' • ov .•iq .• ,^'\ ''. %.<^x (■"-n^^ ."> J'"'^^. V • o*' . ' ■ . So "•' J- .jr. . V •"* -^' ;• /\ '••^' >*'% -•- -^.Z :^!S»-. *•-..** /Jife'-. X.^** yMak^ \,<^^ ^^c,- V-^^ "sTC,- ■J^^r P--^. ,' >°-nf-, V ov^ " -^^0^ '^bv* .v"-*^ ".Visors" ^i-^-n^^ ".^ •^-> ..^ .*^??»^\ -^^^^^Z •*^^"° \<^'^ -^^fe'' ^^^-^^ V^.'^'^.o' \-^.'\/ V"^-'''^''*o'' ' X'-^-- *. .* ....... ^^^^^^ j^. ..^^^^^^* .^^ ^^^^^^ *7^ A <^ *'...♦ .0^ o 'o.»* A ^ ♦'.TV* .0^ \ CS^nrp Waslitn^ton An Ai&rpaa by k: George Washington AN ADDRESS BY ISAAC nTpHILLIPS PRINTED FOR PRIVATE DISTRIBUTION. 1903 Bloomington, Illinois .63 "It is but too probable that no plan that we propose will be adopted. Perhaps an- other dreadful conflict is to be sustained. If, to please the people, we offer what we ourselves^, disapprove, how can we after- wards defend our work ? Let us raise a standard to which the wise and the honest can repair; the event is in the hands of God. — speech of fVaihington in the Federal Con-vention. GEORGE WASHINGTON Ladies and Gentlemen: It is not my purpose to detail to you the life of a man or to recite consecutively the history of a revolution. My task is rather to tell you in a plain way a few of the things which I deem best worth knowing- about George Washington. The theme seems hackneyed enough, but much as it has been discussed, the last word has not ye'i b}^ any means been said. Although Washington was born 171 years ago and has now been dead more than a century, we are but just beginning to know the real man. Like most great men he was not fully understood even by those contemporaries who apparently had the best opportunities for knowing him. Nor is this strange. Some fields of human activity develop men of simple and transparent lives — men to the very bottoms of whose souls all may see; but to achieve immortality, either in the field of politics or of war, argues a com- plexity of mind and character not to be fathomed by every inquiring glance. Hence it is that the familiar friends of a dead statesman are sometimes found disputing hotly above his grave as to what manner of man he really was. In his own day Washinglon was belittled by friendly fools and slandered by malicious enemies. Some wanted to make him king while others thought him unfit to be president. Shallow and vulgar agi- tators denounced as a monarchist the one man of all the world whose steadfastness, valor and ability had forever driven the spirit of monarchy from a conti- nent. Writhing under the injustice of the men he had so nobly served, Washington once declared that the abuse he had received could scarcel}'^ with pro- priety have been applied to a Nero. To the great body of his countrj'-men he was, however, in his own day, perhaps the most sacred personality of all his- tory, and I wish now to show you how this very fact has made it hard for posterity to know^ the real Washington. When a small statesman of reputation dies, — such, for instance, as an average American presi- dent, — it is quite possible to know, ten or twenty years afterwards, what manner of man he really was. He is seen through no distorting medium. The extravagance alike of malice and of adulation soon subsides, and no one feels it to be to his par- ticular interest to print lies about him. The stu- dent will, of course, find his virtues and abilities much overstated in the obituary notices. Eulogies of party friends may run riot in fulsome and unde- served praise. If the deceased left influential friends and strong family connections, the funeral sermon will not fail to assign him a place of extreme felicit}^ in the company of the elect in Paradise. Those who have eaten of the dead man's political cakes will perform the mock ceremony of his canon- ization and solemnly destine his mediocre dust to the Pantheon. But in the case of a little man, how- ever hig"h-blown his reputation, these contemporary vauntings and mortuary salaams do little harm. They are not taken seriously beyond the immediate circle of the mourners or the sect of interested polit- ical partisans. A generation may possibly be mis- led, but history, refusing to be deceived, enters up, at an early day, her inexorable decree of oblivion. Of the twenty-five men who have successively been president of the United States not above six will claim a quarter of a page in the most elaborate en- cyclopedia of the twenty-first century. But with the choice few whom Clio destines for the company of the immortals the case is very dif- ferent. No sooner does a man of world-fame go to his grave than about his name begin to gather the clouds of doubt and the mists of fable. The truly great are nearly always silent men, who have not in life constantly chattered about themselves. Their inmost hearts have not been shown to the rabble. The myth-makers therefore find some details to be supplied, and they g-ather about the memories of such men as naturally and as busily as moths and bug-s seek an arc lig'ht in the nif^ht time. Many a clod-hopper suddenly wakes up to the stimulating^ fact, wholly unrecognized before, that he has been actually in close association with one of the elect of the earth, — one whose name is sure to be pro- nounced with reverence on the far banks of the Volg"a and the Po, and whose fame is destined to g"row brig"hter and wider as the centuries roll on. Then, to use an expressive political phrase, there is a rush for the historical band-wag'on. Every vain busybody is determined to connect himself in some way with this supreme reputation. Men who barely saw the great dead pass by, — who were per- haps kicked out of his road, — are ready to be "inter- viewed." In these days they not only enter the newspapers and mag'azines, but even write books, to mag-nify their own personal relations with a life drama, the world-wide importance of which they scarcely suspected until the curtain had been rung" down. Curiosity is on tiptoe to know how so g^reat a man demeaned himself; what he ate and drank; how he slept; what he said to his coach- man, his butler, his valet and his cook. All these worthies find themselves for the time being impor- tant historic personages, and when the ignorant find that the world is looking" to them for informa- tion, beware of romances! As time g"oes on, g'ossiping' dotards, finding none living" to contradict them, remember the most silly incidents that never took place and detail the most remarkable conversations that were never uttered. The artists proceed to remove all the wrinkles, warts and moles from the face of the dead, hoping to make him look pretty, as a great man should. The man of low mind manages to remember hap- penings and sayings which will show that the mighty dead was at least as salacious and low- minded as himself. The religious enthusiast is on hand with proof that the deceased believed, even to the last and toughest item, in his pious creed, while the unbeliever is just as intent to claim him for the company of the unregenerate. Apocryphal anec- dotes and bogus recollections are put forth, often under the authority of respectable names, until his- tory is for the time being confused and the world sees only a colossal form enveloped in mists and clouds. The greatest literary fame of the ages es- caped this process; but the exception is of the kind that makes good the rule, for every man and woman who had ever seen William Shakespeare had mould- ered into dust before the world recognized that he was anything more than just a clever writer. The process I have described has been going" on for thirty j^ears in the case of Abraham Lincoln. His great personality is being made over to suit the village gossips. Literary reptiles of all sizes and shapes have crawled out of the Sangamon ooze and attacked his character under the guise of old friend- ship. That fantastic abomination known as the historical novel has exploited him for hard cash, and got it, too, solely because of the unending in- terest which forever attaches to his name, while the green flies of envy and hellish wantonness have blown even the fair name and memory of his humble ancestors. Artists are removing the wrinkles and lines from his wonderfully interesting and tragic face, determined, apparently, to reduce him to the gray level of composite humanity. The most tri- fling incidents and sayings, which in their proper relation and setting would be of no importance whatever, are magnified by the microscopes of curi- osity into the materials of sober history, and thus a false coloring is put over his entire career and life. Some university lecturers, who can only conceive of a statesman that will exactly fit into their pat- ent, acedemic moulds, are exploiting, before open- mouthed audiences, a Lincoln made; up of the shreds and patches of motley and buffoonery. The far-see- ing, earnest statesman, who, before the year 1860, had profoundly touched the political thought of the 8 entire Mississippi valley, seems to have escaped the attention of these wise students of history. The unconventional fooling, which with Lincoln marked the recoil from excruciating' cares, is made by these worthies the very warp and woof of his life and work. To them Lincoln is always in his shirt-sleeves. Having described the man who made the "divided house" speech and the speeches at Gettysburg and at Cooper's Institute — the man who issued the eman- cipation proclamation and delivered the second in- augural address — as an impossible and superstitious clown, these men are driven of necessity to account for his phenomenal success as a statesman by the fortunate interposition of divine providence. A hundred years hence the higher historical criticism will be drilling and blasting amid the stratified lay- ers of hardened mud and drift with which. the real Lincoln is to-day