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George Washington, Volume I

by Henry Cabot Lodge · English · Gutenberg #12652 · 638,361 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: George Washington, Volume I

Author: Henry Cabot Lodge


        
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                Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GEORGE WASHINGTON, VOLUME I ***

[Illustration: Frontispiece]

American Statesmen

STANDARD LIBRARY EDITION


[Illustration: _The Home of the Washington Family_]


       *       *       *       *       *


GEORGE WASHINGTON

      BY

HENRY CABOT LODGE

  IN TWO VOLUMES
     VOL. I.

      1889




PREFACE

This edition has been carefully revised, and although very little has
been added of late years to our knowledge of the facts of Washington's
life, I have tried to examine all that has appeared. The researches of
Mr. Waters, which were published just after these volumes in the first
edition had passed through the press, enable me to give the Washington
pedigree with certainty, and have turned conjecture into fact. The
recent publication in full of Lear's memoranda, although they tell
nothing new about Washington's last moments, help toward a completion
of all the details of the scene.

H.C. LODGE.

WASHINGTON, February 7, 1898.


       *       *       *       *       *


CONTENTS

CHAPTER.

        INTRODUCTION
     I. THE OLD DOMINION
    II. THE WASHINGTONS
   III. ON THE FRONTIER
    IV. LOVE AND MARRIAGE
     V. TAKING COMMAND
    VI. SAVING THE REVOLUTION
   VII. "MALICE DOMESTIC, AND FOREIGN LEVY"
  VIII. THE ALLIES
    IX. ARNOLD'S TREASON, AND THE WAR IN THE SOUTH
     X. YORKTOWN
    XI. PEACE

        INDEX




ILLUSTRATIONS


GEORGE WASHINGTON

From the painting by Gilbert Stuart in the Museum of Fine Arts,
Boston. This painting is owned by the Boston Athenæum and is known as
the Athenæum portrait.

Autograph is from Washington's signature to a bill of exchange, from
"Talks about Autographs" by George Birkbeck Hill.

The vignette of the residence of the Washington family is from "Homes
of American Statesman," published by Alfred W. Putnam, New York.


LAWRENCE WASHINGTON

From an original painting in the possession of Lawrence Washington,
Esq., Alexandria, Va., a great-great-great-nephew.

Autograph from MS. in New York Public Library, Lenox Building.


MISS MARY CARY

From an original painting owned by Dr. James D. Moncure of Virginia,
one of her descendants.

No autograph can be found.


MISS MARY PHILIPSE

From Irving's "Washington," published by G.P. Putnam's Sons.

Autograph from Appleton's "Cyclopædia of American Biography."


WASHINGTON CROSSING THE DELAWARE

From the original painting by Emanuel Leutze in the New York
Metropolitan Museum. The United States flag shown in the picture is an
anachronism. The stars and stripes were first adopted by Congress in
June, 1777; and any flag carried by Washington's army in December,
1776, would have consisted of the stripes with the crosses of St.
George and St. Andrew in the blue field where the stars now appear.




INTRODUCTION

February 9 in the year 1800 was a gala day in Paris. Napoleon had
decreed a triumphal procession, and on that day a splendid military
ceremony was performed in the Champ de Mars, and the trophies of the
Egyptian expedition were exultingly displayed. There were, however,
two features in all this pomp and show which seemed strangely out
of keeping with the glittering pageant and the sounds of victorious
rejoicing. The standards and flags of the army were hung with crape,
and after the grand parade the dignitaries of the land proceeded
solemnly to the Temple of Mars, and heard the eloquent M. de Fontanes
deliver an "Eloge Funèbre."[1]

[Footnote 1: A report recently discovered shows that more even was
intended than was actually done.

The following is a translation of the paper, the original of which
is Nos. 172 and 173 of volume 51 of the manuscript series known as
_Etats-Unis_, 1799, 1800 (years 7 and 8 of the French republic):--

    "_Report of Talleyrand, Minister of Foreign Affairs, on the
    occasion of the death of George Washington_.

    "A nation which some day will he a great nation, and which today
    is the wisest and happiest on the face of the earth, weeps at the
    bier of a man whose courage and genius contributed the most to
    free it from bondage, and elevate it to the rank of an independent
    and sovereign power. The regrets caused by the death of this
    great man, the memories aroused by these regrets, and a proper
    veneration for all that is held dear and sacred by mankind, impel
    us to give expression to our sentiments by taking part in an event
    which deprives the world of one of its brightest ornaments, and
    removes to the realm of history one of the noblest lives that ever
    honored the human race.

    "The name of Washington is inseparably linked with a memorable
    epoch. He adorned this epoch by his talents and the nobility of
    his character, and with virtues that even envy dared not assail.
    History offers few examples of such renown. Great from the outset
    of his career, patriotic before his country had become a nation,
    brilliant and universal despite the passions and political
    resentments that would gladly have checked his career, his fame
    is to-day imperishable,--fortune having consecrated his claim to
    greatness, while the prosperity of a people destined for grand
    achievements is the best evidence of a fame ever to increase.

    "His own country now honors his memory with funeral ceremonies,
    having lost a citizen whose public actions and unassuming grandeur
    in private life were a living example of courage, wisdom, and
    unselfishness; and France, which from the dawn of the American
    Revolution hailed with hope a nation, hitherto unknown, that was
    discarding the vices of Europe, which foresaw all the glory that
    this nation would bestow on humanity, and the enlightenment of
    governments that would ensue from the novel character of the
    social institutions and the new type of heroism of which
    Washington and America were models for the world at
    large,--France, I repeat, should depart from established usages
    and do honor to one whose fame is beyond comparison with that of
    others.

    "The man who, amid the decadence of modern ages, first dared
    believe that he could inspire degenerate nations with courage to
    rise to the level of republican virtues, lived for all nations and
    for all centuries; and this nation, which first saw in the life
    and success of that illustrious man a foreboding of its destiny,
    and therein recognized a future to be realized and duties to be
    performed, has every right to class him as a fellow-citizen. I
    therefore submit to the First Consul the following decree:--
      "Bonaparte, First Consul of the republic, decrees as follows:--
      "Article 1. A statue is to be erected to General Washington.
      "Article 2. This statue is to be placed in one of the squares of
    Paris, to be chosen by the minister of the interior, and it shall
    be his duty to execute the present decree."]

About the same time, if tradition may be trusted, the flags upon the
conquering Channel fleet of England were lowered to half-mast in token
of grief for the same event which had caused the armies of France to
wear the customary badges of mourning.

If some "traveler from an antique land" had observed these
manifestations, he would have wondered much whose memory it was that
had called them forth from these two great nations, then struggling
fiercely with each other for supremacy on land and sea. His wonder
would not have abated had he been told that the man for whom they
mourned had wrested an empire from one, and at the time of his death
was arming his countrymen against the other.

These signal honors were paid by England and France to a simple
Virginian gentleman who had never left his own country, and who when
he died held no other office than the titular command of a provisional
army. Yet although these marks of respect from foreign nations were
notable and striking, they were slight and formal in comparison with
the silence and grief which fell upon the people of the United States
when they heard that Washington was dead. He had died in the fullness
of time, quietly, quickly, and in his own house, and yet his death
called out a display of grief which has rarely been equaled in
history. The trappings and suits of woe were there of course, but what
made this mourning memorable was that the land seemed hushed with
sadness, and that the sorrow dwelt among the people and was neither
forced nor fleeting. Men carried it home with them to their firesides
and to their churches, to their offices and their workshops. Every
preacher took the life which had closed as the noblest of texts, and
every orator made it the theme of his loftiest eloquence. For more
than a year the newspapers teemed with eulogy and elegy, and both
prose and poetry were severely taxed to pay tribute to the memory of
the great one who had gone. The prose was often stilted and the verse
was generally bad, but yet through it all, from the polished sentences
of the funeral oration to the humble effusions of the obscurest poet's
corner, there ran a strong and genuine feeling, which the highest art
could not refine nor the clumsiest expression degrade.

From that time to this, the stream of praise has flowed on, ever
deepening and strengthening, both at home and abroad. Washington alone
in history seems to have risen so high in the estimation of men that
criticism has shrunk away abashed, and has only been heard whispering
in corners or growling hoarsely in the now famous house in Cheyne Row.

There is a world of meaning in all this, could we but rightly
interpret it. It cannot be brushed aside as mere popular superstition,
formed of fancies and prejudices, to which intelligent opposition
would be useless. Nothing is in fact more false than the way in which
popular opinions are often belittled and made light of. The opinion
of the world, however reached, becomes in the course of years or
centuries the nearest approach we can make to final judgment on
human things. Don Quixote may be dumb to one man, and the sonnets of
Shakespeare may leave another cold and weary. But the fault is in
the reader. There is no doubt of the greatness of Cervantes or
Shakespeare, for they have stood the test of time, and the voices of
generations of men, from which there is no appeal, have declared them
to be great. The lyrics that all the world loves and repeats, the
poetry which is often called hackneyed, is on the whole the best
poetry. The pictures and statues that have drawn crowds of admiring
gazers for centuries are the best. The things that are "caviare to the
general" often undoubtedly have much merit, but they lack quite as
often the warm, generous, and immortal vitality which appeals alike to
rich and poor, to the ignorant and to the learned.

So it is with men. When years after his death the world agrees to call
a man great, the verdict must be accepted. The historian may whiten or
blacken, the critic may weigh and dissect, the form of the judgment
may be altered, but the central fact remains, and with the man, whom
the world in its vague way has pronounced great, history must reckon
one way or the other, whether for good or ill.

When we come to such a man as Washington, the case is still stronger.
Men seem to have agreed that here was greatness which no one could
question, and character which no one could fail to respect. Around
other leaders of men, even around the greatest of them, sharp
controversies have arisen, and they have their partisans dead as they
had them living. Washington had enemies who assailed him, and friends
whom he loved, but in death as in life he seems to stand alone, above
conflict and superior to malice. In his own country there is no
dispute as to his greatness or his worth. Englishmen, the most
unsparing censors of everything American, have paid homage to
Washington, from the days of Fox and Byron to those of Tennyson and
Gladstone. In France his name has always been revered, and in distant
lands those who have scarcely heard of the existence of the United
States know the country of Washington. To the mighty cairn which the
nation and the states have raised to his memory, stones have come
from Greece, sending a fragment of the Parthenon; from Brazil and
Switzerland, Turkey and Japan, Siam and India beyond the Ganges. On
that sent by China we read: "In devising plans, Washington was more
decided than Ching Shing or Woo Kwang; in winning a country he was
braver than Tsau Tsau or Ling Pi. Wielding his four-footed falchion,
he extended the frontiers and refused to accept the Royal Dignity. The
sentiments of the Three Dynasties have reappeared in him. Can any man
of ancient or modern times fail to pronounce Washington peerless?"
These comparisons so strange to our ears tell of a fame which has
reached farther than we can readily conceive.

Washington stands as a type, and has stamped himself deep upon the
imagination of mankind. Whether the image be true or false is of no
consequence: the fact endures. He rises up from the dust of history as
a Greek statue comes pure and serene from the earth in which it has
lain for centuries. We know his deeds; but what was it in the man
which has given him such a place in the affection, the respect, and
the imagination of his fellow men throughout the world?

Perhaps this question has been fully answered already. Possibly every
one who has thought upon the subject has solved the problem, so that
even to state it is superfluous. Yet a brilliant writer, the latest
historian of the American people, has said: "General Washington is
known to us, and President Washington. But George Washington is an
unknown man." These are pregnant words, and that they should be true
seems to make any attempt to fill the great gap an act of sheer and
hopeless audacity. Yet there can be certainly no reason for adding
another to the almost countless lives of Washington unless it be done
with the object in view which Mr. McMaster indicates. Any such attempt
may fail in execution, but if the purpose be right it has at least an
excuse for its existence.

To try to add to the existing knowledge of the facts in Washington's
career would have but little result beyond the multiplication of
printed pages. The antiquarian, the historian, and the critic have
exhausted every source, and the most minute details have been and
still are the subject of endless writing and constant discussion.
Every house he ever lived in has been drawn and painted; every
portrait, and statue, and medal has been catalogued and engraved. His
private affairs, his servants, his horses, his arms, even his clothes,
have all passed beneath the merciless microscope of history. His
biography has been written and rewritten. His letters have been drawn
out from every lurking place, and have been given to the world in
masses and in detachments. His battles have been fought over and
over again, and his state papers have undergone an almost verbal
examination. Yet, despite his vast fame and all the labors of the
antiquarian and biographer, Washington is still not understood,--as a
man he is unfamiliar to the posterity that reverences his memory. He
has been misrepresented more or less covertly by hostile critics and
by candid friends, and has been disguised and hidden away by the
mistaken eulogy and erroneous theories of devout admirers. All that
any one now can do, therefore, is to endeavor from this mass of
material to depict the very man himself in the various conjunctures of
his life, and strive to see what he really was and what he meant then,
and what he is and what he means to us and to the world to-day.

In the progress of time Washington has become in the popular
imagination largely mythical; for mythical ideas grow up in this
nineteenth century, notwithstanding its boasted intelligence, much as
they did in the infancy of the race. The old sentiment of humanity,
more ancient and more lasting than any records or monuments, which led
men in the dawn of history to worship their ancestors and the founders
of states, still endures. As the centuries have gone by, this
sentiment has lost its religious flavor, and has become more and
more restricted in its application, but it has never been wholly
extinguished. Let some man arise great above the ordinary bounds of
greatness, and the feeling which caused our progenitors to bow down
at the shrines of their forefathers and chiefs leads us to invest
our modern hero with a mythical character, and picture him in our
imagination as a being to whom, a few thousand years ago, altars would
have been builded and libations poured out.

Thus we have to-day in our minds a Washington grand, solemn, and
impressive. In this guise he appears as a man of lofty intellect, vast
moral force, supremely successful and fortunate, and wholly apart
from and above all his fellow-men. This lonely figure rises up to our
imagination with all the imperial splendor of the Livian Augustus, and
with about as much warmth and life as that unrivaled statue. In this
vague but quite serious idea there is a great deal of truth, but
not the whole truth. It is the myth of genuine love and veneration
springing from the inborn gratitude of man to the founders and chiefs
of his race, but it is not by any means the only one of its family.
There is another, equally diffused, of wholly different parentage.
In its inception this second myth is due to the itinerant parson,
bookmaker, and bookseller, Mason Weems. He wrote a brief biography of
Washington, of trifling historical value, yet with sufficient literary
skill to make it widely popular. It neither appealed to nor was read
by the cultivated and instructed few, but it reached the homes of the
masses of the people. It found its way to the bench of the mechanic,
to the house of the farmer, to the log cabins of the frontiersman and
pioneer. It was carried across the continent on the first waves of
advancing settlement. Its anecdotes and its simplicity of thought
commended it to children both at home and at school, and, passing
through edition after edition, its statements were widely spread, and
it colored insensibly the ideas of hundreds of persons who never had
heard even the name of the author. To Weems we owe the anecdote of the
cherry-tree, and other tales of a similar nature. He wrote with Dr.
Beattie's life of his son before him as a model, and the result is
that Washington comes out in his pages a faultless prig. Whether Weems
intended it or not, that is the result which he produced, and that is
the Washington who was developed from the wide sale of his book. When
this idea took definite and permanent shape it caused a reaction.
There was a revolt against it, for the hero thus engendered had
qualities which the national sense of humor could not endure in
silence. The consequence is, that the Washington of Weems has afforded
an endless theme for joke and burlesque. Every professional American
humorist almost has tried his hand at it; and with each recurring 22d
of February the hard-worked jesters of the daily newspapers take it
up and make a little fun out of it, sufficient for the day that is
passing over them. The opportunity is tempting, because of the ease
with which fun can be made when that fundamental source of humor, a
violent contrast, can be employed. But there is no irreverence in it
all, for the jest is not aimed at the real Washington, but at the
Washington portrayed in the Weems biography. The worthy "rector of
Mount Vernon," as he called himself, meant no harm, and there is a
good deal of truth, no doubt, in his book. But the blameless and
priggish boy, and the equally faultless and uninteresting man, whom he
originated, have become in the process of development a myth. So in
its further development is the Washington of the humorist a myth.
Both alike are utterly and crudely false. They resemble their great
original as much as Greenough's classically nude statue, exposed to
the incongruities of the North American climate, resembles in dress
and appearance the general of our armies and the first President of
the United States.

Such are the myth-makers. They are widely different from the critics
who have assailed Washington in a sidelong way, and who can be better
dealt with in a later chapter. These last bring charges which can be
met; the myth-maker presents a vague conception, extremely difficult
to handle because it is so elusive.

One of our well-known historical scholars and most learned
antiquarians, not long ago, in an essay vindicating the "traditional
Washington," treated with scorn the idea of a "new Washington" being
discovered. In one sense this is quite right, in another totally
wrong. There can be no new Washington discovered, because there never
was but one. But the real man has been so overlaid with myths and
traditions, and so distorted by misleading criticisms, that, as
has already been suggested, he has been wellnigh lost. We have
the religious or statuesque myth, we have the Weems myth, and the
ludicrous myth of the writer of paragraphs. We have the stately hero
of Sparks, and Everett, and Marshall, and Irving, with all his great
deeds as general and president duly recorded and set down in polished
and eloquent sentences; and we know him to be very great and wise and
pure, and, be it said with bated breath, very dry and cold. We are
also familiar with the common-place man who so wonderfully illustrated
the power of character as set forth by various persons, either from
love of novelty or because the great chief seemed to get in the way of
their own heroes.

If this is all, then the career of Washington and his towering fame
present a problem of which the world has never seen the like. But this
cannot be all: there must be more behind. Every one knows the famous
Stuart portrait of Washington. The last effort of the artist's cunning
is there employed to paint his great subject for posterity. How serene
and beautiful it is! It is a noble picture for future ages to look
upon. Still it is not all. There is in the dining-room of Memorial
Hall at Cambridge another portrait, painted by Savage. It is cold and
dry, hard enough to serve for the signboard of an inn, and able, one
would think, to withstand all weathers. Yet this picture has something
which Stuart left out. There is a rugged strength in the face which
gives us pause, there is a massiveness in the jaw, telling of an iron
grip and a relentless will, which has infinite meaning.

  "Here's John the Smith's rough-hammered head. Great eye,
  Gross jaw, and griped lips do what granite can
  To give you the crown-grasper. What a man!"

In death as in life, there is something about Washington, call it
greatness, dignity, majesty, what you will, which seems to hold men
aloof and keep them from knowing him. In truth he was a most difficult
man to know. Carlyle, crying out through hundreds of pages and myriads
of words for the "silent man," passed by with a sneer the most
absolutely silent great man that history can show. Washington's
letters and speeches and messages fill many volumes, but they are all
on business. They are profoundly silent as to the writer himself. From
this Carlyle concluded apparently that there was nothing to tell,--a
very shallow conclusion if it was the one he really reached. Such an
idea was certainly far, very far, from the truth.

Behind the popular myths, behind the statuesque figure of the orator
and the preacher, behind the general and the president of the
historian, there was a strong, vigorous man, in whose veins ran warm,
red blood, in whose heart were stormy passions and deep sympathy for
humanity, in whose brain were far-reaching thoughts, and who was
informed throughout his being with a resistless will. The veil of his
silence is not often lifted, and never intentionally, but now and then
there is a glimpse behind it; and in stray sentences and in little
incidents strenuously gathered together; above all, in the right
interpretation of the words, and the deeds, and the true history known
to all men,--we can surely find George Washington "the noblest figure
that ever stood in the forefront of a nation's life."


