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Title: George Washington
Author: Woodrow Wilson
Illustrator: Howard Pyle
Release date: October 1, 2026 [eBook #79698]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1896
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79698
Credits: Charlene Taylor, Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GEORGE WASHINGTON ***
[Illustration: ATHENÆUM PORTRAIT, BY GILBERT STUART]
_George Washington_
BY
WOODROW WILSON
PHD., LITT.D., LL.D.
COPIOUSLY ILLUSTRATED
FROM
OLD PRINTS, PAINTINGS
AND DRAWINGS BY
HOWARD PYLE
[Illustration]
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
BOOKS BY
WOODROW WILSON
INTERNATIONAL IDEALS
GUARANTEES OF PEACE
IN OUR FIRST YEAR OF WAR
WHY WE ARE AT WAR
A HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE
WHEN A MAN COMES TO HIMSELF
ON BEING HUMAN
THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK
[ESTABLISHED 1817]
COPYRIGHT, 1896, BY HARPER & BROTHERS
COPYRIGHT, 1924, BY WOODROW WILSON
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
M.A.
TO
E. A. W.
WITHOUT WHOSE SYMPATHY AND COUNSEL
LITERARY WORK WOULD LACK
INSPIRATION
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. IN WASHINGTON’S DAY 3
II. A VIRGINIAN BREEDING 45
III. COLONEL WASHINGTON 69
IV. MOUNT VERNON DAYS 99
V. THE HEAT OF POLITICS 117
VI. PILOTING A REVOLUTION 153
VII. GENERAL WASHINGTON 179
VIII. THE STRESS OF VICTORY 213
IX. FIRST IN PEACE 233
X. THE FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 265
INDEX 315
ILLUSTRATIONS
ATHENÆUM PORTRAIT, BY GILBERT STUART _Frontispiece_
GEORGE WASHINGTON _Facing p._18
TIDE-WATER, VIRGINIA, 1738 (MAP) “ 22
WILLIAM BYRD “ 26
JAMES BLAIR “ 34
ALEXANDER SPOTSWOOD “ 38
FACSIMILE OF THE ENTRY OF WASHINGTON’S BIRTH _Page_ 41
THOMAS, SIXTH LORD FAIRFAX _Facing p._48
MOUNT VERNON AT THE PRESENT DAY “ 52
LAWRENCE WASHINGTON “ 58
FRENCH AND ENGLISH IN NORTH AMERICA, 1755 (MAP) “ 60
GENERAL EDWARD BRADDOCK “ 82
THE BURIAL OF BRADDOCK “ 90
WASHINGTON AND MARY PHILIPSE “ 92
LEAVING MOUNT VERNON FOR THE CONGRESS OF THE
COLONIES “ 100
“THE WHITE HOUSE,” ON THE PAMUNKEY “ 104
TAZEWELL HALL, THE HOME OF THE RANDOLPHS “ 120
WILLIAM AND MARY COLLEGE, FROM AN OLD PRINT “ 120
PEYTON RANDOLPH “ 132
GEORGE MASON “ 136
IN THE OLD RALEIGH TAVERN “ 146
WASHINGTON, FROM A PORTRAIT BY REMBRANDT PEALE “ 158
CARPENTER’S HALL, PHILADELPHIA “ 166
WASHINGTON’S HEADQUARTERS AT VALLEY FORGE “ 198
THE ESCAPE OF ARNOLD “ 208
THE BUST OF ECKSTEIN “ 218
FRAUNCE’S TAVERN, NEW YORK “ 226
WASHINGTON BRINGING HIS MOTHER INTO THE BALL-ROOM,
FREDERICKSBURG “ 240
THOMSON, THE CLERK OF CONGRESS, ANNOUNCING TO
WASHINGTON, AT MOUNT VERNON, HIS ELECTION TO
THE PRESIDENCY “ 266
THE FIRST PRESIDENTIAL MANSION, NEW YORK “ 272
WASHINGTON MANSION, PHILADELPHIA “ 272
WASHINGTON, AFTER A PAINTING BY SAVAGE “ 276
CONGRESS HALL, 1790-1800 “ 282
ELEANOR PARKE CUSTIS “ 286
WASHINGTON AND NELLY CUSTIS “ 300
DEATH OF WASHINGTON “ 304
HANOVER COURT-HOUSE “ 310
THE OLD TOMB, MOUNT VERNON “ 310
IN WASHINGTON’S DAY
GEORGE WASHINGTON
CHAPTER I
George Washington was bred a gentleman and a man of honor in the free
school of Virginian society, with the generation that first learned what
it meant to maintain English communities in America in safety and a
self-respecting independence. He was born in a season of quiet peace,
when the plot of colonial history was thickening noiselessly and almost
without observation. He came to his first manhood upon the first stir of
revolutionary events; caught in their movement, he served a rough
apprenticeship in arms at the thick of the French and Indian war; the
Revolution found him a leader and veteran in affairs at forty-four;
every turn of fortune confirmed him in his executive habit of foresight
and mastery; death spared him, stalwart and commanding, until, his
rising career rounded and complete, no man doubted him the first
character of his age. “Virginia gave us this imperial man,” and with him
a companion race of statesmen and masters in affairs. It was her natural
gift, the times and her character being what they were; and Washington’s
life showed the whole process of breeding by which she conceived so
great a generosity in manliness and public spirit.