being- overlaid; but the true Abra- ham Lincoln will then be found, just as in the last twenty years biographers have been discovering the real George Washington, Much labor has been squandered to find for George Washington a lineage fit for so illustrious a hero. The subject is, however, one to which Wash- ington himself attached slight importance, and it may be doubted w^hether, if living, he would ap- preciate the labors of a certain veracious antiquary, who, not content with tracing the line of his descent across the channel to Normandy, has invaded the very Valhalla of Norse mythology to find Washing- ton's only tit prog'cnitors in Thorfinn and Odin. As a matter of fact, there never lived in this world a lord, duke, king- or emperor who would not have derived honor from even the remotest kinship w^ith Georji^e Washington. What we do know that is really important concerning the Washington family is, that they were a high-spirited and sturdy race, which in England turned out some stout soldiers whose veins were full of fighting blood. The Wash- ingtons served the church and state with steadfast- ness and spirit. They were thrifty men of affairs, full of the spirit of loyalty to their king, — gallant in love and dauntless in war. They were knights and gentlemen, who in the time of the Puritan revolution maintained the loyal traditions of their family, standing faithfully by King Charles in his attempt to extend over England the same despotic scepter which a later scion of their house struck forever from the nerveless hand of the last English king who ever assumed to wield it. In the year 1656 two brothers of this manly race, named, respectively, John and Lawrence Wash- ington, came over to America and settled in the "Northern neck" of Virginia, at a spot which was afterwards included in Westmoreland county. Their father, an English clergyman, had been 10 stripped of his clerical living- by the hated Puri- tans, which fact, together with the generally un- congenial air of Puritan England, had been the cause of the migration, George Washington was the great-grandson of the immigrant John Washing- ton, who was himself a soldier of no mean prowess, and whose fighting qualities were reproduced in his great descendant. The father of George Washing- ton was named Augustine. He married for his sec ond wife a girl named Mary Ball, much younger than himself, whose portraiture history has left ex- tremely vague and indistinct. George Washington was the first-born child of Augustine Washington and Mary Ball, and the Virginia into which he came on February 22, 1732, was the fit nursery of a hero. The last statement I pause to emphasize. The Virginia of the eighteenth centur}'^ had not stooped to the business of breeding slaves for the market. Its men of consequence were large landed proprie- tors. The narrowing influence of the commercial spirit had never touched them. Perhaps no com- munity that ever existed was ever so well calculated to produce men of broad and enlightened views, of rugged physical frames, of high public spirit and independent action, of steadfast courage and unsel- fish devotion to principle, as the Virginia of the time of Washington. The public men which Vir- ginia could show in that day were never surpassed 11 by any body of men that have at one time inhabited any state or country of the world. The royalist of Virginia and the Puritan of Massachusetts both had much to learn in the new world. At the beginning" the two represented op- posite political principles. The Puritan stood for individualism in church and in state; the cavalier stood for a religion established by law and for chivalrous loyalty to the crown. Each brought his principles with him to the new world. They came in swarms at alternate periods as the opposing fac- tion happened for the time being to be dominant and oppressive in England. But in the course of a century or more the Puritan and the cavalier found themselves educated to a common belief in the rights of man and in the proper scope and functions of government. In 1776 the Virginia cavalier had learned that kings could do much wrong. The Massachusetts Puritan in the meantime had learned that a theocracy is unfit for the government of free men. They all met at last on common ground in a common cause, and, proclaiming with Rousseau that governments derive their just powers from the con- sent of the governed, they went forth shoulder to shoulder under the immortal Washington, — that rebel who had no treason in him, — to win victories for themselves and for the world. 12 If we exclude his childhood, there were but seven years of Washington's life during which he was not in some way connected with the public ser- vice, and yet the only office he ever really sought was a seat in the Virginia House of Burgesses. His father was a well-to-do planter — proprietor of five thousand Virginia acres. Two of his elder brothers had been educated in England, and George would doubtless have received like favor had not his father's death when he was but eleven years old destined him to a far different — may I not say, for his purposes, a more effective — schooling amid fron- tier hardships. Enjoyment of his scant inheritance from his father's estate — a younger son's portion — was postponed until his majority, it yielded no immediate income, and at the age of sixteen, with but a meager education in books beyond mathe- matics, Washington became a surveyor. For three years he dived much of the time in the frontier wilderness of Virginia. He seems scarcely to have had a childhood. When history first takes account of him he was a strenuous and methodical worker. In the wilderness he learned all that was to be known of woodcraft. He sometimes wore clothes made of the skins of animals and slept much of the time upon the ground, under the trees or on the floor be- fore the open fire of some frontier cabin. In this period he learned the Indian character thoroughly 13 — a lesson that served him well in after life. His work as a surveyor was always accurately and thoroughly done. Yet through all this period of inestimable train- ing" filled with hardships and dangers, it must be remembered that George Washington belonged to the better class of Virginians. He was often at Mt. Vernon, the elegant countr}^ seat of his eldest half-brother, Lawrence, where he met much gay company. He was, too, a frequent visitor in the home near by of Thomas Lord Fairfax, a courtly English nobleman of sixty, with whom he plied the chase, and who, divining the boy's thoroughness and capacity, had in fact set him upon his career as a surveyor. The dawn was always bright in the horizon of his youth. He had always rich, influ- ential and courtl}^ friends. He spoke the language of gentility, and bore himself, even in youth, much like a gentleman of the old school. He was almost, but not quite, an aristocrat. Certainly, he could eat whether he worked or not; but his was a reso- lute soul full of the spirit of independence, which forbade him to eat where he had not labored. This certainly was not an aristocratic trait. By the death of his eldest half-brother, Law- rence, and the extinction of his line soon after, Washington became owner of the princely estates of Mt. Vernon, and in addition to this great wealth 14 the rank of major, which the deceased Lawrence Washington had held in the Virginia militia, had been transferred to the promising younger brother. Responsibilities were falling thick upon this youth of twenty. He became a soldier just as the mutter- ings of war between France and England began to be heard along the colonial frontiers. The struggle for an empire was taking form, the story of which has been so enchantingly told by Parkman, — a struggle which was to decide one of the most mo- mentous questions which greed of empire ever pro- pounded or war ever answered, namely, whether Latin civilization or Saxon civilization should domi- nate the new world. And when a discreet and trusty messenger was needed to face the storms of an inclement season and warn the French from the frontiers of the Ohio, what fitter man could be found for the arduous service by Governor Dinwiddle, of Virginia, than the hardy, the intelligent, the daunt- less Major George Washington? Through more than five hundred miles of trackless forests infested by hostile savages, over swollen streams and amid almost impassable snows, this youth of twenty-one led his little band. When on the return the horses became exhausted, Washington, with a single com- panion, took the forest paths on foot, and through hardships which only a giant frame could have en- dured be brought news to Virginia's Governor that Prance meant to fight for the West. Young as he was, Washington had before been well known throughout Virginia, but from the day when he made his report of this perilous journey, showing the rare tact he had displayed in dealing with the French and Indians and the enormous dif- ficulties he had overcome, he became the man of the hour in the colonies. His name and deeds went over to England and were heard in parliament. Everybody somehow felt that there was great ma- terial in this boy with the old head and the daunt- less heart. It was seen that here was a superb personal character — a thing rarer and more useful even than genius. In the war between France and England Wash- ington acquired much local reputation as a soldier, and it is remarkable that this reputation was achieved principally through reverses and defeats. The populace usually judge a soldier by his success — by results. An excuse, however well grounded, can seldom be made to take the place of a victory; and yet, when the French war had closed, the name of Washington had been connected with no solitary campaign or