminent statesmen, 
 and with a nature moving with the still and 
 orderly celerity of a planet round its sun, — 
 he dwindles, in comparison, into a kind of 
 angelic dunce ! What is genius ? Is it 
 worth any thing ? Is splendid folly the 
 measure of its inspiration ? Is wisdom its 
 base and summit, — that which it recedes 
 from, or tends towards ? And by what 
 definition do you award the name to the 
 creator of an epic, and deny it to the crea- 
 tor of a country ? On what principle is it 
 to be lavished on him who sculptures in 
 perishing marble the image of possible 
 excellence, and withheld from him who 
 built up in himself a transcendent charac- 
 ter, indestructible as the obligations of Duty, 
 and beautiful as her rewards ? 
 
25 
 
 Indeed, if by the genius of action you 
 mean will enlightened by intelligence, and 
 intelligence energized by will, — if force 
 and insight be its characteristics, and influ- 
 ence its test, — and, especially, if great 
 effects suppose a cause proportionably great, 
 that is, a vital causative mind, — then is 
 Washington most assuredly a man of ge- 
 nius, and one whom no other American has 
 equalled in the power of working morally 
 and mentally on other minds. His genius, 
 it is true, was of a peculiar kind, the genius 
 of character, of thought and the objects of 
 thought solidified and concentrated into 
 active faculty. He belongs to that rare 
 class of men, — rare as Homers and INIil- 
 tons, rare as Platos and Newtons, — who 
 have impressed their characters upon na- 
 tions without pampering national vices. 
 Such men have natures broad enough to 
 include all the facts of a people's practical 
 life, and deep enough to discern the spiri- 
 
26 
 
 tual laws which underhe, animate, and 
 govern those facts. Washington, in short, 
 had that greatness of character which is 
 the highest expression and last result of 
 greatness of mind ; for there is no method of 
 building up character except through mind. 
 Indeed, character like his is not built up, 
 stone upon stone, precept upon precept, 
 but groivs up, through an actual contact 
 of thought with things, — the assimilative 
 mind transmuting the impalpable but po- 
 tent spirit of public sentiment, and the life 
 of visible facts, and the power of spiritual 
 laws, into individual life and power, so 
 that their mighty energies put on person- 
 ality, as it were, and act through one cen- 
 tralizing human will. This process may 
 not, if you please, make the great philoso- 
 pher or the great poet; but it does make 
 the great man, — the man in whom thought 
 and judgment seem identical with volition, 
 — the man whose vital expression is not in 
 
27 
 
 words, but deeds, — the man whose sublime 
 ideas issue necessarily in sublime acts, not 
 in sublime art. It was because Washing- 
 ton's character was thus composed of the 
 inmost substance and power of facts and 
 principles, that men instinctively felt the 
 perfect reality of his comprehensive man- 
 hood. This reality enforced universal re- 
 spect, married strength to repose, and threw 
 into his face that commanding majesty, 
 which made men of the speculative audacity 
 of Jefferson, and the lucid genius of Hamil- 
 ton, recognize, with unwonted meekness, 
 his awful superiority. 
 
 But, you may say, how does this account 
 for Washington's virtues ? Was his disin- 
 terestedness will ? Was his patriotism intel- 
 ligence ? Was his morahty genius ? These 
 questions I should answer with an emphatic 
 yes ; for there are few falser fallacies than 
 that which represents moral conduct as flow- 
 ing from moral opinions detached from 
 
28 
 
 moral character. "Why, there is hardly a 
 tyrant, sycophant, demagogue, or liberticide 
 mentioned in history, who had not enough 
 moral opinions to suffice for a new Eden ; 
 and Shakspeare, the sure-seeing poet, of 
 human nature, delights to put the most 
 edifying maxims of ethics into the mouths 
 of his greatest villains, of Angelo, of Richard 
 the Third, of the uncle-father of Hamlet. 
 Without doubt Csesar and Napoleon could 
 have discoursed more fluently than Washing- 
 ton on patriotism, as there are a thousand 
 French republicans, of the last hour's coin- 
 age, who could prattle more eloquently than 
 he on freedom. But Washington's morality 
 was built up in warring with outward temp- 
 tations and inward passions, and every 
 grace of his conscience was a trophy of toil 
 and struggle. He had no moral opinions 
 which hard experience and sturdy discipline 
 had not vitahzed into moral sentiments and 
 organized into moral powers; and these 
 
