ATIIEN.EUM PORTRAIT, BY GILBERT STUART 
 
, GEORGE WASHINGTON^ 
 
 BY 
 
 WOODROW WILSON 
 
 ILLUSTRATED 
 
 BY HOWARD PYLE, HAKRY FENN 
 AND OTHERS 
 
 
 NEW YORK 
 HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 
 
 1897 
 

 Copyright, 1896, by HARPER & BROTHERS. 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 
TO? 
 
 E. A. W. 
 
 WITHOUT WHOSE SYMPATHY AND COUNSEL 
 
 LITERARY WORK WOULD LACK 
 
 INSPIRATION 
 
 212411 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. IN WASHINGTON S DAY 3 
 
 II. A VIRGINIAN BREEDING 45 
 
 III. COLONEL WASHINGTON 69 
 
 IV. MOUNT VERNON DAYS 99 
 
 V. THE HEAT OF POLITICS 117 
 
 VI. PILOTING A REVOLUTION 153 
 
 VII. GENERAL WASHINGTON 179 
 
 VIII. THE STRESS OF VICTORY 213 
 
 IX. FIRST IN PEACE 233 
 
 X. THE FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. . . . 265 
 
 INDEX . . 315 
 
ILLUSTEATIONS 
 
 THE ATHENAEUM PORTRAIT, BY GILBERT STUART .... Frontispiece 
 
 TAILPIECE Page xii 
 
 HEADPIECE " 3 
 
 A VIRGINIA PLANTATION WHARF Facing p. 6 
 
 "EVEN SIR WILLIAM BERKELEY SAW HE MUST YIELD" 14 
 
 GEORGE WASHINGTON " 18 
 
 TIDE-WATER, VIRGINIA, 1738 " 22 
 
 WILLIAM BYRD " 26 
 
 THEY READ ONLY UPON OCCASION WHEN THE WEATH 
 ER DARKENED" " 30 
 
 JAMES BLAIR " 34 
 
 ALEXANDER SPOTSWOOD " 38 
 
 VIEW OF THE POTOMAC RIVER FROM THE SITE OF THE 
 
 HOUSE WHERE WASHINGTON WAS BORN " 40 
 
 FACSIMILE OF THE ENTRY OF WASHINGTON S BIRTH . . Page 41 
 
 THOMAS, SIXTH LORD FAIRFAX Facing p. 48 
 
 MOUNT VERNON AT THE PRESENT DAY " 52 
 
 THE POTOMAC FROM MOUNT VERNON " 56 
 
 LAWRENCE WASHINGTON " 58 
 
 FRENCH AND ENGLISH IN NORTH AMERICA, 1755 ... " 60 
 
 BATTLE OF GREAT MEADOWS " 74 
 
 WASHINGTON S RETREAT FROM GREAT MEADOWS ... " 76 
 
 GENERAL EDWARD BRADDOCK " 82 
 
 THE BURIAL OF BRADDOCK " 90 
 
 WASHINGTON AND MARY PHILIPSE " 92 
 
 TAILPIECE Page 95 
 
 LEAVING MOUNT VERNON FOR THE CONGRESS OF THE 
 
 COLONIES Facing p. 100 
 
 "THE WHITE HOUSE," ON THE PAMUNKEY " 104 
 
 THE OLD CAPITOL AT WILLIAMSBURG . " 106 
 
viii ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 GREENWAY COURT, VIRGINIA, LORD FAIRFAX S FOREST 
 
 SEAT Facing p. 108 
 
 GUNSTON HALL, THE HOME OF GEORGE MASON. . . . 110 
 
 WILLIAM AND MARY COLLEGE, WILLIAMSBURG, AT THE 
 
 PRESENT DAY 
 
 WILLIAM AND MARY COLLEGE, FROM AN OLD PRINT. 
 TAZEWELL HALL, THE HOME OF THE RANDOLPHS. . 
 
 PEYTON RANDOLPH " 132 
 
 GEORGE MASON " 136 
 
 IN THE OLD RALEIGH TAVERN " 146 
 
 TAILPIECE Page 149 
 
 WASHINGTON, FROM A PORTRAIT BY REMBRANDT PEALE Facing p. 158 
 
 CARPENTER S HALL, PHILADELPHIA " 166 
 
 MRS. WASHINGTON S ARRIVAL AT HEADQUARTERS, CAM 
 BRIDGE " 184 
 
 FORT HUNTINGTON, VALLEY FORGE " 196 
 
 WASHINGTON S HEADQUARTERS AT VALLEY FORGE . . " 198 
 
 WASHINGTON AND STEUBEN AT VALLEY FORGE ... * 200 
 
 THE ESCAPE OF ARNOLD 208 
 
 TAILPIECE Page 209 
 
 THE BUST BY ECKSTEIN Facing p. 218 
 
 JOHN PARKE CUSTIS, JR 222 
 
 FRAUNCE S TAVERN, NEW YORK 226 
 
 TAILPIECE Page 229 
 
 LOWER BRANDON, NORTH FRONT Facing p. 234 
 
 KENMORE, THE HOME OF MRS. BETTY WASHINGTON, 
 
 FREDERICKSBURG " 236 
 
 WASHINGTON IN HIS GARDEN AT MOUNT VERNON. . . 238 
 WASHINGTON BRINGING HIS MOTHER INTO THE BALL 
 ROOM, FREDERICKSBURG 240 
 
 SAMPLE PIECES OF THE FAMOUS CINCINNATI DINNER- 
 SET 
 
 REMAINS OF A TEA-SET BELONGING TO MRS. WASH 
 INGTON 
 
 THE MARY WASHINGTON HOUSE, FREDERICKSBURG . . " 250 
 
 MONTPELIER, THE HOME OF MADISON " 256 
 
 MUSTERED OUT A REST ON THE WAY HOME .... " 260 
 
 TAILPIECE Page 262 
 
 THOMSON, THE CLERK OF CONGRESS, ANNOUNCING TO 
 WASHINGTON AT MOUNT VERNON HIS ELECTION TO 
 THE PRESIDENCY Facing p. 266 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 IX 
 
 GOVERNMENT HOUSE, AT THE BATTERY, NEW YORK, 1790 Facing p. 268 
 THE FIRST PRESIDENTIAL MANSION, NEW YORK . ) 
 
 f 272 
 
 WASHINGTON MANSION, PHILADELPHIA ) 
 
 WASHINGTON, AFTER A PAINTING BY SAVAGE .... " 276 
 
 WASHINGTON LAMPS " 280 
 
 CONGRESS HALL, 1790-1800 " 282 
 
 ELEANOR PARKE CUSTIS " 286 
 
 WASHINGTON AND NELLY CUSTIS " 300 
 
 THE DEATH OF WASHINGTON " 304 
 
 ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE DEATH OF WASHINGTON . . " 306 
 
 HANOVER COURT-HOUSE. . ) 
 
 310 
 THE OLD TOMB, MOUNT VERNON ) 
 
 TAILPIECE Page 314 
 
IN WASHINGTON S DAY 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 EOEGE WASHINGTON was bred a 
 gentleman and a man of honor 
 in the free school of Virginian 
 society, with the generation that 
 first learned what it meant to 
 maintain English communities in 
 America in safety and a self-respect 
 ing independence. He was born in 
 a season of quiet peace, when the 
 plot of colonial history was thickening noiselessly and 
 almost without observation. He came to his first man 
 hood upon the first stir of revolutionary events ; caught 
 in their movement, he served a rough apprenticeship 
 
4 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 in arms at the thick of the French and Indian war; 
 the Revolution found him a leader and veteran in 
 affairs at forty-four; every turn of fortune confirmed 
 him in his executive habit of foresight and mastery ; 
 death spared him, stalwart and commanding, until, 
 his rising career rounded and complete, no man doubt 
 ed him the first character of his age. "Virginia gave 
 us this imperial man," and with him a companion 
 race of statesmen and masters in affairs. It was her 
 natural gift, the times and her character being what 
 they were; and Washington s life showed the whole 
 process of breeding by which she conceived so great a 
 generosity in manliness and public spirit. 
 
 The English colonies in America lay very tranquil in 
 1732, the year in which Washington was born. It fell 
 in a season bet \veentimes, when affairs lingered, as if 
 awaiting a change. The difficulties and anxieties of 
 first settlement were long ago past and done with in all 
 the principal colonies. They had been hardening to 
 their " wilderness work," some of them, these hundred 
 years and more. England could now reckon quite six 
 hundred thousand subjects upon the long Atlantic sea 
 board of the great continent which had lain remote and 
 undiscovered through so many busy ages, until daring 
 sailors hit upon it at last amidst the stir of the ad 
 venturous fifteenth century ; and there was no longer 
 any thought that her colonists would draw back or 
 falter in what they had undertaken. They had grown 
 sedate even and self-poised, with somewhat of the air 
 of old communities, as they extended their settlements 
 upon the coasts and rivers and elaborated their means 
 of self - government amidst the still forests, and each 
 had already a bearing and character of its own. Twas 
 
IN WASHINGTON S DAY 5 
 
 easy to distinguish the New-Englander from the man 
 of the southern colonies ; and the busy middle prov 
 inces that stretched back from the great bay at New 
 York and from the waters of the spreading .Delaware 
 had also a breed of their own, like neither the men of 
 the south nor the men of the northeast. Each regions 
 had bred for itself its characteristic communities, hold 
 ing their own distinctive standards, knowing their own 
 special purposes, living their own lives with a certain 
 separateness and independence. 
 
 Virginia, the oldest of the colonies, was least to be 
 distinguished by any private character of her own from 
 the rural communities of England herself. Her popula 
 tion had come to her almost without selection through 
 out every stage of quick change and troubled fortune 
 that England had seen during the fateful days since 
 James Stuart became king; and Englishmen in Vir 
 ginia were in no way radically distinguishable from 
 Englishmen in England, except that they were provin 
 cials and frontiersmen. They had their own tasks and 
 ways of life, indeed, living, as they did, within the old 
 forests of a virgin continent, upon the confines of the 
 world. But their tastes and temperament, spite of 
 change and seclusion, they had in common with Eng 
 lishmen at home. They gave leave to their opinions, 
 too, with a like downright confidence and hardihood of 
 belief, never doubting they knew how practical affairs 
 should go. They had even kept the English character 
 as they had received it, against the touch of time and 
 social revolution, until Virginians seemed like elder 
 Englishmen. England changed, but Virginia did not. 
 There landed estates spread themselves with an ample 
 acreage along the margins of the streams that every- 
 
G GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 where threaded the virgin woodland ; and the planter 
 drew about him a body of dependants who knew no 
 other master ; to whom came, in their seclusion, none 
 of that quick air of change that had so stirred in Eng 
 land throughout all her century of revolution. Some 
 were his slaves, bound to him in perpetual subjection. 
 Others were his tenants, and looked upon him as a sort 
 of patron. In Maryland, where similar broad estates 
 lay upon every shore, the law dubbed a great property 
 here and there a "manor," and suffered it to boast its 
 separate court baron and private jurisdiction. Vir 
 ginian gentlemen enjoyed independence and authority 
 without need of. formal title. 
 
 There was but one centre of social life in Virginia : 
 at Williamsburg, the village capital, where the Govern 
 or had his " palace," where stood the colonial college, 
 where there were taverns and the town houses of sun 
 dry planters of the vicinage, and where there was much 
 gay company and not a little formal ceremonial in the 
 season. For the rest, the Old Dominion made shift to 
 do without towns. There was no great mart to which 
 all the trade of the colony was drawn. Ships came and 
 went upon each broad river as upon a highway, taking 
 and discharging freight at the private wharves of the 
 several plantations. For every planter was his own 
 merchant, shipping his tobacco to England, and import 
 ing thence in return his clothes, his tools, his house 
 hold fittings, his knowledge of the London fashions and 
 of the game of politics at home. His mechanics he 
 found among his own slaves and dependants. Their 
 "quarters" and the offices of his simple establishment 
 showed almost like a village of themselves where they 
 stood in irregular groups about his own square, broad- 
 
A VIRGINIA PLANTATION WHARF 
 
: ) 
 
 *r 
 
 
IN WASHINGTON S DAY 7 
 
 gabled house, with its airy hall and homelike living- 
 rooms. He might have good plate upon his sideboard 
 and on his table, palatable old wine in his cellar, and 
 on the walls about him portraits of the stately men 
 and dames from whom he took his blood and breeding. 
 J>ut there was little luxury in his life. Plain comfort 
 and a homely abundance sufficed him. He was a gen 
 tleman, owned all he saw around him, exercised author 
 ity, and enjoyed consideration throughout the colony; 
 but he was no prince. He lived always in the style of 
 a provincial and a gentleman commoner, as his neigh 
 bors and friends did. 
 
 Slaves, dependants, and planters, however, did not by 
 any means make up the tale of Virginia s population. She 
 had been peopled out of the common stock of Englishmen, 
 and contained her own variety. Most of the good land 
 that lay upon the lower courses of the James, the York, 
 the Eappahannock, and the Potomac rivers, and upon 
 the bay on either hand, had been absorbed into the es 
 tates of the wealthier planters, who began to conceive 
 themselves a sort of aristocracy; but not a few plain 
 men owned their own smaller tracts within the broad 
 stretches of country that lay back from the rivers or 
 above their navigable depth. Upon the western front 
 of the colony lived sturdy frontiersmen ; and no man 
 was so poor that he might not hope by thrift to hold 
 his own with the best in the country. Few could own 
 slaves in any number, for the negroes counted less than 
 a third in a reckoning of the whole population. There 
 were hired servants besides, and servants bound for a 
 term of years by indenture ; even criminals who could 
 be had of the colony for private service ; but most men 
 must needs work their own plots of ground and devise 
 
8 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 a domestic economy without servants. ^_A wholesome 
 democratic spirit pervaded the colony, which made even 
 the greater planters hesitate to give themselves airs. 
 A few families that had thriven best and longest, and 
 had built up great properties for themselves, did indeed 
 lay claim, as royal governors found to their great dis 
 pleasure, to a right to be heard before all others in the 
 management of the government. But they could of 
 course show no title but that of pride and long prac 
 tice. Twas only their social weight in the parish ves 
 tries, in the Council, and in the House of Burgesses that 
 gave them ascendency. 
 
 It was the same in church as in state. Virginia 
 prided herself upon having maintained the Establish 
 ment without schism or sour dissent ; but she had main 
 tained it in a way all her own, with a democratic con 
 stitution and practice hardly to be found in the canons. 
 Nominally the Governor had the right of presentation 
 to all livings ; but the vestries took care he should sel 
 dom exercise it, and, after they had had their own way 
 for a century, claimed he had lost it by prescription. 
 They chose and dismissed and ruled their ministers as 
 they would. And the chief planters were nowhere 
 greater figures than in the vestries of their own par 
 ishes, where so many neighborhood interests were passed 
 upon the care of the poor, the survey of estates, the 
 correction of disorders, the tithe rates, and the main 
 tenance of the church and minister. Sometimes the 
 church building was itself the gift of the chief land 
 owner of the parish ; and the planters were always the 
 chief rate-payers. Their leadership Was natural and un 
 challenged. They enjoyed in their own neighborhood 
 a sort of feudal pre-eminence, and the men about them 
 
IN WASHINGTON S DAY 9 
 
 easily returned in thought and estimation to that elder 
 order of English life in which the chief proprietor of 
 the counts-side claimed as of course the homage of his 
 neighbors. There were parishes, not a few, indeed, in 
 which there was no such great planter to command 
 consideration by a sort of social primacy. It was, after 
 all, only here and there, and in the older parts of 
 the colony, that affairs awaited the wish of privileged 
 individuals. But it was the ascendency of the greater 
 planters which most struck the imagination, and which 
 gave to Virginia something of the same air and tone 
 and turn of opinion that existed in England, with its 
 veritable aristocracy, its lordly country gentlemen, its 
 ancient distinctions of class and manners. 
 
 Those who took counsel in England concerning colo 
 nial affairs had constant occasion to mark the sharp 
 contrast between the easy-going Virginians, who were 
 no harder to govern than Englishmen everywhere, and 
 the men of the northeastern colonies, with their dry 
 reserve and their steadfast resolution not to be gov 
 erned at all. These seemed unlike Englishmen else 
 where ; a whit stiffer, shrewder, more self-contained 
 and circumspect. They were, in fact, a peculiar people. 
 Into New England had come a selected class, picked 
 out of the general mass of Englishmen at home by test 
 of creed. " God sifted the whole nation," one of their 
 own preachers had told them, at election-time, in the 
 far year 1668, "that he might send choice grain out 
 into this wilderness." But the variety of the old life 
 in England had been lost in the sifting. The Puritan, 
 for all he was so strong and great a figure in his day, 
 was but one man among a score in the quick and vari 
 ous English life. His single standard and manner of 
 
10 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 living, out of the many that strove for mastery in the 
 old seats where the race was bred, had been transferred 
 to New England ; and he had had separate and undis 
 puted ascendency there to build new commonwealths 
 as he would. The Puritan Commonwealth in England 
 had been the government of a minority. Cromwell had 
 done his work of chastening with a might and fervor 
 which he found, not in the nation, but in himself and in 
 the stout men-at-arms and hardy reformers who stood 
 with him while he purified England and brought upon 
 all her foes a day of reckoning. The people had stood 
 cowed and uneasy while he lived, and had broken into 
 wild excess of joy at their release when he died. But 
 in New England an entire community consented to the 
 Puritan code and mastery with a hearty acquiescence. 
 It was for this liberty they had come over sea. 
 
 And the thoughtful, strong-willed men who were their 
 leaders had built, as they wished, a polity that should 
 last. Time wrought its deep changes in New England, 
 as elsewhere, but the stamp set upon these Puritan set 
 tlements by the generation that founded them was not 
 effaced. Trade made its characteristic mark upon them. 
 Their merchants had presently their own fleets and 
 markets. Their hardy people took more and more to 
 the sea, lived the rough life of the ocean ways with a 
 relish, beat in their small craft up and down the whole 
 coast of the continent, drove bargains everywhere, and 
 everywhere added a touch to their reputation as doughty 
 sea-dogs and shrewd traders. The population that after 
 a while came to New England did not stay to be sifted 
 before attempting the voyage out of the Old World, 
 and the quaint sedateness of the settlements began to 
 be broken by a novel variety. Kew men beset the old 
 
IN WASHINGTON S DAY H 
 
 order ; a rough democracy began to make itself felt ; 
 and new elements waxed bold amidst the new condi 
 tions that time had wrought. The authority of the 
 crown at last made a place of command for itself, de 
 spite every stubborn protest and astute evasion. It be 
 came necessary to be a trifle less observant of sect and 
 creed, to cultivate, as far as might be, a temper of tol 
 erance and moderation. But it was a slow change at 
 best. The old order might be modified, but it could not 
 so soon be broken. NewJEnglancl, through all her ju 
 risdictions, remained a body of churches,, as well as a 
 body of towns, submissive to the doctrine and discipline 
 of her learned clergy, keeping the old traditions dis 
 tinct, indubitable, alike in her schools and her meeting 
 houses. Even in Ehocle Island, where there had from 
 the first been such diversity of creed and license of in 
 dividual belief, there was little variety of type among 
 the people, for all they counted themselves so free to 
 be what they would. There was here a singular as 
 sortment, no doubt, of the units of the stock, but it 
 was of the Puritan stuff, none the less, through all its 
 variety. 
 
 New England, indeed, easily kept her character, for 
 she lived apar^ Her people mustered a full hundred 
 thousand strong before the seventeenth century was 
 out; her towns numbered many score, both upon the 
 margins of the sea and within the forests ; but she still 
 lay within a very near frontier, pushed back only a 
 short journey from the coast. Except where the towns 
 of Connecticut ran in broken line close to the westward 
 strait of Long Island Sound, a broad wilderness of un 
 touched woodland, of thicketed hills and valleys that 
 no white man yet had seen, stretched between them 
 
12 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 and Hudson s river, where New York s settlements lay 
 upon the edge of a vast domain, reaching all the way 
 to the great lakes and the western rivers. Not till 1Y25 
 did adventurous settlers dare go so far as the Berk 
 shire Hills. "Our country," exclaimed Colonel Byrd, 
 of Virginia, who had seen its wild interior, "has now 
 been inhabited more than a hundred and thirty years, 
 and still we hardly know anything of the Appalachian 
 Mountains, which are nowhere above two hundred and 
 fifty miles from the sea." A full century after the 
 coming of the Pilgrims, New England, like Virginia, 
 was still a frontier region, shut close about on every 
 hand by thick forests beset by prowling bands of sav 
 ages. She had as yet no intimate contact with the other 
 colonies whose fortunes she was to share. Her simple 
 life, quickened by adventure, but lacking the full pulse 
 of old communities, kept, spite of slow change, to a 
 single standard of conduct, made her one community 
 from end to end, her people one people. She stood 
 apart and compact, still soberly cultivating, as of old, a 
 life and character all her own. Colonel Byrd noted 
 how " New England improved much faster than Vir 
 ginia," and was fain to think that " though these peo 
 ple may be ridiculed for some Pharisaical particularities 
 in their worship and behavior, yet they were very use 
 ful subjects, as being frugal and industrious, giving no 
 scandal or bad example." Public men in England, who 
 had to face these " particularities in behavior," would 
 hardly have agreed that the men of New England were 
 good subjects, though they must have admitted their 
 excellent example in thrift, and Virginia s need to im 
 itate it. 
 
 This contrast between the northern and southern set- 
 
IN WASHINGTON S DAT 13 
 
 tlements was as old as their establishment, for Virginia 
 had from the first been resorted to by those who had 
 no other purpose than to better their fortunes, while 
 ISTew England had been founded to be the home of a 
 creed and discipline ; but it was not until the Common 
 wealth was set up in England that the difference began 
 to be marked, and to give promise of becoming per 
 manent. The English in Virginia, like the bulk of their 
 countrymen at home, had stood aghast at a king s death 
 upon the scaffold, and had spoken very hotly, in their 
 loyalty, of the men who had dared do the impious deed 
 of treason ; but when the Guinea, frigate, brought the 
 Commonwealth s commission into the river to demand 
 their submission, even Sir William Berkeley, the re 
 doubtable Cavalier Governor, who had meant stub 
 bornly to keep his province for the second Charles, saw 
 he must yield ; perceived there was too nice a balance 
 of parties in the colony to permit an execution of his 
 plans of resistance; heard too many plain men in his 
 Council, and out of it, declare themselves very much of 
 a mind with the Puritans for the nonce in politics 
 very willing to set up a democracy in Virginia which 
 should call itself a part of the Puritan state in Eng 
 land. But a great change had been wrought in Vir 
 ginia while the Commonwealth lasted. When the Com 
 monwealth s frigate came in at the capes she counted 
 scarcely fifteen thousand settlers upon her plantations, 
 but the next twenty years saw her transformed. By 
 1670 quite twenty-five thousand people were added to 
 the reckoning; and of the new-comers a great multi 
 tude had left England as much because they hated the 
 Puritans as because they desired Virginia. They were 
 drawn out of that great majority at home to whom 
 
14 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 Cromwell had not dared resort to get a new parlia 
 ment in the stead of the one he had " purged." Many 
 of them were of the hottest blood of the Cavaliers. 
 
 It was in these years Virginia got her character and 
 received her leading gentry for the time to come the 
 years while the Commonwealth stood and royalists de 
 spaired, and the years immediately following the Res 
 toration, when royalists took heart again and English 
 men turned with a new ardor to colonization as the 
 times changed. Among the rest in the great migration 
 came two brothers, John and Lawrence Washington, 
 of a stock whose loyalty was as old as the Conquest. 
 They came of a Norman family, the men of whose 
 elder branch had for two hundred years helped the 
 stout Bishops of Durham keep the border against the 
 Scots ; and in every branch of which men had sprung 
 up to serve the king, the state, and the church with 
 steadfastness and honor : dashing soldiers ready for the 
 iield at home or abroad, stout polemical priors, lawyers 
 who knew the learning of their day and made their 
 way to high posts in chancery, thrifty burghers, gallant 
 courtiers, prosperous merchants public-spirited gentle 
 men all. It was Colonel Henry Washington, cousin 
 to the Virginian refugees, who had been with Rupert 
 when he stormed Bristol, and who, with a handful of 
 men, had made good an entrance into the town when 
 all others were beaten back and baffled. It was he 
 who had held Worcester for his master even after he 
 knew Charles to be a prisoner in the hands of the par 
 liamentary forces. " Procure his Majesty s commands 
 for the disposal of this garrison," was all he would an 
 swer when Fairfax summoned him to surrender ; " till 
 then I shall make good the trust reposed in me. The 
 
IN WASHINGTON S DAY 15 
 
 worst I know and fear not ; if I had, the profession of 
 a soldier had riot been begun." But it was an ill time 
 to revive the traditions of the knights of Durham ; 
 loyalty only brought ruin. The Eeverend Lawrence 
 Washington, uncle to the gallant colonel who was the 
 King s Governor at Worcester, had been cast out of his 
 living at Purleigh in 1643 by order of Parliament, upon 
 the false charge that he was a public tippler, oft drunk, 
 and loud to rail against the Parliament and its armies ; 
 but really because, with all his race, he was a royalist, 
 and his living one of the best in Essex. It was his 
 sons who left off hoping to see things mend in England 
 and betook themselves to Virginia. His ruin had come 
 upon him while they were yet lads. He had been a 
 brilliant university scholar, fellow and lector of Brase- 
 nose, and rector of Oxford ; but he could give his sons 
 neither a university career nor hope of fortune in the 
 humble parish pitying friends had found for him in an 
 obscure village of Essex ; and when he was dead they 
 saw no reason why they should stay longer in Eng 
 land, where Cromwell was master. 
 
 John Washington, the oldest son of the unfortunate 
 rector, reached Virginia in 1656, having made his way 
 to the colony as "second man" to Edward Prescott, 
 merchant and ship-owner, in whose company he had 
 come ; and his brother Lawrence, after passing to and 
 fro between England and the colony several times 
 upon errands of business, presently joined him in per 
 manent residence upon the " northern neck " of rich 
 land that lay between the Rappahannock and the Po 
 tomac rivers. It was a region where every settlement 
 as yet was new. A few families had fixed themselves 
 upon it when Maryland drove Captain Clayborne and 
 
16 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 his Virginian partisans forth from Kent Island in the 
 years 1637 and 1638 ; and they had mustered numbers 
 enough within a few years to send a representative to 
 the House of Burgesses at Jamestown. But it was not 
 till 1648 that the Assembly gave their lands a regular 
 constitution as the County of Northumberland ; for it 
 was to this region the Indians had been driven by the 
 encroachment of the settlements on the James and 
 York, and for a while the Assembly had covenanted 
 with the red men to keep it free from settlers. When 
 once the ban was removed, however, in 1648, coloniza 
 tion set in apace from the older counties of Virginia, 
 from Maryland across the river and England over sea, 
 from New England even, as if by a common impulse. 
 In 1651 the Assembly found it necessary to create the 
 two additional counties of Gloucester and Lancaster, 
 and in 1653 still another, the County of Westmore 
 land, for the region s proper government, so quickly 
 did it fill in; for the tide out of England already be 
 gan to show its volume. The region was a natural seat 
 of commerce, and merchants out of the trading ports of 
 England particularly affected it. Rich land was abun 
 dant, and the Potomac ran strong and ample there, to 
 carry the commerce alike of Virginia and Maryland to 
 the bay, upon whose tributaries and inlets lay all the 
 older settlements of both colonies. Lawrence Wash 
 ington, though he still described himself, upon occa 
 sion, as " of Luton, County Bedford, merchant," found 
 his chief profit where he made his home, with his 
 brother John, in the new County of Westmoreland in 
 Virginia. About them lived young men and old, come, 
 like themselves, out of England, or drawn from the 
 older settlements by the attractions of the goodly re- 
 
v { 
 
 0S 
 
IN WASHINGTON S DAY 17 
 
 gion, looking out, as it did, on either hand to a broad 
 river and an easy trade. They felt it scarcely an ex 
 patriation to live there, so constantly did ships come 
 and go between their wharves and the home ports at 
 Bristol and London. It soon grew to be nothing sin 
 gular to see well-to-do men go every year to England 
 upon some errand of profit or pleasure. 
 
 It was with such a region and such stirring neigh 
 bors that the young Washingtons identified themselves 
 while they were yet youths in their twenties ; and there 
 they prospered shrewdly with the rest. Prudent men 
 and men of character readily accumulated estates in 
 the untouched glades and forests of Westmoreland. 
 The season of their coming, moreover, sadly as things 
 seemed to go in 1656, turned out propitious. The Ees- 
 toration opened a new era in the settlement of the 
 country. Englishmen bestirred themselves to take act 
 ual possession of all the great coast -line they had so 
 long claimed without occupying. "The Dutch had 
 enjoyed New Netherland during the distractions of the 
 reign of Charles I. without any other interruption" 
 than the seizure of their post upon the Connecticut 
 by the New-Englanders, and the aggressions alike of 
 Swedes and English upon the Delaware ; but the min 
 isters of Charles II., though " for some time perplexed 
 in what light to view them, whether as subjects or as 
 aliens, determined at length that New Netherland ought 
 in justice to be resumed," and the thing was presently 
 accomplished in true sovereign fashion by force of 
 arms. To the ducal province of New York, Penn 
 presently added the thrifty Quaker colony which so 
 promptly created a busy town and mart of trade at 
 Philadelphia, and which pushed its rural settlements 
 
18 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 back so speedily into the fertile lands that lay towards 
 the west. Then, while the new colonizing impulse still 
 ran strong, New Jersey, too, was added, with her limits 
 at one end upon the Hudson and the great bay at New 
 York, where she depended upon one rival for a port of 
 entry, and at the other upon the Delaware, where an 
 other rival presided over the trade of her southern 
 highway to the sea. To the southward straggling set 
 tlements upon Albemarle Sound grew slowly into the 
 colony of North Carolina ; and still other settlements, 
 upon the rivers that lay towards Florida, throve so 
 bravely that Charleston presently boasted itself a sub 
 stantial town, and South Carolina had risen to be a 
 considerable colony, prosperous, well ordered, and show 
 ing a quick life and individuality of her own. 
 
 A new migration had come out of England to the 
 colonies, and Englishmen looked with fresh confidence 
 to see their countrymen build an empire in America. 
 And yet perhaps not an empire of pure English blood. 
 New York was for long scarcely the less a Dutch prov 
 ince, for all she had changed owners, and saw English 
 men crowd in to control her trade. There were Swedes 
 still upon the Delaware; and Pennsylvania mustered 
 among her colonists, besides a strange mixture out of 
 many nations Germans, French, Dutch, Finns, and 
 English. Even in Virginia, which so steadily kept its 
 English character, there were to be found groups of 
 French Huguenots and Germans who had been given 
 an ungrudging welcome ; and South Carolina, though 
 strongly English too, had taken some of her best blood 
 out of France when Louis so generously gave the world 
 fifty thousand families of the finest breed of his king 
 dom by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685). 
 
GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 (From a portrait painted in 1772 by C. W. Peale, now owned by Gene 
 of Lexington, Virginia) 
 
 George Washington Custis Lee, 
 
IN WASHINGTON S DAY 19 
 
 The second quarter of the eighteenth century saw 
 Scots-Irish enter Virginia and the middle colonies in 
 hosts that for a time numbered ten thousand by the 
 year. Pennsylvania alone, in the single year 1729, 
 could reckon five thousand of these sturdy people who 
 had come to multiply and strengthen her settlements. 
 
 It was to the middle colonies that most foreigners 
 came, and their coming gave to the towns and farms 
 of that region a variety of tongues and customs, of 
 manners and trades and ways of life and worship, to 
 be found nowhere else. Boston, with all its trade and 
 seafaring, had no touch of that cosmopolitan character 
 which New York had taken on quite inevitably in the 
 course of her varying fortunes, and which Philadelphia 
 had assumed by choice; and rural Virginia scarcely 
 felt amidst her scattered plantations the presence of the 
 few families who lived by standards that were not Eng 
 lish. The common feature of the new time, with its 
 novel enterprises and its general immigration, was that 
 the colonies everywhere, whether young or old, felt a 
 keen stimulation and a new interest in affairs beyond 
 their borders. A partial exchange of population be 
 gan, a noticeable intercolonial migration. "Whole con 
 gregations came out of New England to found towns 
 in New Jersey, and individuals out of every colony vent- 
 jured more freely than before to exchange one region 
 for another, in order to coax health or fortune. Pop 
 ulation was thus not a little compacted, while the colo 
 nies were drawn by insensible degrees to feel a certain 
 community of interest and cultivate a certain commu 
 nity of opinion. 
 
 An expanding life, widened fields of enterprise and 
 adventure, quickened hopes, and the fair prospects of a 
 
20 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 growing empire everywhere heartened strong men in 
 the colonies to steady endeavor when the new century 
 opened the scheming, calculating eighteenth century, 
 so unimpassioned and conventional at first, so tempest 
 uous at last. The men of the colonies were not so 
 new as their continent in the ways of civilization. They 
 were Old "World men put upon fresh coasts and a forest 
 frontier, to make the most of them, create markets, 
 build a new trade, become masters of vast resources as 
 yet untouched and incalculable ; and they did their work 
 for the most part with unmatched spirit and energy, 
 notwithstanding they were checked and hampered by 
 the statutes of the realm. The Navigation Acts forbade 
 the use of any but English ships in trade ; forbade all 
 trade, besides, which did not run direct to and from the 
 ports of England. The colonies must not pass England 
 by even in their trade with one another. What they 
 could not produce themselves they must bring straight 
 from England ; what they had to dispose of they must 
 send straight to England. If they would exchange 
 among themselves they must make England by the way, 
 so that English merchants should be their middlemen 
 and factors; or else, if they must needs carry direct 
 from port to port of their own coasts, they must pay 
 such duties as they would have paid in English ports 
 had they actually gone the intermediate voyage to Eng 
 land preferred by the statutes. Twas the "usage of 
 other nations " besides England " to keep their planta 
 tion trade to themselves " in that day, as the Parliament 
 itself said and no man could deny, and twas the purpose 
 of such restrictions to maintain "a greater correspond 
 ence and kindness between " England and her subjects 
 in America, "keeping them in a firmer dependence," 
 
IN WASHINGTON S DAY 21 
 
 and at the same time " rendering them yet more bene 
 ficial and advantageous " to English seamen, merchants, 
 wool-growers, and manufacturers ; but it cost the colo 
 nists pride and convenience and profit to obey. 
 
 Some, who felt the harness of such law too smartly, 
 consoled themselves by inventing means to escape it. 
 The coast was long; was opened by many an unused 
 harbor, great and small ; could not everywhere and al 
 ways be watched by king s officers ; was frequented by a 
 tolerant people, who had no very nice conscience about 
 withholding taxes from a sovereign whose messages and 
 commands came quickly over sea only when the wind held 
 fair for weeks together ; and cargoes could be got both 
 out and in at small expense of secrecy and no expense at 
 all in duties. In short, smuggling was easy. Twas a 
 time of frequent wars, moreover, and privateering com 
 missions were to be had for the asking ; so that French 
 ships could be brought in with their lading, condemned, 
 and handsomely sold, without the trouble of paying 
 French prices or English port dues. Privateering, too, 
 was cousin-german to something still better ; twas but 
 a sort of formal apprenticeship to piracy ; and the quiet, 
 unused harbors of the coast showed many a place where 
 the regular profession might be set up. Veritable pirates 
 took the sea, hunted down what commerce they would 
 English no less than French and Dutch and Spanish 
 rendezvoused in lonely sounds, inlets, and rivers where 
 king s officers never came, and kept very respectable 
 company when they came at last to dispose of their 
 plunder at New York or Charleston, being men very 
 learned in subterfuges and very quick-fingered at brib 
 ing. And then there was " the Eed Sea trade," whose 
 merchants sent fleets to Madagascar in the season to ex- 
 
22 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 change cargoes with rough men out of the Eastern seas, 
 of whom they courteously asked no questions. The 
 larger ports were full of sailors who waited to be en 
 gaged, not at regular wages, but "on the grand ac 
 count " ; and it took many weary years of hangman s 
 labor to bring enough pirates to the gallows to scotch 
 the ugly business. In 1717 it was reported in the colo 
 nies that there were quite fifteen hundred pirates on the 
 coast, full one-half of whom made their headquarters, 
 very brazenly, at New Providence in the Bahamas ; and 
 there were merchants and mariners by the score who 
 had pangs of keen regret to see the breezy trade go 
 down, as the century drew on a decade or two, because 
 of the steady vigilance and stern endeavor of Governors 
 who had been straitly commanded to suppress it. 
 
 The Navigation Acts bred an irritation in the colonies 
 which grew with their growth and strengthened with 
 their consciousness of strength and capacity. Not be 
 cause such restrictions were uncommon, but because the 
 colonies were forward and exacting. There was, indeed, 
 much to commend the legislation they resented. It at 
 tracted the capital of English merchants to the American 
 trade, it went far towards securing English supremacy 
 on the seas, and it was strictly within the powers of 
 Parliament, as no man could deny. Parliament had an 
 undoubted right to regulate imperial interests, of this or 
 any other kind, even though it regulated them unreason 
 ably. But colonies that reckoned their English popula 
 tion by the hundred thousand and lived by trade and 
 adventure would not long have brooked such a policy of 
 restraint had they had the leisure to fret over it. They 
 did not as yet have the leisure. The French stood men 
 acingly at their western gates, through which the great 
 
i a 
 
IN WASHINGTON S DAY 23 
 
 fur trade made its way ; where the long rivers ran which 
 threaded the central valleys of the continent ; where the 
 Mississippi stretched itself from north to south like a 
 great body of dividing waters, flanking all the coast and 
 its settlements where alone a true mastery of the con 
 tinent and its resources could be held. It would be 
 time enough to reckon with Parliament touching the 
 carrying trade when they had made good their title to 
 what they were to trade withal. 
 
 The French had been a long time about their work, 
 for they had done it like subjects, at the bidding of 
 an ambitious king, rather than like free men striving 
 as they pleased for themselves. But what they had 
 done they had done systematically and with a fixed 
 policy that did not vary, though ministers and even 
 dynasties might come and go. The English had 
 crowded to the coasts of the continent as they pleased, 
 and had mustered their tens of thousands before the 
 French reckoned more than a few hundreds. But the 
 French had hit upon the mighty river St. Lawrence, 
 whose waters came out of the great lakes and the heart 
 of the continent ; their posts were garrisons ; what men 
 they had they put forward, at each step of discovery, at 
 some point of vantage upon lake or river, whence they 
 were not easily dislodged. Their shrewd fur-traders and 
 dauntless priests struck everywhere into the heart of 
 the forests, leading forward both trade and conquest, 
 until at last, through the country of the Illinois and 
 out of far Lake Michigan, the streams had been found 
 which ran down into the west to the flooding Missis 
 sippi. Colonists were sent to the mouth of the vast 
 river, posts presently dotted its banks here and there 
 throughout its length, trade passed up and down its 
 
24 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 spreading stream, and the English, their eyes at last 
 caught by the stealthy movement, looked in a short 
 space to see French settlements "running all along from 
 our lakes by the back of Virginia and Carolina to the 
 Bay of Mexico." 
 
 This was a business that touched the colonies to the 
 quick. New York had her western frontiers upon the 
 nearer lakes. Thence, time out of mind, had come the 
 best furs to the markets at Albany, brought from tribe 
 to tribe out of the farthest regions of the northwest. 
 New England, with the French at her very doors, had 
 to look constantly to her northern borders to keep them 
 against the unquiet savage tribes the French every year 
 stirred up against her. Virginia felt the French power 
 among her savage neighbors too, the moment her peo 
 ple ventured across the Blue Ridge into the valley 
 where many an ancient war-path ran ; and beyond the 
 Alleghanies she perceived she must stand in the very 
 presence almost of the French themselves. English fron 
 tiersmen and traders, though they had no advancing 
 military posts behind them, were none the less quick to 
 go themselves deep into the shadowed wilderness, there 
 to meet the French face to face in their own haunts. 
 The Carolinas were hardly settled before their more ad 
 venturous spirits went straight into the far valley of the 
 Tennessee, and made trade for themselves there against 
 the coming of the French. Out of Virginia, too, and 
 out of Pennsylvania, as well as out of New York, traders 
 pressed towards the "West, and fixed their lonely huts 
 here and there along the wild banks of the Ohio. Twas 
 diamond cut diamond when they met their French rivals 
 in the wig \vams of the Indian villages, and their canoes 
 knew the waterways of the wilderness as well as any 
 
IN WASHINGTON S DAY 25 
 
 man s. Twas they who learned at first hand what the 
 French were doing. They were like scouts sent out to 
 view the ground to be fought for. 
 
 This hazardous meeting of rival nations at the heart 
 of the continent meant many a deep change in the fort 
 unes of the colonies. European politics straightway en 
 tered their counsels. Here was an end of their sepa- 
 rateness and independence of England. Charles and 
 James and William all showed that they meant to be 
 veritable sovereigns, and had no thought but that the 
 colonists in America, like all other Englishmen, should 
 be their subjects ; and here was their opportunity to be 
 masters upon an imperial scale and with an imperial ex 
 cuse. In Europe, England beheld France her most for 
 midable foe ; she must look to it that Louis and his min 
 isters take no advantage in America. The colonies, no 
 less than the Channel itself, were become the frontiers 
 of an empire and there must be no trespass upon Eng 
 lish soil by the French. The colonists must be rallied 
 to the common work, and, if used, they must be ruled 
 and consolidated. 
 
 As it turned out, the thing was quite impossible. 
 The colonies had too long been separate ; their charac 
 ters, their tempers, their interests, were too diverse and 
 distinct ; they were unused to co-operate, and unwilling ; 
 they were too slow to learn submission in anything. 
 The plan of grouping several of them under a single 
 governor was attempted, but they remained as separate 
 under that arrangement as under any other. Massachu 
 setts would interest herself in nothing beyond her own 
 jurisdiction that did not immediately touch her safety 
 or advantage ; New York cared little what the French 
 did, if only the Iroquois could be kept quiet and she 
 
26 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 could get her furs in the season, and find a market for 
 them abroad or among the French themselves ; Virginia 
 had no eye for any movement upon the frontiers that 
 did not menace her own fair valleys within the moun 
 tains with hostile occupation ; the Carolinas were as yet 
 too young to be serviceable, and New Jersey too remote 
 from points of danger. Nowhere could either men or 
 supplies be had for use against the French except by the 
 vote of a colonial assembly. The law of the empire 
 might be what it would in the mouths of English 
 judges at home ; it did not alter the practice of the col 
 onies. The courts in England might say with what 
 emphasis they liked that Virginia, u being a conquered 
 country, their law is what the King pleases " ; it was 
 none the less necessary for the King s Governor to 
 keep on terms with the people s representatives. " Our 
 government is so happily constituted," writes Colonel 
 Byrd to his friend in the Barbadoes, " that a governor 
 must first outwit us before he can oppress us. And if 
 ever he squeeze money out of us, he must first take care 
 to deserve it." Every colony held stoutly to a like 
 practice, with a like stubborn temper, which it was mere 
 folly to ignore. One and all they were even then " too 
 proud to submit, too strong to be forced, too enlightened 
 not to see all the consequences which mast arise" should 
 they tamely consent to be ruled by royal command or 
 parliamentary enactment. Their obedience must be had 
 on their own terms, or else not had at all. Governors 
 saw this plainly enough, though the ministers at home 
 could not. Many a governor had his temper sadly 
 soured by the contentious obstinacy of the colonial as 
 sembly he was set to deal with. One or two died of sheer 
 exasperation. But the situation was not altered a whit. 
 
WILLIAM liYRD 
 
IN WASHINGTON S DAY 27 
 
 When there is friction there must, sooner or later ? be 
 adjustment, if affairs are to go forward at all, and this 
 contest between imperial system and colonial indepen 
 dence at last brought some things that had been vague 
 to a very clear definition. Twas plain the colonies 
 would not of themselves combine to meet and oust the 
 French. They would supply neither men nor money, 
 moreover. England must send her own armies to Amer 
 ica, fight France there as she would have fought her in 
 Europe, and pay the reckoning herself out of her own 
 treasury, getting from the colonies, the while, only such 
 wayward and niggardly aid as they chose to give. The 
 colonies, meanwhile, might gather some of the fruits of 
 experience ; might learn how safe it was to be selfish, 
 and how unsafe, if they hoped to prosper and be free ; 
 might perceive where their common interests lay, and 
 their common power; might in some degree steady 
 their lives and define their policy against the coming of 
 more peaceful times. Two wars came and went which 
 brought France and England to arms against each 
 other in America, as in Europe, but they passed away 
 without decisive incident in the New World, and there 
 followed upon them thirty years of uneventful peace, 
 during which affairs hung at a nice balance, and the 
 colonies took counsel, each for itself, how they should 
 prosper. 
 
 Virginia, meanwhile, had got the charter she was to 
 keep. From the Potomac to the uncertain border of 
 the Carolinas she had seen her counties fill witk the 
 men who were to decide her destiny. Her people, close 
 upon a hundred thousand strong, had fallen into the or 
 der of life they were to maintain. They were no longer 
 colonists merely, but citizens of a commonwealth of 
 

 28 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 which they began to be very proud, not least because 
 they saw a noble breed of public men spring out of 
 their own loins to lead them. Though they were scat 
 tered, they were not divided. There was, after all, no 
 real isolation for any man in Virginia, for all that he 
 lived so much apart and was a sort of lord within his 
 rustic barony. In that sunny land men were constantly 
 abroad, looking to their tobacco and the labor of all 
 kinds that must go forward, but would not unless they 
 looked to it, or else for the sheer pleasure of bestriding 
 a good horse, being quit of the house, and breathing 
 free in the genial air. Bridle-paths everywhere threaded 
 the forests; it was no great matter to ride from house 
 to house among one s neighbors; there were county- 
 court days, moreover, to draw the country-side together, 
 whether there was much business or little to be seen to. 
 Men did not thrive thereabouts by staying within doors, 
 but by being much about, knowing their neighbors, ob 
 serving what ships came and went upon the rivers, and 
 what prices were got for the cargoes they carried away ; 
 learning what the news was from "Williamsburg and 
 London, what horses and cattle were to be had, and 
 what dogs, of what breeds. It was a country in which 
 news and opinions and friendships passed freely current; 
 where men knew each other with a rare leisurely in 
 timacy, and enjoyed their easy, unforced intercourse 
 with a keen and lasting relish. 
 
 It was a country in which men kept their individuali 
 ty very handsomely withal. If there was no town life, 
 there were no town manners either, no village conven 
 tionalities to make all men of one carriage and pattern 
 find manner of living. Every head of a family was 
 head also of an establishment, and could live with a self- 
 
IN WASHINGTON S DAY 29 
 
 respect and freedom which were subject to no man s 
 private scrutiny. He had leave, in his independence, to 
 be himself quite naturally, and did not need to justify 
 his liberty by excuses. And yet he had responsibilities 
 too, and a position which steadied and righted him al 
 most in spite of himself. It required executive capacity 
 to make his estate pay, and an upright way of life to 
 maintain his standing. If he was sometimes loud and 
 hectoring, or over-careless what he said or did, twas 
 commonly because he was young or but half come into 
 his senses ; for his very business, of getting good crops 
 of tobacco and keeping on dealing terms with his neigh 
 bors, demanded prudence and a conduct touched with 
 consideration. He had to build his character very care 
 fully by the plumb to keep it at an equilibrium, though 
 he might decorate it, if it were but upright, as freely, 
 as whimsically even, as he chose, with chance traits and 
 self-pleasing tastes, with the full consent and tolerance 
 of the neighborhood. He was his own man, might have 
 his own opinions if he held them but courteously 
 enough, might live his own life if he but lived it cleanly 
 and without offence. Twas by their living rather than 
 by their creed or their livelihood that men were assessed 
 and esteemed. 
 
 It was not a life that bred students, though it was a 
 life that begot thoughtfulness and leadership in affairs. 
 Those who fell in the way of getting them had not a 
 few books upon their shelves, because they thought every 
 gentleman should have such means of knowing what 
 the world had said and done before his day. But they 
 read only upon occasion, when the weather darkened, 
 or long evenings dragged because there were no guests 
 in the house. Not much systematic education was pos- 
 
30 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 sible where the population was so dispersed and sepa 
 rate. A few country schools undertook what was ab 
 solutely necessary, and gave instruction in such practi 
 cal branches as every man must know something of who 
 was to take part in the management of private and pub 
 lic business. For the rest, those who chose could get 
 the languages from private tutors, when they were to 
 be had, and then go over sea to read at the universities, 
 or to Williamsburg when at last the colony had its own 
 college of William and Mary. More youths went from 
 the Northern Neck to England for their education, no 
 doubt, than from any other part of Virginia. The 
 counties there were somewhat closer than the rest to 
 the sea, bred more merchants and travellers, kept up a 
 more intimate correspondence both by travel and by 
 letter with Bristol and London and all the old English 
 homes. And even those who stayed in Virginia had most 
 of them the tradition of refinement, spoke the mother 
 tongue purely and with a proper relish, and maintained 
 themselves somehow, with perhaps an added touch of 
 simplicity that was their own, in the practices of a cul 
 tivated race. 
 
 No one in Virginia thought that " becoming a mere 
 scholar" was "a desirable education for a gentleman." 
 He ought to " become acquainted with men and things 
 rather than books." Books must serve only to deepen 
 and widen the knowledge he should get by observation 
 and a free intercourse with those about him. When 
 Virginians wrote, therefore, you might look to find them 
 using, not studied phrases, but a style that smacked 
 fresh of all the free elements of good talk not like 
 scholars or professed students, but like gentlemen of 
 leisure and cultivated men of affairs with a subtle, not 
 
THEY READ ONLY UPON OCCASION, WHEN THE WEATHER DARKENED 
 
UNIVERSITY 
 
IN WASHINGTON S DAY 
 
 31 
 
 unpleasing flavor of egotism, and the racy directness of 
 speech, withal, that men may use who are sure of their 
 position. Such was the writing of Robert Beverley, 
 whose History and Present State of Virginia, published 
 in London in 1705, spoke at first hand and authorita 
 tively of affairs of which the world had heard hitherto 
 only by uncertain report. He did not write the manly 
 book because he had a pricking ambition to be an au 
 thor, but because he loved Virginia, and wished to give 
 such an account of her affairs as would justify his pride 
 in her. He came of an ancient English family, whose 
 ample means were scarcely more considerable in Virginia 
 than they had been in Beverley, in Yorkshire. He had 
 himself been carefully educated in England, and had 
 learned to feel very much at home there ; but the at 
 tractions of the old home did not wean him from his 
 love of the new, where he had been born that quiet 
 land where men dealt with one another so frankly, 
 where Nature was so genial in all her moods, and men 
 so without pretence. Official occupations gave him oc 
 casion while yet a very young man to handle familiar 
 ly the records of the colony, the intimate letters of its 
 daily life, and he took a proud man s pleasure in ex 
 tracting from them, and from the traditions of those 
 who still carried much of the simple history in their 
 own recollections of a stirring life, a frank and genial 
 story of what had been done and seen in Virginia. 
 And so his book became " the living testimony of a 
 proud and generous Virginian" too proud to conceal 
 his opinions or withhold censure where it was merited, 
 too generous not to set down very handsomely whatever 
 was admirable and of good report in the life of his peo 
 ple. His own manly character, speaking out every- 
 
32 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 where, as it does, in lively phrase and candid meaning, 
 is itself evidence of the wholesome native air he so 
 praises in Virginia. 
 
 He thought himself justified in loving a country 
 where "plantations, orchards, and gardens constantly 
 afford fragrant and delightful walks. In their woods 
 and fields they have an unknown variety of vegetables 
 and other rarities of nature to discover and observe. 
 They have hunting, fishing, and fowling, with which 
 they entertain themselves in a thousand ways. Here is 
 the most good nature and hospitality practised in the 
 world, both towards friends and strangers ; but the 
 worst of it is this generosity is attended now and then 
 with a little too much intemperance. The neighborhood 
 is at much the same distance as in the country in Eng 
 land, but with this advantage, that all the better sort of 
 people have been abroad and seen the world, by which 
 means they are free from that stiffness and formality 
 which discover more civility than kindness. And be 
 sides, the goodness of the roads and the fairness of the 
 weather bring people oftener together." 
 
 Of a like quality of genuineness and good breeding is 
 the writing of Colonel William Byrd, the accomplished 
 master of "West-over, who was of the same generation. 
 He may well have been the liveliest man in Virginia, so 
 piquant and irrepressible is the humor that runs through 
 almost everj^ sentence he ever wrote. It must be he 
 wrote for pastime. He never took the pains to publish 
 anything. His manuscripts lay buried a hundred years 
 or more in the decent sepulture of private possession ere 
 they were printed, but were even then as quick as when 
 they were written. Beverley had often a grave smile 
 for what he recorded, or a quiet sarcasm of tone in the 
 
IN WASHINGTON S DAY 33 
 
 telling of it. " The militia are the only standing forces 
 in Virginia," he says, very demurely, and " they are 
 happy in the enjoyment of an everlasting peace." But 
 Colonel Byrd is very merry, like a man of sense, not 
 contriving the jest, but only letting it slip, revealing it ; 
 looks very shrewdly into things, and very wisely, too, 
 but with an easy eye, a disengaged conscience, keeping 
 tally of the score like one who attends but is not too 
 deeply concerned. He was, in fact, very deeply en 
 gaged in all affairs of importance no man more deeply 
 or earnestly ; but when he wrote twas not his chief 
 business to speak of that. He was too much of a gen 
 tleman and too much of a wit to make grave boast of 
 what he was doing. 
 
 !N"o man born in Virginia had a greater property than 
 he, a house more luxuriously appointed, or a part to 
 play more princely ; and no man knew the value of 
 position and wealth and social consideration more ap 
 preciatively. His breeding had greatly quickened his 
 perception of such things. He had had a long training 
 abroad, had kept very noble company alike in England 
 and on the Continent, had been called to the bar in the 
 Middle Temple and chosen a Fellow of the Eoyal 
 Society, and so had Avon his freedom of the world of 
 letters and of affairs. Yet he had returned to Virginia, 
 as all her sons did, with only an added zest to serve and 
 enjoy her. Many designs for her development throve 
 because of his interest and encouragement ; he sought 
 her advantage jealously in her Council, as her agent in 
 England, as owner of great tracts of her fertile lands. 
 Twas he who brought to her shores some of her best 
 settlers, gave her promise of veritable towns at Eich- 
 mond and Petersburg, fought arbitrary power wherever 
 
 3 
 
34 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 it showed itself in her government, and proved himself 
 in every way " a true and worthy inheritor of the feel 
 ings and opinions of the old cavaliers of Virginia." But 
 through all his busy life he carried himself like the 
 handsome, fortunate man he was, with a touch of gayety, 
 a gallant spirit of comradeship, a zest for good books, 
 spirited men, and comely women heartily, like a man 
 who, along with honor, sought the right pleasures of 
 the world. 
 
 Nothing daunted the spirits of this manly gentleman, 
 not even rough work at the depths of the forest, upon 
 the public business of determining the southern boun 
 dary-line of the colony, or upon the private business of 
 seeing to his own distant properties in North Carolina. 
 It gave him only the better chance to see the world ; 
 and he was never at a loss for something to do. There 
 were stray books to be found even in the cabins of the 
 remotest settlers ; or, if not, there was the piquant liter 
 ary gossip of those laughing times of Queen Anne, but 
 just gone by, to rehearse and comment upon. Colonel 
 Byrd was not at a loss to find interesting ways in which 
 even a busy man might make shift to enjoy " the Caro 
 lina felicity of having nothing to do." A rough people 
 lived upon that frontier in his day, who showed them 
 selves very anxious to be put upon the southern side of 
 the line ; for, if taken into Virginia, " they must have 
 submitted to some sort of order and government; 
 whereas in North Carolina every one does what seems 
 best in his own eyes." "They pay no tribute," he 
 laughs, " either to God or to Caesar." It would not be 
 amiss, he thinks, were the clergy in Virginia, once in 
 two or three years not to make the thing burdensome 
 to "take a turn among these gentiles." " Twould 
 
JAMBS r>LAIK 
 
IN WASHINGTON S DAY 35 
 
 look a little apostolical," he argues, with the character 
 istic twinkle in his eye, " and they might hope to be re 
 quited for it hereafter, if that be not thought too long 
 to tarry for their reward." A stray parson was to be 
 found once and again even at the depths of the forest 
 on the Virginian side though to find his humble quar 
 ters you must needs thread " a path as narrow as that 
 which leads to heaven, but much more dirty"; but a 
 stray parson was no great evangel. Colonel Byrd was 
 too sound a gentleman not to be a good churchman ; but 
 he accounted it no sin to see where the humor lurks 
 even in church. " Mr. Betty, the parson of the parish, 
 entertained us with a good, honest sermon," he chroni 
 cles upon occasion ; " but whether he bought it, or bor 
 rowed it, would have been uncivil in us to inquire. Be 
 that as it will, he is a decent man, with a double chin 
 that fits gracefully over his band. . . . When church was 
 done we refreshed our teacher with a glass of wine, and 
 then, receiving his blessing, took horse." Tis likely 
 Colonel Byrd would have found small amusement in 
 narrating the regular course of his life, his great errands 
 and permanent concerns of weighty business. That he 
 could as well leave to his biographer, should he chance 
 to have one. For himself, he chose to tell the unusual 
 things he had seen and heard and taken part in, and to 
 make merry as well as he might by the way. 
 
 The Virginian writers were not all country gentle 
 men. There were austere and stately scholars, too, like 
 the Reverend William Stith, who had held modest liv 
 ings in more than one parish, had served the House of 
 Burgesses as chaplain, and the college, first as instructor 
 and then as president, until at length, having won " per 
 fect leisure and retirement," he set himself in his last 
 
36 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 days to straighten into order the confusion of early Vir 
 ginian history. " Such a work," he reflected, " will be a 
 noble and elegant entertainment for my vacant hours, 
 which it is not in my power to employ more to my own 
 satisfaction, or the use and benefit of my country." 
 What with his scholarly love of documents set forth at 
 length, however, his painstaking recital of details, and 
 his roundabout, pedantic style, his story of the first sev 
 enteen years of the colony lingered through a whole 
 volume; and his friends laggard subscriptions to that 
 single prolix volume discouraged him from undertaking 
 another. There was neither art nor quick movement 
 enough in such work, much as scholars have prized it 
 since, to take the taste of a generation that lived its 
 life on horseback and spiced it with rough sport and 
 direct speech. They could read with more patience the 
 plain, business-like sentences of the Eeverend Hugh 
 Jones s Present State of Virginia, and with more zest 
 the downright, telling words in which the Keverend 
 James Blair, " commissary " to the Bishop of London, 
 spoke of their affairs. 
 
 James Blair, though born and bred in Scotland, edu 
 cated at Edinburgh, and engaged as a minister at home 
 till he was close upon thirty years of age, was as much 
 a Virginian in his life and deeds as any man born in 
 the Old Dominion. Twas he who had been the chief 
 founder of the College of William and Mary, and who 
 had served it as president through every vicissitude of 
 fortune for fifty years. For fifty years he was a mem 
 ber, too, of the King s Council in the colony, and for 
 fifty-eight the chief adviser of the mother Church in 
 England concerning ecclesiastical affairs in Virginia. 
 " Probably no other man in the colonial time did so 
 
IN WASHINGTON S DAY 37 
 
 much for the intellectual life of Yirginia " as did this 
 "sturdy and faithful" Scotsman. To the colonists, 
 oftentimes, he seemed overbearing, dictatorial even, and, 
 for all their " gentlemanly conformity to the Church of 
 England," they did not mean to suffer any man to be 
 set over them as bishop in Yirginia ; while to the royal 
 governors he seemed sometimes a headstrong agitator 
 and demagogue, so stoutly did he stand up for the lib 
 erties of the people among whom he had cast his lot. 
 He was in all things a doughty Scot. He made very 
 straight for the ends he deemed desirable; dealt frank 
 ly, honestly, fearlessly with all men alike ; confident of 
 being in the right even when he was in the wrong ; deal 
 ing with all as he thought he ought to deal, " whether 
 they liked it or not"; incapable of discouragement, as he 
 was also incapable of dishonor ; a stalwart, formidable 
 master of all work in church and college, piling up 
 every day to his credit a great debt of gratitude from 
 the colony, which honored him without quite liking him. 
 It was very noteworthy that masterful men of many 
 kinds took an irresistible liking to Yirginia, though they 
 were but sent upon an errand to it. There was Alex 
 ander Spotswood, for example, who, after he had been 
 twelve years Lieutenant -Governor in the stead of his 
 lordship the Earl of Orkney, spent eighteen more good 
 years, all he had left, upon the forty-odd thousand acres 
 of land he had acquired in the fair colony, as a country 
 gentleman, very busy developing the manufacture of 
 iron, and as busy as there was any need to be as Post 
 master-General of the colonies. He came of a sturdy 
 race of gentlemen, had seen service along with Marlbor- 
 ough and my uncle Toby "with the army in Flanders," 
 had gone much about the world upon many errands 
 
38 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 and seen all manner of people, and then had found him 
 self at last in Virginia when he was past forty. For all 
 its rough life, he liked the Old Dominion well enough 
 to adopt it as his home. There was there, he said, 
 " less swearing, less profaneness, less drunkenness and 
 debauchery, less uncharitable feuds and animosities, 
 and less knavery and villany than in any part of the 
 world " where his lot had been. Not all of his neigh 
 bors were gentlemen ; not very many could afford to 
 send their sons to England to be educated. Men of all 
 sorts had crowded into Virginia : merchants and gentle 
 men not a few, but also commoner men a great many- 
 mariners, artisans, tailors, and men without settled trades 
 or handicrafts of any kind. Spots wood had found it no 
 easy matter when he was Governor to deal patiently 
 with a House of Burgesses to which so many men of 
 " mean understandings " had been sent, and had allowed 
 himself to wax very sarcastic when he found how igno 
 rant some of them were. " I observe," he said, tartly, 
 "that the grand ruling party in your House has not 
 furnished chairmen of two of your standing committees 
 who can spell English or write common - sense, as the 
 grievances under their own handwriting will manifest." 
 Twas not a country, either, where one could travel 
 much at ease, for one must ford the streams for lack 
 of bridges, and keep an eye sharply about him as he 
 travelled the rude forest roads when the wind was high 
 lest a rotten tree should fall upon him. Nature was so 
 bountiful, yielded so easy a largess of food, that few men 
 took pains to be thrifty, and some parts of the colony 
 were little more advanced in the arts of life than North 
 Carolina, where, Colonel Byrd said, nothing was dear 
 a but law, physic, and strong drink." No doubt the 
 
ALEXANDER SPOTSWOOD 
 
IN WASHINGTON S DAY 39 
 
 average colonist in Virginia, when not sobered by im 
 portant cares, was apt to be a fellow of coarse fibre, 
 whose 
 
 "addiction was to courses vain ; 
 
 His companies unlettered, rude, and shallow ; 
 
 His hours fill d up with riots, banquets, sports ; 
 
 And never noted in him any study, 
 
 Any retirement, any sequestration 
 
 From open haunts and popularity." 
 
 But to many a scapegrace had come " reformation in 
 a flood, with such a heady current, scouring faults," as 
 to make a notable man of him. There were at least 
 the traditions of culture in the colony, and enough men 
 of education and refinement to leaven the mass. Life 
 ran generously, even if roughly, upon the scattered 
 plantations, and strong, thinking, high-bred men had 
 somehow a mastery and leadership in it all which made 
 them feel Virginia their home and field of honor. 
 
 Change of time and of affairs, the stir of growing life 
 in Virginia as she ceased from being a mere colony and 
 became a sturdy commonwealth, boasting her own 
 breed of gentlemen, merchants, scholars, and statesmen, 
 laid upon the Washingtons, as upon other men, a touch 
 of transformation. Seventy-six years had gone by since 
 John "Washington came out of Bedfordshire and took up 
 lands on Bridges Creek in Westmoreland in Virginia, 
 and still his children were to be found in the old seats 
 he had chosen at the first. They had become thorough 
 Virginians with the rest, woven into the close fibre of 
 the new life. Westmoreland and all the counties that 
 lay about it on the Northern Eeck were strictly of a 
 piece with the rest of Virginia, for all they had waited 
 long to be settled. There the Washingtons had become 
 
40 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 country gentlemen of comfortable estate upon the ac 
 cepted model. John had begotten Lawrence, and Law 
 rence had begotten Augustine. John had thriftily taken 
 care to see his offspring put in a way to prosper at the 
 very first. He had acquired a substantial property of 
 his own where the land lay very fertile upon the banks 
 of the Potomac, and he had, besides, by three marriages, 
 made good a very close connection with several fami 
 lies that had thriven thereabouts before him. He had 
 become a notable figure, indeed, among his neighbors 
 ere he had been many years in the colony a colonel in 
 their militia, and their representative in the House of 
 Burgesses ; and they had not waited for his death to call 
 the parish in which he lived Washington Parish. His 
 sons and grandsons, though they slackened a little the 
 pace he had set them in his energy at the outset, throve 
 none the less substantially upon the estates he had left 
 them, abated nothing of the dignity and worth they had 
 inherited, lived simply, and kept their place of respect 
 in the parish and state. Wars came and went without 
 disturbing incident for them, as the French moved upon 
 the borders by impulse of politics from over sea ; and 
 then long peace set in, equally without incident, to stay 
 a whole generation, while good farming went quietly 
 forward, and politicians at home and in the colonies 
 planned another move in their game. It was in the 
 mid-season of this time of poise, preparation, and expect 
 ancy that George Washington was born, on the 22d of 
 February, in the year 1732, " about ten in the morning," 
 William Gooch, gentlest of Marlborough s captains, be 
 ing Governor in Virginia. He came into the world at 
 the plain but spacious homestead on Bridges Creek, 
 fourth son, fifth child, of Augustine Washington, and of 
 
OFTHE 
 
 UNIVERSITY I 
 
 OF 
 
IN WASHINGTON S DAY 41 
 
 the third generation from John Washington, son of the 
 one-time rector of Purleigh. The homestead stood upon 
 a green and gentle slope that fell away, at but a little 
 distance, to the waters of the Potomac, and from it 
 could be seen the broad reaches of the stream stretching 
 wide to the Maryland shore beyond, and flooding with 
 slow, full tide to the great bay below. The spot gave 
 token of the quiet youth of the boy, of the years of 
 grateful peace in which he was to learn the first lessons 
 of life, ere war and the changing fortunes of his coun 
 try hurried him to the field and to the council. 
 