The English colonies in America lay very tranquil in 1732, the year in
which Washington was born. It fell in a season betweentimes, when
affairs lingered, as if awaiting a change. The difficulties and
anxieties of first settlement were long ago past and done with in all
the principal colonies. They had been hardening to their “wilderness
work,” some of them, these hundred years and more. England could now
reckon quite six hundred thousand subjects upon the long Atlantic
seaboard of the great continent which had lain remote and undiscovered
through so many busy ages, until daring sailors hit upon it at last
amidst the stir of the adventurous fifteenth century; and there was no
longer any thought that her colonists would draw back or falter in what
they had undertaken. They had grown sedate even and self-poised, with
somewhat of the air of old communities, as they extended their
settlements upon the coasts and rivers and elaborated their means of
self-government amidst the still forests, and each had already a bearing
and character of its own. ’Twas easy to distinguish the New-Englander
from the man of the southern colonies; and the busy middle provinces
that stretched back from the great bay at New York and from the waters
of the spreading Delaware had also a breed of their own, like neither
the men of the south nor the men of the northeast. Each region had bred
for itself its characteristic communities, holding their own distinctive
standards, knowing their own special purposes, living their own lives
with a certain separateness and independence.
Virginia, the oldest of the colonies, was least to be distinguished by
any private character of her own from the rural communities of England
herself. Her population had come to her almost without selection
throughout every stage of quick change and troubled fortune that England
had seen during the fateful days since James Stuart became king; and
Englishmen in Virginia were in no way radically distinguishable from
Englishmen in England, except that they were provincials and
frontiersmen. They had their own tasks and ways of life, indeed, living,
as they did, within the old forests of a virgin continent, upon the
confines of the world. But their tastes and temperament, spite of change
and seclusion, they had in common with Englishmen at home. They gave
leave to their opinions, too, with a like downright confidence and
hardihood of belief, never doubting they knew how practical affairs
should go. They had even kept the English character as they had received
it, against the touch of time and social revolution, until Virginians
seemed like elder Englishmen. England changed, but Virginia did not.
There landed estates spread themselves with an ample acreage along the
margins of the streams that everywhere threaded the virgin woodland;
and the planter drew about him a body of dependants who knew no other
master; to whom came, in their seclusion, none of that quick air of
change that had so stirred in England throughout all her century of
revolution. Some were his slaves, bound to him in perpetual subjection.
Others were his tenants, and looked upon him as a sort of patron. In
Maryland, where similar broad estates lay upon every shore, the law
dubbed a great property here and there a “manor,” and suffered it to
boast its separate court baron and private jurisdiction. Virginian
gentlemen enjoyed independence and authority without need of formal
title.
There was but one centre of social life in Virginia: at Williamsburg,
the village capital, where the Governor had his “palace,” where stood
the colonial college, where there were taverns and the town houses of
sun-dry planters of the vicinage, and where there was much gay company
and not a little formal ceremonial in the season. For the rest, the Old
Dominion made shift to do without towns. There was no great mart to
which all the trade of the colony was drawn. Ships came and went upon
each broad river as upon a highway, taking and discharging freight at
the private wharves of the several plantations. For every planter was
his own merchant, shipping his tobacco to England, and importing thence
in return his clothes, his tools, his household fittings, his knowledge
of the London fashions and of the game of politics at home. His
mechanics he found among his own slaves and dependants. Their “quarters”
and the offices of his simple establishment showed almost like a village
of themselves where they stood in irregular groups about his own square,
broad-gabled house, with its airy hall and homelike living-rooms. He
might have good plate upon his sideboard and on his table, palatable old
wine in his cellar, and on the walls about him portraits of the stately
men and dames from whom he took his blood and breeding. But there was
little luxury in his life. Plain comfort and a homely abundance sufficed
him. He was a gentleman, owned all he saw around him, exercised
authority, and enjoyed consideration throughout the colony; but he was
no prince. He lived always in the style of a provincial and a gentleman
commoner, as his neighbors and friends did.
Slaves, dependants, and planters, however, did not by any means make up
the tale of Virginia’s population. She had been peopled out of the
common stock of Englishmen, and contained her own variety. Most of the
good land that lay upon the lower courses of the James, the York, the
Rappahannock, and the Potomac rivers, and upon the bay on either hand,
had been absorbed into the estates of the wealthier planters, who began
to conceive themselves a sort of aristocracy; but not a few plain men
owned their own smaller tracts within the broad stretches of country
that lay back from the rivers or above their navigable depth. Upon the
western front of the colony lived sturdy frontiersmen; and no man was so
poor that he might not hope by thrift to hold his own with the best in
the country. Few could own slaves in any number, for the negroes counted
less than a third in a reckoning of the whole population. There were
hired servants besides, and servants bound for a term of years by
indenture; even criminals who could be had of the colony for private
service; but most men must needs work their own plots of ground and
devise a domestic economy without servants. A wholesome democratic
spirit pervaded the colony, which made even the greater planters
hesitate to give themselves airs. A few families that had thriven best
and longest, and had built up great properties for themselves, did
indeed lay claim, as royal governors found to their great displeasure,
to a right to be heard before all others in the management of the
government. But they could of course show no title but that of pride and
long practice. ’Twas only their social weight in the parish vestries, in
the Council, and in the House of Burgesses that gave them ascendency.
It was the same in church as in state. Virginia prided herself upon
having maintained the Establishment without schism or sour dissent; but
she had maintained it in a way all her own, with a democratic
constitution and practice hardly to be found in the canons. Nominally
the Governor had the right of presentation to all livings; but the
vestries took care he should seldom exercise it, and, after they had had
their own way for a century, claimed he had lost it by prescription.
They chose and dismissed and ruled their ministers as they would. And
the chief planters were nowhere greater figures than in the vestries of
their own parishes, where so many neighborhood interests were passed
upon--the care of the poor, the survey of estates, the correction of
disorders, the tithe rates, and the maintenance of the church and
minister. Sometimes the church building was itself the gift of the chief
land-owner of the parish; and the planters were always the chief
rate-payers. Their leadership was natural and unchallenged. They enjoyed
in their own neighborhood a sort of feudal pre-eminence, and the men
about them easily returned in thought and estimation to that elder
order of English life in which the chief proprietor of the country-side
claimed as of course the homage of his neighbors. There were parishes,
not a few, indeed, in which there was no such great planter to command
consideration by a sort of social primacy. It was, after all, only here
and there, and in the older parts of the colony, that affairs awaited
the wish of privileged individuals. But it was the ascendency of the
greater planters which most struck the imagination, and which gave to
Virginia something of the same air and tone and turn of opinion that
existed in England, with its veritable aristocracy, its lordly country
gentlemen, its ancient distinctions of class and manners.