expedition which had not either posi- tively failed, or, at best, proven futile. His first expedition against Fort Duquesne met with disaster at Great Meadows, where Washington surrendered 16 his command. The second, under Braddock, wliich Washington accompanied as a staff officer, was overwhelmed and routed by Indians and French in ambush. A third, toward the same quarter, which he accompanied as an officer under General Forbes, did little important fighting", and arrived only to find a deserted fortress. But on Braddock's fatal field Wash- ington had shown rare metal and all the qualities of a great soldier. In great dangers he was always at his best. From Braddock's field he brought away the reputation of having saved the English army. He was ubiquitous; his coat was riddled with bul- lets; three horses fell under him; and when all was over it was remembered to his credit that he had given Braddock advice which, if heeded, would have prevented the disaster. Virginia was filled with pride at the recital of his prudence, his daring and his strength, and doubted not that on fairer fields her cool and daring hero of twenty-three would give a great account of the stout heart and the rare sense that were in him. Again his name and deeds went over sea, and were applauded in the country he was destined to dismember and humiliate. Washington's subsequent services cover so long a period and were so various that I can only touch his career in a few places, and all thought of chronological order must be abandoned. In valu- ing the services of a public man it is necessary to 17 take account of the problem which was before him for solution, the extent of the difficulties to be over- come, the means at hand with which to do the work, the manner in which the work was finally done and the value of the results achieved. No man wins a just fame by doing- thing's which may easily be done. The friends of a politician may, indeed, by a S3^stem of puffing and advertising", make of him a sort of stuffed and tinseled hero, but the little brass g-ods of politics meet with rough usag^e from history. They die as the worm dieth, and oblivion swallows them. War, also, has its false heroes, — dress parade warriors that strut for an hour amid clang^ing brass and martial noise; but they, too, pass quickly away, even as we shall see some bog^us heroes of the American revolution falling- from their little pedes- tals while the great, silent hero goes on to immor- tal fame. "Taxation and religion," says John Morley, "have ever been the prime movers in human revo- lutions," and surely both of these have entered largely into the making of America. The implaca- ble hostilities of religion peopled the new world; taxation without representation made us an inde- pendent nation. The contest over the right of parliament to tax the American colonies had gone through several phases, which I must pass un- noticed. It was well known that to press the hated 18 taxing" policy would provoke colonial resistance — if necessary, with arms. When Lord North became prime minister he proceeded to do the thing which of all others was most unstatesmanlike and disas- trous, namely, he reported and carried a bill to re- peal all the taxes except one, — that upon tea, — and in these sage words he justified his policy: "The properest time," said he, "to exert our right of tax- ation is when the right is refused. To temporize is to yield; and the authority of the mother country, if it is not now supported, will be relinquished for- ever. A total repeal cannot be thought of till America is prostrate at our feet." Thus were abandoned all the real benefits of the hated policy, just enough being retained to insure a continuance of the quarrel. No wonder real statesmen like Chatham and Burke cried out against such fatal nonsense. Lord North was far from being a fool, and his policy, thus announced, has been taken by history as au echo from the weak and despotic mind of his master, George III, the best thing about whom is that he died a long time ago. It quite astonished North and his master to find the Americans standing up for a principle. Not the amount of the tax, but the principle of it, Franklin told parliament, was the question at issue. The in- dignant colonists thundered back to King George that the right to take one pound implied the right 19 to tcike thousands, and that there was no wealth which, on such a principle, power guided by cupid- ity could not exhaust. Then followed the Boston Tea Party, the closing of the Boston port by act of parliament, and at length, in quick succession, Lex- ington, Concord and Bunker Hill. The conduct of the war throughout, on the part of Great Britain, was in the last degree stu- pid and barbarous. The non-combatant colonists, whom it should have been the first object to concil- iate, were subjected to every conceivable outrage by the British troops. Again and again predatory bands were sent out with no other purpose, appar- ently, than to punish peaceful inhabitants and de- stroy their means of subsistence. Without this element of cruelty and wanton outrage it would have been difficult for the patriot cause to succeed. Little, despotic King George was stupid enough to believe the colonists could be awed by a show of unbridled power. Too late he learned that he was dealing with men of spirit and character, such as it never pays to drive to desperation. British atrocities bore good fruit. Wherever the British army went it made rebels of all that were before indifferent. The struggle, begun only to resist taxation, was speedily changed into a war for independence and the rights of man — a struggle the grandest in its object and the most prodigious 20 in its consequences which was perhaps ever before waged by man. Its theater became the world. It became a war of manhood against oppression — against personal government — and in the end it did the friends of liberty in England as much good as it did the patriots in America, for even Lord North himself came out of that war declaring that no English king ought ever again to be entrusted with real power. And ever since that day English mon- archs have reigned but have not ruled. The historic gyves upon the hands of Edward VII, are probably much tighter to-daythan they would have been had George Washington never lived. It is hardly too much to saj^ our revolutionary war resulted ulti- mately in the enfranchisement of the civilized por- tion of the human race. Now, of all men in the American colonies in the summer of 177.') George Washington was the one who had apparently least personal interest in the war that was coming on. On the day he took command of the Continental army he was probably the wealthiest man on the American continent. He was a planter, and not a trader, and, by the way, the best farmer Virginia ever had, content in his calling. The trouble which had broken out up at Boston was not disturbing the quiet and order of his plantations in Virginia. He had had little part in the preliminary agitation, and the British troops 21 that had been quartered on the people of Boston were not troubling" him any at all. He had arrived at the age of forty-three, and was respected every- where as a man of great substance and character. Even in England he was held in high esteem, for he had done great and heroic service for the king. Why should he fly to arms and jeopardize his all, — wealth, reputation, life even, — in an unequal con- test over a trifling tax on tea, which would not have taken from his pocket five shillings in a year? How natural for Washington to have said, "This is only a tempest in a teapot, gotten up by the merchants of Boston, and they may fight it out." But he in fact said a very different thing. His words were always few. He rose in the Virginia convention and said, "I will raise one thousand men, euiist them at my own expense, and march myself at their head for the relief of Boston." It was this speech, and not Patrick Henry's fierce cry for "liberty or death," which was the most momen- tous Virginia utterance of that period. When the man of silence and action speaks thus it has a mean- ing far deeper than the babble of professional orators This utterance thrilled every colonial pa- triot, and furthermore it jDroved Washington to be a statesman as well as a patriot, for in it is seen his clear perception that the colonies must support each other, and that the chain which was riveted 22 upon the freemen of New Eng-land must of necessity equally fetter the men of the Southern colonies. It was never hard for Georg-e Washington to see across the Virginia border. In reckoning the services of Washington many popular misconceptions must be brushed aside. We are accustomed to think of the revolutionary strug- gle as something different in kind from other his- toric events. A glamour, which it seems sacrilege to dispel, rests over the revolutionary fathers. We like to believe that in that crisis of our history every man did the unselfish duty of a patriot; that there were no corruptions, no petty jealousies, and that all worked together in harmony in the noble cause of liberty and independence. But this pleas- ing delusion must be abandoned at the very outset. The average American of a century and a quarter ago was made of the same frail human material of which all men, everywhere, have been made. In the first place, it is to be remembered there was always a large and very respectable minority of the colonists who were loyal to England. An- other party, also respectable in numbers and char- acter, were almost indifferent, and only the gross outrages of the British military domination con- verted them into patriots. But there were plenty of men, then as now, who were patriotic with their vocal organs