29 
 
 powers, fixed and seated in the inmost heart 
 of his character, were mighty and far-sighted 
 forces, which made his intelligence moral 
 and his morality intelligent, and which no 
 sorcery of the selfish passions could over- 
 come or deceive. In the sublime metaphy- 
 sics of the New Testament, his eye was 
 single, and this made his whole body full of 
 light. It is just here that so many other 
 eminent men of action, who have been tried 
 by strong temptations, have miserably failed. 
 Blinded by pride, or whirled on by wrath, 
 they have ceased to discern and regard the 
 inexorable moral laws, obedience to which 
 is the condition of ail permanent success ; 
 and, in the labyrinths of fraud and unreali- 
 ties in which crime entangles ambition, the 
 thousand-eyed genius of wilful error is 
 smitten with folly and madness. No human 
 intellect, however vast its compass and deli- 
 cate its tact, can safely thread those terrible 
 mazes. *' Every heaven-stormer," says a 
 
30 
 
 quaint German, *' finds his hell, as sure as 
 every mountain its valley." Let us not 
 doubt the genius of Washington because it 
 was identical with wisdom, and because its 
 energies worked with, and not against, the 
 spiritual order its '' single eye" was gifted 
 to divine. We commonly say that he acted 
 in accordance with moral laws ; but we must 
 recollect that moral laws are intellectual 
 facts, and are known through intellectual 
 processes. We commonly say that he was 
 so conscientious as ever to follow the path 
 of right, and obey the voice of duty. But 
 what is right but an abstract term for rights ? 
 What is duty but an abstract term for 
 duties ? Rights and duties move not in 
 parallel but converging lines ; and how, in 
 the terror, discord, and madness of a civil 
 war, with rights and duties in confused con- 
 flict, can a man seize on the exact point 
 where clashing rights harmonize, and where 
 opposing duties are reconciled, and act 
 
•^1 
 
 ol 
 
 vigorously on the conception, Avithout having 
 a conscience so informed with intelligence 
 that his nature gravitates to the truth as by 
 the very instinct and essence of reason ? 
 
 The virtues of Washington, therefore, 
 appear moral or mental according as we 
 view them Avith the eye of conscience or 
 reason. In him loftiness did not exclude 
 breadth, but resulted from it ; justice did not 
 exclude wisdom, but grew out of it; and, 
 as the wisest as well as justest man in Ame- 
 rica, he was preeminently distinguished 
 among his contemporaries for moderation, — 
 a word under which weak politicians con- 
 ceal their want of courage, and knavish 
 politicians their want of principle, but which 
 in him was vital and comprehensive energy, 
 tempering audacity with prudence, self- 
 reliance with modesty, austere principles 
 with merciful charities, inflexible purpose 
 with serene courtesy, and issuing in that 
 persistent and unconquerable fortitude, in 
 
82 
 
 which he excelled all mankind. In scruti- 
 nizing the events of his life to discover the 
 processes by which his character grew gra- 
 dually up to its amazing height, we are 
 arrested at the beginning by the character of 
 his mother, a woman temperate like him in 
 the use of words, from her clear perception 
 and vigorous grasp of things. There is a 
 familiar anecdote recorded of her, which 
 enables us to understand the simple sincerity 
 and genuine heroism she early instilled into 
 his strong and aspiring mind. At a time 
 when his glory rang through Europe ; when 
 excitable enthusiasts were crossing the At- 
 lantic for the single purpose of seeing him ; 
 when bad poets all over the world were 
 sacking the dictionaries for hyperboles of 
 panegyric ; when the pedants of republi- 
 canism were calling him the American Cin- 
 cinnatus and the American Fabius — as if 
 our Washington were honored in playing 
 the adjective to any Roman, however illus- 
 