 Vo^^Tl^ 
 
 ?<fc^L ti^ffiL&r*, <~3 
 
 FAC-SIMILE OF THE ENTRY OF WASHINGTON S BIRTH IN HIS MOTHER S BIBLE 
 
A VIKGItflAN BKEEDING 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 GEORGE WASHINGTON was cast for his career by a very 
 scant and homely training. Augustine WashingtonTMs 
 father, lacked neither the will nor the means to set him 
 handsomely afoot, with as good a schooling, both in 
 books and in affairs, as was to be had ; he would have 
 done all that a liberal and provident man should do to 
 advance his boy in the world, had he lived to go with 
 him through his youth. He owned land in four coun 
 ties, more than five thousand acres all told, and lying 
 upon both the rivers that refresh the fruitful Northern 
 Neck; besides several plots of ground in the promising 
 village of Fredericksburg, which lay opposite his lands 
 upon the Rappahannock ; and one-twelfth part of the 
 stock of the Principio Iron Company, whose mines and 
 furnaces in Maryland and Yirginia yielded a better profit 
 than any others in the two colonies. He had com 
 manded a ship in his time, as so many of his neighbors 
 had in that maritime province, carrying iron from the 
 mines to England, and no doubt bringing convict labor 
 ers back upon his voyage home again. He himself 
 raised the ore from the mines that lay upon his own 
 land, close to the Potomac, and had it carried the easy 
 six miles to the river. Matters were very well managed 
 there, Colonel Byrd said, and no pains were spared to 
 make the business profitable. Captain Washington had 
 
46 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 represented bis home parish of Truro, too, in the House 
 of Burgesses, where his athletic figure, his rutldy skin, 
 and frank gray eyes must have made him as conspicuous 
 as his constituents could have wished. He was a man 
 of the world, every inch, generous, hard} 7 , independent. 
 Pie lived long enough, too, to see how stalwart and 
 capable and of how noble a spirit his young son was to 
 be, with how manly a bearing he was to carry himself in 
 the world ; and had loved him and made him his compan 
 ion accordingly. But the end came for him before he 
 could see the lad out of boyhood. He died April 12, 
 1743, when he was but forty-nine years of age, and be 
 fore George w T as twelve ; and in his will there was, of 
 course, for George only a younger son s portion. The 
 active gentleman had been twice married, and there were 
 seven children to be provided for. Two sons of the first 
 marriage survived. The bulk of the estate went, as 
 Virginian custom dictated, to Lawrence, the eldest son. 
 To Augustine, the second son, fell most of the rich lands 
 in Westmoreland. George, the eldest born of the second 
 marriage, left to the guardianship of his young mother, 
 shared with the four younger children the residue of the 
 estate. He was to inherit his father s farm upon the 
 Rappahannock, to possess, and to cultivate if he would, 
 w T hen he should come of age ; but for the rest his fort 
 unes w r ere to make. He must get such serviceable 
 training as he could for a life of independent endeavor. 
 The two older brothers had been sent to England to get 
 their schooling and preparation for life, as their father 
 before them had been to get his Lawrence to make 
 ready to take his father s place when the time should 
 come ; Augustine, it was at first planned, to fit himself 
 for the law. George could now look for nothing of the 
 
A VIRGINIAN BREEDING 47 
 
 kind. He must continue, as he had begun, to get such 
 elementary and practical instruction as was to be had of 
 schoolmasters in Virginia, and the young mother s care 
 must stand him in the stead of a father s pilotage and 
 oversight. 
 
 Fortunately Mary Washington was a wise and provi 
 dent mother, a woman of too firm a character and too 
 steadfast a courage to be dismayed by responsibility. 
 She had seemed only a fair and beautiful girl when 
 Augustine Washington married her, and there was a 
 romantic story told of how that gallant Virginian sailor 
 and gentleman had literally been thrown at her feet out 
 of a carriage in the London streets by way of introduc 
 tion where she, too, was a visiting stranger out of Vir 
 ginia. But she had shown a singular capacity for busi 
 ness when the romantic days of courtship were over. 
 Lawrence Washington, too, though but five-and-twenty 
 when his father died and left him head of the family, 
 proved himself such an elder brother as it could but bet 
 ter and elevate a boy to have. For all he was so young, 
 he had seen something of the world, and had already 
 made notable friends. He had not returned home out 
 of England until he was turned of twenty-one, and he 
 had been back scarceh r a twelvemonth before he was 
 off again, to seek service in the war against Spain. The 
 colonies had responded with an unwonted willingness 
 and spirit in 1740 to the home government s call for 
 troops to go against the Spaniard in the West Indies ; and 
 Lawrence Washington had sought and obtained a com 
 mission as captain in the Virginian regiment which had 
 volunteered for the duty. He had seen those terrible 
 days at Cartagena, with Vernon s fleet and Wentworth s 
 army, when the deadly heat and blighting damps of the 
 
48 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 tropics wrought a work of death which drove the Eng 
 lish forth as no fire from the Spanish cannon could. He 
 had been one of that devoted force which threw itself 
 twelve hundred strong upon Fort San Lazaro, and came 
 away beaten with six hundred only. He had seen the 
 raw provincials out of the colonies carry themselves as gal 
 lantly as any veterans through all the fiery trial ; had seen 
 the storm and the valor, the vacillation and the blunder 
 ing, and the shame of all the rash affair ; and had come 
 away the friend and admirer of the gallant Yernon, de 
 spite his headstrong folly and sad miscarriage. He had 
 reached home again, late in the year 1742, only to see 
 his father presently snatched away by a sudden illness, 
 and to find himself become head of the family in his 
 stead. All thought of further service away from home 
 was dismissed. He accepted a commission as major in 
 the colonial militia, and an appointment as adjutant- 
 general of the military district in which his lands lay ; 
 but he meant that for the future his duties should be 
 civil rather than military in the life he set himself to 
 live, and turned very quietly to the business and the 
 social duty of a proprietor among his neighbors in 
 Fairfax County, upon the broad estates to which he 
 gave the name Mount Vernon, in compliment to the 
 brave sailor whose friend he had become in the far, un- 
 happy South. 
 
 Marriage was, of course, his first step towards domes 
 tication, and the woman he chose brought him into new 
 connections which suited both his tastes and his train 
 ing. Three months after his father s death he married 
 Anne Fairfax, daughter to William Fairfax, his neigh 
 bor. Twas William Fairfax s granduncle Thomas, 
 third Lord Fairfax, who had in that revolutionary year 
 
THOMAS, SIXTH LOUD FAIRFAX 
 
O f THE 
 
 UN5V ERS.TY 
 
 -*l\^i 
 
A VIRGINIAN BREEDING 
 
 49 
 
 1646 summoned Colonel Henry Washington to give into 
 his hands the city of Worcester, and who had got so sharp 
 an answer from the King s stout soldier. But the Fair 
 faxes had soon enough turned royalists again when they 
 saw whither the Parliament men would carry them. A 
 hundred healing years had gone by since those unhappy 
 days when the nation was arrayed against the King. 
 Anne Fairfax brought no alien tradition to the house 
 hold of her young husband. Her father had served the 
 King, as her lover had with more hardship than re 
 ward, as behooved a soldier in Spain and in the Baha 
 mas ; and was now, when turned of fifty, agent here in 
 Virginia to his cousin Thomas, sixth Baron Fairfax, in 
 the management of his great estates, lying upon the 
 Northern Neck and in the fruitful valleys beyond. 
 William Fairfax had been but nine years in the colony, 
 but he was already a Virginian like his neighbors, and, 
 as collector of his Majesty s customs for the South Po 
 tomac and President of the King s Council, no small 
 figure in their affairs a man who had seen the world 
 and knew how to bear himself in this part of it. 
 
 In 1746 Thomas, Lord Fairfax, himself came to Vir 
 ginia a man strayed out of the world of fashion at 
 fifty-five into the forests of a wild frontier. The better 
 part of his ancestral estates in Yorkshire had been sold 
 to satisfy the creditors of his spendthrift father. These 
 untilled stretches of land in the Old Dominion were now 
 become the chief part of his patrimony. Twas said, 
 too, that he had suffered a cruel misadventure in love at 
 the hands of a fair jilt in London, and so had become 
 the austere, eccentric bachelor he showed himself to be 
 in the free and quiet colony. A man of taste and cult 
 ure, he had written with Addison and Steele for the 
 
50 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 Spectator a man of the world, he had acquired, for all 
 his reserve, that easy touch and intimate mastery in 
 dealing with men which come with the long practice 
 of such men of fashion as are also men of sense. He 
 brought with him to Virginia, though past fifty, the 
 fresh vigor of a young man eager for the free pioneer 
 life of such a province. He tarried but two years with 
 his cousin, where the colony had settled to an ordered 
 Avay of living. Then he built himself a roomy lodge, 
 shadowed by spreading piazzas, and fitted with such 
 simple appointments as sufficed for comfort at the 
 depths of the forest, close upon seventy miles away, 
 within the valley of the Shenandoah, where a hardy 
 frontier people had but begun to gather. The great 
 manor-house he had meant to build was never begun. 
 The plain comforts of " Greenway Court " satisfied him 
 more and more easily as the years passed, and the habits 
 of a simple life grew increasingly pleasant and familiar, 
 till thirty years and more had slipped away and he was 
 dead, at ninety-one broken-hearted, men said, because 
 the King s government had fallen upon final defeat and 
 was done with in America. 
 
 It was in the company of these men, and of those 
 who naturally gathered about them in that hospita 
 ble country, that George Washington was bred. " A 
 stranger had no more to do," says Beverley, " but to in 
 quire upon the road where any gentleman or good 
 housekeeper lived, and there he might depend upon be 
 ing received with hospitality"; and twas certain many 
 besides strangers would seek out the young major at 
 Mount Yernon whom his neighbors had hastened to 
 make their representative in the House of Burgesses, 
 and the old soldier of the soldierly house of Fairfax 
 
A VIRGINIAN BREEDING 51 
 
 who was President of the King s Council, and so next 
 to the Governor himself. A boy who was much at 
 Mount Yernon and at Mr. Fairfax s seat, Belvoir, might 
 expect to see not a little that was worth seeing of the 
 life of the colony. George was kept at school until 
 he was close upon sixteen ; but there was ample vaca 
 tion-time for visiting. Mrs. Washington did not keep 
 him at her apron-strings. He even lived, when it was 
 necessary, with his brother Augustine, at the old home 
 on Bridges Creek, in order to be near the best school 
 that was accessible, while the mother was far away on 
 the farm that lay upon the Kappahannock. Mrs. "Wash 
 ington saw to it, nevertheless, that she should not lose 
 sight of him altogether. When he was fourteen it was 
 proposed that he should be sent to sea, as so many lads 
 were, no doubt, from that maritime province ; but the 
 prudent mother preferred he should not leave Virginia, 
 and the schooling went on as before the schooling of 
 books and manly sports. Every lad learned to ride to 
 ride colt or hofce, regardless of training, gait, or temper 
 in that country, where no one went afoot except to 
 catch his mount in the pasture. Every lad, black or 
 white, bond or free, knew where to find and how to take 
 the roving game in the forests. And young Washing 
 ton, robust boy that he was, not to be daunted while 
 that strong spirit sat in him which he got from his 
 father and mother alike, took his apprenticeship on 
 horseback and in the tangled woods with characteristic 
 zest and ardor. 
 
 He was, above all things else,_a__capable, executive 
 boy. He loved mastery, and he relished acquiring the 
 most effective means of mastery in all practical affairs. 
 His very exercise-books used at school gave proof of it. 
 
52 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 They were filled, not only with the rules, formulas, dia 
 grams, and exercises of surveying, which he was taking- 
 special pains to learn, at the advice of his friends, but 
 also with careful copies of legal and mercantile papers, 
 bills of exchange, bills of sale, bonds, indentures, land 
 warrants, leases, deeds, and wills, as if he meant to be a 
 lawyer s or a merchant s clerk. It would seem that, pas 
 sionate and full of warm blood as he was, he conned 
 these things as he studied the use and structure of his 
 fowling-piece, the bridle he used for his colts, his saddle- 
 girth, and the best ways of mounting. He copied these 
 forms of business as he might have copied Beverley s 
 account of the way fox or possum or beaver was to be 
 taken or the wild turkey trapped. The men he most 
 admired his elder brothers, Mr. Fairfax, and the gentle 
 men planters who were so much at their houses were 
 most of them sound men of business, who valued good 
 surveying as much as they admired good horsemanship 
 and skill in sport. They were their own merchants, and 
 looked upon forms of business paper as quite as useful 
 as ploughs and hogsheads. Careful exercise in such 
 matters might well enough accompany practice in the 
 equally formal minuet in Virginia. And so this boy 
 learned to show in almost everything he did the careful 
 precision of the perfect marksman. 
 
 In the autumn of 1747, when he was not yet quite 
 sixteen, George quit his formal schooling, and presently 
 joined his brother Lawrence at Mount Vernon, to seek 
 counsel and companionship. Lawrence had conceived a 
 strong affection for his manly younger brother. Him 
 self a man of spirit and honor, he had a high-hearted 
 man s liking for all that he saw that was indomitable 
 and well-purposed in the lad, a generous man s tender- 
 
A VIRGINIAN BREEDING 53 
 
 ness in looking to the development of this thoroughbred 
 boy; and he took him into his confidence as if he had 
 been his own son. Not only upon his vacations now, but 
 almost when he would, and as if he were already him 
 self a man with the rest, he could live in the comrade 
 ship that obtained at Belvoir and Mount Yernon. Men 
 of all sorts, it seemed, took pleasure in his company. 
 Lads could be the companions of men in Virginia. Her 
 outdoor life of journeyings, sport, adventure, put them, 
 as it were, upon equal terms with their elders, where 
 spirit, audacity, invention, prudence, manliness, resource, 
 told for success and comradeship. Young men and old 
 can be companions in arms, in sport, in woodcraft, and 
 on the trail of the fox. Twas not an indoor life of 
 conference, bat an outdoor life of affairs in this rural 
 colony. One man, indeed, gave at least a touch of an 
 other quality to the life Washington saw. This was 
 Lord Fairfax, who had been almost two years in Vir 
 ginia when the boy quit school, and who was now deter 
 mined, as soon as might be, to take up his residence at 
 his forest lodge within the Blue Eidge. George greatly 
 struck his lordship s fancy, as he did that of all capable 
 men, as a daring lad in the hunt and a sober lad in 
 counsel ; and, drawn into such companionship, he learned 
 a great deal that no one else in Virginia could have 
 taught him so well the scrupulous deportment of a 
 high-bred and honorable man of the world ; the use of 
 books by those who preferred affairs ; the way in which 
 strength may be rendered gracious, and independence 
 made generous. A touch of Old World address was to 
 be learned at Belvoir. 
 
 His association with Lord Fairfax, moreover, put him 
 in the way of making his first earnings as a surveyor. 
 
54 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 Fairfax had not come to America merely to get away 
 from the world of fashion in London and bury himself 
 in the wilderness. His chief motive was one which did 
 him much more credit, and bespoke him a man and a 
 true colonist. It was his purpose, he declared, to open 
 up, settle, and cultivate the vast tracts of beautiful and 
 fertile land he had inherited in Virginia, and he proved 
 his sincerity by immediately setting about the business. 
 It was necessary as a first step that he should have sur 
 veys made, in order that he might know how his lands 
 lay, how bounded and disposed through the glades and 
 upon the streams of the untrodden forests ; and in young 
 "Washington he had a surveyor ready to his hand. The 
 lad was but sixteen, indeed ; was largely self-taught in 
 surveying ; and had had no business yet that made test 
 of his quality. But surveyors were scarce, and boys 
 were not tender at sixteen in that robust, out-of-door 
 colony. Fairfax had an eye for capacity. He knew the 
 athletic boy to be a fearless woodsman, with that odd, 
 calm judgment looking forth at his steady gray eyes; 
 perceived how seriously he took himself in all that he 
 did, and how thorough lie was at succeeding ; and had 
 no doubt he could run his lines through the thicketed 
 forests as well as any man. At any rate, he commis 
 sioned him to undertake the task, and was not disap 
 pointed in the way he performed it. "Within a very few 
 weeks AVashington conclusively showed his capacity. 
 In March, 1748, with George Fairfax, William Fairfax s 
 son, for company, he rode forth with his little band of 
 assistants through the mountains to the wild country 
 where his work lay, and within the month almost he 
 was back again, with maps and figures which showed 
 his lordship very clearly what lands he had upon the 
 
A VIRGINIAN BREEDING 55 
 
 sparkling Shenandoah and the swollen upper waters of 
 the Potomac. Twas all he wanted before making his 
 home where his estate lay in the wilderness. Before the 
 year was out he had established himself at Greenway 
 Court; huntsmen and tenants and guests had found 
 their way thither, and life was fairly begun upon the 
 rough rural barony. 
 
 It had been wild and even perilous work for the young 
 surveyor, but just out of school, to go in the wet spring 
 time into that wilderness, when the rivers were swollen 
 and ugly with the rains and melting snows from off the 
 mountains, where there was scarcely a lodging to be 
 had except in the stray, comfortless cabins of the scat 
 tered settlers, or on the ground about a fire in the open 
 woods, and where a woodman s wits were needed to 
 come even tolerably off. But there was a strong relish 
 in such an experience for Washington, which did not 
 wear off with the novelty of it. There is an unmistaka 
 ble note of boyish satisfaction in the tone in which he 
 speaks of it. " Since you received my letter in October 
 last," he writes to a young comrade, " I have not sleep d 
 above three nights or four in a bed, but, after walking a 
 good deal all the day, I lay down before the fire upon a 
 little hay, straw, fodder, or bear-skin, whichever is to be 
 had, with man, wife, and children, like a parcel of dogs 
 and cats ; and happy is he who gets the berth nearest 
 the fire. ... I have never had my clothes off, but lay 
 and sleep in them, except the few nights I have lay n 
 in Frederick Town." For three years he kept steadily 
 at the trying business, without loss either of health or 
 courage, now deep in the forests laboriously laying off 
 the rich bottom lands and swelling hill-sides of that 
 wild but goodly country between the mountains, now at 
 
56 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 Greenway Court with his lordship, intent upon the busy 
 life there, following the hounds, consorting with hunts 
 men and Indians and traders, waiting upon the ladies 
 who now and again visited the lodge ; when other occu 
 pations failed, reading up and down in his lordship s copy 
 of the Spectator, or in the historians who told the great 
 English story. His first success in surveying brought 
 him frequent employment in the valley. Settlers were 
 steadily making their way thither, who must needs have 
 their holdings clearly bounded and defined. Upon his 
 lordship s recommendation and his own showing of what 
 he knew and could do, he obtained appointment at the 
 hands of the President and Master of William and Mary, 
 the colony s careful agent in the matter, as official sur 
 veyor for Culpeper County, " took the usual oaths to his 
 Majesty s person and government," and so got for his 
 work the privilege of authoritative public record. 
 
 Competent surveyors were much in demand, and, 
 when once he had been officially accredited in his pro 
 fession, Washington had as much to do both upon new 
 lands and old as even a young man s energy and liking 
 for an independent income could reasonably demand. 
 His home he made with his brother at Mount Yernon, 
 where he was always so welcome ; and he was as often as 
 possible with his mother at her place upon the Rappa- 
 hannock, to lend the efficient lady such assistance as she 
 needed in the business of the estate she held for herself 
 and her children. At odd intervals he studied tactics, 
 practised the manual of arms, or took a turn at the 
 broadsword with the old soldiers who so easily found 
 excuses for visiting Major Washington at Mount Yer 
 non. But, except when winter weather forbade him the 
 fields, he was abroad, far and near, busy with his sur- 
 
- 
 
 Hf ^i 
 
 , - ^ 
 
 [I ^* 
 
A VIRGINIAN BREEDING 57 
 
 veying, and incidentally making trial of his neighbors 
 up and down all the country-side round about, as his 
 errands threw their open doors in his way. His pleas 
 ant bearing and his quiet satisfaction at being busy, his 
 manly, efficient ways, his evident self-respect, and his 
 frank enjoj^ment of life, the engaging mixture in him of 
 man and boy, must have become familiar to everybody 
 worth knowing throughout all the Northern Keck. 
 
 But three years put a term to his surveying. In 1751 
 he was called imperatively off, and had the whole course 
 of his life changed, by the illness of his brother. Law 
 rence Washington had never been robust ; those long 
 months spent at the heart of the fiery South with Yer- 
 non s fever-stricken fleet had touched his sensitive con 
 stitution to the quick, and at last a fatal consumption 
 fastened upon him. Neither a trip to England nor the 
 waters of the warm springs at home brought him re 
 cuperation, and in the autumn of 1751 his physician 
 ordered him to the Bahamas for the winter. George, 
 whom he so loved and trusted, went with him, to nurse 
 and cheer him. But even the gentle sea -air of the 
 islands wrought no cure of the stubborn malady. The 
 sterling, gifted, lovable gentleman, who had made his 
 quiet seat at Mount Yernon the home of so much that 
 was honorable and of good report, came back the next 
 summer to die in his prime, at thirty -four. George found 
 himself named executor in his brother s will, and looked 
 to of a sudden to guard all the interests of the young 
 widow and her little daughter in the management of a 
 large estate. That trip to the Bahamas had been his 
 last outing as a boy. lie had enjoyed the novel journey 
 with a very keen and natural relish while it promised 
 his brother health. The radiant air of those summer 
 
58 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 isles had touched him with a new pleasure, and the cor 
 dial hospitality of the homesick colonists had added 
 the satisfaction of a good welcome. He had braved the 
 small-pox in one household with true Virginian punctilio 
 rather than refuse an invitation to dinner, had taken the 
 infection, and had come home at last bearing some per 
 manent marks of a three weeks sharp illness upon him. 
 But he had had entertainment enough to strike the bal 
 ance handsomely against such inconveniences, had borne 
 whatever came in his way very cheerily, with that whole 
 some strength of mind which made older men like him, 
 and would have come off remembering nothing but the 
 pleasure of the trip had his noble brother only found 
 his health again. As it was, Lawrence s death put a 
 final term to his youth. Five other executors were 
 named in the will ; but George, as it turned out, was to 
 be looked to to carry the burden of administration, and 
 gave full proof of the qualities that had made his brother 
 trust him with so generous a confidence. 
 
 His brother s death, in truth, changed everything for 
 him. He seemed of a sudden to stand as Lawrence s 
 representative. Before they set out for the Bahamas 
 Lawrence had transferred to him his place in the militia, 
 obtaining for him, though he was but nineteen, a com 
 mission as major and district adjutant in his stead ; and 
 after his return, in 1752, Lieutenant-Governor Dinwid- 
 die, the crown s new representative in Virginia, added 
 still further to his responsibilities as a soldier by re 
 ducing the military districts of the colony to four, and 
 assigning to him one of the four, under a renewed 
 commission as major and adjutant-general. His broth 
 er s will not only named him an executor, but also made 
 him residuary legatee of the estate of Mount Vernon in 
 
LAWRENCE WASHINGTON 
 
 an unknown artist, in the possession of Lawrence Washington, 
 Alexandria, Virginia) 
 
A VIRGINIAN BREEDING 59 
 
 case his child should die. He had to look to the disci 
 pline and accoutrement of the militia of eleven counties, 
 aid his mother in her business, administer his brother s 
 estate, and assume on all hands the duties and responsi 
 bilities of a man of affairs when he was but just turned 
 of twenty. 
 
 The action of the colonial government in compacting 
 the organization and discipline of the militia by reduc 
 ing the number of military districts was significant of 
 a sinister change in the posture of affairs beyond the 
 borders. The movements of the French in the West had 
 of late become more ominous than ever ; twas possible 
 the Virginian militia might any day see an end of that 
 " everlasting peace" which good Mr. Beverley had smiled 
 to see them complacently enjoy, and that the young 
 major, who was now Adjutant-General of the Northern 
 Division, might find duties abroad even more serious and 
 responsible than his duties at home. Whoever should 
 be commissioned to meet and deal with the French 
 upon the western rivers would have to handle truly crit 
 ical affairs, decisive of the fate of the continent, and it 
 looked as if Virginia must undertake the fateful busi 
 ness. The northern borders, indeed, were sadly har 
 ried by the savage allies of the French ; the brunt of the 
 fighting hitherto had fallen upon the hardy militiamen 
 of Massachusetts and Connecticut in the slow contest 
 for English mastery upon the continent. But there was 
 really nothing to be decided in that quarter. The French 
 were not likely to attempt the mad task of driving out 
 the thickly set English population, already established, 
 hundreds of thousands strong, upon the eastern coasts. 
 Their true lines of conquest ran within. Their strength 
 lay in their command of the great watercourses which 
 
60 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 flanked the English colonies both north and west. Twas 
 a long frontier to hold, that mazy line of Jake and river 
 that ran all the way from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the 
 wide mouths of the sluggish Mississippi. Throughout 
 all the posts and settlements that lay upon it from end 
 to end there were scarcely eighty thousand Frenchmen, 
 while the English teemed upon the coasts more than a 
 million strong. But the forces of New France could 
 be handled like an army, while the English swarmed 
 slowly westward, without discipline or direction, the 
 headstrong subjects of a distant government they would 
 not obey, the wayward constituents of a score of petty 
 and jealous assemblies tardy at planning, clumsy at 
 executing plans. They were still far away, too, from 
 the mid- waters of the lakes and from the royal stream 
 of the Mississippi itself, where lonely boats floated 
 slowly down, with their cargoes of grain, meat, tallow, 
 tobacco, oil, hides, and lead, out of the country of the 
 Illinois, past the long, thin line of tiny isolated posts, to 
 the growing village at New Orleans and the southern 
 Gulf. But they were to be feared, none the less. If 
 their tide once flowed in, the French well knew it could 
 not be turned back again. It was not far away from 
 the Ohio now ; and if once settlers out of Pennsylvania 
 and Virginia gained a foothold in any numbers on that 
 river, they would control one of the great highways 
 that led to the main basins of the continent. It was 
 imperative they should be effectually forestalled, and 
 that at once. 
 
 The Marquis Duquesne, with his quick soldier blood, 
 at last took the decisive step for France. He had hard 
 ly come to his colony, to serve his royal master as Gov 
 ernor upon the St. Lawrence, when he determined to 
 
FRENCH AND ENGLISH 
 
 IN 
 
 NORTH AMERICA 
 
 Longitude West ^ 82 CromV Cre>mu-h 
 
OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF 
 
A VIRGINIAN BREEDING 61 
 
 occupy the upper waters of the Ohio, and block the 
 western passes against the English with a line of military 
 posts. The matter did not seem urgent to the doubting 
 ministers at Versailles. " Be on your guard against 
 new undertakings," said official letters out of France ; 
 " private interests are generally at the bottom of them." 
 But Duquesne knew that it was no mere private interest 
 of fur trader or speculator that was at stake now. The 
 rivalry between the two nations had gone too far to 
 make it possible to draw back. Military posts had al 
 ready been established by the bold energy of the French 
 at Niagara, the key to the western lakes, and at Crown 
 Point upon Champlain, where lake and river struck 
 straight towards the heart of the English trading set 
 tlements upon the Hudson. The English, accepting the 
 challenge, had planted themselves at Oswego, upon the 
 very lake route itself, and had made a port there. to 
 take the furs that came out of the West, and, though 
 very sluggish in the business, showed purpose of ag 
 gressive movement everywhere that advantage offered. 
 English settlers by the hundred were pressing towards 
 the western mountains in Pennsylvania, and down into 
 that "Virginian Arcady," the sweet valley of the Shen- 
 andoah : thrifty Germans, a few ; hardy Scots-Irish, a 
 great many the blood most to be feared and checked. 
 It was said that quite three hundred English traders 
 passed the mountains every year into the region of the 
 Ohio. Enterprising gentlemen in Virginia Lawrence 
 and Augustine Washington among the rest had joined 
 influential partners in London in the formation of an 
 Ohio Company for the settlement of the western coun 
 try and the absorption of the western trade ; had sent 
 out men who knew the region to make interest with 
 
62 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 the Indians and fix upon points of vantage for trading- 
 posts and settlements ; had already set out upon the busi 
 ness by erecting storehouses at "Will s Creek, in the heart 
 of the Alleghanies, and, farther westward still, upon 
 Redstone Creek, a branch of the Monongahela itself. 
 
 It was high time to act; and Duquesne, having no 
 colonial assembly to hamper him, acted very promptly. 
 When spring came, 1753, he sent fifteen hundred men 
 into Lake Erie, to Presque Isle, where a fort of squared 
 logs was built, and a road cut through the forests to a 
 little river whose waters, when at the flood, would carry 
 boats direct to the Alleghany and the great waterway of 
 the Ohio itself. An English lieutenant at Oswego had 
 descried the multitudinous fleet of canoes upon Ontario 
 carrying this levy to its place of landing in the lake 
 beyond, and a vagrant Frenchman had told him plainly 
 what it was. It was an army of six thousand men, he 
 boasted, going to the Ohio, " to cause all the English to 
 quit those parts." It was plain to every English Gov 
 ernor in the colonies who had his eyes open that the 
 French would not stop with planting a fort upon an ob 
 scure branch of the Alleghany, but that they would 
 indeed press forward to take possession of the Ohio, 
 drive every English trader forth, draw all the native 
 tribes to their interest by force or favor, and close alike 
 the western lands and the western trade in very earnest 
 against all the King s subjects. 
 
 Governor Dinwiddie was among the first to see the 
 danger and the need for action, as, in truth, was very 
 natural. In office and out, his study had been the co 
 lonial trade, and he had been merchant and official now 
 a long time. He was one of the twenty stockholders of 
 the Ohio Company, and had come to his governorship 
 
A VIRGINIAN BREEDING 63 
 
 in Virginia with his eye upon the western country. He 
 had but to look about him to perceive that Virginia 
 would very likely be obliged to meet the crisis unaided, 
 if, indeed, he could induce even her to meet it. Gov 
 ernor Hamilton, of Pennsylvania, also saw how critical 
 ly affairs stood, it is true, and what ought to be done. 
 His agents had met and acted with the agents of the 
 Ohio Company already in seeking Indian alliances and 
 fixing upon points of vantage beyond the Alleghanies. 
 But the Pennsylvania Assembly could by no argument 
 or device be induced to vote money or measures in the 
 business. The placid Quaker traders were as stubborn as 
 the stolid German farmers. They opposed warlike ac 
 tion on principle. The Germans opposed it because 
 they could not for the life of them see the necessity of 
 parting with their money to send troops upon so remote 
 an errand. Dinwiddie did not wait or parley. He 
 acted first, and consulted his legislature afterwards. It 
 was in his Scots blood to take the business very strenu 
 ously, and in his trader s blood to take it very anxious 
 ly. He had kept himself advised from the first of the 
 movements of the French. Their vanguard had scarce 
 ly reached Presque Isle ere he despatched letters to Eng 
 land apprising the government of the danger. Answer 
 had come very promptly, too, authorizing him to build 
 forts upon the Ohio, if he could get the money from the 
 Burgesses ; and meantime, should the French trespass 
 further, " to require of them peaceably to depart." If 
 they would not desist for a warning, said his Majesty, 
 " we do hereby strictly charge and command you to 
 drive them oif by force of arms." 
 
 Even to send a warning to the French was no easy 
 matter when the King s letter came and the chill au- 
 
64 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 tumn rains were at hand. The mountain streams, al 
 ready swollen, presently to be full of ice, would be very 
 dangerous for men and horses, and the forests were 
 likely enough to teem with hostile savages, now the 
 French were there. A proper messenger was found 
 and despatched, nevertheless young Major George 
 Washington, of the Northern District. The errand lay 
 in his quarter ; his three years of surveying at the heart 
 of the wilderness had made him an experienced woods 
 man and hardy traveller, had tested his pluck and made 
 proof of his character ; he was well known upon the 
 frontier, and his friends were very influential, and very 
 cordial in recommending him for this or any other 
 manly service that called for steadiness, hardihood, and 
 resource. Dinwiddie had been a correspondent of Law 
 rence Washington s ever since the presidency of the 
 Ohio Company had fallen to the young Virginian upon 
 the death of his neighbor Thomas Lee, writing to him 
 upon terms of intimacy. He knew the stock of which 
 George, the younger brother, came, and the interests in 
 which he might be expected to embark with ardor ; he 
 could feel that he took small risk in selecting such an 
 agent. Knowing him, too, thus through his family and 
 like a friend, he did not hesitate in writing to Governor 
 Hamilton, of Pennsylvania, to speak of this youth of 
 twenty-one as " a person of distinction." 
 
 Washington performed his errand as Dinwiddie must 
 have expected he would. He received his commission 
 and the Governor s letter to the French commandant on 
 the last day of October, and set out the same day for 
 the mountains. Jacob Vanbraam, the Dutch soldier of 
 fortune who had been his fencing-master at Mount Ver- 
 non, accompanied him as interpreter, and Christopher 
 
A VIRGINIAN BREEDING 65 
 
 Gist, the hardy, self-reliant frontier trader, whom the 
 Ohio Company had employed to make interest for them 
 among the Indians of the far region upon the western 
 rivers which he knew so well, was engaged to act as his 
 guide and counsellor ; and with a few servants and pack- 
 horses he struck straight into the forests in the middle 
 of bleak November. It was the llth of December be 
 fore the jaded party rode, in the cold dusk, into the 
 drenched and miry clearing where the dreary little fort 
 stood that held the French commander. Through two 
 hundred and fifty miles and more of forest they had 
 dragged themselves over swollen rivers, amidst an almost 
 ceaseless fall of rain or snow, with not always an Indian 
 trail, even, or the beaten track of the bison, to open the 
 forest growth for their flagging horses, and on the 
 watch always against savage treachery. It had become 
 plain enough before they reached their destination what 
 answer they should get from the French. Sixty miles 
 nearer home than these lonely headquarters of the French 
 commander at Fort Le Boeuf they had come upon an 
 outpost where the French colors were to be seen flying 
 from a house from which an English trader had been 
 driven out, and the French officers there had uttered 
 brutally frank avowal of their purpose in that wilderness 
 as they sat at wine with the alert and temperate young 
 Virginian. " It was their absolute design," they said, 
 "to take possession of the Ohio, and, by G , they 
 would do it. ... They were sensible the English 
 could raise two men for their one, yet they knew their 
 motions were too slow and dilatory to prevent any un 
 dertaking of theirs." The commandant at Fort Le 
 Boeuf received the wayworn ambassador very courte 
 ously, and even graciously a thoughtful elderly man, 
 
66 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 Washington noted him, " with much the air of a soldier" 
 but would make no profession even that he would 
 consider the English summons to withdraw ; and the 
 little party of Englishmen presently turned back amidst 
 the winter s storms to carry through the frozen wilder 
 ness a letter which boasted the French lawful masters 
 of all the continent beyond the Alleghanies. When 
 Washington reached Williamsburg, in the middle of 
 January, 1754, untouched by even the fearful fatigues 
 and anxieties of that daring journey, he had accom 
 plished nothing but the establishment of his own char 
 acter in the eyes of the men who were to meet the crisis 
 now at hand. He had been at infinite pains, at every 
 stage of the dreary adventure, to win and hold the con 
 fidence of the Indians who were accounted friends of 
 the English, and had displayed an older man s patience, 
 address, and fortitude in meeting all their subtle shifts ; 
 and he iiad borne hardships that tried even the doughty 
 Gist. When the horses gave out, he had left them to 
 come by easier stages, while he made his way afoot, 
 with only a single companion, across the weary leagues 
 that lay upon his homeward way. Gist, his comrade in 
 the hazard, had been solicitously " unwilling he should 
 undertake such a travel, who had never been used to 
 walking before this time," but the imperative young 
 commander would not be stayed, and the journey was 
 made, spite of sore feet and frosts and exhausting weari 
 ness. He at least knew Avhat the French were about, 
 with what strongholds and forces, and could afford to 
 await orders what to do next. 
 
COLONEL WASHINGTON 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 DINWIDDIE had not been idle while Washington went 
 his perilous errand. He had gotten the Burgesses to 
 gether by the 1st of November, before Washington had 
 left the back settlements to cross the wilderness, and 
 would have gotten a liberal grant of money from them 
 had they not fallen in their debates upon the question 
 of the new fee charged, since his coming, for every 
 grant out of the public lands of the colony, and insisted 
 that it should be done away with. " Subjects," they 
 said, very stubbornly, " cannot be deprived of the least 
 part of their property without their consent ;" and such 
 a fee, they thought, was too like a tax to be endured. 
 They would withhold the grant, they declared, unless 
 the fee was abolished, notwithstanding they saw plainly 
 enough in how critical a case things stood in the West ; 
 and the testy Governor very indignantly sent them 
 home again. He ordered a draft of two hundred men 
 from the militia, nevertheless, with the purpose of as 
 signing the command to Washington and seeing what 
 might be done upon the Ohio, without vote of Assembly. 
 A hard-headed Scotsman past sixty could not be ex 
 pected to wait upon a body of wrangling and factious 
 provincials for leave to perform his duty in a crisis, and, 
 inasmuch as the object was to save their own lands, 
 and perhaps their own persons, from the French, could 
 
70 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 hardly be blamed for proposing in his anger that they 
 be taxed for the purpose by act of Parliament. " A 
 Governor," he exclaimed, " is really to be pitied in the 
 discharge of his duty to his King and country in having 
 to do with such obstinate, self-conceited people !" Some 
 money he advanced out of his own pocket. When 
 Washington came back from his fruitless mission, Din- 
 widdie ordered his journal printed and copies sent to 
 all the colonial Governors. " As it was thought advisa 
 ble by his Honour the Governor to have the following 
 account of my proceedings to and from the French on 
 Ohio committed to print," said the modest young major, 
 " I think I can do no less than apologize, in some meas 
 ure, for the numberless imperfections of it." But it was 
 a very manly recital of noteworthy things, and touched 
 the imagination and fears of every thoughtful man who 
 read it quite as near the quick as the urgent and re 
 peated letters of the troubled Dinwiddie. 
 
 Virginia, it turned out, was, after all, more forward 
 than her neighbors when it came to action. The Penn 
 sylvania Assembly very coolly declared they doubted 
 his Majesty s claim to the lands on the Ohio, and the 
 Assembly in New York followed suit. " It appears," 
 they said, in high judicial tone, " that the French have 
 built a fort at a place called French Creek, at a consid 
 erable distance from the river Ohio, which may, but 
 does not by any evidence or information appear to us to 
 be, an invasion of any of his Majesty s colonies." The 
 Governors of the other colonies whose safety was most 
 directly menaced by the movements of the French in 
 the West were thus even less able to act than Dinwid 
 die. For the Virginian Burgesses, though they would 
 not yield the point of the fee upon land grants, did not 
 
COLONEL WASHINGTON 71 
 
 mean to leave Major "Washington in the lurch, and be 
 fore an expedition could be got afoot had come together 
 again to vote a sum of money. It would be possible 
 with the sum they appropriated to put three or four 
 hundred men into the field ; and as spring drew on, raw 
 volunteers began to gather in some numbers at Alexan 
 dria a ragged regiment, made up for the most part of 
 idle and shiftless men, who did not always have shoes, or 
 even shirts, of their own to wear ; anxious to get their 
 eightpence a day, but not anxious to work or submit 
 to discipline. Twas astonishing how steady and how 
 spirited they showed themselves when once they had 
 shaken their lethargy off and were on the march or face 
 to face with the enemy. A body of backwoodsmen 
 had been hurried forward in February, ere spring had 
 opened, to make a clearing and set to work upon a fort 
 at the forks of the Ohio ; but it was the 2d of April be 
 fore men enough could be collected at Alexandria to be 
 gin the main movement towards the frontier, and by 
 that time it was too late to checkmate the French. The 
 little force sent forward to begin fortifications had set 
 about their task very sluggishly and without skill, and 
 their commander had turned back again with some of 
 his men to rejoin the forces behind him before the petty 
 works he should have stayed to finish were well begun. 
 When, therefore, on the lYth of April, the river sudden 
 ly filled with canoes bearing an army of more than five 
 hundred Frenchmen, who put cannon ashore, and sum 
 moned the forty men who held the place to surrender 
 or be blown into the water, there was no choice but to 
 comply. The young ensign who commanded the little 
 garrison urged a truce till he could communicate with 
 his superiors, but the French commander would brook 
 
72 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 no delay. The boy might either take his men off free 
 and unhurt, or else fight and face sheer destruction ; and 
 the nearest succor was a little force of one hundred and 
 fifty men under Colonel Washington, who had not yet 
 topped the Alleghanies in their painful work of cutting 
 a way through the forests for their field -pieces and 
 wagons. 
 
 The Governor s plans had been altered by the Assem 
 bly s vote of money and the additional levy of men 
 which it made possible. Colonel Joshua Fry, whom 
 Dinwiddie deemed " a man of good sense, and one of 
 our best mathematicians," had been given the command 
 in chief, and Washington had been named his second in 
 command, with the rank of lieutenant-colonel. " Dear 
 George," wrote Mr. Corbin, of the Governors Council, 
 " I enclose you your commission. God prosper you 
 with it !" and the brunt of the work in fact fell upon the 
 younger man. But three hundred volunteers could be 
 gotten together ; and, all too late, half of the raw levy 
 were sent forward under Washington to find or make a 
 way for wagons and ordnance to the Ohio. The last 
 days of May were almost at hand before they had 
 crossed the main ridge of the Alleghanies, so inexperi 
 enced were they in the rough labor of cutting a road 
 through the close-set growth and over the sharp slopes 
 of the mountains, and so ill equipped ; and by that time 
 it was already too late by a full month and more to 
 forestall the French, who had only to follow the open 
 highway of the Alleghany to bring what force they 
 would to the key of the West at the forks of the Ohio. 
 As the spring advanced, the French force upon the river 
 grew from five to fourteen hundred men, and work was 
 pushed rapidly forward upon fortifications such as the 
 
COLONEL WASHINGTON 7 3 
 
 little band of Englishmen they had ousted had not 
 thought of attempting a veritable fort, albeit of a rude 
 frontier pattern, which its builders called Duquesne, in 
 honor of their Governor. Washington could hit upon 
 no watercourse that would afford him quick transport; 
 twould have been folly, besides, to take his handful of 
 ragged provincials into the presence of an intrenched 
 army. He was fain to go into camp at Great Meadows, 
 just across the ridge of the mountains, and there await 
 his Colonel with supplies and an additional handful of 
 men. 
 
 It was " a charming field for an encounter," the young 
 commander thought, but it was to be hoped the enemy 
 would not find their way to it in too great numbers. 
 An " Independent Company " of provincials in the 
 King s pay joined him out of South Carolina, whence 
 they had been sent forward by express orders from 
 England ; and the rest of the Virginia volunteers at last 
 came up to join their comrades at the Meadows with 
 out good Colonel Fry, the doughty mathematician, who 
 had sickened and died on the way so that there were 
 presently more than three hundred men at the camp, 
 and "Washington was now their commander -in -chief. 
 The officers of the Independent Company from South 
 Carolina, holding their commissions from the King, 
 would not, indeed, take their orders from Washington, 
 with his colonial commission merely ; and, what was 
 worse, their men would not work; but there was no 
 doubt they would fight with proper dignity and spirit 
 for his Majesty, their royal master. The first blood had 
 already been drawn, on the 28th of May, before rein 
 forcements had arrived, when Washington had but just 
 come to camp. Upon the morning of that day Wash- 
 
74 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 ington, with forty men, guided by friendly Indians, had 
 come upon a party of some thirty Frenchmen where 
 they lurked deep within the thickets of the dripping 
 forest, and, with thrust of bayonet when the wet guns 
 
 / o 
 
 failed, had brought them to a surrender within fifteen 
 minutes of the first surprise. JS T o one in the Virginian 
 camp doubted that there was war already, or dreamed 
 of awaiting the action of diplomats and cabinets over 
 sea. The French had driven an English garrison from 
 the forks of the Ohio with threats of force, which would 
 certainly have been executed had there been need. 
 These men hidden in the thickets at Great Meadows 
 would have it, when the fight was over, that they had 
 come as messengers merely to bear a peaceful summons ; 
 but did it need thirty odd armed men to bear a mes 
 sage ? Why had they lurked for five days so stealthily 
 in the forest ; and why had they sent runners back post 
 haste to Fort Duquesne to obtain support for their 
 diplomacy ? Washington might regret that young M. 
 Jumonville, their commander, had lost his life in the 
 encounter, but he had no doubt he had done right to 
 order his men to fire when he saw the French spring 
 for their arms at the first surprise. 
 
 Now, at any rate, Avar was unquestionably begun. 
 That sudden volley fired in the wet woods at the heart 
 of the lonely Alleghanies had set the final struggle 
 ablaze. It was now either French or English in Amer 
 ica: it could no longer be both. Jumonville with his 
 thirty Frenchmen was followed ere many weeks were 
 out by Coulon de Villiers with seven hundred some of 
 them come all the way from Montreal at news of what 
 had happened to France s lurking ambassadors in the 
 far-away mountains of Virginia. On the 3d of July 
 
COLONEL WASHINGTON 75 
 
 they closed to an encounter at " Fort Necessity," Wash 
 ington s rude intrenchments upon the Great Meadows. 
 There were three hundred and fifty Englishmen with 
 him able to fight, spite of sickness and short rations ; 
 and as the enemy began to show themselves at the edges 
 of the neighboring woods through the damp mists of 
 that dreary morning, Washington drew his little force 
 up outside their works upon the open meadow. He 
 "thought the French would come up to him in open 
 field," laughed a wily Indian, who gave him counsel 
 freely, but no aid in the fight ; but Yilliers had no mind 
 to meet the gallant young Virginian in that manly 
 fashion. Once, indeed, they rushed to his trenches, but, 
 finding hot reception there, kept their distance after 
 wards. Yilliers brought them after that only " as near 
 as possible without uselessly exposing the lives of the 
 King s subjects," and poured his fire in from the cover 
 of the woods. For nine hours the unequal fight dragged 
 on, the French and their Indians hardly showing them 
 selves outside the shelter of the forest, the English 
 crouching knee -deep in water in their rude trenches, 
 while the rain poured incessantly, reducing their breast 
 works to a mass of slimy mud, and filling all the air 
 with a chill and pallid mist. Day insensibly darkened 
 into night in such an air, and it was eight o clock when 
 the firing ceased and the French asked a parley. Their 
 men were tired of the dreary fight, their Indian allies 
 threatened to leave them when morning should come, 
 and they were willing the English should withdraw, if 
 they would, without further hurt or molestation. The 
 terms they offered seemed very acceptable to Washing 
 ton s officers as the interpreter read them out, standing 
 there in the drenching downpour and the black night. 
 
76 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 " It rained so hard we could hardly keep the candle 
 lighted to read them by," said an officer ; but there was 
 really no choice what to do. More than fifty men lay 
 dead or wounded in the flooded camp ; the ammunition 
 was all but spent ; the French strength had hardly been 
 touched in the fight, and might at any moment be in 
 creased. Capitulation was inevitable, and "Washington 
 did not hesitate. 
 
 The next morning saw his wretched force making 
 their way back again along the rude road they had cut 
 through the forests. They had neither horses nor wagons 
 to carry their baggage. What they could they burned ; 
 and then set, out, sore stricken in heart and body, their 
 wounded comrades and their scant store of food slung 
 upon their backs, and dragged themselves very wearily 
 all the fifty miles to the settlements at home. Two of 
 the King s Independent Companies from New York 
 ought to have joined them long ago, but had gotten no 
 farther than Alexandria when the fatal day came at the 
 Great Meadows. North Carolina had despatched three 
 hundred and fifty of her militiamen, under an experi 
 enced officer, to aid them, but they also came too late. 
 It had been expected that Maryland would raise two 
 hundred and fifty men, and Pennsylvania had at last 
 voted money, to be spent instead of blood, for she would 
 levy no men ; but no succor had come from any quarter 
 when it should. The English were driven in, and all 
 their plans were worse than undone. 
 
 It was a bitter trial for the young Virginian com 
 mander to have his first campaign end so disastrously 
 to be worsted in a petty fight, and driven back hope 
 lessly outdone. No one he cared for in Virginia blamed 
 him. His ragged troops had borne themselves like men 
 
WASHINGTON S RETREAT FROM GREAT MEADOWS 
 
COLONEL WASHINGTON 77 
 
 in the fight ; his own gallantry no man could doubt. 
 The House of Burgesses thanked him and voted money 
 to his men. But it had been a rough apprenticeship, and 
 Washington felt to the quick the lessons it had taught 
 him. The discouraging work of recruiting at Alexan 
 dria, the ragged idlers to be governed there, the fruit 
 less drilling of listless and insolent men, the two months 
 work with axe and spade cutting a way through the 
 forests, the whole disheartening work of making ready 
 for the fight, of seeking the enemy, and of choosing a 
 field of encounter, he had borne as a stalwart young 
 man can while his digestion holds good. He had at 
 least himself clone everything that was possible, and it 
 had been no small relief to him to write plain-spoken 
 letters to the men who were supposed to be helping him 
 in Williamsburg, telling them exactly how things were 
 going and who was to blame letters which showed 
 both how efficient and how proud he was. He had 
 even shown a sort of boyish zest in the affair when it 
 came to actual fighting with Jumonville and his scouts 
 hidden in the forest. He had pressed to the thick of 
 that hot and sudden skirmish, and had taken the French 
 volleys with a lad s relish of the danger. " I heard the 
 bullets whistle," he wrote his brother, " and believe me 
 there is something charming in the sound." But after 
 he had stood a day in the flooded trenches of his wretched 
 " fort " at Great Meadows, and fought till evening in 
 the open with an enemy he could not see, he knew that 
 he had been taught a lesson ; that he was very young 
 at this terrible business of fighting ; and that something 
 more must be learned than could be read in the books 
 at Mount Yernon. He kept a cheerful front in the 
 dreary retreat, heartening his men bravely by word and 
 
78 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 example of steadfastness ; but it was a sore blow to his 
 pride and his hopes, and he must only have winced 
 without protest could he have heard how Horace Wai- 
 pole called him a " brave braggart " for his rodomontade 
 about the music of deadly missiles. 
 
 He had no thought, however, of quitting his duty be 
 cause his first campaign had miscarried. When he had 
 made his report at Williamsburg he rejoined his demor 
 alized regiment at Alexandria, where it lay but an hour s 
 ride from Mount Vernon, and set about executing his 
 orders to recruit once more, as if the business were only 
 just begun. Captain Innes, who had brought three hun 
 dred and fifty men from North Carolina too late to be 
 of assistance at the Meadows, and who had had the cha 
 grin of seeing them take themselves off home again be 
 cause there was no money forthcoming to pay them what 
 had been promised, remained at Will s Creek, amidst 
 the back settlements, to command the King s provincials 
 from South Carolina who had been with Washington at 
 the Meadows, and the two Independent Companies from 
 New York, who had lingered so long on the way ; and to 
 build there a rough fortification, to be named Fort Cum 
 berland, in honor of the far-away Duke who was com- 
 mander-in-chief in England. Dinwiddie, having such 
 hot Scots blood in him as could brook no delays, and 
 having been bred no soldier or frontiersman, but a mer 
 chant and man of business, would have had Washing 
 ton s recruiting despatched at once, like a bill of goods, 
 and a new force sent hot-foot to the Ohio again to catch 
 the French while they were at ease over their victory and 
 slackly upon their guard at Duquesne. When he was 
 flatly told it was impossible, he turned to other plans, 
 equally ill considered, though no doubt equally well 
 
COLONEL WASHINGTON 79 
 
 meant. By October he had obtained of the Assembly 
 twenty thousand pounds, and from the government at 
 home ten thousand more in good specie, such as was 
 scarce in the colony for the sharp stir of actual fight 
 ing had had its effect alike upon King and Burgesses 
 and had ordered the formation and equipment of ten 
 full companies for the frontier. But the new orders 
 contained a sad civilian blunder. The ten companies 
 should all be Independent Companies; there should be 
 no officer higher than a captain amongst them. This, 
 the good Scotsman thought, would accommodate all dis 
 putes about rank and precedence, such as had come near 
 to making trouble between Washington and Captain 
 Mackay, of the Independent Company from South Caro 
 lina, while they waited for the French at Great Meadows. 
 Washington at once resigned, indignant to be so dealt 
 with. ISTot only would he be reduced to a captaincy un 
 der such an arrangement, but every petty officer would 
 outrank him who could show the King s commission. 
 It was no tradition of his class to submit to degradation 
 of rank thus by indirection and without fault committed, 
 and his pride and sense of personal dignity, for all he 
 was so young, were as high-strung as any man s in Vir 
 ginia. He had shown his quality in such matters already, 
 six months ago, while he lay in camp in the wilderness on 
 his way towards the Ohio. The Burgesses had appoint 
 ed a committee of their own to spend the money they 
 had voted to put his expedition afoot in the spring, lest 
 Din widdie should think, were they to give him the spend 
 ing of it, that they had relented in the matter of the fees ; 
 and these gentlemen, in their careful parsimony, had cut 
 the officers of the already straitened little force down to 
 such pay and food as Washington deemed unworthy a 
 
80 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 gentleman s acceptance. He would not resign his com 
 mission there at the head of his men upon the march, but 
 he asked to be considered a volunteer without pay, that 
 .he might be quit of the humiliation of being stinted like 
 a beggar. Now that it was autumn, however, and wars 
 stood still, he could resign without reproach, and he did 
 so very promptly, in spite of protests and earnest solici 
 tations from many quarters. " I am concerned to find 
 Colonel Washington s conduct so imprudent," wrote 
 Thomas Penn. But the high-spirited young officer 
 deemed it no imprudence to insist upon a just considera 
 tion of his rank and services, and quietly withdrew to 
 Mount Vernon, to go thence to his mother at the "ferry 
 farm" upon the Rappahannock, and see again all the 
 fields and friends he loved so well. 
 
 It was a very brief respite. He had been scarcely five 
 months out of harness when he found himself again in 
 camp, his plans and hopes once more turned towards 
 the far wilderness where the French lay. He had set a 
 great war ablaze that day he led his forty men into the 
 thicket and bade them fire upon M. Jumonville and his 
 scouts lurking there ; and he could not, loving the deep 
 business as he did, keep himself aloof from it when he 
 saw how it was to be finished. Horace Walpole might 
 laugh lightly at the affair, but French and English states 
 men alike even Newcastle, England s Prime-Minister, 
 as busy about nothing as an old woman, and as thorough 
 ly ignorant of affairs as a young man knew that some 
 thing must be done, politics hanging at so doubtful a bal 
 ance between them, now that Frederick of Prussia had 
 driven France, Austria, and Russia into league against 
 him. The French Minister in London and the British 
 Minister in Paris vowed their governments still loved 
 
COLONEL WASHINGTON 81 
 
 and trusted one another, and there was no declaration of 
 war. But in the spring of 1755 eighteen French ships 
 of war put to sea from Brest and Rochef ort, carrying six 
 battalions and a new Governor to Canada, and as many 
 ships got away under press of sail from English ports to 
 intercept and destroy them. Transports carrying two 
 English regiments had sailed for Virginia in January, 
 and by the 20th of February had reached the Chesa 
 peake. The French ships got safely in at the St. Law 
 rence despite pursuit, losing but two of their fleet, 
 which had the ill luck to be found by the English 
 befogged and bewildered off the coast. The colonies 
 were to see fighting on a new scale. 
 
 The English ministers, with whom just then all things 
 went either by favor or by accident, had made a sorry 
 blunder in the choice of a commander. Major-General 
 Edward Braddock, whom they had commissioned to take 
 the two regiments out and act as commander-in-chief in 
 America, was a brave man, a veteran soldier, bred in a 
 thorough school of action, a man quick with energy and 
 indomitable in resolution ; but every quality he had un 
 fitted him to learn. Self-confident, brutal, headstrong, 
 " a very Iroquois in disposition," he would take neither 
 check nor suggestion. But energy, resolution, good 
 soldiers, and a proper equipment might of themselves 
 suffice to do much in the crisis that had come, whether 
 wisdom held the reins or not ; and it gave the Old Do 
 minion a thrill of quickened hope and purpose to see 
 Keppel s transports in the Potomac and Braddock s red 
 coats ashore at Alexandria. 
 
 The transports, as they made their way slowly up the 
 river, passed beneath the very Avindows of Mount Ver- 
 non, to put the troops ashore only eight miles beyond. 
 
82 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 Washington had left off being soldier for Dinwiddie, but 
 he had resigned only to avoid an intolerable indignity, 
 not to shun service, and he made no pretence of indiffer 
 ence when he saw the redcoats come to camp at Alex 
 andria. Again and again was he early in the saddle to 
 see the stir and order of the troops, make the acquaint 
 ance of the officers, and learn, if he might, what it was 
 that fitted his Majesty s regulars for their stern business. 
 The self-confident gentlemen who wore his Majesty s 
 uniform and carried his Majesty s commissions in their 
 pockets had scant regard, most of them, for the raw folk 
 of the colony, who had never been in London or seen 
 the set array of battle. They were not a little impatient 
 that they must recruit among such a people. The trans 
 ports had brought but a thousand men two half-regi 
 ments of five hundred each, whose colonels had instruc 
 tions to add two hundred men apiece to their force in 
 the colony. Six companies of " rangers," too, the colo 
 nists were to furnish, and one company of light horse, 
 besides carpenters and teamsters. By all these General 
 Braddock s officers set small store, deeming it likely they 
 must depend, not upon the provincials, but upon them 
 selves for success. They were at small pains to conceal 
 their hearty contempt for the people they had come to 
 help. 
 
 But with Washington it was a different matter. 
 There was that in his proud eyes and gentleman s bear 
 ing that marked him a man to be made friends with and 
 respected. A good comrade he proved, without pre 
 tence or bravado, but an ill man to scorn, as he went 
 his way among them, lithe and alert, full six feet in his 
 boots, with that strong gait as of a backwoodsman, and 
 that haughty carriage as of a man born to have his will. 
 
GENERAL EDWARD BRADDOCK 
 
COLONEL WASHINGTON 83 
 
 He won their liking, and even their admiration, as a fel 
 low of their own pride and purpose. General Braddock, 
 knowing he desired to make the campaign if he might 
 do so without sacrifice of self-respect, promptly invited 
 him to go as a member of his staff, where there could 
 be no question of rank, asking him, besides, to name any 
 young gentlemen of his acquaintance he chose for sev 
 eral vacant ensigncies in the two regiments. The letter 
 of invitation, written by Captain Orme, aide-de-camp, 
 was couched in terms of unaffected cordiality. Wash 
 ington very gladly accepted, in a letter that had just a 
 touch of the young provincial in it, so elaborate and 
 over-long was its explanation of its writer s delicate po 
 sition and self-respecting motives, but with so much 
 more of the proud gentleman and reso]ute man that the 
 smile with which Captain Orme must have read it could 
 have nothing of disrelish in it. The young aide-de-camp 
 and all the other members of the General s military 
 "family" found its author, at any rate, a man after 
 their own hearts when it came to terms of intimacy 
 among them. 
 
 By mid- April the commander -in -chief had brought 
 five Governors together at Alexandria, in obedience to 
 his call for an immediate conference William Shirley, 
 of Massachusetts, the stout-hearted old lawyer, every 
 inch " a gentleman and politician," who had of a sudden 
 turned soldier to face the French, for all he was past 
 sixty ; James De Lancey, of New York, astute man of 
 the people ; the brave and energetic Horatio Sharpe, of 
 Maryland ; Robert Hunter Morris, fresh from the latest 
 wrangles with the headstrong Quakers and Germans of 
 Pennsylvania; and Robert Dinwiddie, the busy mer 
 chant Governor of the Old Dominion, whose urgent let- 
 
 \ 
 
84 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 ters to the government at home had brought Braddock 
 and his regiments to the Potomac. Plans were prompt 
 ly agreed upon. New York and New England, seeing 
 war come on apace, were astir no less than Virginia, 
 and in active correspondence with the ministers in Lon 
 don. Two regiments had already been raised and taken 
 into the King s pay ; the militia of all the threatened 
 colonies were afoot ; in all quarters action was expected 
 and instant war. Governor Shirley, the council agreed, 
 should strike at once at Niagara with the King s new 
 provincial regiments, in the hope to cut the enemy s 
 connections with their western posts ; Colonel William 
 Johnson, the cool-headed trader and borderer, who had 
 lived and thriven so long in the forests where the dread 
 ed Mohawks had their strength, should lead a levy from 
 New England, New York, and New Jersey to an attack 
 upon Crown Point, where for twenty -four years the 
 French had held Champlain ; and Lieutenant - Colonel 
 Monckton, of the King s regulars, must take a similar 
 force against Beausejour in Acadia, while General Brad- 
 dock struck straight into the western wilderness to take 
 Duquesne. Twere best to be prompt in every part of 
 the hazardous business, and Braddock turned from the 
 conference to push his own expedition forward at once. 
 " After taking Fort Duquesne," he said to Franklin, " I 
 am to proceed to Niagara ; and after having taken that, 
 to Frontenac, if the season will allow time ; and I sup 
 pose it will, for Duquesne can hardly detain me above 
 three or four days ; and then I can see nothing that can 
 obstruct my march to Niagara." " To be sure, sir," qui 
 etly replied the sagacious Franklin ; " if you arrive well 
 before Duquesne with these fine troops, so well provided 
 with artillery, the fort . . . can probably make but a 
 
COLONEL WASHINGTON 85 
 
 short resistance." But there was the trouble. Twould 
 have been better, no doubt, had a route through Penn 
 sylvania been chosen, where cultivated farms already 
 stretched well into the West, with their own roads and 
 grain and cattle and wagons to serve an army with ; but 
 the Virginia route had been selected (by intrigue of gen 
 tlemen interested in the Ohio Company, it was hinted), 
 and must needs be made the best of. There was there, 
 at the least, the rough track Washington s men had cut 
 to the Great Meadows. This must be widened and lev 
 elled for an army with its cumbrous train of artillery, 
 and its endless procession of wagons laden with baggage 
 and provisions. To take two thousand men through 
 the dense forests with all the military trappings and 
 supplies of a European army would be to put, it might 
 be, four miles of its rough trail between van and rear of 
 the struggling line, and it would be a clumsy enemy, as 
 fighting went in the woods, who could not cut such a 
 force into pieces " like thread," as Franklin said. 
 
 The thing was to be attempted, nevertheless, with 
 stubborn British resolution. It was the 19th of May 
 before all the forces intended for the march were finally 
 collected at Fort Cumberland, twenty -two hundred men 
 in all fourteen hundred regulars, now the recruits were 
 in ; nearly five hundred Virginians, horse and foot ; two 
 Independent Companies from New York ; and a small 
 force of sailors from the transports to rig tackle for the 
 ordnance when there was need on the rough way. And 
 it was the 10th of June when the advance began, 
 straight into that "realm of forests ancient as the 
 world" that lay without limit upon all the western 
 ways. It was a thing of infinite difficulty to get that 
 lumbering train through the tangled wilderness, and it 
 
86 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 kept the temper of the truculent Braddock very hot to 
 see how it played havoc with every principle and prac 
 tice of campaigning he had ever heard of. He charged 
 the colonists with an utter want alike of honor and of 
 honesty to have kept him so long awaiting the transpor 
 tation and supplies they had promised, and to have clone 
 so little to end with, and so drew Washington into 
 "frequent disputes, maintained with warmth on both 
 sides " ; but the difficulties of the march presently 
 wrought a certain forest change upon him, and disposed 
 him to take counsel of his young Virginian aide the 
 only man in all his company who could speak out of 
 knowledge in that wild country. On the 19th, at 
 "Washington s advice, he took twelve hundred men and 
 pressed forward with a lightened train to a quicker ad 
 vance, leaving Colonel D unbar to bring up the rest of 
 the troops with the baggage. Even this lightened force 
 halted " to level every mole-hill, and to erect bridges over 
 every brook," as Washington chafed to see, and " were 
 four days in getting twelve miles "; but the pace was 
 better than before, and brought them at last almost to 
 their destination. 
 
 On the 9th of July, at mid -day, they waded the 
 shallow Monongahela, but eight miles from Duquesne, 
 making a brave show as the sun struck upon their 
 serried ranks, their bright uniforms, their fluttering 
 banners, and their glittering arms, and went straight 
 into the rough and shadowed forest path that led to the 
 French post. Upon a sudden there came a man bound 
 ing along the path to meet them, wearing the gorget of 
 a French officer, and the forest behind him swarmed 
 with a great host of but half-discovered men. Upon 
 signal given, these spread themselves to the right and 
 
COLONEL WASHINGTON 87 
 
 left within the shelter of the forest, and from their cov 
 ert poured a deadly fire upon Braddock s advancing 
 lines. With good British pluck the steady regulars 
 formed their accustomed ranks, crying, " God save the 
 King !" to give grace to the volleys they sent back into 
 the forest ; the ordnance was brought up and swung to 
 its work ; all the force pressed forward to take what 
 place it could in the fight; but where was the use? 
 Washington besought General Braddock to scatter his 
 men too, and meet the enemy under cover as they came, 
 but he would not listen. They must stand in ranks, as 
 they were bidden, and take the fire of their hidden foes 
 like men, without breach of discipline. When they 
 would have broken in spite of him, in their panic at 
 being slaughtered there in the open glade without sight 
 of the enemy, Braddock beat them back with his sword, 
 and bitterly cursed them for cowards. He would have 
 kept the Virginians, too, back from the covert if he 
 could, when he saw them seek to close with the attack 
 ing party in true forest fashion. As it was, they were 
 as often shot down by the terror-stricken regulars be 
 hind them as by their right foes in front. They alone 
 made any head in the fight ; but who could tell in such 
 a place how the battle fared? No one could count 
 the enemy where they sprang from covert to covert. 
 They were, in fact, near a thousand strong at the first 
 meeting in the way more than six hundred Indians, a 
 motley host gathered from far and near at the summons 
 of the French, sevenscore Canadian rangers, seventy odd 
 regulars from the fort, and thirty or forty French offi 
 cers, come out of sheer eagerness to have a hand in the 
 daring game. Contrecceur could not spare more French 
 men from his little garrison, his connections at the lakes 
 
88 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 being threatened, and he sorely straitened for men and 
 stores. He was staking everything, as it was, upon this 
 encounter on the way. If the English should shake the 
 savages off, as he deemed they would, he must no doubt 
 withdraw as he could ere the lines of siege were closed 
 about him. He never dreamed of such largess of good 
 fortune as came pouring in upon him. The English 
 were not only checked, but beaten. They had never 
 seen business like this. Twas a pitiful, shameful 
 slaughter men shot like beasts in a pen there where 
 they cowered close in their scarlet ranks. Their first 
 blazing volleys had sent the craven Canadians scamper 
 ing back the way they had come ; Beaujeu, who led the 
 attack, was killed almost at the first onset ; but the gal 
 lant youngsters who led the motley array wavered never 
 an instant, and readily held the Indians to their easy 
 work. Washington did all that furious energy and reck 
 less courage could to keep the order of battle his com 
 mander had so madly chosen, to hold the regulars to 
 their blind work and hearten the Virginians to stay the 
 threatened rout, driving his horse everywhere into the 
 thick of the murderous firing, and crying upon all alike 
 to keep to it steadily like men. He had but yesterday 
 rejoined the advance, having for almost two weeks lain 
 stricken with a fever in Dunbar s camp. He could 
 hardly sit his cushioned saddle for weakness when the 
 fight began ; but when the blaze of the battle burst, his 
 eagerness was suddenly like that of one possessed, and 
 his immunity from harm like that of one charmed. 
 Thrice a horse was shot under him, many bullets cut his 
 clothing, but he went without a wound. A like mad 
 energy drove Braddock storming up and down the 
 breaking lines; but he was mortally stricken at last, 
 
COLONEL WASHINGTON 89 
 
 and Washington alone remained to exercise such control 
 as was possible when the inevitable rout came. 
 