       *       *       *       *       *


GEORGE WASHINGTON




CHAPTER I

THE OLD DOMINION


To know George Washington, we must first of all understand the society
in which he was born and brought up. As certain lilies draw their
colors from the subtle qualities of the soil hidden beneath the water
upon which they float, so are men profoundly affected by the obscure
and insensible influences which surround their childhood and youth.
The art of the chemist may discover perhaps the secret agent which
tints the white flower with blue or pink, but very often the elements,
which analysis detects, nature alone can combine. The analogy is
not strained or fanciful when we apply it to a past society. We can
separate, and classify, and label the various elements, but to combine
them in such a way as to form a vivid picture is a work of surpassing
difficulty. This is especially true of such a land as Virginia in the
middle of the last century. Virginian society, as it existed at that
period, is utterly extinct. John Randolph said it had departed before
the year 1800. Since then another century, with all its manifold
changes, has wellnigh come and gone. Most important of all, the last
surviving institution of colonial Virginia has been swept away in the
crash of civil war, which has opened a gulf between past and present
wider and deeper than any that time alone could make.

Life and society as they existed in the Virginia of the eighteenth
century seem, moreover, to have been sharply broken and ended. We
cannot trace our steps backward, as is possible in most cases, over
the road by which the world has traveled since those days. We are
compelled to take a long leap mentally in order to land ourselves
securely in the Virginia which honored the second George, and looked
up to Walpole and Pitt as the arbiters of its fate.

We live in a period of great cities, rapid communication, vast and
varied business interests, enormous diversity of occupation, great
industries, diffused intelligence, farming by steam, and with
everything and everybody pervaded by an unresting, high-strung
activity. We transport ourselves to the Virginia of Washington's
boyhood, and find a people without cities or towns, with no means
of communication except what was afforded by rivers and wood roads;
having no trades, no industries, no means of spreading knowledge, only
one occupation, clumsily performed; and living a quiet, monotonous
existence, which can now hardly be realized. It is "a far cry to
Loch-Awe," as the Scotch proverb has it; and this old Virginian
society, although we should find it sorry work living in it, is both
pleasant and picturesque in the pages of history.

The population of Virginia, advancing toward half a million, and
divided pretty equally between the free whites and the enslaved
blacks, was densest, to use a most inappropriate word, at the water's
edge and near the mouths of the rivers. Thence it crept backwards,
following always the lines of the watercourses, and growing ever
thinner and more scattered until it reached the Blue Ridge. Behind
the mountains was the wilderness, haunted, as old John Lederer said a
century earlier, by monsters, and inhabited, as the eighteenth-century
Virginians very well knew, by savages and wild beasts, much more real
and dangerous than the hobgoblins of their ancestors.

The population, in proportion to its numbers, was very widely
distributed. It was not collected in groups, after the fashion with
which we are now familiar, for then there were no cities or towns
in Virginia. The only place which could pretend to either name was
Norfolk, the solitary seaport, which, with its six or seven thousand
inhabitants, formed the most glaring exception that any rule
solicitous of proof could possibly desire. Williamsburg, the capital,
was a straggling village, somewhat overweighted with the public
buildings and those of the college. It would light up into life and
vivacity during the season of politics and society, and then relapse
again into the country stillness. Outside of Williamsburg and Norfolk
there were various points which passed in the catalogue and on the map
for towns, but which in reality were merely the shadows of a name. The
most populous consisted of a few houses inhabited by storekeepers and
traders, some tobacco warehouses, and a tavern, clustered about the
church or court-house. Many others had only the church, or, if a
county seat, the church and court-house, keeping solitary state in the
woods. There once a week the sound of prayer and gossip, or at longer
intervals the voices of lawyers and politicians, and the shouts of the
wrestlers on the green, broke through the stillness which with the
going down of the sun resumed its sway in the forests.

There was little chance here for that friction of mind with mind, or
for that quick interchange of thought and sentiment and knowledge
which are familiar to the dwellers in cities, and which have driven
forward more rapidly than all else what we call civilization. Rare
meetings for special objects with persons as solitary in their lives
and as ill-informed as himself, constituted to the average Virginian
the world of society, and there was nothing from outside to supply the
deficiencies at home. Once a fortnight a mail crawled down from
the North, and once a month another crept on to the South. George
Washington was four years old when the first newspaper was published
in the colony, and he was twenty when the first actors appeared at
Williamsburg. What was not brought was not sought. The Virginians did
not go down to the sea in ships. They were not a seafaring race, and
as they had neither trade nor commerce they were totally destitute of
the inquiring, enterprising spirit, and of the knowledge brought
by those pursuits which involve travel and adventure. The English
tobacco-ships worked their way up the rivers, taking the great staple,
and leaving their varied goods, and their tardy news from Europe,
wherever they stopped. This was the sum of the information and
intercourse which Virginia got from across the sea, for travelers were
practically unknown. Few came on business, fewer still from curiosity.
Stray peddlers from the North, or trappers from beyond the mountains
with their packs of furs, chiefly constituted what would now be called
the traveling public. There were in truth no means of traveling except
on foot, on horseback, or by boat on the rivers, which formed the
best and most expeditious highways. Stage-coaches, or other public
conveyances, were unknown. Over some of the roads the rich man, with
his six horses and black outriders, might make his way in a lumbering
carriage, but most of the roads were little better than woodland
paths; and the rivers, innocent of bridges, offered in the uncertain
fords abundance of inconvenience, not unmixed with peril. The taverns
were execrable, and only the ever-ready hospitality of the people
made it possible to get from place to place. The result was that the
Virginians stayed at home, and sought and welcomed the rare stranger
at their gates as if they were well aware that they were entertaining
angels.

It is not difficult to sift this home-keeping people, and find out
that portion which was Virginia, for the mass was but an appendage
of the small fraction which ruled, led, and did the thinking for the
whole community. Half the people were slaves, and in that single
wretched word their history is told. They were, on the whole, well
and kindly treated, but they have no meaning in history except as an
institution, and as an influence in the lives, feelings, and character
of the men who made the state.

Above the slaves, little better than they in condition, but separated
from them by the wide gulf of race and color, were the indented white
servants, some convicts, some redemptioners. They, too, have their
story told when we have catalogued them. We cross another gulf and
come to the farmers, to the men who grew wheat as well as tobacco on
their own land, sometimes working alone, sometimes the owners of a few
slaves. Some of these men were of the class well known since as the
"poor whites" of the South, the weaker brothers who could not resist
the poison of slavery, but sank under it into ignorance and poverty.
They were contented because their skins were white, and because they
were thereby part of an aristocracy to whom labor was a badge of
serfdom. The larger portion of this middle class, however, were
thrifty and industrious enough. Including as they did in their ranks
the hunters and pioneers, the traders and merchants, all the freemen
in fact who toiled and worked, they formed the mass of the white
population, and furnished the bone and sinew and some of the
intellectual power of Virginia. The only professional men were the
clergy, for the lawyers were few, and growing to importance only as
the Revolution began; while the physicians were still fewer, and as a
class of no importance at all. The clergy were a picturesque
element in the social landscape, but they were as a body very poor
representatives of learning, religion, and morality. They ranged from
hedge parsons and Fleet chaplains, who had slunk away from England
to find a desirable obscurity in the new world, to divines of real
learning and genuine piety, who were the supporters of the college,
and who would have been a credit to any society. These last, however,
were lamentably few in number. The mass of the clergy were men who
worked their own lands, sold tobacco, were the boon companions of the
planters, hunted, shot, drank hard, and lived well, performing their
sacred duties in a perfunctory and not always in a decent manner.

The clergy, however, formed the stepping-stone socially between
the farmers, traders, and small planters, and the highest and most
important class in Virginian society. The great planters were the
men who owned, ruled, and guided Virginia. Their vast estates were
scattered along the rivers from the seacoast to the mountains. Each
plantation was in itself a small village, with the owner's house in
the centre, surrounded by outbuildings and negro cabins, and the
pastures, meadows, and fields of tobacco stretching away on all sides.
The rare traveler, pursuing his devious way on horseback or in a boat,
would catch sight of these noble estates opening up from the road or
the river, and then the forest would close in around him for several
miles, until through the thinning trees he would see again the white
cabins and the cleared fields of the next plantation.

In such places dwelt the Virginian planters, surrounded by their
families and slaves, and in a solitude broken only by the infrequent
and eagerly welcomed stranger, by their duties as vestrymen and
magistrates, or by the annual pilgrimage to Williamsburg in search of
society, or to sit in the House of Burgesses. They were occupied by
the care of their plantations, which involved a good deal of riding in
the open air, but which was at best an easy and indolent pursuit made
light by slave labor and trained overseers. As a result the planters
had an abundance of spare time, which they devoted to cock-fighting,
horse-racing, fishing, shooting, and fox-hunting,--all, save the
first, wholesome and manly sports, but which did not demand any undue
mental strain. There is, indeed, no indication that the Virginians
had any great love for intellectual exertion. When the amiable
attorney-general of Charles II. said to the Virginian commissioners,
pleading the cause of learning and religion, "Damn your souls! grow
tobacco!" he uttered a precept which the mass of the planters seem to
have laid to heart. For fifty years there were no schools, and down to
the Revolution even the apologies bearing that honored name were
few, and the college was small and struggling. In some of the great
families, the eldest sons would be sent to England and to the great
universities: they would make the grand tour, play a part in the
fashionable society of London, and come back to their plantations fine
gentlemen and scholars. Such was Colonel Byrd, in the early part of
the eighteenth century, a friend of the Earl of Orrery, and the author
of certain amusing memoirs. Such at a later day was Arthur Lee,
doctor and diplomat, student and politician. But most of these young
gentlemen thus sent abroad to improve their minds and manners led a
life not materially different from that of our charming friend, Harry
Warrington, after his arrival in England.

The sons who stayed at home sometimes gathered a little learning from
the clergyman of the parish, or received a fair education at the
College of William and Mary, but very many did not have even so much
as this. There was not in truth much use for learning in managing a
plantation or raising horses, and men get along surprisingly well
without that which they do not need, especially if the acquisition
demands labor. The Virginian planter thought little and read less,
and there were no learned professions to hold out golden prizes and
stimulate the love of knowledge. The women fared even worse, for
they could not go to Europe or to William and Mary's, so that after
exhausting the teaching capacity of the parson they settled down to a
round of household duties and to the cares of a multitude of slaves,
working much harder and more steadily than their lords and masters
ever thought of doing.

The only general form of intellectual exertion was that of governing.
The planters managed local affairs through the vestries, and ruled
Virginia in the House of Burgesses. To this work they paid strict
attention, and, after the fashion of their race, did it very well and
very efficiently. They were an extremely competent body whenever they
made up their minds to do anything; but they liked the life and habits
of Squire Western, and saw no reason for adopting any others until it
was necessary.

There were, of course, vast differences in the condition of the
planters. Some counted their acres by thousands and their slaves by
hundreds, while others scrambled along as best they might with one
plantation and a few score of negroes. Some dwelt in very handsome
houses, picturesque and beautiful, like Gunston Hall or Stratford, or
in vast, tasteless, and extravagant piles like Rosewell. Others were
contented with very modest houses, consisting of one story with a
gabled roof, and flanked by two massive chimneys. In some houses there
was a brave show of handsome plate and china, fine furniture, and
London-made carriages, rich silks and satins, and brocaded dresses.
In others there were earthenware and pewter, homespun and woolen, and
little use for horses, except in the plough or under the saddle.

But there were certain qualities common to all the Virginia planters.
The luxury was imperfect. The splendor was sometimes barbaric. There
were holes in the brocades, and the fresh air of heaven would often
blow through a broken window upon the glittering silver and the costly
china. It was an easy-going aristocracy, unfinished, and frequently
slovenly in its appointments, after the fashion of the warmer climates
and the regions of slavery.

Everything was plentiful except ready money. In this rich and poor
were alike. They were all ahead of their income, and it seems as if,
from one cause or another, from extravagance or improvidence, from
horses or the gaming-table, every Virginian family went through
bankruptcy about once in a generation.

When Harry Warrington arrived in England, all his relations at
Castlewood regarded the handsome young fellow as a prince, with his
acres and his slaves. It was a natural and pleasing delusion, born of
the possession of land and serfs, to which the Virginians themselves
gave ready credence. They forgot that the land was so plentiful that
it was of little value; that slaves were the most wasteful form of
labor; and that a failure of the tobacco crop, pledged before it was
gathered, meant ruin, although they had been reminded more than once
of this last impressive fact. They knew that they had plenty to eat
and drink, and a herd of people to wait upon them and cultivate their
land, as well as obliging London merchants always ready to furnish
every luxury in return for the mortgage of a crop or an estate. So
they gave themselves little anxiety as to the future and lived in the
present, very much to their own satisfaction.

To the communities of trade and commerce, to the mercantile and
industrial spirit of to-day, such an existence and such modes of life
appear distressingly lax and unprogressive. The sages of the bank
parlors and the counting-rooms would shake their heads at such
spendthrifts as these, refuse to discount their paper, and confidently
predict that by no possibility could they come to good. They had their
defects, no doubt, these planters and farmers of Virginia. The life
they led was strongly developed on the animal side, and was perhaps
neither stimulating nor elevating. The living was the reverse of
plain, and the thinking was neither extremely high nor notably
laborious. Yet in this very particular there is something rather
restful and pleasant to the eye wearied by the sight of incessant
movement, and to the ear deafened by the continual shout that nothing
is good that does not change, and that all change must be good. We
should probably find great discomforts and many unpleasant limitations
in the life and habits of a hundred years ago on any part of the
globe, and yet at a time when it seems as if rapidity and movement
were the last words and the ultimate ideals of civilization, it is
rather agreeable to turn to such a community as the eighteenth-century
planters of Virginia. They lived contentedly on the acres of their
fathers, and except at rare and stated intervals they had no other
interests than those furnished by their ancestral domain. At the
court-house, at the vestry, or in Williamsburg, they met their
neighbors and talked very keenly about the politics of Europe, or the
affairs of the colony. They were little troubled about religion, but
they worshiped after the fashion of their fathers, and had a serious
fidelity to church and king. They wrangled with their governors over
appropriations, but they lived on good terms with those eminent
persons, and attended state balls at what they called the palace, and
danced and made merry with much stateliness and grace. Their every-day
life ran on in the quiet of their plantations as calmly as one of
their own rivers. The English trader would come and go; the infrequent
stranger would be received and welcomed; Christmas would be kept in
hearty English fashion; young men from a neighboring estate would
ride over through the darkening woods to court, or dance, or play
the fiddle, like Patrick Henry or Thomas Jefferson; and these simple
events were all that made a ripple on the placid stream. Much time was
given to sports, rough, hearty, manly sports, with a spice of danger,
and these, with an occasional adventurous dash into the wilderness,
kept them sound and strong and brave, both in body and mind. There was
nothing languid or effeminate about the Virginian planter. He was a
robust man, quite ready to fight or work when the time came, and well
fitted to deal with affairs when he was needed. He was a free-handed,
hospitable, generous being, not much given to study or thought, but
thoroughly public-spirited and keenly alive to the interests of
Virginia. Above all things he was an aristocrat, set apart by the
dark line of race, color, and hereditary servitude, as proud as the
proudest Austrian with his endless quarterings, as sturdy and vigorous
as an English yeoman, and as jealous of his rights and privileges
as any baron who stood by John at Runnymede. To this aristocracy,
careless and indolent, given to rough pleasures and indifferent to the
finer and higher sides of life, the call came, as it comes to all men
sooner or later, and in response they gave their country soldiers,
statesmen, and jurists of the highest order, and fit for the great
work they were asked to do. We must go back to Athens to find another
instance of a society so small in numbers, and yet capable of such an
outburst of ability and force. They were of sound English stock, with
a slight admixture of the Huguenots, the best blood of France; and
although for a century and a half they had seemed to stagnate in
the New World, they were strong, fruitful, and effective beyond the
measure of ordinary races when the hour of peril and trial was at
hand.




CHAPTER II

THE WASHINGTONS


Such was the world and such the community which counted as a small
fraction the Washington family. Our immediate concern is with that
family, for before we approach the man we must know his ancestors. The
greatest leader of scientific thought in this century has come to
the aid of the genealogist, and given to the results of the latter's
somewhat discredited labors a vitality and meaning which it seemed
impossible that dry and dusty pedigrees and barren tables of descent
should ever possess. We have always selected our race-horses according
to the doctrines of evolution, and we now study the character of a
great man by examining first the history of his forefathers.

Washington made so great an impression upon the world in his lifetime
that genealogists at once undertook for him the construction of a
suitable pedigree. The excellent Sir Isaac Heard, garter king-at-arms,
worked out a genealogy which seemed reasonable enough, and then wrote
to the president in relation to it. Washington in reply thanked him
for his politeness, sent him the Virginian genealogy of his own
branch, and after expressing a courteous interest said, in his simple
and direct fashion, that he had been a busy man and had paid but
little attention to the subject. His knowledge about his English
forefathers was in fact extremely slight. He had heard merely that
the first of the name in Virginia had come from one of the northern
counties of England, but whether from Lancashire or Yorkshire, or one
still more northerly, he could not tell. Sir Isaac was not thoroughly
satisfied with the correctness of his own work, but presently Baker
took it up in his history of Northamptonshire, and perfected it to
his own satisfaction and that of the world in general. This genealogy
derived Washington's descent from the owners of the manor of Sulgrave,
in Northamptonshire, and thence carried it back to the Norman knight,
Sir William de Hertburn. According to this pedigree the Virginian
settlers, John and Lawrence, were the sons of Lawrence Washington of
Sulgrave Manor, and this genealogy was adopted by Sparks and Irving,
as well as by the public at large. Twenty years ago, however, Colonel
Chester, by his researches, broke the most essential link in the chain
forged by Heard and Baker, proving clearly that the Virginian settlers
could not have been the sons of Lawrence of Sulgrave, as identified by
the garter king-at-arms. Still more recently the mythical spirit has
taken violent possession of the Washington ancestry, and an ingenious
gentleman has traced the pedigree of our first president back to
Thorfinn and thence to Odin, which is sufficiently remote, dignified,
and lofty to satisfy the most exacting Welshman that ever lived. Still
the breach made by Colonel Chester was not repaired, although many
writers, including some who should have known better, clung with
undiminished faith to the Heard pedigree. It was known that Colonel
Chester himself believed that he had found the true line, coming, it
is supposed, through a younger branch of the Sulgrave race, but he
died before he had discovered the one bit of evidence necessary to
prove an essential step, and he was too conscientiously accurate to
leave anything to conjecture. Since then the researches of Mr. Henry
E. Waters have established the pedigree of the Virginian Washingtons,
and we are now able to know something of the men from whom George
Washington drew his descent.

In that interesting land where everything, according to our narrow
ideas, is upside down, it is customary, when an individual arrives at
distinction, to confer nobility upon his ancestors instead of upon
his children. The Washingtons offer an interesting example of the
application of this Chinese system in the Western world, for, if they
have not been actually ennobled in recognition of the deeds of their
great descendant, they have at least become the subjects of intense
and general interest. Every one of the name who could be discovered
anywhere has been dragged forth into the light, and has had all that
was known about him duly recorded and set down. By scanning family
trees and pedigrees, and picking up stray bits of information here and
there, we can learn in a rude and general fashion what manner of men
those were who claimed descent from William of Hertburn, and who bore
the name of Washington in the mother-country. As Mr. Galton passes
a hundred faces before the same highly sensitized plate, and gets a
photograph which is a likeness of no one of his subjects, and yet
resembles them all, so we may turn the camera of history upon these
Washingtons, as they flash up for a moment from the dim past, and hope
to obtain what Professor Huxley calls a "generic" picture of the race,
even if the outlines be somewhat blurred and indistinct.