33 
 
 trious ! — she, in her quiet dignity, simply 
 said to the voluble friends who were striv- 
 ing to flatter her mother's pride into an 
 expression of exulting praise, " that he had 
 been a good son, and she beUeved he had 
 done his duty as a man." Under the care 
 of a mother, who flooded common words 
 with such a wealth of meaning, the boy was 
 not likely to mistake mediocrity for excel- 
 lence, but would naturally domesticate in 
 his heart lofty principles of conduct, and act 
 from them as a matter of course, without 
 expecting or obtaining praise. The conse- 
 quence was, that in early life, and in his first 
 occupation as surveyor, and through the 
 stirring events of the French war, he built 
 up character day by day in a systematic en- 
 durance of hardship ; in a constant sacrifice 
 of inchnations to duty ; in taming hot pas- 
 sions into the service of reason ; in assidu- 
 ously learning from other minds ; in wringin g 
 knowledge, which could not be taught him, 
 
84 
 
 from the reluctant grasp of a flinty experi- 
 ence ; in completely mastering every subject 
 on which he fastened his intellect, so that 
 whatever he knew he knew perfectly and 
 forever, transmuting it into mind, and send- 
 ing it forth in acts. Intellectual and moral 
 principles, which other men lazily contem- 
 plate and talk about, he had learned through 
 a process which gave them the toughness of 
 muscle and bone. A man thus sound at the 
 core and on the surface of his nature ; so 
 full at once of integrity and sagacity ; speak- 
 ing ever from the level of his character, and 
 always ready to substantiate opinions with 
 deeds; — a man without any morbid ego- 
 tism, or pretension, or extravagance ; simple, 
 modest, dignified, incorruptible ; never giv- 
 ing advice which events did not endorse as 
 wise, never lacking fortitude to bear calami- 
 ties which resulted from his advice being 
 overruled ; — such a man could not but 
 exact that recognition of commanding genius 
 
35 
 
 which inspires universal confidence. Ac- 
 cordingly, when the contest between the 
 colonies and the mother country was assum- 
 ing its inevitable form of civil war, he was 
 found to be our natural leader in virtue of 
 being the ablest man among a crowd of 
 able men. When he appeared among the 
 eloquent orators, the ingenious thinkers, the 
 vehement patriots, of the revolution, his 
 modesty and temperate professions could 
 not conceal his superiority : he at once, by 
 the very nature of great character, was felt 
 to be their leader ; towered up, indeed, over 
 all their heads as naturally as the fountain, 
 sparkling yonder in this July sun, which, in 
 its long, dark, downward journey, forgets 
 not the altitude of its parent lake, and no 
 sooner finds an outlet in our lower lands 
 than it mounts, by an impatient instinct, 
 surely up to the level of its far-off inland 
 source. 
 
 After the first flush and fever of the revo- 
 
36 . 
 
 lutionary excitement was over, and the hag- 
 gard fact of civil war was visible in all its 
 horrors, it soon appeared how vitally im- 
 portant was such a character to the success 
 of such a cause. We have already seen 
 that the issue of the contest depended, not 
 on the decision of this or that battle, not on 
 the occupation of this or that city, but on the 
 pov/er of the colonists to wear out the 
 patience, exhaust the resources, and tame 
 the pride of Great Britain. The king, when 
 Lord North threatened, in 1778, to resign 
 unless the war were discontinued, expressed 
 his determination to lose his crown rather 
 than acknowledge the independence of the 
 rebels; he was as much opposed to that 
 acknowledgment in 1783 as 1778; and it 
 was only by a pressure from without, and 
 when the expenditures for the war had 
 reached a hundred miUion of pounds, that a 
 reluctant consent was forced from that 
 small, spiteful mind. Now, there was un- 
 