Those who took counsel in England concerning colonial affairs had
constant occasion to mark the sharp contrast between the easy-going
Virginians, who were no harder to govern than Englishmen everywhere, and
the men of the northeastern colonies, with their dry reserve and their
steadfast resolution not to be governed at all. These seemed unlike
Englishmen elsewhere; a whit stiffer, shrewder, more self-contained and
circumspect. They were, in fact, a peculiar people. Into New England had
come a selected class, picked out of the general mass of Englishmen at
home by test of creed. “God sifted the whole nation,” one of their own
preachers had told them, at election-time, in the far year 1668, “that
he might send choice grain out into this wilderness.” But the variety of
the old life in England had been lost in the sifting. The Puritan, for
all he was so strong and great a figure in his day, was but one man
among a score in the quick and various English life. His single standard
and manner of living, out of the many that strove for mastery in the
old seats where the race was bred, had been transferred to New England;
and he had had separate and undisputed ascendency there to build new
commonwealths as he would. The Puritan Commonwealth in England had been
the government of a minority. Cromwell had done his work of chastening
with a might and fervor which he found, not in the nation, but in
himself and in the stout men-at-arms and hardy reformers who stood with
him while he purified England and brought upon all her foes a day of
reckoning. The people had stood cowed and uneasy while he lived, and had
broken into wild excess of joy at their release when he died. But in New
England an entire community consented to the Puritan code and mastery
with a hearty acquiescence. It was for this liberty they had come over
sea.
And the thoughtful, strong-willed men who were their leaders had built,
as they wished, a polity that should last. Time wrought its deep changes
in New England, as elsewhere, but the stamp set upon these Puritan
settlements by the generation that founded them was not effaced. Trade
made its characteristic mark upon them. Their merchants had presently
their own fleets and markets. Their hardy people took more and more to
the sea, lived the rough life of the ocean ways with a relish, beat in
their small craft up and down the whole coast of the continent, drove
bargains everywhere, and everywhere added a touch to their reputation as
doughty sea-dogs and shrewd traders. The population that after a while
came to New England did not stay to be sifted before attempting the
voyage out of the Old World, and the quaint sedateness of the
settlements began to be broken by a novel variety. New men beset the
old order; a rough democracy began to make itself felt; and new
elements waxed bold amidst the new conditions that time had wrought. The
authority of the crown at last made a place of command for itself,
despite every stubborn protest and astute evasion. It became necessary
to be a trifle less observant of sect and creed, to cultivate, as far as
might be, a temper of tolerance and moderation. But it was a slow change
at best. The old order might be modified, but it could not so soon be
broken. New England, through all her jurisdictions, remained a body of
churches, as well as a body of towns, submissive to the doctrine and
discipline of her learned clergy, keeping the old traditions distinct,
indubitable, alike in her schools and her meeting-houses. Even in Rhode
Island, where there had from the first been such diversity of creed and
license of individual belief, there was little variety of type among the
people, for all they counted themselves so free to be what they would.
There was here a singular assortment, no doubt, of the units of the
stock, but it was of the Puritan stuff, none the less, through all its
variety.
New England, indeed, easily kept her character, for she lived apart. Her
people mustered a full hundred thousand strong before the seventeenth
century was out; her towns numbered many score, both upon the margins of
the sea and within the forests; but she still lay within a very near
frontier, pushed back only a short journey from the coast. Except where
the towns of Connecticut ran in broken line close to the westward strait
of Long Island Sound, a broad wilderness of untouched woodland, of
thicketed hills and valleys that no white man yet had seen, stretched
between them and Hudson’s river, where New York’s settlements lay upon
the edge of a vast domain, reaching all the way to the great lakes and
the western rivers. Not till 1725 did adventurous settlers dare go so
far as the Berkshire Hills. “Our country,” exclaimed Colonel Byrd, of
Virginia, who had seen its wild interior, “has now been inhabited more
than a hundred and thirty years, and still we hardly know anything of
the Appalachian Mountains, which are nowhere above two hundred and fifty
miles from the sea.” A full century after the coming of the Pilgrims,
New England, like Virginia, was still a frontier region, shut close
about on every hand by thick forests beset by prowling bands of savages.
She had as yet no intimate contact with the other colonies whose
fortunes she was to share. Her simple life, quickened by adventure, but
lacking the full pulse of old communities, kept, spite of slow change,
to a single standard of conduct, made her one community from end to end,
her people one people. She stood apart and compact, still soberly
cultivating, as of old, a life and character all her own. Colonel Byrd
noted how “New England improved much faster than Virginia,” and was fain
to think that “though these people may be ridiculed for some Pharisaical
particularities in their worship and behavior, yet they were very useful
subjects, as being frugal and industrious, giving no scandal or bad
example.” Public men in England, who had to face these “particularities
in behavior,” would hardly have agreed that the men of New England were
good subjects, though they must have admitted their excellent example in
thrift, and Virginia’s need to imitate it.