 It was impossible to hold the ground in such fashion. 
 The stubborn Braddock himself had ordered a retreat 
 ere the fatal bullet found him. Sixty-three out of the 
 eighty-six officers of his force were killed or disabled ; 
 less than five hundred men out of all the thirteen hun 
 dred who had but just now passed so gallantly through 
 the ford remained unhurt ; the deadly slaughter must 
 have gone on to utter destruction. Retreat was inevita 
 ble twas blessed good fortune that it was still possi 
 ble. When once it began it was headlong, reckless, 
 frenzied. The men ran wildly, blindly, as if hunted by 
 demons whom no man might hope to resist haunted 
 by the frightful cries, maddened by the searching and 
 secret fire of their foes, now coming hot upon their 
 heels. Wounded comrades, military stores, baggage, 
 their very arms, they left upon the ground, abandoned. 
 Far into the night they ran madly on, in frantic search 
 for the camp of the rear division, crying, as they ran, 
 for help ; they even passed the camp, in their uncontrol 
 lable terror of pursuit, and went desperately on towards 
 the settlements. Washington and the few officers and 
 provincials who scorned the terror found the utmost 
 difficulty in bringing off their stricken General, where 
 he lay wishing to die. Upon the fourth day after the 
 battle he died, loathing the sight of a redcoat, they said, 
 and murmuring praises of " the blues," the once despised 
 Yirginians. They buried his body in the road, that the 
 army wagons might pass over the place and obliterate 
 every trace of a grave their savage enemies might re 
 joice to find and desecrate. 
 
 He had lived to reach Dunbar s camp, but not to see 
 
90 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 the end of the shameful rout. The terror mastered the 
 rear-guard too. They destroyed their artillery, burned 
 their wagons and stores, emptied their powder into the 
 streams, and themselves broke into a disordered, fever 
 ish retreat which was a mere flight, their craven com 
 mander shamefully acquiescing. He would not even 
 hold or rally them at Fort Cumberland, but went on, 
 as if upon a hurried errand, all the way to Philadel 
 phia, leaving the fort, and all the frontier with it, 
 "to be defended by invalids and a few Virginians." 
 " I acknowledge," cried Dinwiddie, " I was not brought 
 up to arms; but I think common -sense would have 
 prevailed not to leave the frontier exposed after hav 
 ing opened a road over the mountains to the Ohio, 
 by which the enemy can the more easily invade us. 
 The whole conduct of Colonel Dunbar seems to be 
 monstrous." And so, indeed, it was. But the colonies 
 at large had little time to think of it. Governor Shir 
 ley had gone against Niagara only to find the French 
 ready for him at every point, now that they had read 
 Braddock s papers, taken at Duquesne, and to come back 
 again without doing anything. Beausejour had been 
 taken in Acadia, but it lay apart from the main field of 
 struggle. Johnson beat the French off at Lake George 
 when they attacked him, and took Dieskau, their com 
 mander ; but he contented himself with that, and left 
 Crown Point untouched. There were other frontiers 
 besides those of Virginia and Pennsylvania to be looked 
 to and guarded. For three long years did the fortunes 
 of the English settlements go steadily from danger to 
 desperation, as the French and their savage allies ad 
 vanced from victory to victory. In 1756 Oswego was 
 taken ; in 1757, Fort William Henry. Commander sue- 
 
i 
 
 I 
 
 Washington (-Jage Gates 
 
 THE BURIAL OB" HHADDOCK 
 
COLONEL WASHINGTON 91 
 
 ceeded commander among the English, only to add blun 
 der to blunder, failure to failure. And all the while it 
 fell to Washington, Virginia s chief stay in her desperate 
 trouble, to stand steadfastly to the hopeless work of 
 keeping three hundred and fifty miles of frontier with 
 a few hundred men against prowling bands of sav 
 ages, masters of the craft of swift and secret attack, 
 " dexterous at skulking," in a country " mountainous 
 and full of swamps and hollow ways covered with 
 woods." 
 
 For twenty years now settlers had been coming 
 steadily into this wilderness that lay up and down upon 
 the nearer slopes of the great mountains Germans, 
 Scots-Irish, a hardy breed. Their settlements lay scat 
 tered far and near among the foot-hills and valleys. 
 Their men were valiant and stout-hearted, quick with 
 the rifle, hard as flint when they were once afoot to re 
 venge themselves for murdered wives and children and 
 comrades. But how could they, scattered as they were, 
 meet these covert sallies in the dead of night a sudden 
 rush of men with torches, the keen knife, the quick rifle? 
 The country filled with fugitives, for whom Washing 
 ton s militiamen could find neither food nor shelter. 
 " The supplicating tears of the women, and moving pe 
 titions of the men," cried the young commander, " melt 
 me into such deadly sorrow that I solemnly declare, if 
 I know my own mind, I could offer myself a willing 
 sacrifice to the butchering enemy, provided that would 
 contribute to the people s ease. ... I would be a will 
 ing offering to savage fury, and die by inches to save a 
 people." It was a comfort to know, at the least, that 
 he was trusted and believed in. The Burgesses had 
 thanked him under the very stroke of Braddock s defeat, 
 
92 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 in terms which could not be doubted sincere. In the 
 very thick of his deep troubles, when he would have 
 guarded the helpless people of the border, but could not, 
 Colonel Fairfax could send him word from Williams- 
 burg, " Your good health and fortune are the toast at 
 every table." " Our Colonel," wrote a young comrade 
 in arms, " is an example of fortitude in either danger or 
 hardships, and by his easy, polite behavior has gained 
 not only the regard but affection of both officers and 
 soldiers." But it took all the steadiness that had been 
 born or bred in him to endure the strain of the dis 
 heartening task, from which he could not in honor 
 break away. His plans, he complained, were " to-day 
 approved, to-morrow condemned." He was bidden do 
 what was impossible. It would require fewer men to 
 go against Duquesne again and remove the cause of 
 danger than to prevent the effects while the cause re 
 mained. Many of his officers were careless and ineffi 
 cient, many of his men mutinous. " Your Honor will, 
 I hope, excuse my hanging instead of shooting them," 
 he wrote to the Governor ; " it conveyed much more 
 terror to others, and it was for example sake that we 
 did it." It was a test as of fire for a young colonel in 
 his twenties. 
 
 But a single light lies upon the picture. Early in 
 1756, ere the summer s terror had come upon the bor 
 der, and while he could be spared, he took horse and 
 made his way to Boston to see Governor Shirley, now 
 acting as commander-in-chief in the colonies, and from 
 him at first hand obtain settlement of that teasing ques 
 tion of rank that had already driven the young officer 
 once from the service. He went very bravely dight in 
 proper uniform of buff and blue, a white -and -scarlet 
 

 WASHINGTON AND MANY PIHLIPSK 
 
COLONEL WASHINGTON 93 
 
 cloak upon his shoulders, the sword at his side knotted 
 with red and gold, his horse s fittings engraved with the 
 Washington arms, and trimmed in the best style of the 
 London saddlers. With him rode two aides in their 
 uniforms, and two servants in their white -and -scarlet 
 livery. Curious folk who looked upon the celebrated 
 young officer upon the road saw him fare upon his way 
 with all the pride of a Virginian gentleman, a hand 
 some man, and an admirable horseman a very gallant 
 figure, no one could deny. Everywhere he was feted 
 as he went ; everywhere he showed himself the earnest, 
 high-strung, achieving youth he was. In New York he 
 fell into a new ambush, from which he did not come off 
 without a wound. His friend Beverly Robinson must 
 needs have Miss Mary Philipse at his house there, a 
 beauty and an heiress, and Washington came away 
 from her with a sharp rigor at his heart. But he could 
 not leave that desolate frontier at home unprotected to 
 stay for a siege upon a lady s heart ; he had recovered 
 from such wounds before, had before that left pleasure 
 for duty; and in proper season was back at his post, 
 with papers from Shirley which left no doubt who 
 should command in Virginia. 
 
 At last, in 175 8, the end came, when William Pitt 
 thrust smaller men aside and became Prime-Minister in 
 England. Amherst took Louisbourg, Wolfe came to 
 Quebec, and General Forbes, that stout and steady sol 
 dier, was sent to Virginia to go again against Duquesne. 
 The advance was slow to exasperation in the view of 
 every ardent man like Washington, and cautious almost 
 to timidity ; but the very delay redounded to its success 
 at last. Twas November before Duquesne was reached. 
 The Indians gathered there, seeing winter come on, had 
 
94 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 not waited to meet them ; and the French by that time 
 knew themselves in danger of being cut off by the Eng 
 lish operations in the North. When Forbes s forces, 
 therefore, at last entered those fatal woods again, where 
 Braddock s slaughtered men had lain to rot, the French 
 had withdrawn ; nothing remained but to enter the 
 smoking ruins of their abandoned fort, hoist the King s 
 flag, and re-name the post Fort Pitt ; and Washington 
 turned homeward again to seek the rest he so much 
 needed. It had been almost a bloodless campaign, but 
 such danger as it had brought Washington had shared 
 to the utmost. The French had not taken themselves 
 off without at least one trial of the English strength. 
 While yet Forbes lay within the mountains a large de 
 tachment had come from Duquesne to test and recon 
 noitre his force. Colonel Mercer, of the Virginian line, 
 had been ordered forward with a party to meet them. 
 He stayed so long, and the noise of the firing came 
 back with so doubtful a meaning to the anxious ears at 
 the camp, that Washington hastened with volunteers to 
 his relief. In the dusk the two bodies of Englishmen 
 met, mistook each other for enemies, exchanged a dead 
 ly fire, and were checked only because Washington, 
 rushing between their lines, even while their pieces 
 blazed, cried his hot commands to stop, and struck up 
 the smoking muzzles with his sword. Twas through 
 no prudence of his he was not shot. 
 
 For a long time his friends had felt a deep uneasiness 
 about his health. They had very earnestly besought 
 him not to attempt a new campaign. " You will in all 
 probability bring on a relapse," George Mason had 
 warned him, " and render yourself incapable of serving 
 the public at a time when there may be the utmost oc- 
 
COLONEL WASHINGTON 
 
 95 
 
 casion. There is nothing more certain than that a gen 
 tleman of your station owes the care of his health and 
 his life not only to himself and his friends, but to his 
 country." But he had deemed the nearest duty the 
 most imperative ; and it was only after that duty was 
 disposed of that he had turned from the field to seek 
 home and new pleasures along with new duties. The 
 winter brought news from Quebec of the fall of the 
 French power in America, which made rest and home 
 and pleasure the more grateful and full of zest. 
 
MOUNT VEKNON DAYS 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 ON a May day in 1758, as he spurred upon the way to 
 Williamsburg, under orders from the frontier, Washing 
 ton rode straight upon an adventure he had not looked 
 for. He was within a few hours ride of the little capi 
 tal ; old plantations lay close upon the way ; neighborly 
 homes began to multiply ; and so striking a horseman, 
 riding uniformed and attended, could not thereabouts 
 go far unrecognized. He was waylaid and haled to din 
 ner, despite excuses and protests of public business call 
 ing for despatch. There was a charming woman to be 
 seen at the house, his friend told him, if a good dinner 
 was not argument enough and his business could not 
 spoil for an hour s stay in agreeable company. And so, 
 of a sudden, under constraint of Virginian hospitality, 
 he was hurried into the presence of the gracious young 
 matron who was at once, and as if of right, to make his 
 heart safe against further quest or adventure. Martha 
 Custis was but six-and-twenty. To the charm of youth 
 and beauty were added that touch of quiet sweetness 
 and that winning grace of self-possession which come to 
 a woman wived in her girlhood, and widowed before 
 age or care has checked the first full tide of life. At 
 seventeen she had married Daniel Parke Custis, a man 
 more than twenty years her senior ; but eight years of 
 quiet love and duty as wife and mother had only made 
 
100 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 her youth the more gracious in that rural land of leisure 
 and good neighborhood ; and a year s widowhood had 
 been but a suitable preparation for perceiving the charm 
 of this stately young soldier who now came riding her 
 way upon the public business. His age was her own ; 
 all the land knew him and loved him for gallantry and 
 brave capacity; he carried himself like a prince and 
 he forgot his errand to linger in her company. Dinner 
 was soon over, and his horses at the door; there was 
 the drilled and dutiful Bishop, trained servant that he 
 was, leading his restless and impatient charge back and 
 forth within sight of the windows and of the terrace 
 where his young Colonel tarried, absorbed and forget 
 ful ; man and beast alike had been in the service of the 
 unhappy Braddock, and might seem to walk there lively 
 memorials of duty done and undertaken. But dusk 
 came; the horses w r ere put up; and the next morning 
 was well advanced before the abstracted young officer 
 got at last to his saddle, and spurred on belated to 
 "Williamsburg. His business concerned the preparations 
 then afoot for General Forbes s advance upon Duquesne. 
 " I came here at this critical juncture," said Washington 
 to the President of the Council, " by the express order 
 of Sir John St. Clair, to represent in the fullest man 
 ner the posture of our affairs at Winchester" lack 
 of clothes, arms, and equipage, lack of money, lack of 
 wise regulations touching rank and discipline. General 
 Forbes had been in Philadelphia a month already, 
 awaiting the formation of his army in Virginia; Sir 
 John St. Clair, his quartermaster-general, had come into 
 the province to see that proper plans were made and 
 executed ; it was necessary that matters should be 
 pressed forward very diligently and at once ; and Wash- 
 

 Patrick Henry Washington Pendleton 
 LEAVING MOUNT VERNON FOR THE CONGRESS OF THE COLONIES 
 
, J f 
 
 MOUNT VERNON DAYS / 101 { 
 
 ington, when once at the seat of government^ tv&si, r-jct; 
 slack to urge and superintend official action. But, the 
 troublesome business once in proper course, he turned 
 back to seek Mrs. Custis again, this time at her own 
 home, ere he went the long distance of the frontier. 
 The onset was made with a soldier s promptness and 
 audacity. He returned to his post, after a delay too 
 slight to deserve any reasonable man s remark, and yet 
 with a pledge given and taken which made him look 
 forward to the end of the campaign with a new longing 
 as to the winning of a real home and an unwonted hap 
 piness. 
 
 This was not his first adventure in love, but it was his 
 last, and gave him a quiet joy which stood him in stead 
 a whole lifetime. No^ung^J^fflQ^fr could live twenty- 
 six years amidst fair wgjnen in that hale and sociable 
 colony without being touched again and again by the 
 quick passion ; and this man had the blood of a lover 
 Beyond his fellows. Despite the shyness of a raw lad 
 who lived much in the open, he had relished the com 
 pany of lively women from the first, meeting their gay 
 sallies sometimes with a look from his frank blue eyes 
 that revealed more than he knew. Love had first found 
 him out in earnest six years ago, when he was but just 
 turned of twenty ; and it had taken all the long while 
 since to forget his repulse at the hands of a fair young 
 beauty in that day of passion. Mary Phillipse had but 
 taken his fancy for a moment, because he could not pass 
 such a woman by and deem himself still a true Virgin 
 ian. It was more serious that he had been much in the 
 company, these last years, of a fair neighbor of the 
 vivacious house of Gary, whose wit and beauty had 
 haunted him in the very thick of campaigns upon the 
 
102 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 frontier, a&d\ \ylio still mastered his heart now and 
 again, with a sort of imperious charm, in the midst of 
 this very happy season when he knew Martha Custis 
 his veritable heart s mistress for the future. It may 
 well have made him glad of misadventures in the past 
 to know his heart safe now. 
 
 The campaign dragged painfully, far into the drear au 
 tumn. December had come before the captured post on 
 the Ohio could be left to the keeping of Colonel Mercer 
 and a little garrison of provincials. But when at last 
 he was free again there was no reason why Washington 
 should wait longer to be happy, and he was married to 
 Martha Custis on the 6th of January, 1759. The sun 
 shone very bright that day, and there was the fine glit 
 ter of gold, the brave show of resplendent uniforms, in 
 the little church where the marriage was solemnized. 
 Officers of his Majesty s service crowded there, in their 
 gold lace and scarlet coats, to see their comrade wedded ; 
 the new Governor, Francis Fauquier, himself came, clad 
 as befitted his rank ; and the bridegroom took the sun 
 not less gallantly than the rest, as he rode, in blue and 
 silver and scarlet, beside the coach and six that bore his 
 bride homeward amidst the thronging friends of the 
 country-side. The young soldier s love of a gallant 
 array and a becoming ceremony was satisfied to the 
 full, and he must have rejoiced to be so brave a horse 
 man on such a day. For three months of deep content 
 he lived with his bride at her own residence, the White 
 House, by York River side, where their troth had been 
 plighted, forgetting the fatigues of the frontier, and 
 learning gratefully the new life of quiet love and home 
 ly duty. 
 
 These peaceful, healing months gone by, he turned 
 
MOUNT VERNON DAYS 103 
 
 once more to public business. Six months before his 
 marriage he had been chosen a member of the House of 
 Burgesses for Frederick County the county which had 
 been his scene of adventure in the old days of surveying 
 in the wilderness, and in which ever since Braddock s 
 fatal rout he had maintained his headquarters, striving 
 to keep the border against the savages. Small wonder 
 that he led the poll taken there in Winchester, where 
 through so many seasons men had seen him bear him 
 self like a capable man and a gallant, indomitable sol 
 dier. Twas no unwelcome duty, either, to take his 
 young wife to Williamsburg in " the season," when all 
 Virginia was in town in the persons of the Burgesses 
 and the country gentry come to enjoy the festivities 
 and join in the business then sure to be afoot. The 
 young soldier was unused to assemblies, however, and 
 suffered a keen embarrassment to iind himself for a 
 space too conspicuous amidst the novel parliamentary 
 scene. He had hardly taken his seat when the gracious 
 and stately Robinson, Speaker of the House and Treas 
 urer of the colony these twenty years, rose, at the bid 
 ding of the Burgesses, to thank him for the services of 
 which all were speaking. This sudden praise, spoken 
 with generous warmth there in a public place, was more 
 than Washington knew how to meet. He got to his 
 feet when Mr. Speaker was done, but he could not utter 
 a syllable. He stood there, instead, hot with blushes, 
 stammering, all a- tremble from head to foot. " Sit / 
 down, Mr. Washington," cried the Speaker; "your 1 
 modesty is equal to your valor, and that surpasses the 
 power of any language that I possess." 
 
 Again and again, as the years passed, Washington re 
 turned at each session to Williamsburg to take his place 
 
104 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 in the Assembly ; and with custom came familiarity and 
 the ease and firmness he at first had lacked upon the 
 floor. His life broadened about him ; all the uses of 
 peace contributed to give him facility and knowledge 
 and a wide comradeship in affairs. Along with quiet 
 days as a citizen, a neighbor, and a country gentleman, 
 came maturity and the wise lessons of a various experi 
 ence. No man in Virginia lived more or with a greater 
 zest henceforth than Colonel Washington. His mar 
 riage brought him great increase of wealth, as well as 
 increase of responsibility. Mr. Custis had left many 
 thousand acres of land, and forty-five thousand pounds 
 sterling in money, a substantial fortune to the young 
 w r ife and the two little children who survived him ; and 
 Washington had become, by special decree of the Gov 
 ernor and Council in General Court, trustee and mana 
 ger of the whole. It needed capacity and knowledge 
 and patience of no mean order to get good farming out 
 of slaves, and profitable prices out of London merchants ; 
 to find prompt and trustworthy ship-masters by whom to 
 send out cargoes, and induce correspondents over sea to 
 ship the perishable goods sent in return by the right ves 
 sels, bound to the nearest river ; and the bigger your es 
 tate the more difficult its proper conduct and economy, 
 the more disastrous in scale the effects of mismanage 
 ment. No doubt the addition of Mrs. Custis s handsome 
 property to his own broad and fertile acres at Mount 
 Yernon made Colonel "Washington one of the wealthiest 
 men in Virginia. But Virginian wealth was not to be 
 counted till crops were harvested and got to market. The 
 current price of tobacco might leave you with or with 
 out a balance to your credit in London, your only clear 
 ing-house, as it chanced. Your principal purchases, too, 
 
i Aw^^^- 4^1 IS% 
 
MOUNT VERNON DAYS 105 
 
 must be made over sea and through factors. Both what 
 you sold and what you bought must take the hazards of 
 the sea voyage, the whims of sea captains, the chances of 
 a foreign market. To be farmer and merchant at once, 
 manage your own negroes and your own overseers, and 
 conduct an international correspondence ; to keep the run 
 of prices current, duties, port dues, and commissions, and 
 know the fluctuating rates of exchange; to understand 
 and meet all changes, whether in merchants or in mar 
 kets, three thousand miles away, required an amount of 
 information, an alertness, a steady attention to detail, a 
 sagacity in farming and a shrewdness in trade, such as 
 made a great property a burden to idle or inefficient 
 men. But Washington took pains to succeed. __He had 
 a great zest for business. The practical genius which 
 had shone in him almost prematurely as a boy now 
 grew heartily in him as a man of fortune. Messrs. 
 Robert Gary & Company, his factors in London, must 
 soon have learned to recognize his letters, in the mere 
 handling, by their bulk. No detail escaped him when 
 once he had gotten into the swing of the work. 
 They must be as punctilious as he was, they found, in 
 seeing to every part of the trade and accounting with 
 which he intrusted them, or else look to lose his lucra 
 tive patronage. He was not many years in learning 
 how to make the best tobacco in Virginia, and to get it 
 recognized as such in England. Barrels of flour marked 
 " George Washington, Mount Vernon," were ere long 
 suffered to pass the inspectors at the ports of the Brit 
 ish West Indies without scrutiny. It was worth while 
 to serve so efficient a man to his satisfaction ; worth 
 while or not, he would not be served otherwise. 
 
 He had emerged, as it were, after a tense and troubled 
 
106 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 youth, upon a peaceful tract of time, where his powers 
 could stretch and form themselves without strain or 
 hurry. He had robust health, to which he gave leave 
 in unstinted work, athletic strength, and an insatiable 
 relish for being much afoot and in the open, which he 
 satisfied with early rounds of superintendence in the 
 fields where the men were at their tasks, with many a 
 tireless ride after the hounds, or steadfast wait at the 
 haunts of the deer ; a planning will that craved some 
 practical achievement every day, which he indulged by 
 finding tasks of betterment about the estate and keep 
 ing his men at them with unflagging discipline ; a huge 
 capacity for being useful and for understanding how to 
 be so, which he suffered his neighbors, his parish, his 
 county, the colony itself, to employ when there was 
 need. To a young man, bred these ten ;years in the for 
 ests and in the struggle of warfare upon a far frontier, 
 it had been intolerable to live tamely, without executive 
 tasks big and various enough to keep his energy from 
 rust. The clerical side of business he had learned very 
 thoroughly in camp, as well as the exceeding stir and 
 strain of individual effort the incessant letter writing 
 necessary to keep promised performance afoot, the reck 
 oning of men and of stores, the nice calculations of time 
 and ways and means ; the scrutiny of individual men, 
 too, which is so critical a part of management, and the 
 slow organization of effort : he had been in a fine school 
 for these things all his youth, and would have thought 
 shame to himself not to have learned temperance, sagac 
 ity, thrift, and patience wherewith to use his energy. 
 His happy marriage did him the service to keep him 
 from restlessness. His love took his allegiance, and 
 held him to his home as to a post of honor and reward. 
 
MOUNT VERNON DATS 107 
 
 He had never before had leave to be tender with chil 
 dren, or show with what a devotion he could preside 
 over a household all his own. His home got strong 
 hold upon him. His estates gave him scope of com 
 mand and a life of action. Twas no wonder he kept 
 his factors busy, and shipped goods authenticated by the 
 brand. 
 
 The soldierly young planter gave those who knew 
 him best, as well as those who met him but to pass, the 
 impression of a singular restraint and self-command, 
 which lent a peculiar dignity and charm to his speech 
 and carriage. They deemed him deeply passionate, and 
 yet could never remember to have seen him in a pas 
 sion. The impression was often a wholesome check 
 upon strangers, and even upon friends and neighbors, 
 who would have sought to impose upon him. No doubt 
 he had given way to bursts of passion often enough in 
 camp and upon the march, when inefficiency, disobedi 
 ence, or cowardice angered him hotly and of a sudden. 
 There were stories to be heard of men who had reason 
 to remember how terrible he could be in his wrath. 
 But he had learned, in the very heat and discipline 
 of such scenes, how he must curb and guard himself 
 against surprise, and it was no doubt trials of command 
 made in his youth that had given him the fine self-poise 
 men noted in him now. He had been bred in a strict 
 school of manners at Belvoir and Greenway Court, and 
 here at his own Mount Yernon in the old days, and the 
 place must have seemed to him full of the traditions of 
 whatsoever was just and honest and lovely and of good 
 report as he looked back to the time of his gentle 
 brother. It was still dangerous to cross or thwart 
 him, indeed. Poachers might look to be caught and 
 
108 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 soundly thrashed by the master himself if he chanced 
 their way. Negligent overseers might expect sharp 
 penalties, and unfaithful contractors a strict accounting, 
 if necessary work went wrong by their fault. He was 
 exacting almost to the point of harshness in every mat 
 ter of just right or authority. But he was open and 
 wholesome as the day, and reasonable to the point of 
 pity in every affair of humanity, through it all. Now 
 it was " my rascally overseer, Hard wick," in his diary, 
 when certain mares Avere sent home " scarce able to 
 highlone, much less to assist in the business of the 
 plantations"; but not a month later it was "my worthy 
 overseer, Hardwick, lying in Winchester of a broken 
 leg." It was not in his way to add anything to the 
 penalties of nature. 
 
 A quiet simplicity of lifejmd a genuine love of real 
 sport rid him of morbid humors. All up and down the 
 English world, while the eighteenth century lasted, gen 
 tlemen were commonly to be found drunk after dinner 
 outside New England, where the efficient Puritan 
 Church had fastened so singular a discipline in manners 
 upon a whole society and Virginian gentlemen had a 
 reputation for deep drinking which they had been at 
 some pains to deserve. A rural society craves excite 
 ment, and can get it very simply by such practices. 
 There is always leisure to sleep afterwards, even 
 though your dinner come in the middle of the day ; and 
 there is good reason you should be thirsty if you have 
 been since daybreak in the saddle. To ride hard and to 
 drink hard seemed to go together in Virginia as inevita 
 bly as the rhymes in a song; and twas famous hard 
 riding after the fox over the rough fields and through 
 the dense thickets. If Washington drank only small 
 
MOUNT VERNON DAYS 109 
 
 beer or cider and a couple of glasses of Madeira at din 
 ner, it was no doubt because he bad found his quick 
 blood tonic enough, and had set himself a hard regimen 
 as a soldier. He did not scruple to supply drink enough 
 for the thirstiest gathering when he presented himself 
 to the voters of the country-side as a candidate for the 
 House of Burgesses. " A hogshead and a barrel of; 
 punch, thirty -five gallons of wine, forty -three gallons 
 of strong cider, and dinner for his friends," was what; 
 he cheerfully paid for at his first election, and the poll 
 footed but a few hundred votes all told. Mount Yernon 
 saw as much company and as constant merriment and 
 good cheer as any house in Virginia ; and the master 
 was no martinet to his guests, even though they came 
 upon professional errands. "Doctor Laurie came here, 
 I may add drunk," says his quiet diary, without com 
 ment, though the doctor had come upon summons to at 
 tend Mrs. Washington, and w r as next morning suffered 
 to use his lancet for her relief. No doubt a good fel 
 low when sober, and not to be lightly chidden when 
 drunk, like many a gallant horseman and gentleman 
 who joined the meet of the country-side at the hospita 
 ble place to follow the hounds when the hunting was 
 good. There was fox-hunting winter and summer, in 
 season and out, but the sport was best in the frosty 
 days of January and February, when the year was. 
 young and the gentlemen of the country round gathered 
 at Belvoir or Gunston Hall or Mount Yernon two or 
 three times a week to warm their blood in the hale 
 sport, and dine together afterwards a cordial company 
 of neighbors, with as many topics of good talk as foxes 
 to run to cover. The hunt went fastest and most in 
 cessantly when Lord Fairfax came down from his lodge 
 
110 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 in the Yalley and joined them for days together in the 
 field and at the table. 
 
 Washington loved horses and dogs with the heartiest 
 sportsman of them all. He had a great gusto for stalk 
 ing deer with George Mason on the broad forested 
 tracts round Gunston Hall, and liked often to take gun 
 or rod after lesser game when the days fell dull ; but 
 best of all he loved a horse s back, and the hard ride for 
 hours together after the dogs and a crafty quarry a 
 horse it put a man to his points to ride, a country 
 where the running was only for those who dared. His 
 own mounts could nowhere be bettered in Yirginia. 
 There was full blood of Araby in his noble Magnolia, 
 and as good hunting blood as was to be found in the 
 colony in his Blueskin and Ajax, Valiant and Chink- 
 ling. His hounds he bred " so flew d, so sanded," so 
 matched in speed and habit, that they kept always tune 
 and pace together in the field. " A cry more tuneable 
 was never holla d to, nor cheered with horn," than theirs 
 when they were let " spend their mouths " till echo re 
 plied " as if another chase were in the skies." Twas 
 first to the stables for him always in the morning, and 
 then to the kennels. 
 
 It had been hard and anxious work to get his affairs 
 into prosperous shape again when the war was over, 
 and those long, hopeless summers on the stricken fron 
 tier. Stock, buildings, fences everything had to be 
 renewed, refitted, repaired. For the first two or three 
 years there were even provisions to buy, so slow was the 
 place to support itself once more. Not only all his own 
 ready money, but all he got by his marriage too, and 
 more besides, was swallowed up, and he found himself 
 in debt before matters were finally set to rights and 
 
MOUNT VERNON DAYS HI 
 
 profitable crops made and marketed. But, the thing 
 once done, affairs cleared and became easy as if of their 
 own. accord in the business of the estate. The men he 
 had to deal with presently knew their master: the 
 young planter had matured his plans and his discipline. 
 Henceforth his affairs were well in hand, and he could 
 take his wholesome pleasures both handsomely and with 
 a free heart. There was little that was debonair about 
 the disciplined and masterful young soldier. He had 
 taken Pallas s gift : " Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self- 
 control, these three alone lead life to sovereign power. 
 And because right is right, to follow right were wisdom 
 in the scorn of consequence." But he took heed of his 
 life very genially, and was matured by pleasure no less 
 than by duty done. He loved a game of cards in almost 
 any company, and paid his stakes upon the rubber like 
 every other well-conducted man of his century. He did 
 not find Annapolis, or even Philadelphia, too far away 
 to be visited for the pleasure of seeing a good horse 
 race or enjoying a round of balls and evenings at the 
 theatre, to shake the rustic dulness off of a too constant 
 stay at home. Mrs. Washington enjoyed such outings, 
 such little flings into the simple world of provincial 
 fashion, as much as he did ; and they could not sit wait 
 ing all the year for the short season at Williamsburg. 
 
 A young man at once so handsome, so famous, and so 
 punctilious in point of dress as Colonel Washington 
 could not but make a notable figure in any society. " I 
 want neither lace nor embroidery," was the order he 
 sent to London. " Plain clothes, with a gold or silver 
 button (if worn in genteel dress), are all I desire. My 
 stature is six feet ; otherwise rather slender than corpu 
 lent." But he was careful the material, the color, and 
 
112 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 the fit should be of the best and most tasteful, and thai 
 very elegant stuffs should be provided from over sea 
 for Mrs. Washington and her children, and very sub 
 stantial for the servants who were to be in attendance 
 upon the household a livery of white and scarlet. 
 Twas a point of pride with Virginians to know how to 
 dress, both well and in the fashion ; and the master of 
 Mount Yernon would have deemed it an impropriety to 
 be less careful than his neighbors, less well dressed than 
 his station and fortune warranted. He watched the 
 tradesmen sharply. " Tis a custom, I have some reason 
 to believe, with many shopkeepers and tradesmen in 
 London," he wrote bluntly to the Messrs. Gary, " when 
 they know goods are bespoken for exportation, to palm 
 sometimes old, and sometimes very slight and indiffer 
 ent, goods upon us, taking care at the same time to ad 
 vance the price," and he wished them informed that 
 their distant customers would not be so duped. 
 
 He longed once and again to be quit of the narrow 
 life of the colony, and stretch himself for a little upon 
 the broader English stage at home. " But I am tied by 
 the leg," he told his friends there, "and must set in 
 clination aside. My indulging myself in a trip to Eng 
 land depends upon so many contingencies, which, in all 
 probability, may never occur, that I dare not even think 
 of such a gratification." But the disappointment bred 
 no real discontent. There could be no better air or 
 company to come to maturity in than were to be had 
 there in Virginia, if a young man were poised and mas 
 ter of himself. " We have few things here striking to 
 European travellers (except our abundant woods)," he 
 professed, when he wrote to his kinsman Richard Wash 
 ington in England ; " but little variety, a welcome recep- 
 
MOUNT VERNON DAYS 113 
 
 tion among a few friends, and the open and prevalent 
 hospitality of the country"; but it was a land that bred 
 men, and men of affairs, in no common fashion. 
 
 Especially now, after the quickening of pulses that 
 had come with the French war, and its sweep of con 
 tinental, even of international, forces across the colonial 
 stage, hitherto set only for petty and sectional affairs. 
 The colonies had grown self-conscious and restless as 
 the plot thickened and thrust them forward to a role 
 of consequence in the empire such as they had never 
 thought to play, and the events which succeeded hurried 
 them to a quick maturity. It was a season a young 
 man was sure to ripen in, and there was good company. 
 The House of Burgesses was very quiet the year Wash 
 ington first took his place in it and stood abashed to 
 hear himself praised ; but before Mr. Robinson, its al 
 ready veteran Speaker, was dead, a notable change had 
 set in. Within five years, before the country on the St. 
 Lawrence and the lakes was well out of the hands of 
 the French, the Parliament in England had entered 
 upon measures of government which seemed meant of 
 deliberate purpose to set the colonies agog, and every 
 body of counsellors in America stood between anger 
 and amazement to see their people in danger to be so 
 put upon. 
 
 The threat and pressure of the French power upon 
 the frontiers had made the colonies thoughtful always, 
 so long as it lasted, of their dependence upon England 
 for succor and defence should there come a time of 
 need. Once and again often enough to keep them 
 sensible how they must stand or fall, succeed or fail, 
 with the power at home their own raw levies had 
 taken part with the King s troops out of England in 
 
114 ^ ^CJEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 some clumsy stroke or other against a French strong 
 hold in the North or a Spanish fortress in the South ; 
 and now at last they had gone with English troops into 
 the field in a national cause. Provincials and redcoats 
 had joined for a final grapple with the French, to settle 
 once and fof,.all who should be owners and masters on 
 the coveted .. continent. Tl^e issue had been decisive. 
 By the sumfner of 1760 "Washington could write his 
 kinsman in England that the French were so thoroughly 
 drubbed and humbled that there remained little to do 
 to reduce Canada from end to end to the British power. 
 But the v^ry thoroughness of the success wrought a 
 revolution^in the relations of the colonies to the mother- 
 country. *4t rid them of their sense of dependence. 
 English regiments had mustered their thousands, no 
 doubt, upon, the battle-fields of the war in order that 
 the colonies might be free to possess the continent, and 
 it was hard to see how the thing- could have been ac- 
 
 o 
 
 complished without them. But it had been accom 
 plished, and would not need to be done again. More 
 over, it had shown the colonial militia how strong they 
 were eveniin the presence of regulars. They had almost 
 everywhere borne an equal part in the fighting, and, 
 ratykand file, they had felt with a keen resentment the 
 ope*n contempt for their rude equipment and rustic dis 
 cipline which too many arrogant officers and insolent 
 n>eii among the regulars had shown. They knew that 
 they had proved themselves the equals of any man in 
 th<? King s pay in the fighting, and they had come out 
 of .the hot business confident that henceforth, at any 
 , they could dispense with English troops and take 
 of themselves. They had lost both their fear of 
 e French and their awe of the English. 
 
THE HEAT OF POLITICS 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 TWAS hardly an opportune time for statesmen in 
 London to make a new and larger place for England s 
 authority in America, and yet that was what they im 
 mediately attempted. Save Chatham and Burke and a 
 few discerning men who had neither place nor power, 
 there was no longer any one in England who knew, 
 though it were never so vaguely, the real temper and 
 character of the colonists. Twas matter of common 
 knowledge and comment, it is true, that the men of 
 Massachusetts were beyond all reason impatient of com 
 mand or restraint, affecting an independence which w r as 
 hardly to be distinguished from contumacy and insubor 
 dination ; but what ground was there to suppose that a 
 like haughty and ungovernable spirit lurked in the loyal 
 and quiet South, or among the prudent traders and 
 phlegmatic farmers who were making the middle colo 
 nies so rich, and so regardful of themselves in every 
 point of gain or interest ? Statesmen of an elder gener 
 ation had had a sure instinct what must be the feeling 
 of Englishmen in America, and had, with " a wise and 
 salutary neglect," suffered them to take their own way 
 in every matter of self-government. Though ministry 
 after ministry had asserted a rigorous and exacting 
 supremacy for the mother -country in every affair of 
 commerce, and had determined as they pleased what 
 
118 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 the colonies should be suffered to manufacture, and how 
 they should be allowed to trade with what merchants, 
 in what commodities, in what bottoms, within what 
 limits they had nevertheless withheld their hands 
 hitherto from all direct exercise of authority in the 
 handling of the internal affairs of the several settle 
 ments, had given them leave always to originate their 
 own legislation and their own measures of finance, until 
 self-government had become with them a thing as if of 
 immemorial privilege. Sir William Keith, sometime 
 Governor of Pennsylvania, had suggested to Sir Kobert 
 Walpole that he should raise revenue from the colonies. 
 "What!" exclaimed that shrewd master of men. "I 
 have Old England set against me, and do you think I 
 will have New England likewise ?" 
 
 But men had come into authority in England now 
 who lacked this stout sagacity, and every element of 
 sound discretion. English arms and English money, 
 they could say, had swept the French power from 
 America in order that the colonies might no longer suf 
 fer menace or rivalry. A great debt had been piled up 
 in the process. Should not the colonies, who had reaped 
 the chief benefit, bear part of the cost? They had 
 themselves incurred burdensome debts, no doubt, in the 
 struggle, and their assemblies would very likely profess 
 themselves willing to vote what they could should his 
 Majesty call upon them and press them. But an ade 
 quate and orderly system of taxation could not be 
 wrought out by the separate measures of a dozen petty 
 legislatures ; twere best the taxation should be direct 
 and by Parliament, whose authority, surely, no man 
 outside turbulent Boston would be mad enough seriously 
 to question or resist. It would, in any event, be whole- 
 
THE HEAT OF POLITICS 119 
 
 some, now the colonies were likely to grow lusty as 
 kingdoms in their roomy continent, to assert a mother s 
 power to use and restrain a power by no means lost 
 because too long unexercised and neglected. It was with 
 such wisdom the first step was taken. In March, 1764, 
 Parliament voted it " just and necessary that a revenue 
 be raised in America," passed an act meant to secure 
 duties on wines and sugars, and took measures to in 
 crease the efficiency of the revenue service in America. 
 
 George Grenville was Prime - Minister. He lacked 
 neither official capacity nor acquaintance with affairs. 
 He thought it just the colonists should pay their quota 
 into the national treasury, seeing they were so served 
 by the national power; and he declared that in the 
 next session of Parliament he should propose certain 
 direct taxes in addition to the indirect already in force. 
 He saw no sufficient reason to doubt that the colonies 
 would acquiesce, if not without protest, at least without 
 tumult or dangerous resistance. It was a sad blunder. 
 Virginia resented threat and execution alike in such a 
 matter as deeply as did litigious Massachusetts. A long 
 generation ago, in the quiet year 1732, when bluff Sir 
 Eobert was Prime-Minister, there had been an incident 
 which Governor Keith, maybe, had forgotten. The 
 ministry had demanded of Massachusetts that she 
 should establish a fixed salary for her governors by a 
 standing grant ; but she had refused, and the ministers 
 had receded. The affair had not been lost upon the 
 other colonies. That sturdy onetime royal Governor, 
 Alexander Spots wood, in Virginia, had noted it very 
 particularly, and spoken of it very bluntly, diligent ser 
 vant of the crown as he was, to Colonel William Byrd, 
 when he came his way on his " progress to the mines." 
 
120 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 He declared "that if the Assembly in New England 
 would stand bluff, he did not see how they could be 
 forced to raise money against their will ; for if they 
 should direct it to be done by act of Parliament, which 
 they have threatened to do (though it be against the 
 right of Englishmen to be taxed but by their representa 
 tives), yet they would find it no easy matter to put such 
 an act in execution." No observing man could so much 
 as travel in Virginia without finding very promptly 
 what it was that gave point and poignancy to such an 
 opinion. That quiet gentleman the Rev. Andrew Bur- 
 naby, Yicar of Greenwich, was in Virginia in 1T59, and 
 saw plainly enough how matters stood. " The public 
 or political character of the Virginians," he said, " cor 
 responds with their private one ; they are haughty and 
 jealous of their liberties, impatient of restraint, and can 
 scarcely bear the thought of being controlled by any 
 superior power. Many of them consider the colonies as 
 independent states, not connected with Great Britain 
 otherwise than by having the same common King and 
 being bound to her with natural affection." Not only 
 so, but " they think it a hardship not to have an un 
 limited trade to every part of the world." All this, and 
 more, Grenville might have learned by the simple pains 
 of inquiry. One had but to open his eyes and look to 
 see how imperious a race had been bred in the almost 
 feudal South ; and, for all they had never heard revolu- 
 tionarv talk thence, ministers ought to have dreaded 
 the leisure men had there to think, the provocation to 
 be proud, the necessity to be masterful and individual, 
 quite as much as they had ever dreaded the stubborn 
 temper and the quick capacity for united action they 
 had once and again seen excited in New England. 
 
TAX E WELL HALL, THE HOME OF THE RANDOLPHS 
 
 (After a print in Omitted Chapters of History in the Life and Papers of Edward Randolph. By 
 Courtesy of G. P. Putnam s Sons) 
 
 WILLIAM AND MARY COLLEGE 
 
 (From an old print) 
 
THE HEAT OF POLITICS 121 
 
 It was not necessary to try new laws to see what the 
 colonies would do if provoked. The difficulty already 
 encountered in enforcing the laws of trade was object- 
 lesson enough ; and the trouble in that matter had 
 grown acute but yesterday. For long, indeed, no one 
 in the colonies questioned the right of Parliament to 
 regulate their trade ; but it was notorious that the laws 
 actually enacted in that matter had gone smoothly off 
 in America only because they were not seriously en 
 forced. " The trade hither is engrossed by the Saints 
 of New England," laughed Colonel Byrd, " who carry 
 off a great deal of tobacco without troubling themselves 
 with paying that impertinent duty of a penny a pound." 
 The Acts of Trade practically forbade direct commerce 
 with foreign countries or their dependencies, especially 
 in foreign bottoms; but ships from France, Spain, and 
 the Canary Isles came and went very freely, notwithstand 
 ing, in colonial ports ; for royal officials liked to enjoy a 
 comfortable peace and the esteem of their neighbors, 
 and very genially winked at such trangressions. Car 
 goes without number were sent to the Dutch and Span 
 ish West Indies every year, and as many brought thence, 
 which were undoubtedly forfeit under the navigation 
 laws Parliament had been at such pains to elaborate 
 and enforce ; and privateering as well as smuggling had 
 for long afforded the doughty seamen of Boston, Salem, 
 Charleston, and New York a genteel career of profit. 
 Things had come to such a pass that where business 
 went briskly the people of the colonial ports demanded 
 as of right " a full freedom of illegal trade," and broke 
 sometimes into riot when it was denied them. The 
 Boston News Letter had been known very courteously 
 to mourn the death of a w r orthy collector of his Majes- 
 
 v.ns,T 
 
122 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 ty s customs because, " with much humanity," he had 
 been used to take " pleasure in directing masters of vessels 
 how they ought to avoid the breach of the Acts of 
 Trade." Sea captains grew accustomed to very confi 
 dential relations with owners and consignees, and knew 
 very well, without official counsel, how to take the ad 
 vice " not to declare at the Custom-house " ; and things 
 went very easily and cordially with all parties to the 
 understanding. 
 
 In 1761 that understanding was of a sudden rudely 
 broken and the trouble began, which Grenville had the 
 folly to add to. The Board of Trade determined to col 
 lect the duties on sugar, molasses, and rum, so long and 
 so systematically evaded in the trade between "New Eng- 
 gland and the West Indies, at whatever cost of suit and 
 scrutiny, and directed their agents in Boston to demand 
 " writs of assistance " from the courts, giving them leave 
 to enter what premises they would in search of smug 
 gled goods. There were instant exasperation and resist 
 ance. General search - warrants, opening every man s 
 door to the officers of the law, with or without just and 
 explicit ground of suspicion against him, no English 
 subject anywhere would submit to ; and yet these writs 
 authorized nothing less. Issued under a questionable 
 extension to America of an exceptional power of the 
 Court of Exchequer, they violated every precedent of 
 the common law, no less than every principle of prudent 
 administration ; and the excitement which they pro 
 voked was at once deep and ominous. Sharp resistance 
 was made in the courts, and no officer ever ventured to 
 serve one of the obnoxious writs. Such challenge of 
 the process was uttered by colonial counsel upon trial of 
 the right, moreover, that ministers would be without 
 
THE HEAT OF POLITICS 123 
 
 excuse should they ignore the warning, so explicit and 
 so eloquent of revolutionary purpose. It was James 
 Otis who uttered it. He had but the other day carried 
 the royal commission in his pocket as Advocate-General 
 in his Majesty s Court of Admiralty ; but he would not 
 have scrupled, even as his Majesty s servant, he said, to 
 oppose the exercise of a power which had already cost 
 one King his head and another his throne. To oppose 
 in such a case was to defend the very constitution under 
 which the King wore his crown. That constitution se 
 cured to Englishmen everywhere the rights of freemen ; 
 the colonists had, besides, the plain guarantees of their 
 own charters ; if constitution and charter failed, or were 
 gainsaid, the principles of natural reason sufficed for de 
 fence against measures so arrogant and so futile. No 
 lawyer could justify these extraordinary writs ; no King 
 with an army at his back could ever force them to exe 
 cution. 
 
 Protest not only, but defiance, rang very clear in these 
 fearless words; and ministers must avow themselves 
 very ignorant should they pretend they did not know 
 how Mr. Otis had kindled fire from one end of the colo 
 nies to the other. But Grenville was resolute to take 
 all risks and push his policy. He did not flinch from 
 the enforcement of the measures of 1764, and in the ses 
 sion of 1Y65 calmly fulfilled his promise of further taxa 
 tion. He proposed that the colonists should be required 
 to use revenue stamps upon all their commercial paper, 
 legal documents, pamphlets, and newspapers ; and that, 
 at once as a general measure of convenience and a salu 
 tary exhibition of authority, his Majesty s troops sta 
 tioned in the plantations should be billeted on the peo 
 ple. Parliament readily acquiesced. It was thus Gren- 
 
124 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 ville purposed " defraying the expenses of defending, 
 protecting, and securing" the colonies; but he came 
 near losing them instead. The act was passed in 
 March ; it was not to go into effect until November ; but 
 the colonists did not keep him waiting until November 
 for their protests. It was the voice of a veritable 
 tempest that presently came over sea to the ear of the 
 startled minister. And it was not the General Court of 
 turbulent Massachusetts, but the House of Burgesses of 
 loyal Virginia that first spoke the general indignation. 
 Already in the autumn of 1764, upon the mere threat of 
 what was to come, that House had spoken very urgently 
 against the measures proposed, in a memorial to King 
 and Parliament, which, amidst every proper phrase of 
 loyalty and affection, had plainly declared it the opin 
 ion of his Majesty s subjects in Virginia that such acts 
 would be in flat violation of their undoubted rights and 
 liberties; and the committee by which that memorial 
 was drawn up had contained almost every man of chief 
 consequence in the counsels of the colony, the King s 
 Attorney-General himself not excepted. But it was one 
 thing to protest against measures to come and quite 
 another to oppose their execution when enacted into 
 laws. The one was constitutional agitation ; the other, 
 flat rebellion little less. It was very ominous to read 
 the words of the extraordinary resolutions passed by 
 the Burgesses on the 30th of May, 1765, after the Stamp 
 Act had become law, and note the tone of restrained 
 passion that ran through them. They declared that 
 from the first the settlers of " his Majesty s colony and 
 dominion" of Virginia had possessed and enjoyed all 
 the privileges, franchises, and immunities at any time 
 enjoyed by the people of Great Britain itself ; and that 
 
THE HEAT OF POLITICS 125 
 
 this, their freedom, had been explicitly secured to them 
 by their charters, " to all intents and purposes as if they 
 had been abiding and born within the realm of Eng 
 land " ; " that the taxation of the people by themselves 
 or by persons chosen by themselves to represent them " 
 was " a distinguishing characteristic of British freedom, 
 without which the ancient constitution" of the realm 
 itself could not subsist ; " and that his Majesty s liege 
 people of this most ancient colony" had u uninter 
 ruptedly enjoyed the right of being thus governed by 
 their assemblies in the article of their taxes and internal 
 police," had never forfeited or relinquished it, and had 
 seen it " constantly recognized by the Kings and people 
 of Great Britain." 
 
 Spoken as it was in protest against actual legislation 
 already adopted by Parliament in direct despite of all 
 such privileges and immunities, this declaration of rights 
 seemed to lack its conclusion. The constitutional rights 
 of Virginians had been invaded. "What then ? Resolved, 
 therefore, " that his Majesty s liege people, the inhabi 
 tants of this colony, are not bound to yield obedience to 
 any law or ordinance whatever designed to impose any 
 taxation whatsoever upon them, other than the laws 
 or ordinances of the General Assembly aforesaid," and 
 "that any person who shall, by speaking or writing, 
 assert or maintain " the contrary " shall be deemed an 
 enemy of his Majesty s colony." Such had been the 
 uncompromising conclusion drawn by the mover of the 
 resolutions. What other conclusion could any man 
 draw if he deemed the colonists men, and proud men at 
 that ? But the Burgesses would not go so far or be so 
 explicit. They feared to speak treason ; they were con 
 tent to protest of their rights, and let the issue bring 
 
 V 
 
126 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 conclusions to light. It had been hot fighting to get 
 even that much said. The men hitherto accepted al 
 ways as leaders in the House had wished to hold it 
 back from rash and heated action, and there had been 
 bitter debates before even those significant premises for 
 a revolutionary conclusion had been forced to adoption. 
 Old leaders and new, young men and old alike, had will 
 ingly united in the memorial of 1764 ; but now that the 
 Stamp Act was law, conservative members shrank from 
 doing what must look so like a flat defiance of Parlia 
 ment. Only young men would have had the audacity 
 to urge such action ; only very extraordinary young 
 men would have had the capacity to induce the House 
 to take it. But such young men were at hand, their 
 leader as veritable a democrat as had ever taken the 
 floor in that assembly. 
 
 Patrick Henry was not of the aristocracy of the col 
 ony. Good Scots blood ran in his veins, quickened by the 
 lively strain of an old Welsh stock. His father came of 
 a race of scholars, and, good churchman though he was, 
 knew his Livy and his Horace better than his Bible. 
 His mother came of a vivacious line of easy-going wits 
 and talkers, which but a touch more of steadiness and 
 energy might any day have made famous. His father 
 had served his county of Hanover very capably and ac 
 ceptably as surveyor, colonel, magistrate, and his uncle 
 had been beloved as the faithful pastor of quiet parishes. 
 But they had been no long time in the colony; they 
 lived back from the tide-water counties where the real 
 aristocracy had its strength and supremacy ; they were 
 of that middle class of yeomen-gentlemen who love lib 
 erty but do not affect rank. " A vigorous aristocracy 
 favors the growth of personal eminence even in those 
 
THE HEAT OF POLITICS 127 
 
 who are not of it, but only near it," and these plain men 
 of the middle counties were the more excellent and in 
 dividual in the cultivation of their powers by reason of 
 the contact. But there was a touch of rusticity, a neg 
 lect of polish, a rough candor of speech, about them 
 which set them apart and distinguished them sharply 
 enough when they came into the presence of the courtly 
 and formal gentlemen who practised the manners of 
 London in the river counties. Patrick Henry, at any 
 rate, must have seemed a very rustic figure to the Bur 
 gesses when he first came to take his seat amongst them 
 on a May day in 1765. He was known, indeed, to 
 many. This was the man, they must have known, who 
 had won so strange a verdict from a jury two years ago 
 in the celebrated parsons case at Hanover court-house, 
 against the law and the evidence. But his careless 
 dress and manner, his loose, ungainly figure, his listless, 
 absent bearing, must have set many a courtly member 
 staring. For such men as Washington, indeed, there 
 can have been nothing either strange or unattractive in 
 the rough exterior and unstudied ways of the new mem 
 ber. Punctilious though he was himself in every point 
 of dress and bearing, Washington s life had most of it 
 been spent with men who looked thus, and yet were 
 stuff of true courage and rich capacity within. The 
 manner of a man could count as no test of quality with 
 him. His experience had covered the whole variety of 
 Virginian life. He was an aristocrat by taste, not by 
 principle. And Patrick Henry had, in fact, come to the 
 same growth as he in essential quality and principle, 
 though by another way. Henry s life had been wilful, 
 capricious, a bit haphazard, Washington s all the while 
 subject to discipline ; but both men had touched and 
 
128 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 seen the whole energy of the commonwealth, knew its 
 hope, could divine its destiny. There was but one Yir- 
 ginia, and they were her children. It could not take 
 
 T long to bring them to an understanding and comrade- 
 
 ! ship in affairs. 
 
 It was characteristic of the new member that he 
 should step at once and unhesitatingly to a place of lead 
 ership when debate of the Stamp Act stirred the House, 
 and that he should instantly sweep the majority into 
 his following with a charm and dash of eloquence that 
 came like a revelation upon the quiet assembly. He 
 was but twenty-nine years old, but he had spent all his 
 life in learning how the world went, and by what man 
 ner of speech it was moved and governed. He had 
 roamed the woods with no thought but for sport, or a 
 quiet hour with a book or his fancy in the shade of the 
 trees. He had kept a country store, and let gossip and 
 talk of affairs of colony and country-side take prece 
 dence of business. Finally he had turned with a per 
 manent relish to the law, and had set himself to plead 
 causes for his neighbors in a way that made judges stare 
 and juries surrender at discretion. In everything he 
 had seemed to read the passions of men. Books no less 
 than men, the chance company of an old author no less 
 than the constant talk of the neighborly land he lived 
 in, seemed to fill him with the quick principles of the 
 people and polity to which he belonged, and to lend 
 him as inevitably every living phrase in which to ut 
 ter them. The universal sympathy and insight which 
 made his pleasantry so engaging to men of every stamp 
 rendered his power no less than terrible when he turned 
 to play upon their passions. He was not conscious of 
 any audacity when he sprang to his feet upon the in- 
 
THE HEAT OF POLITICS 129 
 
 stant he saw the House resolved into committee to con 
 sider the Stamp Act. It was of the ardor of his nature 
 to speak when conviction moved him strongly, without 
 thought of propriety or precedence ; and it was like him 
 to stand there absorbed, reading his resolutions from a 
 fly-leaf torn from an old law-book. 
 
 It seemed no doubt a precious piece of audacity in 
 the eyes of the prescriptive leaders of the House to hear 
 this almost unknown man propose his high recital of 
 Virginia s liberties and his express defiance of Parlia 
 ment in tones which rang no less clear and confident 
 upon the clause which declared "his Majesty s liege 
 people " of the colony in no way bound to yield obedi 
 ence, than in the utterance of the accepted matter of 
 his premises. Debate flamed up at once, hot, even pas 
 sionate. The astounding, moving eloquence of the 
 young advocate, his instant hold upon the House, the 
 directness with which he purposed and executed action 
 in so grave a matter, stirred the pulses of his opponents 
 and his followers with an equal power, and roused those 
 who would have checked him to a vehemence as great 
 as his own. The old leaders of the House, with whom 
 he now stood face to face in this critical business, were 
 the more formidable because of the strong reason of 
 their position. No one could justly doubt that they 
 wished to see the Old Dominion keep and vindicate her 
 liberty, but they deemed it folly to be thus intemperately 
 beforehand with the issue. Almost to a man they were 
 sprung of families who had come to Virginia with the 
 great migration that had brought the Washingtons, in 
 the evil day when so many were fleeing England to be 
 quit of the Puritan tyranny royalists all, and touched 
 to the quick with the sentiment of loyalty. Twas now 
 
130 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 a long time since Cromwell s day, indeed ; generations 
 had passed, and a deep passion for Virginia had been 
 added to that old reverence for the wearer of the crown 
 in England. But these men prided themselves still upon 
 their loyalty ; made it a point of honor to show them 
 selves no agitators, but constitutional statesmen. It 
 made them grave and deeply anxious to see the privi 
 leges that were most dear to them thus violated and 
 denied, but it did not make them hasty to quarrel with 
 the Parliament of the realm. They had intended oppo 
 sition, but they feared to throw their cause away by 
 defiance. Twas as little wise as dignified to flout thus 
 at the sovereign power before all means had been ex 
 hausted to win it to forbearance. 
 
 It was not the least part of the difficulty to face the 
 veteran Speaker, John Robinson, so old in affairs, so 
 stately in his age, so gravely courteous, and yet with 
 such a threat of good manners against those who should 
 make breach of the decorous traditions of the place. 
 But the men chiefly to be feared w^ere on the floor. 
 There was Richard Bland, "wary, old, experienced," 
 with "something of the look," a Virginian wit said, 
 "of old musty parchments, which he handleth and 
 studieth much," author of a " treatise against the Quak 
 ers on water-baptism"; with none of the gifts of an 
 orator, but a veritable antiquarian in law and the pre 
 cedents of public business, a very formidable man in 
 counsel. Quiet men trusted him, and thought his pru 
 dence very wise. George Wythe was no less learned, 
 and no less influential. Men knew him a man of letters, 
 bringing the knowledge of many wise books to the 
 practice of affairs, and set great store by his sincerity, as 
 artless as it was human, and sweetened with good feel- 
 
THE HEAT OF POLITICS 131 
 
 ing. It made Eandolph and Pendleton and Nicholas, 
 the elder orators of the House, seem the more redoubt 
 able that they should have such men as these at their 
 elbows to prompt and steady them. And yet they would 
 have been formidable enough of themselves. Edmund 
 Pendleton had not, indeed, the blood or the breeding 
 that gave his colleagues prestige. He had won his way 
 to leadership by his own steady genius for affairs. He 
 read nothing but law-books, knew nothing but business, 
 cared for nothing but to make practical test of his 
 powers. But he took all his life and purpose with such 
 a zest, made every stroke with so serene a self-posses 
 sion, was so quick to see and act upon every advantage 
 in his business of debate, and was withal so transparent, 
 bore himself with such a grace and charm of manner, 
 was so obviously right-minded and upright, that it meant 
 a great deal to the House to hear him intervene in its 
 discussions with his melodious voice, his cool, distinct, 
 effective elocution. Robert Carter Nicholas added to 
 like talents for business and debate a reverent piety, a 
 title to be loved and trusted without question, which no 
 man ever thought to gainsay. And Peyton Randolph, 
 with his " knowledge, temper, experience, judgment, in 
 tegrity " as of a true Roman spirit, was a sort of prince 
 among the rest. No man could doubt he wished Vir 
 ginia to have her liberties. He had gone over sea to 
 speak for her in Dinwiddie s day, though he was the 
 King s attorney, and had lost his office for his boldness. 
 But there were traditions of loyalty and service in his 
 breeding which no man might rightly ignore. His 
 father before him had won knighthood and the royal 
 favor by long and honorable service as his Majesty s 
 attorney in the colony. Pride and loyalty had gone 
 
132 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 hand in hand in the annals of a proud race, and had 
 won for the Randolphs a prestige which made it impos 
 sible Sir John s son should very long be kept from the 
 office he had so honorably inherited. And so Peyton 
 Randolph was now once again the King s attorney. It 
 was not as the King s officer, however, but as an ex 
 perienced Parliamentary tactician, a trained debater, a 
 sound man of affairs, that he had set himself to check 
 Henry in his revolutionary courses. 
 
 Henry found himself, in truth, passionately set upon. 
 Even threats were uttered, and abuse such as proud 
 men find ill to bear. They cried " Treason ! treason !" 
 upon him when he dared declare the King would do 
 well to look to the fate of Caesar and Charles the First 
 for profitable examples. But he was not daunted a 
 whit. " If this be treason, make the most of it," was 
 his defiance to them. One ally who might have stood 
 with him, had he known, was absent. Richard Henry 
 Lee would have brought to his support a name as an 
 cient and as honorable as any in the colony, and an 
 eloquence scarcely less than his own. But, as it was, 
 he was left almost alone, and won his battle with no 
 other aid than very plain men could lend by vote and 
 homely utterance. The vote was very close, but enough. 
 Randolph flung out of the House, muttering in his heat 
 that he " would have given five hundred guineas for a 
 single vote." Henry, taking the triumph very simply, 
 as was his wont, and knowing his work for the session 
 done, quietly made his way homeward that very day, 
 striding unconcernedly down Duke of Gloucester Street, 
 chatting with a friend, his legs clad in buckskin as if 
 for the frontier, his saddle-bags and the reins of his lean 
 nag slung carelessly over his arm. 
 
PEYTON RANDOLPH 
 
THE HEAT OF POLITICS 133 
 
 The Assembly had adopted Henry s declaration of 
 rights, not his resolution of disobedience, and had soft 
 ened a little the language he would have used ; but its 
 action seemed seditious enough to Fauquier, the Gov 
 ernor, and he promptly dissolved them. It did little 
 good to send Virginians home, however, if the object 
 was to check agitation. The whole manner of their 
 life bred thought and concert of action. Where men 
 have leave to be individual, live separately and with a 
 proud self-respect, and yet are much at each other s 
 tables, often in vestry council together, constantly com 
 ing and going, talking and planning throughout all the 
 country - side, accustomed to form their opinions in 
 league, and yet express each man his own with a dash 
 and flavor of independence ; where there is the leisure 
 te reflect, the habit of joint efforts in business, the spirit 
 to be social, and abundant opportunity to be frank withal, 
 if you will you may look to see public views form 
 themselves very confidently, and as easily without as 
 semblies as with them. Washington had taken no part 
 in the stormy scenes of the House, but had sat calmly 
 apart rather, concerned and thoughtful. He was not 
 easily caught by the excitement of a sudden agita 
 tion. He had the soldier s steady habit of self-pos 
 session in the presence of a crisis, and his own way 
 of holding things at arm s -length for scrutiny "like 
 a bishop at his prayers," a wag said. He had a sol 
 dier s loyalty, too, and slowness at rebellion. His 
 thought, no doubt, was with the conservatives, whatever 
 may have been the light that sprang into his quiet 
 eye when Henry s voice rang out so like a clarion, 
 calling Virginia to her standard ; and he went home, 
 upon the dissolution, to join and aid his neighbors in 
 
134 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 the slow discussion which must shape affairs to an 
 issue. 
 
 "The Virginia Resolutions" had run like a flame 
 through the colonies not as the Burgesses had adopted 
 them, but as Henry had drawn them, with their express 
 threat of disobedience. Nor was that all. October, 
 1T65J saw delegates from nine colonies come together 
 in New York, at the call of Massachusetts, to take coun 
 sel what should be done. Every one knew that Vir- 
 ginia, North Carolina, and Georgia, the only colonies 
 absent from the " congress," would have sent delegates 
 too had their Governors not prevented them by the dis 
 solution of their Assemblies before they could act on the 
 call. A deep excitement and concern had spread every 
 where throughout the settlements. Not only did the 
 impending enforcement of the act engross u the conver 
 sation of the speculative part of the colonists," as Wash 
 ington wrote to Francis Dandridge in London ; it prom 
 ised to engross also the energies of very active, and it 
 might be very violent, men in many quarters, and it be 
 gan to grow evident that some part of government itself 
 would be brought to a standstill by its processes. " Our 
 courts of judicature," declared Washington, "must inevi 
 tably be shut up ; for it is impossible (or next of kin to 
 it), under our present circumstances, that the act of Par 
 liament can be complied with . . . ; and if a stop be put 
 to our judicial proceedings, I fancy the merchants of 
 Great Britain trading to the colonies will not be among 
 the last to wish for a repeal of it." The congress at 
 New York drew up nothing less than a bill of rights 
 and immunities, and sent resolutions over sea which ar 
 rested the attention of the world. The Yirginian As 
 sembly despatched like papers for itself ; and Richard 
 
THE HEAT OF POLITICS 135 
 
 Henry Lee, when he had assisted to draw its memorials, 
 hastened home to form in his own Cavalier county a 
 "Westmoreland Association," whose members (four 
 Washingtons among the rest) bound themselves by a 
 solemn covenant to " exert every faculty to prevent the 
 execution of the said Stamp Act in any instance what 
 soever within this colony." The ministry could not 
 stand the pressure. They gave way to Lord Rocking- 
 ham, and the act was repealed. 
 