In the North of England, in the region conquered first by Saxons and
then by Danes, lies the little village of Washington. It came into the
possession of Sir William de Hertburn, and belonged to him at the time
of the Boldon Book in 1183. Soon after, he or his descendants took
the name of De Wessyngton, and there they remained for two centuries,
knights of the palatinate, holding their lands by a military tenure,
fighting in all the wars, and taking part in tournaments with becoming
splendor. By the beginning of the fifteenth century the line of feudal
knights of the palatinate was extinct, and the manor passed from the
family by the marriage of Dionisia de Wessyngton. But the main stock
had in the mean time thrown out many offshoots, which had taken firm
root in other parts and in many counties of England. We hear of
several who came in various ways to eminence. There was the learned
and vigorous prior of Durham, John de Wessyngton, probably one of the
original family, and the name appears in various places after his time
in records and on monuments, indicating a flourishing and increasing
race. Lawrence Washington, the direct ancestor of the first President
of the United States, was, in the sixteenth century, the mayor of
Northampton, and received from King Henry VIII. the manor of Sulgrave
in 1538. In the next century we find traces of Robert Washington of
the Adwick family, a rich merchant of Leeds, and of his son Joseph
Washington, a learned lawyer and author, of Gray's Inn. About the same
time we hear of Richard Washington and Philip Washington holding high
places at University College, Oxford. The Sulgrave branch, however,
was the most numerous and prosperous. From the mayor of Northampton
were descended Sir William Washington, who married the half-sister of
George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham; Sir Henry Washington, who made a
desperate defense of Worcester against the forces of the Parliament in
1646; Lieutenant-Colonel James Washington, who fell at the siege of
Pontefract, fighting for King Charles; another James, of a later time,
who was implicated in Monmouth's rebellion, fled to Holland and became
the progenitor of a flourishing and successful family, which has
spread to Germany and there been ennobled; Sir Lawrence Washington, of
Garsdon, whose grand-daughter married Robert Shirley, Baron Ferrers;
and others of less note, but all men of property and standing. They
seem to have been a successful, thrifty race, owning lands and
estates, wise magistrates and good soldiers, marrying well, and
increasing their wealth and strength from generation to generation.
They were of Norman stock, knights and gentlemen in the full sense of
the word before the French Revolution, and we can detect in them here
and there a marked strain of the old Norse blood, carrying with it
across the centuries the wild Berserker spirit which for centuries
made the adventurous Northmen the terror of Europe. They were a strong
race evidently, these Washingtons, whom we see now only by glimpses
through the mists of time, not brilliant apparently, never winning the
very highest fortune, having their failures and reverses no doubt,
but on the whole prudent, bold men, always important in their several
stations, ready to fight and ready to work, and as a rule successful
in that which they set themselves to do.

In 1658 the two brothers, John and Lawrence, appeared in Virginia. As
has been proved by Mr. Waters, they were of the Sulgrave family,
the sons of Lawrence Washington, fifth son of the elder Lawrence of
Sulgrave and Brington. The father of the emigrants was a fellow of
Brasenose College, Oxford, and rector of Purleigh, from which living
he was ejected by the Puritans as both "scandalous" and "malignant."
That he was guilty of the former charge we may well doubt; but that he
was, in the language of the time, "malignant," must be admitted, for
all his family, including his brothers, Sir William Washington of
Packington, and Sir John Washington of Thrapston, his nephew, Sir
Henry Washington, and his nephew-in-law, William Legge, ancestor of
the Earl of Dartmouth, were strongly on the side of the king. In a
marriage which seems to have been regarded as beneath the dignity of
the family, and in the poverty consequent upon the ejectment from
his living, we can find the reason for the sons of the Rev. Lawrence
Washington going forth into Virginia to find their fortune, and flying
from the world of victorious Puritanism which offered just then so
little hope to royalists like themselves. Yet what was poverty in
England was something much more agreeable in the New World of America.
The emigrant brothers at all events seem to have had resources of a
sufficient kind, and to have been men of substance, for they purchased
lands and established themselves at Bridges Creek, in Westmoreland
County. With this brief statement, Lawrence disappears, leaving us
nothing further than the knowledge that he had numerous descendants.
John, with whom we are more concerned, figures at once in the colonial
records of Maryland. He made complaint to the Maryland authorities,
soon after his arrival, against Edward Prescott, merchant, and captain
of the ship in which he had come over, for hanging a woman during the
voyage for witchcraft. We have a letter of his, explaining that he
could not appear at the first trial because he was about to baptize
his son, and had bidden the neighbors and gossips to the feast. A
little incident this, dug out of the musty records, but it shows us an
active, generous man, intolerant of oppression, public-spirited and
hospitable, social, and friendly in his new relations. He soon after
was called to mourn the death of his English wife and of two children,
but he speedily consoled himself by taking a second wife, Anne Pope,
by whom he had three children, Lawrence, John, and Anne. According to
the Virginian tradition, John Washington the elder was a surveyor, and
made a location of lands which was set aside because they had been
assigned to the Indians. It is quite apparent that he was a forehanded
person who acquired property and impressed himself upon his neighbors.
In 1667, when he had been but ten years in the colony, he was chosen
to the House of Burgesses; and eight years later he was made a colonel
and sent with a thousand men to join the Marylanders in destroying
the "Susquehannocks," at the "Piscataway" fort, on account of some
murdering begun by another tribe. As a feat of arms, the expedition
was not a very brilliant affair. The Virginians and Marylanders killed
half a dozen Indian chiefs during a parley, and then invested the
fort. After repulsing several sorties, they stupidly allowed the
Indians to escape in the night and carry murder and pillage through
the outlying settlements, lighting up first the flames of savage war
and then the fiercer fire of domestic insurrection. In the next year
we hear again of John Washington in the House of Burgesses, when Sir
William Berkeley assailed his troops for the murder of the Indians
during the parley. Popular feeling, however, was clearly with the
colonel, for nothing was done and the matter dropped. At that point,
too, in 1676, John Washington disappears from sight, and we know only
that as his will was proved in 1677, he must have died soon after the
scene with Berkeley. He was buried in the family vault at Bridges
Creek, and left a good estate to be divided among his children. The
colonel was evidently both a prudent and popular man, and quite
disposed to bustle about in the world in which he found himself. He
acquired lands, came to the front at once as a leader although a
new-comer in the country, was evidently a fighting man as is shown by
his selection to command the Virginian forces, and was honored by his
neighbors, who gave his name to the parish in which he dwelt. Then
he died and his son Lawrence reigned in his stead, and became by his
wife, Mildred Warner, the father of John, Augustine, and Mildred
Washington.

This second son, Augustine, farmer and planter like his forefathers,
married first Jane Butler, by whom he had three sons and a daughter,
and second, Mary Ball, by whom he had four sons and two daughters. The
eldest child of these second nuptials was named George, and was born
on February 11 (O.S.), 1732, at Bridges Creek. The house in which
this event occurred was a plain, wooden farmhouse of the primitive
Virginian pattern, with four rooms on the ground floor, an attic story
with a long, sloping roof, and a massive brick chimney. Three years
after George Washington's birth it is said to have been burned, and
the family for this or some other reason removed to another estate in
what is now Stafford County. The second house was like the first, and
stood on rising ground looking across a meadow to the Rappahannock,
and beyond the river to the village of Fredericksburg, which was
nearly opposite. Here, in 1743, Augustine Washington died somewhat
suddenly, at the age of forty-nine, from an attack of gout brought on
by exposure in the rain, and was buried with his fathers in the old
vault at Bridges Creek. Here, too, the boyhood of Washington was
passed, and therefore it becomes necessary to look about us and see
what we can learn of this important period of his life.

We know nothing about his father, except that he was kindly and
affectionate, attached to his wife and children, and apparently
absorbed in the care of his estates. On his death the children came
wholly under the maternal influence and direction. Much has been
written about the "mother of Washington," but as a matter of fact,
although she lived to an advanced age, we know scarcely more about her
than we do about her husband. She was of gentle birth, and possessed
a vigorous character and a good deal of business capacity. The
advantages of education were given in but slight measure to the
Virginian ladies of her time, and Mrs. Washington offered no exception
to the general rule. Her reading was confined to a small number of
volumes, chiefly of a devotional character, her favorite apparently
being Hale's "Moral and Divine Contemplations." She evidently knew no
language but her own, and her spelling was extremely bad even in that
age of uncertain orthography. Certain qualities, however, are clear to
us even now through all the dimness. We can see that Mary Washington
was gifted with strong sense, and had the power of conducting business
matters providently and exactly. She was an imperious woman, of strong
will, ruling her kingdom alone. Above all she was very dignified, very
silent, and very sober-minded. That she was affectionate and loving
cannot be doubted, for she retained to the last a profound hold upon
the reverential devotion of her son, and yet as he rose steadily to
the pinnacle of human greatness, she could only say that "George
had been a good boy, and she was sure he would do his duty." Not a
brilliant woman evidently, not one suited to shine in courts, conduct
intrigues, or adorn literature, yet able to transmit moral qualities
to her oldest son, which, mingled with those of the Washingtons, were
of infinite value in the foundation of a great Republic. She found
herself a widow at an early age, with a family of young children to
educate and support. Her means were narrow, for although Augustine
Washington was able to leave what was called a landed estate to each
son, it was little more than idle capital, and the income in ready
money was by no means so evident as the acres.

Many are the myths, and deplorably few the facts, that have come
down to us in regard to Washington's boyhood. For the former we are
indebted to the illustrious Weems, and to that personage a few more
words must be devoted. Weems has been held up to the present age
in various ways, usually, it must be confessed, of an unflattering
nature, and "mendacious" is the adjective most commonly applied to
him. There has been in reality a good deal of needless confusion about
Weems and his book, for he was not a complex character, and neither he
nor his writings are difficult to value or understand. By profession a
clergyman or preacher, by nature an adventurer, Weems loved notoriety,
money, and a wandering life. So he wrote books which he correctly
believed would be popular, and sold them not only through the regular
channels, but by peddling them himself as he traveled about the
country. In this way he gratified all his propensities, and no doubt
derived from life a good deal of simple pleasure. Chance brought him
near Washington in the closing days, and his commercial instinct
told him that here was the subject of all others for his pen and
his market. He accordingly produced the biography which had so much
success. Judged solely as literature, the book is beneath contempt.
The style is turgid, overloaded, and at times silly. The statements
are loose, the mode of narration confused and incoherent, and the
moralizing is flat and common-place to the last degree. Yet there
was a certain sincerity of feeling underneath all the bombast and
platitudes, and this saved the book. The biography did not go, and was
not intended to go, into the hands of the polite society of the great
eastern towns. It was meant for the farmers, the pioneers, and the
backwoodsmen of the country. It went into their homes, and passed with
them beyond the Alleghanies and out to the plains and valleys of the
great West. The very defects of the book helped it to success among
the simple, hard-working, hard-fighting race engaged in the conquest
of the American continent. To them its heavy and tawdry style, its
staring morals, and its real patriotism all seemed eminently befitting
the national hero, and thus Weems created the Washington of the
popular fancy. The idea grew up with the country, and became so
ingrained in the popular thought that finally everybody was affected
by it, and even the most stately and solemn of the Washington
biographers adopted the unsupported tales of the itinerant parson and
book-peddler.

In regard to the public life of Washington, Weems took the facts known
to every one, and drawn for the most part from the gazettes. He then
dressed them up in his own peculiar fashion and gave them to the
world. All this, forming of course nine tenths of his book, has
passed, despite its success, into oblivion. The remaining tenth
described Washington's boyhood until his fourteenth or fifteenth year,
and this, which is the work of the author's imagination, has lived.
Weems, having set himself up as absolutely the only authority as to
this period, has been implicitly followed, and has thus come to demand
serious consideration. Until Weems is weighed and disposed of, we
cannot even begin an attempt to get at the real Washington.

Weems was not a cold-blooded liar, a mere forger of anecdotes. He was
simply a man destitute of historical sense, training, or morals, ready
to take the slenderest fact and work it up for the purposes of the
market until it became almost as impossible to reduce it to its
original dimensions as it was for the fisherman to get the Afrit back
into his jar. In a word, Weems was an approved myth-maker. No better
example can be given than the way in which he described himself. It
is believed that he preached once, and possibly oftener, to a
congregation which numbered Washington among its members. Thereupon he
published himself in his book as the rector of Mount Vernon parish.
There was, to begin with, no such parish. There was Truro parish, in
which was a church called indifferently Pohick or Mount Vernon church.
Of this church Washington was a vestryman until 1785, when he joined
the church at Alexandria. The Rev. Lee Massey was the clergyman of the
Mount Vernon church, and the church at Alexandria had nothing to do
with Mount Vernon. There never was, moreover, such a person as the
rector of Mount Vernon parish, but it was the Weems way of treating
his appearance before the great man, and of deceiving the world with
the notion of an intimacy which the title implied.

Weems, of course, had no difficulty with the public life, but in
describing the boyhood he was thrown on his own resources, and out
of them he evolved the cherry-tree, the refusal to fight or permit
fighting among the boys at school, and the initials in the garden.
This last story is to the effect that Augustine Washington planted
seeds in such a manner that when they sprouted they formed on the
earth the initials of his son's name, and the boy being much delighted
thereby, the father explained to him that it was the work of the
Creator, and thus inculcated a profound belief in God. This tale
is taken bodily from Dr. Beattie's biographical sketch of his son,
published in England in 1799, and may be dismissed at once. As to the
other two more familiar anecdotes there is not a scintilla of evidence
that they had any foundation, and with them may be included the colt
story, told by Mr. Custis, a simple variation of the cherry-tree
theme, which is Washington's early love of truth. Weems says that
his stories were told him by a lady, and "a good old gentleman," who
remembered the incidents, while Mr. Custis gives no authority for his
minute account of a trivial event over a century old when he wrote.
To a writer who invented the rector of Mount Vernon, the further
invention of a couple of Boswells would be a trifle. I say Boswells
advisedly, for these stories are told with the utmost minuteness, and
the conversations between Washington and his father are given as if
from a stenographic report. How Mr. Custis, usually so accurate, came
to be so far infected with the Weems myth as to tell the colt story
after the Weems manner, cannot now be determined. There can be no
doubt that Washington, like most healthy boys, got into a good deal of
mischief, and it is not at all impossible that he injured fruit-trees
and confessed that he had done so. It may be accepted as certain that
he rode and mastered many unbroken thoroughbred colts, and it is
possible that one of them burst a blood-vessel in the process and
died, and that the boy promptly told his mother of the accident. But
this is the utmost credit which these two anecdotes can claim. Even so
much as this cannot be said of certain other improving tales of like
nature. That Washington lectured his playmates on the wickedness of
fighting, and in the year 1754 allowed himself to be knocked down in
the presence of his soldiers, and thereupon begged his assailant's
pardon for having spoken roughly to him, are stories so silly and
so foolishly impossible that they do not deserve an instant's
consideration.

There is nothing intrinsically impossible in either the cherry-tree or
the colt incident, nor would there be in a hundred others which might
be readily invented. The real point is that these stories, as told by
Weems and Mr. Custis, are on their face hopelessly and ridiculously
false. They are so, not merely because they have no vestige of
evidence to support them, but because they are in every word and
line the offspring of a period more than fifty years later. No
English-speaking people, certainly no Virginians, ever thought or
behaved or talked in 1740 like the personages in Weems's stories,
whatever they may have done in 1790, or at the beginning of the next
century. These precious anecdotes belong to the age of Miss Edgeworth
and Hannah More and Jane Taylor. They are engaging specimens of the
"Harry and Lucy" and "Purple Jar" morality, and accurately reflect the
pale didacticism which became fashionable in England at the close of
the last century. They are as untrue to nature and to fact at the
period to which they are assigned as would be efforts to depict
Augustine Washington and his wife in the dress of the French
revolution discussing the propriety of worshiping the Goddess of
Reason.

To enter into any serious historical criticism of these stories would
be to break a butterfly. So much as this even has been said only
because these wretched fables have gone throughout the world, and it
is time that they were swept away into the dust-heaps of history. They
represent Mr. and Mrs. Washington as affected and priggish people,
given to cheap moralizing, and, what is far worse, they have served
to place Washington himself in a ridiculous light to an age which has
outgrown the educational foibles of seventy-five years ago. Augustine
Washington and his wife were a gentleman and lady of the eighteenth
century, living in Virginia. So far as we know without guessing or
conjecture, they were simple, honest, and straight-forward, devoted to
the care of their family and estate, and doing their duty sensibly and
after the fashion of their time. Their son, to whom the greatest wrong
has been done, not only never did anything common or mean, but from
the beginning to the end of his life he was never for an instant
ridiculous or affected, and he was as utterly removed from canting
or priggishness as any human being could well be. Let us therefore
consign the Weems stories and their offspring to the limbo of
historical rubbish, and try to learn what the plain facts tell us of
the boy Washington.

Unfortunately these same facts are at first very few, so few that they
tell us hardly anything. We know when and where Washington was born;
and how, when he was little more than three years old,[1] he was taken
from Bridges Creek to the banks of the Rappahannock. There he was
placed under the charge of one Hobby, the sexton of the parish, to
learn his alphabet and his pothooks; and when that worthy man's store
of learning was exhausted he was sent back to Bridges Creek, soon
after his father's death, to live with his half-brother Augustine,
and obtain the benefits of a school kept by a Mr. Williams. There he
received what would now be called a fair common-school education,
wholly destitute of any instruction in languages, ancient or modern,
but apparently with some mathematical training.

[Footnote 1: There is a conflict about the period of this removal (see
above, p. 37). Tradition places it in 1735, but the Rev. Mr. McGuire
(_Religious Opinions of Washington_) puts it in 1739.]

That he studied faithfully cannot be doubted, and we know, too, that
he matured early, and was a tall, active, and muscular boy. He could
outwalk and outrun and outride any of his companions. As he could
no doubt have thrashed any of them too, he was, in virtue of these
qualities, which are respected everywhere by all wholesome minds, and
especially by boys, a leader among his school-fellows. We know further
that he was honest and true, and a lad of unusual promise, not because
of the goody-goody anecdotes of the myth-makers, but because he
was liked and trusted by such men as his brother Lawrence and Lord
Fairfax.

There he was, at all events, in his fourteenth year, a big, strong,
hearty boy, offering a serious problem to his mother, who was
struggling along with many acres, little money, and five children.
Mrs. Washington's chief desire naturally was to put George in the way
of earning a living, which no doubt seemed far more important than
getting an education, and, as he was a sober-minded boy, the same idea
was probably profoundly impressed on his own mind also. This condition
of domestic affairs led to the first attempt to give Washington a
start in life, which has been given to us until very lately in a
somewhat decorated form. The fact is, that in casting about for
something to do, it occurred to some one, very likely to the boy
himself, that it would be a fine idea to go to sea. His masculine
friends and relatives urged the scheme upon Mrs. Washington, who
consented very reluctantly, if at all, not liking the notion of
parting with her oldest son, even in her anxiety to have him earn his
bread. When it came to the point, however, she finally decided against
his going, determined probably by a very sensible letter from her
brother, Joseph Ball, an English lawyer. In all the ornamented
versions we are informed that the boy was to enter the royal navy,
and that a midshipman's warrant was procured for him. There does not
appear to be any valid authority for the royal navy, the warrant, or
the midshipman. The contemporary Virginian letters speak simply of
"going to sea," while Mr. Ball says distinctly that the plan was to
enter the boy on a tobacco-ship, with an excellent chance of being
pressed on a man-of-war, and a very faint prospect of either getting
into the navy, or even rising to be the captain of one of the petty
trading-vessels familiar to Virginian planters. Some recent writers
have put Mr. Ball aside as not knowing what was intended in regard to
his nephew, but in view of the difficulty at that time of obtaining
commissions in the navy without great political influence, it seems
probable that Mrs. Washington's brother knew very well what he was
talking about, and he certainly wrote a very sensible letter. A bold,
adventurous boy, eager to earn his living and make his way in the
world, would, like many others before him, look longingly to the sea
as the highway to fortune and success. To Washington the romance of
the sea was represented by the tobacco-ship creeping up the river and
bringing all the luxuries and many of the necessaries of life from
vaguely distant countries. No doubt he wished to go on one of these
vessels and try his luck, and very possibly the royal navy was hoped
for as the ultimate result. The effort was certainly made to send
him to sea, but it failed, and he went back to school to study more
mathematics.