This contrast between the northern and southern set tlements was as old
as their establishment, for Virginia had from the first been resorted to
by those who had no other purpose than to better their fortunes, while
New England had been founded to be the home of a creed and discipline;
but it was not until the Commonwealth was set up in England that the
difference began to be marked, and to give promise of becoming
permanent. The English in Virginia, like the bulk of their countrymen at
home, had stood aghast at a king’s death upon the scaffold, and had
spoken very hotly, in their loyalty, of the men who had dared do the
impious deed of treason; but when the _Guinea_, frigate, brought the
Commonwealth’s commission into the river to demand their submission,
even Sir William Berkeley, the redoubtable Cavalier Governor, who had
meant stubbornly to keep his province for the second Charles, saw he
must yield; perceived there was too nice a balance of parties in the
colony to permit an execution of his plans of resistance; heard too many
plain men in his Council, and out of it, declare themselves very much of
a mind with the Puritans for the nonce in politics--very willing to set
up a democracy in Virginia which should call itself a part of the
Puritan state in England. But a great change had been wrought in
Virginia while the Commonwealth lasted. When the Commonwealth’s frigate
came in at the capes she counted scarcely fifteen thousand settlers upon
her plantations, but the next twenty years saw her transformed. By 1670
quite twenty-five thousand people were added to the reckoning; and of
the new-comers a great multitude had left England as much because they
hated the Puritans as because they desired Virginia. They were drawn out
of that great majority at home to whom Cromwell had not dared resort to
get a new parliament in the stead of the one he had “purged.” Many of
them were of the hottest blood of the Cavaliers.
It was in these years Virginia got her character and received her
leading gentry for the time to come--the years while the Commonwealth
stood and royalists despaired, and the years immediately following the
Restoration, when royalists took heart again and Englishmen turned with
a new ardor to colonization as the times changed. Among the rest in the
great migration came two brothers, John and Lawrence Washington, of a
stock whose loyalty was as old as the Conquest. They came of a Norman
family, the men of whose elder branch had for two hundred years helped
the stout Bishops of Durham keep the border against the Scots; and in
every branch of which men had sprung up to serve the king, the state,
and the church with steadfastness and honor: dashing soldiers ready for
the field at home or abroad, stout polemical priors, lawyers who knew
the learning of their day and made their way to high posts in
chancery, thrifty burghers, gallant courtiers, prosperous
merchants--public-spirited gentlemen all. It was Colonel Henry
Washington, cousin to the Virginian refugees, who had been with Rupert
when he stormed Bristol, and who, with a handful of men, had made good
an entrance into the town when all others were beaten back and baffled.
It was he who had held Worcester for his master even after he knew
Charles to be a prisoner in the hands of the parliamentary forces.
“Procure his Majesty’s commands for the disposal of this garrison,” was
all he would answer when Fairfax summoned him to surrender; “till then I
shall make good the trust reposed in me. The worst I know and fear not;
if I had, the profession of a soldier had not been begun.” But it was an
ill time to revive the traditions of the knights of Durham; loyalty only
brought ruin. The Reverend Lawrence Washington, uncle to the gallant
colonel who was the King’s Governor at Worcester, had been cast out of
his living at Purleigh in 1643 by order of Parliament, upon the false
charge that he was a public tippler, oft drunk, and loud to rail against
the Parliament and its armies; but really because, with all his race, he
was a royalist, and his living one of the best in Essex. It was his sons
who left off hoping to see things mend in England and betook themselves
to Virginia. His ruin had come upon him while they were yet lads. He had
been a brilliant university scholar, fellow and lector of Brasenose, and
rector of Oxford; but he could give his sons neither a university career
nor hope of fortune in the humble parish pitying friends had found for
him in an obscure village of Essex; and when he was dead they saw no
reason why they should stay longer in England, where Cromwell was
master.
John Washington, the oldest son of the unfortunate rector, reached
Virginia in 1656, having made his way to the colony as “second man” to
Edward Prescott, merchant and ship-owner, in whose company he had come;
and his brother Lawrence, after passing to and fro between England and
the colony several times upon errands of business, presently joined him
in permanent residence upon the “northern neck” of rich land that lay
between the Rappahannock and the Potomac rivers. It was a region where
every settlement as yet was new. A few families had fixed themselves
upon it when Maryland drove Captain Clayborne and his Virginian
partisans forth from Kent Island in the years 1637 and 1638; and they
had mustered numbers enough within a few years to send a representative
to the House of Burgesses at Jamestown. But it was not till 1648 that
the Assembly gave their lands a regular constitution as the County of
Northumberland; for it was to this region the Indians had been driven by
the encroachment of the settlements on the James and York, and for a
while the Assembly had covenanted with the red men to keep it free from
settlers. When once the ban was removed, however, in 1648, colonization
set in apace--from the older counties of Virginia, from Maryland across
the river and England over sea, from New England even, as if by a common
impulse. In 1651 the Assembly found it necessary to create the two
additional counties of Gloucester and Lancaster, and in 1653 still
another, the County of Westmoreland, for the region’s proper government,
so quickly did it fill in; for the tide out of England already began to
show its volume. The region was a natural seat of commerce, and
merchants out of the trading ports of England particularly affected it.
Rich land was abundant, and the Potomac ran strong and ample there, to
carry the commerce alike of Virginia and Maryland to the bay, upon whose
tributaries and inlets lay all the older settlements of both colonies.
Lawrence Washington, though he still described himself, upon occasion,
as “of Luton, County Bedford, merchant,” found his chief profit where he
made his home, with his brother John, in the new County of Westmoreland
in Virginia. About them lived young men and old, come, like themselves,
out of England, or drawn from the older settlements by the attractions
of the goodly region, looking out, as it did, on either hand to a broad
river and an easy trade. They felt it scarcely an expatriation to live
there, so constantly did ships come and go between their wharves and the
home ports at Bristol and London. It soon grew to be nothing singular to
see well-to-do men go every year to England upon some errand of profit
or pleasure.