37 
 
 doubtedly a vast majority of the American 
 people unalterably lesolved on independ- 
 ence ; but they were spread through thirteen 
 colonies, were not without mutual jealousies, 
 and were represented in a Congress whose 
 delegated powers were insufficient to prose- 
 cute war with vigor. The problem was, 
 how to combine the strength, allay the sus- 
 picions, and sustain the patriotism of the 
 people, during a contest peculiarly calcu- 
 lated to distract and weaken their energies. 
 Washington solved this problem by the true 
 geometry of indomitable personal character. 
 He was the soul of the revolution, felt at its 
 centre, and felt through all its parts, as an 
 uniting, organizing, animating power. Com- 
 prehensive as America itself, through him, 
 and through him alone, could the strength 
 of America act. He was security in defeat, 
 cheer in despondency, light in darkness, 
 hope in despair — the one man in whom all 
 could have confidence — the one man whose 
 
 4 
 
38 
 
 sun-like integrity and capacity shot rays of 
 light and heat through everything they shoHe 
 upon. He would not stoop to thwart the 
 machinations of envy ; he would not stoop 
 to contradict the fictions and forgeries of 
 calumny ; and he did not need to do it. 
 Before the effortless might of his character, 
 they stole away, and withered, and died ; 
 and through no instrumentality of his did 
 their abject authors become immortal as the 
 maligners of Washington. 
 
 To do justice to Washington's mihtary 
 career, we must consider that he had to fuse 
 the hardest individual materials into a mass 
 of national force, which was to do battle, not 
 only with disciplined armies, but with frost, 
 famine, and disease. Missing the rapid suc- 
 cession of brilliant engagements between 
 forces almost equal, and the dramatic storm 
 and swift consummation of events, which 
 European campaigns have made famihar, 
 there are those who see in him only a slow, 
 
39 
 
 sure, and patient commander, without readi- 
 ness of combination or energy of movement. 
 But the truth is, the quick eye of his pru- 
 dent audacity seized occasions to dehver 
 blows with the prompt fehcity of Marl- 
 borough or Wellington. He evinced no 
 lack of the highest energy and skill when he 
 turned back the tide of defeat at Monmouth, 
 or in the combinations which preceded the 
 siege of Yorktown, or in the rapid and mas- 
 terly movements by which, at a period when 
 he was considered utterly ruined, he stooped 
 suddenly down upon Trenton, broke up all 
 the enemy's posts on the Delaware, and 
 snatched Philadelphia from a superior and 
 victorious foe. Again, some eulogists have 
 caricatured him as a passionless, imperturb- 
 able, " proper " man ; but, at the battle of 
 Monmouth, General Lee was privileged to 
 discover, that from those firm, calm lips 
 could leap words hotter and more smiting 
 than the hot June sun that smote down upon 
 
40 
 
 their heads. Indeed, Washington's inces- 
 sant and various activity answered to the 
 strange complexity of his position, as the 
 heart and brain of a revolution, which de- 
 manded not merely generalship, but the 
 highest qualities of the statesman, the diplo- 
 matist, and the patriot. As we view him in 
 his long seven years' struggle with the 
 perilous difficulties of his situation, his acti- 
 vity constantly entangled in a mesh of con- 
 flicting considerations, — with his eye fixed 
 on Congress, on the States, and on the peo- 
 ple, as well as on the enemy, — compelled 
 to compose sectional quarrels, to inspire 
 faltering patriotism, and to triumph over all 
 the forces of stupidity and selfishness, — 
 compelled to watch, and wait, and warn, 
 and forbear, and endure, as well as to act, — 
 compelled, amid vexations and calamities 
 which would sting the dullest sensibilities 
 into madness, to transmute the fire of the 
 fiercest passion into an element of forti- 
 
41 
 
 tude; — and, especially, as we view him 
 coming out of that terrible and obscure 
 scene of trial and temptation, without any 
 bitterness in his virtue, or hatred in his 
 patriotism, but full of the loftiest Avisdom 
 and serenest power ; — as we view all this 
 in the order of its history, that placid face 
 grows gradually sublime, and in its immor- 
 tal repose looks rebuke to our presumptuous 
 eulogium of the genius which breathes 
 through it ! 
 