 Meanwhile Washington, his calm temper unshaken, 
 was slowly coming to a clear vision of affairs in all their 
 significance. Fox-hunting did not cease. He was much 
 in the saddle and at table with the Fairfaxes, whom 
 nothing could shake from their allegiance, and who 
 looked with sad forebodings upon the temper the colony 
 was in. It was proper they should speak so if they 
 deemed it just, and Washington had no intolerance for 
 what they urged. But George Mason, the neighbor 
 whom he most trusted, was of a very different mind, 
 and strengthened and confirmed him in other counsels. 
 Mason was six years his senior ; a man, too, cast by nat 
 ure to understand men and events, how they must go 
 and how be guided. They conferred constantly, at 
 every turn of their intimate life, in the field or in the 
 library, mounted or afoot in the forests, and came very 
 deliberately and soberly to their statesman s view. 
 Kandolph and Pendleton and Wythe and Bland had 
 themselves turned, after the first hesitation, to act with 
 ardent men like Lee in framing the memorials to King, 
 Lords, and Commons w T hich were to go from the Bur 
 gesses along with the resolutions of the Stamp Act 
 Congress in New York ; and Washington, w r ho had 
 never hesitated, but had only gone slowly and with his 
 
136 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 eyes open, with that self-poise men had found so strik 
 ing in him from the first, came steadily with the rest to 
 the at last common purpose of resolute opposition. The 
 repeal of the act came to all like a great deliverance. 
 
 Governor Fauquier had deemed it his duty to dissolve 
 the Assembly upon the passage of Henry s resolutions, 
 but he had acted without passion in the matter, and had 
 kept the respect of the men he dealt with. He was not 
 a man, indeed, to take public business very seriously, 
 having been bred a man of fashion and a courtier rather 
 than a master of affairs. He loved gay company and 
 the deep excitement of the gaming-table, not the round 
 of official routine. Affable, generous, elegant, a scholar 
 and real lover of letters, he vastly preferred the talk of 
 vivacious women and accomplished men to the business 
 of the General Court, and was a man to be liked rather 
 than consulted. Washington, always admitted to the 
 intimacy of official circles at Williamsburg, very likely 
 relished the gallant Fauquier better than the too officious 
 Dinwidclie. It was, unhappily, no portent to see a man 
 still devoted to dissipation at sixty-two, even though he 
 were Governor of one of his Majesty s colonies and a 
 trusted servant of the crown ; and Fauquier s gifts as a 
 man of wit and of instructed tastes made his companion 
 ship no less acceptable to Washington than to the other 
 men of discernment who frequented the ballrooms and 
 receptions, ate formal dinners, and played quiet games 
 of cards during the brief season at the little capital. It 
 did not seriously disturb life there that the Governor 
 upheld the power of Parliament to tax, while the Bur 
 gesses strenuously opposed it. Washington, for one, 
 did not hesitate on that account to be seen often in 
 friendly talk with the Governor, or to accept frequent 
 
GEORGE MASON 
 
THE HEAT OF POLITICS 13V 
 
 invitations to the "palace." jle was of the temper 
 which has so distinguished the nobler sort of English 
 men in politics^ he might regard opposition as a public 
 duty, but he never made it a ground of personal feeling 
 or private spite. In a sense, indeed, he had long been 
 regarded as belonging to official circles in the colony, 
 more intimately than afiy other man who did not hold 
 office. He had been put forward by the Fairfaxes in 
 his youth ; men in the Council and at the head of af 
 fairs had been his sponsors and friends from the first ; 
 he had been always, like his brother before him, a mem 
 ber of one of the chief groups in the colony for influence 
 and a confidential connection with the public business. 
 It was even understood that he was himself destined 
 for the Council, when it should be possible to put him 
 in it without seeming to give too great a preponderance 
 to the Fairfax interest, already so much regarded in its 
 make-up. 
 
 The first flurry of differing views and conflicting pur 
 poses among the Virginian leaders had passed off. The 
 judgment of high-spirited men everywhere sustained 
 Henry gave him unmistakable authentication as a 
 leader ; put all public men in the way of understanding 
 their constituents. Some were bold and some were 
 timid, but all were animated by the same hope and pur 
 pose, and few were yet intemperate. " Sensible of the 
 importance of unanimity among our constituents," said 
 Jefferson afterwards, looking back to that time when 
 he was young and in the first flush of his radical senti 
 ments, " although we often wished to have gone faster, 
 we slackened our pace, that our less ardent colleagues 
 might keep up with us ; and they, on their part, differ 
 ing nothing from us in principle, quickened their gait 
 
138 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 somewhat beyond that which their prudence might of 
 itself have advised." Patrick Henry was received to 
 the place he had earned; and although the older leaders 
 resumed that sway in counsel to which their tried skill 
 and varied experience in affairs fairly entitled them, 
 there was no longer any jealous exclusion of new men. 
 Henry s fame crept through the colonies as the man 
 who had first spoken the mind not of Virginians only, 
 but of all just men, with regard to the liberties of Eng 
 lishmen in America. Before a year was out Richard 
 Bland himself, parchment man and conservative that he 
 was, had written and published a pamphlet entitled "An 
 Inquiry into the Rights of the British Colonies," which 
 said nothing less than that in all that concerned her 
 internal affairs Virginia was "a distinct, independent 
 state," though " united with the parent state by the 
 closest league and amity, and under the same alle 
 giance." A colony " treated with injury and violerice," 
 he exclaimed, u is become an alien." "When antiquari 
 ans and lawyers, fresh from poring upon old documents, 
 spoke thus, there were surely signs of the times. 
 
 The government at home kept colonial sentiment very 
 busy. Even Lord Rockingham s government, with 
 Burke to admonish it, coupled its repeal of the stamp 
 duties with a " declaratory act " which sought to quiet 
 controversy by giving the lie direct to every argument 
 urged against its authority in the colonies. " Parliament 
 has power to bind the colonies in all cases whatsoever," 
 was its round assertion : " a resolution for England s 
 right to do what the Treasury pleased with three mill 
 ions of freemen," cried Chatham. Though Rocking 
 ham s government would not act on that right, its suc 
 cessors would without scruple; and they were soon 
 
THE HEAT OF POLITICS 139 
 
 about it, for Rockingham s ministry retained office 
 scarcely a twelvemonth. Grenville was, indeed, dis 
 credited; but Grafton and Townshend were as bad, as 
 stubborn in temper, as reckless in policy. The year 1767 
 saw taxes proposed and enacted on glass, paper, painters 
 colors, and tea imported into the colonies, with a pur 
 pose to pay fixed sa]aries to the crown s officers in the 
 colonies out of the proceeds ; and the contested ground 
 was all to go over again. To show their temper, the 
 new ministers suspended the legislative powers of the 
 Colonial Assembly in New York for refusing to make 
 provision for troops quartered upon the colony. To 
 complete their fiscal arrangements they presently created 
 a custom-house and board of revenue commissioners for 
 America. It was an ominous year, and set opinion for 
 ward not a little in the colonies. 
 
 The House of Burgesses broke, at its next session 
 (1768), into fresh protests and remonstrances, and there 
 was no one to restrain or rebuke it. Fauquier was dead, 
 and gone to his reckoning; the reins of government were 
 in the hands of gentle John Blair, President of the 
 Council, a Virginian every inch, and with never a 
 thought of checking his fellow-colonists in the expres 
 sion of their just opinions. The autumn brought Lord 
 Botetourt, the new Governor - General, who came in 
 showy state, and with genial display of courtly man 
 ners and good feeling ; but his arrival made little differ 
 ence. The Burgesses smiled to see him come to open 
 their session of 1769 with pageant of coach and six, 
 brave display of royal insignia, and the manner of a 
 sovereign meeting Parliament ; and turned from him al 
 most in contempt to denounce once more the course of 
 the ministers, argue again the rights of America, de- 
 
140 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 clare they would draw the colonies together in concert 
 ed opposition, and call upon the other colonies to concur 
 with them alike in their principles and in their purpose. 
 Botetourt came hot foot to dissolve them ; but they 
 only shifted their place of meeting, gathered again at 
 the private house of Mr. Anthony Hay, and there re 
 solved no longer to import the things which Parliament 
 had taxed in despite of them. George Mason had drawn 
 the resolutions, at Washington s request, and Washing 
 ton himself presented them. 
 
 Mason s thought had hastened very far along the path 
 of opposition under the whip of England s policy; and 
 Washington s quite as far. The government had not 
 only sent troops to Boston and dissolved every Assem 
 bly that protested, but had advised the King to press 
 prosecutions for treason in the colonies, and, should 
 there be deemed sufficient ground, transport the accused 
 to England to be tried by special commission. It was 
 this last measure that had provoked the Burgesses to 
 their hottest outburst. " At a time when our lordly 
 masters in Great Britain will be satisfied with nothing 
 less than the deprivation of American freedom," wrote 
 Washington to Mason, with a sudden burst of passion, 
 " it seems highly necessary that something should be 
 done to avert the stroke, and maintain the liberty which 
 we have derived from our ancestors. . . . That no man 
 should scruple, or hesitate a moment, to use a-ms in de 
 fence of so valuable a blessing, on which all the good 
 and evil of life depends, is clearly my opinion. Yet 
 a-ms, I would beg leave to add, should be the last re 
 source." Addresses to the throne and remonstrances to 
 Parliament had failed : it remained to try " starving 
 their trades and manufactures," to see if that at last 
 
THE HEAT OF POLITICS 141 
 
 would arrest their attention. No doubt even that would 
 prove of little avail ; but it was at least peaceable and 
 worth the trial. The next month, accordingly, he got 
 unhesitatingly to his feet in the private meeting of the 
 Burgesses at Mr. Hay s and moved George Mason s 
 resolutions ; nor did he forget to subscribe his quota to 
 the fund which was to defray the expenses of the " asso 
 ciation" there formed. 
 
 The next evening he attended the " Queen s Birth- 
 Night" at the palace with the same naturalness of de 
 meanor and frankness of dealing towards the Governor 
 as before. Botetourt was not all show and gallantry, 
 but was a genuine man at bottom. He had come to 
 Virginia thinking the colonists a pleasure-loving people 
 who could be taken by display and cajoled by hospital 
 ity : he had been told they were such in London. But 
 he knew his mistake almost as soon as he had made it ; 
 and was prompt, even while he upheld prerogative, to 
 do what he could to deal with them in a liberal and 
 manly spirit. He had acquiesced very heartily at the 
 outset of his administration in a decision of the Council 
 that writs of assistance could not legally be issued in 
 Virginia, for the process had been tried there too. He 
 made such representations with regard to the state of 
 the colony to the ministers at home as were both just 
 and wise ; was assured in reply that the ministers were 
 willing to make every necessary concession ; pledged 
 his word in Virginia that there should be a substantial 
 change of policy ; and died the sooner (October 15, 
 1770) because the government would not, after all, re 
 deem his promises. " Your Governor is becoming very 
 popular, as we are told here," wrote Arthur Lee to his 
 brother, from London, " and I have the worst proof of 
 
142 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 it in the increased orders for fineries from the ladies." 
 Virginians did not find it easy to break an immemorial 
 habit in order to starve the English trades and manu 
 factures ; and it was more than once necessary to urge 
 and renew the non-importation agreements alike among 
 the Burgesses and merchants at Williamsburg and by 
 means of local associations throughout the colony. But 
 Washington was punctilious to observe to the letter the 
 agreements he had himself proposed. Again and again 
 he bade his mercantile agents in London assist him to 
 guard against any inadvertent breach of them: not to 
 send him the articles Parliament had picked out for 
 taxation in the colonies. 
 
 Life still continued to go, it is true, with something 
 of the old sumptuousness at Mount Yernon. It was in 
 June, 1768, that Colonel Washington ordered a new 
 chariot, " made in the newest taste, handsome, genteel, 
 and light, to be made of the best seasoned wood, and by 
 a celebrated workman," which was to cost him, fittings 
 and all, 133. For all he grew uneasy lest the colonies 
 disagreement with England should come at last to a 
 conflict of arms, he pushed his private interests with no 
 abatement of thoroughness or self-possession, as if there 
 were no fear but that things would long enough stand 
 as they were. He had not run surveyor s lines for Lord 
 Fairfax, or assisted to drive the French from the Ohio, 
 without seeing what fair lands lay upon the western 
 rivers awaiting an owner ; and, though there was still 
 doubt how titles were to be established in that wilder 
 ness, he took care, through the good offices of an old 
 comrade in arms, at least to be quietly beforehand with 
 other claimants in setting up such titles as might be 
 where the land lay richest and most accessible. "A 
 
THE HEAT OF POLITICS 143 
 
 silent management" was what he advised, "snugly car 
 ried on under the guise of hunting other game," lest 
 there should be a premature rush thither that would set 
 rival interests a-clashing. A strange mixture of the 
 shrewdness of the speculator and the honesty of the 
 gentleman claims pushed with privacy, but without 
 trickery or chicane ran through his letters to Captain 
 Crawford, and drew as canny replies from the frontiered 
 soldier. Business gave way often to sport and pleasure, 
 too, as of old, when politics fell dull between sessions. 
 Now it was the hunt ; then a gunning party in the 
 woods ; and again a day or two aboard his schooner, 
 dropping down the river, and drawing the seine for 
 sheepsheads upon the bar at Cedar Point. Even poli 
 tics was mixed with diversion. He must needs give a 
 ball at Alexandria on the evening of his election to the 
 House which was to meet Lord Botetourt, no less than 
 on other like occasions, of whatever kind the business of 
 the Assembly was likely to be. He did not lose his pas 
 sion for fine horse-flesh, either, at the thickest of the 
 plot. In 1770 he was with Governor Eden, of North 
 Carolina, at the Jockey Club races in Philadelphia, no 
 doubt relieved by the news that all but the tea tax had 
 been repealed. The next year it was the races in An 
 napolis that claimed him ; and in 1773 Jacky Custis 
 held him again at Philadelphia on the same errand. It 
 was wholesome to be thus calmly in pursuit of diversion 
 in the intervals of trying business. It bespoke a hearty 
 life and a fine balance in the man. 
 
 There was one matter to which Washington felt it his 
 bounden duty as a soldier and a man of honor to devote 
 his time and energies, whether politics pressed or not. 
 A grant of two hundred thousand acres of the western 
 
144 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 lands had been promised by the government of the col 
 ony to those who enlisted for the war against the 
 French and Indians in 1754 ; but nothing had ever been 
 done to fulfil the promise, and Washington undertook 
 to act as agent for his comrades in the business. In the 
 autumn of 1770, accordingly, he turned away for a 
 space from the deepening trouble in the east to plunge 
 once more into the western ways and search out proper 
 tracts for the grant along the reaches of the Ohio. 
 Twas a two-months journey, for he did not stop till 
 he had gone close upon three hundred miles beyond 
 Fort Pitt. And when he was home again no one in 
 the government who could lend a hand in the matter 
 got any peace from the stirring, thorough man until 
 the business was put finally into shape. There was a 
 tidy profit in the grant for himself ; for his own share 
 was large, and he providently bought, besides, the shares 
 of others who were unwilling to spend or co-operate in 
 the matter. But there were months upon months of 
 weary, unrequited service for his comrades, too, given 
 with hearty diligence and without grudging. Their 
 portions were as well placed as his own, they were to 
 find, when it came to the survey. He came off from 
 the business very rich in western lands buying the 
 Great Meadows, among the rest, for memory s sake 
 but richer still in the gratitude and admiration of the 
 men for whom he had labored. 
 
 Meanwhile events darkened ominously. A new ad 
 ministration had been formed in England under Lord 
 North, and had begun its government by repealing all 
 the taxes of 1769 except that on tea. But it was Par 
 liament s right to tax them that the colonists were 
 fighting, not the taxes themselves, and one tax was as 
 
THE HEAT OF POLITICS 145 
 
 hateful as a hundred. The year had been marked in 
 sinister fashion, moreover, by a broil between townsmen 
 and troops in the streets of Boston, in which arms had 
 been used and men slain, and in the heated imaginations 
 of the colonists the affair had taken on the ugly aspect 
 of a massacre. The year 1771 went quietly enough for 
 Virginians. Botetourt was dead, and that good mer- 
 .chant of York, William Kelson, President of the Coun 
 cil, sat in the place of authority throughout the year. 
 Although the whole country refused the taxed tea, the 
 attention of the ministers, as it happened, was fixed 
 chiefly upon Massachusetts, where trade centred at a 
 growing port and opposition had a local habitation. In 
 Virginia there was no place to send troops to, unless 
 the whole country were occupied, and so long as Mr. 
 Nelson was acting Governor, Colonel Washington could 
 go without preoccupation to the races, and gentlemen 
 everywhere follow their own devices in the quiet coun 
 ties. There was rioting rebellion, even in North 
 Carolina, so uneasily did affairs go there ; but Governor 
 Try on was a soldier as well as a despot, and did not 
 need to trouble his neighbors about that. It was not 
 until the first months of 1772 that Virginians began to 
 read plain signs of change in the face of their new Gov 
 ernor, John Murray, Earl Dunmore a dark and dis 
 tant man, who seemed to the Virginians to come like a 
 satrap to his province, who brought a soldier with him 
 for secretary and confidential adviser, set up a fixed 
 etiquette to be observed by all who would approach 
 him, spoke abruptly and without courtesy, displayed in 
 all things an arbitrary temper, and took more interest, 
 it presently appeared, in acquiring tracts of western 
 land than in conducting the government of the colony. 
 10 
 
146 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 The year of his coming was marked by the secret de 
 struction of the revenue -schooner Gaspe in Rhode Isl 
 and, and by many significant flaws of temper here and 
 there throughout the colonies ; and 1773 saw affairs at 
 last come to a crisis. 
 
 Dunmore had summoned the Burgesses to meet him 
 upon his first coming, but had liked their proud temper 
 as little as they liked his, and was careful not to call 
 them together again till March, 1773, though he had 
 promised to convene them earlier. There was instant 
 trouble. In view of the affair of the Gaspe, Parliament 
 had again resolved upon the trial of malcontents in 
 England, and the Burgesses were hot at seeing the sen 
 timents of the colonies so flouted. Conservative men 
 would still have waited to try events, but their fel 
 low-members of quicker pulse were diligent to disap 
 point them. Leadership fell to those who were bold 
 enough to take it ; and Patrick Henry, Richard Henry 
 Lee, Dabney Carr, and Thomas Jefferson, radicals all, 
 drew together, a self -constituted committee of guidance. 
 Evening after evening they met in a private room at 
 the Raleigh, with now and again one or two other like 
 spirits called into counsel, to consult Avhat should be 
 done. Richard Henry Lee proposed that the colonies 
 should be invited to join Virginia in appointing com 
 mittees of correspondence, through which to devise 
 steady concert of action, and that Virginia s committee, 
 to be appointed at once, should be instructed to look 
 into the character of the new court of trial lately estab 
 lished in Rhode Island. Dabney Carr was directed to 
 move the resolutions, and the eloquence of Lee and 
 Henry won for them an instant and hearty acceptance. 
 Dunmore promptly dissolved the Assembly, and Wash- 
 
lomas Jefferson Patrick Henry 
 
 R H. Lee F L. Let 
 
 IX THE OLD RALEIGH TAVEUN 
 
THE HEAT OF POLITICS 147 
 
 ington was free to set out for ~New York to place Jacky 
 Custis at King s College, lingering on the way in Phila 
 delphia to see the races, and pick up the talk of the 
 hour during half a dozen evenings at the rooms of the 
 Jockey Club, at the balls and assemblies of the gay 
 town, and at the hospitable tables of his friends. 
 
 The opening of the year had found Washington in a 
 very genial humor, his letters touched with pleasantry 
 and gossip. u Our celebrated fortune, Miss French, 
 whom half the world was in pursuit of," he wrote, in 
 February, to Colonel Bassett, " bestowed her hand on 
 Wednesday last, being her birthday (you perceive, I 
 think myself under a necessity of accounting for the 
 choice), on Mr. Ben Dulany, who is to take her to Mary 
 land Mentioning of one wedding puts me in mind 
 
 of another" and so through the news of Miss More, 
 ; remarkable for a very frizzled head and good singing," 
 and the rest of the neighborhood talk. But the year 
 turned out a very sad one for him. He had been scarce 
 ly ten days back from New York when Patsy Custis, 
 whom he loved as his own daughter, died. It called 
 forth all the latent Christian faith of the thoughtful, 
 steadfast man to withstand the shock. And Master 
 Jack Custis, the girl s wayward brother, gave him little 
 but anxiety. He would not study, for all Washington 
 was so solicitous he should have the liberalizing outlook 
 of books, and be made " fit for more useful purposes 
 than horse-racer," and though he was but twenty, could 
 hardly be induced to see the year out at college before 
 getting married. 
 
 It was no doubt very well that public affairs of the 
 first consequence called Washington s mind imperatively 
 off from these private anxieties, which could not but be 
 
148 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 chvarfed in the presence of transactions which threat 
 ened to shake the continent. As the year drew on, the 
 government in England undertook to force cargoes of 
 the East India Company s tea into the ports. When all 
 resisted, and -Boston, more forward even than the rest, 
 threw three hundred and forty odd chests of tea into 
 the harbor, acts passed Parliament giving dangerous in 
 crease of power to the Governor of Massachusetts, and 
 directing that Boston port be closed to all commerce on 
 and after the first day of June; and it became evident 
 that vigorous action must be taken in response. The 
 Burgesses in Virginia (May, 1774) resolved that June 1st 
 should be set apart as a day of fasting and prayer 
 prayer that civil war might be averted and the people 
 of America united in a common cause. Again Dun- 
 more dissolved them; but they gathered in the long 
 room of the Raleigh tavern, and there resolved to urge 
 a congress of all the colonies, and to call a convention 
 for Virginia to meet at that place on the first day of 
 August to take action for the colony. They showed no 
 spleen towards the Governor. Washington dined with 
 him the very day of the dissolution, spent the evening 
 at the palace, even rode out with him to his farm on 
 the following morning and breakfasted there ; and the 
 Burgesses did not fail to give the ball they had planned 
 in honor of Lady Dunmore and her daughters on the 
 evening of the day they had held their meeting in the 
 " Appolo room" at the Raleigh. But there were fast 
 ing and prayer on the 1st of June; the convention met 
 on the first day of August ; very outspoken resolutions 
 were adopted; and Peyton Randolph, Richard Henry 
 Lee, Patrick Henry, Richard Bland, Edmund Pendle- 
 ton, George Washington, and Benjamin Harrison were 
 
THE HEAT OF POLITICS 
 
 149 
 
 directed to attend the congress of the colonies appointed 
 to meet in Philadelphia on the fifth day of September. 
 When the time came for the journey, Henry and Pen- 
 dleton joined Washington at Mount Yernon. It must 
 have been with many grave thoughts that the three 
 companions got to horse and turned to ride through the 
 long August day towards the north. 
 
PILOTING A REVOLUTION 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 IN the congress of 177-i the leaders of Yirginia were 
 for the first time brought into face-to-face conference 
 with the men of the other colonies. In 1765 Fauquier 
 had dissolved the Burgesses with such sharp despatch, 
 upon the passage of Mr. Henry s resolutions, that they 
 were all gone home before the call for a congress to act 
 upon the stamp duties could reach them. But in 1774: 
 they were not to be so cheated. They had themselves 
 issued the call for a congress this time, and dissolution 
 could not drive them home. Their leaders could at 
 least linger at the Ealeigh and concert means to have 
 their way, House or no House. A convention took the 
 place of the Assembly ; and seven leading members of 
 the House were sent to Philadelphia, with as full au 
 thority to speak and act for the colony as if the Bur 
 gesses themselves had commissioned them. Mr. Har 
 rison declared in Philadelphia that "he would have 
 come on foot rather than not come"; and quiet Kich- 
 ard Bland, that " he would have gone if it had been to 
 Jericho." Colonel Harrison struck his new colleagues 
 from the North as a bit rough in his free Southern 
 speech and manner ; and Mr. Bland seemed to them " a 
 plain, sensible man," such as would be more given to 
 study than to agitation. If such men, artless and 
 steady as any downright country gentleman of old 
 
154 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 England, held so high a fancy for the business of the 
 congress, it was easy to conclude what the hastier, 
 younger men would be likely to plan and do ; and 
 the Massachusetts delegates found themselves greatly 
 heartened. 
 
 John Adams, Thomas Gushing, Samuel Adams, and 
 Robert Treat Paine were the representatives of Massa 
 chusetts. It was their people who had most provoked 
 Parliament to be high-handed and aggressive. The 
 struggle with the ministry at home had taken shape in 
 Boston. It had come to actual riot there. All the 
 continent and all England had seen how stubborn was 
 the temper, how incorrigible the spirit of resistance, in 
 that old seat of the Puritan power, always hard set and 
 proud in its self-willed resolution to be independent ; 
 and all eyes were turned now upon Gushing and Paine 
 and this " brace of Adamses," who had come, it was 
 thought, to hurry the congress into radical courses. 
 Kindness, applause, hospitality, "studied and expensive 
 respect," had attended them at every stage of their long 
 ride from Boston to Philadelphia. The country was 
 much stirred by the prospect of a general " congress of 
 committees" at Philadelphia; and the delegates from 
 Massachusetts were greeted as they passed even more 
 generously than the rest, because their people had been 
 the first to suffer in this bad business; because their 
 chief port at Boston was closed, and red-coated sentries 
 were on their streets. It behooved the Massachusetts 
 men, however, not to suffer themselves to be misled. 
 Many looked upon them askance ; some distrusted them 
 heartily. Their own hot-headed mob had provoked the 
 "massacre," of which they made so much. They had 
 wantonly destroyed private property when they threw 
 
PILOTING A REVOLUTION 155 
 
 the tea into their harbor to show the government their 
 spirit. There had been more than a touch of violence, 
 more than a little turbulence, and a vast deal of radical 
 and revolutionary talk in all that they had done ; and 
 the colonies were full yet of men who had no tolerance 
 for anything that transgressed, were it never so little, 
 the moderate limits of constitutional agitation. " There 
 is an opinion which does in some degree obtain in the 
 other colonies that the Massachusetts gentlemen, and 
 especially of the town of Boston, do affect to dictate 
 and take the lead in continental measures ; that we are 
 apt, from an inward vanity and self-conceit, to assume 
 big and haughty airs," said Joseph Hawley, who, for 
 all he had grown old as a quiet Massachusetts lawyer 
 among his neighbors, had kept his shrewd eyes abroad. 
 "It is highly probable," he told John Adams, with a 
 wholesome bluntness, " that you will meet gentlemen 
 from several of the other colonies fully equal to your 
 selves or any of you in their knowledge of Great Brit 
 ain, the colonies, law, history, government, commerce. 
 . . . By what we from time to time see in the public 
 papers, and what our Assembly and committees have 
 received from the Assemblies and committees of the 
 more southern colonies, we must be satisfied that they 
 have men of as much sense and literature as any we 
 can, or ever could, boast of." It was mere counsel of 
 prudence that they should play their part in the con 
 gress with modesty and discretion. 
 
 Not Gushing and Paine, but the Adamses, carried the 
 strength of the Massachusetts delegation ; and it was 
 Samuel Adams, rather than John, who was just now 
 the effective master in the great Bay Colony " master 
 of puppets," his enemies called him. Hale, bluff, adroit, 
 
156 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 plain, a man of the people, he had grown old in the 
 business of agitation. Fifty-two years he had lived, 
 planning always for others, never for himself. He had 
 " never looked forward in his life," he frankly said ; 
 " never planned, laid a scheme, or framed a design of 
 laying up anything for himself or others after him " ; 
 had let all his private business go neglected, and lived 
 upon the petty salary of a small public office, the indul 
 gence of fortune, and the good offices of the friends and 
 neighbors who loved him. He was in Philadelphia now 
 wearing the plain suit and spending the modest purse 
 with which his friends and partisans had fitted him out 
 the very impersonation of the revolution men were 
 beginning so to fear. No man had ever daunted him ; 
 neither could any corrupt him. He was possessed with 
 the instinct of agitation : led the people, not the leaders ; 
 cared not for place, but only for power; showed a mas 
 tery of means, a self-containment, a capacity for timely 
 and telling speech, that marked him a statesman, though 
 he loved the rough ways of a people s government, and 
 preferred the fierce democracy of the town meeting to 
 the sober dignity of senates. Like an eagle in his high 
 building and strength of audacious flight, but in instinct 
 and habit a bird of the storm. Not over-nice what he 
 did, not too scrupulous what he devised, he was yet not 
 selfish, loved the principles he had given his life to, and 
 spent himself without limit to see them triumph. 
 
 John Adams, his cousin, was of a very different mould : 
 a younger man b}^ thirteen years ; no man of the people, 
 but with a taste rather for the exclusive claims of edu 
 cation and breeding ; self-regardful ; a thought too cal 
 culating ; too quick-witted to be patient with dull men, 
 too self-conscious to be at ease with great ones ; and yet 
 
PILOTING A REVOLUTION 157 
 
 public-spirited withal, and generous in action if not in 
 judgment ; of great powers, if only he could manage 
 to use them without jealousy. Samuel Adams thought 
 only of his end, not of himself; seldom spoke of himself, 
 indeed ; seemed a sort of subtle engine for the people s 
 business. John Adams thought of himself always, and 
 yet mastered himself to play a great part with the no 
 bility of a man of genius, if not with the grace of a man 
 of modesty and self -forgetful devotion. For the time he 
 could even hold back with his wily cousin, resign leader 
 ship in the congress to Virginia, and act in all things 
 the wise part of those who follow. 
 
 It was a circumstance full of peril that the delegates 
 of the several colonies should at such a juncture be 
 strangers to one another, and provincials all, nowhere 
 bred to continental affairs. Only since the passage of 
 the Stamp Act had they taken any thought for each 
 other. There was no assurance that even the best lead 
 ers of a colony could rise to the statesman s view and 
 concert measures to insure the peace of an empire. 
 Rising lawyers like John Adams, brusque planters like 
 Colonel Harrison, well-to-do merchants like Thomas 
 Mifflin, might bring all honesty and good intention to 
 the task and yet miserably fail. A provincial law prac 
 tice, the easy ascendency of a provincial country gentle 
 man, the narrow round of provincial trade, might afford 
 capable men opportunity to become enlightened citizens, 
 but hardly fitted them to be statesmen. The real first 
 business of the delegates was to become acquainted, and 
 to learn how to live in the foreign parts to which most 
 of them had come. There was a continual round of en 
 tertainment in the hospitable town, therefore, a univer 
 sal exchange of courtesies, a rush of visiting and dining, 
 
158 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 a flow of excellent wine, a rich abundance of good cheer, 
 such as for a while made the occasion seem one of fes 
 tivity rather than of anxious counsel. Many of the dele 
 gates had come to town a week or more before the date 
 set for the congress, and had settled to an acquaintance 
 before it was time to effect an organization ; but the 
 gentlemen from Maryland and Virginia, more familiar 
 with the journey, arrived almost upon the day. They 
 made an instant impression upon their new colleagues. 
 John Adams promptly declared them " the most spirited 
 and consistent of any," and deemed Mr. Lee particularly 
 "a masterly man." Joseph Hawley s prediction was 
 fulfilled. "The Virginia and indeed all the Southern 
 delegates appear like men of importance," said Silas 
 Deane ; " I never met, nor scarcely had an idea of meet 
 ing, with men of such firmness, sensibility, spirit, and 
 thorough knowledge of the interests of America." Mr. 
 Lynch of South Carolina, though he wore " the manu 
 facture of this country," and was in all things " plain, 
 sensible, above ceremony," seemed to Mr. Deane to carry 
 with him " more force in his very appearance than most 
 powdered folks in their conversation." 
 
 The high bearing and capacity of the Southern dele 
 gates came upon the New England men like a great sur 
 prise : where they had expected to see rustic squires 
 they found rneri of elegance and learning. But there 
 was, in fact, no good reason to wonder at the natural 
 leadership of these men. Their life had bred them more 
 liberally than others. It required a much more various 
 capacity and knowledge of the world to administer a 
 great property and live the life of a local magnate in the 
 South than sufficed to put a man at the front of trade or 
 of legal practice in Boston or New York or Philadelphia. 
 
WASHINGTON 
 
 (From the portrait by Rembrandt Peale in the Vice-President s Room at the Capitol, Washington) 
 
PILOTING A REVOLUTION 159 
 
 The Southern colonies, besides, had lived more in sym 
 pathy with the life of the empire than had their North 
 ern neighbors. Their life had depended directly upon 
 that of England hitherto, and had partaken of it with 
 a constant zest. They had no rival trade; they had 
 wanted no rival government. The general air of the 
 wide empire had blown in all ordinary seasons through 
 their affairs, and they had cultivated none of that shrewd 
 antagonism towards the home government which had so 
 sharpened the wits and narrowed the political interests 
 of the best men in New England. They had read law 
 because they were men of business, without caring too 
 much about its niceties or meaning to practise it in liti 
 gation. They had read their English history without 
 feeling that the} 7 were separate from it. Their passion 
 for freedom was born not of local feeling so much as of 
 personal pride and the spirit of those who love old prac 
 tices and the just exemptions of an ancient constitution. 
 It was the life they had lived, and the conceptions of 
 personal dignity and immemorial privilege that had gone 
 always with it, that gave them so striking an air of mas 
 tery. It was not simply because the Massachusetts dele 
 gates kept themselves prudently in the background and 
 the rest yielded to her pretensions that Virginia was ac 
 corded primacy in the congress : it was also because her 
 representatives were men to whom power naturally fell, 
 and because she had won so honorable a place of leader 
 ship already in the common affairs of the continent. 
 
 Colonel Washington, striking and forceable man 
 though he was, did not figure as a leader among the 
 Virginian delegates. Peyton Eandolph was elected 
 president of the congress ; Kichard Henry Lee and Pat 
 rick Henry stood forth as the Virginian leaders on the 
 
160 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 floor. "If you speak of solid information and sound 
 judgment, Colonel Washington is unquestionably the 
 greatest man on that floor," was Henry s confident and 
 generous verdict ; but Washington was no politician, 
 and did not stand in exactly the same class with the 
 rest. He had headed committees and presided over 
 popular meetings among his own neighbors in Fairfax, 
 and had been prompt to join them in speaking with 
 high spirit against the course of the ministry in Eng 
 land. He had been forward in urging and punctiliously 
 careful in practising non-importation. He had declared 
 Gage s conduct in Boston " more becoming a Turkish 
 bashaw than an English governor." But he was a man 
 of action rather than of parliaments. " I will raise one 
 thousand men, enlist them at my own expense, and 
 inarch myself at their head for the relief of Boston," 
 had been his impetuous utterance in the Virginian con 
 vention " the most eloquent speech that ever was 
 made," Mr. Lynch declared. " I have heard he said," 
 reported an admiring Philadelphian " I have heard he 
 said he wished to God the liberties of America were to 
 be determined by a single combat between himself and 
 George !" But his fellow Virginians understood him 
 better. They had chosen him for force and sobriety ; 
 not as an orator, but as the first soldier and one of the 
 first characters of the commonwealth ; and he had made 
 the impression they expected. He had not been put upon 
 their committee of correspondence, or been appointed 
 with Nicholas and Pendleton and Lee and Henry to 
 draw resolutions and remonstrances ; but when it came 
 to choosing those who should represent the Old Do 
 minion in the- congress, but two names stood before 
 his in the vote. Peyton Eandolph, 104; Richard Henry 
 
PILOTING A REVOLUTION 161 
 
 Lee, 100; George Washington, 98 ; Patrick Henry, 89; 
 Kichard Bland, 79 ; Benjamin Harrison, 66 ; Edmund 
 Pendleton, 62 such had been the preference of the con 
 vention. The Northern delegates admired his "easy, 
 soldier-like air and gesture " and his modest and " cool 
 but determined " style and accent when he spoke ; and 
 wondered to see him look scarce forty, when they re 
 called how his name had gone through the colonies 
 twenty years ago, when he had met the French so gal 
 lantly at Great Meadows, and with Braddock at the 
 forks of the Ohio. 
 
 The Massachusetts delegates had reason to admire 
 his manly openness, too, and straightforward candor. 
 An old comrade in arms whom he esteemed a Virgin 
 ian now in regular commission, and stationed Avith the 
 troops in Boston had written him very damaging 
 things about the " patriot " leaders of the beset town ; 
 of their "tyrannical oppression over one another," and 
 " their fixed aim at total independence," and had charged 
 them roundly with being no better than demagogues 
 and rebels. Washington went at once to the men ac 
 cused, to learn from their own lips their principles and 
 intentions, taking Richard Henry Lee and discreet Dr. 
 Shippen along with him as his sponsors and witnesses. 
 " Spent the evening at home with Colonel Lee, Colonel 
 Washington, and Dr. Shippen, who came in to consult 
 us," was John Adams s entry in his diary for September 
 28th. Ko doubt Samuel Adams found the interview a 
 trying one, and winced a little under the examination of 
 the calm and steady soldier, going so straight to the 
 point, for all his Virginian ceremony. There had been 
 many outward signs of the demagogue in Adams s career. 
 He had been consciously and deliberately planning and 
 11 
 
162 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 scheming for independence ever since 1768, and had 
 made public avowal of his purpose no longer ago than 
 last year. It must have taxed even his adroit powers 
 to convince these frank Virginians that his purpose was 
 not rebellion, but liberty ; that he venerated what they 
 venerated, and wished only what they wished. But the 
 truth somehow lay open before the evening was gone. 
 There was frank cordiality in the parting: Washing 
 ton was convinced of their genuineness and sobriety. 
 " Though you are led to believe by venal men," he re 
 plied to Captain Mackenzie, " that the people of Massa 
 chusetts are rebellious, setting up for independency, 
 and what not, give me leave, my good friend, to tell you 
 that you are abused, grossly abused. This I advance 
 with a degree of confidence and boldness which may 
 claim your belief, having better opportunities for know 
 ing the real sentiments of the people you are among, 
 from the leaders of them, in opposition to the present 
 measures of the administration, than you have from 
 those whose business it is not to disclose truths, but to 
 misrepresent facts in order to justify as much as possi 
 ble to the world their own conduct." 
 
 The Massachusetts men had come to a better under 
 standing of the game began to see how cautiously it 
 must be played, how slowly and how wisely. It was a 
 critical business, this of drawing all the colonies into a 
 common congress, as if to create a directing body for 
 the continent, without constitution or warrant. The 
 establishment of committees of correspondence had 
 seemed little short of seditious, for it was notorious the 
 committees were formed to concert action against the 
 government at home; but this "congress of commit 
 tees " was an even more serious matter. Would the 
 
PILOTING A REVOLUTION 163 
 
 colonies venture a continental organization to defy Par 
 liament ? Dangerous differences of opinion were blown 
 hot between neighbors by such measures. Some of the 
 best men in America were opposed to the course which 
 was now evidently to be taken. So long as it was 
 merely a matter of protest by the colonies severally, 
 they had no criticism to make except perhaps that 
 Mr. Otis and Mr. Henry had held unnecessarily high 
 language, and had been bold and defiant beyond meas 
 ure ; but when they saw how the opposition gathered 
 head, hastened from protest to concerted resistance, put 
 popular conventions into the place of lawful legislative 
 assemblies, and advanced at length to a continental or 
 ganization, they deemed it high time to bestir them 
 selves, vindicate their loyalty to his Majesty s govern 
 ment, and avert a revolution. They were not men to 
 be trifled with. Had they been able to unite upon ac 
 tive measures, had they advanced from defence to ag 
 gressive action, they might have rendered themselves 
 formidable beyond possibility of defeat. Everywhere 
 men of substance and of influence were to be found by 
 the score who were opposed to a revolutionary agita 
 tion, such as this that now seemed to be gathering head. 
 Even in Massachusetts men who bore the best and the 
 oldest names of the commonwealth were of this num 
 ber ; in New York and Pennsylvania, at the very heart 
 of the continent, they could, it was believed, boast a 
 majority, as well as to the far southward, in the low 
 country of South Carolina and Georgia. No one, they 
 declared, but designing politicians and men without 
 property, those who had much to gain and nothing to 
 lose by the upsetting of law and ordered government, 
 wished to see this contest with the ministry pushed to 
 
164 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 extremes. They wished no less than others to see the 
 colonies keep their lawful and chartered liberties, but 
 the thing must be accomplished soberly, and without 
 loss of things equally dear of honor, and the mainten 
 ance of an unbroken English Empire. 
 
 The nice balance of parties was disclosed in the con 
 gress itself. The Pennsylvanian delegation was led by 
 Joseph Galloway, a man in the prime of life, full of 
 force and learning, who had been Speaker of the pro 
 vincial House these eight years by the almost unani 
 mous choice of his colleagues, and who now stood forth 
 to utter the real voice of his colony in proposing meas 
 ures of accommodation. He proposed that the home 
 government be asked to sanction the establishment of a 
 confederate parliament for America, composed of dele 
 gates to be chosen every third year by the legislatures 
 of the several colonies, and acting under a governor- 
 general to be appointed by the crown. Edward Eut- 
 ledge, of South Carolina, hot orator for liberty though 
 he was, declared it an " almost perfect plan," and was 
 eager to see it adopted ; influential members from 
 almost every quarter gave it their hearty support, 
 Mr. John Jay, of New York, among the rest ; and it 
 was defeated only by the narrow majority of a single 
 colony s vote. Chatham might very justly commend 
 the congress of 1774 as conspicuous among deliberative 
 bodies for its " decency, firmness, and wisdom," its " so 
 lidity of reasoning, force of sagacity, and wisdom of 
 conclusion, under such a complication of circumstances," 
 for the complication of circumstances was such as even 
 he did not fully comprehend. For seven weeks of al 
 most continuous session did it hammer its stiff business 
 into shape, never wearying of deliberation or debate, till 
 
PILOTING A REVOLUTION 165 
 
 it could put forth papers to the world an address to 
 the King, memorials to the people of Great Britain and 
 to the people of British America, their fellow-subjects, 
 and a solemn declaration of rights which should mark 
 it no revolutionary body, but a congress of just and 
 thoughtful Englishmen, in love, not with license or re 
 bellion, but with right and wholesome liberty. Their 
 only act of aggression was the formation of an " Amer 
 ican Association" pledged against trade with Great 
 Britain till the legislation of which they complained 
 should be repealed. Their only intimation of intention 
 for the future was a resolution to meet again the next 
 spring, should their prayers not meanwhile be heeded. 
 
 Washington turned homeward from the congress 
 with thoughts and purposes every way deepened and 
 matured. It had been a mere seven weeks conference ; 
 no one had deemed the congress a government, or had 
 spoken of any object save peace and accommodation ; 
 but no one could foresee the issue of what had been 
 done. A spirit had run through those deliberations 
 which gave thoughtful men, as they pondered it, a new 
 idea of the colonies. It needed no prophet to discern 
 beyond all this sober and anxious business a vision 
 of America united, armed, belligerent for her rights. 
 There was no telling what form of scornful rejection 
 awaited that declaration of rights or the grave plead 
 ing of that urgent memorial to the crown. It behooved 
 every man to hold himself in readiness for the worst ; 
 and Washington saw as clearly as any man at how nice 
 a hazard things stood. He had too frank a judgment 
 upon affairs to cheat himself with false hopes. " An 
 innate spirit of freedom first told me that the measures 
 which administration hath for some time been and now 
 
166 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 are most violently pursuing are repugnant to every prin 
 ciple of natural justice," had been his earnest language 
 to Bryan Fairfax ere he set out for the congress ; 
 " whilst much abler heads than my own hath fully con 
 vinced me that it is not only repugnant to natural right, 
 but subversive of the laws and constitution of Great 
 Britain itself, in the establishment of which some of 
 the best blood of the kingdom hath been spilt. ... I 
 could wish, I own," he had added, "that this dispute 
 had been left to posterity to determine " ; but he knew 
 more clearly than ever before, as he rode homeward 
 from the congress through the autumn woods, that it 
 had not been ; that Lee and Henry and Mason were 
 rightly of the same mind and purpose with the men 
 from Massachusetts; that conference had only united 
 and heartened those who stood for liberty in every col 
 ony ; that there could be no compromise perhaps no 
 yielding either and that every man must now take his 
 soberest resolution for the times to come. 
 
 He turned steadily to his private business for the 
 winter, nevertheless, as was his wont pushed forward 
 the preparation and settlement of his western lands, 
 and stood guard, as before, over the soldiers grants 
 upon the Ohio, against official bad faith and negligence. 
 " For a year or two past there has been scarce a mo 
 ment that I could properly call my own," he declared 
 to a friend who solicited his promise to act as guardian 
 to his son. " What with my own business, my present 
 ward s, my mother s, which is wholly in my hands, 
 Colonel Fairfax s, Colonel Mercer s, and the little assist 
 ance I have undertaken to give in the management of 
 my brother Augustine s concerns, together with the 
 share I take in public affairs, I have been constantly 
 
CARPENTER S HALL, PHILADELPHIA 
 
PILOTING A REVOLUTION 167 
 
 engaged in writing letters, settling accounts, and nego 
 tiating one piece of business or another ; by which means 
 I have really been deprived of every kind of enjoyment, 
 and had almost fully resolved to engage in no fresh mat 
 ter till I had entirely wound up the old." He promised 
 to undertake the new charge, nevertheless. It was 
 stuff of his nature to spend himself thus, and keep his 
 powers stretched always to a great compass. 
 
 With the new year (1775) public affairs loomed big 
 again, and ominous. The petitions of the congress at 
 Philadelphia had been received in England almost with 
 contempt. Chatham, indeed, with that broad and no 
 ble sagacity which made him so great a statesman, had 
 proposed that America s demands should be met, to the 
 utmost length of repeal and withdrawal of menace, and 
 that she should be accorded to the full the self-govern 
 ment she demanded in respect of taxation and every 
 domestic concern. " It is not cancelling a piece of parch 
 ment," he cried, " that can win back America," the old 
 fire burning hot within him; "you must respect her 
 fears and her resentments." The merchants, too, in fear 
 for their trade, urged very anxiously that there should 
 be instant and ample concession. But the King s stub 
 born anger, the Parliament s indifference, the ministry s 
 incapacity, made it impossible anything wise or gener 
 ous should be done. Instead of real concession there 
 was fresh menace. The ministry did, indeed, offer to 
 exempt from taxation every colony that would promise 
 that by its own vote it would make proper contribution 
 to the expenses of public defence and imperial adminis 
 tration in the hope thereby to disengage the luke 
 warm middle colonies from the plot now thickening 
 against the government. But Massachusetts was at 
 
168 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 once proclaimed in rebellion, every port in New Eng 
 land was declared closed against trade, New England 
 fishermen were denied access to the Newfoundland fish 
 eries, and ten thousand fresh troops were ordered to 
 Boston. Neither the pleas of their friends nor the 
 threats of their enemies reached the ears of the colo 
 nists promptly from over sea that portentous spring; 
 but they were not slow to perceive that they must 
 look for no concessions ; and they did not wait upon 
 Parliament in their preparation for a doubtful future. 
 Upon the very day the " congress of committees " at 
 Philadelphia adjourned, a "provincial congress" in 
 Massachusetts, formed of its own authority in the stead 
 of the House of Delegates the Governor had but just 
 now dissolved, had voted to organize and equip the 
 militia of the colony and to collect stores and arms. 
 Virginia had been equally bold, and almost equally 
 prompt, far away as she seemed from the King s troops 
 at Boston. By the end of January Charles Lee could 
 write from Williamsburg : "The Avhole country is full 
 of soldiers, all furnished, all in arms. . . . Never was 
 such vigor and concord heard of, not a single traitor, 
 scarcely a silent dissentient." 
 
 " Every county is now arming a company of men for 
 the avowed purpose of protecting their committees," 
 Dunmore had reported to the ministry before the year 
 1774: was out, " and to be employed against government 
 if occasion require. As to the power of government 
 which your lordship directs should be exerted to coun 
 teract the dangerous measures pursuing here, I can as 
 sure your lordship that it is entirely disregarded, if not 
 wholly overturned. There is not a justice of peace in 
 Virginia that acts except as a committeeman ; the abol- 
 
PILOTING A REVOLUTION 169 
 
 ishing of courts of justice was the first step taken, in 
 which the men of fortune and pre-eminence joined 
 equally with the lowest and meanest." Company after 
 company, as it formed, asked Colonel Washington to 
 assume command over it, not only in his own county of 
 Fairfax, but in counties also at a distance and he ac 
 cepted the responsibility as often as it was offered to 
 him. "It is my full intention," he said, simply, "to 
 devote my life and fortune to the cause we are engaged 
 in, if needful" ; and he had little doubt any longer what 
 was to come. He found time, even that stirring year, 
 to quicken his blood once and again, nevertheless, while 
 winter held, by a run with the hounds : for he was not 
 turned politician so sternly even yet as to throw away 
 his leisure upon anything less wholesome than the hale 
 sport he loved. 
 
 On the 20th of May, 1775, the second Virginian con 
 vention met, not in "Williamsburg, but at Richmond, 
 and its chief business was the arming of the colony. 
 Maryland had furnished the ironical formula with which 
 to justify what was to be done : "Resolved, unanimous 
 ly, that a well-regulated militia, composed of the gen 
 tlemen freeholders and other freemen, is the natural 
 strength and only stable security of a free government ; 
 and that such militia will relieve our mother -country 
 from any expense in our protection and defence, will 
 obviate the pretence of a necessity for taxing us on that 
 account, and render it unnecessary to keep any standing 
 army ever dangerous to liberty in this province." 
 Mr. Henry accepted the formula with great relish, in 
 the convention at Richmond, in his resolution " that the 
 colony be immediately put into a posting of defence," 
 but he broke with it in the speech with which he sup- 
 
170 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 ported his measures of preparation. In that there was 
 no plan or pretence of peace, but, instead, a plain dec 
 laration of war. Once more did Edmund Pendleton, 
 Eichard Bland, Mr. Nicholas, and Colonel Harrison 
 spring to their feet to check him, as in the old days of 
 the Stamp Act. Once more, nevertheless, did he have 
 his way, completely, triumphantly. What he had pro 
 posed was done, and his very opponents served upon 
 the committee charged with its accomplishment. It 
 was not doing more than other colonies had done ; it 
 was only saying more ; it was only dealing more fear 
 lessly and frankly with fortune. Even slow, conserva 
 tive men like John Dickinson, of Pennsylvania, shielded 
 themselves behind only an " if." " The first act of vio 
 lence on the part of administration in America," they 
 knew, " or the attempt to reinforce General Gage this 
 winter or next year, will put the whole continent in 
 arms, from Nova Scotia to Georgia." 
 
 What they feared very speedily came to pass. Twas 
 hardly four weeks from the day Mr. Henry proclaimed 
 a state of war in the convention at Richmond before 
 the King s regulars were set upon at Lexington and 
 Concord and driven back in rout to their quarters by 
 the swarming militia-men of Massachusetts. On the 
 19th of April they had set out across a peaceful country 
 to seize the military stores placed at Concord. Before 
 the day was out they had been fairly thrown back into 
 Boston, close upon three hundred of their comrades 
 gone to a last reckoning; and the next morning dis 
 closed a rapidly growing provincial army drawn in 
 threatened siege about them. In the darkness of that 
 very night (April 20th), at the command of Dunmore, 
 a force of marines was landed from an armed sloop that 
 
PILOTING A REVOLUTION 171 
 
 lay in James Kiver, in Virginia, to seize the gunpowder 
 stored at Williamsburg. The Virginians in their turn 
 sprang to arms, and Dunmore was forced, ere he could 
 rid himself of the business, to pay for the powder taken 
 pay Captain Patrick Henry, at the head of a body of 
 militia under arms. 
 
 On the 10th of May the second Continental Congress 
 met at Philadelphia, with business to transact vastly 
 different from that to which the first " congress of com 
 mittees" had addressed itself not protests and re 
 solves, but quick and efficient action. The very day it 
 met, a body of daring provincials under Ethan Allen 
 had walked into the open gates at Ticonderoga and 
 taken possession of the stout fortress "in the name of 
 the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress " ; and 
 two days later a similar exploit secured Crown Point to 
 the insurgents. Active war had begun ; an army was 
 set down before Boston a rude army that had grown 
 to be sixteen thousand strong within the first week of 
 its rally ; the country was united in a general resistance, 
 and looked to the congress to give it organization and 
 guidance. Colonel Washington had come to the con 
 gress in his provincial uniform, and found himself a 
 great deal sought after in its committees. Not only 
 the drawing of state papers which would once more 
 justify their cause and their resort to arms in the eyes 
 of the world, but the actual mustering and equipment 
 of an army, quick fortification, the gathering of muni 
 tions and supplies, the raising of money and the organ 
 ization of a commissariat, the restraint of the Indians 
 upon the frontier, was the business in hand, and Wash 
 ington s advice was invaluable when such matters were 
 afoot. He showed no hesitation as to what should be 
 
172 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 done. His own mind had long ago been made up ; and the 
 sessions of the congress were not ended before Virginia 
 was committed beyond all possibility of drawing back. 
 The 1st of June saw her last House of Burgesses con 
 vene ; for by the 8th of the month Dunmore was a 
 fugitive had seen the anger of a Williamsburg mob 
 blaze hot against him, and had taken refuge upon a 
 man-of-war lying in the river. The province was in 
 revolution, and Washington was ready to go with it. 
 
 It meant more than he thought that he had come to 
 Philadelphia habited like a soldier. It had not been his 
 purpose to draw all eyes upon him : it was merely his 
 instinctive expression of his own personal feeling with 
 regard to the crisis that had come. But it was in its 
 way a fulfilment of prophecy. "When the first Virgin 
 ian convention chose delegates to attend the congress 
 of 1774, "some of the tickets on the ballot assigned 
 reasons for the choice expressed in them. Randolph 
 should preside in congress ; Lee and Henry should dis 
 play the different kinds of eloquence for which they 
 were renowned ; Washington should command the 
 army, if an army should be raised ; Bland should open 
 the treasures of ancient colonial learning; Harrison 
 should utter plain truths ; and Pendleton should be the 
 penman for business." No wonder the gentlemen from 
 Virginia, coming with such confidence to the congress, 
 made the instant impression they did for mastery and 
 self -poise! "There are some fine fellows come from 
 Virginia," Joseph Reed had reported, "but they are 
 very high. We understand they are the capital men of 
 the colony." Washington alone awaited his cue. Now 
 he was to get it, without expecting it. The irregular 
 army swarming before Boston was without standing or 
 
PILOTING A REVOLUTION 173 
 
 government. It had run hastily together out of four 
 colonies ; was subject to no common authority ; hardly 
 knew what allegiance it bore; might fall to pieces un 
 less it were adequately commanded. The congress in 
 Philadelphia was called upon to recognize and adopt it, 
 give it leave and authority to act for all the colonies, 
 give it a commander, and summon the whole country 
 to recruit it. There was an obvious political necessity 
 that the thing should be done, and done promptly. 
 Massachusetts did not wish to stand alone ; New Eng 
 land wanted the active assistance of the other colonies ; 
 something must be attempted to secure common action. 
 The first thing to do was to choose an acceptable and 
 efficient leader, and to choose him outside New England. 
 To John Adams the choice seemed simple enough. 
 There was no soldier in America, outside New England 
 nor inside either to be compared, whether in ex 
 perience or distinction, with Washington, the gallant, 
 straightforward, earnest Virginian he had learned so to 
 esteem and trust there in Philadelphia. He accordingly 
 moved that congress " adopt the army at Cambridge," 
 and declared that he had " but one gentleman in mind " 
 for its command "a gentleman from Virginia, who 
 was among us," he said, " and very well known to all of 
 us ; a gentleman whose skill and experience as an officer, 
 whose independent fortune, great talents, and excellent 
 universal character, would command the approbation of 
 all America, and unite the cordial exertions of all the 
 colonies better than any other person in the union." 
 Washington, taken unawares, rose and slipped in con 
 fusion from the room. Some of his own friends doubt 
 ed the expediency of putting a Virginian at the head 
 of a New England army, but the more clear-sighted 
 
174 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 among the New-Englanders did not, and the selection 
 was made, after a little hesitation, unanimously. 
 
 Washington accepted his commission with that mix 
 ture of modesty and pride that made men love and hon 
 or him. " You may believe me, my dear Patsy," were 
 his simple words to his wife, " when I assure you in 
 the most solemn manner, that, so far from seeking this 
 appointment, I have used every endeavor in my power 
 to avoid it, not only from my unwillingness to part 
 with you and the family, but from a consciousness of 
 its being a trust too great for my capacity. . . . But as 
 it has been a kind of destiny that has thrown me upon 
 this service, I shall hope that my undertaking it is de 
 signed to answer some good purpose. ... It was ut 
 terly out of my power to refuse this appointment, with 
 out exposing my character to such censures as would 
 have reflected dishonor upon myself and given pain to 
 my friends." He spoke in the same tone to the con 
 gress. " I beg it may be remembered," he said, " by 
 every gentleman in this room, that I this day declare 
 with the utmost sincerity I do not think myself equal 
 to the command I am honored with." His commission 
 was signed on the 19th of June ; on the 21st he was on 
 the road to the north the road he had travelled twenty 
 years ago to consult with Governor Shirley in Boston 
 upon questions of rank, and to fall into Mary Philipse s 
 snare by the way ; the road he had ridden after the 
 races, but three years ago, to put Jacky Custis at college 
 in New York. " There is something charming to me 
 in the conduct of Washington," exclaimed John Adams; 
 and it was wholesome for the whole country that such 
 a man should be put at the head of affairs. Many ig 
 noble things were being done in the name of liberty, 
 
PILOTING A REVOLUTION 175 
 
 and an ugly tyranny had been brought to every man s 
 door the tyranny of his next-door neighbor." There 
 were men by the score in the colonies who had no taste 
 or sympathy for the rebellion they now saw afoot 
 common men who knew little or nothing of the mother- 
 country, as well as gentlemen of culture who loved her 
 traditions and revered her crown ; farmers and village 
 lawyers, as well as merchants at the ports who saw 
 their living gone and ruin staring them in the face. 
 But the local committees and the " Sons of Liberty " 
 everywhere saw to it that such men should know and 
 dread and fearfully submit to the views of the majority. 
 Government was suspended: there was nowhere so 
 much as a justice of the peace acting under the authority 
 of the crown. There might have been universal license 
 had the rabble not seen their leaders so noble, so bent 
 upon high and honorable purposes. It was an object- 
 lesson in the character of the revolution to see Wash 
 ington ride through the colonies to take charge of an, 
 insurgent army. And no man or woman, or child even, 
 was likely to miss the lesson. That noble figure drew 
 all eyes to it ; that mien as if the man were a prince ; that 
 sincere and open countenance, which every man could see 
 was lighted by a good conscience ; that cordial ease in 
 salute, as of a man who felt himself brother to his friends. 
 There was something about Washington that quickened 
 the pulses of a crowd at the same time that it awed them, 
 that drew cheers which were a sort of voice of worship. 
 Children desired sight of him, and men felt lifted after 
 he had passed. It was good to have such a man ride all 
 the open way from Philadelphia to Cambridge in sight 
 of the people to assume command of the people s army. 
 It gave character to the thoughts of all who saw him. 
 
 UBJi^ 
 
 U " " * S E , 
 
 ^ ~ Of 
 
GENEKAL WASHINGTON 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 MATTERS had not stood still before Boston to await a 
 commander sent by congress. While Washington waited 
 for his commission and made ready for his journey 
 there had been fighting done which was to simplify his 
 task. General William Howe had reached Boston with 
 reinforcements on the 25th of May, and quite ten thou 
 sand troops held the city, while a strong fleet of men- 
 of-war lay watchfully in the harbor. There was no 
 hurry, it seemed, about attacking the sixteen thousand 
 raw provincials, whose long lines Avere drawn loosely 
 about the town from Charlestown Neck to Jamaica Plain. 
 But commanding hills looked across the water on either 
 hand in Charlestown on the north and in Dorchester 
 on the southeast and it would be well, Howe saw, to 
 secure them, lest they should be occupied by the insur 
 gents. On the morning of the 17th of June, however, 
 while leisurely preparations were a-making in Boston 
 to occupy the hills of Charlestown, it was discovered 
 that the provincials had been beforehand in the project. 
 There they were in the clear sun, working diligently at 
 redoubts of their own upon th e height. Three thousand 
 men were put across the water to drive them off. 
 Though they mustered only seventeen hundred behind 
 their unfinished works, three several assaults and the 
 loss of a thousand men was the cost of dislodging- them. 
 
180 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 They withheld their fire till the redcoats were within 
 fifty nay, thirty yards of them, and then poured out 
 a deadly, blazing fire which no man could face and live. 
 They were ousted only when they failed of powder and 
 despaired of reinforcements. Veteran officers who had 
 led the assault declared the regulars of France were not 
 more formidable than these militia-men, whom they had 
 despised as raw peasants. There was no desire to buy 
 another American position at that price ; and Washing 
 ton ha.d time enough for the complimentary receptions 
 and addresses and the elaborate parade of escort and 
 review that delayed his journey to headquarters. 
 
 He reached Cambridge on the 2d of July, and bore 
 himself with so straightforward and engaging a courte 
 sy in taking command that the officers he superseded 
 could not but like him : jealousy was disarmed. But 
 he found neither the preparations nor the spirit of the 
 army to his liking. His soldierly sense of order was 
 shocked by the loose discipline, and his instinct of com 
 mand by the free and easy insolence of that irregular 
 levy ; and his authority grew stern as he labored to 
 bring the motley host to order and effective organiza 
 tion. " The people of this government have obtained a 
 character," his confidential letters declared, " which they 
 by no means deserved their officers, generally speak 
 ing, are the most indifferent kind of people I ever saw. 
 I dare say the men would fight very well (if properly 
 officered), although they are an exceedingly dirty and 
 nasty people. ... It is among the most difficult tasks 
 I ever undertook in my life to induce these people to 
 believe that there is, or can be, danger till the bayonet 
 is pushed at their breasts. Not that it proceeds from 
 any uncommon prowess, but rather from an unaccounta- 
 
GENERAL WASHINGTON 181 
 
 ble kind of stupidity in the lower class of these people, 
 which, believe me, prevails but too generally among the 
 officers of the Massachusetts part of the army, who are 
 nearly of the same kidney with the privates." He had 
 seen like demoralization and slackness in the old da} 7 s at 
 "Winchester, on the wild frontier, but he had expected 
 to find a better spirit and discipline in the New England 
 levies. 
 
 His first disgust, however, soon wore off. He was 
 not slow to see how shrewd and sturdy these uncouth, 
 intractable ploughboys and farmers could prove them 
 selves upon occasion. "I have a sincere pleasure in 
 observing," he wrote to congress, " that there are 
 materials for a good army, a great number of able- 
 bodied men, active, zealous in the cause, and of unques 
 tionable courage." There was time enough and to 
 spare in which to learn his army s quality. " Our lines 
 of defence are now completed," he could tell Lund 
 Washington on the 20th of August, "as near so at least 
 as can be we now wish them to come out as soon as 
 they please ; but they discover no inclination to quit 
 their own works of defence ; and as it is almost im 
 possible for us to get at them, we do nothing but watch 
 each other s motions all day at the distance of about a 
 mile." He could even turn away from military affairs 
 to advise that "spinning should go forward with all 
 possible despatch " on the estate at home, and to say, 
 " I much approve of your sowing wheat in clean ground, 
 although you should be late in doing it." Once more 
 he settled to the old familiar work, this time upon a 
 great scale, of carrying a difficult enterprise forward by 
 correspondence. Letters to the Continental Congress 
 at Philadelphia, letters to the provincial congresses of 
 
182 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 the ~NQW England colonies, letters to subordinate (some 
 times insubordinate) officers at distant posts, letters to 
 intimate friends and influential men everywhere, setting 
 forth the needs and situation of the army, advising 
 measures of organization, supply, and defence, pointing 
 out means that might be used and mistakes that must 
 be avoided, commanding, dissuading, guiding, forecast 
 ing, poured steadily forth from those busy headquarters, 
 where the commander-in-chief was always to be found, 
 intent, deeply employed, calmly imperative, never tir 
 ing, never hesitating, never storming, a leader and mas 
 ter of men and affairs. He was in his prime, and all 
 the forty-three years of his strenuous life he had been 
 at school to learn how such a task as this was to be 
 performed. He had found the army not only without 
 proper discipline and equipment, but actually without 
 powder; and the winter had come and was passing 
 away before even that primary and perilous need could 
 be supplied. The men of that extemporized army had 
 been enlisted but for a few months service. When 
 their brief terms of enlistment ran out they inconti 
 nently took themselves off; and Washington s most 
 earnest appeals to the continental and provincial con 
 gresses to provide for longer enlistments and an adequate 
 system of recruitment did not always suffice to prevent 
 his force from perilously dwindling away under his very 
 eyes. It was a merciful providence that disposed the 
 British to lie quiet in Boston. 
 
 Such authority as he had, Washington used to the ut 
 most, and with a diligence and foresight which showed 
 all his old policy of Thorough. Under his orders a few 
 fast vessels were fitted out and armed as privateers at 
 the nearest safe ports. Marblehead volunteers in the 
 
GENERAL WASHINGTON 183 
 
 army were put aboard them for crews, and the enemy s 
 supplies were captured upon the seas and brought over 
 land the much-needed powder and all into the Amer 
 ican camp, while men-of-war which might have swept 
 the coast lay just at hand in the harbor. No opportu 
 nity was missed either to disturb the British or to get 
 what the army needed ; and the ministers at home, as 
 well as the commanders in Boston, grew uneasy and 
 apprehensive in the presence of so active and watchful 
 an opponent. He was playing the game boldly, even a 
 bit desperately at times. More than once, as the slow 
 months of siege dragged by, he would have hazarded a 
 surprise and sought to take the. city by storm, had not 
 the counsel of his officers persistently restrained him. 
 