It was with such a region and such stirring neighbors that the young
Washingtons identified themselves while they were yet youths in their
twenties; and there they prospered shrewdly with the rest. Prudent men
and men of character readily accumulated estates in the untouched glades
and forests of Westmoreland. The season of their coming, moreover, sadly
as things seemed to go in 1656, turned out propitious. The Restoration
opened a new era in the settlement of the country. Englishmen bestirred
themselves to take actual possession of all the great coast-line they
had so long claimed without occupying. “The Dutch had enjoyed New
Netherland during the distractions of the reign of Charles I. without
any other interruption” than the seizure of their post upon the
Connecticut by the New-Englanders, and the aggressions alike of Swedes
and English upon the Delaware; but the ministers of Charles II., though
“for some time perplexed in what light to view them, whether as subjects
or as aliens, determined at length that New Netherland ought in justice
to be resumed,” and the thing was presently accomplished in true
sovereign fashion by force of arms. To the ducal province of New York,
Penn presently added the thrifty Quaker colony which so promptly created
a busy town and mart of trade at Philadelphia, and which pushed its
rural settlements back so speedily into the fertile lands that lay
towards the west. Then, while the new colonizing impulse still ran
strong, New Jersey, too, was added, with her limits at one end upon the
Hudson and the great bay at New York, where she depended upon one rival
for a port of entry, and at the other upon the Delaware, where another
rival presided over the trade of her southern highway to the sea. To the
southward straggling settlements upon Albemarle Sound grew slowly into
the colony of North Carolina; and still other settlements, upon the
rivers that lay towards Florida, throve so bravely that Charleston
presently boasted itself a substantial town, and South Carolina had
risen to be a considerable colony, prosperous, well ordered, and showing
a quick life and individuality of her own.
A new migration had come out of England to the colonies, and Englishmen
looked with fresh confidence to see their countrymen build an empire in
America. And yet perhaps not an empire of pure English blood. New York
was for long scarcely the less a Dutch province, for all she had changed
owners, and saw Englishmen crowd in to control her trade. There were
Swedes still upon the Delaware; and Pennsylvania mustered among her
colonists, besides a strange mixture out of many nations--Germans,
French, Dutch, Finns, and English. Even in Virginia, which so steadily
kept its English character, there were to be found groups of French
Huguenots and Germans who had been given an ungrudging welcome; and
South Carolina, though strongly English too, had taken some of her best
blood out of France when Louis so generously gave the world fifty
thousand families of the finest breed of his kingdom by the revocation
of the Edict of Nantes (1685).
[Illustration: GEORGE WASHINGTON
(From a portrait painted in 1772 by C. V. Peale, now owned by General
George Washington Custis Lee, of Lexington, Virginia)]
The second quarter of the eighteenth century saw Scots-Irish enter
Virginia and the middle colonies in hosts that for a time numbered ten
thousand by the year. Pennsylvania alone, in the single year 1729, could
reckon five thousand of these sturdy people who had come to multiply and
strengthen her settlements.
It was to the middle colonies that most foreigners came, and their
coming gave to the towns and farms of that region a variety of tongues
and customs, of manners and trades and ways of life and worship, to be
found nowhere else. Boston, with all its trade and seafaring, had no
touch of that cosmopolitan character which New York had taken on quite
inevitably in the course of her varying fortunes, and which Philadelphia
had assumed by choice; and rural Virginia scarcely felt amidst her
scattered plantations the presence of the few families who lived by
standards that were not English. The common feature of the new time,
with its novel enterprises and its general immigration, was that the
colonies everywhere, whether young or old, felt a keen stimulation and a
new interest in affairs beyond their borders. A partial exchange of
population began, a noticeable intercolonial migration. Whole
congregations came out of New England to found towns in New Jersey, and
individuals out of every colony ventured more freely than before to
exchange one region for another, in order to coax health or fortune.
Population was thus not a little compacted, while the colonies were
drawn by insensible degrees to feel a certain community of interest and
cultivate a certain community of opinion.
An expanding life, widened fields of enterprise and adventure, quickened
hopes, and the fair prospects of a growing empire everywhere heartened
strong men in the colonies to steady endeavor when the new century
opened--the scheming, calculating eighteenth century, so unimpassioned
and conventional at first, so tempestuous at last. The men of the
colonies were not so new as their continent in the ways of civilization.
They were Old World men put upon fresh coasts and a forest frontier, to
make the most of them, create markets, build a new trade, become masters
of vast resources as yet untouched and incalculable; and they did their
work for the most part with unmatched spirit and energy, notwithstanding
they were checked and hampered by the statutes of the realm. The
Navigation Acts forbade the use of any but English ships in trade;
forbade all trade, besides, which did not run direct to and from the
ports of England. The colonies must not pass England by even in their
trade with one another. What they could not produce themselves they must
bring straight from England; what they had to dispose of they must send
straight to England. If they would exchange among themselves they must
make England by the way, so that English merchants should be their
middlemen and factors; or else, if they must needs carry direct from
port to port of their own coasts, they must pay such duties as they
would have paid in English ports had they actually gone the intermediate
voyage to England preferred by the statutes. ’Twas the “usage of other
nations” besides England “to keep their plantation trade to themselves”
in that day, as the Parliament itself said and no man could deny, and
’twas the purpose of such restrictions to maintain “a greater
correspondence and kindness between” England and her subjects in
America, “keeping them in a firmer dependence,” and at the same time
“rendering them yet more beneficial and advantageous” to English seamen,
merchants, wool-growers, and manufacturers; but it cost the colonists
pride and convenience and profit to obey.
Some, who felt the harness of such law too smartly, consoled themselves
by inventing means to escape it. The coast was long; was opened by many
an unused harbor, great and small; could not everywhere and always be
watched by king’s officers; was frequented by a tolerant people, who had
no very nice conscience about withholding taxes from a sovereign whose
messages and commands came quickly over sea only when the wind held fair
for weeks together; and cargoes could be got both out and in at small
expense of secrecy and no expense at all in duties. In short, smuggling
was easy. ’Twas a time of frequent wars, moreover, and privateering
commissions were to be had for the asking; so that French ships could be
brought in with their lading, condemned, and handsomely sold, without
the trouble of paying French prices or English port dues. Privateering,
too, was cousin-german to something still better; ’twas but a sort of
formal apprenticeship to piracy; and the quiet, unused harbors of the
coast showed many a place where the regular profession might be set up.