 We all know that towards the end of the 
 wearying struggle, and when his matchless 
 moderation and invincible fortitude were 
 about to be crowned with the hallowing 
 glory which Liberty piously reserves for her 
 triumphant saints and martyrs, a commit- 
 tee of his officers proposed to make him 
 king ; and we sometimes do him the cruel 
 injustice to say that his virtue overcame the 
 temptation. He was not Ifliave enough, or 
 fool enough, to be tempted by such criminal 
 4* 
 
42 
 
 baubles. What was his view of the propo- 
 sal ? He who had never sought popularity, 
 but whom popularity had sought, — he who 
 had entered public life, not for the pleasure 
 of exercising power, but for the satisfaction of 
 performing duty, — he to be insulted and 
 outraged by such an estimate of his services, 
 and such a conception of his character ! — 
 why, it could provoke in him nothing but 
 an instantaneous burst of indignation and 
 abhorrence ! — and, in his reply, you will 
 find that these emotions strain the language 
 of reproof beyond the stern courtesy of 
 military decorum. 
 
 The war ended, and our independence 
 acknowledged, the time came when Ameri- 
 can liberty, threatened by anarchy, was to 
 be re-organized in the Constitution of the 
 United States. As President of the Conven- 
 tion which framed the Constitution, Washing- 
 ton powerfully cdhtributed to its acceptance 
 by the States. The people were uncertain 
 
43 
 
 as to the equity of its compromise of oppos- 
 ing interests, and adjustment of clashing 
 claims. By this eloquent and learned man 
 they were advised to adopt it ; by that elo- 
 quent and learned man they were advised 
 to reject it ; but there, at the end of the in- 
 strument itself, and first among many emi- 
 nent and honored names, was the bold and 
 honest signature of George Washington, a 
 signature which always carried with it the 
 integrity and the influence of his character ; 
 and that was an argument stronger even 
 than any furnished by Hamilton, Madison, 
 and Jay. The Constitution was accepted ; 
 and Washington, whose fame, to use AU- 
 ston's familiar metaphor, was ever the sha- 
 dow cast by his excellence, was of course 
 unanimously elected President. This is no 
 place to set forth the glories of his civil 
 career. It is sufficient to say that placed 
 amid circumstances where ignorance, vanity, 
 or rashness would have worked ruinous 
 
 4t 
 
44 
 
 mischief and disunion, he consolidated the 
 government. One little record in his diary, 
 just before he entered upon his office, is a 
 key to the spirit of his administration. His 
 journey from JMount Vernon to the seat of 
 government was a triumphal procession. 
 At New York the air was alive with that 
 tumult of popular applause, which has poi- 
 soned the integrity by intoxicating the pride 
 of so many eminent generals and statesmen. 
 What was the feehng of Washington ? Did 
 he have a misanthrope's cynical contempt 
 for the people's honest tribute of gratitude ? 
 Did he have a demagogue's fierce elation 
 in being the object of the people's boundless 
 admiration? No. His sensations, he tells 
 us, were as painful as they were pleasing. 
 His lofty and tranquil mind thought of the 
 possible reverse of the scene after all his 
 exertions to do good. The streaming flags, 
 the loud acclamations, the thunder of the 
 cannon, and the shrill music piercing through 
 
4o 
 
 all other sounds, — these sent his mind sadly 
 forward to the solitude of his closet, where, 
 with the tender and beautiful austerity of 
 his character, he was perhaps to sacrifice 
 the people's favor for the people's safety, and 
 to employ every granted power of a consti- 
 tution he so perfectly understood, in preserv- 
 ing peace, in restraining faction, and in 
 giving energy to all those constitutional 
 restraints on popular passions, by which the 
 wisdom of to-morrow^ rules the recklessness 
 of to-day. 
 