only — men who every day were slaying 23 Englishmen in buckram, and who heroically went in for the new flag" and an appropriation. As always happens, many agitators who had been active and noisy in bringing on the war ceased to be of a par- ticle of value to the cause when the tug actually came and wise, practical measures were to be de- vised. Mere large talk became very cheap when, after the defeat of Long Island, Washington's im- mediate command had dwindled to three thousand tatterdemalions fleeing through the Jerseys before a victorious British army. John Adams could give his toast for a "short and violent war" when Wash- ington's army was starving and freezing at Valle}^ Forge, but toasts slew no invaders and fair words buttered no parsnips. It was easy for the impetu- ous Samuel Adams to sneer at the "Fabian policy" of the great man, who was not, indeed, prolific in words, but who by sheer endurance and courage was none the less Iceepingthe great cause alive through the dreary years between the surrender of Burgoyne and the final campaign against Yorktown. Even thus it was that such men as Greeley, Wendell Phillips and Ben Wade carped at the wise measures of Abraham Lincoln throughout the dark days of our civil war. Noisy agitators are not statesmen. Formulat- ing grand declarations about the rights of man was an easy matter compared with the task Washington 24 met at Long- Island, at Trenton and at Yorktown. Itisa very pretty thing to say "right makes might," but to g-et the requisite number of muskets behind the right, so it may be indeed transmuted into might, is a mathematical and an economical, as well as a moral, question, which calls for brains, char- acter and courage. The Continental army of which Washington took command under the Harvard Elm July 2, 1775, had sprung into being spontaneously, without a particle of legal authority. It was New England's answer to the clatter of the hoofs of the charger which bore Paul Revere forth on his midnight ride to warn the minute men that the British were moving. The appointment of Washington to the command, which was moved in Congress by John Adams, was a shrewd stroke of the New England men to insure the support of the Southern colonies. On the day that Washington assumed command that army was an unorganized rabble. Our good sons and daughters of the American Revolution must not be shocked to know that George Washington did not think much of the New England army when he first calmly looked it over. He wrote confidentially to his brother, Lund Washington: "Their officers are the most indifferent kind of people I ever saw. I dare say the men would fight well enough if properly officered, although they are an exceedingly dirty 25 and nasty peoi^le. * * * An unaccountable kind of stupidity * * * prevails but too generally among" the officers of the Massachusetts part of the army, who are nearly of the same kidney with the pri- vates." He further says in the same letter: "The Massachusetts people suffer nothing to go by them that they can lay hands upon." Yankee thrift was not wanting, you see, even in that early day. Again, hear this wail of almost blank despair: "Such dearth of public spirit and such want of virtue, such stock- jobbing and fertility in all the low arts to obtain advantage of one kind or another, I never saw be- fore, and I pray God's mercy that I may never be witness to it again. I tremble at the prospect. * * * Could I have foreseen what I have experienced and am likely to experience, no consideration upon earth should have induced me to accept this command." The mad haste of the militia to abandon the army the moment their terms expired, no matter what the emergency, caused the commander much chagrin, To the president of Congress he wrote: "I am sorry to be necessitated to mention to you the egregious want of public spirit which prevails here. Instead of pressing to be engaged in the cause of their country, which I vainly flattered myself would be the case, I find we are likely to be deserted in a most critical time." The Connecticut men marched out of the trenches at Boston just when the British ?6 were being- re-enforced, and Washing-ton 's entreaties "were powerless to stop them. "The desire of re- tiring into a chimney corner," wrote Washington, "seized the troops as soon as their terms expired." After the retreat from New York and the Hadson the militia deserted in droves, and the only reason the army did not then disintegrate, leaving the patriot cause stranded and lost, was that there was at its head a great and dauntless hero that never in all his life struck his colors to foe or fate. We are not accustomed to think thus of the revolutionary army, nor would the impression to be derived from the letters of Washing-ton, written early in the war, from which I have quoted, be a fair one if nothing- more were said. The truth is, that army had in it as good fighting- material as any army that every existed It was later joined by many good and even great soldiers from the south- ern and other colonies. In the course of time Wash- ington infused discipline into the unorganized mass, but it was never a highly effective body, and I must not neglect to tell you why. The revolutionary army was always more or less demoralized for the reason that it had no org-anized government or authority behind it. Some one wittily and not inaptly said its commander never knew whether or not it would fight, and the British com- mander could never rely upon it to run. That army 27 did not even have a people behind it, for the colonists were not then one homojjeneous people as Ameri- cans have since become. An effective army without a national spirit back of it is an utter impossibility. The Continental Congress was a mere "leag^ue of friendship." It could not command; it could only advise. It was, indeed, permitted to exercise with- out question a few of the hig-hest functions of sov- ereig'nty, such as declaring independence, issuing- continental money and negotiating treaties; but it had no direct relations with the people and could enforce its mandates against no unwilling citizen. It had no truly national powers. It could not levy taxes or compel the enrollment of an army. Without a solitary war power it was attempting to carry on a great war. When the war opened it found a spon- taneous swarm of minute men surrounding Boston, and after a good deal of debate decided to adopt them as a colonial army, and the adopted child, in point of discipline and order, was, of course, as un- certain as its adoptive parent. The Congress could request the different states to furnish certain quotas of soldiers and to contribute their respective pro- portions of needed revenue; but scarcel}^ a state complied, and Congress had no power to compel obe- dience. The inability of Congress to put into the field an effective army devolved upon W^ashington himself the almost superhuman struggle, lasting for 28 seven years, to keep on foot enough men to continue the war; and his success is proof of the incompar- able streng^th and greatness of his character no less than of his wonderful capacity for business. But when the lighting- blood of George Wash- ington was up nothing ever daunted him. What- ever he might say or write to friends in confidence, he kept a bold front toward the enemies of his country. He saw his problem and he met it. To appreciate Washington's ability as a military com- mander it is necessary to realize that he very early ceased to expect to gain his cause by fighting pitched battles. His problem was not to attack and destroy the British arm3^ for such an attempt, with the resources at his command, would have been sheer quixotic folly. His great problem was to keep an organized army on foot in the field and wait for favorable developments. It was some- thing more than a figure of speech which assigned him the sobriquet of the American Fabius. Allegiances during the colonial regime were all local. A New Yorker would fight Burgoyne with great spirit in his own state, but was comiDaratively indifferent when New Jersey or Pennsylvania was the scene of invasion. The people of the Southern colonies, under local leaders like Sumter, Marion and Pickens, performed wonders of daring and energy when their own section was overrun, but 29 were comparatively indifferent to outrag"es perpe- trated in New Eng-land. Washing-ton's problem necessarily became civil as w^ell as military. He had to be constantly re-creating- the army with which to keep up the strug-gle. Passing- by Con- gress, he often appealed directly to the g-overnors and the assemblies of the different colonies. His pressing- question was not whether he should go over and crush Howe or Clinton, but how to keep his own army from literally melting away, leaving the British in undisputed possession. His writings in the period of the war abound largely in urgent, almost beseeching, appeals sent to the governors, assemblies and public men of the different colonies, urging them to come to the aid of the cause. As the struggle progressed, Congress from doing nothing took to doing positive mischief. It was filled with small politicians, many of whom were busy with schemes of intrigue against the great, stalwart hero who, like another Atlas, was supporting the sacred cause of his country. But the great body of the people who cared little for Congress loved and respected George Washington. Somehow they felt he could be trusted in spite of the disparagements of the politicians, and he in fact became the center and magnet of the pojDular allegiance. In great measure he took the place of the central authority which was wanting. It is 30 literally true that lie stood at the focus of the peo- ple's feeling" of loyalty. To them he represented the