Veritable pirates took the sea, hunted down what commerce they
would--English no less than French and Dutch and Spanish--rendezvoused
in lonely sounds, inlets, and rivers where king’s officers never came,
and kept very respectable company when they came at last to dispose of
their plunder at New York or Charleston, being men very learned in
subterfuges and very quick-fingered at bribing. And then there was “the
Red Sea trade,” whose merchants sent fleets to Madagascar in the season
to exchange cargoes with rough men out of the Eastern seas, of whom
they courteously asked no questions. The larger ports were full of
sailors who waited to be engaged, not at regular wages, but “on the
grand account”; and it took many weary years of hangman’s labor to bring
enough pirates to the gallows to scotch the ugly business. In 1717 it
was reported in the colonies that there were quite fifteen hundred
pirates on the coast, full one-half of whom made their headquarters,
very brazenly, at New Providence in the Bahamas; and there were
merchants and mariners by the score who had pangs of keen regret to see
the breezy trade go down, as the century drew on a decade or two,
because of the steady vigilance and stern endeavor of Governors who had
been straitly commanded to suppress it.
The Navigation Acts bred an irritation in the colonies which grew with
their growth and strengthened with their consciousness of strength and
capacity. Not because such restrictions were uncommon, but because the
colonies were forward and exacting. There was, indeed, much to commend
the legislation they resented. It attracted the capital of English
merchants to the American trade, it went far towards securing English
supremacy on the seas, and it was strictly within the powers of
Parliament, as no man could deny. Parliament had an undoubted right to
regulate imperial interests, of this or any other kind, even though it
regulated them unreasonably. But colonies that reckoned their English
population by the hundred thousand and lived by trade and adventure
would not long have brooked such a policy of restraint had they had the
leisure to fret over it. They did not as yet have the leisure. The
French stood menacingly at their western gates, through which the great
[Illustration: TIDE-WATER VIRGINIA, 1738
(From Sir William Keith’s _History of the British Plantation in
America_)]
fur trade made its way; where the long rivers ran which threaded the
central valleys of the continent; where the Mississippi stretched itself
from north to south like a great body of dividing waters, flanking all
the coast and its settlements--where alone a true mastery of the
continent and its resources could be held. It would be time enough to
reckon with Parliament touching the carrying trade when they had made
good their title to what they were to trade withal.
The French had been a long time about their work, for they had done it
like subjects, at the bidding of an ambitious king, rather than like
free men striving as they pleased for themselves. But what they had done
they had done systematically and with a fixed policy that did not vary,
though ministers and even dynasties might come and go. The English had
crowded to the coasts of the continent as they pleased, and had mustered
their tens of thousands before the French reckoned more than a few
hundreds. But the French had hit upon the mighty river St. Lawrence,
whose waters came out of the great lakes and the heart of the continent;
their posts were garrisons; what men they had they put forward, at each
step of discovery, at some point of vantage upon lake or river, whence
they were not easily dislodged. Their shrewd fur-traders and dauntless
priests struck everywhere into the heart of the forests, leading forward
both trade and conquest, until at last, through the country of the
Illinois and out of far Lake Michigan, the streams had been found which
ran down into the west to the flooding Mississippi. Colonists were sent
to the mouth of the vast river, posts presently dotted its banks here
and there throughout its length, trade passed up and down its spreading
stream, and the English, their eyes at last caught by the stealthy
movement, looked in a short space to see French settlements “running all
along from our lakes by the back of Virginia and Carolina to the Bay of
Mexico.”
This was a business that touched the colonies to the quick. New York had
her western frontiers upon the nearer lakes. Thence, time out of mind,
had come the best furs to the markets at Albany, brought from tribe to
tribe out of the farthest regions of the northwest. New England, with
the French at her very doors, had to look constantly to her northern
borders to keep them against the unquiet savage tribes the French every
year stirred up against her. Virginia felt the French power among her
savage neighbors too, the moment her people ventured across the Blue
Ridge into the valley where many an ancient war-path ran; and beyond the
Alleghanies she perceived she must stand in the very presence almost of
the French themselves. English frontiersmen and traders, though they had
no advancing military posts behind them, were none the less quick to go
themselves deep into the shadowed wilderness, there to meet the French
face to face in their own haunts. The Carolinas were hardly settled
before their more adventurous spirits went straight into the far valley
of the Tennessee, and made trade for themselves there against the coming
of the French. Out of Virginia, too, and out of Pennsylvania, as well as
out of New York, traders pressed towards the West, and fixed their
lonely huts here and there along the wild banks of the Ohio. ’Twas
diamond cut diamond when they met their French rivals in the wigwams of
the Indian villages, and their canoes knew the waterways of the
wilderness as well as any man’s. ’Twas they who learned at first hand
what the French were doing. They were like scouts sent out to view the
ground to be fought for.
This hazardous meeting of rival nations at the heart of the continent
meant many a deep change in the fortunes of the colonies. European
politics straightway entered their counsels. Here was an end of their
separateness and independence of England. Charles and James and William
all showed that they meant to be veritable sovereigns, and had no
thought but that the colonists in America, like all other Englishmen,
should be their subjects; and here was their opportunity to be masters
upon an imperial scale and with an imperial excuse. In Europe, England
beheld France her most formidable foe; she must look to it that Louis
and his ministers take no advantage in America. The colonies, no less
than the Channel itself, were become the frontiers of an empire--and
there must be no trespass upon English soil by the French. The colonists
must be rallied to the common work, and, if used, they must be ruled and
consolidated.
As it turned out, the thing was quite impossible. The colonies had too
long been separate; their characters, their tempers, their interests,
were too diverse and distinct; they were unused to co-operate, and
unwilling; they were too slow to learn submission in anything. The plan
of grouping several of them under a single governor was attempted, but
they remained as separate under that arrangement as under any other.