 Only in the north was there such fighting as he wished 
 to see. Montgomery had pushed through the forests and 
 taken Montreal (November 12th, 1775). At the same 
 time Washington had sent a force of some twelve hun 
 dred men, under Benedict Arnold, to see what could be 
 done against the little garrison at Quebec. The journey 
 had cost Arnold four hundred men ; but with what he 
 had left he had climbed straight to the Heights of Abra 
 ham and summoned the British at their gates. When 
 they would neither surrender nor fight, he had sat 
 down to wait for Montgomery ; and when he came, with 
 barely five hundred men, had stormed the stout de 
 fences, in a driving snow-storm, in the black darkness 
 that came just before the morning on the last day of 
 the year. Had Montgomery not been killed in the as 
 sault, the surprise would have succeeded ; and Arnold 
 had no cause to be ashamed of the gallant affair. Fail 
 ure though it was, it heartened the troops before Boston 
 to think what might be done under such officers. 
 
184 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 The monotony of the long, anxious season was broken 
 at Cambridge by a touch now and again of such pleas 
 ures as spoke of home and gracious peace. In midwin 
 ter Mrs. Washington had driven into camp> come all the 
 way from Virginia, with proper escort, in her coach and 
 four, her horses bestridden by black postilions in their 
 livery of scarlet and white ; and she had seemed to bring 
 with her to the homely place not only the ceremoni 
 ous habit, but the genial and hospitable air of Virginia 
 as well. Many a quiet entertainment at headquarters 
 coaxed a little ease of mind out of the midst of even 
 that grim and trying winters work while she was there. 
 
 "With the first month of spring Washington deter 
 mined to cut inaction short and make a decisive stroke. 
 He had been long enough with the army now to pre 
 sume upon its confidence and obedience, though he fol 
 lowed his own counsels. Siege cannon had been dragged 
 through the unwilling forests all the way from Ticon- 
 deroga ; the supplies and the time had come ; and on the 
 morning of the 5th of March, 1776, the British stared 
 to see ramparts and cannon on Dorchester Heights. 
 " It was like the work of the genii of Aladdin s wonder 
 ful lamp," declared one of their astonished officers. 
 Why they had themselves neglected to occupy the hills 
 of Dorchester, and had waited so patiently till Wash 
 ington should have time and such guns as he needed, 
 was a question much pressed at home in England ; and 
 their stupidity was rewarded now. They had suffered 
 themselves to be amused all night by a furious cannon 
 ading out of Eoxbury, Somerville, and East Cambridge, 
 while two thousand men, a battery of heavy ordnance, 
 and hundreds of wagons and ox-carts with timber, bales 
 of hay, spades, crowbars, hatchets, hammers, and nails, 
 
-* A f, 
 1 
 
 S3 
 
GENERAL WASHINGTON 185 
 
 had been gotten safely to the Dorchester hills. When 
 they saw what had happened they thought of the assault 
 upon Bunker s Hill, and hesitated what to do. A vio 
 lent storm blew up while they waited, rendering an at 
 tack across the water impracticable, and when the calmer 
 morning of the 6th dawned it was too late ; the Ameri 
 can position was too strong. Neither the town nor the 
 harbor could safely be held under fire from Dorchester 
 Heights. There was nothing for it but to evacuate the 
 place, and no one gainsaid their departure. By the 17th 
 they Avere all embarked, eight thousand troops and nine 
 hundred loyalist citizens of Boston, and had set sail 
 towards the north for Halifax. They were obliged to 
 leave behind them more than two hundred cannon and 
 a great quantity of military stores of every kind pow 
 der, muskets, gun-carriages, small-arms whatever an 
 army might need. When Washington established him 
 self in General Howe s headquarters, in Mrs. Edwards s 
 comfortable lodging-house at the head of State Street, 
 he could congratulate himself not only on a surprising 
 victory brilliantly won, but on the possession, besides, 
 of more powder and better stores and equipments than 
 he could have dreamed of in his camp at Cambridge. 
 He caught up his landlady s little granddaughter one 
 day, set her on his knee, as he liked to do, and asked 
 her, smiling, which she liked the better, the redcoats or 
 the provincials. 
 
 "The redcoats," said the child. 
 
 "Ah, my dear," said the young general, a blithe light 
 in his blue eyes, " they look better, but they don t fight. 
 The ragged fellows are the boys for fighting." 
 
 But he did not linger at Boston. He knew that its 
 capture did not end, but only deepened, the struggle. 
 
186 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 Reinforcements would be poured out of England with 
 the spring, and the next point of attack would unques 
 tionably be New York, the key to the Hudson. Here 
 again was a city flanked about on either hand by water, 
 and commanded by heights the heights of Brooklyn. 
 A garrison must be left in Boston, and New York must 
 be held for the most part by a new levy, as raw, as ill 
 organized and equipped, as factious, as uncertain in ca 
 pacity and purpose, as that which had awaited his dis 
 cipline and guidance before Boston. It was an army 
 always a-making and to be made. The sea was open, 
 moreover. The British could enter the great harbor 
 when they pleased. The insurgents had no naval force 
 whatever with which to withstand them on the water. 
 There were a score of points to be defended which were 
 yet without defence on the long island where the town 
 lay, and round about the spreading arms of the sea that 
 enclosed it ; and there were but eighteen thousand mili 
 tia-men mustered for the formidable task, in the midst 
 of an active loyalist population. The thing must be 
 attempted, nevertheless. The command of the Hudson 
 would very likely turn out to be the command of the 
 continent, and the struggle was now to be to the death. 
 It was too late to draw back. The royal authority 
 had, in fact, been everywhere openly thrown off, even 
 in the middle colonies, where allegiance and opinion 
 hung still at so doubtful a balance. For "Washington 
 the whole situation must have seemed to be summed up 
 in what had taken place in his own colony at home. 
 Dunmore, when he fled to the men-of-war in the bay, 
 had called upon all who were loyal to follow him ; had 
 even offered freedom to all slaves and servants who 
 would enlist in the force he should collect for the pur- 
 
GENERAL WASHINGTON 187 
 
 pose of "reducing the colony to a proper sense of its 
 duty." Unable to do more, he had ravaged the coasts 
 on either hand upon the Bay, and had put men ashore 
 within the rivers to raid and burn, making Norfolk, with 
 its loyalist merchants, his headquarters and rendezvous. 
 Driven thence by the provincial militia, he had utterly 
 destroyed the town by fire, and was now refuged upon 
 Gwynn s Island, striking when he could, as before, at 
 the unprotected hamlets and plantations that looked 
 everywhere out upon the water. Virginia s only execu 
 tive, these nine months and more, had been her Com 
 mittee of Safety, of which Edmund Pendleton was pres 
 ident. 
 
 Washington had hardly begun his work of organiza 
 tion and defence at New York before North Carolina 
 (April 12th, 1776) authorized her delegates in the con 
 gress at Philadelphia to join in a declaration of indepen 
 dence ; and the next month (May 15th) the congress ad 
 vised the colonies to give over all show and pretence of 
 waiting for or desiring peace or accommodation: to form 
 complete and independent governments of their own, 
 and so put an end to " the exercise of every kind of au 
 thority under the crown." The next step was a joint 
 Declaration of Independence, upon a motion made in 
 congress by Richard Henry Lee, in eager obedience to 
 the express bidding of a convention met in the hall of 
 the Burgesses at Williamsburg to frame a constitution 
 for Yirginia. His motion was adopted by the votes of 
 every colony except New York. It was a bitter thing 
 to many a loyal man in the colonies to see such things 
 done, and peace rendered impossible. Not even those 
 who counted themselves among the warmest friends of 
 the colonial cause were agreed that it was wise thus to 
 
188 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 throw off one government before another was put in its 
 place while there was as yet no better guidance in that 
 distracted time than might be had from a body of gen 
 tlemen in Philadelphia who possessed no power but to 
 advise. But the radicals were in the saddle. Washing 
 ton himself came down from New York to urge that the 
 step be taken. He deemed such radicalism wise ; for he 
 wished to see compromise abandoned, and all minds set 
 as sternly as his own in the resolve to fight the fight 
 out to the bitter end. " I have never entertained an 
 idea of an accommodation," he said, " since I heard of 
 the measures which were adopted in consequence of the 
 Bunker s Hill fight"; and his will hardened to the con 
 test after the fashion that had always been characteris 
 tic of him when once the heat of action was upon him. 
 He grew stern, and spoke sometimes with a touch of 
 harshness, in the presence of his difficulties at New 
 York ; because he knew that they were made for him in 
 no small part by Americans who were in the British in 
 terest, and whom he scorned even while scrupulous to 
 be just in what he did to thwart and master them. " It 
 requires more serenity of temper, a deeper understand 
 ing, and more courage than fell to the lot of Marl bor 
 ough to ride in this whirlwind," said John Adams ; and 
 the young commander-in-chief had them all. But his 
 quiet was often that of a metal at white heat, and he 
 kindled a great fire with what he touched. 
 
 No strength of will, however, could suffice to hold 
 New York and its open harbor against a powerful ene 
 my with such troops as Washington could drill and 
 make between April and July. On the 28th of June 
 British transports began to gather in the lower bay. 
 Within a few days they had brought thirty thousand 
 
GENERAL WASHINGTON 189 
 
 men, armed and equipped as no other army had ever 
 been in America. It was impossible to prevent their 
 landing, and they were allowed to take possession of 
 Staten Island unopposed. Men-of-war passed untouched 
 through the Narrows, and made their way at will up the 
 broad Hudson, unhurt by the batteries upon either shore. 
 General Howe remembered Dorchester and Charlestown 
 Heights, and directed his first movement against Wash 
 ington s intrenched position on the hills of Brooklyn, 
 where quite half the American army lay. For a little 
 space he waited, till his brother, Admiral Lord Howe, 
 should come to act with him in negotiation and com 
 mand. Lord Howe was authorized to offer pardon for 
 submission, and very honorably used a month and more 
 of good fighting time in learning that the colonists had 
 no desire to be pardoned. " No doubt we all need par 
 don from Heaven for our manifold sins and transgres 
 sions," was Governor Trumbull s Connecticut version of 
 the general feeling, " but the American who needs the 
 pardon of his Britannic Majesty is yet to be found." 
 On the 22d of August, accordingly, General Howe put 
 twenty thousand men ashore at Gravesend Bay. On 
 the 27th, Ms arrangements for an overwhelming attack 
 succeeding at every point, he drove the five thousand 
 Americans thrown out to oppose him back into their 
 works upon the heights, with a loss of four hundred 
 killed and wounded and a thousand taken. Still mind 
 ful of Bunker s Hill, he would not storm the intrench- 
 ments, to which Washington himself had brought rein 
 forcements which swelled his strength upon the heights 
 to ten thousand. He determined, instead, to draw lines 
 of siege about them, and at his leisure take army, posi 
 tion, stores, and all. Washington, seeing at once what 
 
190 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 Howe intended, and how possible it was, decided to 
 withdraw immediately, before a fleet should be in the 
 river and his retreat cut off. It was a masterly piece of 
 work. The British commander was as much astounded 
 to see Brooklyn Heights empty on the morning of Au 
 gust 30th as he had been to see Dorchester Heights oc 
 cupied that memorable morning six months before. 
 Washington had taken ten thousand men across that 
 broad river, with all their stores and arms, in a single 
 night, while a small guard kept up a sharp fire from the 
 breastworks, and no sound of the retreat reached the 
 dull ears of the British sentries. 
 
 But the sharp fighting and bitter defeat of the 27th had 
 sadly, even shamefully, demoralized Washington s raw 
 troops, and he knew he must withdraw from New York. 
 All through September and a part of October he held 
 what he could of the island, fighting for it almost mile 
 by mile as he withdrew now cut to the quick and 
 aflame with almost uncontrollable anger to see what 
 cowards his men could be ; again heartened to see them 
 stand and hold their ground like men, even in the open. 
 The most that he could do was to check and thwart the 
 powerful army pressing steadily upon his front and the 
 free fleet threatening his flanks. He repulsed the ene 
 my at Harlem Heights (September 16th) ; he kept his 
 ground before them at White Plains, despite the loss of 
 an outpost at Chatterton Hill (October 28th); he might 
 possibly have foiled and harassed them the winter 
 through had not General Greene suffered a garrison of 
 three thousand of the best-trained men in the army to 
 be penned up and taken, with a great store of artillery 
 and small-arms besides, in Fort Washington, on the isl 
 and (November 16th). After such a blow there was 
 
GENERAL WASHINGTON 191 
 
 nothing for it but to abandon the Hudson and retreat 
 through New Jersey. His generals growing insubordi 
 nate, Washington could not even collect his divisions and 
 unite his forces in retreat. His men deserted by the 
 score ; whole companies took their way homeward as 
 their terms of enlistment expired with the closing of the 
 year ; barely three thousand men remained with him by 
 the time he had reached Princeton. Congress, in its 
 fright, removed to Baltimore ; hundreds of persons hur 
 ried to take the oath of allegiance upon Howe s offer of 
 pardon ; and the British commanders deemed the rebel 
 lion at an end. 
 
 They did not understand the man they were fighting. 
 "When he had put the broad Delaware between his 
 dwindling regiments and the British at his heels, he 
 stopped, undaunted, to collect force and give his oppo 
 nents a taste of his quality. Such an exigency only stif 
 fened his temper, and added a touch of daring to his 
 spirit. Charles Lee, his second in command, hoping to 
 make some stroke for himself upon the Hudson, had 
 withheld full half the army in a safe post upon the river, 
 in direct disobedience to orders, while the British drove 
 Washington southward through New Jersey; but Lee 
 was now happily in the hands of the enemy, taken at an 
 unguarded tavern where he lodged, and most of the 
 troops he had withheld found their way at last to Wash 
 ington beyond the Delaware. Desperate efforts at re 
 cruiting were made. Washington strained his authority 
 to the utmost to keep and equip his force, and excused 
 himself to congress very nobly. " A character to lose," 
 he said, " an estate to forfeit, the inestimable blessing of 
 liberty at stake, and a life devoted must be my excuse." 
 What he planned and did won him a character with his 
 
192 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 foes. Before the year was out he had collected six 
 thousand men, and was ready to strike a blow at the 
 weak, extended line Hessian mercenaries for the most 
 part which Howe had left to hold the Delaware. 
 
 On Christmas Day he made his advance, and ordered 
 a crossing to be made in three divisions, under cover of 
 the night. Only his own division, twenty-five hundred 
 strong, effected the passage. Twas ten hours perilous 
 work to cross the storm-swept river in the pitchy dark 
 ness, amidst the hazards of floating ice, but not a man 
 or a gun was lost. There was a nine miles march 
 through driving snow and sleet after the landing before 
 Trenton could be reached, the point of attack, and two 
 men were frozen to death as they went. General Sulli 
 van sent word that the guns were wet : " Tell him to 
 use the bayonet," said Washington, "for the town must 
 be taken." And it was taken in the early morning, at 
 the point of the bayonet, with a loss of but two or three 
 men. The surprise was complete. Colonel Kahl, the 
 commander of the place, was mortally wounded at the 
 first onset, and nine hundred Hessians surrendered at 
 discretion. 
 
 When he had gotten his prisoners safe on the south 
 side of the river, Washington once more advanced to oc 
 cupy the town. It was a perilous place to be, no doubt, 
 with the great unbridged stream behind him ; but the 
 enemy s line was everywhere broken, now that its cen 
 tre had been taken ; had been withdrawn from the 
 river in haste, abandoning its cannon even and its 
 baggage at Burlington ; and Washington calmly dared 
 to play the game he had planned. It was not Howe 
 who came to meet him, but the gallant Cornwallis, no 
 mean adversary, bringing eight thousand men. Wash- 
 
GENERAL WASHINGTON 193 
 
 ington let him come all the way to the Delaware with 
 out himself stirring, except to put a small tributary 
 stream between his men and the advancing columns; 
 and the confident Englishman went to bed that night 
 exclaiming, " At last we have run down the old fox, 
 and we ll bag him in the morning." Then, while a 
 small force kept the camp-fires burning and worked 
 audibly at the ramparts the cold night through, the 
 fox was up and away. He put the whole of his force 
 upon the road to Princeton and New Brunswick, where 
 he knew Cornwallis s stores must be. As the morning s 
 light broadened into day (January 3d, 1777) he met the 
 British detachment at Princeton in the way, and drove 
 it back in decisive rout, a keen ardor coming into his 
 blood as he saw the sharp work done. "An old-fash 
 ioned Virginia fox-hunt, gentlemen," he exclaimed, 
 shouting the view -halloo. Had his troops been fresh 
 and properly shod to outstrip Cornwallis at their heels, 
 he would have pressed on to New Brunswick and taken 
 the stores there; but he had done all that could be done 
 with despatch, and withdrew straight to the heights 
 of Morristown. Cornwallis could only hasten back to 
 New York. By the end of the month the Americans 
 were everywhere afoot ; the British held no posts in 
 New Jersey but Paulus Hook, Amboy, and New Bruns 
 wick ; and Washington had issued a proclamation com 
 manding all who had accepted General Howe s offer of 
 pardon either to withdraw within the British lines or 
 to take oath of allegiance to the United States. Men 
 loved to tell afterwards how Frederick the Great had 
 said that it was the most brilliant campaign of the cen 
 tury. 
 
 Congress took steps before the winter was over to 
 
 e> 
 13 
 
194 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 secure long enlistments, and substitute a veritable army 
 for the three months levies with which Washington 
 had hitherto been struggling to make shift. After the 
 affair at Trenton, Washington had been obliged to 
 pledge his own private fortune for their pay to induce 
 the men whose terms of enlistment were to expire on 
 New Year s Day more than half his force to stay 
 with him but a few weeks more, till his plan should be 
 executed. Now he was authorized to raise regiments 
 enlisted till the war should end, and to exercise almost 
 dictatorial powers in everything that might affect the 
 discipline, provisioning, and success of his army. There 
 was need, for the year witnessed fighting of tremendous 
 consequence. The British struck for nothing less than 
 complete possession of the whole State of New York, 
 throughout the valleys of the Hudson and the Mohawk. 
 General Howe, who had above twenty thousand men 
 in New York city, was to move up the Hudson ; Gen 
 eral Burgoyne, with eight thousand men, from Canada 
 down Lake Champlain ; Colonel St. Leger, with a small 
 but sufficient force, down into the valley of the Mo 
 hawk, striking from Oswego, on Ontario ; and the col 
 onies were to be cut in twain, New England hopeless 
 ly separated from her confederates, by the converging 
 sweep of three armies, aggregating more than thirty- 
 three thousand men. But only the coast country, it 
 turned out, was tenable ground for British troops. Sir 
 Guy Carleton had attempted Champlain out of Canada 
 the year before, and had gone back to Quebec without 
 touching Ticonderoga, so disconcerted had he been by 
 the price he had had to pay for his passage up the lake 
 to a small force and an extemporized fleet under Ben 
 edict Arnold. This time Burgoyne, with his splendid 
 
GENERAL WASHINGTON 195 
 
 army, made short work of Ticonderoga (July, 1777), 
 and drove General Schuyler and his army back to their 
 posts beyond the Hudson ; but the farther he got from 
 his base upon the lake into the vast forests of that wide 
 frontier, the more certainly did he approach disaster. 
 No succor came. St. Leger was baffled, and sent in 
 panic back the way he had come. Howe did not ascend 
 the river. The country swarmed with gathering mili 
 tia. They would not volunteer for distant campaigns ; 
 but this invading host, marching by their very homes 
 into the deep forest, roused and tempted them as they 
 had been roused at Concord, and they gathered at its 
 rear and upon its flanks as they had run together to in 
 vest Boston. A thousand men Burgoyne felt obliged 
 to leave in garrison at Ticonderoga; a thousand more, 
 sent to Bennington to seize the stores there, were over 
 whelmed and taken (August 16th). Quite twenty thou 
 sand provincials presently beset him, and he had but six 
 thousand left wherewith to save himself. He crossed 
 the river, for he still expected Howe ; and there was 
 stubborn fighting about Saratoga (September 19th, Oc 
 tober 7th), in which Arnold once more made his name 
 in battle. But the odds were too great; Burgoyne s sup 
 plies were cut off, his troops beaten ; there was nothing 
 for it but capitulation (October 17th). He had been 
 trapped and taken by a rising of the country. 
 
 Howe had not succored him, partly because he lacked 
 judgment and capacity, partly because Washington had 
 thwarted him at every turn. From his position at Mor- 
 ristown, Washington could send reinforcements to the 
 north or recall them at will, without serious delay ; and 
 Howe, in his hesitation, gave him abundant time to do 
 what he would. It was Sir William s purpose to occupy 
 
196 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 the early summer, ere Burgoyne should need him, in an 
 attack on Philadelphia. On the 12th of June, accord 
 ingly, he threw a force of eighteen thousand men into 
 !New Jersey. But Washington foiled him at each at 
 tempt to advance by hanging always upon his flank in 
 such a position that he could neither be safely ignored 
 nor forced to fight ; and the prudent Howe, abandoning 
 the march, withdrew once more to New York. But he 
 did not abandon his project against Philadelphia. He 
 deemed it the "capital" of the insurgent confederacy, 
 and wished to discredit congress and win men of doubt 
 ful allegiance to his standard by its capture; and he 
 reckoned upon some advantage in drawing Washington 
 after him to the southward, away from Burgoyne s field 
 of operations in the north. Though July had come, 
 therefore, and Burgoyne must need him presently, he 
 put his eighteen thousand men aboard the fleet and 
 carried them by sea to the Chesapeake. Washington 
 was sorely puzzled. He had taken it for granted 
 that Howe would go north, and he had gone south! 
 " Howe s in a manner abandoning Burgoyne is so un 
 accountable," he said, " that I cannot help casting my 
 eyes continually behind me ; " and he followed very 
 cautiously, ready upon the moment to turn back, lest 
 the movement should prove a feint. But there was no 
 mistake. Howe entered the Delaware, and, being fright 
 ened thence by reports of obstructions in the river, went 
 all the long four hundred miles about the capes of 
 Chesapeake, and put his army ashore at Elkton for its 
 advance upon Philadelphia. It was then the 25th of 
 August. Washington met him (September llth) behind 
 the fords of the Brandywine, and, unable to check 
 Cornwallis on his flank, was defeated. But for him 
 
GENERAL WASHINGTON 197 
 
 defeat was never rout: his army was still intact and 
 steady ; and he held his foe yet another fortnight on 
 the road ere the "capital" could be entered (September 
 27th). Burgoyne was by that time deep within the net 
 spread for him at Saratoga. On the morning of the 4th 
 of October, in a thick mist, AVashington threw himself 
 upon Howe s main force encamped across the village 
 street of Germantown, and would have overwhelmed it 
 in the surprising onset had not two of his own columns 
 gone astray in the fog, attacked each other, and so lost 
 the moment s opportunity. General Howe knew very 
 soon how barren a success he had had. The end of 
 November came before he had made himself master of 
 the forts upon the Delaware below the " capital " and 
 removed the obstructions from the river to give access 
 to his fleet ; the British power was broken and made an 
 end of in the north ; and Washington was still at hand 
 as menacing and dangerous as ever. Dr. Franklin was 
 told in Paris that General Howe had taken Philadel 
 phia. " Philadelphia has taken Howe," he laughed. 
 
 Philadelphia kept Howe safely through the winter, 
 and his officers made themselves easy amidst a round of 
 gayeties in the complacent town, while Washington 
 went to Valley Forge to face the hardships and the in 
 trigues of a bitter season. A deep demoralization fell 
 that winter, like a blight, upon all the business of the 
 struggling confederacy. The congress, in its exile at 
 York, had lost its tone and its command in affairs. It 
 would have lost it as completely in Philadelphia, no 
 doubt, for it was no longer the body it had been. Its 
 best members were withdrawn to serve their respective 
 states in the critical business, now everywhere in hand, 
 of reorganizing their governments ; and it itself was no 
 
198 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 government at all, but simply a committee of advice, 
 which the states heeded or ignored as they pleased. 
 Oftentimes but ten or twelve members could be got to 
 gether to transact its business. It suffered itself to fall 
 into the hands of intriguers and sectional politicians. 
 It gave commissions in the army not according to merit, 
 but upon a plan carefully devised to advance no more 
 officers from one section than from another even men 
 like John Adams approving. Adams denounced claims 
 of seniority and service as involving " one of the most 
 putrid corruptions of absolute monarchy," and suggest 
 ed that the officers who did not relish the idea of seeing 
 the several states given " a share of the general officers," 
 proportioned to the number of troops they had sent to 
 the army, had better take themselves off, and see how 
 little they would be missed. "Worst of all, an ugly plot 
 was hatched to displace Washington ; and the various 
 distempers of different men for a brief season gave it a 
 chance to succeed. Some were impatient of Washing 
 ton s " Fabian policy," as they called it, and would have 
 had him annihilate, instead of merely checking, these 
 invading hosts. " My toast," cried John Adams, " is a 
 short and violent war." Others envied Washington his 
 power and his growing fame, resented their own subor 
 dination and his supremacy, and intrigued to put Gen 
 eral Gates in his place. Had not Gates won at Sara 
 toga, and Washington lost at the Brandy wine and at 
 Germantown? Schuyler had prepared the victory in 
 the north ; Arnold and Morgan had done the fighting 
 that secured it ; but Gates had obtained the command 
 when all was ready, and was willing to receive the re 
 ward. With a political committee-congress in charge of 
 affairs, nothing was impossible. 
 

\\. 
 
T 
 
 GENERAL WASHINGTON 199 
 
 Washington and his army were starving the while 
 at Valley Forge, in desperate straits to get anything 
 to eat or anything to cover them in that bitter season 
 not because there were no supplies, but because congress 
 had disorganized the commissary department, and the 
 supplies seldom reached the camp. The country had 
 not been too heavily stricken by the war. Abundant 
 crops were ever v where sown and peacefully reaped, and 
 there were men enough to do the work of seed-time and 
 harvest. It was only the army that was suffering for 
 lack of food and lack of men. The naked fact was that 
 the confederacy was falling apart for lack of a govern 
 ment. Local selfishness had overmastered national feel 
 ing, and only a few men like "Washington held the 
 breaking structure together. Washington s steadfast 
 ness was never shaken ; and Mrs. Washington, stanch 
 lady that she was, joined him even at Valley Forge. 
 The intrigue against him he watched in stern silence 
 till it was ripe and evident, then he crushed it with 
 sudden exposure, and turned away in contempt, hardly 
 so much as mentioning it in his letters to his friends. 
 " Their own artless zeal to advance their views has 
 destroyed them," he said. His soldiers he succored and 
 supplied as he could, himself sharing their privations, 
 and earning their love as he served them. " Naked and 
 starving as they are," he wrote, " we cannot sufficiently 
 admire the incomparable patience and fidelity of the 
 soldiers." And even out of that grievous winter some 
 profit was wrung. Handsome sums of French money 
 had begun of late to come slowly into the confederate 
 treasury for France, for the nonce, was quick with 
 sympathy for America, and glad to lend secret aid 
 against an old foe. Presently, she promised, she would 
 
200 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 recognize the independence of the United States, and 
 herself grapple once more with England. Meanwhile 
 French, German, and Polish officers hurried over sea 
 to serve as volunteers with the raw armies of the con 
 federacy adventurers, some of them; others sober 
 veterans, gentlemen of fortune, men of generous and 
 noble quality among the rest the boyish Lafayette 
 and the distinguished Steuben. Baron von Steuben 
 had won himself a place on the great Frederick s staff 
 in the Seven Years War, and was of that studious race 
 of soldiers the world was presently to learn to fear. He 
 joined Washington at Yalley Forge, and turned the 
 desolate camp into a training-school of arms, teaching, 
 what these troops had never known before, promptness 
 and precision in the manual of arms, in massed and 
 ordered movement, in the use of the bayonet, the drill 
 and mastery of the charge and of the open field. Nei 
 ther Washington nor any of his officers had known how 
 to give this training. The commander-in-chief had not 
 even had a properly organized staff till this schooled 
 and thorough German supplied it, and he was valued 
 in the camp as he deserved. " You say to your soldier, 
 6 Do this, and he doeth it," he wrote to an old comrade 
 in Prussia ; " I am obliged to say to mine, This is the 
 reason why you ought to do that, and then he does 
 it." But he learned to like and to admire his new com 
 rades soon enough when he found what spirit and 
 capacity there was in them for the field of action. 
 
 The army came out of its dismal winter quarters 
 stronger than it had ever been before, alike in spirit 
 and in discipline ; more devoted to its commander than 
 ever, and more fit to serve him. At last the change to 
 a system of long enlistments had transformed it from 
 
WASHINGTON AND STEUBEN AT VALLEY FORGE 
 
GENERAL WASHINGTON 201 
 
 a levy of militia into an army steadied by service, un 
 afraid of the field. The year opened, besides, with a 
 new hope and a new confidence. They were no longer 
 a body of insurgents even to the eye of Europe. News 
 came to the camp late in the night of the 4th of May 
 (1778) that France had entered into open alliance with 
 the United States, and would send fleets and an army 
 to aid in securing their independence. Such an alliance 
 changed the whole face of affairs. England would no 
 longer have the undisputed freedom of the seas, and 
 the conquest of her colonies in America might turn out 
 the least part of her task in the presence of European 
 enemies. She now knew the full significance of Sara 
 toga and Germantown. "Washington s splendid audac 
 ity and extraordinary command of his resources in 
 throwing himself upon his victorious antagonist at Ger 
 mantown as the closing move of a long retreat had 
 touched the imagination and won the confidence of for 
 eign soldiers and statesmen hardly less than the taking 
 of Burgoyne at Saratoga. Parliament at last (Febru 
 ary, 1778) came to its senses : resolved to renounce the 
 right to tax the colonies, except for the regulation of 
 trade, and sent commissioners to America to offer such 
 terms for submission. But it was too late ; neither con 
 gress nor the states would now hear of anything but 
 independence. 
 
 With a French fleet about to take the sea, it was 
 necessary that the British commanders in America 
 should concentrate their forces. Philadelphia, they had 
 at last found out, was a burden, not a prize. It had 
 no strategic advantage of position ; was hard to defend, 
 and harder to provision ; was too far from the sea, and 
 not far enough from Washington s open lines of opera- 
 
202 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 tion. Before the summer s campaign began, Sir Wil 
 liam Howe resigned his command and bade the town 
 good-bye, amidst elaborate festivities (May 18th, 1778). 
 General Clinton, who succeeded him, received orders 
 from England to undo Howe s work at once, abandon 
 Philadelphia, and concentrate his forces at New York. 
 Twas easier said than done. There were not transports 
 enough to move his fifteen thousand men by sea ; only 
 the three thousand loyalists who had put themselves 
 under his protection could be sent in the ships, with a 
 portion of his stores ; he must cross the hostile country ; 
 and his march was scarcely begun (June 18th) before 
 Washington was at his heels, with a force but little 
 inferior to his own either in numbers or in discipline. 
 He might never have reached New York at all had 
 not Charles Lee been once more second in command in 
 the American army. He had come out of captivity, 
 exchanged, and now proved himself the insubordinate 
 poltroon he was. He had never had any real heart in 
 the cause. He owned estates in Virginia, but he was 
 not of the great Virginian family of the Northern Neck. 
 He was only a soldier of fortune, strayed out of the 
 British service on half-pay to seek some profit in the 
 colonies, and cared for no interest but his own. While 
 a prisoner he had secretly directed Howe s movement 
 against Philadelphia, and now he was to consummate 
 his cowardly treachery. Washington outstripped his 
 opponent in the movement upon New York, and deter 
 mined to fall upon him at Mon mouth Court House, 
 where, on the night of the 27th of June, Clinton s divis 
 ions lay separate, offering a chance to cut them asun 
 der. On the morning of the 28th, Lee was ordered 
 forward with six thousand men to enfold Clinton s left 
 
GENERAL WASHINGTON 203 
 
 wing eight thousand men, the flower of the British 
 force by gaining its flank, while Washington held his 
 main body ready to strike in his aid at the right mo 
 ment. The movement was perfectly successful, and 
 the fighting had begun, when, to the amazement and 
 chagrin alike of officers and men, Lee began to with 
 draw. Lafayette sent a messenger hot-foot for Wash 
 ington, who rode up to find his men, not attacking, but 
 pursued. " What is the meaning of all this ?" he thun 
 dered, his wrath terrible to see. When Lee would have 
 made some excuse, he hotly cursed him, in his fury, for 
 a coward, himself rallied the willing troops, and led 
 them forward again to a victory : won back the field 
 Lee had abandoned, and drove the enemy to the cover 
 of a morass. In the night that followed, Clinton hastily 
 withdrew, leaving even his wounded behind him, and 
 Washington s chance to crush him was gone. 
 
 " Clinton gained no advantage except to reach New 
 York with the wreck of his army," commented the ob 
 servant Frederick over sea ; " America is probably lost 
 for England." But a great opportunity had been treach 
 erously thrown away, and the war dragged henceforth 
 with every painful trial of hope deferred. A scant three 
 weeks after Clinton had reached New York, the Count 
 d Estaing was off Sandy Hook, with a French fleet of 
 twelve ships of the line and six frigates, bringing four 
 thousand troops. The British fleet within the harbor 
 was barely half as strong ; but the pilots told the cau 
 tious Frenchman that his larger ships could not cross 
 the bar, and he turned away from New York to strike 
 at Newport, the only other point now held by the Brit 
 ish in all the country. That place had hardly been in 
 vested, however, when Lord Howe appeared with a 
 
204 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 stronger fleet than the French. D Estaing was obliged 
 to draw off to meet him ; a great storm sent both fleets 
 into port to refit instead of to fight ; and the disgusted 
 militia-men and continentals, who had come to take the 
 town with the French, withdrew in high choler to see 
 the fleet, without which they could do nothing, taken 
 off to Boston. When the autumn came Clinton felt 
 free to send thirty- five hundred men to the Southern 
 coast, and Savannah was taken (December 29th, 1778). 
 Only in the far West, at the depths of the great wilder 
 ness beyond the mountains, was anything done that 
 promised decisive advantage. George Kogers Clark, 
 that daring Saxon frontiersman, who moved so like a 
 king through the far forests, swept the whole country 
 of the Illinois free from British soldiers and British au 
 thority that winter of 177S-9, annexing it to the states 
 that meant to be independent ; and a steady stream of 
 immigration began to pour into the opened country, as 
 if to prepare a still deeper task of conquest for the Brit 
 ish at far New York. 
 
 But few noted in the East what gallant men were do 
 ing in the valley of the Mississippi. They saw only 
 that the British, foiled in New England and the middle 
 colonies, had changed their plans, and were now minded 
 to try what could be done in the South. There at last 
 their campaigns seemed about to yield them something. 
 Savannah taken, they had little trouble in overrunning 
 Georgia, and every effort to dislodge them failed ; for 
 Washington could not withdraw his army from before 
 Clinton at New York. Spain joined France in offensive 
 alliance in April, 1779 ; in August a combined French 
 and Spanish fleet attempted an invasion of England ; all 
 Europe seemed about to turn upon the stout little king- 
 
GENERAL WASHINGTON 205 
 
 dom in its unanimous fear and hatred of her arrogant 
 supremacy upon the seas. Everywhere there was war 
 upon the ocean highways even America sending forth 
 men of desperate valor, like John Paul Jones, to ravage 
 and challenge Britain upon her very coasts. But Eng 
 land s spirit only rose with the danger, and Washington 
 waited all the weary year through for his French allies. 
 In 1780 it looked for a little as if the British were in 
 deed turned victors. In the spring Clinton withdrew 
 the force that had held Newport to New York, and, 
 leaving General Knyphausen there with a powerful 
 force to keep Washington and the city, carried eight 
 thousand men southward to take Charleston. There 
 were forces already in the South sufficient to swell his 
 army to ten thousand ere he invested the fated town ; 
 and on the 12th of May (1780) it fell into his hands, 
 with General Lincoln and three thousand prisoners. 
 Washington had sent such succor as he could, but the 
 British force was overwhelming, and South Carolina 
 was lost. South Carolina teemed with loyalists. The 
 whole country was swept and harried by partisan bands. 
 The men who should have swelled General Lincoln s 
 force knew not when their homes might be plundered 
 and destroyed, if they were to leave them. The planters 
 of the low country dared not stir for fear of an insur 
 rection of their slaves. In June, Clinton could take half 
 his force back to New York, deeming the work done. 
 General Gates completed the disastrous record. On the 
 13th of June he was given chief command in the South, 
 and was told that the country expected another "Bur- 
 goynade." His force was above three thousand, and he 
 struck his blow, as he should, at Camden, where Corn- 
 wallis had but two thousand men, albeit trained and 
 
206 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 veteran troops ; but the end was total, shameful rout 
 (August 16th, 1780), and men knew at last the incapacity 
 of their " hero of Saratoga." " We look on America as 
 at our feet," said Horace Walpole. 
 
 Certainly things looked desperate enough that dark 
 year. The congress was sinking into a more and more 
 helpless inefficiency. Definitive articles of confederation 
 had been submitted to the states nearly three years ago 
 (November, 1777), but they had not been adopted yet, 
 and the states had almost ceased to heed the requisitions 
 of the congress at all. Unable to tax, it paid its bills 
 and the wages of its troops in paper, which so rapidly 
 fell in value that by the time the hopeless year 1780 was 
 out, men in the ranks found a month s pay too little 
 with which to buy even a single bushel of wheat. 
 Washington was obliged to levy supplies from the coun 
 try round him to feed his army ; and in spite of their 
 stanch loyalty to him, his men grew mutinous, in sheer 
 disgust with the weak and faithless government they 
 were expected to serve. Wholesale desertion began, as 
 many as one hundred men a month going over to the 
 enemy, to get at least pay and food and clothing. The 
 country seemed not so much dismayed as worn out and 
 indifferent ; weary of waiting and hoping ; looking stol 
 idly to see the end come. Washington was helpless. 
 Without the co-operation of a naval force, it was impos 
 sible to do more than hold the British in New York. 
 France, it was true, was bestirring herself again. On 
 the 10th of July a French fleet put in at Newport and 
 landed a force of six thousand men, under Count Ko- 
 chambeau, a most sensible and capable officer, who was 
 directed to join Washington and put himself entirely 
 under his command. But a powerful British fleet pres- 
 
GENERAL WASHINGTON 207 
 
 ently made its appearance in the Sound ; the French ad 
 miral dared not stir; Rochambeau dared not leave him 
 without succor; and the reinforcements that were to 
 have followed out of France were blockaded in the har 
 bor of Brest. 
 
 Then, while things stood so, treason was added. Bene 
 dict Arnold, the man whom "Washington trusted with a 
 deep affection, and whom the army loved for his gal 
 lantry, entered into correspondence with the enemy ; 
 arranged to give West Point and the posts dependent 
 upon it into their hands ; and, his treason suddenly de 
 tected, escaped without punishment to the British sloop 
 of war that waited in the river for the British agent in 
 
 o 
 
 the plot. Washington was at hand when the discovery 
 was made. His aides were breakfasting with Arnold 
 when the traitor was handed the note which told him 
 he was found out ; and Arnold had scarcely excused 
 himself and made good his flight when the commander- 
 in-chief reached the house. When Washington learned 
 what had happened, it smote him so that mighty sobs 
 burst from him, as if his great heart would break ; and 
 all the night through the guard could hear him pac 
 ing his room endlessly, in a lonely vigil with his bit 
 ter thoughts. He did not in his own grief forget the 
 stricken wife upstairs. " Go to Mrs. Arnold," he said to 
 one of his officers, " and tell her that, though my duty 
 required that no means should be neglected to arrest 
 General Arnold, I have great pleasure in acquainting 
 her that he is now safe on board a British vessel." 
 Arnold had deemed himself wronged and insulted by 
 congress but what officer that Washington trusted 
 might not? Who could be confided in if such men 
 turned traitors ? 
 
208 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 But a sudden turning of affairs marked the close of 
 the year. Cornwallis had penetrated too far into the 
 Carolinas ; had advanced into North Carolina, and was 
 beset, as Burgoyne had been, by a rising of the county. 
 He lost twelve hundred men at King s Mountain (Octo 
 ber 7th, 1780), as Burgoyne had lost a thousand at Ben- 
 nington; and everywhere, as he moved, he found him 
 self checked by the best officers the long war had bred 
 Nathanael Greene, who had been Washington s right 
 hand the Avar through ; Henry Lee, the daring master 
 of cavalry, whom Washington loved ; the veteran Steu- 
 ben ; Morgan, who had won Saratoga with Arnold ; 
 and partisan leaders a score, whom he had learned to 
 dread in that wide forested country. He was outgener- 
 alled ; his forces were taken in detail and beaten, and 
 he himself was forced at last into Virginia. By mid 
 summer, 1781, all his interior posts were lost, and he 
 was cut off from Charleston and Savannah by a country 
 he dared not cross again. In Virginia, though at first 
 he raided as he pleased, he was checked more and more 
 as the season advanced by a growing force under Lafay 
 ette ; and by the first week in August he had taken 
 counsel of prudence, and established himself, seven thou 
 sand strong, at Yorktown, near the sea, his base of sup 
 plies. Then it was that Washington struck the blow 
 which ended the war. At last Eochambeau was free to 
 move ; at last a French fleet was at hand to block the 
 free passage of the sea. The Count de Grasse, with 
 twenty-eight ships of the line, six frigates, and twenty 
 thousand men, was in the West Indies, and in August 
 sent word to Washington that he was about to bring 
 his whole fleet to the Chesapeake, as Washington had 
 urged. Either the Chesapeake or New York, had been 
 
**; 
 
 THE ESCAPE OF ARNOLD 
 
GENERAL WASHINGTON 
 
 209 
 
 Washington s prayer to him. Making as if he were but 
 moving about New York from north to south for some 
 advantage of position, "Washington suddenly took two 
 thousand Continentals and four thousand Frenchmen, 
 under Rochambeau, all the long four hundred miles to 
 York River in Virginia, to find Cornwallis already en 
 trapped there, as he had planned, between Grasse s fleet 
 in the bay and Lafayette intrenched across the peninsu 
 la with eight thousand men, now the French had loaned 
 him three thousand. A few weeks siege and the de 
 cisive work was done, to the admiration of Cornwallis 
 himself. The British army was taken. The generous 
 Englishman could not withhold an expression of his ad 
 miration for the extraordinary skill with which Wash 
 ington had struck all the way from New York with six 
 thousand men as easily as if with six hundred. " But, 
 after all," he added, " your Excellency s achievements in 
 New Jersey were such that nothing could surpass 
 them." 
 
THE STEESS OF YICTOKY 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE victory at Yorktown brought neither peace nor 
 ease in affairs. The revolution was indeed accomplished 
 that every man could see who had the candor to 
 look facts in the face ; but its accomplishment brought 
 tasks harder even than the tasks of war. Hostilities 
 slackened were almost wholly done with before an 
 other spring had come. No more troops came over sea. 
 The ministry in England were discredited and ousted. 
 Every one knew that the proud mother country must 
 yield, for all her stout defiance of the world. But a long 
 year dragged by, nevertheless, before even preliminary 
 articles of accommodation were signed; and still an 
 other before definitive peace came, with independence 
 and the full fruits of victory. Meanwhile there was an 
 army to be maintained, despite desperate incompetence 
 on the part of the congress and a hopeless indifference 
 among the people ; and a government to be kept pre- 
 sentably afoot, despite lack of money and lack of men. 
 The Articles of Confederation proposed at the heart 
 of the war-time (November 15th, 1777) had at last been 
 adopted (March 1st, 1781), in season to create at least 
 a government which could sign treaties and conclude 
 wars, but neither soon enough nor wisely enough to 
 bring order out of chaos. The states, glad to think the 
 war over, would do nothing for the army, nothing for 
 
214 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 the public credit, nothing even for the maintenance of 
 order ; and the Articles of Confederation only gave the 
 congress written warranty for offering advice : they did 
 not make its shadowy powers real. 
 
 It was beyond measure fortunate that at such a crit 
 ical time as this Washington still kept his command, 
 still held affairs under the steady pressure of his will. 
 His successes had at last given him a place of authority 
 in the thoughts and affections of his countrymen in 
 some sort commensurate with his capacity and his vision 
 in affairs. He had risen to a very safe footing of power 
 among all the people as the war drew towards its close, 
 filling their imaginations, and reigning among them as 
 securely as among his troops, who for so long had felt 
 his will wrought upon them day by day. His very re 
 serve, and the large dignity and pride of his stately 
 bearing, made him seem the more like a hero in the 
 people s eyes. They could understand a man made in 
 this ample and simple kind, give them but time enough 
 to see him in his full proportions. It answered to their 
 thought of him to find him too proud to dissemble, too 
 masterful to brook unreasonable faults, and yet slow to 
 grow impatient, though he must wait a whole twelve 
 month to see a plan mature, or coax a half-score states 
 to get a purpose made good. And they could not deem 
 him cold, though they found him self-possessed, keeping 
 his own counsel ; for was not the country full of talk 
 how passionately he was like to act at a moment of 
 crisis and in the field? They only feared to lose a lead 
 er so reckless of himself -when danger was sharpest. 
 " Our army love their general very much," one of his 
 officers had said, " but they have one thing against him, 
 which is the little care he takes of himself in any 
 
THE STRESS OF VICTORY 215 
 
 action "; for he had seen how Washington pressed at 
 Trenton and at Princeton to the points that were most 
 exposed, thinking of his troops, not of himself. The 
 spirit of fight had run high in him the whole war 
 through. Even during those dismal weeks of 1776, 
 when affairs looked darkest, and he had but a handful 
 of men about him as he all but fled before Howe 
 through New Jersey, he had spoken, as if in the very 
 pleasantry of daring, of what he would do should things 
 come to the worst with him. His thought turned to 
 those western fastnesses he knew so well, where the 
 highlands of his own state lay, and he spoke calmly of 
 a desperate venture thither. " Keed," he exclaimed, to 
 one of his aides, " my neck does not feel as though it 
 was made for a halter. We must retire to Augusta 
 County, in Virginia, and if overpowered, must pass the 
 Alleghany Mountains." And when the last movement 
 of the war came, it was still with the same feeling that 
 he drew his lines about Cornwallis. " We may be 
 beaten by the English," he said ; " it is the chance of 
 war ; but there is the army they will never conquer." 
 
 " The privates are all generals, but not soldiers," the 
 gallant Montgomery had cried, in his hot impatience 
 with the heady militia-men he was bidden command ; 
 but it was not so in the presence of Washington, when 
 once these men had taken his measure. They were 
 then "rivals in praising him," the Abbe Robin de 
 clared, " fearing him even when he was silent, and re 
 taining their full confidence in him after defeats and 
 disgrace." The singular majesty and poise of this revo 
 lutionary hero struck the French officers as infinitely 
 more remarkable than his mastery in the field and his 
 ascendency in council. They had looked to find him 
 
216 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 great in action, but they had not thought to see in him 
 a great gentleman, a man after their own kind in grace 
 and courtesy and tact, and yet so lifted above the man 
 ner of courts and drawing-rooms by an incommunicable 
 quality of grave sincerity which they were at a loss how 
 to describe. No one could tell whether it were a gift of 
 the mind or of the heart. It was certain only that it 
 constituted the atmosphere and apotheosis of the man. 
 The Marquis de Chastellux noted, with a sort of rev 
 erent awe for this hero not yet turned of fifty, how 
 perfect a union reigned between his physical and moral 
 qualities. " One alone," he declared, " will enable you 
 to judge of all the rest." " It is not my intention to 
 exaggerate," he said ; " I wish only to express my im 
 pression of a perfect whole, which cannot be the prod 
 uct of enthusiasm, since the effect of proportion is 
 rather to diminish the idea of greatness." 
 
 Strangers who had noted his appearance in the earlier 
 years of the war had remarked the spirit and life that 
 sat in Washington s eyes : but when the war was over, 
 and its strain relaxed, they found those eyes grown 
 pensive, " more attentive than sparkling "; steady still, 
 and noble in their frankness and good feeling, but 
 touched a little with care, dimmed with watching. The 
 Prince de Broglie found him "still as fresh and active 
 as a young man " in 1782, but thought " he must have 
 been much handsomer three years ago," for " the gen 
 tlemen who had remained with him during all that 
 time said that he seemed to have grown much older." 
 Twould have been no marvel had he broken under the 
 burden he had carried, athletic soldier and hardened 
 campaigner though he was. " This is the seventh year 
 that he has commanded the army and that he has 
 
THE STRESS OF VICTORY 217 
 
 obeyed the congress : more need not be said," the Mar 
 quis de Chastellux declared, unconsciously uttering a 
 very bitter gibe against the government, when he 
 meant only to praise its general. 
 
 Such service told the more heavily upon Washington 
 because he had rendered it in silence. No man among 
 all the Revolutionary leaders, it is true, had been more 
 at the desk than he. Letters of command and persua 
 sion, reports that carried every detail of the army s life 
 and hopes in their careful phrases, orders of urgency 
 and of provident arrangement, writings of any and 
 every sort that might keep the hard war afoot, he had 
 poured forth incessantly, and as if incapable of fatigue 
 or discouragement. No one who was under orders, no 
 man who could lend the service a hand or take a turn at 
 counsel, was likely to escape seeing the commander-in- 
 chief s handwriting often enough to keep him in mind 
 of his tireless power to foresee and to direct. Washing 
 ton seemed present in every transaction of the war. 
 And yet always and to every one he seemed a silent 
 man. What he said and what he wrote never touched 
 himself. He spoke seldom of motives, always of what 
 was to be done and considered ; and even his secre 
 taries, though they handled the multitude of his papers, 
 were left oftentimes to wonder and speculate about the 
 man himself so frank and yet so reserved, so straight 
 forward and simple and yet so proud and self-contained, 
 revealing powers, but somehow not revealing himself. 
 It must have seemed at times to those who followed 
 him and pondered what they saw that he had caught 
 from Nature her own manner while he took his breed 
 ing as a boy and his preparation as a man amidst the 
 forests of a wild frontier; that his character spoke in 
 
218 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 what he did and without self -consciousness; that he 
 had no moods but those of action. 
 
 Nor did men know him for what he really was until 
 the war was over. His own officers then found they 
 had something more to learn of the man they had 
 fought under for six years and those six, all of them, 
 years such as lay bare the characters of men. What 
 remained to be done during the two trying, anxious 
 years 1Y82 and 1783 seemed as if intended for a supreme 
 and final test of the qualities of the man whose genius 
 and character had made the Eevolution possible. " At 
 the end of a long civil war," said the Marquis de Chas- 
 tellux, with a noble pride for his friend, " he had noth 
 ing with which he could reproach himself " ; but it was 
 these last years which were to crown this perfect praise 
 with its full meaning. In the absence of any real gov 
 ernment, Washington proved almost the only prop of 
 authority and law. What the crisis was no one knew 
 quite so thoroughly or so particularly as he. It con 
 sisted in the ominous fact that the army was the only 
 organized and central power in the country, and that 
 it had deep reason for discontent and insubordination. 
 When once it had served its purpose greatly at York- 
 town, and the war seemed ended at a stroke, the coun 
 try turned from it in indifference left it without money ; 
 talked of disbanding it without further ceremony, and 
 with no provision made for arrears of pay; seemed 
 almost to challenge it to indignation and mutiny. It 
 was necessary, for every reason of prudence and good 
 statesmanship, to keep the army still upon a Avar footing. 
 There were sure signs of peace, no doubt, but no man 
 could foretell what might be the course of politics ere 
 England should have compounded her quarrel with 
 
THE BUST 13 Y ECKSTEIN 
 
 (Owned by Frederick McGuire, Esq., Washington) 
 
THE STRESS OF VICTORY 219 
 
 France and Spain, and ended the wars with which the 
 ^Revolution had become inextricably involved. Twere 
 folly to leave the English army at New York unchecked. 
 Premature confidence that peace had come might bring 
 some sudden disaster of arms, should the enemy take 
 the field again. The army must be ready to fight, if 
 only to make fighting unnecessary. Washington would 
 have assumed the offensive again, would have crushed 
 Clinton where he lay in New York ; and the congress 
 was not slack as slackness was counted there in sus 
 taining his counsels. But the congress had no power 
 to raise money ; had no power to command. The 
 states alone could make it possible to tax the country 
 to pay the army : their thirteen governments were the 
 only civil authority, and they took the needs and the 
 discontents of the army very lightly, deemed peace se 
 cure and war expenses unnecessary, and let matters drift 
 as they would. 
 
 They came very near drifting to another revolution 
 a revolution such as politicians had left out of their 
 reckoning, and only "Washington could avert. After 
 Yorktown, Washington spent four months in Philadel 
 phia, helping the congress forward with the business of 
 the winter ; but as March of the new year (1782) drew 
 towards its close, he rejoined the army at New burgh, 
 to resume his watch upon New York. He had been 
 scarcely two months at his post when a letter was 
 placed in his hands which revealed, more fully than any 
 observations of his own could have revealed it, the pass 
 to which affairs had come. The letter was from Colonel 
 Lewis Nicola, an old and respected officer, who stood 
 nearer than did most of his fellow-officers to the com- 
 mander-in-chief in intimacy and affection, and who felt 
 
220 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 it his privilege to speak plainly. The letter was calm 
 in temper, grave and moderate in tone, with something 
 of the gravity and method of a disquisition written 
 upon abstract questions of government ; did not broach 
 its meaning like a revolutionary document. But what 
 it proposed was nothing less, when read between the 
 lines, than that Washington should suffer himself to be 
 made king, and that so an end should be put to the 
 incompetency and ingratitude of a band of weak and 
 futile republics. Washington met the suggestion with 
 a rebuke so direct and overwhelming that Colonel Nicola 
 must himself have wondered how he had ever dared 
 make such a venture. " Be assured, sir," said the indig 
 nant commander, " no occurrence in the course of the 
 war has given me more painful sensations than your in 
 formation of there being such ideas existing in the army. 
 ... I am much at a loss to conceive what part of my 
 conduct could have given encouragement to an address 
 which to me seems big with the greatest mischiefs that 
 can befall my country. If I am not deceived in the 
 knowledge of myself, you could not have found a person 
 to whom your schemes are more disagreeable. . . . Let 
 me conjure you, if you have any regard for your country, 
 concern for yourself or posterity, or respect for me, to 
 banish these thoughts from your mind, and never com 
 municate, as from yourself or any one else, a sentiment 
 of the like nature." He was cut to the quick that his 
 own officers should deem him an adventurer, willing to 
 advance his own pow r er at the expense of the very 
 principles he had fought for. His thought must have 
 gone back at a bound to his old comradeship with his 
 brother Lawrence, with the Fairfaxes, George Mason, 
 and the Lees, and all that free company of gentlemen 
 
THE STRESS OF VICTORY 221 
 
 in the Northern Neck who revered law, loved liberty, 
 and hated a usurper. 
 
 But he could not blink the just complaints and real 
 grievances of the army ; nor did he wish to. Though 
 others were angry after a manner he scorned, no man s 
 grief or indignation was deeper than his that the army 
 should be left penniless after all it had suffered and 
 done, and be threatened, besides, with being turned 
 adrift without reward or hope of provision for the fut 
 ure. " No man possesses a more sincere wish to see 
 ample justice done to the army than I do," he had de 
 clared to Colonel Nicola ; " and as far as my power and 
 influence, in a constitutional way, extend, they shall be 
 employed to the utmost of my abilities to effect it." 
 The pledge was fulfilled in almost every letter he wrote, 
 private or public. He urged the states, as he urged 
 the congress, in season and out of season, to see justice 
 done the men who had won the Kevolution, and whom 
 he loved as if they had been of his own blood. But 
 even his great voice went too long unheeded. " The 
 spirit of party, private interest, slowness, and national 
 indolence slacken, suspend, and overthrow the best con 
 certed measures," the Abbe Robin had observed, upon 
 his first coming with Rochambeau ; and now meas 
 ures were not so much as concerted until a final menace 
 from the army brought the country to its senses. A 
 troubled summer came and went, and another winter of 
 anxious doubt and ineffectual counsel. The very ap 
 proach of peace, as it grew more certain, quickened the 
 angry fears of the army, lest peace should be made a 
 pretext, when it came, to disperse them before their de 
 mands could be driven home upon the demoralized and 
 reluctant government they were learning to despise. 
 
222 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 Another spring and the mischief so long maturing was 
 ripe ; it looked as if even Washington could not prevent 
 it. It had been rumored in Philadelphia, while the 
 winter held, " that the army had secretly determined 
 not to lay down their arms until due provision and a 
 satisfactory prospect should be afforded on the subject 
 of their pay," and that Washington had grown unpop 
 ular among almost all ranks because of his harshness 
 against every unlawful means of securing justice. " His 
 extreme reserve, mixed sometimes with a degree of as 
 perity of temper, both of which were said to have in 
 creased of late, had contributed to the decline of his 
 popularity " so ran the report and it grew every 
 week the more unlikely he could check the treasonable 
 purposes of his men. 
 
 In March, 1783, the mine was sprung ; and then men 
 learned, by a new sign, what power there was in the 
 silent man : how he could handle disaffection and dis 
 arm reproach. An open address was spread broadcast 
 through the camp, calling upon the army to use its 
 power to obtain its rights, and inviting a meeting of the 
 officers to devise a way. " Can you consent to be the 
 only sufferers by this Revolution? ... If you can, . . go, 
 . . carry with you the ridicule, and, what is worse, the 
 pity of the world. Go, starve, and be forgotten. . . . 
 But if you have sense enough to discover, and spirit 
 enough to oppose, tyranny, . . awake ; attend to your 
 situation, and redress yourselves." Such were its kind 
 ling phrases ; and no man need deceive himself with 
 thinking they would go unheeded. Washington showed 
 his tact and mastery by assuming immediate control of 
 the movement, with a sharp rebuke for such a breach 
 of manly propriety and soldierly discipline, but with no 
 
JOHN PARKE CUSTIS, JR. 
 
 (From a miniature in \ 
 
 ssion of General G. W. Custis, Lexington. 
 Virginia) 
 
THE STRESS OF VICTORY 223 
 
 thought to stay a righteous protest. He himself sum 
 moned the officers ; and when they had come together 
 stepped to the desk before them, with no show of anger 
 or offended dignity, but very gravely, with a sort of 
 majesty it moved one strangely to see, and taking a 
 written paper from his pocket, adjusted his spectacles 
 to read it. " Gentlemen," he said, very simply, " you 
 will permit me to put on my spectacles, for I have not 
 only grown gray, but almost blind, in the service of my 
 country." There were wet eyes upon the instant in the 
 room ; no man stirred while he read read words of 
 admonition, of counsel, and of hope which burned at 
 the ear; and when he was done, and had withdrawn, 
 leaving them to do what they would, they did nothing 
 of which he could be ashamed. They spoke manfully, 
 as was right, of what they deemed it just and impera 
 tive the congress should do for them; but they " Re- 
 solved, unanimously, that at the commencement of the 
 present war the officers of the American army engaged 
 in the service of their country from the purest love and 
 attachment to the rights and liberties of human nature, 
 which motives still exist in the highest degree ; and that 
 no circumstances of distress or danger shall induce a 
 conduct that may tend to sully the reputation and glory 
 which they have acquired at the price of their blood 
 and eight years faithful services." 
 
 Washington knew, nevertheless, how black a danger 
 lurked among these distressed men ; did not fail to 
 speak plainly of it to the congress ; and breathed freely 
 again only when the soldiers just demands had at last 
 in some measure been met, by at any rate the proper 
 legislation. He grew weary with longing for peace, 
 when the work seemed done and his thoughts had lei- 
 
224 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 sure to turn towards his home again. But once in all 
 the lengthened days of fighting had he seen Mount 
 Yernon. He had turned aside to spend a night or two 
 there on his way to Yorktown, and he had seen the 
 loved place again for a little after the victory was won. 
 Now, amidst profitless days at Newburgh, or in counsel 
 with the committees of the congress upon business that 
 was never finished, while affairs stood as it were in a 
 sort of paralysis, waiting upon the interminable confer 
 ences of the three powers who haggled over definitive 
 terms of peace at Paris, home seemed to him, in his 
 weariness, more to be desired than ever before. Pri 
 vate griefs had stricken him at the very moment of his 
 triumph. Scarcely had the victory at Yorktown been 
 celebrated when he was called (November, 1781) to the 
 death-bed of Jack Custis, his wayward but dearly loved 
 step-son, and had there to endure the sight of his wife s 
 grief and the young widow s hopeless sorrow added to 
 his own. The two youngest children he claimed for 
 himself, with that wistful fatherly longing that had al 
 ways marked him ; and Mount Yernon seemed to him 
 more like a haven than ever, where to seek rest and 
 solace. The two years he had yet to wait may well 
 have seemed to him the longest of his life, and may 
 have added a touch of their own to what strangers 
 deemed his sternness. 
 
 He had seldom seemed so stern, indeed, as in one 
 incident of those trying months. An officer of the 
 American army had been taken in a skirmish, and the 
 English had permitted a brutal company of loyalists, 
 under one Captain Lippincott, to take him from his 
 prison in New York and wantonly hang him in broad 
 daylight on the heights near Middlefcown. Washington 
 
THE STRESS OF VICTORY 225 
 
 at once notified the British commander that unless the 
 murderers were delivered up to be punished, a British 
 officer would be chosen by lot from among his prisoners 
 to suffer in their stead ; and, when reparation was with 
 held, proceeded without hesitation to carry his threat 
 into execution. The lot fell upon Captain Charles As- 
 gill, an engaging youth of only nineteen, the heir of a 
 great English family. Lady Asgill, the lad s mother, 
 did not stop short of moving the very French court it 
 self to intervene to save her son, and at last the con 
 gress counselled his release, the English commander 
 having disavowed the act of the murderers in whose 
 place he was to suffer, and Washington himself having 
 asked to be directed what he should do. " Captain As 
 gill has been released," "Washington wrote to Yergennes, 
 in answer to the great minister s intercession. a * I have 
 no right to assume any particular merit from the lenient 
 manner in which this disagreeable affair has terminated. 
 But I beg you to believe, sir, that I most sincerely re 
 joice, not only because your humane intentions are grat 
 ified, but because the event accords with the wishes of 
 his Most Christian Majesty." It lifted a great weight 
 from his heart to have the innocent boy go unhurt from 
 his hands, and he wrote almost tenderly to him in ac 
 quainting him with his release ; but it was of his simple 
 nature to have sent the lad to the gallows, nevertheless, 
 had things continued to stand as they were at the first. 
 He was inexorable to check perfidy and vindicate the 
 just rules of war. Men were reminded, while the affair 
 pended, of the hanging of Andre, Arnold s British con 
 federate in treason, and how pitiless the commander-in- 
 chief had seemed in sending the frank, accomplished, 
 lovable gentleman to his disgraceful death, like any 
 
226 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 common spy, granting him not even the favor to be 
 shot, like a soldier. It seemed hard to learn the inflex 
 ible lines upon which that consistent mind worked, as if 
 it had gone to school to Fate. 
 
 But no one deemed him hard or stern, or so much as 
 a thought more or less than human, when at last the 
 British had withdrawn from New York, and he stood 
 amidst his officers in Fraunce s Tavern to say good-bye. 
 He could hardly speak for emotion : he could only lift 
 his glass and say : " With a heart full of love and grati 
 tude, I now take my leave of you, most devoutly wish 
 ing that your latter clays may be as prosperous and 
 happy as your former ones have been glorious and hon 
 orable. ... I cannot come to each of you and take my 
 leave," he said, " but shall be obliged if you will come 
 and take me by the hand." "When General Knox, who 
 stood nearest, approached him, he drew him to him with 
 a sudden impulse and kissed him, and not a soldier 
 among them all went away without an embrace from 
 this man who was deemed cold and distant. After the 
 parting they followed him in silence to Whitehall Ferry, 
 and saw him take boat for his journey. 
 
 And then, standing before the congress at Annapolis 
 to resign his commission, he added the crowning touch 
 of simplicity to his just repute as a man beyond others 
 noble and sincere. " I have now the honor of offering 
 my sincere congratulations to congress," he said, as he 
 stood amidst the august scene they had prepared for 
 him, " and of presenting myself before them to sur 
 render into their hands the trust committed to me, and 
 to claim the indulgence of retiring from the service of 
 my country. Happy in the confirmation of our inde 
 pendence and sovereignty, and pleased with the op- 
 
THE STRESS OF VICTORY 227 
 
 portunity afforded the United States of becoming a 
 respectable nation, I resign with satisfaction the ap 
 pointment I accepted with diffidence a diffidence in 
 my abilities to accomplish so arduous a task, which, 
 however, was superseded by a confidence in the recti 
 tude of our cause, the support of the supreme power of 
 the Union, and the patronage of Heaven. The success 
 ful termination of the war has verified the most sanguine 
 expectations ; and my gratitude for the interposition of 
 Providence and the assistance I have received from my 
 countrymen increases with every review of the momen 
 tous contest. ... I consider it my indispensable duty 
 to close this last solemn act of my official life by com 
 mending the interests of our dearest country to the pro 
 tection of Almighty God, and those who have the super 
 intendence of them to His holy keeping." It was as if 
 spoken on the morrow of the day upon which he accept 
 ed his commission : the same diffidence, the same trust 
 in a power greater and higher than his own. The 
 plaudits that had but just now filled his ears at every 
 stage of his long journey from JSTew York seemed utterly 
 forgotten ; he seemed not to know how his fellow coun 
 trymen had made of him an idol and a hero ; his simplic 
 ity was once again his authentic badge of genuineness. 
 He kne\v, it would seem, no other way in which to act. 
 A little child remembered afterwards how he had prayed 
 at her father s house upon the eve of battle ; how he had 
 taken scripture out of Joshua, and had cried, " The Lord 
 God of gods, the Lord God of gods, He knoweth, and 
 Israel he shall know; if it be in rebellion, or if in trans 
 gression against the Lord (save us not this day)." There 
 was here the same note of solemnity and of self-forget 
 ful devotion, as if duty and honor were alike inevitable. 
 