 In reviewing a life thus passed in enduring 
 hardship and confronting peril, fretted by 
 constant cares and wor» by incessant 
 drudgery, we are at first saddened by the 
 thought that such heroic virtue should have 
 been purchased by the sacrifice of happi- 
 ness. But we wrong Washington in bring- 
 ing his enjoyments to the test of our low 
 standards. He has everything for us to 
 venerate — nothing for our commiseration. 
 
46 
 
 He tasted of that joy which springs from a 
 sense of great responsibilities willingly in- 
 curred, and great duties magnanimously 
 performed. To him was given the deep 
 bliss of seeing the austere countenance of 
 inexorable Duty melt into approving smiles, 
 and to him was reahzed the poet's rapturous 
 vision of her celestial compensations : — 
 
 " Stern Lawgiver ! yet thou dost wear 
 The Godhead's most benignant grace, 
 Nor know we anything so fair 
 As is the smile upon thy face." 
 
 It has been truly said that " men of intem- 
 perate minds cannot be free ; their passions 
 forge their fetters ; " but no clank of any 
 chain, whether of avarice or ambition, gave 
 the least harshness to the movement of 
 Washington's ample mind. In him America 
 has produced at least one man, whose free 
 soul was fit to be Liberty's chosen home. 
 As was his individual freedom, so should be 
 our national freedom. We have seen all 
 
47 
 
 along, that American liberty, in its sentiment 
 and idea, is no opinionated, will-strong, un- 
 tamable passion, bursting all bounds of 
 moral restraint, and hungering after anarchy 
 and license, but a creative and beneficent 
 energy, organizing itself in laws, profes- 
 sions, trades, arts, institutions. From its 
 extreme practical character, however, it 
 is liable to contract a taint which has 
 long vitiated English freedom. To the 
 Anglo-Saxon mind, Liberty is not apt to be 
 the enthusiast's mountain nymph, Avith 
 cheeks wet with morning dew and clear 
 eyes that mirror the heavens, but rather is 
 she an old dowager lady, fatly invested in 
 commerce and manufactures, and peevishly 
 fearful that enthusiasm Avill reduce her esta- 
 blishment, and panics cut off her dividends. 
 Now the moment property becomes timid, 
 agrarianism becomes bold ; and the industry 
 which liberty has created, liberty must ani- 
 mate, or it will be plundered by the impu- 
 
48 
 
 dent and rapacious idleness its slavish fears 
 incite. Our political institutions, again, are 
 but the body of which liberty is the soul ; 
 their preservation depends on their being 
 continually inspired by the hght and heat of 
 the sentiment and idea whence they sprung ; 
 and when we timorously suspend, according 
 to the latest political fashion, the truest and 
 dearest maxims of our freedom at the call 
 of expediency or the threat of passion, — 
 when we convert politics into a mere game 
 of interests, unhallowed by a single great 
 and unselfish principle, — we may be sure 
 that our worst passions are busy " forging 
 our fetters ; " that we are proposing all 
 those intricate problems which red republi- 
 canism so swiftly solves, and giving Manifest 
 Destiny pertinent hints to shout new an- 
 thems of atheism over victorious rapine. 
 The liberty which our fathers planted, and 
 for which they sturdily contended, and 
 under which they grandly conquered, is a 
 
49 
 
 rational and temperate but brave and un- 
 yielding freedom, the august mother of insti- 
 tutions, the hardy nurse of enterprise, the 
 sworn ally of justice and order ; a Liberty 
 that lifts her awful and rebuking face equally 
 upon the cowards who would sell, and the 
 braggarts who would pervert, her precious 
 gifts of rights and obligations ; and this 
 Liberty we are solemnly bound at all 
 hazards to protect, at any sacrifice to pre- 
 serve, and by all just means to extend, 
 against the unbridled excesses of that ugly 
 and brazen hag, originally scorned and de- 
 tested by those who unw^isely gave her 
 mfancy a home, but which now, in her enor- 
 mous growth and favored deformity, reels 
 with blood-shot eyes, and dishevelled tresses, 
 and words of unshamed slavishness, into 
 halls where Liberty should sit throned ! 
 
39 « 
 
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