Massachusetts would interest herself in nothing beyond her own
jurisdiction that did not immediately touch her safety or advantage; New
York cared little what the French did, if only the Iroquois could be
kept quiet and she could get her furs in the season, and find a market
for them abroad or among the French themselves; Virginia had no eye for
any movement upon the frontiers that did not menace her own fair valleys
within the mountains with hostile occupation; the Carolinas were as yet
too young to be serviceable, and New Jersey too remote from points of
danger. Nowhere could either men or supplies be had for use against the
French except by the vote of a colonial assembly. The law of the empire
might be what it would in the mouths of English judges at home; it did
not alter the practice of the colonies. The courts in England might say
with what emphasis they liked that Virginia, “being a conquered country,
their law is what the King pleases”; it was none the less necessary for
the King’s Governor to keep on terms with the people’s representatives.
“Our government is so happily constituted,” writes Colonel Byrd to his
friend in the Barbadoes, “that a governor must first outwit us before he
can oppress us. And if ever he squeeze money out of us, he must first
take care to deserve it.” Every colony held stoutly to a like practice,
with a like stubborn temper, which it was mere folly to ignore. One and
all they were even then “too proud to submit, too strong to be forced,
too enlightened not to see all the consequences which must arise” should
they tamely consent to be ruled by royal command or parliamentary
enactment. Their obedience must be had on their own terms, or else not
had at all. Governors saw this plainly enough, though the ministers at
home could not. Many a governor had his temper sadly soured by the
contentious obstinacy of the colonial assembly he was set to deal with.
One or two died of sheer exasperation. But the situation was not altered
a whit.
[Illustration: WILLIAM BYRD]
When there is friction there must, sooner or later, be adjustment, if
affairs are to go forward at all, and this contest between imperial
system and colonial independence at last brought some things that had
been vague to a very clear definition. ’Twas plain the colonies would
not of themselves combine to meet and oust the French. They would supply
neither men nor money, moreover. England must send her own armies to
America, fight France there as she would have fought her in Europe, and
pay the reckoning herself out of her own treasury, getting from the
colonies, the while, only such wayward and niggardly aid as they chose
to give. The colonies, meanwhile, might gather some of the fruits of
experience; might learn how safe it was to be selfish, and how unsafe,
if they hoped to prosper and be free; might perceive where their common
interests lay, and their common power; might in some degree steady their
lives and define their policy against the coming of more peaceful times.
Two wars came and went which brought France and England to arms against
each other in America, as in Europe, but they passed away without
decisive incident in the New World, and there followed upon them thirty
years of uneventful peace, during which affairs hung at a nice balance,
and the colonies took counsel, each for itself, how they should prosper.
Virginia, meanwhile, had got the charter she was to keep. From the
Potomac to the uncertain border of the Carolinas she had seen her
counties fill with the men who were to decide her destiny. Her people,
close upon a hundred thousand strong, had fallen into the order of life
they were to maintain. They were no longer colonists merely, but
citizens of a commonwealth of which they began to be very proud, not
least because they saw a noble breed of public men spring out of their
own loins to lead them. Though they were scattered, they were not
divided. There was, after all, no real isolation for any man in
Virginia, for all that he lived so much apart and was a sort of lord
within his rustic barony. In that sunny land men were constantly abroad,
looking to their tobacco and the labor of all kinds that must go
forward, but would not unless they looked to it, or else for the sheer
pleasure of bestriding a good horse, being quit of the house, and
breathing free in the genial air. Bridle-paths everywhere threaded the
forests; it was no great matter to ride from house to house among one’s
neighbors; there were county-court days, moreover, to draw the
country-side together, whether there was much business or little to be
seen to. Men did not thrive thereabouts by staying within doors, but by
being much about, knowing their neighbors, observing what ships came and
went upon the rivers, and what prices were got for the cargoes they
carried away; learning what the news was from Williamsburg and London,
what horses and cattle were to be had, and what dogs, of what breeds. It
was a country in which news and opinions and friendships passed freely
current; where men knew each other with a rare leisurely intimacy, and
enjoyed their easy, unforced intercourse with a keen and lasting relish.
It was a country in which men kept their individuality very handsomely
withal. If there was no town life, there were no town manners either, no
village conventionalities to make all men of one carriage and pattern
and manner of living. Every head of a family was head also of an
establishment, and could live with a self-respect and freedom which
were subject to no man’s private scrutiny. He had leave, in his
independence, to be himself quite naturally, and did not need to justify
his liberty by excuses. And yet he had responsibilities too, and a
position which steadied and righted him almost in spite of himself. It
required executive capacity to make his estate pay, and an upright way
of life to maintain his standing. If he was sometimes loud and
hectoring, or over-careless what he said or did, ’twas commonly because
he was young or but half come into his senses; for his very business, of
getting good crops of tobacco and keeping on dealing terms with his
neighbors, demanded prudence and a conduct touched with consideration.
He had to build his character very carefully by the plumb to keep it at
an equilibrium, though he might decorate it, if it were but upright, as
freely, as whimsically even, as he chose, with chance traits and
self-pleasing tastes, with the full consent and tolerance of the
neighborhood. He was his own man, might have his own opinions if he held
them but courteously enough, might live his own life if he but lived it
cleanly and without offence. ’Twas by their living rather than by their
creed or their livelihood that men were assessed and esteemed.
It was not a life that bred students, though it was a life that begot
thoughtfulness and leadership in affairs. Those who fell in the way of
getting them had not a few books upon their shelves, because they
thought every gentleman should have such means of knowing what the world
had said and done before his day. But they read only upon occasion, when
the weather darkened, or long evenings dragged because there were no
guests in the house. Not much systematic education was possible where
the population was so dispersed and separate. A few country schools
undertook what was absolutely necessary, and gave instruction in such
practical branches as every man must know something of who was to take
part in the management of private and public business. For the rest,
those who chose could get the languages from private tutors, when they
were to be had, and then go over sea to read at the universities, or to
Williamsburg when at last the colony had its own college of William and
Mary. More youths went from the Northern Neck to England for their
education, no doubt, than from any other part of Virginia. The counties
there were somewhat closer than the rest to the sea, bred more merchants
and travellers, kept up a more intimate correspondence both by travel
and by letter with Bristol and London and all the old English homes. And
even those who stayed in Virginia had most of them the tradition of
refinement, spoke the mother tongue purely and with a proper relish, and
maintained themselves somehow, with perhaps an added touch of simplicity
that was their own, in the practices of a cultivated race.