228 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 On Christmas Eve, 1783, he was once more at Mount 
 Vernon, to resume the life he loved more than victory 
 and power. He had a zest for the means and the labor 
 of succeeding, but not for the mere content of success. 
 He put the Revolution behind him as he would have laid 
 aside a book that was read ; turned from it as quietly as 
 he had turned from receiving the surrender of Cornwal- 
 lis at Yorktown interested in victory not as a pageant 
 and field of glory, but only as a means to an end. He 
 looked to find very sweet satisfaction in the peace which 
 war had earned, as sufficient a scope for his powers at 
 home as in the field. Once more he would be a Vir 
 ginian, and join his strength to his neighbors in all the 
 tasks of good citizenship. He had seen nothing of the 
 old familiar places since that far-away spring of the 
 year 1775, when he had left his farming and his fox 
 hunting, amidst rumors of war, to attend the congress 
 which was to send him to Cambridge. He had halted 
 at Fredericksburg, indeed, with the Count de Rocham- 
 beau, two years ago, ere he followed his army from 
 York to its posts upon the Hudson. Mrs. Lewis, his 
 sister, had returned one day from visiting a neighbor in 
 the quiet town to look in astonishment upon an officer s 
 horses and attendants at her door, and had entered to 
 find her beloved brother stretched upon her own bed 
 within, sound asleep in his clothes, like a boy returned 
 from hunting. There had been a formal ball given, too, 
 in celebration of the victory, before the French officers 
 and the commander-in-chief left Fredericksburg to go 
 northward again, and Washington had had the joy of 
 entering the room in the face of the gay company with 
 his aged mother on his arm, not a whit bent for all her 
 seventy-four years, and as quiet as a queen at receiving 
 
THE STRESS OF VICTORY 
 
 229 
 
 the homage of her son s comrades in arms. He had got 
 his imperious spirit of command from her. A servant 
 had told her that " Mars George " had put up at the tav 
 ern. "Go and tell George to come here instantly," 
 she had commanded ; and he had come, masterful man 
 though he was. He had felt every old affection and 
 every old allegiance renew itself as he saw former neigh 
 bors crowd around him ; and that little glimpse of Vir 
 ginia had refreshed him like a tonic deeply, and as if 
 it renewed his very nature, as only a silent man can 
 be refreshed. But a few days in Fredericksburg and 
 at Mount Vernon then had been only an incident of 
 campaigning, only a grateful pause on a march. Now 
 at last he had come back to keep his home and be a 
 neighbor again, as he had not been these nine years. 
 
FIKST IN PEACE 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 IT was not the same Virginia, nor even the same 
 home and neighborhood he had gone from, that Wash 
 ington came back to when the war was done. He had 
 left Mount Yernon in the care of Lund "Washington, his 
 nephew, while the war lasted, and had not forgotten 
 amidst all his letter writing to send seasonable direc 
 tions and maintain a constant oversight upon the man 
 agement of his estate. It was part of his genius to find 
 time for everything ; and Mount Yernon had suffered 
 something less than the ordinary hazards and neglects 
 of war. It had suffered less upon one occasion, indeed, 
 than its proud owner could have found it in his heart 
 to wish. In the spring of 1781 several British vessels 
 had come pillaging within the Potomac, and the anx 
 ious Lund had regaled their officers with refreshments 
 from Mount Yernon to buy them off from mischief. 
 " It would have been a less painful circumstance to 
 me," his uncompromising uncle had written him, "to 
 have heard that, in consequence of your non-compliance 
 with their request, they had burnt my house and laid 
 the plantation in ruin. You ought to have considered 
 yourself as my representative." Kept though it was 
 from harm, however, the place had suffered many 
 things for lack of his personal care. There was some 
 part of the task to be done over again that had con- 
 
234 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 fronted him when he came to take possession of the 
 old plantation with his bride after the neglects of the 
 French war. 
 
 Bat Virginia was more changed than Mount Yernon. 
 He had left it a colony, at odds with a royal Governor; 
 he returned to find it a State, with Benjamin Harrison, 
 that stout gentleman and good planter, for Governor, 
 by the free suffrages of his fellow Virginians. There 
 had been no radical break with the aristocratic tradi 
 tions of the past. Mr. Harrison s handsome seat at 
 Lower Brandon lay where the long reaches of the James 
 marked the oldest regions of Virginia s life upon broad, 
 half-feudal estates ; where there were good wine and 
 plate upon the table, and gentlemen kept old customs 
 bright and honored in the observance. But the face 
 of affairs had greatly changed, nevertheless. The old 
 generation of statesmen had passed away, almost with 
 the colony, and a younger generation was in the saddle, 
 notwithstanding a gray-haired figure here and there. 
 Richard Bland had died in the year of the Declaration ; 
 Peyton Randolph had not lived to see it. Edmund 
 Pendleton, after presiding over Virginia s making as a 
 State, as chairman of her revolutionary Committee of 
 Safety, was now withdrawn from active affairs to the 
 bench, his fine figure marred by a fall from his horse, 
 his old power as an advocate transmuted into the cooler 
 talents of the judge. Patrick Henry, the ardent leader 
 of the Revolution, had been chosen the State s first 
 Governor, in the year of the Declaration of Indepen 
 dence ; three years later Thomas Jefferson had suc 
 ceeded him in the office, the philosophical radical of 
 times of change ; the choice of Mr. Harrison had but 
 completed the round of the new variety in affairs. Men 
 
FIRST IN PEACE 235 
 
 who, like Richard Henry Lee, had counselled revolution 
 and the breaking of old bonds, were now in all things 
 at the front of the State s business ; and younger men, 
 of a force and power of origination equal to their own, 
 were pressing forward, as if to hurry a new generation 
 to the stage which had known nothing but indepen 
 dence and a free field for statesmanship. Among the 
 rest, James Madison, only a little more than ten years 
 out of college, but already done with serving his no 
 vitiate in the Congress of the Confederation, a pub 
 licist and leader in the Old Dominion at thirty-two. 
 Edmund Randolph, of the new generation of the com 
 monwealth s great family of lawyers, like his forebears 
 in gifts and spirit, was already received, at thirty, into 
 a place of influence among public men. John Marshall, 
 just turned of twenty-eight, but a veteran of the long 
 war none the less, having been at the thick of the fight 
 ing, a lieutenant and a captain among the Virginian 
 forces, from the time Dunmore was driven from Nor 
 folk till the eve of Yorktown, was, now that that duty 
 was done, a lawyer in quiet Fauquier, drawing to him 
 self the eyes of every man who had the perception to 
 note qualities of force and leadership. James Monroe 
 had come out of the war at twenty-five to go at once 
 into the public councils of his State, an equal among his 
 elders. Young men came forward upon every side to 
 take their part in the novel rush of affairs that followed 
 upon the heels of revolution. 
 
 Washington found himself no stranger in the new 
 State, for all it had grown of a sudden so unlike that 
 old community in which his own life had been formed. 
 He found a very royal welcome awaiting him at his 
 home-coming. The old commonwealth loved a hero 
 
236 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 still as much as ever ; was as loyal to him now as it 
 had been in the far-away days of the French war, when 
 Dinwiddie alone fretted against him ; received him 
 with every tribute of affection ; offered him gifts, and 
 loved him all the better for refusing them. But he 
 must have felt that a deep change had come upon his 
 life, none the less, and even upon his relations with his 
 old familiars and neighbors. He had gone away hon 
 ored indeed, and marked for responsible services among 
 his people a Burgess as a matter of course, a notable 
 citizen, whose force no man who knew him could fail 
 to remark ; but by no means accounted greatest, even 
 among the men who gathered for the colony s business 
 at Williamsburg ; chosen only upon occasion for spe 
 cial services of action ; no debater or statesman, so far 
 as ordinary men could see ; too reserved to be popular 
 with the crowd, though it should like his frankness 
 and taking address, and go out of its way to see him 
 on horseback ; a man for his neighbors, who dbuld know 
 him, not for the world, which he refused to court. But 
 the war had suddenly lifted him to the view of all 
 mankind ; had set him among the- great captains of the 
 world ; had marked him a statesman in the midst of 
 affairs more a statesman than a soldier even, men 
 must have thought who had read his letters or heard 
 them read in Congress, on the floor or in the commit 
 tee rooms ; had drawn to himself the admiration of the 
 very men he had been fighting, the very nation whose 
 dominion he had helped to cast off. He had come home 
 perhaps the most famous man of his day, and could 
 not take up the old life where he had left it off, much 
 as he wished to ; was obliged, in spite of himself, to 
 play a new part in affairs. 
 
FIRST IN PEACE 237 
 
 For a few weeks, indeed, after he had reached Mount 
 Yernon, Nature herself assisted him to a little privacy 
 and real retirement. The winter (1783-4) was an un 
 commonly severe one. Snow lay piled, all but impas 
 sable, upon the roads ; frosts hardened all the country 
 against travel ; he could not get even to Fredericksburg 
 to see his aged mother ; and not many visitors, though 
 they were his near neighbors, could reach him at Mount 
 Yernon. " At length, my dear Marquis," he could write 
 to Lafayette in his security, "I am become a private 
 citizen on the banks of the Potomac ; and under the 
 shadow of my own vine and my own fig-tree, free from 
 the bustle of a camp and the busy scenes of public life, 
 I am solacing myself with those tranquil enjoyments 
 of which the soldier, who is ever in pursuit of fame, the 
 statesman, whose watchful days and sleepless nights are 
 spent in devising schemes to promote the welfare of his 
 own, perhaps the ruin of other countries, as if this globe 
 was insufficient for us all, and the courtier, who is al 
 ways watching the countenance of his prince, can have 
 very little conception. I have not only retired from 
 all public employments, but I am retiring within myself. 
 . . . Envious of none, I am determined to be pleased 
 with all ; and this, my dear friend, being the order of 
 my march, I will move gently down the stream of time 
 until I sleep with my fathers." The simple gentleman 
 did not yet realize what the breaking up of the frosts 
 would bring. 
 
 With the spring the whole life of the world seemed to 
 come pouring in upon him. Men of note everywhere 
 pressed their correspondence upon him ; no stranger 
 visited America but thought first of Mount Yernon in 
 planning where he should go and what he should see; 
 
238 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 new friends and old sat every day at his table ; a year 
 and a half had gone by since his home-coming before he 
 could note in his diary (June 30th, 1785) : " Dined with 
 only Mrs. Washington, which, I believe, is the first in 
 stance of it since my retirement from public life" for 
 some visitors had broken their way even through the 
 winter roads. Authors sent him what they wrote ; in 
 ventors submitted their ideas and models to him ; every 
 thing that was being said, everything that was being 
 done, seemed to find its way, if nowhere else, to Mount 
 Yernon till those who knew his occupations could 
 speak of Washington, very justly, as " the focus of polit 
 ical intelligence for the New World." He would not 
 alter his way of living even in the face of such over 
 whelming interruptions. His guests saw him for a lit 
 tle after dinner, and once and again, it might be, in the 
 evening also ; but he kept to his business throughout 
 all the working hours of the day ; was at his desk even 
 before breakfast, and after breakfast was always early 
 in the saddle and off to his farms. 
 
 Only at table did he play the host, lingering over the 
 wine to give and call for toasts and relax in genial con 
 versation, losing, as the months passed by, some of the 
 deep gravity that had settled upon him in the camp, 
 and showing once more an enjoying relish for " a pleas 
 ant story, an unaffected sally of wit, or a burlesque de 
 scription," as in the old days after hunting. Strangers 
 were often in awe of him. It did not encourage talk in 
 those who had little to sa} r to sit in the presence of a 
 man who so looked his greatness in the very proportions 
 of his strong figure even, and whose grave and steady 
 eyes so challenged the significance of what was said. 
 Young people would leave off dancing and romping 
 
/ 
 
 WASHINGTON IN THE GARDEN AT MOUNT VERNON 
 
FIRST IN PEACE 239 
 
 when he came into the room, and force him to with 
 draw, and peep at the fun from without the door, unob 
 served. It was only among his intimates that he was 
 suffered and taken to be the simple, straightforward, 
 sympathizing man he was, exciting, not awe, but only a 
 warm and affectionate allegiance. " The General, with 
 a few glasses of champagne, got quite merry," a young 
 Englishman could report who had had the good luck 
 to be introduced by Richard Henry Lee, "and, being 
 with his intimate friends, laughed and talked a good 
 deal." 
 
 As much as he could, he resumed the old life, and the 
 thoughts and pastimes that had gone with it. Once 
 more he became the familiar of his hounds at the ken 
 nels, and followed them as often as might be in the 
 hunt at sunrise. He asked but one thing of a horse, as 
 of old, "and that was to go along. He ridiculed the 
 idea that he could be unhorsed, provided the animal 
 kept on his legs." The two little children, a tiny boy 
 and a romping, mischievous lassie, not much bigger, 
 whom he had adopted at Jack Custis s death-bed, took 
 strong hold upon his heart, and grew slowly to an inti 
 macy with him such as few ventured to claim any longer 
 amidst those busy days in the guest-crowded house. It 
 seemed to Lafayette a very engaging picture when he 
 saw Washington and the little toddling boy together 
 " a very little gentleman with a feather in his hat, hold 
 ing fast to one finger of the good General s remarkable 
 hand, which (so large that hand !) " was all the tiny fel 
 low could manage. These children took Washington 
 back more completely than anything else to the old 
 days when he had brought his bride home with her own 
 little ones. He felt those days come back, too, when he 
 
240 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 was on his horse in the open, going the round of good 
 twelve miles and more that carried him to all the quar 
 ters of his plantation. 
 
 Once more he was the thorough farmer, ransacking 
 books, when men and his own observation failed him, 
 to come at the best methods of cultivation. Once more 
 he took daily account of the character of his slaves and 
 servants, and of the progress of their work, talking with 
 them when he could, and gaining a personal mastery 
 over them. Contracts for work he drew up with his 
 own hand, with a minuteness and particularity which 
 were sometimes whimsical and shot through with a 
 gleam of grim humor. He agreed with Philip Barter 
 that if he would serve him faithfully as gardener and 
 keep sober at all other times, he would allow him " four 
 dollars at Christmas, with which to be drunk four days 
 and four nights ; two dollars at Easter, to effect the 
 same purpose ; two dollars at Whitsuntide, to be drunk 
 for two days ; a dram in the morning, and a drink of 
 grog at dinner, at noon"; and the contract was drawn, 
 signed, and Avitnessed with all formality. Philip no 
 doubt found short shrift of consideration from his 
 thorough -going master if there was any drunkenness 
 in the garden beyond the limit of the eight days nomi 
 nated in the bond, and found the contract no jest in the 
 end, for Washington had small patience and no soft 
 words for a breach of agreement, whatever its kind. 
 He would help men in distress with a generosity and 
 wise choice of means which few took the pains to exer 
 cise, but he had only sharp rebuke for carelessness or 
 neglect or any slackness in the performance of a duty. 
 Men who had cheated or sought to impose upon him 
 deemed him harsh and called him a hard master, so 
 
WASHINGTON BRINGING HIS MOTHER INTO THE BALL ROOM, 
 FREDERICKSBURG 
 
FIRST IN PEACE 241 
 
 sharply did they smart after he had reckoned with 
 them. He exacted the uttermost farthing. But he 
 spent it, with the other hand, to relieve genuine suffer 
 ing and real want, though it were deserved and the fruit 
 of a crying fault. In his home dealings, as in every 
 thing else, his mind kept that trait by which men had 
 been awed in the camp that trick, as if of Fate, of 
 letting every act come at its consequences and its full 
 punishment or reward, as if he but presided at a process 
 which was just Nature s own. When he succored dis 
 tress, he did it in pity, not in justice not excusing fault, 
 but giving leave to mercy. If he urged the government 
 to pension and reward the soldiers of the war, who had 
 only done their duty, he himself set an example. There 
 were black pensioners not a few about his own home 
 stead. Bishop, his old body-servant, lived like a retired 
 gentleman in his cottage there; even Kelson, the good 
 sorrel who had borne him so bravely in the field till 
 Yorktown, now went forever unsaddled, free , a his own 
 pasture. 
 
 But, much as he loved his home and courted retire 
 ment amidst the duties of a planter, the old life would 
 not come back, was gone forever. He was too famous, 
 and there was an end on t. He could not go abroad 
 without drawing crowds about him. If he attended 
 service on a Sunday away from home, though it were 1n 
 never so quiet a parish, the very walls of the church 
 groaned threateningly under the unaccustomed weight 
 of people gathered in the galleries and packed upon the 
 floor to see the hero of the Revolution. Not even a ride 
 into the far west, to view his lands and pull together 
 his neglected business on the Ohio, was long enough to 
 take him beyond the reach of public affairs. On the 
 
 16 
 
242 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 1st of September, 1784, with Dr. Craik for company, he 
 set out on horseback to go by Braddock s road again 
 into the west. For nearly five weeks he was deep in 
 the wilderness, riding close upon seven hundred miles 
 through the forested mountains, and along the remote 
 courses of the long rivers that ran into the Mississippi ; 
 camping out as in the old days when he was a surveyor 
 and a soldier in his prenticeship in these very wilds; re 
 newing his zest for the rough life and the sudden advent 
 ures of the frontiersman. But, though he had come 
 upon his own business, it was the seat of a future em 
 pire he saw rather than his own acres scattered here 
 and there. 
 
 When last he had ridden the long stages from settle 
 ment to settlement and cabin to cabin in this far coun 
 try of the Ohio, he had been a Virginian and nothing 
 more, a colonial colonel merely, come to pick out lands 
 for his comrades and himself, their reward for serving 
 the crown against the French. A transformation had 
 been worked upon him since then. He had led the 
 armies of the whole country ; had been the chief instru 
 ment of a new nation in winning independence ; had 
 carried its affairs by his own counsels as no other man 
 had done ; had seen through all the watches of those 
 long campaigns the destinies and the hopes that were 
 at stake. Now he saw the crowding immigrants come 
 into the west with a new solicitude he had not felt be 
 fore. A new vision was in his thought. This western 
 country was now a " rising world," to be kept or lost, 
 husbanded or squandered, by the raw nation he had 
 helped put upon its feet. His thought was stretched at 
 last to a continental measure ; problems of statesman 
 ship that were national, questions of policy that had a 
 
FIRST IN PEACE 243 
 
 scope great as schemes of empire, stood foremost in his 
 view. He returned home more engrossed than ever by 
 interests not his own, but central to public affairs, and 
 of the very stuff of politics. 
 
 And so not the letters merely which poured in with 
 every mail, not only his host of visitors, great and small 
 the Governor of the State, the President of Congress, 
 foreign noblemen, soldiers, diplomatists, travellers, 
 neighbors, friends, acquaintances, intruders but his 
 own unbidden thoughts as well, and the very sugges 
 tions of his own interest as a citizen and land-owner, 
 drew him from his dreams of retirement and forced him 
 upon the open stage again. Even hunting ceased be 
 fore many seasons were out. The savage boar-hounds 
 which Lafayette had sent, in his kindness, from the Old 
 "World, proved too fierce and great a breed for even the 
 sharp sport with the gray fox ; the old hunting com 
 panions were gone the Fairfaxes over sea ; Belvoir de 
 serted and burned ; George Mason too much engaged 
 none but boys and strangers left to ride with. Twas 
 poor sport, after all, without the right sportsmen. It 
 must needs give way before a statesman s cares. 
 
 Upon his first home-coming, Washington had found it 
 hard to break himself of his habit of waking very early 
 in the morning with a sense of care concerning the af 
 fairs of the day, as if he were still in camp and in the 
 midst of public duties. Now a new sense of responsi 
 bility possessed him, and more and more gained ascen 
 dency over him. He began to feel a deep anxiety lest a 
 weak government should make independence little bet 
 ter than a reproach, and the country should fall into a 
 hopeless impotency. At first he had been very san 
 guine. "Notwithstanding the jealous and contracted 
 
244 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 temper which seems to prevail in some of the States," 
 he wrote to Jonathan Trumbull in January, 1784, " yet 
 I cannot but hope and believe that the good sense of 
 the people will ultimately get the better of their preju 
 dices, and that order and sound policy, though they do 
 not come so soon as one could wish, will be produced 
 from the present unsettled and deranged state of public 
 affairs. . . . Everything, my dear Trumbull, will come 
 right at last, as we have often prophesied. My on\y 
 fear is that we shall lose a little reputation first." But 
 the more he observed the temper of the time, the more 
 uneasy he grew. " Like a young heir," he cried, " come 
 a little prematurely to a large inheritance, we shall 
 wanton and run riot until we have brought our reputa 
 tion to the brink of ruin, and then, like him, shall have 
 to labor with the current of opinion, when compelled, 
 perhaps, to do what prudence and common policy point 
 ed out, as plain as any problem in Euclid, in the first 
 instance. ... I think we have opposed Great Britain, 
 and have arrived at the present state of peace and in 
 dependency, to very little purpose, if we cannot con 
 quer our own prejudices." 
 
 For the present he saw little that could be done be 
 yond holding up the hands of the Congress, and increas 
 ing, as it might prove possible to do so, the meagre 
 powers of the Confederation. " My political creed," he 
 said, " is to be wise in the choice of delegates, support 
 them like gentlemen while they are our representatives, 
 give them competent powers for all federal purposes, 
 support them in the due exercise thereof, and, lastly, to 
 compel them to close attendance in Congress during 
 their delegation." But his thoughts took wider scope as 
 the months passed ; and nothing quickened them more 
 
FIRST IN PEACE 245 
 
 than his western trip. He saw how much of the future 
 travelled with those slow wagon trains of immigrants into 
 the west ; realized how they were leaving behind them 
 the rivers that ran to the old ports at the sea, and going 
 down into the valleys whose outlet was the great high 
 way of the Mississippi and the ports of the Gulf ; how 
 the great ridge of the Alleghanies lay piled between 
 them and the older seats of settlement, with only here 
 and there a gap to let a road through, only here and 
 there two rivers lying close enough at their sources to 
 link the east with the west ; and the likelihood of a 
 separation between the two populations seemed to him 
 as obvious as the tilt of the mountains upon either 
 slope. " There is nothing which binds one country or 
 one State to another but interest," he said. " Without 
 this cement the western inhabitants, who more than 
 probably will be composed in a great degree of foreign 
 ers, can have no predilection for us, and a commercial 
 connection is the only tie we can have upon them." 
 " The western settlers," he declared, while still fresh 
 from the Ohio, "stand as it were upon a pivot. The 
 touch of a feather would turn them any way " down 
 the Mississippi to join their interests with those of the 
 Spaniard, or back to the mountain roads and the head 
 waters of the eastern streams, to make for themselves 
 a new allegiance in the east. He was glad to see the 
 Spaniard so impolitic as to close the Mississippi against 
 the commerce offered him, and hoped that things might 
 stand so until there should have been " a little time al 
 lowed to open and make easy the ways between the At 
 lantic States and the western territory." 
 
 The opening of the upper reaches of the Potomac to 
 navigation had long been a favorite object with Wash- 
 
246 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 ington ; now it seemed nothing less than a necessity. 
 It had been part of the original scheme of the old Ohio 
 Company to use this means of winning a way for com 
 merce through the mountains. Steps had been taken 
 more than twenty years ago to act in the matter through 
 private subscription ; and active measures for securing 
 the necessary legislation from the Assemblies of Vir 
 ginia and Maryland were still in course when Washing 
 ton was called to Cambridge and revolution drew men s 
 minds imperatively off from the business. In 1770 
 Washington had written to Jefferson of the project as 
 a means of opening a channel for " the extensive trade 
 of a rising empire"; now the empire of which he had 
 had a vision was no longer Britain s, but America s 
 own, and it was become a matter of exigent political 
 necessity to keep that western country against estrange 
 ment, winning it by commerce and close sympathy to 
 join itself with the old colonies in building up a free 
 company of united States upon the great continent. 
 
 Already the west was astir for the formation of new 
 States. Virginia had taken the broad and national 
 view of her duty that Washington himself held, and 
 had ceded to the Confederation all her ancient claims 
 to the lands that lay northwest of the Ohio River, re 
 serving for herself only the fair region that stretched 
 south of that great stream, from her own mountains to 
 the Mississippi. North Carolina would have ceded her 
 western lands beyond the mountains also, had they been 
 empty and unclaimed, like the vast territory that lay 
 beyond the Ohio. But for many a year settlers had 
 been crossing the mountains into those fertile valleys, 
 and both this region and that which Virginia still kept 
 showed many a clearing now and many a rude hamlet 
 
SAMPLE PIECES OF THE FAMOUS CINCINNATI DINNEIl SET 
 
 (Blue-and-white chlnRj with a centre decoration, in bright colors, of an angel with a trumpet carrying the 
 insignia of the order) 
 
 REMAINS OF A TEA SET BELONGING TO MRS. WASHINGTON 
 
FIRST IN PEACE 247 
 
 where hardy frontiersmen were making a new home for 
 civilization. Rather than be handed over to Congress, 
 to be disposed of by an authority which no one else was 
 bound to obey, North Carolina s western settlers de 
 clared they would form a State of their own, and North 
 Carolina had to recall her gift of their lands to the 
 Confederation before their plans of defiance could be 
 checked and defeated. Virginia found her own fron 
 tiersmen no less ready to take the initiative in whatever 
 affair touched their interest. Spain offered the United 
 States trade at her ports, but refused to grant them the 
 use of the lower courses of the Mississippi, lest terri 
 torial aggression should be pushed too shrewdly in that 
 quarter; and news reached the settlers beyond the 
 mountains, in the far counties of North Carolina and 
 Virginia, that Mr. Jay, the Confederation s Secretary for 
 Foreign Affairs, had proposed to the Congress to yield 
 the navigation of the Mississippi for a generation in ex 
 change for trade on the seas. They flatly declared they 
 would give themselves, and their lands too. into the 
 hands of England again rather than submit to be so 
 robbed, cramped, and deserted. The New England 
 States, on their part, threatened to withdraw from the 
 Confederation if treaties were to be made to wait upon 
 the assent of frontiersmen on the far Mississippi. 
 
 The situation was full of menace of no ordinary sort. 
 It could profit the Confederation little that great States 
 like Virginia and New York had grown magnanimous, 
 and were endowing the Confederation with vast gifts of 
 territory in the west, if such gifts were but to loosen 
 still further the already slackened bonds of the common 
 government, leaving settlers in the unclaimed lands no 
 allegiance they could respect. Without a national gov- 
 
248 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 eminent spirited and strong enough to frame policies 
 and command obedience, " we shall never establish a 
 national character or be considered as on a respectable 
 footing by the powers of Europe," Washington had said 
 from the first. He had made a most solemn appeal to 
 the States in his last circular to them, ere he resigned 
 his commission, urging them to strengthen the powers 
 of Congress, put faction and jealousy away, and make 
 sure of " an indissoluble union under one federal head." 
 " An option is still left to the United States of Amer 
 ica," he had told them, with all his plain and stately elo 
 quence ; " it is in their choice, and depends upon their 
 conduct, whether they will be respectable and prosper 
 ous, or contemptible and miserable, as a nation. This is 
 the time of their political probation." The hazards of 
 that probation had been a burden upon his heart through 
 all the toil of the Revolution, and now it seemed as if 
 the States must needs make every evil choice in meet 
 ing them. Congress could not so much as carry out the 
 provisions of the treaty of peace, for its commissioners 
 had made promises in the name of the States which the 
 States would not redeem. England consequently re 
 fused to keep her part of the agreement and relinquish 
 the western posts. She levied commercial war against 
 the country, besides, without fear of reprisal ; for Con 
 gress had no power to regulate trade, and the States 
 were too jealous of each other to co-operate in this or 
 any other matter. English statesmen had consented to 
 give up the colonies, and recognize their independence 
 as a nation, rather than face any longer the world in 
 arms ; hut they now looked to see them presently drop 
 back into their hands again, out of sheer helplessness 
 and hopeless division in counsel; and there were observ- 
 
FIRST IN PEACE 249 
 
 ant men in America who deemed the thing possible, 
 though it brought an intolerable fire into their blood to 
 think of it. 
 
 Other nations, too, were fast conceiving a like con 
 tempt for the Confederation. It was making no pro 
 vision for the payment of the vast sums of money it had 
 borrowed abroad, in France and Holland and Spain; 
 and it could not make any. It could only ask the 
 States for money, and must count itself fortunate to get 
 enough to pay even the interest on its debts. It was 
 this that foreign courts were finding out, that the Con 
 federation was a mere " government of supplication," as 
 Randolph had dubbed it ; and its credit broke utterly 
 down. Frenchman and Spaniard alike would only have 
 laughed in contemptuous derision to see the whole fabric 
 go to pieces, and were beginning to interest themselves 
 with surmises as to what plunder it would afford. The 
 States which lay neighbors to each other were embroiled 
 in boundary disputes, and were fallen to levying duties 
 on each other s commerce. They were individually in 
 debt, besides, and were many of them resorting to issues 
 of irredeemable paper money to relieve themselves of 
 the inevitable taxation that must sooner or later pay 
 their reckonings. " We are either a united people, or 
 we are not so," cried Washington. "If the former, let 
 us in all matters of general concern act as a nation 
 which has a national character to support ; if we are 
 not, let us no longer act a farce by pretending to it." 
 As the months passed it began to look as if the farce 
 might be turned into a tragedy. 
 
 The troubles of the country, though he filled his let 
 ters with them and wrung his heart for phrases of pro 
 test and persuasion that would tell effectually in the 
 
250 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 deep labor of working out the sufficient remedy of ? 
 roused and united opinion, though he deemed them per 
 sonal to himself, and knew his own fame in danger to be 
 undone by them, did not break the steady self-possession 
 of Washington s life at Mount Yernon. " It s astonish 
 ing the packets of letters that daily come for him, from 
 all parts of the world," exclaimed an English visitor ; 
 but it was not till he had struggled to keep pace with 
 his correspondence unassisted for a year and a half that 
 he employed a secretary to help him. "Letters of 
 friendship require no study," he wrote to General Knox ; 
 "the communications are easy, and allowances are ex 
 pected and made. This is not the case with those that 
 require researches, consideration, recollection, and the 
 de 1 knows what to prevent error, and to answer the 
 ends for which they are written." He grew almost doc 
 ile, nevertheless, under the gratuitous tasks of courtesy 
 thrust upon him. His gallantry, bred in him since a 
 boy, the sense of duty to which he was born, his feel 
 ing that what he had done had in some sort committed 
 him to serve his countrymen and his friends every 
 where, though it were only in answering questions, dis 
 posed him to sacrifice his comfort and his privacy to 
 every one who had the slightest claim upon his atten 
 tion. He even found sitting for his portrait grow easy 
 at last. " In for a penny, in for a pound, is an old 
 adage," he laughed, writing to Francis Hopkinson. " I 
 am so hackneyed to the touches of the painter s pencil 
 that I am now altogether at their beck ; and sit like 
 Patience on a monument whilst they are delineating 
 the lines of my face. ... At first I was as impatient at 
 the request, and as restive under the operation, as a colt 
 is of the saddle. The next time I submitted very re- 
 
I 
 
FIRST IN PEACE 251 
 
 luctantly, but with less flouncing. Now no dray-horse 
 moves more readily to his thill than I do to the painter s 
 chair." Besides the failure of the public credit, it con 
 cerned him to note the fact that, though he kept a hun 
 dred cows, he was obliged to buy butter for his innu 
 merable guests. He saw to it that there should be at 
 least a very definite and efficient government upon his 
 own estate, and, when there was need, put his own hand 
 to the work. He " often works with his men himself 
 strips off his coat and labors like a common man," meas 
 ures with his own hands every bit of building or con 
 struction that is going forward, and " shows a great turn 
 for mechanics," one of his guests noted, amidst com 
 ments on his greatness and his gracious dignity. It was 
 such constancy and candor and spirit in living that took 
 the admiration of all men alike upon the instant; and 
 his neighbors every day saw here the same strenuous 
 and simple gentleman they had known before ever the 
 war began. 
 
 It was through the opening of the Potomac, after all 
 the thing nearest his hand that a way was found to 
 cure the country of its malady of weakness and disorder. 
 Washington had been chosen president of the Potomac 
 Company, that it might have the advantage both of his 
 name and of his capacity in affairs ; and he had gone 
 upon a tour of inspection, with the directors of the com 
 pany, to the falls of the river in the summer of 1785, 
 keeping steadily to the business he had come upon, and 
 insisting upon being in fact a private gentleman busy 
 with his own affairs, despite the efforts made everywhere 
 he went to see and to entertain him ; and it presently 
 became evident even to the least sanguine that the 
 long-talked-of work was really to be carried through. A 
 
252 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 visitor at Mount Yernon in the autumn of 1785 found 
 Washington " quite pleased at the idea of the Baltimore 
 merchants laughing at him, and saying it was a ridicu 
 lous plan, and would never succeed. They begin now, 
 says the General, to look a little serious about the mat 
 ter, as they know it must hurt their commerce amaz- 
 ingly." 
 
 The scheme had shown its real consequence in the 
 spring of that very year, when it brought commissioners 
 from the two States that lay upon the river together in 
 conference to devise plans of co-operation. Both Vir 
 ginia and Maryland had appointed commissioners, and 
 a meeting had been set for March, 1785, at Alexandria. 
 For some reason the Virginian commissioners were not 
 properly notified of the place and time of conference. 
 The meeting was held, nevertheless, a minority of the 
 Virginian commissioners being present ; and, as if to 
 give it more the air of a cordial conference of neigh 
 bors, Washington invited the representatives of both 
 States to adjourn from Alexandria to Mount Vernon. 
 There they sat, his guests, from Friday to Monday. He 
 was not formally of the commission ; but conference 
 was not confined to their formal sessions, and his coun 
 sel entered into their determinations. It was evident 
 that two States were not enough to decide the questions 
 submitted to them. Pennsylvania, at least, must be 
 consulted before the full line of trade they sought could 
 be drawn from the head -waters of the Ohio to the 
 head -waters of the Potomac; and if three States 
 were to consult upon questions of trade which con 
 cerned the whole continent, why should not more be 
 invited, and the conference be made general? Such 
 was the train of suggestion, certainly, that ran in 
 
FIRST IN PEACE 253 
 
 Washington s mind, and which the commissioners car 
 ried home with them. Every sign of the time served to 
 deepen its significance for Washington. Just before 
 quitting the array he had ridden upon a tour of inspec 
 tion into the valley of the Mohawk, where a natural 
 way, like this of the Potomac, ran from the northern 
 settlements into the west. He knew that the question 
 of joining the Potomac with the Ohio was but one 
 item of a policy which all the States must consider and 
 settle nothing less than the policy which must make 
 them an empire or doom them to remain a weak and 
 petty confederacy. 
 
 The commissioners did not put all that they had 
 heard at Mount Yernon into their reports to their re 
 spective Assemblies. They recommended only that, 
 besides co-operating with each other and with Penn 
 sylvania in opening a way to the western waters, Vir 
 ginia and Maryland should adopt a uniform, system 
 of duties and of commercial regulations, and should es 
 tablish uniform rules regarding their currency. But 
 the Maryland Assembly itself went further. It pres 
 ently informed the Virginian Legislature that it had 
 not only adopted the measures recommended by the 
 commissioners, but thought it wise to do something 
 more. Delaware ought to be consulted, with a view to 
 carrying a straight watercourse, by canal, from Chesa 
 peake Bay to the Delaware River ; and, since conference 
 could do no harm and bind nobody, it would be as well 
 to invite all the States to confer with them, for the 
 questions involved seemed far-reaching enough to justify 
 it, if not to make it necessary. Governor Bowdoin, of 
 Massachusetts, had that very year urged his Legislature 
 to invite a general convention of the States in the in- 
 
254 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 terest of trade. The whole country was in a tangle of 
 disagreement about granting to Congress the power to 
 lay imposts ; Gardoqui, it was rumored, was insisting, 
 for Spain, upon closing the Mississippi : twas evident 
 enough conference was needed. Every thoughtful man 
 might well pray that it would bring peace and accom 
 modation. When Maryland s suggestion was read in 
 the Virginian Assembly, there was prompt acquiescence. 
 Virginia asked all the States of the Union (January, 
 1786) to send delegates to a general conference to be 
 held at Annapolis on the first Monday in September, to 
 consider arid recommend such additions to the powers 
 of Congress as might conduce to a better regulation of 
 trade. " There is more wickedness than ignorance in 
 the conduct of the States, or, in other words, in the 
 conduct of those who have too much influence in the 
 government of them," Washington wrote hotly to 
 Henry Lee, upon hearing to what lengths contempt of 
 the authority of Congress had been carried ; " and until 
 the curtain is withdrawn, and the private views and 
 selfish principles upon which these men act are exposed 
 to public notice, I have little hope of amendment with 
 out another convulsion." Perhaps the conference at 
 Annapolis would withdraw the curtain and give the 
 light leave to work a purification ; and he waited anx 
 iously for the issue. 
 
 But when the commissioners assembled they found 
 only five States represented Virginia, Pennsylvania, 
 Delaware, New Jersey, and New York. Maryland had 
 suddenly fallen indifferent, and had not appointed" dele 
 gates. New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Ehode Island, 
 and North Carolina had appointed delegates, but they 
 had not taken the trouble to come. Connecticut, South 
 
FIRST IN PEACE 255 
 
 Carolina, and Georgia had ignored the call altogether. 
 The delegates who were in attendance, besides, had 
 come with only the most jealously restricted powers; 
 only New Jersey, in her great uneasiness at being 
 neighbor to the powerful States of New York and 
 Pennsylvania, had authorized her representatives to 
 " consider how far a uniform system in their commercial 
 regulations and other important matters might be neces 
 sary to the common interest and permanent harmony 
 of the several States." The other delegates had no 
 such scope ; all deemed it futile to attempt their busi 
 ness in so small a convention; and it was resolved to 
 make another opportunity. Alexander Hamilton, of 
 New York, drew up their address to the States, and in 
 it made bold to adopt New Jersey s hint, and ask for a 
 conference which should not merely consider questions 
 of trade, but also "devise such further provisions as 
 should appear to them necessary to render the constitu 
 tion of the federal government adequate to the exigen 
 cies of the Union." Hamilton held with Washington 
 for a national government. He had been born, and 
 bred as a lad, in the West Indies, and had never re 
 ceived the local pride of any colony-state into his blood. 
 He had served with the army, too, in close intimacy 
 with Washington, and, though twenty-five years his cap 
 tain s junior, had seen as clearly as he saw the deep 
 hazards of a nation s birth. 
 
 The Congress was indifferent, if not hostile, to the 
 measures which the address proposed ; and the States 
 would have acted on the call as slacldy as before, had 
 not the winter brought with it something like a threat 
 of social revolution, and fairly startled them out of their 
 negligent humor. The central counties of Massachu- 
 
t 
 256 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 setts broke into violent rebellion, under one Shays, a 
 veteran of the Revolution not to reform the govern 
 ment, but to rid themselves of it altogether; to shut 
 the courts and escape the payment of debts and taxes. 
 The insurgents worked their will for weeks together; 
 drove out the officers of the law, burned and plun 
 dered at pleasure through Avhole districts, living upon 
 the land like a hostile army, and were brought to a 
 reckoning at last only when a force thousands strong 
 had been levied against them. The contagion spread 
 to Vermont and New Hampshire ; and, even when 
 the outbreak had been crushed, the States concerned 
 were irresolute in the punishment of the leaders. 
 Rhode Island declared her sympathy with the insur 
 gents ; Vermont offered them asylum ; Massachusetts 
 brought the leaders to trial and conviction only to par 
 don and set them free again. Congress dared do no 
 more than make covert preparation to check a general 
 rising. " You talk, my good sir," wrote Washington to 
 Henry Lee, in Congress, " of employing influence to 
 appease the present tumults in Massachusetts. I know 
 not where that influence is to be found, or, if attainable, 
 that it would be a proper remedy for the disorders. 
 Influence is no government. Let us have one by which 
 our lives, liberties, and properties will be secured, or let 
 us know the worst at once." It was an object-lesson 
 for the whole country ; the dullest and the most lethar 
 gic knew now what slack government and financial dis 
 order would produce. The States one and all save 
 Rhode Island bethought them of the convention called 
 to meet in Philadelphia on the second Monday in May, 
 1787, and delegates were appointed. Even Congress took 
 the lesson to heart, and gave its sanction to the conference. 
 
u*i* 
 
FIRST IN PEACE 257 
 
 The Legislature of Virginia put Washington s name 
 at the head of its own list of delegates, and after his 
 name the names of Patrick Henry, Edmund Randolph, 
 John Blair, James Madison, George Mason, and George 
 Wythe the leading names of the State, no man could 
 doubt. But Washington hesitated. He had already de 
 clined to meet the Society of the Cincinnati in Phila 
 delphia about the same time, he said, and thought it 
 would be disrespectful to that body, to whom he owed 
 much, "to be there on any other occasion." He even 
 hinted a doubt whether the convention was constitu 
 tional, its avowed purposes being what they were, until 
 Congress tardily sanctioned it. His real reason his in 
 timate friends must have divined from the first. They 
 knew him better in such matters than he knew himself. 
 He not only loved his retirement ; he deemed himself 
 a soldier and man of action, and no statesman. The 
 floor of assemblies had never seemed to him his princi 
 pal sphere of duty. He had thought of staying away 
 from the House of Burgesses on private business twenty 
 years ago, when he knew that the Stamp Act was to be 
 debated. But it was not for the floor of the approach 
 ing convention that his friends wanted him ; they told 
 him from the first he must preside. He was known to 
 be in favor of giving the Confederation powers that 
 would make it a real government, and he thought that 
 enough ; but they wanted the whole country to see him 
 pledged to the actual work, and, when they had per 
 suaded him to attend, knew that they had at any rate 
 won the confidence of the people in their patriotic pur 
 pose. His mere presence would give them power. 
 
 Washington and the other Virginians were prompt 
 to be in Philadelphia on the day appointed, but only 
 
258 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 the Pennsylvanian delegates were there to meet them. 
 They had to wait an anxious week before so many as 
 seven States were represented. Meanwhile, those who 
 gathered from day to day were nervous and appre 
 hensive, and there was talk of compromise and half 
 way measures, should the convention prove weak or 
 threaten to miscarry. They remembered for many a 
 long year afterwards how nobly Washington, " standing 
 self-collected in the midst of them," had uttered brave 
 counsels of wisdom in their rebuke. " It is too prob 
 able," he said, " that no plan we propose will be adopt 
 ed. Perhaps another dreadful conflict is to be sustained. 
 If, to please the people, we offer what we ourselves 
 disapprove, how can we afterwards defend our work? 
 Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest 
 can repair. The event is in the hand of God." It 
 was an utterance, they knew, not of statesmanship 
 merely, but of character ; and it was that character, if 
 anything could, that would win the people to their sup 
 port. When at last seven States were represented a 
 quorum of the thirteen an organization was effected, 
 and Washington unanimously chosen president of the 
 convention. He spoke, when led to the chair, " of the 
 novelty of the scene of business in which he was to act, 
 lamented his want of better qualifications, and claimed 
 the indulgence of the house towards the involuntary 
 errors which his inexperience might occasion"; but no 
 mere parliamentarian could have given that anxious 
 body such steadiness in business or such grave earnest 
 ness in counsel as it got from his presence and influence 
 in the chair. Five more States were in attendance be 
 fore deliberation was very far advanced ; but he had the 
 satisfaction to see his own friends lead upon the floor. 
 
FIRST IN PEACE 259 
 
 It was the plan which Edmund Randolph proposed, for 
 his fellow Virginians, which the convention accepted as 
 a model to work from ; it was James Madison, that 
 young master of counsel, who guided the deliberations 
 from day to day, little as he showed his hand in the 
 work or seemed to put himself forward in debate. No 
 speeches came from the president ; only once or twice 
 did he break the decorum of his office to temper some 
 difference of opinion or facilitate some measure of ac 
 commodation. It was the 17th of September when the 
 convention at last broke up ; the 19th when the Consti 
 tution it had wrought out was published to the country. 
 All the slow summer through, Washington had kept 
 counsel with the rest as to the anxious work that was 
 going forward behind the closed doors of the long con 
 ference ; it was a grateful relief to be rid of the painful 
 strain, and he returned to Mount Yernon like one whose 
 part in the work was done. 
 
 " I never saw him so keen for anything in my life as 
 he is for the adoption of the new scheme of govern 
 ment," wrote a visitor at Mount Yernon to Jefferson ; 
 but he took no other part than his correspondence af 
 forded him in the agitation for its acceptance. Through 
 out all those long four months in Philadelphia he had 
 given his whole mind and energy to every process of 
 difficult counsel by which it had been wrought to com 
 pletion ; but he was no politician. Earnestly as he com 
 mended the plan to his friends, he took no public part 
 either in defence or in advocacy of it. He read not only 
 the Federalist papers, in which Hamilton and Madison 
 and Jay made their masterly plea for the adoption of 
 the Constitution, but also " every performance which 
 has been printed on the one side and the other on the 
 
260 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 great question," he said, so far as he was able to obtain 
 them ; and he felt as poignantly as any man the deep 
 excitement of the momentous contest. It disturbed him 
 keenly to find George Mason opposing the Constitution 
 the dear friend from whom he had always accepted 
 counsel hitherto in public affairs and Richard Henry 
 Lee and Patrick Henry, too, in their passionate attach 
 ment to what they deemed the just sovereignty of Vir 
 ginia. He could turn away with all his old self-pos 
 session, nevertheless, to discuss questions of culture and 
 tillage, in the midst of the struggle, with Arthur Young 
 over sea, and to write very gallant compliments to the 
 Marquis de Chastellux on his marriage. " So your day 
 has at length come," he laughed. " I am glad of it with 
 all my heart and soul. It is quite good enough for you. 
 Kow you are well served for coming to fight in favor of 
 the American rebels all the way across the Atlantic 
 Ocean, by catching that terrible contagion domestic 
 felicity which, like the small-pox or the plague, a man 
 can have only once in his life, because it commonly lasts 
 him (at least with us in America I don t know how 
 you manage such matters in France) for his whole life 
 time." 
 
 Ten months of deep but quiet agitation the forces 
 of opinion in close grapple and the future seemed to 
 clear. The Constitution was adopted, only two States 
 dissenting. It had been a tense and stubborn fight : in 
 such States as Massachusetts and New York, the con 
 certed action of men at the centres of trade against the 
 instinctive dread of centralization or change in the re 
 gions that lay back from the rivers and the sea ; in States 
 like Virginia, where the mass of men waited to be led, 
 the leaders who had vision against those who had 
 
FIRST IN PEACE 261 
 
 only the slow wisdom of caution and presentiment. 
 But, though she acted late in the business, and some 
 home-keeping spirits among even her greater men held 
 back, Virginia did not lose the place of initiative she 
 had had in all this weighty business of reform. Some 
 thing in her air or her life had given her in these latter 
 years an extraordinary breed of public men men liber 
 ated from local prejudice, possessed of a vision and an 
 efficacy in affairs worthy of the best traditions of states 
 manship among the English race from which they were 
 sprung, capable of taking the long view, of seeing the 
 permanent lines of leadership upon great questions, and 
 shaping ordinary views to meet extraordinary ends. 
 Even Henry and Mason could take their discomfiture 
 gracefully, loyally, like men bred to free institutions ; 
 and Washington had the deep satisfaction to see his 
 State come without hesitation to his view and hope. 
 
 The new Constitution made sure of, and a time set by 
 Congress for the elections and the organization of anew 
 government under it, the country turned as one man 
 to Washington to be the first President of the United 
 States. " We cannot, sir, do without you," cried Gov 
 ernor Johnson, of Maryland, "and I and thousands more 
 can explain to anybody but yourself why we cannot 
 do without you." To make any one else President, it 
 seemed to men everywhere, would be like crowning a 
 subject while the king was by. But Washington held 
 back, as he had held back from attending the Constitu 
 tional Convention. He doubted his civil capacity, called 
 himself an old man, said "it would be to forego repose 
 and domestic enjoyment for trouble, perhaps for public 
 obloquy." " The acceptance," he declared. " would be 
 attended with more diffidence and reluctance than I 
 
262 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 ever experienced before in my life." But he was not 
 permitted to decline. Hamilton told him that his at 
 tendance upon the Constitutional Convention must be 
 taken to have pledged him in the view of the country to 
 take part also in the formation of the government. " In 
 a matter so essential to the well-being of society as the 
 prosperity of a newly instituted government," said the 
 great advocate, "a citizen of so much consequence as 
 yourself to its success has no option but to lend his ser 
 vices, if called for. Permit me to say it would be in 
 glorious, in such a situation, not to hazard the glory, 
 however great, which he might have previously ac 
 quired." 
 
 Washington of course yielded, like the simple-minded 
 gentleman and soldier he was, when it was made thus a 
 matter of duty. When the votes of the electors were 
 opened in the new Congress, and it was found that they 
 were one and all for him, he no longer doubted. He 
 did not know how to decline such a call, and turned 
 with all his old courage to the new task. 
 
THE FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE 
 UNITED STATES 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 THE members of the new Congress were so laggard 
 in coming together that it was the 6th of April, 1789, 
 before both Houses could count a quorum, though the 
 4th of March had been appointed the day for their 
 convening. Their first business was the opening and 
 counting of the electoral votes ; and on the 7th Charles 
 Thomson, the faithful and sedulous gentleman who had 
 been clerk of every congress since that first one in the 
 old colonial days fifteen years ago, got away on his 
 lono- ride to Mount Yernon to notify Washington of his 
 
 O / 
 
 election. Affairs waited upon the issue of his errand. 
 AYashington had for long known what was coming, and 
 was ready and resolute, as of old. There had been no 
 formal nominations for the presidency, and the votes 
 of the electors had lain under seal till the new Congress 
 met and found a quorum ; but it was an open secret 
 who had been chosen President, and Washington had 
 made up his mind what to do. Mr. Thomson reached 
 Mount Yernon on the 14th, and found Washington 
 ready to obey his summons at once. He waited only 
 for a hasty ride to Fredericksburg to bid his aged 
 mother farewell. She was not tender in the parting. 
 Her last days had come, and she had set herself to bear 
 with grim resolution the fatal disease that had long 
 been upon her. She had never been tender, and these 
 
266 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 latter days had added their touch of hardness. But it 
 was a tonic to her son to take her farewell, none the 
 less ; to hear her once more bid him God-speed, and 
 once more command him, as she did, to his duty. On 
 the morning of the 16th he took the northern road 
 again, as so often before, and pressed forward on the 
 way for New York. 
 
 The setting out was made with a very heavy heart; 
 for duty had never seemed to him so unattractive as it 
 seemed now, and his diffidence had never been so dis 
 tressing. " For myself the delay may be compared to 
 a reprieve," he had written to Knox, when he learned 
 how slow Congress was in coming together, " for in 
 confidence I tell you that my movements to the chair 
 of government will be accompanied by feelings not 
 unlike those of a culprit who is going to the place of 
 execution." When the day for his departure came, his 
 diary spoke the same heaviness of heart. "About ten 
 o clock," he wrote, " I bade adieu to Mount Vernon, to 
 private life, and to domestic felicity ; and, with a mind 
 oppressed with more anxious and painful sensations 
 than I have Avords to express, set out for New York." 
 He did not doubt that he was doing right ; he doubted 
 his capacity in civil affairs, and loved the sweet retire 
 ment and the free life he was leaving behind him. 
 Grief and foreboding did not in the least relax his 
 proud energy and promptness in action. He was not 
 a whit the less resolute to attempt this new role, and 
 stretch his powers to the uttermost to play it in master 
 ful fashion. He was only wistful and full of a sort 
 of manly sadness ; lacking not resolution, but only 
 alacrity. 
 
 He had hoped to the last that he would be suffered 
 
THOMSON, TUP: CLERK OF CONGRESS, ANNOUNCING TO WASHINGTON, 
 AT MOUNT VEKNON, HIS ELECTION TO THE PRESIDENCY 
 
THE FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 267 
 
 to spend the rest of his days at Mount Yernon ; he 
 knew the place must lack efficient keeping, and fall 
 once more out of repair under hired overseers ; he feared 
 his strength would be spent and his last years come ere 
 he could return to look to it and enjoy it himself again. 
 He had but just now been obliged to borrow a round 
 sum of money to meet pressing obligations ; and the 
 expenses of this very journey had made it necessary to 
 add a full hundred pounds to the new debt. If the 
 estate brought money so slowly in while he farmed 
 it, he must count upon its doing even less while he was 
 away ; and yet he had determined to accept no salary 
 as President, but only his necessary expenses while in 
 the discharge of his official duties, as in the old days 
 of the war. It had brought distressing perplexities 
 upon him to be thus drawn from his private business 
 to serve the nation. Private cares passed off, no doubt, 
 and were forgotten as the journey lengthened. But 
 the other anxiety, how he should succeed in this large 
 business of statesmanship to which he had been called, 
 did not pass off ; the incidents of that memorable ride 
 only served to heighten it. When he had ridden to 
 Cambridge that anxious summer of 1775, he had been 
 hailed by cheering crowds upon the way, who admired 
 the fine figure he made, and shouted for the cause he 
 was destined to lead; but he knew himself a soldier 
 then, was but forty-three, and did not fear to find his 
 duty uncongenial. The people had loved him and had 
 thronged about him with looks and words it had quick 
 ened his heart to see and hear as he made his way from 
 New York to Annapolis to resign his commission but 
 six years ago ; but that was upon the morrow of a task 
 accomplished, and the plaudits he heard upon the way 
 
268 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 were but greetings to speed him the more happily 
 homeward. Things stood very differently now. Though 
 he felt himself grown old, he had come out to meet a 
 hope he could not share, and it struck a subtle pain to 
 his heart that the people should so trust him should 
 give him so royal a progress as he fared on his way to 
 attempt an untried task. 
 
 No king in days of kings divinity could have looked 
 for so heartfelt a welcome to his throne as this modest 
 gentleman got to the office he feared to take. Not only 
 were there civil fete and military parade at every stage 
 of the journey; there was everywhere, besides, a run 
 ning together from all the country roundabout of peo 
 ple who bore themselves not as mere sight-seers, but as 
 if they had come out of love for the man they were to 
 see pass by. It was not their numbers but their manner 
 that struck their hero with a new sense of responsibil 
 ity : their earnest gaze, their unpremeditated cries of 
 welcome, their simple joy to see the new government 
 put into the hands of a man they perfectly trusted. He 
 was to be their guarantee of its good faith, of its respect 
 for law and its devotion to liberty ; and they made him 
 know their hope and their confidence in the very tone of 
 their greeting. There was the manifest touch of love in 
 the reception everywhere prepared for him. Refined 
 women broke their reserve to greet him in the open 
 road ; put their young daughters forward, in their en 
 thusiasm, to strew roses before him in the way ; brought 
 tears to his eyes by the very artlessness of their affec 
 tion. When at last the triumphal journey was ended, 
 the display of every previous stage capped and outdone 
 by the fine pageant of his escort of boats from Newark 
 and of his reception at the ferry stairs in New York, 
 
THE FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 269 
 
 the demonstration seemed almost more than he could 
 bear. " The display of boats which attended and joined 
 us," he confessed to his diary, " the decorations of the 
 ships, the roar of the cannon, and the loud acclamations 
 of the people which rent the skies as I walked along 
 the streets, filled my mind with sensations as painful 
 as they are pleasant"; for his fears foreboded scenes 
 the opposite of these, when he should have shown him 
 self unable to fulfil the hopes which were the burden of 
 all the present joy. 
 
 It was the 27th of April when he reached New York. 
 Notwithstanding his executive fashion of making haste, 
 the rising of the country to bid him God-speed had kept 
 him four days longer on the way than Mr. Thomson had 
 taken to carry the summons to Mount Yernon. Three 
 days more elapsed before Congress had completed its 
 preparations for his inauguration. (On the 30th of April, 
 in the presence of a great concourse of people, who first 
 broke into wild cheers at sight of him, and then fell si 
 lent again upon the instant to see him so moved, Wash 
 ington stood face to face with the Chancellor of the 
 State upon the open balcony of the Federal Hall in Wall 
 Street, and took the oath of office?) " Do you solemnly 
 swear," asked Livingston, " that you will faithfully exe 
 cute the office of President of the United States, and 
 will, to the best of your ability, preserve, protect, and 
 defend the Constitution of the United States?" ("I do 
 solemnly swear," replied Washington, " that I will faith 
 fully execute the office of President of the United States, 
 and will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and 
 defend the Constitution of the United States," and then, 
 bending to kiss the Bible held before him, bowed his 
 head and said " So help me God !" in tones no man could 
 
270 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 mistake, so deep was their thrill of feeling. " Long live 
 George Washington, President of the United States !" 
 cried Livingston to the people ; and a great shout went 
 up with the booming of the cannon in the narrow 
 streets.^ 
 
 (Washington was profoundly moved, and, with all his 
 extraordinary mastery of himself, could not hide his 
 agitation. It was a company of friends, the Senators 
 and Kepresentatives who stood about him within the 
 Senate chamber as he read his address, after the taking 
 of the oath. Some very old friends were there men 
 who had been with him in the first continental con 
 gress, men who had been his intimate correspondents 
 the long years through, men who were now his close 
 confidants and sworn supporters. Kot many strangers 
 could crowd into the narrow hall ; and it was not mere 
 love of ceremony, but genuine and heartfelt respect, 
 that made the whole company stand while he read. He 
 visibly trembled, nevertheless, as he stood in their pres 
 ence, strong and steadfast man though he was, "and 
 several times could scarce make out to read " ; shifted 
 his manuscript uneasily from hand to hand ; gestured 
 with awkward effort ; let his voice fall almost inaudi 
 ble ; was every way unlike himself, except for the sim 
 ple majesty and sincerity that shone in him through it 
 all. His manner but gave emphasis, after all, to the 
 words he was reading. " The magnitude and difficulty 
 of the trust," he declared, " could not but overwhelm 
 with despondence one who, inheriting inferior endow 
 ments from nature, and unpractised in the duties of civil 
 administration, ought to be peculiarly conscious of his 
 own deficiencies " ; and no one there could look at him 
 and deem him insincere when he added, "All I dare 
 
THE FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 271 
 
 aver is that it has been my faithful study to collect my 
 duty from a just appreciation of every circumstance by 
 which it might be affected/) All I dare hope is that, if 
 in executing this task I have been too much swayed by 
 a grateful remembrance of former instances, or by an 
 affectionate sensibility to this transcendent proof of the 
 confidence of my fellow-citizens, and have thence too 
 little consulted my incapacity as well as disinclination 
 for the weighty and untried cares before me, my error 
 will be palliated by the motives which misled me, and 
 its consequences be judged by my country with some 
 share of the partiality with which they originated." 
 , His hearers knew how near the truth he struck when he 
 said, " The smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a 
 nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and 
 right which Heaven itself has ordained ; and the pres 
 ervation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of 
 the republican model of government, are justly consid 
 ered as deeply, perhaps as finally, staked on the experi 
 ment intrusted to the hands of the American people."^ 
 It was, no doubt, " a novelty in the history of society to 
 see a great people turn a calm and scrutinizing eye upon 
 itself," as the people of America had done ; " to see it 
 carefully examine the extent of the evil " into which dis 
 union and disorder had brought it ; " patiently wait for 
 two years until a remedy was discovered " ; and at last 
 voluntarily adopt a new order and government " with 
 out having Avrung a tear or a drop of blood from man 
 kind." But Washington knew that the praise deserved 
 for such mastery and self-possession would be short 
 lived enough if the new government should fail or be 
 discredited. It was the overpowering thought that he 
 himself would be chiefly responsible for its success or 
 
272 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 failure that shook his nerves as he stood there at the 
 beginning of his task ; and no man of right sensibility 
 in that audience failed to like him the better and trust 
 him the more implicitly for his emotion. " It was a 
 very touching scene," wrote Fisher Ames, of Massa 
 chusetts. " It seemed to me an allegory in which 
 virtue was personified as addressing those whom she 
 Avould make her votaries. Her power over the heart 
 was never greater, and the illustration of her doctrine 
 by her own example was never more perfect. ^ " I 
 feel how much I shall stand in need of the countenance 
 and aid of every friend to myself, of every friend to 
 the Revolution, and of every lover of good govern 
 ment," were Washington s words of appeal to Edward 
 Eutledge, of South Carolina; and he never seemed 
 to his friends more attractive or more noble than 
 now. 
 
 The inauguration over, the streets fallen quiet again, 
 the legislative business of the Houses resumed, "Wash 
 ington regained his old self-possession, and turned to 
 master his new duties with a calm thoroughness of pur 
 pose which seemed at once to pass into the action of the 
 government itself. Perhaps it was true, as he thought, 
 that he had been no statesman hitherto; though those 
 who had known him would have declared themselves of 
 another mind. He had carried the affairs of the Con 
 federation upon his own shoulders, while the war lasted, 
 after a fashion the men of that time Avere not likely to 
 forget, so full of energy had he been, so provident and 
 capable upon every point of policy. His letters, too, 
 since the war ended, had shown his correspondents the 
 country over such an appreciation of the present, so 
 sure a forecast of the future, so masculine an under- 
 
THE FIRST PRESIDENTIAL MANSION, AT PEARL AND CHERRY 
 STREETS. NEW YORK 
 
 WASHINGTON MANSION, 190 MARKET STREET, PHILADELPHIA 
 
THE FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 273 
 
 standing of what waited to be done and of the means 
 at hand to do it, that they, at least, accounted him their 
 leader in peace no less than in war. But statesman 
 ship hitherto had been only incidental to his duties as a 
 soldier and a citizen. It had been only an accident of 
 the Revolution that he had had himself, oftentimes, to 
 supply the foresight and the capacity in action which 
 the halting congress lacked. He had had no experience 
 at all in actual civil administration. He did not know 
 his own abilities, or realize how rich his experience in 
 affairs had, in fact, been. He went about his new tasks 
 with diffidence, therefore, but with the full - pulsed 
 heartiness, too, of the man who thoroughly trusts him 
 self, for the capacity at any rate of taking pains. 
 Statesmanship was now his duty his whole duty and 
 it was his purpose to understand and execute the office 
 of President as he had understood and administered the 
 office of General. 
 
 He knew what need there was for caution. This was 
 to be, " in the first instance, in a considerable degree, a 
 government of accommodation as well as a government 
 of laws. Much was to be done by prudence, much by 
 conciliation, much by firmness." "I walk," he said, 
 " on untrodden ground. There is scarcely an action the 
 motive of which may not be subjected to a double in 
 terpretation. There is scarcely any part of my conduct 
 which may not hereafter be drawn into precedent." 
 But, though he sought a prudent course, he had no mind 
 to be timid ; though he asked advice, he meant to be 
 his own master. 
 
 Washington had, no doubt, a more precise understand 
 ing of what the new government must be made to 
 mean than any other man living, except, perhaps, Ham- 
 is 
 
274 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 ilton and Madison, the men whom he most consulted. 
 The Confederation had died in contempt, despised for 
 its want of dignity and power. The new government 
 must deserve and get pre-eminent standing from the 
 first. Its policy must make the States a nation, must 
 stir the people out of their pettiness as colonists and 
 provincials, and give them a national character and 
 spirit. It was not a government only that was to be 
 created, but the definite body of opinion also which 
 should sustain and perfect it. It must be made worth 
 believing in, and the best spirits of the country must be 
 rallied to its support. It was not the question simply 
 of how strong the government should be. Its action 
 must, as Washington said, be mixed of firmness, pru 
 dence, and conciliation, if it would win liking and loyal 
 ty as well as respect. It must cultivate tact as well as 
 eschew weakness; must win as well as compel obedience. 
 It was of the first consequence to the country, there 
 fore, that the man it had chosen to preside in this deli 
 cate business of establishing a government which should 
 be vigorous without being overbearing was a thorough 
 bred gentleman, whose instincts would carry him a 
 great way towards the solution of many a nice question 
 of conduct. While he waited to be made President he 
 called upon every Senator and Eepresentative then in 
 attendance upon Congress, with the purpose to show 
 them upon how cordial and natural a basis of personal 
 acquaintance he wished, for his part, to see the govern 
 ment conducted ; but, the oath of office once taken, he 
 was no longer a simple citizen, as he had been during 
 those two days of waiting; the dignity of the govern 
 ment had come into his keeping with the office. Hence 
 forth he would pay no more calls, accept no invita- 
 
THE FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 275 
 
 tions. On a day fixed he would receive calls; and he 
 would show himself once a week at Mrs. Washington s 
 general receptions. He would invite persons of official 
 rank or marked distinction to his table at suitable in 
 tervals. There should be no pretence of seclusion, no 
 parade of inaccessibility. The President should be a 
 republican officer, the servant of the people. But he 
 would not be common. It should be known that 
 his office and authority were the first in the land. 
 Every proper outward form of dignity, ceremony, and 
 self-respect should be observed that might tell whole 
 somely upon the imagination of the people ; that might 
 be made to serve as a visible sign, which no man could 
 miss, that there was here no vestige of the old federal 
 authority, at which it had been the fashion to laugh, 
 but a real government, and that the greatest in the land. 
 It was not that the President was not to be seen by 
 anybody who had the curiosity to wish to see him. 
 Many a fine afternoon he was to be seen walking, an 
 unmistakable figure, upon the Battery, whither all per 
 sons of fashion in the town resorted for their daily 
 promenade, his secretaries walking behind him, but 
 otherwise unattended. Better still, he could be seen 
 almost any day on horseback, riding in his noble way 
 through the streets. People drew always aside to give 
 him passage wherever he went, whether he walked or 
 rode ; no doubt there was something in his air and bear 
 ing which seemed to expect them to do so ; but their 
 respect had the alacrity of affection, and he would 
 have borne himself with a like proud figure in his own 
 Virginia. Some thought him stiff, but only the churl 
 ish could deem him unrepublican, so evident was it to 
 every candid man that it was not himself but his office 
 
276 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 he was exalting. His old passion for success was upon 
 him, and he meant that this government of which he 
 had been made the head should have prestige from the 
 first. Count de Moustier, the French Minister to the 
 United States, deeming America, no doubt, a protege of 
 France, claimed the right to deal directly with the Pres 
 ident in person, as if upon terms of familiar privilege, 
 when conducting his diplomatic business; but was 
 checked very promptly. It was not likely a man bred 
 in the proud school of Virginian country gentlemen 
 would miss so obvious a point of etiquette as this. To 
 demand intimacy was to intimate superiority, and Wash 
 ington s reply drew from the Count an instant apology. 
 That the United States had every reason to hold France 
 in loyal affection "Washington gladly admitted with all 
 stately courtesy ; but affection became servility when it 
 lost self-respect, and France must approach the President 
 of the United States as every other country did, through 
 the properly constituted department. "If there are 
 rules of proceeding," he said, quietly, " which have 
 originated from the wisdom of statesmen, and are sanc 
 tioned by the common assent of nations, it would not 
 be prudent for a young state to dispense with them 
 altogether," particularly a young state (his thought 
 added) which foreign states had despised and might 
 now try to patronize. These small matters would carry 
 an infinite weight of suggestion with them, as he knew, 
 and every suggestion that proceeded from the President 
 should speak of dignity and independence. 
 