Apart from the fact that the exact sciences in moderate degree were
about all that Mr. Williams could teach, this branch of learning had
an immediate practical value, inasmuch as surveying was almost the
only immediately gainful pursuit open to a young Virginia gentleman,
who sorely needed a little ready money that he might buy slaves and
work a plantation. So Washington studied on for two years more, and
fitted himself to be a surveyor. There are still extant some early
papers belonging to this period, chiefly fragments of school
exercises, which show that he already wrote the bold, handsome
hand with which the world was to become familiar, and that he made
geometrical figures and notes of surveys with the neatness and
accuracy which clung to him in all the work of his life, whether great
or small. Among those papers, too, were found many copies of legal
forms, and a set of rules, over a hundred in number, as to etiquette
and behavior, carefully written out. It has always been supposed that
these rules were copied, but it was reserved apparently for the storms
of a mighty civil war to lay bare what may have been, if not the
source of the rules themselves, the origin and suggestion of their
compilation. At that time a little volume was found in Virginia
bearing the name of George Washington in a boyish hand on the
fly-leaf, and the date 1742. The book was entitled, "The Young Man's
Companion." It was an English work, and had passed through thirteen
editions, which was little enough in view of its varied and extensive
information. It was written by W. Mather, in a plain and easy style,
and treated of arithmetic, surveying, forms for legal documents, the
measuring of land and lumber, gardening, and many other useful topics,
and it contained general precepts which, with the aid of Hale's
"Contemplations," may readily have furnished the hints for the rules
found in manuscript among Washington's papers.[1] These rules were in
the main wise and sensible, and it is evident they had occupied deeply
the boy's mind.[2] They are for the most part concerned with the
commonplaces of etiquette and good manners, but there is something not
only apt but quite prophetic in the last one, "Labor to keep alive in
your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience." To
suppose that Washington's character was formed by these sententious
bits of not very profound wisdom would be absurd; but that a series of
rules which most lads would have regarded as simply dull should have
been written out and pondered by this boy indicates a soberness and
thoughtfulness of mind which certainly are not usual at that age.
The chief thought that runs through all the sayings is to practice
self-control, and no man ever displayed that most difficult of virtues
to such a degree as George Washington. It was no ordinary boy who took
such a lesson as this to heart before he was fifteen, and carried it
into his daily life, never to be forgotten. It may also be said that
very few boys ever needed it more; but those persons who know what
they chiefly need, and pursue it, are by no means common.

[Footnote 1: An account of this volume was given in the _New York
Tribune_ in 1866, and also in the _Historical Magazine_ (x. 47).]

[Footnote 2: The most important are given in Sparks' _Writings of
Washington_, ii. 412, and they may be found complete in the little
pamphlet concerning them, excellently edited by Dr. J.M. Toner, of
Washington.]




CHAPTER III

ON THE FRONTIER


While Washington was working his way through the learning purveyed
by Mr. Williams, he was also receiving another education, of a much
broader and better sort, from the men and women among whom he found
himself, and with whom he made friends. Chief among them was his
eldest brother, Lawrence, fourteen years his senior, who had been
educated in England, had fought with Vernon at Carthagena, and had
then returned to Virginia, to be to him a generous father and a loving
friend. As the head of the family, Lawrence Washington had received
the lion's share of the property, including the estate at Hunting
Creek, on the Potomac, which he christened Mount Vernon, after his
admiral, and where he settled down and built him a goodly house. To
this pleasant spot George Washington journeyed often in vacation
time, and there he came to live and further pursue his studies, after
leaving school in the autumn of 1747.

Lawrence Washington had married the daughter of William Fairfax, the
proprietor of Belvoir, a neighboring plantation, and the agent for
the vast estates held by his family in Virginia. George Fairfax, Mrs.
Washington's brother, had married a Miss Gary, and thus two large and
agreeable family connections were thrown open to the young surveyor
when he emerged from school. The chief figure, however, in that
pleasant winter of 1747-48, so far as an influence upon the character
of Washington is concerned, was the head of the family into which
Lawrence Washington had married. Thomas, Lord Fairfax, then sixty
years of age, had come to Virginia to live upon and look after the
kingdom which he had inherited in the wilderness. He came of a noble
and distinguished race. Graduating at Oxford with credit, he served in
the army, dabbled in literature, had his fling in the London world,
and was jilted by a beauty who preferred a duke, and gave her faithful
but less titled lover an apparently incurable wound. His life having
been thus early twisted and set awry, Lord Fairfax, when well past his
prime, had determined finally to come to Virginia, bury himself in the
forests, and look after the almost limitless possessions beyond the
Blue Ridge, which he had inherited from his maternal grandfather, Lord
Culpeper, of unsavory Restoration memory. It was a piece of great
good-fortune which threw in Washington's path this accomplished
gentleman, familiar with courts and camps, disappointed, but not
morose, disillusioned, but still kindly and generous. From him the boy
could gain that knowledge of men and manners which no school can give,
and which is as important in its way as any that a teacher can impart.

Lord Fairfax and Washington became fast friends. They hunted the fox
together, and hunted him hard. They engaged in all the rough sports
and perilous excitements which Virginia winter life could afford, and
the boy's bold and skillful riding, his love of sports and his fine
temper, commended him to the warm and affectionate interest of the old
nobleman. Other qualities, too, the experienced man of the world saw
in his young companion: a high and persistent courage, robust and calm
sense, and, above all, unusual force of will and character. Washington
impressed profoundly everybody with whom he was brought into personal
contact, a fact which is one of the most marked features of his
character and career, and one which deserves study more than almost
any other. Lord Fairfax was no exception to the rule. He saw in
Washington not simply a promising, brave, open-hearted boy, diligent
in practicing his profession, and whom he was anxious to help, but
something more; something which so impressed him that he confided to
this lad a task which, according to its performance, would affect both
his fortune and his peace. In a word, he trusted Washington, and told
him, as the spring of 1748 was opening, to go forth and survey the
vast Fairfax estates beyond the Ridge, define their boundaries, and
save them from future litigation. With this commission from Lord
Fairfax, Washington entered on the first period of his career. He
passed it on the frontier, fighting nature, the Indians, and the
French. He went in a schoolboy; he came out the first soldier in the
colonies, and one of the leading men of Virginia. Let us pause a
moment and look at him as he stands on the threshold of this momentous
period, rightly called momentous because it was the formative period
in the life of such a man.

[Illustration: LAWRENCE WASHINGTON]

He had just passed his sixteenth birthday. He was tall and muscular,
approaching the stature of more than six feet which he afterwards
attained. He was not yet filled out to manly proportions, but was
rather spare, after the fashion of youth. He had a well-shaped,
active figure, symmetrical except for the unusual length of the arms,
indicating uncommon strength. His light brown hair was drawn back from
a broad forehead, and grayish-blue eyes looked happily, and perhaps a
trifle soberly, on the pleasant Virginia world about him. The face was
open and manly, with a square, massive jaw, and a general expression
of calmness and strength. "Fair and florid," big and strong, he was,
take him for all in all, as fine a specimen of his race as could be
found in the English colonies.

Let us look a little closer through the keen eyes of one who studied
many faces to good purpose. The great painter of portraits, Gilbert
Stuart, tells us of Washington that he never saw in any man such large
eye-sockets, or such a breadth of nose and forehead between the
eyes, and that he read there the evidences of the strongest passions
possible to human nature. John Bernard the actor, a good observer,
too, saw in Washington's face, in 1797, the signs of an habitual
conflict and mastery of passions, witnessed by the compressed mouth
and deeply indented brow. The problem had been solved then; but in
1748, passion and will alike slumbered, and no man could tell which
would prevail, or whether they would work together to great purpose
or go jarring on to nothingness. He rises up to us out of the past in
that early springtime a fine, handsome, athletic boy, beloved by those
about him, who found him a charming companion and did not guess that
he might be a terribly dangerous foe. He rises up instinct with life
and strength, a being capable, as we know, of great things whether for
good or evil, with hot blood pulsing in his veins and beating in his
heart, with violent passions and relentless will still undeveloped;
and no one in all that jolly, generous Virginian society even dimly
dreamed what that development would be, or what it would mean to the
world.

It was in March, 1748, that George Fairfax and Washington set forth on
their adventures, and passing through Ashby's Gap in the Blue Ridge,
entered the valley of Virginia. Thence they worked their way up the
valley of the Shenandoah, surveying as they went, returned and swam
the swollen Potomac, surveyed the lands about its south branch and in
the mountainous region of Frederick County, and finally reached Mount
Vernon again on April 12. It was a rough experience for a beginner,
but a wholesome one, and furnished the usual vicissitudes of frontier
life. They were wet, cold, and hungry, or warm, dry, and well fed, by
turns. They slept in a tent, or the huts of the scattered settlers,
and oftener still beneath the stars. They met a war party of Indians,
and having plied them with liquor, watched one of their mad dances
round the camp-fire. In another place they came on a straggling
settlement of Germans, dull, patient, and illiterate, strangely unfit
for the life of the wilderness. All these things, as well as the
progress of their work and their various resting-places, Washington
noted down briefly but methodically in a diary, showing in these rough
notes the first evidences of that keen observation of nature and men
and of daily incidents which he developed to such good purpose in
after-life. There are no rhapsodies and no reflections in these hasty
jottings, but the employments and the discomforts are all set down in
a simple and matter-of-fact way, which omitted no essential thing and
excluded all that was worthless. His work, too, was well done, and
Lord Fairfax was so much pleased by the report that he moved across
the Blue Ridge, built a hunting lodge preparatory to something more
splendid which never came to pass, and laid out a noble manor, to
which he gave the name of Greenway Court. He also procured for
Washington an appointment as a public surveyor, which conferred
authority on his surveys and provided him with regular work. Thus
started, Washington toiled at his profession for three years, living
and working as he did on his first expedition. It was a rough life,
but a manly and robust one, and the men who live it, although often
rude and coarse, are never weak or effeminate. To Washington it was
an admirable school. It strengthened his muscles and hardened him to
exposure and fatigue. It accustomed him to risks and perils of various
kinds, and made him fertile in expedients and confident of himself,
while the nature of his work rendered him careful and industrious.
That his work was well done is shown by the fact that his surveys were
considered of the first authority, and stand unquestioned to this day,
like certain other work which he was subsequently called to do. It was
part of his character, when he did anything, to do it in a lasting
fashion, and it is worth while to remember that the surveys he made as
a boy were the best that could be made.

He wrote to a friend at this time: "Since you received my letter of
October last, I have not slept above three or four nights in a bed,
but, after walking a good deal all the day, I have lain down before
the fire upon a little hay, straw, fodder, or a bearskin, whichever
was to be had, with man, wife, and children, like dogs and cats; and
happy is he who gets the berth nearest the fire. Nothing would make it
pass off tolerably but a good reward. A doubloon is my constant gain
every day that the weather will permit of my going out, and sometimes
six pistoles." He was evidently a thrifty lad, and honestly pleased
with honest earnings. He was no mere adventurous wanderer, but a man
working for results in money, reputation, or some solid value,
and while he worked and earned he kept an observant eye upon the
wilderness, and bought up when he could the best land for himself and
his family, laying the foundations of the great landed estate of which
he died possessed.

There was also a lighter and pleasanter side to this hard-working
existence, which was quite as useful, and more attractive, than
toiling in the woods and mountains. The young surveyor passed much of
his time at Greenway Court, hunting the fox and rejoicing in all field
sports which held high place in that kingdom, while at the same time
he profited much in graver fashion by his friendship with such a man
as Lord Fairfax. There, too, he had a chance at a library, and his
diaries show that he read carefully the history of England and the
essays of the "Spectator." Neither in early days nor at any other time
was he a student, for he had few opportunities, and his life from the
beginning was out of doors and among men. But the idea sometimes put
forward that Washington cared nothing for reading or for books is an
idle one. He read at Greenway Court and everywhere else when he had an
opportunity. He read well, too, and to some purpose, studying men and
events in books as he did in the world, for though he never talked of
his reading, preserving silence on that as on other things concerning
himself, no one ever was able to record an instance in which he showed
himself ignorant of history or of literature. He was never a learned
man, but so far as his own language could carry him he was an educated
one. Thus while he developed the sterner qualities by hard work and a
rough life, he did not bring back the coarse habits of the backwoods
and the camp-fire, but was able to refine his manners and improve his
mind in the excellent society and under the hospitable roof of Lord
Fairfax.

Three years slipped by, and then a domestic change came which much
affected Washington's whole life. The Carthagena campaign had
undermined the strength of Lawrence Washington and sown the seeds of
consumption, which showed itself in 1749, and became steadily more
alarming. A voyage to England and a summer at the warm springs were
tried without success, and finally, as a last resort, the invalid
sailed for the West Indies, in September, 1751. Thither his brother
George accompanied him, and we have the fragments of a diary kept
during this first and last wandering outside his native country. He
copied the log, noted the weather, and evidently strove to get some
idea of nautical matters while he was at sea and leading a life
strangely unfamiliar to a woodsman and pioneer. When they arrived at
their destination they were immediately asked to breakfast and dine
with Major Clarke, the military magnate of the place, and our young
Virginian remarked, with characteristic prudence and a certain touch
of grim humor, "We went,--myself with some reluctance, as the smallpox
was in the family." He fell a victim to his good manners, for two
weeks later he was "strongly attacked with the smallpox," and was
then housed for a month, getting safely and successfully through
this dangerous and then almost universal ordeal. Before the disease
declared itself, however, he went about everywhere, innocently
scattering infection, and greatly enjoying the pleasures of the
island. It is to be regretted that any part of this diary should have
been lost, for it is pleasant reading, and exhibits the writer in an
agreeable and characteristic fashion. He commented on the country and
the scenery, inveighed against the extravagance of the charges for
board and lodging, told of his dinner-parties and his friends, and
noted the marvelous abundance and variety of the tropical fruits,
which contrasted strangely with the British dishes of beefsteak and
tripe. He also mentioned being treated to a ticket to see the play of
"George Barnwell," on which he offered this cautious criticism:
"The character of Barnwell and several others were said to be well
performed. There was music adapted and regularly conducted."

Soon after his recovery Washington returned to Virginia, arriving
there in February, 1752. The diary concluded with a brief but
perfectly effective description of Barbadoes, touching on its
resources and scenery, its government and condition, and the manners
and customs of its inhabitants. All through these notes we find the
keenly observant spirit, and the evidence of a mind constantly alert
to learn. We see also a pleasant, happy temperament, enjoying with
hearty zest all the pleasures that youth and life could furnish. He
who wrote these lines was evidently a vigorous, good-humored young
fellow, with a quick eye for the world opening before him, and for the
delights as well as the instruction which it offered.

From the sunshine and ease of this tropical winter Washington passed
to a long season of trial and responsibility at home and abroad. In
July, 1752, his much-loved brother Lawrence died, leaving George
guardian of his daughter, and heir to his estates in the event of
that daughter's death. Thus the current of his home life changed, and
responsibility came into it, while outside the mighty stream of public
events changed too, and swept him along in the swelling torrent of a
world-wide war.

In all the vast wilderness beyond the mountains there was not room for
both French and English. The rival nations had been for years slowly
approaching each other, until in 1749 each people proceeded at last to
take possession of the Ohio country after its own fashion. The French
sent a military expedition which sank and nailed up leaden plates; the
English formed a great land company to speculate and make money, and
both set diligently to work to form Indian alliances. A man of far
less perception than Lawrence Washington, who had become the chief
manager of the Ohio Company, would have seen that the conditions on
the frontier rendered war inevitable, and he accordingly made ready
for the future by preparing his brother for the career of a soldier,
so far as it could be done. He brought to Mount Vernon two old
companions-in-arms of the Carthagena time, Adjutant Muse, a Virginian,
and Jacob Van Braam, a Dutch soldier of fortune. The former instructed
Washington in the art of war, tactics, and the manual of arms, the
latter in fencing and the sword exercise. At the same time Lawrence
Washington procured for his brother, then only nineteen years of age,
an appointment as one of the adjutants-general of Virginia, with the
rank of major. To all this the young surveyor took kindly enough so
far as we can tell, but his military avocations were interrupted by
his voyage to Barbadoes, by the illness and death of his brother, and
by the cares and responsibilities thereby thrust upon him.

Meantime the French aggressions had continued, and French soldiers and
traders were working their way up from the South and down from the
North, bullying and cajoling the Indians by turns, taking possession
of the Ohio country, and selecting places as they went for that
chain of forts which was to hem in and slowly strangle the English
settlements. Governor Dinwiddie had sent a commissioner to remonstrate
against these encroachments, but his envoy had stopped a hundred
and fifty miles short of the French posts, alarmed by the troublous
condition of things, and by the defeat and slaughter which the
Frenchmen had already inflicted upon the Indians. Some more vigorous
person was evidently needed to go through the form of warning France
not to trespass on the English wilderness, and thereupon Governor
Dinwiddie selected for the task George Washington, recently
reappointed adjutant-general of the northern division, and major in
the Virginian forces. He was a young man for such an undertaking, not
yet twenty-two, but clearly of good reputation. It is plain enough
that Lord Fairfax and others had said to the governor, "Here is the
very man for you; young, daring, and adventurous, but yet sober-minded
and responsible, who only lacks opportunity to show the stuff that is
in him."

Thus, then, in October, 1753, Washington set forth with Van Braam, and
various servants and horses, accompanied by the boldest of Virginian
frontiersmen, Christopher Gist. He wrote a report in the form of a
journal, which was sent to England and much read at the time as part
of the news of the day, and which has an equal although different
interest now. It is a succinct, clear, and sober narrative. The little
party was formed at Will's Creek, and thence through woods and over
swollen rivers made its way to Logstown. Here they spent some days
among the Indians, whose leaders Washington got within his grasp after
much speech-making; and here, too, he met some French deserters from
the South, and drew from them all the knowledge they possessed of New
Orleans and the military expeditions from that region. From Logstown
he pushed on, accompanied by his Indian chiefs, to Venango, on the
Ohio, the first French outpost. The French officers asked him to sup
with them. The wine flowed freely, the tongues of the hosts were
loosened, and the young Virginian, temperate and hard-headed, listened
to all the conversation, and noted down mentally much that was
interesting and valuable. The next morning the Indian chiefs,
prudently kept in the background, appeared, and a struggle ensued
between the talkative, clever Frenchmen and the quiet, persistent
Virginian, over the possession of these important savages. Finally
Washington got off, carrying his chiefs with him, and made his way
seventy miles further to the fort on French Creek. Here he delivered
the governor's letter, and while M. de St. Pierre wrote a vague and
polite answer, he sketched the fort and informed himself in regard to
the military condition of the post. Then came another struggle over
the Indians, and finally Washington got off with them once more, and
worked his way back to Venango. Another struggle for the savages
followed, rum being always the principal factor in the negotiation,
and at last the chiefs determined to stay behind. Nevertheless, the
work had been well done, and the important Half-King remained true to
the English cause.