great cause. This i)opular devotion provoked the jealousy and sneers of a class of men who af- fected to think battles should be foug-ht and won without an army. The cold-hearted, treacherous adventurer, Charles Lee, was exalted over Wash- ing-ton by many who thoug-ht he should be placed at the head of the army. The mushroom hero, Ho- ratio Gates, upon whom the victory of Saratoga had been thrust without the slig^htest merit of his own, became the center of what was known as the "Con- way cabal," which had for its secret object the dis- placement of Washing-ton by the so-called "Hero of Saratoga." Even John Adams comes painfully near falling under the censure of history for an almost proven complicity in this ugly plot. But the great, silent man kept his counsel through the dark months and years, and maintained his army in the field whether it could win battles or not, and it was this heroic steadfastness of one supreme character that finally won American independence. But Washington was capable of something more than patience and endurance. When the occasion called he could strike like the thunderbolt. This was exemplified by the wonderful coup by which he surprised Cornwallis at Yorktown and fought the battle which practically ended the war. But it was, 31 if possible, still more strikingly exemplified on an earlier occasion. In the late fall of 1776 the patriot cause reached, perhaps, its lowest ebb. New York had been taken. Through no fault of the com- mander, Port Washing-ton, on the Hudson, had been captured with 3000 prisoners. The Continental army had dwindled in its retreat across New Jersey to a few thousand destitute and discouraged men, and Washing-ton, who could do anything- but sur- render his cause, had even thoug-ht of g'oing- to the mountains to conduct a predatory war. "If over- powered," said he, "we must cross the Alleghenies." The British army, however, ravaged the Jerseys and made some more rebels. That helped some. But as the holidays approached it became certain the cause would be lost before spring unless something decisive could be done. In the language of Thomas Paine, the "times that tried men's souls" had come. The emergenc}?^ was desperate and desperate must be the remedy. Washington resolved to make a Christmas call upon the Hessians who were slum- bering in fancied security in their winter canton- ments along the Delaware. His plan was that three columns should cross the river at different places at the same hour and make a simultaneous attack, but of course only the column commanded by Wash- ington in person in fact moved. In the midst of a perilous ice flow, Washington stealthily crossed the 32 ragingf river in the night with 2500 men, marched nine miles to Trenton through a blinding- storm of sleet and snow and at the point of the bayonet cap- tured nearly a thousand prisoners. As the army approached Trenton, General Sullivan sent word that the guns and powder were wet. "Tell General Sullivan to use the bayonet," said Washington, "for the town must be taken." The audacity of the move was never surpassed by Bonaparte himself. Having re-crossed the Delaware and secured his prisoners, Washington, determined not to lose the moral effect of his victory by precipitate flight, again crossed into New Jersey, and on the bank of Assunpink river met the greatly superior force which had come out under Cornwallis to capture him. It was the supreme crisis of the war for independence. In the dead of winter Washington had put the Dela- ware between him and his base of supplies, and with an army composedlargely of raw militia wasconfront- ing a greatly superior force of regulars. The armies met on the evening of January second. There was severe skirmishing before the night fell, but Cornwal- lis, feeling secure in his greatly superior force and deeming it impossible that Washington could escape him, ordered the battle to cease, saying, "In the morn- ing we will go out and bag the old fox." But the "old fox" had no notion of being "bagged." By a strat- agem worthy of Hannibal he escaped in the night to 33 the rear of Cornwallis' army by a road of which Coni- wallis was ig'norant. Next morning the British camp was awakened by the thunder of Washington's can- non at Princeton, where he defeated three regiments of British regulars which were just starting to join Cornwallis, and captured three hundred more pris- oners. He then drew off his ragged, freezing men to the impregnable heights of Morristown and waited for the leaven to work. The country was electrified; faint hearts again took courage; the world applauded, and the patriot army began to grow. The Jerseys had been redeemed and new heart had been put into the waning cause. Fred- erick the Great declared it was the most brilliant campaign of the century. The sheer audacity of Washington had saved his cause, and from that hour the British knew they had to deal not only with a great man but with a great general. I beg to remind you once more that I am only using the facts and incidents of the war for inde- pendence so far as they serve to illustrate the character and abilities of Washington, and with this view I now remark that the revolution was not, as commonly supposed, one of those desperate struggles which men sometimes wage, in which the last man is sacrificed and the last dollar expended. This is said in no disparagement of the splendid heroes w'ho really did the fighting and left the 34 tracks of their bare and bleeding- feet upon the snows of New Jersey and Pennsylvania. What I say is, that owing" to the weakness of the colonial government, which had no power to enforce needed war measures, there never was an hour, from the first g-un at Lexington to the last g^un at Yorktown, when the resources of the colonies, either in point of men or supplies, were anywhere near exhausted. In our war of the rebellion the South made a "last ditch" fight, and even the loyal states proceeded in that struggle much nearer to an actual exhaustion of their resources than the thirteen colonies did in their war for independence. Had the Continental Congress had power to marshal the resources of the colonies in men and money with the same effi- ciency and in the same degree that Lincoln's ad- ministration marshaled the national resources in 1864, the struggle might have been as "short and violent" as John Adams desired. It must be remem- bered that Lord North's government labored under many embarrassments at home. Be it said to their eternal honor, the American war was not heartily supported by the people of England. Pew English- men would volunteer to fight the Americans, and a conscription was too drastic a measure to be risked. There was a vague fear in the British mind of trust- ing despotic little King George with a large army. It became necessary for North's government to hire 35 twenty thousand Hessians to fight the Americans, and Frederick the Great, with a fine stroke of irony, levied a tax per head on each Hessian soldier pass- ing over his soil for service in America, as though they had been cattle for export. Besides all this, England was beset by enemies abroad, as she has always been and is now. She has left no nation that ever dealt with her without a sense of wrong, and if our old mother England should now begin the experiment of respecting the rights of other nations and peoples, she would need to be decent for at least two hundred years before this animosity of centuries would die away. All these things made England weak, and if our Colo- nial government had been invested in 1731 with power to put the same per cent and proportion of the men of fighting age into the ranks of the revo- lutionary army which Lincoln's administration put into the ranks of the Union army in 1864, Washing- ton would in that 3'ear have had in the field over ninety thousand men instead of a little over thirty thousand, and with such an army he could have swept the British from the continent without a French soldier or a French dollar. Furthermore, with such a government the army would have been fed and clothed as it never was in fact. At a time when the soldiers were starving and almost naked there was abundance of clothing and food lying in 36 different military depots, bat the commissar}^ de- partment under the Congress was so utterly ineffi- cient that it failed to transport the stores and issue them to the army. All this must be considered in giving" George Washington his due. The patriotism of the colo- nies, of which there was plenty, had no implement with which to work — no organized government through which it could express itself — no national spirit to which appeal could be made. No wonder, when Washington came out of that war, that he realized as no other man could, the crying need of a government for the American people. But the recital of these facts only puts in a clearer light the great heroism of the incomparable men who, in spite of all discouragements, actually fought out and won the war of independence. After all, it was the few that suffered and bore the revo- lutionary burden. There was scarcely a time in all the struggle when fully half the colonies were not enjoying perfect peace and tranquility. When the fighting came their way, the men of any colony bestirred themselves and took down their fire locks, but when the stress was in a distant colony, only the more lively and adventurous spirits shouldered their muskets to join the fray. All action was sub- stantially voluntary; and it covers the real heroes with imperishable glory to relate that they per- 37 formed this supreme service to the cause of freedom as a willing and voluntary sacrifice. The men who, without hope of mone^^ reward or of worldly honors, followed their great commander to final victory, deserve