 For the first few months of the new government s 
 life these small matters that marked its temper and its 
 self-respect were of as much consequence as its laws or 
 its efficient organization for the tasks of actual adminis- 
 
WASHINGTON 
 
 (After a painting by Edward Savage) 
 
THE FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 277 
 
 tration. The country evidently looked to Washington 
 to set the tone and show what manner of government 
 it was to have. Congress, though diligent and purpose 
 ful enough, could linger, meanwhile, the whole summer 
 through upon its task of framing the laws necessary for 
 the erection and organization of Departments of State, 
 for Foreign Affairs, of the Treasury, and of War, and 
 the creation of the office of Attorney-General a simple 
 administrative structure to suffice for the present. In 
 the interval the treasury board of the Confederation and 
 its secretaries of war and foreign affairs were continued 
 in service, and the President found time to digest the 
 business of the several departments preparatory to their 
 reorganization. He sent for all the papers concerning 
 their transactions since the treaty of peace of 1783, and 
 mastered their contents after his own thorough fashion, 
 making copious notes and abstracts as he read. 
 
 He had been scarcely six weeks in office when he was 
 stricken with a sharp illness. A malignant tumor in 
 his thigh seemed to his physicians for a time to threaten 
 mortification. It was three weeks before he could take 
 the air again, stretched painfully at length in his coach ; 
 even his stalwart strength was slow to rally from the 
 draught made upon it by the disease, and its cure with 
 the knife. There was deep anxiety for a little among 
 those who knew, so likely did it seem that the life of 
 the government was staked upon his life. He himself 
 had looked very calmly into the doctor s troubled face, 
 and had bidden him tell him the worst with that placid 
 firmness that always came to him in moments of dan 
 ger. " I am not afraid to die," he said. " Whether to 
 night or twenty years hence makes no difference. I 
 know that I am in the hands of a good Providence." A 
 
278 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 chain had been stretched across the street in front of 
 the house where he lay, to check the noisy traffic that 
 might have disturbed him more deeply in his fever. 
 But the government had not stood still the while. He 
 had steadily attended to important matters as he could. 
 ? Twas scarcely necessary he should be out of bed and 
 abroad again to make all who handled affairs feel his 
 mastery ; and by the time the summer was ended that 
 mastery was founded upon knowledge. He understood 
 the affairs of the new government, as of the old, better 
 than any other man ; knew the tasks that waited to be 
 attempted, the questions that waited to be answered, 
 the difficulties that awaited solution, and the means at 
 hand for solving them, with a grasp and thoroughness 
 such as made it impossible henceforth that any man 
 who might be called to serve with him in executive 
 business, of whatever capacity in affairs, should be more 
 than his counsellor. He had made himself once for all 
 head and master of the government. 
 
 By the end of September (1789) Congress had com 
 pleted its work of organization and Washington had 
 drawn his permanent advisers about him. The federal 
 courts, too, had been erected and given definitive juris 
 diction. The new government had taken distinct shape, 
 and was ready to digest its business in detail. Wash 
 ington chose Alexander Hamilton to be Secretary of the 
 Treasury, Henry Knox to be Secretary of War, Thomas 
 Jefferson Secretary of State, and Edmund Eandolph 
 Attorney - General young men all, except Jefferson, 
 and he was but forty-six. 
 
 The fate of the government was certain to turn, first 
 of all, upon questions of finance. It was hopeless pov 
 erty that had brought the Confederation into deep dis- 
 
THE FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 279 
 
 grace ; the new government had inherited from it noth 
 ing but a great debt ; and the first test of character to 
 which the new plan in affairs would be put, whether at 
 home or abroad, was the test of its ability to sustain 
 its financial credit with businesslike thoroughness and 
 statesmanlike wisdom. Alexander Hamilton was only 
 thirty-two years old. He had been a spirited and capa 
 ble soldier and an astute and eloquent advocate ; but 
 he had not had a day s experience in the administration 
 of a great governmental department, and had never 
 handled so far as men knew, had never studied ques 
 tions of public finance. "Washington chose him, never 
 theless, without hesitation, for what must certainly turn 
 out to be the most critical post in his administration. 
 ISTo man saw more clearly than Washington did how 
 large a capacity for statesmanship Hamilton had shown 
 in his masterly papers in advocacy of the Constitution. 
 He had known Hamilton, moreover, through all the 
 quick years that had brought him from precocious 
 youth to wise maturity ; had read his letters and felt 
 the singular power that moved in them ; and was ready 
 to trust him with whatever task he would consent to 
 assume. 
 
 Henry Knox, that gallant officer of the Revolution, 
 had been already four years Secretary of War for the 
 Confederation. In appointing him to the same office 
 under the new Constitution, Washington was but re 
 taining a man whom he loved and to whom he had for 
 long been accustomed to look for friendship and coun 
 sel. He chose Thomas Jefferson to handle the delicate 
 questions of foreign affairs which must press upon the 
 young state because, John Adams being Yice-President, 
 there was no other man of equal gifts available who had 
 
280 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 had so large an experience in the field of diplomacy. 
 Again and again Jefferson had been chosen for foreign 
 missions under the Confederation ; he was American 
 Minister to France when "Washington s summons called 
 him to the Secretaryship of State ; and he came of that 
 race of Virginian statesmen from whom Washington 
 might reasonably count upon receiving a support 
 touched with personal loyalty. Kichard Henry Lee, 
 Patrick Henry, and George Mason were home-keeping 
 spirits, and doubted of the success of the new govern 
 ment; but Jefferson, though he had looked upon its 
 making from across the sea, approved, and was ready 
 to lend his aid to its successful establishment. In ap 
 pointing Edmund Eandolph to be Attorney - General, 
 "Washington was but choosing a brilliant young man 
 whom he loved out of a great family of lawyers who 
 had held a sort of primacy at the bar in Virginia ever 
 since he could remember almost ever since she had 
 been called the Old Dominion. Knox was thirty-nine, 
 Edmund Eandolph thirty-six ; but if Washington chose 
 young men to be his comrades and guides in counsel, it 
 was but another capital proof of his own mastery in af 
 fairs. Himself a natural leader, he recognized the like 
 gift and capacity in others, even when fortune had not 
 yet disclosed or brought them to the test. 
 
 It was hard, in filling even the greater offices, to find 
 men of eminence who were willing to leave the service 
 of their States or the security and ease of private life to 
 try the untrodden paths of federal government. The 
 States were old and secure so men thought the fed 
 eral government was new and an experiment. The 
 stronger sort of men, particularly amongst those bred 
 to the law, showed, many of them, a great reluctance 
 
t- 
 
THE FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 81 
 
 to identify themselves with new institutions set up but 
 five or six months ago ; and Washington, though he 
 meant to make every liberal allowance for differences of 
 opinion, would invite no man to stand with him in the 
 new service who did not thoroughly believe in it. He 
 was careful to seek out six of the best lawyers to be had 
 in the country when he made up the Supreme Court, 
 and to choose them from as many States John Jay, of 
 New York, to be chief justice ; John Rutledge, of South 
 Carolina ; "William Gushing, of Massachusetts ; John 
 Blair, of Virginia ; James Wilson, of Pennsylvania, and 
 R. II. Harrison, of Maryland for he knew that the 
 government must draw its strength from the men who 
 administered it, and that the common rua of people 
 must learn to respect it in the persons of its officers. 
 But he was equally careful to find out in advance of 
 every appointment what the man whom he wished to 
 ask thought of the new government and wished its 
 future to be. Many to whom he offered appointment 
 declined ; minor offices seemed almost to go a-begging 
 amongst men of assured position such as it was his ob 
 ject to secure. It needed all the tact and patience he 
 could command to draw about him a body of men such 
 as the country must look up to and revere. His letters 
 again went abroad by the hundred, as so often before, 
 to persuade men to their duty, build a bulwark of right 
 opinion round about the government, make his purposes 
 clear and his plans effective. He would spare no pains 
 to make the government both great and permanent. 
 
 In October, 1789, his principal appointments all made, 
 the government in full operation, and affairs standing 
 still till Congress should meet again, he went upon a 
 four weeks tour through the eastern States, to put the 
 
282 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 people in mind there, by his own presence, of the ex 
 istence and dignity of the federal government, and to 
 make trial of their feeling towards it. They received 
 him with cordial enthusiasm, for he was secure of their 
 love and admiration; and he had once more a royal 
 progress from place to place all the way to far New 
 Hampshire and back again. He studiously contrived to 
 make it everywhere felt, nevertheless, by every turn of 
 ceremonial and behavior, that he had come, not as the 
 hero of the Revolution, but as the President of the 
 United States. At Boston Governor Hancock sought 
 by cordial notes and pleas of illness to force Washing 
 ton to waive the courtesy of a first call from him, and 
 so give the executive of Massachusetts precedence, if 
 only for old friendship s sake. But Washington would 
 not be so defeated of his errand ; forced the perturbed 
 old patriot to come to him, swathed as he was in 
 flannels and borne upon men s shoulders up the stairs, 
 received him with grim courtesy, and satisfied the gos 
 sips of the town once and for all that precedence be 
 longed to the federal government at any rate, so long 
 as George Washington was President. Having seen 
 him and feted him, the eastern towns had seen and 
 done homage to the new authority set over them. 
 Washington was satisfied, and returned with a notice 
 able accession of spirits to the serious work of federal 
 administration. 
 
 No man stood closer to him in his purpose to 
 strengthen and give prestige to the government than 
 Hamilton ; and no man was able to discover the means 
 with a surer genius. Hamilton knew who the well- 
 wishers of the new government were, whence its 
 strength was to be drawn, what it must do to approve 
 
THE FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 283 
 
 itself great and permanent, with an insight and thor 
 oughness Washington himself could not match : for 
 Hamilton knew Washington and the seats of his 
 strength in the country as that self-forgetful man him 
 self could not. He knew that it was the commercial 
 classes of the country such men as he had himself 
 dwelt amongst at the great port at New York who 
 were bound by self-interest to the new government, 
 which promised them a single policy in trade, in the 
 stead of policies a half - score ; and that the men who 
 were standing to its support out of a reasoned prudence, 
 out of a high-minded desire to secure good government 
 and a place of consideration for their country amongst 
 the nations of the world, were individuals merely, to be 
 found only in small groups here and there, where a 
 special light shone in some minds. He knew that 
 Washington was loved most for his national character 
 and purpose amongst the observant middle classes of 
 substantial people in the richer counties of Pennsyl 
 vania, New Jersey, New York, and New England, 
 while his neighbors in the South loved him with an 
 individual affection only, and rather as their hero than 
 as their leader in affairs. He saw that the surest way 
 to get both popular support and international respect 
 was to give to the government at once and in the outset 
 a place of command in the business and material inter 
 ests of the country. Such a policy every man could 
 comprehend, and a great body of energetic and influ 
 ential men would certainly support ; that alone could 
 make the government seem real from the first a veri 
 table power, not an influence and a shadow merely. 
 
 Here was a man, unquestionably, who had a quick 
 genius in affairs ; and Washington gave him leave and 
 
284 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 initiative with such sympathy and comprehension and 
 support as only a nature equally bold and equally orig 
 inative could have given. Hamilton s measures jumped 
 with Washington s purpose, ran with Washington s per 
 ception of national interests ; and they were with Wash 
 ington s aid put into execution with a promptness and 
 decision which must have surprised the friends of the 
 new government no less than it chagrined and alarmed 
 its enemies. 
 
 Having done its work of organization during its first 
 summer session, the Congress came together again, Jan 
 uary 4th, 1790, to attempt the formulation of a policy of 
 government, and Hamilton at once laid before it a " plan 
 for the settlement of the public debt" which he had 
 drawn and Washington had sanctioned. He proposed 
 that provision should be made for the payment of the 
 foreign debt in full that of course ; that the domestic 
 debt, the despised promises and paper of the Confeder 
 ation, should be funded and paid ; and that the debts 
 contracted by the several States in the prosecution of 
 the war for independence should be assumed by the 
 general government as the debt of the nation. No one 
 could doubt that the foreign debt must be paid in full : 
 to that Congress agreed heartily and without hesitation. 
 But there was much in the rest of the plan to give pru 
 dent men pause. To pay off the paper of the Confed 
 eration would be to give to the speculators, who had 
 bought it up in the hope of just such a measure, a gra 
 tuity of many times what they had paid for it. To 
 assume the State debts would be taken to mean that 
 the States were bankrupt or delinquent, that the federal 
 government was to be their guardian and financial 
 providence, and that the capital of the country must 
 
THE FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 285 
 
 look only to the government of the nation, not to the 
 government of the States, for security and profitable 
 employment. This was nationalizing the government 
 with a vengeance, and was a plain bid, besides, to win 
 the moneyed class to its support. Members whose con 
 stituencies lay away from the centres of trade looked 
 askance at such measures, and deemed them no better 
 than handing the government over to the money lenders 
 of the towns. But boldness and energy prevailed, as 
 the} r had prevailed in the adoption of the Constitution 
 itself, and both measures were carried through the 
 Houses the first at once, the second after a close and 
 doubtful struggle by stratagem and barter. 
 
 Jefferson had been in France when Washington called 
 him to assume the headship of foreign affairs at home ; 
 had not reached New York on his return voyage until 
 December 23d, 1789 ; and did not take his place in Wash 
 ington s council till March 21st, 1790. All of Hamilton s 
 great plan had by that time passed Congress, except the 
 assumption of the State debts. Upon that question a 
 crisis had been reached. It had wrought Congress to 
 a dangerous heat of feeling. Members from the South, 
 where trade was not much astir and financial interests 
 told for less than local pride and sharp jealousy of a too 
 great central power, were set hotly against the measure ; 
 most of the Northern members were as hotly resolved 
 upon its adoption. Mr. Jefferson must have caught 
 echoes and rumors of the great debate as he lingered 
 at Monticello in order to adjust his private affairs be 
 fore entering upon his duties in the cabinet. The meas 
 ure had been lost at last in the House by the narrow 
 margin of two votes. But the minority were in no 
 humor to submit. They declined to transact any busi- 
 
286 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 ness at all till they should be yielded to in this matter. 
 There were even ugly threats to be heard that some 
 would withdraw from Congress and force a dissolution 
 of the Union rather than make concessions upon the 
 one side or the other. 
 
 It was to this pass that things had come when Mr, 
 Jefferson reached the seat of government ; and his 
 arrival gave Hamilton an opportunity to show how 
 consummate a politician he could be in support of his 
 statesmanship. The Southern members wanted the seat 
 of the federal government established within their 
 reach, upon the Potomac, where Congress might at least 
 be rid of importunate merchants and money lenders 
 clamoring at its doors, and of impracticable Quakers 
 with their petitions for the abolition of slavery ; and 
 were almost as hot at their failure to get their will in 
 that matter as the Northern men were to find them 
 selves defeated upon the question of the State debts. 
 Mr. Jefferson was fresh upon the field, was strong 
 among the Southern members, was not embroiled or 
 committed in the quarrel. Hamilton besought him to 
 intervene. The success of the government was at stake, 
 he said, and Mr. Jefferson could pluck it out of peril. 
 Might it not be that the Southern men would consent 
 to vote for the assumption of the State debts if the 
 Northern members would vote for a capital on the 
 Potomac ? The suggestion came as if upon the thought 
 of the moment, at a chance meeting on the street, as 
 the two men walked and talked of matters of the day ; 
 but it was very eloquently urged. Mr. Jefferson de 
 clared he was " really a stranger to the whole subject," 
 but would be glad to lend what aid he could. "Would 
 not Mr. Hamilton dine with him the next day, to meet 
 
ELEANOR PARKE CUSTIS 
 
 (From the painting in possession of General Custis Lee) 
 
THE FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 287 
 
 and confer with a few of the Southern members ? In 
 the genial air of the dinner-table the whole difficulty 
 was talked away. Two of the diners agreed to vote 
 for the assumption of the State debts if Mr. Hamilton 
 could secure a majority for a capital on the Potomac; 
 and Congress presently ratified the bargain. There was 
 not a little astonishment at the sudden clearing of the 
 skies. The waters did not go down at once ; hints of 
 a scandal and of the shipwreck of a fair name or two 
 went about the town and spread to the country. But 
 Congress had come out of its angry tangle of factions, 
 calm had returned to the government, and Hamilton s 
 plan stood finished and complete. He had nationalized 
 the government as he wished. 
 
 It was this fact that most struck the eye of Jefferson 
 when he had settled to his work and had come to see 
 affairs steadily and as a whole at the seat of govern 
 ment. He saw Hamilton supreme in the cabinet and in 
 legislation not because either the President or Con 
 gress was weak, but because Hamilton was a master in 
 his new field, and both Congress and the President had 
 accepted his leadership. It chagrined Jefferson deeply 
 to see that he had himself assisted at Hamilton s tri 
 umph, had himself made it complete, indeed. He could 
 not easily brook successful rivalry in leadership ; must 
 have expected to find himself, not Hamilton, preferred 
 in the counsels of a Virginian President ; was beyond 
 measure dismayed to see the administration already in 
 the hands, as it seemed, of a man just two months turned 
 of thirty-three. He began ere long to declare that he 
 had been "most ignorantly and innocently made to hold 
 the candle " to the sharp work of the Secretary of the 
 Treasury, having been " a stranger to the circum- 
 
288 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 stances." But it was not the circumstances of which 
 he had been ignorant ; it was the effect of what he had 
 done upon his own wish to play the chief role in the 
 new government. When he came to a calm scrutiny of 
 the matter, he did not like the assumption of the State 
 debts, and, what was more serious for a man of politi 
 cal ambition, it was bitterly distasteful to the very men 
 from whom he must look to draw a following when par 
 ties should form. He felt that he had been tricked ; he 
 knew that he had been outrun in the race for leadership. 
 What he did not understand or know how to reckon 
 with was the place and purpose of Washington in the 
 government. Hamilton had been Washington s aide 
 and confidant when a lad of twenty, and knew in what 
 way those must rule who served under such a chief. He 
 knew that Washington must first be convinced and 
 won; did not for a moment doubt that the President 
 held the reins and was master; was aware that his own 
 plans had prospered both in the making and in the 
 adoption because the purpose they spoke was the purpose 
 Washington most cherished. Washington had adopted 
 the fiscal measures as his own ; Hamilton s strength 
 consisted in having his confidence and support. Jefferson 
 had slowly to discover that leadership in the cabinet was 
 to be had, not by winning a majority of the counsellors 
 who sat in it, but by winning Washington. That master 
 ful man asked counsel upon every question of conse 
 quence, but took none his own judgment did not ap 
 prove. He had chosen Hamilton because he knew his 
 views, Jefferson only because he knew his influence, 
 ability, and experience in affairs. When he did test 
 Jefferson s views he found them less to his liking than 
 he had expected. 
 
THE FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 289 
 
 He had taken Jefferson direct from France, where for 
 five years he had been watching a revolution come on 
 apace, hurried from stage to stage, not by statesmen 
 who were masters in the art and practice of freedom, 
 like those who had presided in the counsels of America, 
 but by demagogues and philosophers rather; and the 
 subtle air of that age of change had crept into the 
 man s thought. He had come back a philosophical 
 radical rather than a statesman. He had yet to learn, 
 in the practical air of America, what plain and steady 
 policy must serve him to win hard-headed men to his 
 following; and Washington found him a guide who 
 needed watching. Foreign affairs, over which it was 
 Jefferson s duty to preside, began of a sudden to turn 
 upon the politics of France, where Jefferson s thought 
 was so much engaged. The year 1789, in which America 
 gained self-possession and set up a government soberly 
 planned to last, was the year in which France lost self- 
 possession and set out upon a wild quest for liberty 
 which was to cost her both her traditional polity and 
 all the hopes she had of a new one. In that year broke 
 the storm of the French revolution. 
 
 It was a dangerous infection that went abroad from 
 France in those first days of her ardor, and nowhere 
 was it more likely to spread than in America. 
 
 "Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, 
 But to be young was very heaven ! O times 
 In which the meagre, stale, forbidding ways 
 Of custom, law, and statute took at once 
 The attraction of a country in romance ! 
 When Reason seemed the most to assert her rights 
 When most intent on making of herself 
 A prime Enchantress, to assist the work 
 19 
 
290 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 "Which then was going forward in her name ! 
 Not favored spots aloue, but the whole earth, 
 The beauty wore of promise, that which sets 
 (As at some moments might not be unfelt 
 Among the bowers of paradise itself) 
 The budding rose above the rose full blown." 
 
 Was not this spirit that had sprung to such sudden 
 might in France the very spirit that had made America 
 free, her people sovereign, her government liberal as 
 men could dream of ? Was not France now more than 
 ever America s friend and close ally against the world ? 
 Twould be niggardly to grudge her aid and love to the 
 full in this day of her emulation of America s great ex 
 ample. The Bastile was down, tyranny at an end, 
 Lafayette the people s leader. The gallant Frenchman 
 himself could think of nothing more appropriate than to 
 send the great key of the fallen fortress to Washington. 
 But Washington s vision in affairs was not obscured. 
 He had not led revolutionary armies without learning 
 what revolution meant. " The revolution which has 
 been effected in France," he said, " is of so wonderful a 
 nature that the mind can hardly realize the fact " his 
 calm tones ringing strangely amidst the enthusiastic 
 cries of the time. " I fear, though it has gone trium 
 phantly through the first paroxysm, it is not the last it 
 has to encounter before matters are finally settled. The 
 revolution is of too great a magnitude to be effected in 
 so short a space and with the loss of so little blood." 
 He hoped, but did not believe, that it would run its 
 course without fatal disorders ; and he meant, in any 
 case, to keep America from the infection. She was her 
 self but " in a convalescent state," as he said, after her 
 own great struggle. She was too observant still, more- 
 
THE FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 291 
 
 over, of European politics and opinion, like a province 
 rather than like a nation inclined to take sides as if she 
 were still a child of the European family, who had flung 
 away from her mother England to cling in pique to an 
 ancient foe. Washington s first and almost single ob 
 ject, at every point of policy, was to make of the pro 
 vincial States of the Union a veritable nation, inde 
 pendent, at any rate, and ready to be great when its 
 growth should come, and its self-knowledge. " Every 
 true friend to this country," he said, at last, " must see 
 and feel that the policy of it is not to embroil ourselves 
 with any nation whatever, but to avoid their disputes 
 and their politics, and, if they will harass one another, 
 to avail ourselves of the neutral conduct we have adopt 
 ed. Twenty years peace, with such an increase of pop 
 ulation and resources as we have a right to expect, 
 added to our remote situation from the jarring powers, 
 will in all probability enable us, in a just cause, to bid 
 defiance to any power on earth " ; and such were his 
 thought andv.purpose from the first. " I want an Amer 
 ican character," he cried, "that the powers of Europe 
 may be convinced we act for ourselves, and not for 
 others. 1 He had been given charge of a nation in the 
 making, and he meant it should form, under his care, an 
 independent pharacter. 
 
 It was thus he proved himself no sentimentalist, but 
 a statesman. It was stuff of his character, this purpose 
 of independence. He would have played a like part of 
 self-respect for himself among his neighbors on the Yir- 
 ginian plantations ; and he could neither understand nor 
 tolerate the sentiment which made men like Jefferson 
 eager to fling themselves into European broils. Truly 
 this man was the first American, the men about him 
 
292 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 provincials merely, dependent still for their life and 
 thought upon the breath of the Old World, unless, like 
 Hamilton, they had been born and had stood aloof, or, 
 like Gouverneur Morris, had divined Europe in her own 
 capitals with clear, unenamoured eyes. Fortunately 
 affairs could be held steadily enough to a course of wise 
 neutrality and moderation at first, while France s revolu 
 tion wrought only its work of internal overthrow and 
 destruction ; and while things went thus opinion began 
 slowly to cool. Twas plain to be seen, as the months 
 went by, that the work being done in France bore no 
 real likeness at all to the revolution in America ; and 
 wise men began to see it for what it was, a social dis 
 temper, not a reformation of government effective 
 enough as a purge, no doubt ; inevitable, perhaps ; a 
 cure of nature s own devising ; but by no means to be 
 taken part in by a people not likewise stricken, still 
 free to choose. At first Washington and a few men of 
 like insight stood almost alone in their cool self-posses 
 sion. Every man of generous spirit deemed it his mere 
 duty to extol the French, to join clubs after their man 
 ner, in the name of the rights of man, to speak every 
 where in praise of the revolution. But by the time it 
 became necessary to act to declare the position and 
 policy of the nation s government towards France a 
 sober second thought had come, and Washington s task 
 was a little simplified. 
 
 The crisis came with the year 1793. In 1792 France 
 took arms against her European neighbors, let her mobs 
 sack the King s palace, declared herself a republic, and 
 put her monarch on trial for his life. The opening days 
 of 1793 saw Louis dead upon the scaffold; England, 
 Holland, Spain, and the Empire joined with the alliance 
 
THE FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 293 
 
 against the fevered nation ; and war as it were spread 
 suddenly to all the world. Would not America succor 
 her old ally ? Was there no compulsion in the name of 
 liberty ? Would- she stand selfishly off to save herself 
 from danger? There Avas much in such a posture of 
 affairs to give pause even to imperative men like Wash 
 ington. Those who favored France seemed the spokes 
 men of the country. The thoughtful men, to whom 
 the real character of the great revolution over sea was 
 beginning to be made plain, were silent. It would have 
 required a veritable art of divination to distinguish the 
 real sentiment of the country, upon which, after all, the 
 general government must depend. " It is on great oc 
 casions only, and after time has been given for cool 
 and deliberate reflection," Washington held, " that the 
 real voice of the people can be known"; but a great 
 risk must be run in waiting to know it. 
 
 The measures already adopted by the government, 
 though well enough calculated to render it strong, had 
 not been equally well planned to make it popular. The 
 power to tax, so jealously withheld but the other day 
 from the Confederation, the new Congress had begun 
 promptly and confidently to exercise upon a great scale, 
 not only laying duties upon imports, the natural re 
 source of the general government, but also imposing 
 taxes upon distilled spirits, and so entering the fiscal 
 field of the States. Not only had the war debts of the 
 States been assumed, but a national bank had been set 
 up (1791), as if still further to make the general govern 
 ment sure of a complete mastery in the field of finance. 
 Jefferson and Kandolph had fought the measure in the 
 cabinet, as many a moderate man had fought it in Con 
 gress, and Washington had withheld his signature from 
 
294 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 it till he should hear what they had to urge. But he 
 had sent their arguments to Hamilton for criticism, and 
 had accepted his answer in favor of the bank. Jeffer 
 son and Kandolph had challenged the measure on the 
 ground that it was without warrant in the Constitu 
 tion, which nowhere gave Congress the right to create 
 corporations, fiscal or other. Hamilton replied that, 
 besides the powers explicitly enumerated, the Constitu 
 tion gave to Congress the power to pass any measure 
 " necessary and proper " for executing those set forth ; 
 that Congress was itself left to determine what might 
 thus seem necessary ; and that if it deemed the erection 
 of a bank a proper means of executing the undoubted 
 financial powers of the government, the constitutional 
 question was answered. By accepting such a view 
 Washington sanctioned the whole doctrine of " implied 
 powers," which Jefferson deemed the very annulment 
 of a written and explicit constitution. No bounds, 
 Jefferson believed, could be set to the aggressive sweep 
 of congressional pretension if the two Houses were to 
 be given leave to do whatever they thought expedient 
 in exercising their in any case great and commanding 
 powers. No man could doubt, in the face of such meas 
 ures, what the spirit and purpose of Hamilton were, or 
 of the President whom Hamilton so strangely domi 
 nated. 
 
 Strong measures bred strong opposition. When the 
 first Congress came together there seemed to be no par 
 ties in the country. All men seemed agreed upon a fair 
 and spirited trial of the new Constitution. But an oppo 
 sition had begun to gather form before its two years 
 term was out ; and in the second Congress party lines 
 began to grow definite not for and against the Consti- 
 
THE FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 295 
 
 tution, but for and against an extravagant use of con 
 stitutional powers. There was still a majority for the 
 principal measures of the administration ; but the minor 
 ity had clearly begun to gather force both in the votes 
 and in the debates. The reaction was unmistakable. 
 Even Madison, Washington s stanch friend and inti 
 mate counsellor, who had at first been his spokesman in 
 the House, began to draw back first doubted and 
 then opposed the policy of the Treasury. He had led 
 the opposition to the bank, and grew more and more 
 uneasy to note the course affairs were taking. It looked 
 as if the administration were determined of set purpose 
 to increase the expenses of the government, in order 
 that they might add to the loans,which were so accept 
 able to influential men of wealth, and double the taxes 
 which made the power of the government so real in the 
 eyes of the people. Steps were urged to create a navy ; 
 to develop an army with permanent organization and 
 equipment; and the President insisted upon vigorous 
 action at the frontiers against the western Indians. 
 This was part of his cherished policy. It was his way 
 of fulfilling the vision that had long ago come to him, 
 of a nation spreading itself down tke western slopes of 
 the mountains and over all the broad reaches of fertile 
 land that looked towards the Mississippi ; but to many a 
 member of Congress from the quiet settlements in the 
 east it looked like nothing better than a waste of men 
 and of treasure. The President seemed even a little too 
 imperious in the business: w r ould sometimes come into 
 the Senate in no temper to brook delay in the consider 
 ation and adoption of what he proposed in such matters. 
 When things went wrong through the fault of the com 
 manders he had sent to the frontier, he stormed in a 
 
296 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 sudden fury, as sometimes in the old days of the war, 
 scorning soldiers who must needs blunder and fail. The 
 compulsion of his will grew often a little irksome to 
 the minority in Congress ; and the opposition slowly 
 pulled itself together as the months went by to concert 
 a definite policy of action. 
 
 Washington saw as plainly as any man what was 
 taking place. He was sensitive to the movements of 
 opinion ; wished above all things to have the govern 
 ment supported by the people s approval ; was never 
 weary of writing to those who were in a position to know, 
 to ask them what they and their neighbors soberly 
 thought about the questions and policies under debate ; 
 was never so impatient as to run recklessly ahead of 
 manifest public opinion. He knew how many men had 
 been repelled by the measures he had supported Hamil 
 ton in proposing ; knew that a reaction had set in ; that 
 even to seem to repulse France and to refuse her aid or 
 sympathy would surely strengthen it. The men who 
 were opposed to his financial policy were also the men 
 who most loved France, now she was mad with revolu 
 tion. They were the men who dreaded a strong gov 
 ernment as a direct menace to the rights alike of in 
 dividuals and of the separate States ; the men who held 
 a very imperative philosophy of separation and of revolt 
 against any too great authority. If he showed himself 
 cold towards France, he would certainly strengthen 
 them in their charge that the new government craved 
 power and was indifferent to the guarantees of freedom. 
 
 But Washington s spirit was of the majestic sort that 
 keeps a great and hopeful confidence that the right view 
 will prevail ; that the " standard to which the wise and 
 honest will repair" is also the standard to which the 
 
THE FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 297 
 
 whole people will rally at last, if it be but held long and 
 steadily enough on high to be seen of all. When the 
 moment for action came he acted promptly, unhesitat 
 ingly, as if in indifference to opinion. The outbreak of 
 war between France and England made it necessary he 
 should let the country know what he meant to do. 
 " War having actually commenced between France and 
 Great Britain," he wrote to Jefferson in April, 1793, " it 
 behooves the government of this country to use every 
 means in its power to prevent the citizens thereof from 
 embroiling us with either of those powers, by endeavor 
 ing to maintain a strict neutrality. I therefore require 
 that you will give the subject mature consideration, 
 that such measures as shall be deemed most likely to 
 effect this desirable purpose may be adopted without 
 delay. . . . Such other measures as may be necessary 
 for us to pursue against events which it may not be in 
 our power to avoid or control, you will also think of, and 
 lay them before me at my arrival in Philadelphia ; for 
 which place I shall set out to-morrow." He was at 
 Mount Vernon when he despatched these instructions ; 
 but it did not take him long to reach the seat of gov 
 ernment, to consult his cabinet, and to issue a proclama 
 tion of neutrality whose terms no man could mistake. 
 It contained explicit threat of exemplary action against 
 any who should presume to disregard it. 
 
 That very month (April, 1793) Edmond Charles Genet, 
 a youth still in his twenties whom the new republic over 
 sea had commissioned Minister to the United States, 
 landed at Charleston. It pleased him to take posses 
 sion of the country, as if it were of course an appanage 
 of France. He was hardly ashore before he had begun 
 to arrange for the fitting out of privateers, to issue let- 
 
 i 
 c 
 
 
 
298 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 ters of marque to American citizens, and to authorize 
 French consuls at American ports to act as judges of ad 
 miralty in the condemnation of prizes. As he journeyed 
 northward to Philadelphia he was joyfully confirmed in 
 his views and purposes by his reception at the hands of 
 the people. He was everywhere dined and toasted and 
 feted, as if he had been a favorite prince returned to his 
 subjects. His speeches by the way rang in a tone of au 
 thority and patronage. He reached Philadelphia fairly 
 mad with the sense of power, and had no conception of 
 his real situation till he stood face to face with the Pres 
 ident. Of that grim countenance and cold greeting 
 there could be but one interpretation; and the fellow 
 winced to feel that at last he had come to a grapple 
 with the country s government. It was, no doubt, in 
 the eyes of the sobering man, a strange and startling 
 thing that then took place. The country itself had not 
 fully known Washington till then or its own dignity 
 either. It had deemed the proclamation of neutrality a 
 party measure, into which the President had been led 
 by the enemies of France, the partisans of England. 
 But the summer undeceived everybody, even Genet. 
 Not content with the lawless mischief he had set afoot 
 on the coasts by the commissioning of privateersmen, 
 that mad youth had hastened to send agents into 
 the south and west to enlist men for armed expedi 
 tions against the Floridas and against New Orleans, on 
 the coveted Mississippi ; but his work was everywhere 
 steadily undone. Washington acted slowly, deliberately 
 even, with that majesty of self-control, that awful cour 
 tesy and stillness in wrath, that had ever made him a 
 master to be feared in moments of sharp trial. One by 
 one the unlawful prizes were seized ; justice was done 
 
THE FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 299 
 
 upon their captors ; the false admiralty courts were shut 
 up. The array of the United States was made ready 
 to check the risings in the south and west, should there 
 be need ; the complaints of the British Minister were 
 silenced by deeds as well as by words ; the clamor of 
 those who had welcomed the Frenchman so like pro 
 vincials was ignored, though for a season it seemed the 
 voice of the country itself ; and the humiliating work, 
 which ought never to have been necessary, was at last 
 made effective and complete. 
 
 Towards the close of June, Washington ventured to 
 go for a little while to Mount Yernon for rest. At once 
 there was trouble. A privateer was found taking arms 
 and stores aboard in the very river at Philadelphia; 
 Jefferson allowed her to drop down to Chester, believ 
 ing Genet instead of the agents of the government ; and 
 she was upon the point of getting to sea before Wash 
 ington could reach the seat of government. Jefferson 
 was not in town when the President arrived. " What 
 is to be done in the case of the Little Sarah, now at 
 Chester?" came Washington s hot questions after him. 
 " Is the Minister of the French Republic to set the acts 
 of this government at defiance with impunity? And 
 then threaten the executive with an appeal to the peo 
 ple ? What must the world think of such conduct, and 
 of the United States in submitting to it ? Circumstances 
 press for decision ; and as you have had time to con 
 sider them, I wish to know your opinion upon them, 
 even before to-morrow, for the vessel may then be 
 gone." It was indeed too late to stop her : a gross vio 
 lation of neutrality had been permitted under the very 
 eyes of the Secretary of State. Washington stayed 
 henceforth in Philadelphia, in personal control of affairs. 
 
 a 
 
300 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 It was an appeal to the people that finally delivered 
 Genet into his hands. Washington revoked the exe 
 quatur of one Duplaine, French consul at Boston, for 
 continuing to ignore the laws of neutrality; Genet de 
 clared he would appeal from the President to the sover 
 eign State of Massachusetts ; rumors of the silly threat 
 got abroad, and Genet demanded of the President that 
 he deny them. Washington answered with a chilling 
 rebuke; the correspondence was given to the public 
 prints ; and at last the country saw the French Minister 
 for what he was. A demand for his recall had been re 
 solved upon in the cabinet in August ; by February, 
 1794, the slow processes of diplomatic action were com 
 plete, and a successor had arrived. Genet did not vent 
 ure to return to his distracted country ; but he was as 
 promptly and as readily forgotten in America. Some 
 might find it possible to love France still ; but no one 
 could any longer stomach Genet. 
 
 Washington had divined -French affairs much too 
 clearly to be for a moment tempted to think with 
 anything but contempt of the French party who had 
 truckled to Genet. " The affairs of France," he said to 
 Lee, in the midst of Genet s heyday, " seem to me to be 
 in the highest paroxysm of disorder ; not so much from 
 the presence of foreign enemies, but because those in 
 whose hands the government is intrusted are ready to 
 tear each other to pieces, and will more than probably 
 prove the worst foes the country has." It was his clear 
 perception what the danger would be should America 
 be drawn into the gathering European wars that had 
 led him to accept a second term as President. It had 
 been his wish to remain only four years in the arduous 
 office : but he had no thought to leave a task unfinished ; 
 
WASHINGTON AND NELLY CUSTIS 
 

 o 
 
THE FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 3Q1 
 
 knew that he was in the very midst of the critical busi 
 ness of holding the country to the course which should 
 make it a self-respecting nation; and consented to 
 submit himself once more to the vote of the electors. 
 Parties were organizing, but there was no opposition to 
 Washington. He received again a unanimous vote ; and 
 John Adams was again chosen Yice- President. The 
 second inauguration (March, 1793) seemed but a rou 
 tine confirmation of the first. But the elections to 
 Congress showed a change setting in. In the Senate 
 the avowed supporters of the administration had still a 
 narrow majority ; but in the House they fell ten votes 
 short of control ; and Washington had to put his policy 
 of neutrality into execution against the mad Genet with 
 nothing but doubts how he should be supported. The 
 insane folly of Genet saved the President serious embar 
 rassment, after all ; made the evidence that Washington 
 was right too plain to be missed by anybody ; and gave 
 the country at last vision enough to see what was in 
 fact the course of affairs abroad, within and without 
 unhappy France. Before that trying year 1793 was 
 out, an attack upon Hamilton in the House, though led 
 by Madison, had failed ; Jefferson had left the cabinet ; 
 and the hands of those who definitely and heartily sup 
 ported the President were not a little strengthened. 
 There was sharp bitterness between parties a bitter 
 ness sharper as yet, indeed, than their differences of 
 view ; but the " federalists," who stood to the support 
 of Washington and Hamilton, were able, none the less, 
 to carry their more ipdispensable measures even an 
 act of neutrality which made the President s policy the 
 explicit law of the land. The sober second thought of 
 the country was slowly coming about to their aid. 
 
302 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 The air might have cleared altogether had the right 
 method of dealing with France been the only question 
 that pressed ; but the ill fortune of the time forced the 
 President to seem not only the recreant friend of 
 France, but also the too complacent partisan of Eng 
 land. Great Britain seemed as mischievously bent upon 
 forcing the United States to war as Genet himself had 
 been. She would not withdraw her garrisons from the 
 border posts ; it was believed that she was inciting the 
 Indians to their savage inroads upon the border, as the 
 French had done in the old days ; she set herself to de 
 stroy neutral trade by seizing all vessels that carried the 
 products of the French islands or were laden with pro 
 visions for their ports ; she would admit American ves 
 sels to her own West Indian harbors only upon suffer 
 ance, and within the limits of a most jealous restriction. 
 It gave a touch of added bitterness to the country s 
 feeling against her that she should thus levy as it were 
 covert war upon the Union while affecting to be at 
 peace with it, as if she counted on its weakness, es 
 pecially on the seas ; and Congress would have taken 
 measures of retaliation, which must certainly have led 
 to open hostilities, had not "Washington intervened, de 
 spatching John Jay, the trusted Chief Justice, across sea 
 as minister extraordinary, to negotiate terms of accom 
 modation; and so giving pause to the trouble. 
 
 While the country waited upon the negotiation, it 
 witnessed a wholesome object-lesson in the power of 
 its new government. In March, 1791, Congress had 
 passed an act laying taxes on distilled spirits : twas 
 part of Hamilton s plan to show that the federal gov 
 ernment could and would use its great authority. The 
 act bore nowhere so hard upon the people as in the vast 
 
THE FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 3Q3 
 
 far counties of Pennsylvania and Virginia, beyond the 
 mountains and there the very allegiance of the people 
 had been but the other day doubtful, as Washington 
 very well knew. How were they to get their corn to 
 market over the long roads if they were not to be per 
 mitted to reduce its bulk and increase its value by turn 
 ing it into whiskey ? The tax seemed to them intoler 
 able, and the remedy plain. They would not pay it. 
 They had not been punctilious to obey the laws of the 
 States ; they would not begin obedience now by sub 
 mitting to the worst laws of the United States. At first 
 they only amused themselves by tarring and feathering 
 an exciseman here and there ; but resistance could not 
 stop with that in the face of a government bent upon 
 having its own way. Opposition organized itself and 
 spread, till the writs of federal courts had been defied 
 by violent mobs and the western counties of Pennsyl 
 vania were fairly quick with incipient insurrection. 
 
 For two years Washington watched the slow gather 
 ing of the storm, warning those who resisted, keeping 
 Congress abreast of him in preparation for action when 
 the right time should come, letting all the country know 
 what was afoot and prepare its mind for what was to 
 come. It must have won him to a stern humor to learn 
 that seven thousand armed men had gathered in mass- 
 meeting on Braddock s field to defy him. At last he 
 summoned an army of militia out of the States, sent it 
 straight to the lawless counties, going with it himself 
 till he learned there would be no serious resistance 
 and taught the country what was back of federal law. 
 Hamilton had had his way, the country its lesson. 
 " The servile copyist of Mr. Pitt thought he must have 
 his alarms, his insurrections and plots against the Con- 
 
304 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 stitution," sneered Jefferson. " It aroused the favorite 
 purposes of strengthening government and increasing 
 the public debt ; and therefore an insurrection was 
 announced and proclaimed and armed against and 
 marched against, but could never be found. And all 
 this under the sanction of a name which has done too 
 much good not to be sufficient to cover harm also." 
 " The powers of the executive of this country are more 
 definite and better understood, perhaps, than those of any 
 other country," Washington had said, " and my aim has 
 been, and will continue to be, neither to stretch nor to 
 relax from them in any instance whatever, unless com 
 pelled to it by imperious circumstances," and that was 
 what he meant the country to know, whether the law s 
 purpose was good or bad. 
 
 The next year the people knew what Mr. Jay had 
 done. He reached New York May 28th, 1796 ; and the 
 treaty he brought with him was laid before the Senate 
 on the 8th of June. On the 2d of July the country 
 knew what he had agreed to and the Senate had rati 
 fied. There was an instant outburst of wrath. It swept 
 from one end of the country to the other. The treaty 
 yielded so much, gained so little, that to accept it 
 seemed a veritable humiliation. The northwestern posts 
 were, indeed, to be given up at last; the boundaries 
 between English and American territory were to be 
 determined by commissioners ; unrestricted commerce 
 with England herself, and a free direct trade with her 
 East Indian possessions, were conceded ; but not a word 
 was said about the impressment of American seamen ; 
 American claims for damages for unjust seizures in the 
 West Indies were referred to a commission, along with 
 American debts to Englishmen ; the coveted trade with 
 
DEATH OF WASHINGTON 
 
THE FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 305 
 
 the West Indian islands was secured only to vessels of 
 seventy tons and under, and at the cost of renouncing 
 the right to export sugar, molasses, coffee, cocoa, or 
 cotton to Europe. Washington agreed with the Senate 
 that ratifications of the treaty ought not to be ex 
 changed without a modification of the clauses respect 
 ing the West Indian trade, and October had come 
 before new and better terms could be agreed upon ; 
 but he had no doubt that the treaty as a whole ought 
 to be accepted. The opposition party in Congress had 
 refused to vote money for an efficient navy, and so had 
 made it impossible to check British aggressions : they 
 must now accept this unpalatable treaty as better at 
 any rate than war. 
 
 It was hard to stand steady in the storm. The coun 
 try took fire as it had done at the passage of the Stamp 
 Act. Harder things had never been said of king and 
 parliament than were now said of Washington and his 
 advisers. Many stout champions stood to his defence 
 none stouter or more formidable than Hamilton, no 
 longer a member of the cabinet, for imperative private 
 interests had withdrawn him these six months and 
 more, but none the less redoubtable in the field of con 
 troversy. For long, nevertheless, the battle went heav 
 ily against the treaty. Even Washington, for once, 
 stood a little while perplexed, not doubting his own pur 
 pose, indeed, but very anxious what the outcome should 
 be. Protests against his signing the treaty poured in 
 upon him from every quarter of the country : many of 
 them earnest almost to the point of entreaty, some hot 
 with angry comment. His reply, when he vouchsafed 
 any, was always that his very gratitude for the appro 
 bation of the country in the past fixed him but the more 
 
306 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 firmly in his resolution to deserve it now by obeying his 
 own conscience. " It is very desirable," he wrote to 
 Hamilton, " to ascertain, if possible, after the paroxysm 
 of the fever is a little abated, what the real temper of 
 the people is concerning it ; for at present the cry 
 against the Treaty is like that against a mad dog;" but 
 he showed himself very calm to the general eye, mak 
 ing his uneasiness known only to his intimates. The 
 cruel abuse heaped upon him cut him to the quick. 
 " Such exaggerated and indecent terms," he cried, " could 
 scarcely be applied to a Nero, a notorious defaulter, 
 or even to a common pickpocket." But the men who 
 sneered and stormed, talked of usurpation and impeach 
 ment, called him base, incompetent, traitorous even, 
 were permitted to see not so much as the quiver of an 
 eyelid as they watched him go steadily from step to 
 step in the course he had chosen. 
 
 At last the storm cleared ; the bitter months were 
 over ; men at the ports saw at length how much more 
 freely trade ran under the terms of the treaty, and re 
 membered that, while they had been abusing Jay and 
 maligning the President, Thomas Pinckney had ob 
 tained a treaty from Spain which settled the Florida 
 boundary, opened the Mississippi without restriction, 
 secured a place of deposit at New Orleans, and made 
 commerce with the Spaniards as free as commerce with 
 the French. The whole country felt a new impulse of 
 prosperity. The " paroxysm of the fever " was over, 
 and shame came upon the men who had so vilely abused 
 the great President and had made him wish, in his bit 
 terness, that he were in his grave rather than in the 
 Presidency ; who had even said that he had played false 
 in the Revolution, and had squandered public moneys ; 
 
l>ecenibjet at. 
 
 IT is with the deepett grief tl 
 
 we announce to the public the dealt 
 
 f our moft dijtinguijhed fellow-citf 
 
 en Lhut. Central George Wajhing 
 
 ?. Heru ed at Mount Vernon or 
 
 Saturday evening the i3th inft. o; 
 
 on loilammatory affection of tbc 
 
 throat, which put a period to his ex< 
 
 ulence in 23 hoars. 
 
 The grief which we fuffcr .on tfai 
 truly mournful occafion, would b< 
 in fome degree aleviated, if we pol 
 lefled abilities to do juiticc to th 
 agents of this illuftrious bcnefaftorg 
 
 wnlind ; but, confcioug of our ih- 
 eriority, we fhrhik from the fa 
 nity of the fubjecl:. To the impaiv 
 ial and . eloquent biftorian, there- 
 ore, we confign the high and grate- 
 ul office of exhibiting the life of 
 leorgt Washington to the prefent 
 ige, and to generations yet unborn, 
 is a perfeft model of all thit is Vir 
 uous, nobte, reat> and dignified in 
 -nan. Our feelings, however, will 
 aot permit us to forbear obferving, 
 hat the very difintereft d and tm 
 sonant fervices rendered by Gcorgf 
 Vafiington to thele United btatfist 
 both in the Field and La the Cabinet, 
 lave ere&ed in the hearts of his 
 Country men, monuments of fmcerc 
 and unbounded gratitude, which 
 :he mouldering hand of Time can< 
 HoL deface ; and that in every quar 
 er of the Globe, where liree Co- 
 vrnment is ranked amongft the 
 choice/I bteflings of Providence, ond 
 tue*) morality^ religion, and patrio 
 tijm are rcfpedled, THE NAME oi 
 WASHINGTON WILL BE HELD IN 
 veneration. 
 
 And a> along the Cream of TJM*, his name 
 ^Exp"ded flies, and gathers *li its tone*, 
 
 NOTE. The announcement of the death of Washington reproduced 
 here was printed originally as the leading editorial in the New York 
 Gazette and General Advertiser of Saturday, December 21, 1799. This 
 daily newspaper was published by John Lang, Franklin Head, No. 
 116 Pearl Street. 
 
THE FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 307 
 
 who had gone beyond threats of impeachment and dared 
 to hint at assassination ! They saw the end of his term 
 approach, and would have recalled their insults. But 
 they had alienated his great spirit forever. 
 
 When he had seen parties forming in his cabinet in 
 the quiet days of his first term as President, he had 
 sought to placate differences ; had tried to bring Ham 
 ilton and Jefferson to a cordial understanding which 
 should be purged of partisan bias, as he meant his own 
 judgments to be; had deemed parties unnecessary and 
 loyalty to the new Constitution the only standard of 
 preferment to office. But he had come to another mind 
 in the hard years that followed. " I shall not, whilst I 
 have the honor to administer the government, bring a 
 man into any office of consequence knowingly," he de 
 clared in the closing days of 1795, " whose political 
 tenets are adverse to the tenets which the general gov 
 ernment are pursuing ; for this, in my opinion, would be 
 a sort of political suicide ;" and he left the Presidency 
 ready to call himself very flatly a " Federalist " of the 
 party that stood for the Constitution and abated noth 
 ing of its powers. " You could as soon scrub a blacka- 
 more white," he cried, " as to change the principle of a 
 profest Democrat " " he will leave nothing unattempt- 
 ed to overturn the Government of this Country." 
 
 Affairs fell very quiet again as the last year of his 
 Presidency drew towards its close. Brisk trade under 
 the new treaties heartened the country more and more ; 
 the turbulent democratic clubs that had so noisily af 
 fected French principles and French modes of agitation 
 were sobered and discredited, now the Eeign of Terror 
 had come and wrought its bloody work in France ; the 
 country turned once more to Washington with its old 
 
308 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 confidence and affection, and would have had him take 
 the Presidency a third time, to keep the government 
 steady in its new ways. 
 
 But he would not have the hard office again. On the 
 19th of September, 1796, he published to the people a 
 farewell address, quick with the solemn eloquence men 
 had come to expect from him. He wrote to Hamil 
 ton and to Madison for advice as to what he should 
 say, as in the old days of his diffident beginnings in the 
 great office though Hamilton was the arch-Federalist 
 and Madison was turning Democrat took their phrases 
 for his thought where they seemed better than his own ; 
 put the address forth as his mature and last counsel to 
 the little nation he loved. " It was designed," he said, 
 " in a more especial manner for the yeomanry of the 
 country," and spoke the advice he hoped they might 
 take to heart. The circumstances which had given his 
 services a temporary value, he told them, were passed ; 
 they had now a unified and national government, which 
 might serve them for great ends. He exhorted them 
 to preserve it intact, and not to degrade it in the using ; 
 to put down party spirit, make religion, education, and 
 good faith the guides and safeguards of their govern 
 ment, and keep it national and their own by excluding 
 foreign influences and entanglements. Twas a noble 
 document. No thoughtful man could read it Avithout 
 emotion, knowing how it spoke in all its solemn sen 
 tences the great character of the man whose career was 
 ended. 
 
 "When the day came on which he should resign his 
 office to John Adams, the great civilian who was to 
 succeed him, there was a scene which left no one in 
 doubt not even Washington himself what the people 
 
THE FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 309 
 
 thought of the leader they had trusted these twenty 
 years. A great crowd was assembled to see the simple- 
 ceremonies of the inauguration, as on that April day in 
 New York eight years ago ; but very few in the throng 
 watched Adams. All eyes were bent upon that great 
 figure in black velvet, with a light sword slung at his 
 ^side. No one stirred till he had left the room, to follow 
 and pay his respects to the new President. Then they 
 and all the crowd in the streets moved after him, an 
 immense company, going as one man, " in total silence," 
 his escort all the way. He turned upon the threshold 
 of the President s lodgings and looked, as if for the last 
 time, upon this multitude of nameless friends. " No 
 man ever saw him so moved." The tears rolled un 
 checked down his cheeks; and when at last he went 
 within, a great smothered common voice went through 
 the stirred throng, as if they sobbed to see their hero 
 go from their sight forever. 
 
 It had been noted how cheerful he looked, at thought 
 of his release, as he entered the hall of the Kepresenta- 
 tives, where Mr. Adams was to take the oath. As soon 
 as possible he was at his beloved Mount Vernon once 
 more, to pick up such threads as he might of the old 
 life again. " I begin my diurnal course with the sun," 
 he wrote, in grave playfulness, to a friend ; " if my 
 hirelings are not in their places by that time, I send 
 them messages of sorrow for their indisposition ; having 
 put these wheels in motion, I examine the state of 
 things further; the more they are probed the deeper I 
 find the wounds which my buildings have sustained by 
 an absence and neglect of eight years ; by the time I 
 have accomplished these matters breakfast (a little after 
 seven o clock, about the time, I presume, that you are 
 
310 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 taking leave of Mrs. McIIenry) is ready; this being 
 over, I mount my horse and ride round my farms, which 
 employs me until it is time to dress for dinner. . . . The 
 usual time of sitting at the table, a walk, and tea bring 
 me within the dawn of candlelight ; previous to which, 
 if not prevented by company, I resolve that as soon as 
 the glimmering taper supplies the place of the great 
 luminary I will retire to my writing-table and acknowl 
 edge the letters I have received ; when the lights are 
 brought I feel tired and disinclined to engage in this 
 work, conceiving that the next night will do as well. 
 The next night comes, and with it the same causes for 
 postponement, and so on. Having given you the his 
 tory of a day, it will serve for a year, and I am per 
 suaded that you will not require a second edition of it." 
 He had kept his overseers under his hand all the time 
 he was President ; had not forgotten to write to Dr. 
 Young upon methods of cultivation ; had shown the 
 same passion as ever for speeding and regulating at 
 its best every detail of his private business ; but matters 
 had gone ill for lack of his personal supervision. He 
 was obliged to sell no less than fifty thousand dollars 
 worth of his lands in the course of four or five years to 
 defray the great expenses he was put to in the Presi 
 dency and the cost of bringing his estate into solvent 
 shape again. He did not try to begin anew ; he only 
 set things in order, and kept his days serene. 
 
 A spark of war was kindled by the new administra 
 tion s dealings with France, and Washington was called 
 once more to prepare for command, should the fighting 
 leave the sea and come ashore. But formal war did not 
 come. The flurry only kept him a little nearer the 
 movements of politics than he cared to be. He was the 
 
HANOVER COURT-HOUSE 
 
 
 THE OLD TOMB, MOUNT VERNON 
 
THE FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 31 1 
 
 more uneasy to see how the Democrats bore themselves 
 in the presence of the moment s peril ; doubted the ex 
 pediency of assigning men of that party to places of 
 command in the army ; approved the laws passed against 
 aliens and against those who should utter seditious libel 
 against the government; showed again, and without re 
 serve, how deeply his affections were engaged on the 
 side of the institutions he had so labored to set up and 
 protect ; was intolerant towards any who sought to 
 touch or question at any point their new authority- 
 imperious as of old in question of action. 
 
 But it was his home that chiefly held his thought 
 now. He had not changed towards his friends through 
 all the long years of public care and engrossing business. 
 An old comrade, who had come in his rough frontier 
 dress all the way from far Kentucky to Philadelphia to 
 see the President, had been told " that Washington had 
 become puffed up with the importance of his station, 
 and was too much of an aristocrat to welcome him in 
 that garb." But the old soldier was not daunted, press 
 ed on to make his call, and came back to tell his friends 
 how the President and his lady had both seen him and 
 recognized him from the window, and had hurried to 
 the door to draw him cordially in. " I never was 
 better treated," he said. " I had not believed a word 
 against him ; and I found that he was Old Hoss still." 
 Twas the same with his neighbors, and with strangers 
 too. He was the simple gentleman of the old days. A 
 strolling actor, riding Mount Yernon way on a day in 
 July, stopped to help a man and woman who had been 
 thrown from their chaise, and did not recognize the stal 
 wart horseman who galloped up to his assistance till 
 the overturned vehicle had been set up again, they had 
 
312 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 dusted each the other s coat, and the stately stranger, 
 saying he had had the pleasure of seeing him play in 
 Philadelphia, had bidden him come to the house yonder 
 and be refreshed. " Have I the honor of addressing 
 General Washington ?" exclaimed the astonished player. 
 " An odd sort of introduction, Mr. Bernard," smiled the 
 heated soldier ; " but I am pleased to find you can play 
 so active a part in private, and without a prompter." 
 
 Those who saw him now at Mount Yernon thought 
 him gentler with little children than Mrs. Washington 
 even, and remembered how he had always shown a like 
 love and tenderness for them, going oftentimes out of 
 his way to warn them of danger, with a kindly pat on 
 the head, when he saw them watching the soldiers in 
 the war days. Now all at Mount Yernon looked for 
 ward to the evening. That " was the children s hour." 
 He had written sweet Nelly Custis a careful letter of 
 advice upon love matters, half grave, half playful, in the 
 midst of his Presidency, when the troubles with Eng 
 land were beginning to darken ; she had always found 
 him a comrade, and had loved him with an intimacy 
 very few could know. Now she was to be married, to 
 his own sister s son, and upon his birthday, February 
 22d, 1799. She begged him to wear the " grand em 
 broidered uniform," just made for the French war, at 
 her wedding ; but he shook his head and donned in 
 stead the worn buff and blue that had seen real cam 
 paigns. Then the delighted girl told him, with her 
 arm about his neck, that she loved him better in that. 
 
 The quiet days went by without incident. He served 
 upon a petty jury of the county when summoned ; and 
 was more than content to be the simple citizen again, 
 great duties put by, small ones diligently resumed. 
 
THE FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 313 
 
 Once and again his anger flamed at perverse neglects 
 and tasks ill done. Even while he was President, he 
 had stormed to find his horses put to the chariot with 
 unpolished hoofs upon a day of ceremony. But old age, 
 and the consciousness of a lifework done, had added 
 serenity now to his self-control ; and at last the end 
 came, when he was ready. On the 12th of December, 
 1799, he was chilled through by the keen winds and 
 cold rain and sleet that beat upon him as he went his 
 round about the farms. He spent the evening cheer 
 fully, listening to his secretary read ; but went to bed 
 with a gathering hoarseness and cold, and woke in the 
 night sharply stricken in his throat. Physicians came 
 almost at dawn, but the disease was already beyond 
 their control. Nothing that they tried could stay it ; 
 and by evening the end had come. He was calm the 
 day through, as in a time of battle ; knowing what be- 
 tided, but not fearing it ; steady, noble, a warrior figure 
 to the last; and he died as those who loved him might 
 have wished to see him die. 
 
 The country knew him when he was dead : knew 
 the majesty, the nobility, the unsullied greatness of the 
 man who was gone, and knew not whether to mourn 
 or give praise. He could not serve them any more ; 
 but they saw his light shine already upon the future as 
 upon the past, and were glad. They knew him now 
 the Happy Warrior, 
 
 " Whose powers shed round him, in the common strife 
 Or mild concerns of ordinary life, 
 A constant influence, a peculiar grace ; 
 But who, if he be called upon to face 
 Some awful moment to which Heaven has joined 
 Great issues, good or bad, for humankind, 
 
314 GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 Is happy as a Lover; and attired 
 With sudden brightness, like a man inspired ; 
 And, through the heat of conflict, keeps the law 
 In calmness made, and sees what he foresaw. 
 
 * ****** 
 
 A soul whose master-bias leans 
 To homefelt pleasures and to gentle scenes ; 
 
 ******* 
 
 More brave for this, that he haih much to love:- 
 * * * the man, who, lifted high, 
 Conspicuous object in a nation s eye, 
 Or left unthought of in obscurity, 
 Who, with a toward or untoward lot, 
 Prosperous or adverse, to his wish or not, 
 Plays, in the many games of life, that one 
 Where what he most doth value must be won." 
 
INDEX 
 
 ACTS of Trade, 121. 
 
 Adams, John, represents Massa 
 chusetts in Congress at Phila 
 delphia, 154; character of, 156- 
 157 ; opinion of, concerning Ma 
 ryland and Virginia delegates to 
 Congress at Philadelphia, 158 ; 
 accused as rebel at Congress, 
 161-162; proposes Washington 
 as commander of Continental 
 army, 173 ; mentioned, 174. 188, 
 198; Vice-President with Wash 
 ington, 279 ; elected Vice-Presi 
 dent the second time, 301 ; in 
 augurated as President, 309. 
 
 Adams, Samuel, represents Massa 
 chusetts in Congress at Phila 
 delphia, 154; character of, 155, 
 156 ; accused as rebel at Con 
 gress, 161-162. 
 
 Aj ax, Washington s horse, men 
 tioned, 110. 
 
 Alexandria, recruiting at, for west 
 ern expedition, 71, 77 ; Wash 
 ington rejoins regiment at, 78 ; 
 Braddock s regiment at, 82 ; 
 Braddock calls council of gov 
 ernors at, 83; Potomac commis 
 sioners adjourn from, to Mount 
 Veruon, 252. 
 
 Allen, Ethan, takes possession of 
 Ticonderoga, 171. 
 
 Ames, Fisher, comment of, on in 
 auguration of Washington, 272. 
 
 Amherst, General, takes Louis- 
 bourg, 93. 
 
 Annapolis, Washington resigns 
 commission at, 226 ; conference 
 of States at, 254. 
 
 Arm} -, Continental, created by 
 Congress, 173; Washington takes 
 command of, 180 ; unsatisfacto 
 ry condition of, 182 ; desertions 
 from, 191 ; hardships of, at Val 
 ley Forge, 199 ; trained by Steu- 
 ben, 200 ; difficulty in maintain 
 ing, 206 ; treatment of, after the 
 war, 218 ; efforts of Washington 
 in behalf of, 221; Washington s 
 loss of popularity with, 222; dis 
 affection in, 222-223; resolution 
 passed by officers of, 223. 
 
 Army and navy, steps for forma 
 tion of, 295. 
 
 Arnold, Benedict, attempt of, to 
 capture Quebec, 183 ; Carleton 
 checked by, 194, 198 ; at Sara 
 toga, 195 ; treason of, 207. 
 
 Articles of Confederation, adopted 
 by states, 213 ; effect of, 214. 
 
 Asgill, Captain Charles, incident 
 of, 225 ; Washington s gratifica 
 tion at release of, 225. 
 
 Attorney-General, creation of of 
 fice of, by Congress, 277. 
 
 BARTER, Philip, Washington s 
 gardener, makes agreement with 
 Washington, 240. 
 
 Beaujeu leads attack on Brad- 
 dock and is killed, 88. 
 
 Beausejour, expedition planned 
 against, 84 ; taken, 90. 
 
 Belvoir, seat of William Fairfax, 
 51 ; life at, 53 ; referred to 
 107. 
 
 Bennington, Vermont, attack on, 
 195. " 
 
316 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Berkeley, Sir William, resigns Vir 
 ginia to the Commonwealth, 13. 
 
 Bernard, an actor, meeting of, with 
 Washington, 312. 
 
 Betty, Parson, description of, by 
 Colonel Byrd, 35. 
 
 Beverley, Robert, writings and 
 character of, 31-32 ; character 
 ization of Virginia by, 32 ; on 
 Virginian hospitality, 50. 
 
 Bishop, servant of Washington, at 
 Mrs. Custis s, 100 ; pensioned by 
 Washington, 241. 
 
 Blair, James, " commissary " to the 
 Bishop of London in Virginia, 
 character, influence, and breed 
 ing of, 36-37. 
 
 Blair, John, President of Virginia 
 Council, 139; appointed delegate 
 to Philadelphia conference, 257 ; 
 appointed to Supreme Court, 281. 
 
 Bland, Richard, referred to, in con 
 nection with debate of Stamp 
 Act, 130 ; referred to, 135 ; pam 
 phlet of, on colonial rights, 138 ; 
 chosen delegate to Congress at 
 Philadelphia, 148 ; votes re 
 ceived by, as delegate to Con 
 gress, 161 ; opposes Henry in 
 convention, 170; mentioned,*172; 
 death of, 234. 
 
 Blueskin, Washington s horse, 
 mentioned, 110. 
 
 Board of Trade, search-warrants 
 issued by, 122. 
 
 Boston, Washington visits, in 1756, 
 92 ; troops sent to, 140 ; massa 
 cre in, 145 ; "Tea Party," 148 ; 
 port of, closed, 148 ; f re.sh troops 
 sent to, 168; Continental troops 
 in front of, 171 ; reinforced by 
 General Howe, 179 ; evacuation 
 of, by British, 185 ; Washington 
 occupies, 185 ; D Estaing s fleet 
 at, 204. 
 
 Boston News Letter, referred to, 
 121. 
 
 Botetourt, Lord, appointed Gov 
 ernor-General of Virginia, 139 ; 
 attempts to dissolve House of 
 Burgesses, 140 ; attitude of, tow 
 ards colonists, 141 ; death of, 
 141. 
 
 Bowdoin, Governor, of Massachu 
 setts, urges convention of states, 
 253. 
 
 Braddock, Major-General Edward, 
 made commander -in -chief in 
 America, 81; "a very Iroquois 
 in disposition, "81; invites Wash 
 ington to his staff, 83 ; plan of, 
 for attacking Fort Duquesne, 
 84 ; force of," against Fort Du 
 quesne, 85 ; advance of, upon 
 Duquesne, 85-86 ; unreasonable 
 temper of, on the advance, 86 ; 
 defeat of, 86 ff. ; stupid tactics 
 of, 87 ; bravery of, 88 ; death of, 
 89 ; buried in the road, 89 ; losses 
 in force of, 89 ; papers of, taken 
 at Duquesne, 90 ; former master 
 of Washington s servant, 100 ; 
 referred to, 161. 
 
 Brandywine, the, Washington de 
 feated at, 196. 
 
 Brest, French fleet blockaded at, 
 207. 
 
 Bridges Creek, homestead of Au 
 gustine Washington, birthplace 
 of George, 40-41 ; Washington 
 with his brother Augustine at, 
 51. 
 