Leaving his horses, Washington and Gist then took to the woods on
foot. The French Indians lay in wait for them and tried to murder
them, and Gist, like a true frontiersman, was for shooting the
scoundrel whom they captured. But Washington stayed his hand, and
they gave the savage the slip and pressed on. It was the middle of
December, very cold and stormy. In crossing a river, Washington fell
from the raft into deep water, amid the floating ice, but fought his
way out, and he and his companion passed the night on an island, with
their clothes frozen upon them. So through peril and privation, and
various dangers, stopping in the midst of it all to win another savage
potentate, they reached the edge of the settlements and thence went
on to Williamsburg, where great praise and glory were awarded to the
youthful envoy, the hero of the hour in the little Virginia capital.

It is worth while to pause over this expedition a moment and to
consider attentively this journal which recounts it, for there are
very few incidents or documents which tell us more of Washington. He
was not yet twenty-two when he faced this first grave responsibility,
and he did his work absolutely well. Cool courage, of course, he
showed, but also patience and wisdom in handling the Indians, a clear
sense that the crafty and well-trained Frenchmen could not blind, and
a strong faculty for dealing with men, always a rare and precious
gift. As in the little Barbadoes diary, so also in this journal,
we see, and far more strongly, the penetration and perception that
nothing could escape, and which set down all things essential and let
the "huddling silver, little worth," go by. The clearness, terseness,
and entire sufficiency of the narrative are obvious and lie on the
surface; but we find also another quality of the man which is one of
the most marked features in his character, and one which we must dwell
upon again and again, as we follow the story of his life. Here it
is that we learn directly for the first time that Washington was a
profoundly silent man. The gospel of silence has been preached in
these latter days by Carlyle, with the fervor of a seer and prophet,
and the world owes him a debt for the historical discredit which he
has brought upon the man of mere words as compared with the man of
deeds. Carlyle brushed Washington aside as "a bloodless Cromwell," a
phrase to which we must revert later on other grounds, and, as
has already been said, failed utterly to see that he was the most
supremely silent of the great men of action that the world can show.
Like Cromwell and Frederic, Washington wrote countless letters, made
many speeches, and was agreeable in conversation. But this was all in
the way of business, and a man may be profoundly silent and yet talk a
great deal. Silence in the fine and true sense is neither mere holding
of the tongue nor an incapacity of expression. The greatly silent man
is he who is not given to words for their own sake, and who never
talks about himself. Both Cromwell, greatest of Englishmen, and the
great Frederic, Carlyle's especial heroes, were fond of talking of
themselves. So in still larger measure was Napoleon, and many others
of less importance. But Washington differs from them all. He had
abundant power of words, and could use them with much force and point
when he was so minded, but he never used them needlessly or to hide
his meaning, and he never talked about himself. Hence the inestimable
difficulty of knowing him. A brief sentence here and there, a rare
gleam of light across the page of a letter, is all that we can find.
The rest is silence. He did as great work as has fallen to the lot of
man, he wrote volumes of correspondence, he talked with innumerable
men and women, and of himself he said nothing. Here in this youthful
journal we have a narrative of wild adventure, wily diplomacy, and
personal peril, impossible of condensation, and yet not a word of the
writer's thoughts or feelings. All that was done or said important to
the business in hand was set down, and nothing was overlooked, but
that is all. The work was done, and we know how it was done, but the
man is silent as to all else. Here, indeed, is the man of action and
of real silence, a character to be much admired and wondered at in
these or any other days.

Washington's report looked like war, and its author was shortly
afterwards appointed lieutenant-colonel of a Virginian regiment,
Colonel Fry commanding. Now began that long experience of human
stupidity and inefficiency with which Washington was destined to
struggle through all the years of his military career, suffering from
them, and triumphing in spite of them to a degree unequaled by any
other great commander. Dinwiddie, the Scotch governor, was eager
enough to fight, and full of energy and good intentions, but he was
hasty and not overwise, and was filled with an excessive idea of his
prerogatives. The assembly, on its side, was sufficiently patriotic,
but its members came from a community which for more than half a
century had had no fighting, and they knew nothing of war or its
necessities. Unaccustomed to the large affairs into which they were
suddenly plunged, they displayed a narrow and provincial spirit.
Keenly alive to their own rights and privileges, they were more
occupied in quarreling with Dinwiddie than in prosecuting the war. In
the weak proprietary governments of Maryland and Pennsylvania there
was the same condition of affairs, with every evil exaggerated
tenfold. The fighting spirit was dominant in Virginia, but in
Quaker-ridden Pennsylvania it seems to have been almost extinct. These
three were not very promising communities to look to for support in a
difficult and costly war.

With all this inertia and stupidity Washington was called to cope, and
he rebelled against it in vigorous fashion. Leaving Colonel Fry to
follow with the main body of troops, Washington set out on April 2,
1754, with two companies from Alexandria, where he had been recruiting
amidst most irritating difficulties. He reached Will's Creek three
weeks later; and then his real troubles began. Captain Trent, the
timid and halting envoy, who had failed to reach the French, had been
sent out by the wise authorities to build a fort at the junction of
the Alleghany and Monongahela, on the admirable site selected by the
keen eye of Washington. There Trent left his men and returned to
Will's Creek, where Washington found him, but without the pack-horses
that he had promised to provide. Presently news came that the French
in overwhelming numbers had swept down upon Trent's little party,
captured their fort, and sent them packing back to Virginia.
Washington took this to be war, and determined at once to march
against the enemy. Having impressed from the inhabitants, who were not
bubbling over with patriotism, some horses and wagons, he set out on
his toilsome march across the mountains.

It was a wild and desolate region, and progress was extremely slow.
By May 9 he was at the Little Meadows, twenty miles from his
starting-place; by the 18th at the Youghiogany River, which he
explored and found unnavigable. He was therefore forced to take up his
weary march again for the Monongahela, and by the 27th he was at the
Great Meadows, a few miles further on. The extreme danger of his
position does not seem to have occurred to him, but he was harassed
and angered by the conduct of the assembly. He wrote to Governor
Dinwiddie that he had no idea of giving up his commission. "But," he
continued, "let me serve voluntarily; then I will, with the greatest
pleasure in life, devote my services to the expedition, without any
other reward than the satisfaction of serving my country; but to be
slaving dangerously for the shadow of pay, through woods, rocks,
mountains,--I would rather prefer the great toil of a daily laborer,
and dig for a maintenance, provided I were reduced to the necessity,
than serve upon such ignoble terms; for I really do not see why the
lives of his Majesty's subjects in Virginia should be of less value
than those in other parts of his American dominions, especially when
it is well known that we must undergo double their hardship." Here we
have a high-spirited, high-tempered young gentleman, with a contempt
for shams that it is pleasant to see, and evidently endowed also with
a fine taste for fighting and not too much patience.

Indignant letters written in vigorous language were, however, of
little avail, and Washington prepared to shift for himself as best he
might. His Indian allies brought him news that the French were on the
march and had thrown out scouting parties. Picking out a place in the
Great Meadows for a fort, "a charming field for an encounter," he in
his turn sent out a scouting party, and then on fresh intelligence
from the Indians set forth himself with forty men to find the enemy.
After a toilsome march they discovered their foes in camp. The French,
surprised and surrounded, sprang to arms, the Virginians fired, there
was a sharp exchange of shots, and all was over. Ten of the French
were killed and twenty-one were taken prisoners, only one of the party
escaping to carry back the news.

This little skirmish made a prodigious noise in its day, and was much
heralded in France. The French declared that Jumonville, the leader,
who fell at the first fire, was foully assassinated, and that he and
his party were ambassadors and sacred characters. Paris rang with this
fresh instance of British perfidy, and a M. Thomas celebrated the
luckless Jumonville in a solemn epic poem in four books. French
historians, relying on the account of the Canadian who escaped,
adopted the same tone, and at a later day mourned over this black
spot on Washington's character. The French view was simple nonsense.
Jumonville and his party, as the papers found on Jumonville showed,
were out on a spying and scouting expedition. They were seeking to
surprise the English when the English surprised them, with the usual
backwoods result. The affair has a dramatic interest because it was
the first blood shed in a great struggle, and was the beginning of a
series of world-wide wars and social and political convulsions, which
terminated more than half a century later on the plains of Waterloo.
It gave immortality to an obscure French officer by linking his name
with that of his opponent, and brought Washington for the moment
before the eyes of the world, which little dreamed that this Virginian
colonel was destined to be one of the principal figures in the great
revolutionary drama to which the war then beginning was but the
prologue.

Washington, for his part, well satisfied with his exploit, retraced
his steps, and having sent his prisoners back to Virginia, proceeded
to consider his situation. It was not a very cheerful prospect.
Contrecoeur, with the main body of the French and Indians, was moving
down from the Monongahela a thousand strong. This of course was to
have been anticipated, and it does not seem to have in the least
damped Washington's spirits. His blood was up, his fighting temper
thoroughly roused, and he prepared to push on. Colonel Fry had died
meanwhile, leaving Washington in command; but his troops came forward,
and also not long after a useless "independent" company from South
Carolina. Thus reinforced Washington advanced painfully some thirteen
miles, and then receiving sure intelligence of the approach of the
French in great force fell back with difficulty to the Great Meadows,
where he was obliged by the exhausted condition of his men to stop. He
at once resumed work on Fort Necessity, and made ready for a desperate
defense, for the French were on his heels, and on July 3 appeared at
the Meadows. Washington offered battle outside the fort, and this
being declined withdrew to his trenches, and skirmishing went on all
day. When night fell it was apparent that the end had come. The men
were starved and worn out. Their muskets in many cases were rendered
useless by the rain, and their ammunition was spent. The Indians had
deserted, and the foe outnumbered them four to one. When the French
therefore offered a parley, Washington was forced reluctantly to
accept. The French had no stomach for the fight, apparently, and
allowed the English to go with their arms, exacting nothing but a
pledge that for a year they would not come to the Ohio.

So ended Washington's first campaign. His friend the Half-King, the
celebrated Seneca chief, Thanacarishon, who prudently departed on the
arrival of the French, has left us a candid opinion of Washington and
his opponents. "The colonel," he said, "was a good-natured man, but
had no experience; he took upon him to command the Indians as his
slaves, and would have them every day upon the scout and to attack
the enemy by themselves, but would by no means take advice from the
Indians. He lay in one place from one full moon to the other, without
making any fortifications, except that little thing on the meadow;
whereas, had he taken advice, and built such fortifications as I
advised him, he might easily have beat off the French. But the French
in the engagement acted like cowards, and the English like fools."[1]

[Footnote 1: _Enquiry into the Causes and Alienations of the Delaware
and Shawanee Indians_, etc. London, 1759. By Charles Thomson,
afterwards Secretary of Congress.]

There is a deal of truth in this opinion. The whole expedition was
rash in the extreme. When Washington left Will's Creek he was aware
that he was going to meet a force of a thousand men with only a
hundred and fifty raw recruits at his back. In the same spirit he
pushed on; and after the Jumonville affair, although he knew that the
wilderness about him was swarming with enemies, he still struggled
forward. When forced to retreat he made a stand at the Meadows and
offered battle in the open to his more numerous and more prudent
foes, for he was one of those men who by nature regard courage as a
substitute for everything, and who have a contempt for hostile odds.
He was ready to meet any number of French and Indians with cheerful
confidence and with real pleasure. He wrote, in a letter which
soon became famous, that he loved to hear bullets whistle, a sage
observation which he set down in later years as a folly of youth. Yet
this boyish outburst, foolish as it was, has a meaning to us, for it
was essentially true. Washington had the fierce fighting temper of the
Northmen. He loved battle and danger, and he never ceased to love them
and to give way to their excitement, although he did not again set
down such sentiments in boastful phrase that made the world laugh.
Men of such temper, moreover, are naturally imperious and have a fine
disregard of consequences, with the result that their allies, Indian
or otherwise, often become impatient and finally useless. The campaign
was perfectly wild from the outset, and if it had not been for
the utter indifference to danger displayed by Washington, and the
consequent timidity of the French, that particular body of Virginians
would have been permanently lost to the British Empire.

But we learn from all this many things. It appears that Washington was
not merely a brave man, but one who loved fighting for its own sake.
The whole expedition shows an arbitrary temper and the most reckless
courage, valuable qualities, but here unrestrained, and mixed
with very little prudence. Some important lessons were learned by
Washington from the rough teachings of inexorable and unconquerable
facts. He received in this campaign the first taste of that severe
experience which by its training developed the self-control and
mastery of temper for which he became so remarkable. He did not spring
into life a perfect and impossible man, as is so often represented. On
the contrary, he was educated by circumstances; but the metal came out
of the furnace of experience finely tempered, because it was by nature
of the best and with but little dross to be purged away. In addition
to all this he acquired for the moment what would now be called a
European reputation. He was known in Paris as an assassin, and in
England, thanks to the bullet letter, as a "fanfaron" and brave
braggart. With these results he wended his way home much depressed in
spirits, but not in the least discouraged, and fonder of fighting than
ever.

Virginia, however, took a kinder view of the campaign than did her
defeated soldier. She appreciated the gallantry of the offer to fight
in the open and the general conduct of the troops, and her House of
Burgesses passed a vote of thanks to Washington and his officers, and
gave money to his men. In August he rejoined his regiment, only to
renew the vain struggle against incompetence and extravagance, and as
if this were not enough, his sense of honor was wounded and his temper
much irritated by the governor's playing false to the prisoners taken
in the Jumonville fight. While thus engaged, news came that the French
were off their guard at Fort Duquesne, and Dinwiddie was for having
the regiment of undisciplined troops march again into the wilderness.
Washington, however, had learned something, if not a great deal, and
he demonstrated the folly of such an attempt in a manner too clear to
be confuted.

Meantime the Burgesses came together, and more money being voted,
Dinwiddie hit on a notable plan for quieting dissensions between
regulars and provincials by dividing all the troops into independent
companies, with no officer higher than a captain. Washington, the
only officer who had seen fighting and led a regiment, resented quite
properly this senseless policy, and resigning his commission withdrew
to Mount Vernon to manage the estate and attend to his own affairs. He
was driven to this course still more strongly by the original cause of
Dinwiddie's arrangement. The English government had issued an order
that officers holding the king's commission should rank provincial
officers, and that provincial generals and field officers should have
no rank when a general or field officer holding a royal commission was
present. The degradation of being ranked by every whipper-snapper who
might hold a royal commission by virtue, perhaps, of being the bastard
son of some nobleman's cast-off mistress was more than the temper
of George Washington at least could bear, and when Governor Sharpe,
general by the king's commission, and eager to secure the services
of the best fighter in Virginia, offered him a company and urged his
acceptance, he replied in language that must have somewhat astonished
his excellency. "You make mention in your letter," he wrote to Colonel
Fitzhugh, Governor Sharpe's second in command, "of my continuing in
the service, and retaining my colonel's commission. This idea has
filled me with surprise; for, if you think me capable of holding a
commission that has neither rank nor emolument annexed to it, you must
entertain a very contemptible opinion of my weakness, and believe
me to be more empty than the commission itself.... In short, every
captain bearing the king's commission, every half-pay officer, or
others, appearing with such a commission, would rank before me.... Yet
my inclinations are strongly bent to arms."

It was a bitter disappointment to withdraw from military life, but
Washington had an intense sense of personal dignity; not the small
vanity of a petty mind, but the quality of a proud man conscious of
his own strength and purpose. It was of immense value to the American
people at a later day, and there is something very instructive in this
early revolt against the stupid arrogance which England has always
thought it wise to display toward this country. She has paid dearly
for indulging it, but it has seldom cost her more than when it drove
Washington from her service, and left in his mind a sense of indignity
and injustice.

Meantime this Virginian campaigning had started a great movement.
England was aroused, and it was determined to assail France in Nova
Scotia, from New York and on the Ohio. In accordance with this plan
General Braddock arrived in Virginia February 20, 1755, with two
picked regiments, and encamped at Alexandria. Thither Washington used
to ride and look longingly at the pomp and glitter, and wish that he
wore engaged in the service. Presently this desire became known, and
Braddock, hearing of the young Virginian's past experience, offered
him a place on his staff with the rank of colonel where he would
be subject only to the orders of the general, and could serve as a
volunteer. He therefore accepted at once, and threw himself into
his new duties with hearty good-will. Every step now was full of
instruction. At Annapolis he met the governors of the other
colonies, and was interested and attracted by this association with
distinguished public men. In the army to which he was attached he
studied with the deepest attention the best discipline of Europe,
observing everything and forgetting nothing, thus preparing himself
unconsciously to use against his teachers the knowledge he acquired.

He also made warm friends with the English officers, and was treated
with consideration by his commander. The universal practice of all
Englishmen at that time was to behave contemptuously to the colonists,
but there was something about Washington which made this impossible.
They all treated him with the utmost courtesy, vaguely conscious that
beneath the pleasant, quiet manner there was a strength of character
and ability such as is rarely found, and that this was a man whom it
was unsafe to affront. There is no stronger instance of Washington's
power of impressing himself upon others than that he commanded now
the respect and affection of his general, who was the last man to be
easily or favorably affected by a young provincial officer.

Edward Braddock was a veteran soldier, a skilled disciplinarian, and a
rigid martinet. He was narrow-minded, brutal, and brave. He had led a
fast life in society, indulging in coarse and violent dissipations,
and was proud with the intense pride of a limited intelligence and a
nature incapable of physical fear. It would be difficult to conceive
of a man more unfit to be entrusted with the task of marching through
the wilderness and sweeping the French from the Ohio. All the
conditions which confronted him were unfamiliar and beyond his
experience. He cordially despised the provincials who were essential
to his success, and lost no opportunity of showing his contempt for
them. The colonists on their side, especially in Pennsylvania, gave
him, unfortunately, only too much ground for irritation and disgust.
They were delighted to see this brilliant force come from England to
fight their battles, but they kept on wrangling and holding back,
refusing money and supplies, and doing nothing. Braddock chafed and
delayed, swore angrily, and lingered still. Washington strove to help
him, but defended his country fearlessly against wholesale and furious
attacks.

Finally the army began to move, but so slowly and after so much delay
that they did not reach Will's Creek until the middle of May. Here
came another exasperating pause, relieved only by Franklin, who,
by giving his own time, ability, and money, supplied the necessary
wagons. Then they pushed on again, but with the utmost slowness. With
supreme difficulty they made an elaborate road over the mountains as
they marched, and did not reach the Little Meadows until June 16. Then
at last Braddock turned to his young aide for the counsel which had
already been proffered and rejected many times. Washington advised the
division of the army, so that the main body could hurry forward in
light marching order while a detachment remained behind and brought
up the heavy baggage. This plan was adopted, and the army started
forward, still too heavily burdened, as Washington thought, but in
somewhat better trim for the wilderness than before. Their progress,
quickened as it was, still seemed slow to Washington, but he was taken
ill with a fever, and finally was compelled by Braddock to stop for
rest at the ford of Youghiogany. He made Braddock promise that he
should be brought up before the army reached Fort Duquesne, and wrote
to his friend Orme that he would not miss the impending battle for
five hundred pounds.

As soon as his fever abated a little he left Colonel Dunbar, and,
being unable to sit on a horse, was conveyed to the front in a wagon,
coming up with the army on July 8. He was just in time, for the next
day the troops forded the Monongahela and marched to attack the fort.
The splendid appearance of the soldiers as they crossed the river
roused Washington's enthusiasm; but he was not without misgivings.
Franklin had already warned Braddock against the danger of surprise,
and had been told with a sneer that while these savages might be
a formidable enemy to raw American militia, they could make no
impression on disciplined troops. Now at the last moment Washington
warned the general again and was angrily rebuked.