to be revered, not only by Ameri- cans, but by all who love liberty, in every land. It is not the idle extravagance of hero-worship which makes of Washington the most conspicuous case in all history of the one indispensable man for the occasion Unquestionably, without George Washington the Declaration of Independence would have failed. Washington might be defeated in the field, but he was never routed, and everybod}^ knew he would be ready to fight again. No antagonist, whatever his ability or the superiority of his re- sources, ever dared to treat Washington as a con- temptible antagonist. It was his great name, as much as Franklin's diplomacy, that finally secured for us the French alliance. His deeds had roused a contagion among the French people which almost forced the French government to act. As Wash- ington's military services are dispassionately re- valued, the judgment of history must be that no other commander, before or since, ever achieved such grand results with such scant and inadequate means. And at last, after seven years of service with- out pay and at a great personal sacrifice, with hair 38 whitened and eyes dimmed by sleepless anxieties and arduous labor, Washington came back to the Cong^ress to resign his commission and lay down his military burden. There was one deep solace in his bosom: he had won the liberties of his country. The American who, in full view of the value and the unselfish character of his great service, can read the scene of his farewell to his officers at Fraunce's Tavern and his resignation of his commis- sion before Congress without emotion and with per- fectly dry eyes, would confer a service upon his country by immediately emigrating. Christmas, 1783, found Washington once more a private citizen at Mt. Vernon — that haven of so many of his unrealized domestic dreams and now the mecca of all true patriots. But the great work was but half done, and his country yet needed him. To drive away King George was one thing; to set up something in the place of King George was quite another thing. "Taxation without representation" had been beaten, but taxation with representation presented difficulties almost as great. Questions of civil policy as grave as any that ever confronted America were pressing for settlement. On many oc- casions during his military service Washington had demonstrated that he possessed the intellectual poise and the clear vision of a great statesman. Allow me, at the risk of being tedious, to instance a few such cases. 39 Once, when tlie army was on the march, many children bearing torches came out to escort Wash- ing^ton and his officers throug^h a certain town. Washington turned to one of the Prencli officers and said: ''We may be beaten by the English; it is the chance of war; but there," said he, pointing to the children, "is the army they will never conquer." That was the remark of a statesman who foresaw the destiny of America. Congress was at one time considering a propo- sition for the invasion of Canada jointly by the United States and France. Washington wrote con- fidentially to the president of Congress, pointing out that Canada had but recently been conquered from France, and w^as attached to the French monarch}^ by blood, manners and religion, and that it would be unwise to tempt France, as our ally, by putting her in virtual possession of the Canadian capital. "Men are very apt," he wrote, "to run into extremes. Hatred of England may carry some into an excess of confidence in France, esi^ecially when motives of gratitude are thrown into the scale. * * * But it is a maxim, founded on the universal experience of mankind, that no nation is to he trusted further than it is bound by its interests. In our circumstances we ought to be particularly cautious, for we have not yet attained sufficient vigor and maturity to recover from the shock of any 40 false step." This proved Washing'ton to be a states- man of great foresight, incapable of yielding to the mere intoxications of the moment. Bitter as was his quarrel with England, his steady Saxon judgment yet told him that English blood and English insti- tutions were a better environment for the new re- public than French domination could afford. Once in a great crisis of the war Congress passed an order virtually investing Washington with all the powers of a dictator. Having no real power itself. Congress grew recMess in giving power away. But hear how this man received the news of his dictatorship: "I find," he wrote, "Congress have done me the honor to intrust me with powers, in my military capacity, of the highest nature and almost unlimited extent. Instead of thinking myself freed from all civil obligations by this mark of their confidence, I shall constantly bear in mind that as the sword was the last resort for the preservation of our liberties, so it ought to be the first thing laid aside when these liberties are established." The man who wrote that, and really meant it, was cer- tainly the right man to pilot a people's revolution. Throug"hout the entire revolution Washington maintained a punctilious respect for regularity and order in all his proceedings. This trait of his char- acter cannot be over-estimated. He even obeyed many foolish orders of Congress against his own 41 better judgment, rather than assume arbitrary powers. He knew as well as any one that Congress was inadequate to emergencies, and almost con- temptible. The adventurer Charles Lee, before he was finally court-marshaled and suspended, was ac- customed to speak with contempt of Washington because he did not assume the powers of a dictator and disregard the directions of Congress, — and Lee, we must remember, was in those days a great au- thority with the American people; yet such was Washington's respect for regularity and order that he continued throughout the war scrupulously to obey the decrees of Congress. When forced to seize upon supplies to keep his men from starvation, he accompanied his act by a letter to Congress deplor- ing the necessity. "Such procedure,"' he wrote, "may give a momentary relief, but if repeated will prove of most pernicious consequences. * * * I re- gret the occasion that compelled me to the measure, and shall consider it the greatest of our misfortunes if we shall be under the necessity of practicing it again." Thus did the statesman and philosopher rise above the mere soldier. One of Washington's last acts before resigning from the army was to address a letter to the gov- ernors of the several states, pointing out the envi- able opportunities lying before the citizens of this new and free country. "This is the time," he wrote, 42 "of their political probation. This is the moment that the eyes of the world are drawn upon them. This is the moment to establish or ruin their na- tional character forever. This is the favorable mo- ment to give such a tone to the federal goverment as will enable it to answer the needs of its institu- tion, or this may be the moment of relaxing- the powers of the union." But alas! the "powers of the union" were already relaxed, if they, indeed, ever existed The record of the sure progress the old Confederation was mak- ing' toward disintegration and downright anarchy in the years between the surrender of Cornwallis and the adoption of the federal constitution maybe read at length in the luminous pages of Mr. Fiske's "Critical Period.'' The culmination of the disorder was Shays' rebellion in Massachusetts. To a states- man like Washing'ton, who saw things in their true proportion and proper relation, who loved the rights of a freeman and had proven he would die sooner than surrender them, but who at the same time es- teemed that liberty a fleeting delusion which was not secured to the citizens by firmly established in- stitutions, the situation of the country was distress- ing in the extreme. His correspondence shows he was even more discouraged in those years than he was amid the ice g^orges of the Delaware or the in- hospitable snows of Valley Forge. To see the ex- 43 pected results of seven years of war and sacrifice lost in the folly of sectional jealousies and conten- tions was indeed hard to men like Washington, who, as their principal reward, had counted upon seeing their country take a high and honorable place among nations. Yet such were the mad intoxica- tions which an era of disorder had produced, that only the graver and wiser patriots could see whither the mad gallop was tending. Men took up the notion that governments are bad things in themselves. They were gravely speculating whether no govern- ment at all might not be better, after all, than even the best government. Professor Von Hoist (who had more authority among us when he was farther away) makes the singularly wise observation that "the speediest course on the road to despotism is a principle ridden without reins." Our forefathers, between the close of the revolution and the formation of the Union, were riding the principle of individualism not only without reins, but with a murderous spur on each heel; and they rode it dangerously near to the black and bottomless gulf of anarchy. In politics, as in everything else, nothing hap- pens by chance, but the conditions which generated and shaped public opinion changed so rapidly in the nineteenth century that what might have seemed wisdom at its beginning would have seemed almost 44 madness at its close. We are now in an era of con- solidation. The people are collecting in the cities; capital and industries are combining" in great ag- gregations; everything tends toward great centers and governments have long been exhibiting this same tendency toward concentration. This ten- dency has arisen from perfectly natural causes — causes which were not operative in 1787, when