 Brou-lie, Prince de, 216. 
 
 Bunker Hill, battle of, 179-180. 
 
 Burgesses, House of, Governor 
 Spotswoodon education of mem 
 bers of, 38 ; Augustine Wash- 
 ton in, 46 ; quarrels with Din- 
 widdie about land fee, 69; grants 
 money for an expedition to the 
 Ohio, 71 ; thanks Washington 
 for service at Great Meadows, 
 77 ; votes more money against 
 the French, 79 ; appoints com 
 mittee to spend money granted, 
 79 ; thanks Washington for his 
 services with Braddock, 91 ; 
 Washington chosen member of, 
 103; Washington s election ex 
 penses to the, 109 ; temper of, 
 at time of Washington s en 
 trance, 113 ; memorial of, to 
 King, protesting against Stamp 
 Act, 124-125; action of, on 
 resolutions concerning taxa 
 tion, 125; dissolved by Gov- 
 
INDEX 
 
 317 
 
 ernor Fauquier, 133 ; attempt of 
 Botetourt to dissolve, 140 ; res 
 olution of, against importing 
 taxed articles, 140 ; convened 
 by Dunmore, 146 ; resolves to 
 urge a Congress of all the colo 
 nies, 148 ; gives a ball to Lady 
 Dunmore, 148 ; last meeting of, 
 172. 
 
 Burgoyne, General, plan of cam 
 paign of, 194 ; capture of Ticon- 
 deroga by, 195 ; movements of, 
 195 ; capitulation of, 195, 197. 
 
 Burke, Edmund, knowledge of, of 
 temper of colonies, 117. 
 
 Buruaby, Rev. Andrew, Vicar of 
 Greenwich, views of, on public 
 character of Virginians in 1759, 
 120. 
 
 Byrd, Colonel William, remark of, 
 concerning exploration of the 
 interior, 12 ; remark of, concern 
 ing character of New-England- 
 ers, 12 ; on the powers of colo 
 nial governors, 26; character and 
 breeding of, 32 if. ; influence of, 
 in development of Virginia, 33- 
 34 ; undaunted spirits of, 34-35 ; 
 characteristics of, as a writer, 33- 
 35 ; remark of, about North 
 Carolina, 34, 38; description of 
 Mr. Betty by, 35 ; on Captain 
 Washington s management of 
 iron mines, 45; opinion of, re 
 garding taxation, 119-120 ; re 
 mark of, 120. 
 
 CAMDEN, Cornwallis routs Gates 
 at, 205. 
 
 Carleton, Sir Guy, attempt of, on 
 Champlain. 
 
 Carr, Dabney, meets with Henry 
 and others to discuss colonial af 
 fairs, 146. 
 
 Cartagena, Lawrence Washington 
 at siege of, 47-48. 
 
 Gary, Miss, Washington s relations 
 with, 101. 
 
 Gary, Robert, & Company, Wash 
 ington s factors in London, 105 ; 
 carefully watched by Washing 
 ton, 112. 
 
 Champlain, Lake, the French es 
 
 tablished upon, 61 ; attempt at 
 capture of, by Carleton, 194. 
 
 Charleston, creation of, 18 ; a cen 
 tre for pirates, 21 ; taking of, 
 by Clinton, 205. 
 
 Charlestown, occupied by Conti 
 nental troops, 179 ; captured by 
 British, 180. 
 
 Chastellux, Marquis de, 216, 217, 
 218 ; Washington s congratula 
 tions of, on his marriage, 260. 
 
 Chatham, Lord, knowledge of, of 
 temper of colonies, 117 ; com 
 ment of, on Rockingham s "de 
 claratory act," 138 ; advocates 
 conciliation of America, 167. 
 
 Chink ling, Washington s horse, 
 mentioned, 110. 
 
 Church, position of Established, 
 in colonial Virginia, 8. 
 
 Clark, George Rogers, drives Brit 
 ish from the Illinois, 204. 
 
 Clinton, General, succeeds General 
 Howe, 202 ; ordered to leave 
 Philadelphia, 202; attacked by 
 Washington at Monmouth Court 
 House, 202 ; withdraws to New 
 York, 203 ; troops sent by, take 
 Savannah, 204 ; goes south, 205; 
 captures Charleston, 205 ; returns 
 north, 205. 
 
 Colonies, English, in America, 
 population and condition of, in 
 1732, 4; individual development 
 of, 4-5 ; contrast between Vir 
 ginia and New England, 9, 13- 
 14; expansion of, after the Res 
 toration, 17-18; expulsion of the 
 Dutch from, 17; mixture of 
 population in middle and south 
 ern, 18-19; exchange of popula 
 tion amongst, 19 ; nature of set 
 tlement of, 20 ; operation of 
 the Navigation Acts upon, 20 ; 
 smuggling and privateering 
 in, 21; piracy in, 21-22 ; irrita 
 tion of, with regard to Naviga 
 tion Acts, 22 ; early effects of the 
 French power on, 23 ft . ; stub 
 born separateness and indepen 
 dence of, in respect of govern 
 ment, 23-27; drawn into Euro 
 pean politics by presence of the 
 
318 
 
 INDEX 
 
 French in North America, 25; 
 separate action of, in dealing 
 with the French, 25-26; first 
 feeling of independence among, 
 113 - 114 ; effect of close of 
 French war on, 113; taxation of, 
 best imposed by Parliament, 118; 
 resistance to port dues in, 122 ; 
 Stamp Act imposed on, 123-124; 
 spread of Henry s resolutions 
 through, 134; delegates of, as 
 semble in New York, 134 ; cus 
 tom-house and revenue commis 
 sioners created for, 139; attitude 
 of, towards Massachusetts, 154- 
 155; adopt Articles of Confed 
 eration, 213. 
 
 Concord, fighting begins at, 170. 
 
 Conference, at Annapolis, signifi 
 cance of, 254; at Philadelphia, 
 256; twelve states represented 
 in, 258 ; frames constitution, 
 259; adjournment of, 259. 
 
 Congress, delegates to, from Vir 
 ginia, 148; at Philadelphia, 149; 
 delegates to, from Massachusetts, 
 154; unh tness of, for counsel, 
 157 ; leadership of Virginian 
 delegates in, 158-159; forms 
 declaration of rights, 164-165; 
 adjournment of, 165 ; second 
 Continental, meets at Philadel 
 phia (1775), 171; business trans 
 acted by, 171; appoints Wash 
 ington commander of Continen 
 tal Army, 173; removes to Balti 
 more, 191 ; Washington s power 
 increased by, 194 ; inefficiency 
 of, 197, 206; policy of, with re 
 gard to western lands,247; Wash 
 ington urges increase of power 
 of, 248; inability of, to pay na 
 tional debts, 249 ; Washington s 
 letter to Lee on contempt for 
 authority of, 254 ; indifference 
 of, towards Hamilton s proposal, 
 256 ; weakness of, in face of re 
 bellion, 256; sanctions confer 
 ence at Philadelphia, 256; con 
 vening of first, under the Con 
 stitution, 265; organizes vari 
 ous departments, 277; meas 
 ures adopted by, for settle 
 
 ment of public debt, 284; bill 
 defeated in, for assumption of 
 state debts by government, 285; 
 compromise in, effected by Jef 
 ferson, 287; taxes levied by, 
 293; division in, over constitu 
 tional powers, 294; changes in, 
 301; lays taxes on distilled spir 
 its, 302. 
 
 Congress at New York, delegates 
 sent to, by nine colonies, 134; 
 bill of rights and immunities 
 passed by, 134. 
 
 Connecticut fails to send delegates 
 to Annapolis conference, 254. 
 
 Constitution, framed by confer 
 ence at Philadelphia, 259; im 
 partial interest of Washington 
 in discussions of, 259; adoption 
 of, 260. 
 
 Contrecoeur, commander at Du- 
 quesne, against Braddock, 87-88. 
 
 Corbin, Richard, acquaints Wash 
 ington with his commission as 
 lieutenant-colonel, 72. 
 
 Cornwallis, Lord, advances to meet 
 Washington, 192; (defeat of de 
 tachment of, at Princeton, 193 ; 
 retreat of, to New York, 193 ; 
 defeats Gates at Camden, 205 ; 
 defeat of, at King s Mountain, 
 North Carolina, 208 ; forced into 
 Virginia, 208; atYorktown, 208, 
 209; surrender of, 209; admira 
 tion of, for Washington, 209. 
 
 Craik, Dr., accompanies Washing 
 ton on western journey, 242. 
 
 Crawford, Captain, correspond 
 ence of, with Washington, 143. 
 
 Criminals, hired for private service 
 in colonial Virginia, 7; importa 
 tion of, for servants, 45. 
 
 Cromwell, Oliver, the instrument 
 and representative of a minor 
 ity, 10. 
 
 Crown Point, a French post at, 61 ; 
 William Johnson chosen to lead 
 attack upon, 84 ; Johnson does 
 not reach, 90 ; taken possession 
 of by insurgents, 171. 
 
 Culpeper County, Washington 
 made official surveyor for, 56. 
 
 Gushing, Thomas, represents Mas- 
 
INDEX 
 
 319 
 
 sachusetts in Congress at Phila 
 delphia, 154. 
 
 Gushing, William, appointed to 
 Supreme Court, 281. 
 
 Custis, Daniel Parke, first husband 
 of Martha Custis, 99 ; leaves 
 property to wife and children, 
 104. 
 
 Custis, "Jack," placed at King s 
 College by Washington, 147; 
 married, 147, 174 ; death of, 
 224. 
 
 Custis, Martha, meets with Wash 
 ington, 99 ; previous life of, 
 99-100 ; Washington becomes 
 engaged to, 101 ; marriage of, to 
 Washington, 102. 
 
 Custis, Nelly, marriage of, 312. 
 
 Custis, " Patsy," death of, 147. 
 
 DANDRIDGE, Francis, Washing 
 ton writes to, about Stamp Act, 
 134. 
 
 Deane, Silas, opinion of, of South 
 ern delegates to Congress at 
 Philadelphia, 158. 
 
 Declaration of independence, mo 
 tion for, adopted, 187. 
 
 De Lancey, James, Governor of 
 New York, consults with Brad- 
 dock at Alexandria, 83. 
 
 Delaware, crossed by Washington, 
 191; forts on, taken by Howe, 
 197 ; delegates from, to Annap 
 olis conference, 254. 
 
 Department of Foreign Affairs, 
 organization of, 277. 
 
 Department of State organized by 
 Congress, 277. 
 
 Department of the Treasury, or 
 ganization of, 277. 
 
 Department of War organized by 
 Congress, 277. 
 
 Dickinson, John, 170. 
 
 Dieskau, Count, defeated by John 
 son at Lake George, 90. 
 
 Dinwiddie, Governor, appoints 
 Washington adjutant-general of 
 a military district, 58 ; member 
 of Ohio company, 62-64 ; activ 
 ity of, against the French, 62-64; 
 authorized to warn the French 
 from the Ohio, 63 ; sends Wash 
 
 ington to convey warning. 64 ; 
 correspondence of, with Law 
 rence Washington, 64; speaks of 
 young Washington as "a per 
 son of distinction, "64 ; contest 
 with the Burgesses on the land 
 fee, 69 ; orders a draft of mili 
 tia to be sent to the Ohio, 69 ; 
 feeling of, towards the Burgess 
 es, 70; orders Washington s jour 
 nal to the Ohio printed, 70; im 
 patience of, to reattack the 
 French, 78 ; resolves militia in 
 to independent companies, 79 ; 
 restrained in expenditure of 
 money by committee of Bur 
 gesses, 79 ; consults with Brad- 
 dock at Alexandria, 83 ; on the 
 cowardice of Colonel Dunbar 
 90. 
 
 Dorchester Heights, 179 ; occu 
 pied by Washington, 184. 
 
 Dunbar, "Colonel, given command 
 of Braddock s rear division, 86 ; 
 craven behavior of, after Brad- 
 dock s defeat, 90. 
 
 Dunmore, John Murray, Earl of, 
 becomes governor of Virginia, 
 145 ; convenes House of Bur 
 gesses, 146 ; reports of, on con 
 dition of Virginia, 168 ; lands 
 troops near Williamsburg, 170 ; 
 flight of, 172 ; raids of, upon 
 Virginia, 186-187. 
 
 Duplaine, French consul at Bos 
 ton, 300. 
 
 Duquesne, the Marquis, becomes 
 governor on the St. Lawrence, 
 60 ; forestalls the English in the 
 west, 62. 
 
 Duquesne, Fort, built by French 
 on the Ohio, 73 ; Braddock s 
 plan for attacking, 84 ; Virgin 
 ian route to, chosen by Brad- 
 dock, 85 ; Braddock s defeat at, 
 86-89 ; General Forbes sent to 
 command expedition against, 
 93 ; taken and renamed Fort 
 Pitt, 94 ; Forbes s preparations 
 for advancing against, 100. 
 
 Dutch, conquest of the, in Amer 
 ica, 17; presence of, in New York 
 and Pennsylvania, 18. 
 
320 
 
 INDEX 
 
 EDEN, Charles, Governor of North 
 Carolina, accompanies Wash 
 ington to Philadelphia, 143. 
 
 Edict of Nantes, Revocation of, 
 sends Huguenots to America, 
 18. 
 
 Education, unsystematic charac 
 ter of, in early Virginia, 29-30. 
 
 Elkton, Howe lands troops at, 
 196. 
 
 England, compelled to act for 
 herself against the French in 
 America by the colonies, 27 ; 
 neglects government of colonies, 
 117-118 ; attitude of, towards 
 United States, 248 ; war of, with 
 France, 297 ; covert hostilities 
 of, against United States, 302 ; 
 John Jay sent to, 302 ; treaty 
 with, effected by John Jay, 304. 
 
 Estaing, Count d , appears off 
 New York, 203; refits fleet, 204. 
 
 FAIRFAX, Anne, marries Law 
 rence Washington, 48 ; family 
 connections of, 48-49. 
 
 Fairfax, George, Washington s 
 companion in western survey 
 ing, 54. 
 
 Fairfax, Thomas, third Lord, sum 
 mons Colonel H. Washington 
 at Worcester, 48^9. 
 
 Fairfax, Thomas, sixth Baron, es 
 tates of, in Northern Neck, 49; 
 life and character of. 49-50 ; 
 establishes himself in Virginia, 
 49-50; liking of, for Washing 
 ton, 53; employs Washington 
 as surveyor, 53-56; purpose of, 
 in coming to America, 54 ; chief 
 in hunting parties, 109. 
 
 Fairfax, William, family and ca 
 reer of, 48-49; president of the 
 King s Council, 50-51; Belvoir, 
 seat of, 51, 53; influence of, upon 
 Washington, 51-53 ; cheers 
 Washington at the frontier, 92. 
 
 Fauquier, Francis, Governor of 
 Virginia, present at Washing 
 ton s marriage, 102 ; dissolves 
 House of Burgesses, 133 ; tastes 
 of, 136 ; death of, 139. 
 
 Federal Hall, New York City, 
 
 Washington takes oath of office 
 in, 269. 
 
 Federalists support Washington, 
 301. 
 
 Finns in Pennsylvania. 18. 
 
 Forbes, General, sent to Virginia 
 to command against Fort Du- 
 quesue, 93; takes Duquesne, 94; 
 preparations of, for advancing 
 against Duquesne, 100. 
 
 Fort Cumberland, built by Cap 
 tain Innes at Will s Creek, 78 ; 
 Braddock at, 85 ; deserted by 
 Colonel Dunbar, 90. 
 
 "Fort Necessity," Washington s 
 iutrenchmeuts at Great Mead 
 ows, 75. 
 
 Fort Pitt, Fort Duquesne renamed, 
 94 ; left in charge of Colonel Mer 
 cer, 101. 
 
 Fort Washington, surrender of, by 
 General Greene, 190. 
 
 Fort William Henry taken by the 
 French, 90. 
 
 France, money loaned by, 199 ; 
 forms alliance with United States, 
 201 ; United States in debt to, 249; 
 effects of Revolution in, on Amer 
 ica, 289; progress of Revolution 
 in, 292 ; Washington s attitude 
 towards, 290-292, 296; at war 
 with England, 297; war of, with 
 United States threatened, 310. 
 
 Franklin, Benjamin, on Braddock s 
 plan for attacking Fort Du 
 quesne, 84 ; remark of, 197. 
 
 Fraunce s Tavern, Washington s 
 farewell to officers at, 226. 
 
 Frederick County, Washington 
 chosen member of House of 
 Burgesses for, 103. 
 
 Frederick the Great, provokes for 
 mation of league against himself, 
 80, 193 ; comment of, 203. 
 
 Fredericksburg, 228, 265. 
 
 French, in Pennsylvania and the 
 southern colonies, 18; threaten 
 ing power of, in North America, 
 22 ff. ; development of conquest 
 by, in America, 23; hold of, upon 
 the fur trade, 23-24 ; effect of 
 power of, upon relations of col 
 onies to England, 25 ; separate 
 
INDEX 
 
 321 
 
 action of colonies in dealing 
 with, 25-26 ; indecisive wars 
 with, in America, 27; movements 
 of, in the \Vest, 1752, 59-60 ; ag 
 gressive efficiency of, GO; warned 
 from the Ohio by Dinwiddie, 
 64-66 ; at Fort Le Bo3iif, 65 ; 
 claims of, to the West. 66 ; seize 
 fort at forks of the Ohio, 71 ; in 
 crease their force on the Ohio, 
 72; build Fort Duquesne, 73; at 
 tacked by Washington near Great 
 Meadows, 73-74; profess friend 
 ship for the English, 80-81; send 
 reinforcements to Canada, 81 ; 
 force of, against Braddock, 87 ; 
 lose Louisbourg, 93, Duquesne, 
 94, Quebec, 95 ; volunteer for 
 service in America, 200; respect 
 of, for Washington, 215. 
 
 French and Indian War, begun by 
 Washington, 73-74; action in, at 
 Great Meadows, 74-75 ; Brad- 
 dock made commander-iii-chief 
 in, 81; Braddock s defeat in. 86 
 ff. ; goes heavily against the Eng 
 lish, 90; drags upon the frontier, 
 91 ; goes against the French, 93- 
 95; effect of close of, on colo 
 nies, 113; close of, 114. 
 
 French Revolution, beginning of, 
 289; progress of, 292; Washing 
 ton s attitude towards, 290-292, 
 296. 
 
 Fry, Colonel Joshua, made com 
 mander of western expedition, 
 72 ; dies, 73. 
 
 Fur trade, early rivalry of French 
 and English in the, 23-25; effort 
 of the English to control, at Os- 
 wego, 61. 
 
 GAGE, General, 170. 
 
 Galloway, Joseph, leader of Penn 
 sylvania delegation, 164; propo 
 sition of, in Congress, 164. 
 
 Gardoqui insists on closing the 
 Mississippi, 254. 
 
 Gaspe, schooner, destruction of, 
 146. 
 
 Gates, General, 198 ; defeated at 
 Camdpn, South Carolina, 205. 
 
 Genet, Edmond Charles, minister 
 
 from France, 297; conduct of, 
 in America, 298 ; plans of, de 
 feated by AVashington, 298 ; re 
 call of, 300. 
 
 Georgia, prevented by governor 
 from sending delegates to " con 
 gress " in New York, 134; over 
 run by British, 204; fails to 
 send delegates to Annapolis con 
 ference, 255. 
 
 Germans, in Pennsylvania and 
 Virginia, 18 ; settle in valley of 
 Shenandoah, 61; Pennsylvanian, 
 oppose war with France, 63 ; 
 attacked by Indians on Virgin 
 ian frontier, 91 ; volunteer for 
 service in America, 200. 
 
 Germantown, battle of, 197. 
 
 Gist, Christopher, agent of Ohio 
 Company, 65; goes with Wash 
 ington to warn the French, 65 ; 
 solicitude of, for Washington, 
 66. 
 
 Gooch, William, Governor of Vir 
 ginia, 40. 
 
 Grafton referred to, 139. 
 
 Grasse, Count de, co-operates with 
 Washington before York town, 
 209. 
 
 Great Meadows, Washington en 
 camps at. 73; "a charming field 
 for an encounter," 73 ; Wash 
 ington attacked by Villiers at, 
 74-75 ; bought by Washington, 
 144; referred to, 161. 
 
 Greene, General, surrender of 
 Fort Washington by, 190 ; har 
 asses Corn wall is in North Caro 
 lina, 208. 
 
 Green way Court, built by Lord 
 Fairfax, 50 ; Washington at, 
 55-56; referred to, 107. 
 
 Grenville, George, Prime -Minis 
 ter, favors direct taxation of 
 colonies, 119; attempt of, to en 
 force collection of port dues, 
 
 122 ; proposes Stamp Act, and 
 billeting of troops in colonies, 
 
 123 ; referred to, 139. 
 Gunston Hall, centre of sport, 109. 
 
 HAMILTON, Alexander, address of, 
 to the states, 255 ; previous rec- 
 
322 
 
 INDEX 
 
 ord of, 256 ; favors adoption 
 of Constitution, 259 ; urges 
 Washington to accept Dresi- 
 dency, 262 ; referred to, * 273 ; 
 appointed Secretary of Treas 
 ury, 278; Washington s reasons 
 for choice of, 279 ; policy of, 
 282-283 ; plans of, for settle 
 ment of public debt, 284 ; Jef 
 ferson s envy of, 287 ; relations 
 of, with Washington, 288 ; re 
 ferred to, 292 ; arguments of, for 
 National Bank, 294 ; attacked 
 in the House by Madison, 301 ; 
 defence of Washington by, 305 ; 
 referred to, 307 ; Washington 
 asks advice of, 308. 
 
 Hamilton, Governor, of Pennsyl 
 vania, acts with Ohio Company, 
 63. 
 
 Hancock, Governor, of Massachu 
 setts, visit of, to Washington, 
 282. 
 
 Hard wick, Washington s overseer, 
 108. 
 
 Harlem Heights, fight at, 190. 
 
 Harrison, Benjamin, chosen dele 
 gate to a congress in Philadel 
 phia, 148; referred to, 157; voles 
 received by, as delegate to con 
 gress, 161 ; opposes Henry in 
 convention, 170 ; mentioned, 
 172 ; Governor of Virginia, 234. 
 
 Harrison, II. H., appointed to 
 Supreme Court, 281. 
 
 Hawley, Joseph, advice of, to rep 
 resentatives of Massachusetts at 
 Philadelphia, 155 ; referred to, 
 158. 
 
 Hay, Anthony, Burgesses meet at 
 house of, 140. 
 
 Henry, Patrick, family and char 
 acter of, 126-127 ; entrance of, 
 into House of Burgesses, 127; 
 appearance and dress of, 127 ; 
 comparison of, with Washing 
 ton, 127 ; previous life of, 128; 
 leadership of, in debate of Stamp 
 Act, 128-129 ; triumph of, in de 
 bate of Stamp Act, 132; influence 
 on colonies of resolutions of, 134; 
 recognized as a leader, 138 ; 
 meets with Jefferson and others 
 
 to discuss colonial affairs, 146 ; 
 chosen delegate to Congress at 
 Philadelphia, 148-149 ; leader 
 ship of, in Congress at Philadel 
 phia, 159 ; votes received by, as 
 delegate to Congress, 161 ; criti 
 cised for boldness, 163 ; referred 
 to, 165 ; advocates arming col 
 onists, 169; heads militiamen 
 against Dunmore, 171; mention 
 ed, 172 ; chosen governor of 
 Virginia, 234 ; appointed dele 
 gate to conference at Philadel 
 phia, 257 ; opposes Constitution, 
 260 ; referred to, 280. 
 
 Hessians surrendered to Wash 
 ington, 192. 
 
 Holland, United States in debt to, 
 249. 
 
 Howe, Admiral Lord, assists Gen 
 eral Howe at New York, 189 ; 
 offers pardon for submission, 
 189, 191. 
 
 Howe, General William, reinforces 
 Boston, 179 ; evacuates Boston, 
 185 ; forces Washington from 
 Brooklyn Heights, 189; plans of, 
 194 ; movements of, 195 ; ad 
 vance of, on Philadelphiachecked 
 by Washington, 196 ; landing 
 of, at, Elkton, 196 ; defeats 
 Washington at the Brandywine, 
 196 ; enters Philadelphia, 197 ; 
 attacked by Washington at, Ger- 
 mantown, 197 ; winters at Phila 
 delphia, 197 ; resigns command, 
 202. 
 
 ILLINOIS, the French in the coun 
 try of the, 23. 
 
 Independent Company, temper of, 
 from South Carolina at Great 
 Meadows, 73 ; from New York 
 fails to join Washington against 
 the French, 76 ; from New York 
 and from South Carolina at Fort 
 Cumberland, 78 ; from New 
 York with Braddock, 85. 
 
 Indians, Ohio Company, makes in 
 terest with, 61-62; Washington s 
 efforts to retain friendship of, for 
 the English, 66; with Villiers at 
 Great Meadows, 75 ; AVashing- 
 
INDEX 
 
 323 
 
 ton s struggle \vith the, on the 
 frontier, 01-92 ; desert French 
 at Duquesne, 93-94. 
 Innes, Captain, builds Fort Cum 
 berland at Will s Creek, 78. 
 
 JAY, John, supports proposition 
 of Rutledge in Congress, 164 ; 
 proposition of, concerning Mis 
 sissippi, 246 ; favors adoption 
 of Constitution, 259 ; appointed 
 chief-justice, 281 ; sent by Wash 
 ington to England, 302 ; provi 
 sions of treaty effected by, 304. 
 
 Jefferson, Thomas, referred to. 
 137 ; meets with Henry and 
 others to discuss colonial affairs, 
 146 ; becomes governor of Vir 
 ginia, 234 ; appointed Secretary 
 of State, 278 ; Washington s rea 
 sons for choice of, 279 ; com pro 
 mise in Congress effected by, 287; 
 envy of, of Hamilton, 287 ; re 
 lation of, with Washington, 288 ; 
 French influences on, 289 ; op 
 position of, to National Bank, 
 293 ; letter to, from Washington, 
 concerning United States policy 
 towards France, 297 ; neutrality 
 violated by, 299 ; leaves the 
 cabinet, 301 ; remark of, on 
 Whiskey Rebellion, 304 ; re 
 ferred to, 307. 
 
 Johnson, Governor, of Maryland, 
 urges Washington to accept 
 presidency, 261. 
 
 Johnson, Colonel William, chosen 
 to lead attack on Crown Point, 
 84; beats Dieskau at Lake 
 George, 90. 
 
 Jones, Rev. Huffh, author of Pres 
 ent State of Virginia, 36. 
 
 Jones, John Paul, 205. 
 
 Jumonville, M., killed near Great 
 Meadows, 74 ; death of, begins 
 French and Indian War, 74, 80. 
 
 KEITH, Sir William, Governor of 
 Pennsylvania, suggestion of, for 
 taxation of colonies, 118 ; re 
 ferred to. 119. 
 
 Keppel, Admiral, commands fleet 
 sent to Virginia, 81. 
 
 Knox, General, Washington s fare 
 well to, 226 ; letter to, from 
 Washington, 266 ; made Secre 
 tary of War, 278. 
 
 Knyphausen, General, left by Clin 
 ton in charge of New York, 205. 
 
 LAFAYETTE, Marquis de, volunteers 
 for service in America, 200, 202; 
 harasses Cornwallis in Virginia, 
 208 ; letter of Washington to, 
 237 ; remark of, concerning 
 Washington s home life, 239 ; 
 sends hounds to Washington, 
 243 ; becomes people s leader in 
 French Revolution, 290. 
 
 Lake George, Dieskau beaten by 
 Johnson at, 90. 
 
 Land fee, protest of the Virginia 
 Burgesses concerning, 69. 
 
 Laurie, Dr., conies to Mount Ver- 
 non drunk, 109. 
 
 Lee, Arthur, referred to, 141. 
 
 Lee, Charles, 168 ; second in com 
 mand to Washington, 191; taken 
 prisoner, 191; treachery of, 202. 
 
 Lee, Henry ("Light-horse Har 
 ry "), 208. 
 
 Lee, Richard Henry, referred to, 
 132 ; forms association for re 
 sistance to Stamp Act, 135 ; 
 meets with Henry and others to 
 discuss colonial affairs, 146; 
 chosen delegate to Congress at 
 Philadelphia, 148 ; leadership of, 
 in Congress at Philadelphia, 159; 
 votes received by, as delegate 
 to Congress, 161 ; interview of, 
 with Massachusetts delegates, 
 161-162 ; referred to, 166 ; men 
 tioned, 172 ; motion of, for dec 
 laration of independence, 187 ; 
 harasses Cornwallis in North 
 Carolina, 208, 235 ; Washing 
 ton s letter to, on contempt for 
 authority of Congress, 254 ; op 
 poses Constitution, 260; referred 
 to, 280. 
 
 Lee, Thomas, president of Ohio 
 Company, 64. 
 
 Lewis, Mrs., sister of Washington, 
 228. 
 
 Lexington, battle of, 170. 
 
324 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Lincoln, General, taken prisoner, 
 205. 
 
 Lippincott, Captain, hangs Ameri 
 can officer, 224. 
 
 Little Sarah, the, 299. 
 
 Livingston, Chancellor of New 
 York, administers oath of office 
 to Washington, 269. 
 
 Louisbouvg taken by Amherst, 93. 
 
 Lower Brandon, estate of Ben 
 jamin Harrison, 234. 
 
 Lynch, Mr., delegate from South 
 Carolina to Congress at Phila 
 delphia, 158. 
 
 MACKAY, Captain of Independent 
 Company from South Carolina, 
 79. 
 
 Mackenzie, Captain, letter of, to 
 Washington, 162. 
 
 Madison, James, leader in Virgini 
 an politics, 235; appointed dele 
 gate to Philadelphia conference, 
 257; part of, in the conference, 
 259; favors adoption of Consti 
 tution, 259 ; referred to, 274 ; 
 opposes policy of Treasury De 
 partment, 295; attack of, on 
 Hamilton, 301; Washington asks 
 advice of, 308. 
 
 Magnolia, Washington s horse, 
 mentioned, 110. 
 
 Marshall, John, becomes promi 
 nent, 235. 
 
 Maryland, resolution of, to arm 
 colonists, 169 ; takes measures for 
 opening the Potomac, 246; com 
 missioners from, meet at Mount 
 Veraon concerning Potomac, 
 252 ; action of Assembly of, re 
 garding trade, 253 ; fails to send 
 delegates to Annapolis confer 
 ence, 254. 
 
 Mason, George, urges Washington 
 to guard his health, 94-95; Wash 
 ington stalking deer with, 110; 
 conferences of, with Washington 
 on state of colonies, 135; draws 
 up resolution for House of Bur 
 gesses, 140; referred to, 166, 243, 
 280; appointed delegate to Phil 
 adelphia conference, 257 ; op 
 poses Constitution, 260. 
 
 Massachusetts, independence of 
 men of, 117 ; resents direct taxa 
 tion, 119; refuses standing grant 
 to governor, 119; summons col 
 onies to send delegates to New 
 York, 134; attitude of colonies 
 towards,154-155 ; delegates from, 
 at Congress.accused of rebellion, 
 161-162; proclaimed in rebel 
 lion, 167-168 ; provincial con 
 gress formed in, and votes to 
 equip militia of, 168; fails to 
 send delegates to Annapolis con 
 ference, 254; rebellion in, 256; 
 struggle in, over Constitution, 
 260. 
 
 Mercer, Colonel, engages Wash 
 ington by mistake, 94 ; Fort 
 Pitt left in charge of, 102. 
 
 Mifflin, Thomas, member of Con 
 gress at Philadelphia, 157. 
 
 Mississippi, early power of the 
 French on the, 23; closed to 
 commerce by the Spanish, 245; 
 opening of, 306. 
 
 Mouckton. Colonel, directed to 
 attack Beauseiour in Acadiu, 
 84. 
 
 Mon mouth Court House, battle of, 
 202. 
 
 Monroe, James, becomes promi 
 nent, 235. 
 
 Montgomery, General, captures 
 Montreal, 183; death of, 183, 
 215. 
 
 Montreal captured by Montgom 
 ery, 183. 
 
 Morgan, General, 198 ; harasses 
 Cornwallis in North Carolina, 
 208. 
 
 Morris, Gouverneur, 292. 
 
 Morris, Robert Hunter, Governor 
 of Pennsylvania, consults with 
 Braddock at Alexandria, 83. 
 
 Morristown Heights, withdrawal 
 of Washington to, 193. 
 
 Mount Vernon, named after Ad 
 miral Vernon, 48 ; Washington 
 as a boy at, 51-53, 56; Washing 
 ton visits, before Yorktown, 224; 
 Washington returns to, after the 
 war, 228; left in charge of Lund 
 Washington, 233; many visitors 
 
INDEX 
 
 325 
 
 at, 237, 243; Washington s cor 
 respondence at, 250; meeting of 
 Potomac commissioners at, 252; 
 Washington leaves, to take presi 
 dency, 265; retires to private 
 life at, 309. 
 
 Moustier, Count de, French minis 
 ter to the United States, pre 
 sumption of, 276. 
 
 Murray, John, Earl Dunmore. See 
 Duumore. 
 
 NATIONAL Bank, foundation of, 
 293. 
 
 Navigation Acts, policy of the, 
 towards the colonies, 20 ; eva 
 sion of the, 21 ; irritation wrought 
 by the, 22; advantages gained to 
 the colonies by the, 22. 
 
 Nelson, Washington s horse, 241. 
 
 Nelson, William, president of Vir 
 ginia Council, 145. 
 
 New Brunswick. British stores at, 
 193. 
 
 Newcastle, Duke of, aroused on 
 the French war, 80. 
 
 New England, peculiar character 
 of population in, 9-10; persistent 
 character of, amidst change, 10 ; 
 modification of, 10-11 ; a body 
 of churches, 11 ; population and 
 condition of, at end of seven 
 teenth century, 11-12 ; separate 
 life of, 11-12 ; difference be 
 tween, and Virginia accentuated 
 under the Commonwealth, 13; 
 emigration of congregations 
 from, into New Jersey, 19; astir 
 in the French war, 84. 
 
 New Hampshire, fails to send del 
 egates to Annapolis conference, 
 254; rebellion in, 256. 
 
 New Jersey, establishment of, 18 ; 
 emigration of New England con 
 gregations to, 19 ; sends dele 
 gates to Annapolis conference, 
 254. 
 
 New Orleans, growing French 
 village at, 60 ; Genet s plans 
 ngainst, 298. 
 
 Newport, D Estaing sails against, 
 204 ; Rochambeau lands at, 206. 
 
 New Providence, in the Bahamas, 
 
 headquarters of colonial pirates, 
 22. 
 
 New York, establishment of colo 
 ny of, 17 ; early preponderance 
 of the Dutch in, 18 ; a rival of 
 the French in the fur trade, 24 ; 
 Assembly of, questions English 
 claim to the Ohio, 70; Indepen 
 dent Company from, fails to 
 join Washington against the 
 French, 76 ; Independent Com 
 panies from, under Innes at 
 Will s Creek, 78; astir in the 
 French war, 84 ; Independent 
 Companies from, with Brad- 
 dock, 85 ; legislative powers of 
 Colonial Assembly of, suspend 
 ed, 139 ; majority in, opposed 
 to revolution, 163 ; opposes mo 
 tion for declaration of inde 
 pendence, 187 ; delegates from, 
 to Annapolis conference, 254; 
 struggle in, over Constitution, 
 260. 
 
 New York City, cosmopolitan 
 character of colonial, 19 ; a cen 
 tre for pirates, 21 ; delegates of 
 colonies assemble in, 1347 Wash 
 ington s plans for defence of, 
 186 ; British arrive before, 188 ; 
 withdrawal of Washington from, 
 190 ; Clinton retreats to, 203 ; 
 D Estaing s fleet appears off, 
 203 ; Washington s welcome in, 
 as President, 268.; Washing 
 ton takes oath of office in, 
 269. 
 
 Niagara, a French post at, 61 ; 
 Governor Shirley to lead attack 
 upon, 84 ; failure of Shirley s 
 expedition against, 90. 
 
 Nicholas, Robert Carter, member 
 of House of Burgesses, referred 
 to in connection witli debate 
 of Stamp Act, 131 ; opposes 
 Henry in convention, 170. 
 
 Nicola, Colonel Lewis, proposal 
 of, to make Washington king, 
 219-220. 
 
 Norfolk, Virginia, burned by Dun- 
 more, 187. 
 
 North, Lord, Prime-Minister, re 
 peals taxes, 144. 
 
326 
 
 INDEX 
 
 North Carolina, establishment of, 
 18 ; characterization of, by Colo 
 nel Byrd, 34, 38; sends militia 
 men to assist Washington against 
 the French, 76 ; prevented by 
 governor from sending dele 
 gates to "congress" in New 
 York, 134; riots in, 145; delegates 
 of, authorized to join in declara 
 tion of independence, 187 ; up 
 rising of, 208; refusal of, to yield 
 western land claims. 246 ; fails to 
 send delegates to Annapolis con 
 ference, 254. 
 
 "Northern Neck" of Virginia, 
 settlement of, 15-16 ; division 
 of, into counties, 16 ; a natural 
 seat of commerce, 16 ; immigra 
 tion of the Washingtons into, 
 16; intimate intercourse of, with 
 England, 30 ; of a piece with the 
 rest of Virginia, 39 ; property of 
 Augustine Washington in, 45 ; 
 estates of Lord Fairfax in, 49. 
 
 OHIO, determination of Duquesne 
 to occupy upper waters of, 60- 
 61 ; first movement, of the French 
 towards the, 62; Dinwiddie de 
 termines to send militia to the, 
 69; Washington s journal to the, 
 printed, 70 ; fort begun at the 
 forks of the, by the English, 71; 
 the fort seized by the French, 
 71 ; French build Fort Duquesne 
 on the, 73. 
 
 Ohio Company, formation of, 61 ; 
 establishment of posts by, in the 
 west, 62; Governor Dinwiddie 
 member of, 62, 64 ; Thomas Lee, 
 president of the, 64 ; Lawrence 
 Washington president of the, 
 64; interested in Virginia route 
 to Duquesne, 85 ; plans of, for 
 opening the upper Potomac, 
 246. 
 
 Orme, Captain, invites Washing 
 ton to Braddock s staff, 83. 
 
 Oswego, English military post at, 
 61 ; westward expedition of the 
 French observed from, 62; taken 
 by the French, 90. 
 
 Otis, James, Advocate-General in 
 
 Court of Admiralty, warns min 
 isters against enforcing search- 
 warrants, 123 ; criticised for 
 boldness. 163. 
 
 PAINE, Robert Treat, represents 
 Massachusetts in Congress at 
 Philadelphia, 154. 
 
 Parliament renounces right to tax 
 colonies, 201. 
 
 Pendleton, Edmund, member of 
 House of Burgesses, referred to 
 in connection with debate of 
 Stamp Act, 131; character of, 
 131 ; referred to, 135 ; chosen 
 delegate to Congress at Phila 
 delphia, 148-149 ; vote received 
 by, as delegate to Congress, 161; 
 opposes Henry in convention, 
 170 ; referred to, 172 ; president 
 of Committee of Safety, 187; 
 becomes judge, 234. 
 
 Penn, Thomas, comment of, on 
 Wash i no- ton s resignation from 
 militia, 80. 
 
 Pennsylvania, establishment of 
 colony of, 17 ; mixed population 
 of, 18 ; immigration of Scots- 
 Irish into, 19 ; westward move 
 ment of settlers from, 60-61; 
 Assembly of, refuses to act 
 against the French, 63 ; Assem 
 bly of, doubts English claim to 
 the Ohio, 70 ; votes money to 
 be used against the French, 76; 
 advantages of route through, to 
 Duquesne, 85 ; majority in, op 
 posed to revolution, 16*3 ; dele 
 gation from, led by Joseph 
 Galloway, 164; delegates from, 
 to Annapolis conference, 254 ; 
 Whiskey Rebellion in, 303. 
 
 Philadelphia, creation of, 17; cos 
 mopolitan character of colonial, 
 19 ; Congress at, 149, 171 ; en 
 tered by Howe, 197 ; British 
 leave, 202. 
 
 Phillipse, Mary, interests Wash 
 ington, 93, 101, 174. 
 
 Pinckney, Thomas, treaty of, with 
 Spain, 306. 
 
 Piracy in the colonies, 21-22 ; sup 
 pression of, 22. 
 
INDEX 
 
 327 
 
 Pitt, William, becomes Prime- 
 Minister and ends the French 
 war, 93 ff. 
 
 Planters, in colonial Virginia, 
 mode of life of, 6, 28-29 ; pro 
 portion of, in colonial Virginia, 
 7 ; social position of, 8-9. 
 
 Poles volunteer for service in 
 America, 200. 
 
 Potomac, Washington surveying 
 on the, 55 ; importance of, to 
 commerce, 246 ; Washington s 
 plans concerning, 246 ; confer 
 ence of commissioners concern 
 ing, at Mount Vernon, 252. 
 
 Potomac Company, Washington 
 chosen president of, 251. 
 
 Presque Isle, French establish 
 themselves at, 62. 
 
 Princeton, Washington retreats to, 
 191 ; battle of, 193. 
 
 Principle Iron Company, interest 
 of Angustine Washington in, 
 45; Colonel Byrd on the man 
 agement of, 45. 
 
 Privateering in the colonies, 21. 
 
 Puritan Commonwealth in Eng 
 land the government of a mi 
 nority, 10. 
 
 Puritans, unlike other English 
 men, 9 ; of the minority in Eng 
 land, 10; ascendency of, in New 
 England, 10. 
 
 QUAKERS of Pennsylvania op 
 pose war with French, 63. 
 
 Quebec, Wolfe takes command of 
 expedition against, 93 ; taken, 
 95 ; attempt of Arnold to capt 
 ure, 183. 
 
 RAHL, Colonel, mortally wound 
 ed, 192. 
 
 Randolph, Edmund, becomes 
 prominent, 235 ; appointed dele 
 gate to conference at Philadel 
 phia, 257 ; part of, in the con 
 ference, 259 ; appointed Attor 
 ney-General, 278 ; Washington s 
 reasons for choice of, 280 ; op 
 position of, to National Bank, 
 293. 
 
 Randolph, Peyton, member of 
 
 House of Burgesses, referred to 
 in connection with debate of 
 Stamp Act, 131; previous life of, 
 132; referred to, 135; chosen dele 
 gate to Congress at Philadelphia, 
 148-149 ; chosen president of 
 Congress at Philadelphia, 159 ; 
 votes received by, as delegate to 
 Congress, 160 ; referred to, 172 ; 
 death of, 234. 
 
 Rangers, Virginian, added to Brad- 
 dock s forces, 82 ; behavior of, 
 in Braddock s defeat, 87, 88, 89; 
 Braddock praises, 89. 
 
 " Red Sea trade," the, 21-22. 
 
 Redstone Creek, Ohio Company 
 establishes post on, 62. 
 
 Reed, Joseph, comment of, on 
 Virginia delegates, 172. 
 
 Restoration, effect of, upon colonial 
 settlement, 17. 
 
 Revolution, first battle of, 170; 
 goes against British, 203 ; goes 
 against Americans, 205 ; favors 
 Americans in the South, 208 ; 
 close of, 209 ; effect of, on Wash 
 ington, 216. 
 
 Rhode Island, Puritan though 
 various, 11 ; fails to send dele 
 gates to Annapolis conference, 
 254 ; in sympathy with Shays, 
 256. 
 
 Richmond, Virginia convention 
 meets in, 169. 
 
 Robin, Abbe, 215, 221. 
 
 Robinson, Beverly, entertains 
 Washington in New York, 93. 
 
 Robinson, Speaker of House and 
 Treasurer of Virginia, thanks 
 Washington for services, 103 ; 
 deatli of, referred to, 113. 
 
 Rochambeau, Count, lands men 
 at Newport, 206 ; assists Wash 
 ington s plans, 208, 228. 
 
 Rockingham, Lord, referred to, 
 135; "declaratory act" under 
 ministry of, 138. 
 
 Rutledge, Edward, supports prop 
 osition of Galloway in Con 
 gress, 164 ; Washington s appeal 
 to, 272. 
 
 Rutledge, John, appointed to Su 
 preme Court, 281. 
 
328 
 
 INDEX 
 
 ST. GLAIR, Sir John, Washington 
 at Williamsburg by order of, 
 100. 
 
 St. Lawrence, power of the French 
 on the, 28. 
 
 St. Leger, General, plans of, 194 ; 
 failure of, 195. 
 
 San Lazaro, Fort, storming of, 48. 
 
 Saratoga, battle of, 195. 
 
 Savannah taken by British, 204 
 
 Schuyler, Genenil, driven from 
 Ticonderoga, 195; mentioned, 
 198. 
 
 Scots -Irish, in Virginia and the 
 middle colonies, 19; settlement 
 of, in Sheuandoah Valley, 61; 
 harassed by Indians on Virgini 
 an frontier, 91. 
 
 Search-warrants issued by Board 
 of Trade, 122. 
 
 Servants, hired, in colonial Vir 
 ginia, 7. 
 
 Settlers harassed by Indians on 
 Virginian frontier, 91-92. 
 
 Sharpe, Horatio, Governor of Ma 
 ryland, consults with Braddock 
 at Alexandria, 83. 
 
 Shays leads rebellion in Massa 
 chusetts, 256. 
 
 Shenandoah, Washington survey 
 ing on the, 55 ; first movement 
 of settlers into valley of, 61. 
 
 Shippen, Dr., interview of, with 
 Massachusetts delegates, 161- 
 162. 
 
 Shirley, William, Governor of 
 Massachusetts, consults with 
 Braddock at Alexandria, 83 ; to 
 lead attack on Niagara, 84 ; fails 
 in attack, 90; Washington s 
 visit to, in 1756, 92, 93, 174 . 
 
 Slaves, proportion of, in colonial 
 Virginia, 7. 
 
 Smuggling, in the colonies, 21 ; 
 common practice of, 121. 
 
 Society of the Cincinnati, Wash 
 ington declines to meet, 257. 
 
 " Sons of Liberty," 175. 
 
 South Carolina, establishment of, 
 18 ; Independent Company 
 from, at Great Meadows, 73 ; 
 provincials from, under Innes at 
 Will s Creek, 78 ; majority in, 
 
 opposed to revolution, 163; in 
 power of British, 205 ; fails to 
 send delegates to Annapolis 
 conference, 254. 
 
 Spain, alliance of, with France and 
 America, 204 ; invasion of Eng 
 land attempted by. 204 ; closes 
 Mississippi River to commerce, 
 245, 247, 249 ; treaty with, ob 
 tained by Pinckney, 306. 
 
 Spectator, the, Lord Fairfax a con 
 tributor to, 49-50; Washington s 
 acquaintance with, 56. 
 
 Spotswood, Alexander, character 
 of, and career in Virginia, 37- 
 38 ; judgment of Virginians by, 
 38 ; on the education of Bur 
 gesses, 38 ; referred to, 119. 
 
 Stamp Act, proposed by Grenville, 
 123 ; passage of, 124 ; protest 
 against, by House of Burgesses, 
 124; Henry s leadership in de 
 bate of, 128-129 ; repeal of, 135. 
 
 Steuben, Baron von, joins Wash 
 ington at Valley Forge, 200 ; 
 harasses Cornwallis in North 
 Carolina, 208. 
 
 Stith, Rev. William, character and 
 writings of, 35-36. 
 
 Sullivan"; General, 192. 
 
 Swedes on the Delaware, 18. 
 
 TAXATION, Virginian Burgesses 
 regard Dinwiddie s land fee as, 
 69 ; of colonies, best imposed by 
 Parliament, 118 ; imposed on 
 wines and sugars, 1764, 119 ; di 
 rect, of colonies, favored by 
 George Grenville, 119; disregard 
 of, by officials and traders, 120 ; 
 ministry willing to remit, 167. 
 
 Thomson, Charles, clerk of Con 
 gress, notifies Washington of 
 his election, 265. 
 
 Ticonderoga, Allen takes posses 
 sion of, 171 ; captured by Bur- 
 goyne, 195. 
 
 Townshend, Charles, referred to, 
 139. 
 
 Trade, Ohio Company and the- 
 western, 61-62 ; Acts of, 121. 
 
 Trenton captured by Washington, 
 192. 
 
INDEX 
 
 329 
 
 Trumbull, Governor, referred to, 
 189. 
 
 Trumbull, Jonathan, Jr., Wash 
 ington s letter to. 244. 
 
 Truro, parish of, represented by 
 Augustine Washington, 40. 
 
 Tryon, Governor of North Caro 
 lina, 145. 
 
 VALIANT, Washington s horse, 
 mentioned, 110. 
 
 Valley Forge, Washington win 
 ters at, 197, 199; Mrs. Washing 
 ton s visit to, 199. 
 
 Vanbraam, Jacob, fencing-master 
 at Mount Vernon, goes with 
 Washington to warn the French, 
 64. 
 
 Ver^ennes, intercession of, in be 
 half of Captain Asgill, 225. 
 
 Vermont, rebellion in, 256. 
 
 Vernon, Admiral, at Cartagena, 
 47-48. 
 
 Villiers, Coulon de, attacks Wash 
 ington at Great Meadows, 7475. 
 
 Virginia, general English charac 
 ter of colonial, 5 ; fixed nature 
 of society in, 5-6 ; lack of towns 
 in, 6 ; independent plantation 
 life in, 6-7, 28-29; classes of 
 population in, 7; proportion of 
 slaves in, 7 ; democratic spirit 
 in, 8; position of Church in, 8 ; 
 position of Established Church 
 in, 8; contrasted with New Eng 
 land, 9; temper of, at establish 
 ment of the Common wealth, 13; 
 change in population of, during 
 Commonwealth, 13-14 ; emigra 
 tion of John and Lawrence 
 Washington to, 14 ; French Hu 
 guenots and Germans in, 18 : 
 meets the French in western fur 
 trade, 24 ; character and habits 
 of society in, 28 ft ; individu 
 ality of men in, 28-29 ; educa 
 tion and study in, 29-30 ; char 
 acter of literary work in, 30-31; 
 travel in, 38; culture mixed with 
 rough life in, 39; obliged to net 
 alone against the French, 63 ; 
 English regiments for French 
 war arrive in, 81; route through, 
 
 to Duquesne chosen by Brad- 
 dock, 85 ; forces of, with Brad- 
 dock, 85; resents direct taxation, 
 119; loyalty of colonists to, 130; 
 prevented by governor from 
 sending delegates to "congress" 
 in New York, 134; passes hill of 
 rights, 134; leadership of dele 
 gates from, in Congress at Phil 
 adelphia, 158-159 ; colonists of, 
 armed, 168 ; convention of, meets 
 at Richmond, 169; changes in, 
 during the war, 234 ; yields west - 
 ern land claims, 246; commis 
 sioners from, meet at Mount 
 Vernon concerning the Potomac, 
 252 ; calls general conference at 
 Annapolisr254; delegates from, 
 to Annapolis conference, 254 ; 
 final adoption of national Con 
 stitution by, 260-261. 
 
 WALPOLE, Horace, calls Washing 
 ton a " brave braggart," 78, 80, 
 206. 
 
 Wai pole, Sir Robert, answer of, 
 to Keith, 118. 
 
 Washington, Augustine, father of 
 George, 40 ; character and occu 
 pations of, 45-46 ; a represent 
 ative in the House of Burgesses, 
 46; death and will of, 46; court 
 ship and marriage of, 47. 
 
 Washington, Augustine (half- 
 brother of George), estate and 
 education of, 46"; George with, 
 at Bridges Creek, 51; member 
 of Ohio Company, 61. 
 
 Washington, George, breeding of, 
 epitomized. 3; birth of, 40; birth 
 place of, 41; age of, at his fa 
 ther s deatli, 46 ; interest of, in 
 his father s estate, 46; under his 
 mother s care, 47 ; as a bo} r at 
 Mount Vernon and Belvoir, 50- 
 51, 52-53, 56; comradeships of, 
 as a boy, at Belvoir and Mount 
 Vernon, 50-53, 56 ; keptat school 
 till sixteen. 51 ; at Bridges Creek 
 with his brother Augustine, 51; 
 kept from going to sea, 51; boy 
 ish relish of, for practical effi 
 ciency, 51-52; quits school, 52; 
 
330 
 
 INDEX 
 
 intimacy of, with Lord Fairfax, 
 53-56; surveyor for Lord Fair 
 fax, 53-56; letter of, on sur 
 veying experiences, 55 ; boy 
 ish reading of, 56 ; official ap 
 pointment of, as surveyor, 56 ; 
 studies tactics and the broad 
 sword at Mount Vernon, 56; be 
 comes known throughout the 
 Northern Neck, 57; goes to the 
 Bahamas with Lawrence, 57; 
 made Lawrence s executor, 57- 
 58 ; contracts the small-pox in 
 the Bahamas, 58 ; takes Law 
 rence s place in the militia, 58; 
 put in charge of a military dis 
 trict, 58; contingent interest in 
 Mount Vernon, 58; sent by Din- 
 widdie to warn the French from 
 the Ohio, 64-66; difficulties of 
 the journey, 65-66 ; endeavors 
 to attach Indians to the English, 
 66; appointed by Dinwiddie to 
 command militia sent to the 
 Ohio, 69; journal of, to the Ohio 
 printed, 70; recruiting at Alex 
 andria, 71 ; commissioned lieu 
 tenant - colonel under Joshua 
 Fry, 72 ; sent forward to cut a 
 road to the Ohio, 72; establishes 
 camp at Great Meadows, 73; 
 trouble of, with Independent 
 Company at Great Meadows, 73 ; 
 succeeds Colonel Fry in com 
 mand, 73; spills first blood of the 
 French war, 73-74; attacked 
 by Villiers at Great Meadows, 
 74-75; capitulates and retreats, 
 76; thanked by the House of 
 Burgesses, 77; letters of, on man 
 agement of expedition to Ohio, 
 77 ; likes the sound of bullets, 
 77 ; laughed at by Horace Wai- 
 pole, 78; rejoins regiment at 
 Alexandria, 78 ; resigns com 
 mand, 79 ; Thomas Penn s com 
 ment upon resignation of, 80 ; 
 visits Braddock s regiment at 
 Alexandria, 82; accepts place on 
 Braddock s staff, 83 ; disputes 
 of, with Braddock during ad 
 vance on Duquesne, 86; advises 
 division of Braddock s force, 
 
 86; in Braddock s defeat, 87-89 ; 
 ill just before the battle, 88 ; di 
 rects retreat alone,89; distressof, 
 at sufferings of frontier settlers, 
 91 ; thanked by the Burgesses for 
 his services under Braddock, 91 ; 
 keeps the frontier against the 
 Indians, 91 - 92; cheered by 
 Colonel Fairfax, 92 ; behavior 
 of, towards his comrades, 92 ; 
 hangs insubordinates, 92 ; visits 
 Governor Shirley on matter of 
 rank, 92-93; becomes interested 
 in Mary Phillipse in New York, 
 93; goes with Forbes against Fort 
 Duquesne, 94; in ill-health, 94; 
 George Mason to, on need of 
 preserving himself for the coun 
 try, 94-95; meets Martha Ctis- 
 tis, 99; becomes engaged to Mrs. 
 Custis, 101; early love affairs of, 
 101 ; marriage of, 102 ; stay of, 
 at the White House, 102; takes 
 wife to Williamsburg, 102; 
 chosen member of House of Bur 
 gesses, 103 ; embarrassed on en 
 tering House of Burgesses, 103; 
 publicly thanked for services, 
 103; management of estates by, 
 104; home life of, 104-112, 251; 
 business ability of, 105-106; at 
 titude of, towards drinking, 108- 
 
 109 ; election expenses of, 109; 
 fondness of, for hunting, 109- 
 
 110 ; getting estates into condi 
 tion, 110; pleasure outings of, 
 111; taste of, in clothes, 111; de 
 sire of, to go to England, 112; 
 comparison of, with Henry, 127; 
 attitude of, towards debate on 
 Stamp Act, 133; views of, on 
 enforcement of Stamp Act, 134 ; 
 confers with Mason on state of 
 colonies, 135 ; relations of, with 
 Fauquier, 136; letter of, to Ma 
 son on actions of Parliament, 
 140 ; presents Mason s resolution 
 to House of Burgesses, 140-141; 
 encourages observance of impor 
 tation resolution, 142 ; buys new 
 " chariot," 142; pre-empts lands 
 in the west, 142; employments 
 of, 142-143; gives ball at Alex- 
 
INDEX 
 
 331 
 
 andria, 143; attends horse-races 
 in Philadelphia, 143 ; secures 
 western land for comrades in 
 French war, 143 - 144 ; places 
 "Jackie" Custis in Kind s Col 
 lege, New York, 147 ; letter to 
 Colonel Bassett, 147 ; chosen 
 delegate to Congress at Phila 
 delphia, 148-149; not a leader 
 in Congress at Philadelphia, 
 159-160 ; criticism of, of Gage s 
 conduct, 160 ; reported saying 
 of, 160; votes received by, as 
 delegate to Congress, 161; in 
 terview of, with Massachusetts 
 delegates, 161-162; foresees out 
 come of Congress s actions, 165- 
 166; business affairs of, 166-167, 
 assumes command of Virginia 
 companies, 169; attends second 
 Continental Congress, 171; ac 
 cepts command of army at Bos 
 ton, 174, 214; reverence of peo 
 ple for, 174; reaches Cambridge, 
 180; assumes command of army, 
 180 ; correspondence of, from 
 headquarters, 181 ; privateers 
 equipped by orders of, 182; oc 
 cupies Dorchester Heights, 184; 
 enters Boston, 185 ; transfers de 
 fence to New York, 186 ; favors 
 motion for declaration of inde 
 pendence, 188; evacuates Brook 
 lyn Heights, 190 ; withdrawal of, 
 from New York City, 190 ; re 
 treat of, through New Jersey, 
 191; crosses the Delaware, 191; 
 forces recruited by, 192 ; capt 
 ures Trenton, 192; defeats Brit 
 ish at Princeton, 193 ; with 
 draws to Morristown, 193; proc 
 lamation of, 193 ; fortune of, 
 pledged for payment of troops, 
 194; causes Howe to retreat to 
 New York, 196; defeat of, at the 
 Brandywine, 196; attacks Howe 
 at Germantown, 197; winters at 
 Valley Forge, 197; plots against, 
 198; trials of, at Valley Forge, 
 199; joined by Steuben, 200; 
 attacks Clinton at Monmouth 
 Court House, 202 ; wrath of, at 
 Lee s cowardice, 202 ; grief of, 
 
 at Arnold s treason, 207 ; takes 
 Cornwallis at Yorktown, 209 ; 
 courage of, 215 ; effect of the 
 war on, 216; reserve of, in dis 
 charge of duty, 218 ; advises 
 witli Congress, 219; rejoins army 
 at Newburgh, 219; indignation 
 of, at Colonel Nicola s proposal, 
 220 ; efforts of, in behalf of the 
 army, 221; loses popularity with 
 the army, 222 ; treatment of mu 
 tinous officers by, 222-223; long 
 ing of, for home, 223; sternness 
 of, 224 ; reply of, to Vergennes 
 concerning Captain Asgill, 225; 
 gratification of, at release of 
 Captain Asgill, 225; farewell of, 
 to officers, 226 ; speech of, on re 
 signing commission at Annap 
 olis, 226-227; prayer of, before 
 battle, 227 ; returns to Mount 
 Vernon, 228 ; simplicity of, 228 ; 
 attends ball with his mother, 
 228 ; deference of, to his mother, 
 229 ; rebukes his nephew, 233 ; 
 welcome of, on return to Vir 
 ginia, 235; privacy of, at Mount 
 Vernon, 237; letter of, to La 
 fayette, 237; interruptions of, at 
 Mount Vernon, 238 ; as a host, 
 238 ; affection of, for adopted 
 children, 239; agreement of, with 
 gardener, 240; strictness of, in 
 business dealings, 241; eagerness 
 of people to see, 241 ; "makes 
 journey to western lands, 242; 
 cares of, as statesman, 243 ; anx 
 iety of, for success of govern 
 ment, 243-244; political creed " 
 of, 244 ; forebodings of, for fut 
 ure of the West, 245; efforts of, 
 to open the Potomac, 246; urges 
 increase of Congress s power, 
 248 ; portraits of, 250 ; makes 
 tour of inspection as president 
 of Potomac Company, 251 ; in 
 vites commissioners on opening 
 of the Potomac to Mount Ver 
 non, 252 ; letter of, to Henry Lee, 
 254 ; criticises weakness of Con 
 gress, 256; appointed delegate 
 to Philadelphia conference, 257; 
 reluctance of, to attend confer- 
 
332 
 
 INDEX 
 
 ence at Philadelphia, 257 ; op 
 poses compromise in conference 
 at Philadelphia, 258 ; chosen 
 president of conference, 258; re 
 turns to Mount Vernon, 259; in 
 tense interest of, in discussions 
 of Constitution, 259; congratu 
 lations of. to Cliastellux on mar 
 riage, 260 ; reluctance of, to ac 
 cept presidencjr, 261 ; accepts 
 presidency, 262 ; bids farewell 
 to his mother, 265; leaves Mount 
 Vernon, 265 ; feelings of, on leav 
 ing home, 266; financial troubles 
 of, 267; journey of,to New York, 
 267; present journey contrasted 
 \vith former ones, 267: welcome 
 of, in New York, 268; takes oath 
 of office, 269; emotion of, during 
 inaugural address, 270-271; in 
 experience of, in administration, 
 272-273; fitness of, for office, 
 273 ; dignity of, in office, 274- 
 276 ; illness of, 277 ; familiarity 
 of, with affairs of government, 
 278; choice of cabinet by, 278; 
 care of, in federal appointments, 
 281 ; makes tour of eastern states, 
 281 - 282 ; sympathy of, with 
 Hamilton s policy, 284; attitude 
 of, towards French Revolution, 
 290-291, 292, 296; object in na 
 tional policy of, 291 ; sanctions 
 National Bank, 294 ; frontier 
 policy of, 295 ; neutrality of, be 
 tween France and England, 297; 
 frustrates plans of Genet, 298 ; 
 demands recall of Genet, 300 ; 
 elected to second term, 301; sends 
 John Jay to England, 302; puts 
 down Whiskey Rebellion, 303 ; 
 favors Jay s treaty with Eng 
 land, 305; abuse of, by the peo 
 ple, 305; behavior of , under abuse, 
 306; wisdom of, recognized, 306; 
 attempts reconciliation of Ham 
 ilton and Jefferson, 307; declines 
 third term, 308; farewell address 
 of, 308 ; emotion of, on retire 
 ment from office, 309; retires to 
 Mount Vernon, 309-310; connec 
 tions of, with public life, 310; 
 treatment of old comrade by, 
 
 311 : gentleness of, with chil 
 dren, 312 ; attends marriage of 
 Nellie Custis, 312; sickness and 
 death of, 313-314 
 
 Washington, Colonel Henry, holds 
 Worcester for the king, 14. 48- 
 49. 
 
 Washington, John, emigration of, 
 to Virginia, 14-15; ancestry of, 
 14-15 ; settlement of, in "North 
 ern Neck" of Virginia, 16-17 ; 
 life of, in Virginia, 4&; fortunes 
 of descendants of, 40. 
 
 Washington, llev. Lawrence, rec 
 tor of Purleigh, 15, 41. 
 
 Washington, Lawrence, emigrant 
 to Virginia, 14-15 ; ancestry of, 
 14-15; settlement of, in " North 
 ern Neck " of Virginia, 16-17. 
 
 Washington, Lawrence (half-broth 
 er of George), estate and educa 
 tion of, 46 ; service of, at Carta 
 gena, 47 ; in the storming of 
 Fort San Lazaro, 48 ; head of 
 the family and adjutant - gen 
 eral of the colonial militia, 48 ; 
 marriage of, 48-49 ; member of 
 the House of Burgesses, 50; in 
 fluence of, upon George, 50-53, 
 57 ; illness and death of, 57 ; 
 makes George his executor and 
 residuary legatee, 57-58 ; mem 
 ber of Ohio Company, 61; presi 
 dent of Ohio Company, 64 ; cor 
 respondence of, with Dinwiddie, 
 64. 
 
 Washington, Lund, 181 ; manage 
 ment of Mount Vernon by, 233. 
 
 Washington, Martha, outings of, 
 with Washington, 111 ; at Wash 
 ington s headquarters at C;im- 
 bridge, 184; at Valley Forge, 190. 
 
 Washington, Mary, courtship and 
 marriage of, 47 ; keeps George 
 from going to sea, 51 ; attends 
 ball with Washington, 228 ; 
 Washington s deference to, 229 ; 
 Washington bids farewell to, 
 265. 
 
 Washingtons, the, fortunes of, in 
 the Northern Neck, 39-40. 
 
 Wentworth, commander of land 
 forces at Cartagena, 47. 
 
INDEX 
 
 333 
 
 West Point, Arnold tries to be 
 tray, 207. 
 
 Whiskey Rebellion in Pennsyl 
 vania and Virginia, 303. 
 
 Whitehall Ferry, Washington at, 
 226. 
 
 White House, Washington s stay 
 at. 102. 
 
 White Plains, skirmish at, 190. 
 
 William and Mary, College of, 30 ; 
 chiefly founded by James Blair, 
 36. 
 
 Williamsburg, Virginia s chief 
 town, 6 ; Washington belated 
 at, by courting, 100; Washing 
 ton and wife at, 102 ; Dunmore 
 lands troops at, 171. 
 
 Will s Creek, Ohio Company s 
 post at, 62; Captain Innes builds 
 Fort Cumberland at, 78. 
 
 Wilson, James, appointed to Su 
 preme Court, 281. 
 
 Winchester, Washington on busi 
 ness concerning General Forbes 
 at, 100. 
 
 Wolfe, General, takes command 
 against Quebec, 93 ; takes Que 
 bec, 95. 
 
 Worcester, Colonel Henry Wash 
 ington at, 14, 48-49. 
 
 Wythe, George, referred to, in 
 connection with debate of Stamp 
 Act, 130 ; referred to, 135 ; ap 
 pointed delegate to Philadelphia 
 conference, 257. 
 
 YORKTOWN, Virginia, Cornwallis 
 arrives at, 208; Cornvvallis s sur 
 render at, 209. 
 
 Younsr, Arthur, correspondence 
 of, with Washington, 260. 
 
 THE END 
 
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