The troops marched on in ordered ranks, glittering and beautiful.
Suddenly firing was heard in the front, and presently the van was
flung back on the main body. Yells and war-whoops resounded on every
side, and an unseen enemy poured in a deadly fire. Washington begged
Braddock to throw his men into the woods, but all in vain. Fight in
platoons they must, or not at all. The result was that they did not
fight at all. They became panic-stricken, and huddled together,
overcome with fear, until at last when Braddock was mortally wounded
they broke in wild rout and fled. Of the regular troops, seven
hundred, and of the officers, who showed the utmost bravery, sixty-two
out of eighty-six, were killed or wounded. Two hundred Frenchmen and
six hundred Indians achieved this signal victory. The only thing
that could be called fighting on the English side was done by
the Virginians, "the raw American militia," who, spread out as
skirmishers, met their foes on their own ground, and were cut off
after a desperate resistance almost to a man.

Washington at the outset flung himself headlong into the fight. He
rode up and down the field, carrying orders and striving to rally "the
dastards," as he afterwards called the regular troops. He endeavored
to bring up the artillery, but the men would not serve the guns,
although to set an example he aimed and discharged one himself. All
through that dreadful carnage he rode fiercely about, raging with the
excitement of battle, and utterly exposed from beginning to end. Even
now it makes the heart beat quicker to think of him amid the smoke and
slaughter as he dashed hither and thither, his face glowing and his
eyes shining with the fierce light of battle, leading on his own
Virginians, and trying to stay the tide of disaster. He had two horses
shot under him and four bullets through his coat. The Indians thought
he bore a charmed life, while his death was reported in the colonies,
together with his dying speech, which, he dryly wrote to his brother,
he had not yet composed.

When the troops broke it was Washington who gathered the fugitives and
brought off the dying general. It was he who rode on to meet Dunbar,
and rallying the fugitives enabled the wretched remnants to take up
their march for the settlements. He it was who laid Braddock in the
grave four days after the defeat, and read over the dead the solemn
words of the English service. Wise, sensible, and active in the
advance, splendidly reckless on the day of battle, cool and collected
on the retreat, Washington alone emerged from that history of disaster
with added glory. Again he comes before us as, above all things,
the fighting man, hot-blooded and fierce in action, and utterly
indifferent to the danger which excited and delighted him. But the
earlier lesson had not been useless. He now showed a prudence and
wisdom in counsel which were not apparent in the first of his
campaigns, and he no longer thought that mere courage was
all-sufficient, or that any enemy could be despised. He was plainly
one of those who could learn. His first experience had borne good
fruit, and now he had been taught a series of fresh and valuable
lessons. Before his eyes had been displayed the most brilliant
European discipline, both in camp and on the march. He had studied
and absorbed it all, talking with veterans and hearing from them many
things that he could have acquired nowhere else. Once more had he
been taught, in a way not to be forgotten, that it is never well to
underrate one's opponent. He had looked deeper, too, and had seen what
the whole continent soon understood, that English troops were not
invincible, that they could be beaten by Indians, and that they were
after all much like other men. This was the knowledge, fatal in
after days to British supremacy, which Braddock's defeat brought to
Washington and to the colonists, and which was never forgotten. Could
he have looked into the future, he would have seen also in this
ill-fated expedition an epitome of much future history. The expedition
began with stupid contempt toward America and all things American, and
ended in ruin and defeat. It was a bitter experience, much heeded by
the colonists, but disregarded by England, whose indifference was paid
for at a heavy cost.

After the hasty retreat, Colonel Dunbar, stricken with panic, fled
onward to Philadelphia, abandoning everything, and Virginia was left
naturally in a state of great alarm. The assembly came together, and
at last, thoroughly frightened, voted abundant money, and ordered a
regiment of a thousand men to be raised. Washington, who had returned
to Mount Vernon ill and worn-out, was urged to solicit the command,
but it was not his way to solicit, and he declined to do so now.
August 14, he wrote to his mother: "If it is in my power to avoid
going to the Ohio again, I shall; but if the command is pressed upon
me by the general voice of the country, and offered upon such terms as
cannot be objected against, it would reflect dishonor on me to refuse
it." The same day he was offered the command of all the Virginian
forces on his own terms, and accepted. Virginia believed in
Washington, and he was ready to obey her call.

He at once assumed command and betook himself to Winchester, a general
without an army, but still able to check by his presence the existing
panic, and ready to enter upon the trying, dreary, and fruitless work
that lay before him. In April, 1757, he wrote: "I have been posted
then, for more than twenty months past, upon our cold and barren
frontiers, to perform, I think I may say, impossibilities; that is, to
protect from the cruel incursions of a crafty, savage enemy a line of
inhabitants, of more than three hundred and fifty miles in extent,
with a force inadequate to the task." This terse statement covers
all that can be said of the next three years. It was a long struggle
against a savage foe in front, and narrowness, jealousy, and stupidity
behind; apparently without any chance of effecting anything, or
gaining any glory or reward. Troops were voted, but were raised with
difficulty, and when raised were neglected and ill-treated by the
wrangling governor and assembly, which caused much ill-suppressed
wrath in the breast of the commander-in-chief, who labored day and
night to bring about better discipline in camp, and who wrote long
letters to Williamsburg recounting existing evils and praying for a
new militia law.

The troops, in fact, were got out with vast difficulty even under the
most stinging necessity, and were almost worthless when they came.
Of one "noble captain" who refused to come, Washington wrote: "With
coolness and moderation this great captain answered that his wife,
family, and corn were all at stake; so were those of his soldiers;
therefore it was impossible for him to come. Such is the example
of the officers; such the behavior of the men; and upon such
circumstances depends the safety of our country!" But while the
soldiers were neglected, and the assembly faltered, and the militia
disobeyed, the French and Indians kept at work on the long, exposed
frontier. There panic reigned, farmhouses and villages went up in
smoke, and the fields were reddened with slaughter at each fresh
incursion. Gentlemen in Williamsburg bore these misfortunes with
reasonable fortitude, but Washington raged against the abuses and the
inaction, and vowed that nothing but the imminent danger prevented his
resignation. "The supplicating tears of the women," he wrote, "and
moving petitions of the men 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." This is one of the rare flashes
of personal feeling which disclose the real man, warm of heart and
temper, full of human sympathy, and giving vent to hot indignation in
words which still ring clear and strong across the century that has
come and gone.

Serious troubles, moreover, were complicated by petty annoyances. A
Maryland captain, at the head of thirty men, undertook to claim rank
over the Virginian commander-in-chief because he had held a king's
commission; and Washington was obliged to travel to Boston in order to
have the miserable thing set right by Governor Shirley. This affair
settled, he returned to take up again the old disheartening struggle,
and his outspoken condemnation of Dinwiddie's foolish schemes and of
the shortcomings of the government began to raise up backbiters
and malcontents at Williamsburg. "My orders," he said, "are dark,
doubtful, and uncertain; to-day approved, to-morrow condemned. Left
to act and proceed at hazard, accountable for the consequences, and
blamed without the benefit of defense." He determined nevertheless
to bear with his trials until the arrival of Lord Loudon, the new
commander-in-chief, from whom he expected vigor and improvement.
Unfortunately he was destined to have only fresh disappointment from
the new general, for Lord Loudon was merely one more incompetent man
added to the existing confusion. He paid no heed to the South, matters
continued to go badly in the North, and Virginia was left helpless. So
Washington toiled on with much discouragement, and the disagreeable
attacks upon him increased. That it should have been so is not
surprising, for he wrote to the governor, who now held him in much
disfavor, to the speaker, and indeed to every one, with a most galling
plainness. He was only twenty-five, be it remembered, and his high
temper was by no means under perfect control. He was anything but
diplomatic at that period of his life, and was far from patient, using
language with much sincerity and force, and indulging in a blunt irony
of rather a ferocious kind. When he was accused finally of getting up
reports of imaginary dangers, his temper gave way entirely. He wrote
wrathfully to the governor for justice, and added in a letter to
his friend, Captain Peachey: "As to Colonel C.'s gross and infamous
reflections on my conduct last spring, it will be needless, I dare
say, to observe further at this time than that the liberty which he
has been pleased to allow himself in sporting with my character is
little else than a comic entertainment, discovering at one view his
passionate fondness for your friend, his inviolable love of truth,
his unfathomable knowledge, and the masterly strokes of his wisdom in
displaying it. You are heartily welcome to make use of any letter or
letters which I may at any time have written to you; for although
I keep no copies of epistles to my friends, nor can remember the
contents of all of them, yet I am sensible that the narrations are
just, and that truth and honesty will appear in my writings; of which,
therefore, I shall not be ashamed, though criticism may censure my
style."

Perhaps a little more patience would have produced better results,
but it is pleasant to find one man, in that period of stupidity and
incompetency, who was ready to free his mind in this refreshing way.
The only wonder is that he was not driven from his command. That they
insisted on keeping him there shows beyond everything that he
had already impressed himself so strongly on Virginia that the
authorities, although they smarted under his attacks, did not dare to
meddle with him. Dinwiddie and the rest could foil him in obtaining a
commission in the king's army, but they could not shake his hold upon
the people.

In the winter of 1758 his health broke down completely. He was so
ill that he thought that his constitution was seriously injured;
and therefore withdrew to Mount Vernon, where he slowly recovered.
Meantime a great man came at last to the head of affairs in England,
and inspired by William Pitt, fleets and armies went forth to conquer.
Reviving at the prospect, Washington offered his services to General
Forbes, who had come to undertake the task which Braddock had failed
to accomplish. Once more English troops appeared, and a large army
was gathered. Then the old story began again, and Washington, whose
proffered aid had been gladly received, chafed and worried all summer
at the fresh spectacle of delay and stupidity which was presented
to him. His advice was disregarded, and all the weary business of
building new roads through the wilderness was once more undertaken. A
detachment, sent forward contrary to his views, met with the fate of
Braddock, and as the summer passed, and autumn changed to winter, it
looked as if nothing would be gained in return for so much toil and
preparation. But Pitt had conquered the Ohio in Canada, news arrived
of the withdrawal of the French, the army pressed on, and, with
Washington in the van, marched into the smoking ruins of Fort
Duquesne, henceforth to be known to the world as Fort Pitt.

So closed the first period in Washington's public career. We have seen
him pass through it in all its phases. It shows him as an adventurous
pioneer, as a reckless frontier fighter, and as a soldier of great
promise. He learned many things in this time, and was taught much in
the hard school of adversity. In the effort to conquer Frenchmen and
Indians he studied the art of war, and at the same time he learned
to bear with and to overcome the dullness and inefficiency of the
government he served. Thus he was forced to practise self-control in
order to attain his ends, and to acquire skill in the management of
men. There could have been no better training for the work he was to
do in the after years, and the future showed how deeply he profited by
it. Let us turn now, for a moment, to the softer and pleasanter side
of life, and having seen what Washington was, and what he did as a
fighting man, let us try to know him in the equally important and far
more attractive domain of private and domestic life.




CHAPTER IV

LOVE AND MARRIAGE


Lewis Willis, of Fredericksburg, who was at school with Washington,
used to speak of him as an unusually studious and industrious boy, but
recalled one occasion when he distinguished himself and surprised his
schoolmates by "romping with one of the largest girls."[1] Half a
century later, when the days of romping were long over and gone, a
gentleman writing of a Mrs. Hartley, whom Washington much admired,
said that the general always liked a fine woman.[2] It is certain that
from romping he passed rapidly to more serious forms of expressing
regard, for by the time he was fourteen he had fallen deeply in love
with Mary Bland of Westmoreland, whom he calls his "Lowland Beauty,"
and to whom he wrote various copies of verses, preserved amid the
notes of surveys, in his diary for 1747-48. The old tradition
identified the "Lowland Beauty" with Miss Lucy Grymes, perhaps
correctly, and there are drafts of letters addressed to "Dear Sally,"
which suggest that the mistake in identification might have arisen
from the fact that there were several ladies who answered to that
description. In the following sentence from the draft of a letter to a
masculine sympathizer, also preserved in the tell-tale diary of 1748,
there is certainly an indication that the constancy of the lover was
not perfect. "Dear Friend Robin," he wrote: "My place of residence at
present is at his Lordship's, where I might, were my heart disengaged,
pass my time very pleasantly, as there is a very agreeable young lady
in the same house, Colonel George Fairfax's wife's sister. But that
only adds fuel to the fire, as being often and unavoidably in company
with her revives my former passion for your Lowland Beauty; whereas
were I to live more retired from young women, I might in some measure
alleviate my sorrow by burying that chaste and troublesome passion in
oblivion; I am very well assured that this will be the only antidote
or remedy." Our gloomy young gentleman, however, did not take to
solitude to cure the pangs of despised love, but preceded to calm his
spirits by the society of this same sister-in-law of George Fairfax,
Miss Mary Cary. One "Lowland Beauty," Lucy Grymes, married Henry Lee,
and became the mother of "Legion Harry," a favorite officer and friend
of Washington in the Revolution, and the grandmother of Robert E. Lee,
the great soldier of the Southern Confederacy. The affair with Miss
Cary went on apparently for some years, fitfully pursued in the
intervals of war and Indian fighting, and interrupted also by matters
of a more tender nature. The first diversion occurred about 1752, when
we find Washington writing to William Fauntleroy, at Richmond, that he
proposed to come to his house to see his sister, Miss Betsy, and that
he hoped for a revocation of her former cruel sentence.[3] Miss Betsy,
however, seems to have been obdurate, and we hear no more of love
affairs until much later, and then in connection with matters of a
graver sort.

[Footnote 1: Quoted from the Willis MS. by Mr. Conway, in _Magazine of
American History_, March, 1887, p. 196.]

[Footnote 2: _Magazine of American History_, i. 324.]

[Footnote 3: _Historical Magazine_, 3d series, 1873. Letter
communicated by Fitzhugh Lee.]

[Illustration: Mary Cary]

When Captain Dagworthy, commanding thirty men in the Maryland
service, undertook in virtue of a king's commission to outrank the
commander-in-chief of the Virginian forces, Washington made up his
mind that he would have this question at least finally and properly
settled. So, as has been said, he went to Boston, saw Governor
Shirley, and had the dispute determined in his own favor. He made
the journey on horseback, and had with him two of his aides and two
servants. An old letter, luckily preserved, tells us how he looked,
for it contains orders to his London agents for various articles, sent
for perhaps in anticipation of this very expedition. In Braddock's
campaign the young surveyor and frontier soldier had been thrown among
a party of dashing, handsomely equipped officers fresh from London,
and their appearance had engaged his careful attention. Washington was
a thoroughly simple man in all ways, but he was also a man of
taste and a lover of military discipline. He had a keen sense of
appropriateness, a valuable faculty which stood him in good stead in
grave as well as trivial matters all through his career, and which in
his youth came out most strongly in the matter of manners and personal
appearance. He was a handsome man, and liked to be well dressed and to
have everything about himself or his servants of the best. Yet he
was not a mere imitator of fashions or devoted to fine clothes. The
American leggins and fringed hunting-shirt had a strong hold on his
affections, and he introduced them into Forbes's army, and again into
the army of the Revolution, as the best uniform for the backwoods
fighters. But he learned with Braddock that the dress of parade has as
real military value as that of service, and when he traveled northward
to settle about Captain Dagworthy, he felt justly that he now was
going on parade for the first time as the representative of his troops
and his colony. Therefore with excellent sense he dressed as befitted
the occasion, and at the same time gratified his own taste.

Thanks to these precautions, the little cavalcade that left Virginia
on February 4, 1756, must have looked brilliant enough as they rode
away through the dark woods. First came the colonel, mounted of course
on the finest of animals, for he loved and understood horses from the
time when he rode bareback in the pasture to those later days when he
acted as judge at a horse-race and saw his own pet colt "Magnolia"
beaten. In this expedition he wore, of course, his uniform of buff
and blue, with a white and scarlet cloak over his shoulders, and a
sword-knot of red and gold. His "horse furniture" was of the best
London make, trimmed with "livery lace," and the Washington arms were
engraved upon the housings. Close by his side rode his two aides,
likewise in buff and blue, and behind came his servants, dressed in
the Washington colors of white and scarlet and wearing hats laced with
silver. Thus accoutred, they all rode on together to the North.

The colonel's fame had gone before him, for the hero of Braddock's
stricken field and the commander of the Virginian forces was known by
reputation throughout the colonies. Every door flew open to him as he
passed, and every one was delighted to welcome the young soldier. He
was dined and wined and fêted in Philadelphia, and again in New York,
where he fell in love at apparently short notice with the heiress Mary
Philipse, the sister-in-law of his friend Beverly Robinson. Tearing
himself away from these attractions he pushed on to Boston, then
the most important city on the continent, and the head-quarters of
Shirley, the commander-in-chief. The little New England capital had at
that time a society which, rich for those days, was relieved from its
Puritan sombreness by the gayety and life brought in by the royal
officers. Here Washington lingered ten days, talking war and politics
with the governor, visiting in state the "great and general court,"
dancing every night at some ball, dining with and being fêted by the
magnates of the town. His business done, he returned to New York,
tarried there awhile for the sake of the fair dame, but came to no
conclusions, and then, like the soldier in the song, he gave his
bridle-rein a shake and rode away again to the South, and to the
harassed and ravaged frontier of Virginia.

How much this little interlude, pushed into a corner as it has been by
the dignity of history,--how much it tells of the real man! How the
statuesque myth and the priggish myth and the dull and solemn myth
melt away before it! Wise and strong, a bearer of heavy responsibility
beyond his years, daring in fight and sober in judgment, we have here
the other and the more human side of Washington. One loves to picture
that gallant, generous, youthful figure, brilliant in color and manly
in form, riding gayly on from one little colonial town to another,
feasting, dancing, courting, and making merry. For him the myrtle and
ivy were entwined with the laurel, and fame was sweetened by youth. He
was righteously ready to draw from life all the good things which
fate and fortune then smiling upon him could offer, and he took his
pleasure frankly, with an honest heart.

We know that he succeeded in his mission and put the captain of thirty
men in his proper place, but no one now can tell how deeply he was
affected by the charms of Miss Philipse. The only certain fact is that
he was able not long after to console himself very effectually. Riding
away from Mount Vernon once more, in the spring of 1758, this time to
Williamsburg with dispatches, he stopped at William's Ferry to dine
with his friend Major Chamberlayne, and there he met Martha Dandridge,
the widow of Daniel Parke Custis. She was young, pretty, intelligent,
and an heiress, and her society seemed to attract the young soldier.
The afternoon wore away, the horses came to the door at the appointed
time, and after being walked back and forth for some hours were
returned to the stable. The sun went down, and still the colonel
lingered. The next morning he rode away with his dispatches, but on
his return he paused at the White House, the home of Mrs. Custis, and
then and there plighted his troth with the charming widow. The wooing
was brief and decisive, and the successful lover departed for the
camp, to feel more keenly than ever the delays of the British officers
and the shortcomings of the colonial government. As soon as Fort
Duquesne had fallen he hurried home, resigned his commission in the
last week of December, and was married on January 6, 1759. It was a
brilliant wedding party which assembled on that winter day in the
little church near the White House. There were gathered Francis
Fauquier, the gay, free-thinking, high-living governor, gorgeous in
scarlet and gold; British officers, redcoated and gold-laced, and all
the neighboring gentry in the handsomest clothes that London credit
could furnish. The bride was attired in silk and satin, laces and
brocade, with pearls on her neck and in her ears; while the bridegroom
appeared in blue and silver trimmed with scarlet, and with gold
buckles at his knees and on his shoes. After the ceremony the bride
was taken home in a coach and six, her husband riding beside her,
mounted on a splendid horse and followed by all the gentlemen of the
party.