two stage coaches accommodated all the travel and carried nearly all the lighter freight between New York and Boston. South Carolina and Massachu- setts were in those days further apart, by every test of affinity, friendship and commerce, than New Zealand and New England are to-day. We are apt to lose sight of the vast influence of the rail- road and telegraph, not only upon trade and com- merce, but upon political opinions. Rome built a vast empire without electricity and steam, but she acquired her possessions by conquest and cemented them by the terror of her legions. That was the government of force, and its only sanction was the sword. No single free constitution could ever have held together, politically, such a vast empire as the America of our day without the prodigious con- solidating force of the railroad and the telegraph. Intimacy allays jealousy and disarms distrust. Men of distant regions are acquainted to-day as near neighbors were not a hundred years ago. Maine 45 and California are nearer each other now, com- mercialh', sociall}^ and politically, than Illinois and Indiana would be without the railroad. All this renders it difficult for us to understand the disrupt- ing forces which were at work in Washington's day, and we are liable to underestimate the debt we owe to the few men of serene, unclouded vision^ who, rising above the hallucinations of their time, built for us the great house of national refuge in which to-day we securely dwell. Against the hysterical Jacobinism of his time Washington interposed the great prestige of his im- mortal name. As chairman of the great body of men who framed our constitution he saw the waves of an angry sea of contention beat over the table where he so dispassionatelj^ presided and where his silent influence was more potent than the most elo- quent speech. While others were more active than he in the detail work of framing our constitution, it is probable that without the commanding influence of Washington the task of securing its adoption by the people might never have been accomplished. Noth- ing is more certain than that on the da}^ when the draft of the constitution was engrossed and signed a large majority of the American people were averse to the plan of strengthening the central govern- ment. The constitution as finally adopted probably owed more, so far as its structure and form were 46 concerned, to the zeal and talents of Madison than to any other man; in the g'reat task of persuading the people to adopt it, preference must be given to the genius, the eloquence and the industry of Ham- ilton; but Washington was the man under the a^gis of whose prestige, character and power the smaller builders all worked and achieved their ends. The first presidency of the new republic pre- sented a task from which Washington shrank with unfeigned modesty; but he knew the most potent reason for the adoption of the new constitution had been an almost universal belief that he would be made the first president. Only as a most solemn duty did he accept the trust. He had helped to frame the constitution; the next task was to iater- pret it and to make it "march." We have lately been trying with ill success to make it swim. It took four months to frame the constitution; it has taken more than a century to find out what it means, and the debate has not yet closed. The truth is, the con- stitution means different things now from what it meant then. By force of necessity the first con. structions of the constitution had to be made by the executive; afterwards, the courts took up the work; and later, during four years, we went about the business with guns in our hands. Some things have at last been settled. For instance, it is now settled that we are a nation; but even that was not con- 47 ceded until Washington had been more than sixty- five years in his tomb. It is now known that, although not a lawyer, his first interpretations of the constitution, as president, were absolutely cor- rect. They stand to-day as the law of the land. Nor would it be fair to say tlie lawyers of his cabinet construed the constitution for him, for they were bitterly divided between "strict construction" and "loose construction," and Washing-ton, after hear- ing both sides, was compelled between the two to make up his mind for himself. A government thoroughly organized and long established, with traditions and common interests to be appealed to, grows to be a powerful machine, and the machine will run even under the control of a small or weak man But such was not the govern- ment of which Washington took control on the 30th day of April, 1789. Everything about the new gov- ernment was crude and untried. It was a time of experiment. Washington's voyage lay upon an un- charted sea, and he had to take his soundings and find the reefs and rocks as he proceeded. It is one of the marvels of history that he could have gotten through with so few mistakes. Mr. Fiske justly says that it is difficult at this day, after more than a hundred years, to see how, in any of the great crises of his public life, Washington could have done better than he did. Had a weak man, a timid man or a rash man been our first president, our govern- ment would certainly have been overthrown. Disputes about our foreign relations were never so bitter as during the first eight years of the gov- ernment. We then had a "French party" in the United States, and French influence sought to domi- nate the young republic. In April, 1793, France and England again went to war. The Americans hated England and loved France, and the French party was bent upon involving the United States in an- other war with England as the ally of France. What more natural to the super-heated American mind than that we should rush headlong into this war, thereby revenging our wrongs upon England and at the same time repaying our debt of gratitude to France? Washington adopted and maintained his wise neutral policy in the face of a noisy, ad- verse public opinion at home, and many of his former friends turned against him for the time. The government was not yet fairly upon its feet, and to have subjected it to the perils of a foreign war would have been sheer suicide. Besides all this, the "Reign of Terror" in France had brought disgrace upon the new principles of government. The mad excesses of the revolution could hardly be expected to win the favor of a be- liever in order like Washington. The government of France which had really succored the Americans 49 and which had made with them the treaty of alli- ance, had been destroyed to the last vestige by the revolution. Lafayette was in exile and Louis XVI had lost his head. To keep clear of the international complications that were thickening about the French Directory was the plainest wisdom, yet a large ma- jority of the American people angril}? demanded that the new and tottering government should plunge headlong into the vortex of European war! Washington well knew that the French govern- ment, with the crafty Vergennes at its head, had succored the United States solely out of a desire to cripple England, the historic enemy of France. He knew it was the cause of France, and not the cause of America, that Vergennes had served, and that nei- ther Vergennes nor his master, Louis XVI, cared a fig for the liberties of the people of the United States. It is now well known that if France had had her wish the terms of our treaty of jDeace with England would have been far less favorable than our commissioners at length obtained. Neither the imperial domain, extending westward to the Missis- sippi, which the persistence of John Jay procured for us, nor our right to the Atlantic fisheries, which the old bull-dog, John Adams, barked and snarled into the treaty, w^ould have been ours had Vergennes and his master had their way, Their plan, since revealed, was that the United States should be con- 50 fined to a little strip of land along- the Atlantic sea- board. The truth is, the moribund and despotic monarchy of France was really far more afraid of the startling- and contagious doctrines contained in the Declaration of Independence than ever England was. But what I have said concerning the French ministry and government must not be applied to Lafayette personally, who was throughout his long- and stormy life the steadfast friend of human lib- erty. Nor can it be said the lower class of French- men, just ready to emerge from centuries of crushing oppression, did not sincerely sympathize with the American cause. "Washington's domestic policy must be passed with scarcely a word. In his day there were plenty of fools in the United States. Let no one deceive you with fables about the "good old times." Politi- cal clamors were much more intense then than now, but no clamor ever moved Washington to do any act against his own sense of justice and duty. His was the hand of iron in the glove of velvet. Through- out all the terrific outcry that accompanied the signing and ratification of Jay's treaty of commerce with Enofland, the great, silent man did his duty and faced a frowning world. At that period there were perhaps more statesmen to the square mile in America than have ever since been found anywhere — except in Kansas during the reign of Populism. 