[Illustration: Mary Morris born Mary Philipse]

The sunshine and glitter of the wedding-day must have appeared to
Washington deeply appropriate, for he certainly seemed to have all
that heart of man could desire. Just twenty-seven, in the first flush
of young manhood, keen of sense and yet wise in experience, life
must have looked very fair and smiling. He had left the army with a
well-earned fame, and had come home to take the wife of his choice and
enjoy the good-will and respect of all men. While away on his last
campaign he had been elected a member of the House of Burgesses, and
when he took his seat on removing to Williamsburg, three months after
his marriage, Mr. Robinson, the speaker, thanked him publicly in
eloquent words for his services to the country. Washington rose to
reply, but he was so utterly unable to talk about himself that he
stood before the House stammering and blushing, until the speaker
said, "Sit down, Mr. Washington; your modesty equals your valor, and
that surpasses the power of any language I possess." It is an old
story, and as graceful as it is old, but it was all very grateful to
Washington, especially as the words of the speaker bodied forth the
feelings of Virginia. Such an atmosphere, filled with deserved respect
and praise, was pleasant to begin with, and then he had everything
else too.

He not only continued to sit in the House year after year and help to
rule Virginia, but he served on the church vestry, and so held in his
hands the reins of local government. He had married a charming
woman, simple, straightforward, and sympathetic, free from gossip or
pretense, and as capable in practical matters as he was himself. By
right of birth a member of the Virginian aristocracy, he had widened
and strengthened his connections through his wife. A man of handsome
property by the death of Lawrence Washington's daughter, he had become
by his marriage one of the richest men of the country. Acknowledged
to be the first soldier on the continent, respected and trusted in
public, successful and happy in private life, he had attained before
he was thirty to all that Virginia could give of wealth, prosperity,
and honor, a fact of which he was well aware, for there never breathed
a man more wisely contented than George Washington at this period.

He made his home at Mount Vernon, adding many acres to the estate, and
giving to it his best attention. It is needless to say that he was
successful, for that was the ease with everything he undertook. He
loved country life, and he was the best and most prosperous planter in
Virginia, which was really a more difficult achievement than the mere
statement implies. Genuinely profitable farming in Virginia was not
common, for the general system was a bad one. A single great staple,
easily produced by the reckless exhaustion of land, and varying widely
in the annual value of crops, bred improvidence and speculation.
Everything was bought upon long credits, given by the London
merchants, and this, too, contributed largely to carelessness and
waste. The chronic state of a planter in a business way was one of
debt, and the lack of capital made his conduct of affairs extravagant
and loose. With all his care and method Washington himself was often
pinched for ready money, and it was only by his thoroughness and
foresight that he prospered and made money while so many of his
neighbors struggled with debt and lived on in easy luxury, not knowing
what the morrow might bring forth.

A far more serious trouble than bad business methods was one which was
little heeded at the moment, but which really lay at the foundation of
the whole system of society and business. This was the character of
the labor by which the plantations were worked. Slave labor is well
known now to be the most expensive and the worst form of labor that
can be employed. In the middle of the eighteenth century, however, its
evils were not appreciated, either from an economical or a moral point
of view. This is not the place to discuss the subject of African
slavery in America. But it is important to know Washington's opinions
in regard to an institution which was destined to have such a powerful
influence upon the country, and it seems most appropriate to consider
those opinions at the moment when slaves became a practical factor in
his life as a Virginian planter.

Washington accepted the system as he found it, as most men accept the
social arrangements to which they are born. He grew up in a world
where slavery had always existed, and where its rightfulness had never
been questioned. Being on the frontier, occupied with surveying and
with war, he never had occasion to really consider the matter at all
until he found himself at the head of large estates, with his own
prosperity dependent on the labor of slaves. The first practical
question, therefore, was how to employ this labor to the best
advantage. A man of his clear perceptions soon discovered the defects
of the system, and he gave great attention to feeding and clothing
his slaves, and to their general management. Parkinson[1] says in a
general way that Washington treated his slaves harshly, spoke to them
sharply, and maintained a military discipline, to which he attributed
the General's rare success as a planter. There can be no doubt of
the success, and the military discipline is probably true, but the
statement as to harshness is unsupported by any other authority.
Indeed, Parkinson even contradicts it himself, for he says elsewhere
that Washington never bought or sold a slave, a proof of the highest
and most intelligent humanity; and he adds in his final sketch of the
General's character, that he "was incapable of wrong-doing, but did to
all men as he would they should do to him. Therefore it is not to be
supposed that he would injure the negro." This agrees with what we
learn from all other sources. Humane by nature, he conceived a great
interest and pity for these helpless beings, and treated them with
kindness and forethought. In a word, he was a wise and good master,
as well as a successful one, and the condition of his slaves was
as happy, and their labor as profitable, as was possible to such a
system.

[Footnote 1: _Tour in America_, 1798-1800.]

So the years rolled by; the war came and then the making of the
government, and Washington's thoughts were turned more and more, as
was the case with all the men of his time in that era of change and
of new ideas, to the consideration of human slavery in its moral,
political, and social aspects. To trace the course of his opinions
in detail is needless. It is sufficient to summarize them, for the
results of his reflection and observation are more important than the
processes by which they were reached. Washington became convinced that
the whole system was thoroughly bad, as well as utterly repugnant to
the ideas upon which the Revolution was fought and the government of
the United States founded. With a prescience wonderful for those days
and on that subject, he saw that slavery meant the up-growth in the
United States of two systems so radically hostile, both socially and
economically, that they could lead only to a struggle for political
supremacy, which in its course he feared would imperil the Union. For
this reason he deprecated the introduction of the slavery question
into the debates of the first Congress, because he realized its
character, and he did not believe that the Union or the government
at that early day could bear the strain which in this way would be
produced. At the same time he felt that a right solution must be found
or inconceivable evils would ensue. The inherent and everlasting wrong
of the system made its continuance, to his mind, impossible. While
it existed, he believed that the laws which surrounded it should be
maintained, because he thought that to violate these only added one
wrong to another. He also doubted, as will be seen in a later chapter,
where his conversation with John Bernard is quoted, whether the
negroes could be immediately emancipated with safety either to
themselves or to the whites, in their actual condition of ignorance,
illiteracy, and helplessness. The plan which he favored, and which,
it would seem, was his hope and reliance, was first the checking
of importation, followed by a gradual emancipation, with proper
compensation to the owners and suitable preparation and education for
the slaves. He told the clergymen Asbury and Coke, when they visited
him for that purpose, that he was in favor of emancipation, and was
ready to write a letter to the assembly to that effect.[1] He wished
fervently that such a spirit might take possession of the people of
the country, but he wrote to Lafayette that he despaired of seeing it.
When he died he did all that lay within his power to impress his views
upon his countrymen by directing that all his slaves should be set
free on the death of his wife. His precepts and his example in this
grave matter went unheeded for many years by the generations which
came after him. But now that slavery is dead, to the joy of all men,
it is well to remember that on this terrible question Washington's
opinions were those of a humane man, impatient of wrong, and of a
noble and far-seeing statesman, watchful of the evils that threatened
his country.[2]

[Footnote 1: _Magazine of American History_, 1880, p. 158.]

[Footnote 2: For some expressions of Washington's opinions on slavery,
see Sparks, viii. 414, ix. 159-163, and x. 224.]

After this digression let us return to the Virginian farmer, whose
mind was not disturbed as yet by thoughts of the destiny of the United
States, or considerations of the rights of man, but who was much
exercised by the task of making an honest income out of his estates.
To do this he grappled with details as firmly as he did with the
general system under which all plantations in that day were carried
on. He understood every branch of farming; he was on the alert for
every improvement; he rose early, worked steadily, gave to everything
his personal supervision, kept his own accounts with wonderful
exactness, and naturally enough his brands of flour went unquestioned
everywhere, his credit was high, and he made money--so far as it
was possible under existing conditions. Like Shakespeare, as Bishop
Blougram has it, he

  "Saved money, spent it, owned the worth of things."

He had no fine and senseless disregard for money or the good things of
this world, but on the contrary saw in them not the value attached to
them by vulgar minds, but their true worth. He was a solid, square,
evenly-balanced man in those days, believing that whatever he did was
worth doing well. So he farmed, as he fought and governed, better than
anybody else.

While thus looking after his own estates at home, he went further
afield in search of investments, keeping a shrewd eye on the western
lands, and buying wisely and judiciously whenever he had the
opportunity. He also constituted himself now, as in a later time, the
champion of the soldiers, for whom he had the truest sympathy and
affection, and a large part of the correspondence of this period is
devoted to their claims for the lands granted them by the assembly.
He distinguished carefully among them, however, those who were
undeserving, and to the major of the regiment, who had been excluded
from the public thanks on account of cowardice at the Great Meadows,
he wrote as follows: "Your impertinent letter was delivered to me
yesterday. As I am not accustomed to receive such from any man, nor
would have taken the same language from you personally without letting
you feel some marks of my resentment, I would advise you to be
cautious in writing me a second of the same tenor. But for your
stupidity and sottishness you might have known, by attending to the
public gazette, that you had your full quantity of ten thousand acres
of land allowed you. But suppose you had really fallen short, do you
think your superlative merit entitles you to greater indulgence than
others?... All my concern is that I ever engaged in behalf of so
ungrateful a fellow as you are." The writer of this letter, be it said
in passing, was the man whom Mr. Weems and others tell us was knocked
down before his soldiers, and then apologized to his assailant. It may
be suspected that it was well for the recipient of this letter that
he did not have a personal interview with its author, and it may
be doubted if he ever sought one subsequently. Just, generous, and
magnanimous to an extraordinary degree, Washington had a dangerous
temper, held well under control, but blazing out now and again against
injustice, insolence, or oppression. He was a peaceful man, leading a
peaceful life, but the fighting spirit only slumbered, and it
would break out at wrong of any sort, in a way which was extremely
unpleasant and threatening to those who aroused it.

Apart from lands and money and the management of affairs, public and
private, there were many other interests of varied nature which all
had their share of Washington's time and thought. He was a devoted
husband, and gave to his stepchildren the most affectionate care. He
watched over and protected them, and when the daughter died, after a
long and wasting illness, in 1773, he mourned for her as if she
had been his own, with all the tenderness of a deep and reserved
affection. The boy, John Custis, he made his friend and companion from
the beginning, and his letters to the lad and about him are wise and
judicious in the highest degree. He spent much time and thought on the
question of education, and after securing the best instructors took
the boy to New York and entered him at Columbia College in 1773. Young
Custis, however, did not remain there long, for he had fallen in love,
and the following year was married to Eleanor Calvert, not without
some misgivings on the part of Washington, who had observed his ward's
somewhat flighty disposition, and who gave a great deal of anxious
thought to his future. At home as abroad he was an undemonstrative
man, but he had abundance of that real affection which labors for
those to whom it goes out more unselfishly and far more effectually
than that which bubbles and boils upon the surface like a shallow,
noisy brook.

From the suggestions that he made in regard to young Custis, it is
evident that Washington valued and respected education, and that he
had that regard for learning for its own sake which always exists
in large measure in every thoughtful man. He read well, even if his
active life prevented his reading much, as we can see by his vigorous
English, and by his occasional allusions to history. From his London
orders we see, too, that everything about his house must have denoted
that its possessor had refinement and taste. His intense sense
of propriety and unfailing instinct for what was appropriate are
everywhere apparent. His dress, his furniture, his harnesses, the
things for the children, all show the same fondness for simplicity,
and yet a constant insistence that everything should be the best of
its kind. We can learn a good deal about any man by the ornaments of
his house, and by the portraits which hang on his walls; for these
dumb things tell us whom among the great men of earth the owner
admires, and indicate the tastes he best loves to gratify. When
Washington first settled with his wife at Mount Vernon, he ordered
from Europe the busts of Alexander the Great, Charles XII. of Sweden,
Julius Cæsar, Frederick of Prussia, Marlborough, and Prince Eugene,
and in addition he asked for statuettes of "two wild beasts." The
combination of soldier and statesman is the predominant admiration,
then comes the reckless and splendid military adventurer, and lastly
wild life and the chase. There is no mistaking the ideas and fancies
of the man who penned this order which has drifted down to us from the
past.

But as Washington's active life was largely out of doors, so too were
his pleasures. He loved the fresh open-air existence of the woods
and fields, and there he found his one great amusement. He shot and
fished, but did not care much for these pursuits, for his hobby was
hunting, which gratified at once his passion for horses and dogs and
his love for the strong excitement of the chase, when dashed with just
enough danger to make it really fascinating. He showed in his sport
the same thoroughness and love of perfection that he displayed in
everything else. His stables were filled with the best horses that
Virginia could furnish. There were the "blooded coach-horses" for Mrs.
Washington's carriage, "Magnolia," a full-blooded Arabian, used by
his owner for the road, the ponies for the children, and finally, the
high-bred hunters Chinkling and Valiant, Ajax and Blueskin, and the
rest, all duly set down in the register in the handwriting of the
master himself. His first visit in the morning was to the stables;
the next to the kennels to inspect and criticise the hounds, also
methodically registered and described, so that we can read the names
of Vulcan and Ringwood, Singer and Truelove, Music and Sweetlips, to
which the Virginian woods once echoed nearly a century and a half ago.
His hounds were the subject of much thought, and were so constantly
and critically drafted as to speed, keenness, and bottom, that when in
full cry they ran so closely bunched that tradition says, in classic
phrase, they could have been covered with a blanket. The hounds met
three times a week in the season, usually at Mount Vernon, sometimes
at Belvoir. They would get off at daybreak, Washington in the midst of
his hounds, splendidly mounted, generally on his favorite Blueskin, a
powerful iron-gray horse of great speed and endurance. He wore a blue
coat, scarlet waistcoat, buckskin breeches, and a velvet cap. Closely
followed by his huntsman and the neighboring gentlemen, with the
ladies, headed, very likely, by Mrs. Washington in a scarlet habit,
he would ride to the appointed covert and throw in. There was no
difficulty in finding, and then away they would go, usually after a
gray fox, sometimes after a big black fox, rarely to be caught. Most
of the country was wild and unfenced, rough in footing, and offering
hard and dangerous going for the horses, but Washington always made it
a rule to stay with his hounds. Cautious or timid riders, if they were
so minded, could gallop along the wood roads with the ladies, and
content themselves with glimpses of the hunt, but the master rode at
the front. The fields, it is to be feared, were sometimes small, but
Washington hunted even if he had only his stepson or was quite alone.

His diaries abound with allusions to the sport. "Went a-hunting with
Jacky Custis, and catched a fox after three hours chase; found it in
the creek." "Mr. Bryan Fairfax, Mr. Grayson, and Phil. Alexander came
home by sunrise. Hunted and catched a fox with these. Lord Fairfax,
his brother, and Colonel Fairfax, all of whom, with Mr. Fairfax and
Mr. Wilson of England, dined here." Again, November 26 and 29, "Hunted
again with the same party." "1768, Jan. 8th. Hunting again with same
company. Started a fox and run him 4 hours. Took the hounds off at
night." "Jan. 15. Shooting." "16. At home all day with cards; it
snowing." "23. Rid to Muddy Hole and directed paths to be cut for
foxhunting." "Feb. 12. Catched 2 foxes." "Feb. 13. Catched 2 more
foxes." "Mar. 2. Catched fox with bob'd tail and cut ears after
7 hours chase, in which most of the dogs were worsted." "Dec. 5.
Fox-hunting with Lord Fairfax and his brother and Colonel Fairfax.
Started a fox and lost it. Dined at Belvoir and returned in the
evening."[1]

[Footnote 1: MS. Diaries in State Department.]

So the entries run on, for he hunted almost every day in the season,
usually with success, but always with persistence. Like all true
sportsmen Washington had a horror of illicit sport of any kind, and
although he shot comparatively little, he was much annoyed by a
vagabond who lurked in the creeks and inlets on his estate, and
slaughtered his canvas-back ducks. Hearing the report of a gun one
morning, he rode through the bushes and saw his poaching friend just
shoving off in a canoe. The rascal raised his gun and covered his
pursuer, whereupon Washington, the cold-blooded and patient person
so familiar in the myths, dashed his horse headlong into the water,
seized the gun, grasped the canoe, and dragging it ashore pulled the
man out of the boat and beat him soundly. If the man had yielded at
once he would probably have got off easily enough, but when he put
Washington's life in imminent peril, the wild fighting spirit flared
up as usual.

The hunting season was of course that of the most lavish hospitality.
There was always a great deal of dining about, but Mount Vernon was
the chief resort, and its doors, ever open, were flung far back when
people came for a meet, or gathered to talk over the events of a good
run. Company was the rule and solitude the exception. When only the
family were at dinner, the fact was written down in the diary with
great care as an unusual event, for Washington was the soul of
hospitality, and although he kept early hours, he loved society and a
houseful of people. Profoundly reserved and silent as to himself,
a lover of solitude so far as his own thoughts and feelings were
concerned, he was far from being a solitary man in the ordinary
acceptation of the word. He liked life and gayety and conversation, he
liked music and dancing or a game of cards when the weather was bad,
and he enjoyed heartily the presence of young people and of his own
friends. So Mount Vernon was always full of guests, and the master
noted in his diary that although he owned more than a hundred cows he
was obliged, nevertheless, to buy butter, which suggests an experience
not unknown to gentlemen farmers of any period, and also that company
was never lacking in that generous, open house overlooking the
Potomac.

Beyond the bounds of his own estate he had also many occupations and
pleasures. He was a member of the House of Burgesses, diligent in his
attention to the work of governing the colony. He was diligent also in
church affairs, and very active in the vestry, which was the seat of
local government in Virginia. We hear of him also as the manager
of lotteries, which were a common form of raising money for local
purposes, in preference to direct taxation. In a word, he was
thoroughly public-spirited, and performed all the small duties which
his position demanded in the same spirit that he afterwards brought
to the command of armies and to the government of the nation. He had
pleasure too, as well as business, away from Mount Vernon. He liked
to go to his neighbors' houses and enjoy their hospitality as they
enjoyed his. We hear of him at the courthouse on court days, where all
the country-side gathered to talk and listen to the lawyers and hear
the news, and when he went to Williamsburg his diary tells us of a
round of dinners, beginning with the governor, of visits to the club,
and of a regular attendance at the theatre whenever actors came to the
little capital. Whether at home or abroad, he took part in all the
serious pursuits, in all the interests, and in every reasonable
pleasure offered by the colony.

Take it for all in all, it was a manly, wholesome, many-sided life. It
kept Washington young and strong, both mentally and physically. When
he was forty he flung the iron bar, at some village sports, to a point
which no competitor could approach. There was no man in all Virginia
who could ride a horse with such a powerful and assured seat.
There was no one who could journey farther on foot, and no man at
Williamsburg who showed at the governor's receptions such a commanding
presence, or who walked with such a strong and elastic step. As with
the body so with the mind. He never rusted. A practical carpenter and
smith, he brought the same quiet intelligence and firm will to the
forging of iron or the felling and sawing of trees that he had
displayed in fighting France. The life of a country gentleman did not
dull or stupefy him, or lead him to gross indulgences. He remained
well-made and athletic, strong and enduring, keen in perception and in
sense, and warm in his feelings and affections. Many men would have
become heavy and useless in these years of quiet country life, but
Washington simply ripened, and, like all slowly maturing men, grew
stronger, abler, and wiser in the happy years of rest and waiting
which intervened between youth and middle age.

Meantime, while the current of daily life flowed on thus gently at
Mount Vernon, the great stream of public events poured by outside. It
ran very calmly at first, after the war, and then with a quickening
murmur, which increased to an ominous roar when the passage of the
Stamp Act became known in America. Washington was always a constant
attendant at the assembly, in which by sheer force of character, and
despite his lack of the talking and debating faculty, he carried more
weight than any other member. He was present on May 29, 1765, when
Patrick Henry introduced his famous resolutions and menaced the king's
government in words which rang through the continent. The resolutions
were adopted, and Washington went home, with many anxious thoughts,
to discuss the political outlook with his friend and neighbor George
Mason, one of the keenest and ablest men in Virginia. The utter
folly of the policy embodied in the Stamp Act struck Washington very
forcibly. With that foresight for which he was so remarkable, he
perceived what scarcely any one else even dreamt of, that persistence
in this course must surely lead to a violent separation from the
mother-country, and it is interesting to note in this, the first
instance when he was called upon to consider a political question of
great magnitude, his clearness of vision and grasp of mind. In what he
wrote there is no trace of the ambitious schemer, no threatening nor
blustering, no undue despondency nor excited hopes. But there is a
calm understanding of all the conditions, an entire freedom from
self-deception, and the power of seeing facts exactly as they were,
which were all characteristic of his intellectual strength, and to
which we shall need to recur again and again.

The repeal of the Stamp Act was received by Washington with sober but
sincere pleasure. He had anticipated "direful" results and "unhappy
consequences" from its enforcement, and he freely said that those who
were instrumental in its repeal had his cordial thanks. He was no
agitator, and had not come forward in this affair, so he now retired
again to Mount Vernon, to his farming and hunting, where he remained,
watching very closely the progress of events. He had marked the
dangerous reservation of the principle in the very act of repeal; he
observed at Boston the gathering strength of what the wise ministers
of George III. called sedition; he noted the arrival of British troops
in the rebellious Puritan town; and he saw plainly enough, looming in
the background, the final appeal to arms. He wrote to Mason (April 5,
1769), that "at a time when our lordly masters in Great Britain will
be satisfied with nothing less than the deprivation of American
freedom, something should be done to avert the stroke and maintain the
liberty which we have derived from our ancestors. But the manner of
doing it, to answer the purpose effectually, is the point in question.
That no man should scruple or hesitate a moment to use arms in defense
of so valuable a blessing is clearly my opinion. Yet arms, I would beg
leave to add, should be the last resource, the _dernier ressort_." He
then urged the adoption of the only middle course, non-importation,
but he had not much hope in this expedient, although an honest desire
is evident that it may prove effectual.

When the assembly met in May, they received the new governor, Lord
Botetourt, with much cordiality, and then fell to passing spirited
and sharp-spoken resolutions declaring their own rights and defending
Massachusetts. The result was a dissolution. Thereupon the burgesses
repaired to the Raleigh tavern, where they adopted a set of
non-importation resolutions and formed an association. The resolutions
were offered by Washington, and were the result of his quiet country
talks with Mason. When the moment for action arrived, Washington came
naturally to the front, and then returned quietly to Mount Vernon,
once more to go about his business and watch the threatening political
horizon. Virginia did not live up to this first non-importation
agreement, and formed another a year later. But Washington was not in
the habit of presenting resolutions merely for effect, and there
was nothing of the actor in his composition. His resolutions meant
business, and he lived up to them rigidly himself. Neither tea nor
any of the proscribed articles were allowed in his house. Most of
the leaders did not realize the seriousness of the situation, but
Washington, looking forward with clear and sober gaze, was in grim
earnest, and was fully conscious that when he offered his resolutions
the colony was trying the last peaceful remedy, and that the next step
would be war.

Still he went calmly about his many affairs as usual, and gratified
the old passion for the frontier by a journey to Pittsburgh for the
sake of lands and soldiers' claims, and thence down the Ohio and into
the wilderness with his old friends the trappers and pioneers. He
visited the Indian villages as in the days of the French mission, and
noted in the savages an ominous restlessness, which seemed, like the
flight of birds, to express the dumb instinct of an approaching storm.
The clouds broke away somewhat under the kindly management of Lord
Botetourt, and then gathered again more thickly on the accession of
his successor, Lord Dunmore. With both these gentlemen Washington was
on the most friendly terms. He visited them often, and was consulted
by them, as it behooved them to consult the strongest man within the
limits of their government. Still he waited and watched, and scanned
carefully the news from the North. Before long he heard that
tea-chests were floating in Boston harbor, and then from across the
water came intelligence of the passage of the Port Bill and other
measures destined to crush to earth the little rebel town.

When the Virginia assembly met again, they proceeded to congratulate
the governor on the arrival of Lady Dunmore, and then suddenly, as
all was flowing smoothly along, there came a letter through the
corresponding committee which Washington had helped to establish,
telling of the measures against Boston. Everything else was thrown
aside at once, a vigorous protest was entered on the journal of the
House, and June 1, when the Port Bill was to go into operation, was
appointed a day of fasting, humiliation, and prayer. The first result
was prompt dissolution of the assembly. The next was another meeting
in the long room of the Raleigh tavern, where the Boston bill
was denounced, non-importation renewed, and the committee of
correspondence instructed to take steps for calling a general
congress. Events were beginning to move at last with perilous
rapidity. Washington dined with Lord Dunmore on the evening of that
day, rode with him, and appeared at her ladyship's ball the next
night, for it was not his way to bite his thumb at men from whom he
differed politically, nor to call the motives of his opponents in
question. But when the 1st of June arrived, he noted in his diary that
he fasted all day and attended the appointed services. He always meant
what he said, being of a simple nature, and when he fasted and prayed
there was something ominously earnest about it, something that his
excellency the governor, who liked the society of this agreeable
man and wise counselor, would have done well to consider and draw
conclusions from, and which he probably did not heed at all. He might
well have reflected, as he undoubtedly failed to do, that when men
of the George Washington type fast and pray on account of political
misdoings, it is well for their opponents to look to it carefully.

Meantime Boston had sent forth appeals to form a league among the
colonies, and thereupon another meeting was held in the Raleigh
tavern, and a letter was dispatched advising the burgesses to consider
this matter of a general league and take the sense of their respective
counties. Virginia and Massachusetts had joined hands now, and they
were sweeping the rest of the continent irresistibly forward with
them. As for Washington, he returned to Mount Vernon and at once set
about taking the sense of his county, as he had agreed. Before doing
so he had some correspondence with his old friend Bryan Fairfax. The
Fairfaxes naturally sided with the mother-country, and Bryan was much
distressed by the course of Virginia, and remonstrated strongly, and
at length by letter, against violent measures. Washington replied
to him: "Does it not appear as clear as the sun in its meridian
brightness that there is a regular, systematic plan formed to fix the
right and practice of taxation on us? Does not the uniform conduct of
Parliament for some years past confirm this? Do not all the debates,
especially those just brought to us in the House of Commons, on the
side of government expressly declare that America must be taxed in
aid of the British funds, and that she has no longer resources within
herself? Is there anything to be expected from petitioning after this?
Is not the attack upon the liberty and property of the people of
Boston, before restitution of the loss to the India Company was
demanded, a plain and self-evident proof of what they are aiming at?
Do not the subsequent bills (now I dare say acts) for depriving the
Massachusetts Bay of its charter, and for transporting offenders into
other colonies, or to Great Britain for trial, where it is impossible
from the nature of the thing that justice can be obtained, convince us
that the administration is determined to stick at nothing to carry
its point? Ought we not, then, to put our virtue and fortitude to the
severest test?" He was prepared, he continued, for anything except
confiscating British debts, which struck him as dishonorable. These
were plain but pregnant questions, but what we mark in them, and
in all his letters of this time, is the absence of constitutional
discussion, of which America was then full. They are confined to a
direct presentation of the broad political question, which underlay
everything. Washington always went straight to the mark, and he now
saw, through all the dust of legal and constitutional strife, that
the only real issue was whether America was to be allowed to govern
herself in her own way or not. In the acts of the ministry he
perceived a policy which aimed at substantial power, and he believed
that such a policy, if insisted on, could have but one result.

The meeting of Fairfax County was held in due course, and Washington
presided. The usual resolutions for self-government and against
the vindictive Massachusetts measures were adopted. Union and
non-importation were urged; and then the congress, which they
advocated, was recommended to address a petition and remonstrance to
the king, and ask him to reflect that "from our sovereign there can
be but one appeal." Everything was to be tried, everything was to be
done, but the ultimate appeal was never lost sight of where Washington
appeared, and the final sentence of these Fairfax County resolves is
very characteristic of the leader in the meeting. Two days later he
wrote to the worthy and still remonstrating Bryan Fairfax, repeating
and enlarging his former questions, and adding: "Has not General
Gage's conduct since his arrival, in stopping the address of his
council, and publishing a proclamation more becoming a Turkish bashaw
than an English governor, declaring it treason to associate in any
manner by which the commerce of Great Britain is to be affected,--has
not this exhibited an unexampled testimony of the most despotic system
of tyranny that ever was practiced in a free government?... Shall we
after this whine and cry for relief, when we have already tried it in
vain? Or shall we supinely sit and see one province after another fall
a sacrifice to despotism?" The fighting spirit of the man was rising.
There was no rash rushing forward, no ignorant shouting for war, no
blinking of the real issue, but a foresight that nothing could dim,
and a perception of facts which nothing could confuse. On August 1
Washington was at Williamsburg, to represent his county in the
meeting of representatives from all Virginia. The convention passed
resolutions like the Fairfax resolves, and chose delegates to a
general congress. The silent man was now warming into action. He "made
the most eloquent speech that ever was made," and said, "I will raise
a thousand men, subsist them at my own expense, and march them to the
relief of Boston." He was capable, it would seem, of talking to the
purpose with some fire and force, for all he was so quiet and so
retiring. When there was anything to say, he could say it so that it
stirred all who listened, because they felt that there was a mastering
strength behind the words. He faced the terrible issue solemnly and
firmly, but his blood was up, the fighting spirit in him was aroused,
and the convention chose him as one of Virginia's six delegates to
the Continental Congress. He lingered long enough to make a few
preparations at Mount Vernon. He wrote another letter to Fairfax,
interesting to us as showing the keenness with which he read in the
meagre news-reports the character of Gage and of the opposing people
of Massachusetts. Then he started for the North to take the first step
on the long and difficult path that lay before him.




CHAPTER V

TAKING COMMAND


In the warm days of closing August, a party of three gentlemen rode
away from Mount Vernon one morning, and set out upon their long
journey to Philadelphia. One cannot help wondering whether a tender
and somewhat sad remembrance did not rise in Washington's mind, as he
thought of the last time he had gone northward, nearly twenty years
before. Then, he was a light-hearted young soldier, and he and his
aides, albeit they went on business, rode gayly through the forests,
lighting the road with the bright colors they wore and with the
glitter of lace and arms, while they anticipated all the pleasures of
youth in the new lands they were to visit. Now, he was in the prime of
manhood, looking into the future with prophetic eyes, and sober as was
his wont when the shadow of coming responsibility lay dark upon his
path. With him went Patrick Henry, four years his junior, and Edmund
Pendleton, now past threescore. They were all quiet and grave enough,
no doubt; but Washington, we may believe, was gravest of all, because,
being the most truthful of men to himself as to others, he saw more
plainly what was coming. So they made their journey to the North, and
on the memorable 5th of September they met with their brethren from
the other colonies in Carpenters' Hall in Philadelphia.

The Congress sat fifty-one days, occupied with debates and discussion.
Few abler, more honest, or more memorable bodies of men have ever
assembled to settle the fate of nations. Much debate, great and
earnest in all directions, resulted in a declaration of colonial
rights, in an address to the king, in another to the people of Canada,
and a third to the people of Great Britain; masterly state papers,
seldom surpassed, and extorting even then the admiration of England.
In these debates and state papers Washington took no part that is now
apparent on the face of the record. He was silent in the Congress, and
if he was consulted, as he unquestionably was by the committees, there
is no record of it now. The simple fact was that his time had not
come. He saw men of the most acute minds, liberal in education,
patriotic in heart, trained in law and in history, doing the work
of the moment in the best possible way. If anything had been done
wrongly, or had been left undone, Washington would have found his
voice quickly enough, and uttered another of the "most eloquent
speeches ever made," as he did shortly before in the Virginia
convention. He could speak in public when need was, but now there was
no need and nothing to arouse him. The work of Congress followed
the line of policy adopted by the Virginia convention, and that had
proceeded along the path marked out in the Fairfax resolves, so that
Washington could not be other than content. He occupied his own time,
as we see by notes in his diary, in visiting the delegates from
the other colonies, and in informing himself as to their ideas and
purposes, and those of the people whom they represented. He was
quietly working for the future, the present being well taken care of.
Yet this silent man, going hither and thither, and chatting pleasantly
with this member or that, was in some way or other impressing himself
deeply on all the delegates, for Patrick Henry said: "If you speak
of solid information and sound judgment, Colonel Washington is
unquestionably the greatest man on the floor."

We have a letter, written at just this time, which shows us how
Washington felt, and we see again how his spirit rose as he saw more
and more clearly that the ultimate issue was inevitable. The letter is
addressed to Captain Mackenzie, a British officer at Boston, and an
old friend. "Permit me," he began, "with the freedom of a friend (for
you know I always esteemed you), to express my sorrow that fortune
should place you in a service that must fix curses to the latest
posterity upon the contrivers, and, if success (which, by the by, is
impossible) accompanies it, execrations upon all those who have been
instrumental in the execution." This was rather uncompromising talk
and not over peaceable, it must be confessed. He continued: "Give me
leave to add, and I think I can announce it as a fact, that it is not
the wish or intent of that government [Massachusetts], or any other
upon this continent, separately or collectively, to set up for
independence; but this you may at the same time rely on, that none
of them will ever submit to the loss of those valuable rights and
privileges which are essential to the happiness of every free state,
and without which life, liberty, and property are rendered totally
insecure.... Again give me leave to add as my opinion that more blood
will be spilled on this occasion, if the ministry are determined
to push matters to extremity, than history has ever yet furnished
instances of in the annals of North America, and such a vital wound
will be given to the peace of this great country, as time itself
cannot cure or eradicate the remembrance of." Washington was not a
political agitator like Sam Adams, planning with unerring intelligence
to bring about independence. On the contrary, he rightly declared that
independence was not desired. But although he believed in exhausting
every argument and every peaceful remedy, it is evident that he felt
that there now could be but one result, and that violent separation
from the mother country was inevitable. Here is where he differed from
his associates and from the great mass of the people, and it is to
this entire veracity of mind that his wisdom and foresight were so
largely due, as well as his success when the time came for him to put
his hand to the plough.

When Congress adjourned, Washington returned to Mount Vernon, to the
pursuits and pleasures that he loved, to his family and farm, and to
his horses and hounds, with whom he had many a good run, the last that
he was to enjoy for years to come. He returned also to wait and
watch as before, and to see war rapidly gather in the east. When the
Virginia convention again assembled, resolutions were introduced to
arm and discipline men, and Henry declared in their support that
an "appeal to arms and to the God of Hosts" was all that was left.
Washington said nothing, but he served on the committee to draft a
plan of defense, and then fell to reviewing the independent companies
which were springing up everywhere. At the same time he wrote to his
brother John, who had raised a troop, that he would accept the command
of it if desired, as it was his "full intention to devote his life and
fortune in the cause we are engaged in, if needful." At Mount Vernon
his old comrades of the French war began to appear, in search of
courage and sympathy. Thither, too, came Charles Lee, a typical
military adventurer of that period, a man of English birth and of
varied service, brilliant, whimsical, and unbalanced. There also came
Horatio Gates, likewise British, and disappointed with his prospects
at home; less adventurous than Lee, but also less brilliant, and not
much more valuable.

Thus the winter wore away; spring opened, and toward the end of April
Washington started again for the North, much occupied with certain
tidings from Lexington and Concord which just then spread over the
land. He saw all that it meant plainly enough, and after noting the
fact that the colonists fought and fought well, he wrote to George
Fairfax in England: "Unhappy it is to reflect that a brother's sword
has been sheathed in a brother's breast, and that the once happy and
peaceful plains of America are either to be drenched in blood or
inhabited by slaves. Sad alternative. But can a virtuous man hesitate
in his choice?" Congress, it would seem, thought there was a good deal
of room for hesitation, both for virtuous men and others, and after
the fashion of their race determined to do a little more debating and
arguing, before taking any decisive step. After much resistance and
discussion, a second "humble and dutiful petition" to the king was
adopted, and with strange contradiction a confederation was formed at
the same time, and Congress proceeded to exercise the sovereign powers
thus vested in them. The most pressing and troublesome question before
them was what to do with the army surrounding Boston, and with the
actual hostilities there existing.

Washington, for his part, went quietly about as before, saying
nothing and observing much, working hard as chairman of the military
committees, planning for defense, and arranging for raising an army.
One act of his alone stands out for us with significance at this
critical time. In this second Congress he appeared habitually on the
floor in his blue and buff uniform of a Virginia colonel. It was his
way of saying that the hour for action had come, and that he at least
was ready for the fight whenever called upon.

Presently he was summoned. Weary of waiting, John Adams at last
declared that Congress must adopt the army and make Washington, who at
this mention of his name stepped out of the room, commander-in-chief.
On June 15, formal motions were made to this effect and unanimously
adopted, and the next day Washington appeared before Congress and
accepted the trust. His words were few and simple. He expressed his
sense of his own insufficiency for the task before him, and said that
as no pecuniary consideration could have induced him to undertake the
work, he must decline all pay or emoluments, only looking to Congress
to defray his expenses. In the same spirit he wrote to his soldiers
in Virginia, to his brother, and finally, in terms at once simple
and pathetic, to his wife. There was no pretense about this, but the
sternest reality of self-distrust, for Washington saw and measured as
did no one else the magnitude of the work before him. He knew that he
was about to face the best troops of Europe, and he had learned by
experience that after the first excitement was over he would be
obliged to rely upon a people who were brave and patriotic, but also
undisciplined, untrained, and unprepared for war, without money,
without arms, without allies or credit, and torn by selfish local
interests. Nobody else perceived all this as he was able to with his
mastery of facts, but he faced the duty unflinchingly. He did not put
it aside because he distrusted himself, for in his truthfulness he
could not but confess that no other American could show one tithe
of his capacity, experience, or military service. He knew what was
coming, knew it, no doubt, when he first put on his uniform, and he
accepted instantly.

John Adams in his autobiography speaks of the necessity of choosing a
Southern general, and also says there were objectors to the selection
of Washington even among the Virginia delegates. That there were
political reasons for taking a Virginian cannot be doubted. But the
dissent, even if it existed, never appeared on the surface, excepting
in the case of John Hancock, who, with curious vanity, thought that he
ought to have this great place. When Washington's name was proposed
there was no murmur of opposition, for there was no man who could for
one moment be compared with him in fitness. The choice was inevitable,
and he himself felt it to be so. He saw it coming; he would fain have
avoided the great task, but no thought of shrinking crossed his mind.
He saw with his entire freedom from constitutional subtleties that an
absolute parliament sought to extend its power to the colonies. To
this he would not submit, and he knew that this was a question which
could be settled only by one side giving way, or by the dread appeal
to arms. It was a question of fact, hard, unrelenting fact, now to be
determined by battle, and on him had fallen the burden of sustaining
the cause of his country. In this spirit he accepted his commission,
and rode forth to review the troops. He was greeted with loud acclaim
wherever he appeared. Mankind is impressed by externals, and those
who gazed upon Washington in the streets of Philadelphia felt their
courage rise and their hearts grow strong at the sight of his virile,
muscular figure as he passed before them on horseback, stately,
dignified, and self-contained. The people looked upon him, and were
confident that this was a man worthy and able to dare and do all
things.

On June 21 he set forth accompanied by Lee and Schuyler, and with a
brilliant escort. He had ridden but twenty miles when he was met by
the news of Bunker Hill. "Did the militia fight?" was the immediate
and characteristic question; and being told that they did fight, he
exclaimed, "Then the liberties of the country are safe." Given the
fighting spirit, Washington felt he c

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