61 One of the most virulent of the disputes was that provoked by the^, management of the finances, but to-day the financial policy of Washing^ton's adminis- tration is recognized as one of the supreme glories of American history. Amid all the bitterness, how- ever, Washing-ton was never seriously accused of acting from other than patriotic motives, even by the political ghost-dancers of that time, whose heated imaginations saw in the harmless ceremo- nies of Mrs. Washington's drawing room the sure signs of returning "monarchy." Confidence was gradually established in the new government, busi- ness sought its wonted channels, trade and industry revived, and men began at last to do something be- yond the range of mere political agitation. Thus did this wonderful man, during a long life- time, serve his country, and when at length he pre. pared to retire to the shades of his beloved Mt, Ver- non, after having been eight years president, he issued to his countrymen a letter of sage advice, a remarkable thing about which is, that those who have praised it most highly have always been least disposed to practice its wise precepts. The snows of age were now upon Washington, but he was vigorous still, and even once more his country called him. France was so sure she had with her a majority among the American people, that her outrages upon American commerce and her supercilious treatment of our commissioners as illus- trated in the famous "X. Y-.Z-." correspondence had at length brought tiie two nations to the point of war. Provision was made for an army and Wash- ington was made its commander. It had been forty- five years since, at the age of twenty-one, he went to warn the French garrisons from the western frontier, and now at sixty-six he was still ready to answer the call of duty. The war cloud passed, however, without any serious fighting, and very soon, in the quiet of his beautiful estates at Mt.Ver- non, Washington passed to his reward at the age of a little less than sixty-eight. He died as he had lived, facing even death as serenely as he had faced the hardships, perplexities and dangers of a long and strenuous life. With heroic fortitude he bore the great, though short, suffering of his last illness, and was as sweetly considerate of the com- fort of those about him in his last hour as though he had been ia the bloom of health. Methodical and heroic to the last second, he died while in the act of counting his own pulse. Twenty years ago George Washington, the man, was almost lost to his countrymen. His memory had been given over to the myth makers and gos- sips — peddlers of pious and impossible tales Jared Sparks took pains to correct all his bad spelling and faulty syntax, deeming that so great a man 53 must be made to write with the elegance of Addi- son. The puerile inventions of Parson Weems had completely usurped the period of his simple and natural boyhood. To the averag"e American, Wash- ington's life did not ai:)peal, for either he appeared too superhumanly good for this world, or his atti- tude was so cold and lifeless and the pedestal on which he had been placed was so lofty that he seemed rather like some pagan deity of the antique world than a real man of flesh and blood. In short, Washington had become in the popular imagination a stalking and stately ghost, and we were moved to exclaim, in the words of Macbeth: "Thy bones are marrowless, thy blood is cold; Thou hast no speculation in those eyes Which thou dost glare with." If, perchance, we did catch an occasional glimpse of Washington out of his attitudes of lonely, professional greatness, that accusing hatchet was forever in his hand, painfully reminding us that he could not tell a lie, — a circumstance which tended to put him completely out of fellowship with the great body of his later countrymen who have found by long practice that they can tell thousands of them. We are no longer willing to let George Wash- ington recline as a mythical giant against the hori- zon of the past. Blind, unreasoning worship is not 54 the highest tribute which gratitude can pay to greatness. Only that opinion which is made up with discrimination is truly valuable, and we need not fear that any test which historic criticism will everapply to George Washington will leave him less a hero than he was made by the first impulsive gratitude of his countrymen. We have the comforting and well-grounded as- surance of a recent biographer that no portrait ever painted of Washington resembled him. What the man really was in his person is better gathered from written descriptions than from portraits. He has been not unfitly described as possessing a "pro- digious animal nature." In moments of terrible peril he was always a lion. I have already spoken of his extreme activity and intrepid self-possession on the fatal field of Braddock's defeat. At Prince- ton, we are told, he galloped within thirty yards of the muzzles of bellowing English muskets, and in the awful crisis of the retreat from Long Island he was forty-eight consecutive hours in the saddle. Such a man was made of no ordinary stuff. Thomas Jefferson pronounced Washington the best and most graceful horseman of his age. He was six feet two or three inches in height, straight as an arrow, and weighed in middle and later life not far from two hundred and twenty pounds. His great frame would have carried another hundred LrfC. 55 weight without exhibiting- excessive corpulency. His bones and joints were exceptionally large. His arms and legs were long in proportion to his height. His feet and hands were enormous. His boots were number thirteen and his gloves had to be made to order. His shoulders and hips were broad, but his chest was not deep and his waist was slender. Nature had equipped him with the muscles of a gladiator, and Sandow would have had small ad- vantage of him in feats of sheer physical strength. His head, small in proportion to his frame, was in youth covered with dark-brown hair and sat most gracefully upon a superb neck and shoulders. His nose and mouth, like those of other forceful men, were large. His eyes were in color grayish blue, set wide apart in bony sockets of abnormal size, and were oyerhung by a beetling brow. His teeth were bad, and at length were exchanged for artificial ones. His face was colorless and deeply pitted with the small-pox. Within this commanding frame there presided a spirit of stately grace and benignant courtesy. Washington's deportment was easy, erect, noble and reserved. There was an unequaled dignity in his mere presence, and his uniform self-possession was dashed by a suggestion of shyness that added great interest to his personalty. His bearing was high without haughtiness, kind without condescen- 56 sion, and grave without being sullen. In the whole man there was a subtle charm which made him a favorite at first sight — a charm no artist ever caught and no pen ever adequately described. The French counts and marquises, who came over to America looking to see a rough-and-ready soldier with native vigor but without polish, were amazed to find at the head of the colonial army a gentleman of as high breeding and elegant manners as the French court had ever known. Washington was naturally a man of the fiercest passions — passions which only his iron will could have controlled. The lightning of his anger was terrible, and cowed even strong men. There is good evidence that he cursed the villain Charles Lee on the battlefield of Monmouth, and in view of the great provocation I am unwilling to believe the oath was not instantly recorded to his credit in the Book of Life. In business matters he was serious, exact and tireless, completing to the minutest detail whatever work he undertook. He was endowed with a most prodigious capacity for taking pains. Even and temperate in all things, Washington in- dulged no taste or passion to excess. He was fond of a good horse, and was frequently in attendance upon the races. He dearly loved field sports and was a reckless rider in the chase. He kept fox hounds and gave them romantic and poetic names. 57 He was fond of dancing', and General Greene is au- thority for the statement that once during the revo- lution Washington and Mrs. Greene danced for four hours without quitting tlie floor. But it was the stately minuet he danced; I cannot so much as think of George Washington in that mad, satanic whirl known as the two-step. He drank wine moderately at meat, but on no occasion to excess. He never allowed pleasure to supersede business, and it is doubtful whether any other career can be found wherein the merely trivial and agreeable were ever so freely indulged and yet at the same time so ap- propriately subordinated to the more grave and im- portant concerns of life. His greatest power lay in the soundness of his judgment and in the steadfast- ness of his character. The four great words of his fitting description are: wisdom, probity, strength and self-command. His name is perhaps the most illustrious in human annals. Washing"ton practiced none of the arts of the political demagogue. He valued highly the good opinion of his fellow citizens, yet he never turned in the estimation of a hair from the course his judgment of duty dictated in order to win popular applause. He was a shrewd judge of men, but he estimated them upon their merits and not by their pedigrees. He indulged in no nauseating and ful- some adulation of the masses, and his career is a 58 standing rebuke to the little men who ride into prominence on the tides of opportunity and j:raiii cheap applause by flattering the ignorant. It would be in ill taste to attempt to gild this great record of self-sacrifice, courage and righteous- ness with the tinsel of fine words. Mere flowers of tawdry rhetoric have no place in this noble story, and this inadequate review may fittingly close with the oft-quoted words of a great Englishman: "It will be," said Lord Brougham, "the duty of the his- torian and tiie sage of all nations to let no occasion pass of commemorating this illustrious man, and until time shall be no more will a test of the progress which our race has made in wisdom and virtue be derived from the veneration paid to the immortal name of Washington." 59 w -iv"^ . * " , '■^" u^ ■.■■