No one in Virginia thought that “becoming a mere scholar” was “a
desirable education for a gentleman.” He ought to “become acquainted
with men and things rather than books.” Books must serve only to deepen
and widen the knowledge he should get by observation and a free
intercourse with those about him. When Virginians wrote, therefore, you
might look to find them using, not studied phrases, but a style that
smacked fresh of all the free elements of good talk--not like scholars
or professed students, but like gentlemen of leisure and cultivated men
of affairs--with a subtle, not unpleasing flavor of egotism, and the
racy directness of speech, withal, that men may use who are sure of
their position. Such was the writing of Robert Beverley, whose _History
and Present State of Virginia_, published in London in 1705, spoke at
first hand and authoritatively of affairs of which the world had heard
hitherto only by uncertain report. He did not write the manly book
because he had a pricking ambition to be an author, but because he loved
Virginia, and wished to give such an account of her affairs as would
justify his pride in her. He came of an ancient English family, whose
ample means were scarcely more considerable in Virginia than they had
been in Beverley, in Yorkshire. He had himself been carefully educated
in England, and had learned to feel very much at home there; but the
attractions of the old home did not wean him from his love of the new,
where he had been born--that quiet land where men dealt with one another
so frankly, where Nature was so genial in all her moods, and men so
without pretence. Official occupations gave him occasion while yet a
very young man to handle familiarly the records of the colony, the
intimate letters of its daily life, and he took a proud man’s pleasure
in extracting from them, and from the traditions of those who still
carried much of the simple history in their own recollections of a
stirring life, a frank and genial story of what had been done and seen
in Virginia. And so his book became “the living testimony of a proud and
generous Virginian”--too proud to conceal his opinions or withhold
censure where it was merited, too generous not to set down very
handsomely whatever was admirable and of good report in the life of his
people. His own manly character, speaking out everywhere, as it does,
in lively phrase and candid meaning, is itself evidence of the wholesome
native air he so praises in Virginia.
He thought himself justified in loving a country where “plantations,
orchards, and gardens constantly afford fragrant and delightful walks.
In their woods and fields they have an unknown variety of vegetables and
other rarities of nature to discover and observe. They have hunting,
fishing, and fowling, with which they entertain themselves in a thousand
ways. Here is the most good nature and hospitality practised in the
world, both towards friends and strangers; but the worst of it is this
generosity is attended now and then with a little too much intemperance.
The neighborhood is at much the same distance as in the country in
England, but with this advantage, that all the better sort of people
have been abroad and seen the world, by which means they are free from
that stiffness and formality which discover more civility than kindness.
And besides, the goodness of the roads and the fairness of the weather
bring people oftener together.”
Of a like quality of genuineness and good breeding is the writing of
Colonel William Byrd, the accomplished master of Westover, who was of
the same generation. He may well have been the liveliest man in
Virginia, so piquant and irrepressible is the humor that runs through
almost every sentence he ever wrote. It must be he wrote for pastime. He
never took the pains to publish anything. His manuscripts lay buried a
hundred years or more in the decent sepulture of private possession ere
they were printed, but were even then as quick as when they were
written. Beverley had often a grave smile for what he recorded, or a
quiet sarcasm of tone in the telling of it. “The militia are the only
standing forces in Virginia,” he says, very demurely, and “they are
happy in the enjoyment of an everlasting peace.” But Colonel Byrd is
very merry, like a man of sense, not contriving the jest, but only
letting it slip, revealing it; looks very shrewdly into things, and very
wisely, too, but with an easy eye, a disengaged conscience, keeping
tally of the score like one who attends but is not too deeply concerned.
He was, in fact, very deeply engaged in all affairs of importance--no
man more deeply or earnestly; but when he wrote ’twas not his chief
business to speak of that. He was too much of a gentleman and too much
of a wit to make grave boast of what he was doing.
No man born in Virginia had a greater property than he, a house more
luxuriously appointed, or a part to play more princely; and no man knew
the value of position and wealth and social consideration more
appreciatively. His breeding had greatly quickened his perception of
such things. He had had a long training abroad, had kept very noble
company alike in England and on the Continent, had been called to the
bar in the Middle Temple and chosen a Fellow of the Royal Society, and
so had won his freedom of the world of letters and of affairs. Yet he
had returned to Virginia, as all her sons did, with only an added zest
to serve and enjoy her. Many designs for her development throve because
of his interest and encouragement; he sought her advantage jealously in
her Council, as her agent in England, as owner of great tracts of her
fertile lands. ’Twas he who brought to her shores some of her best
settlers, gave her promise of veritable towns at Richmond and
Petersburg, fought arbitrary power wherever it showed itself in her
government, and proved himself in every way “a true and worthy inheritor
of the feelings and opinions of the old cavaliers of Virginia.” But
through all his busy life he carried himself like the handsome,
fortunate man he was, with a touch of gayety, a gallant spirit of
comradeship, a zest for good books, spirited men, and comely
women--heartily, like a man who, along with honor, sought the right
pleasures of the world.
Nothing daunted the spirits of this manly gentleman, not even rough work
at the depths of the forest, upon the public business of determining the
southern boundary-line of the colony, or upon the private business of
seeing to his own distant properties in North Carolina. It gave him only
the better chance to see the world; and he was never at a loss for
something to do. There were stray books to be found even in the cabins
of the remotest settlers; or, if not, there was the piquant literary
gossip of those laughing times of Queen Anne, but just gone by, to
rehearse and comment upon. Colonel Byrd was not at a loss to find
interesting ways in which even a busy man might make shift to enjoy “the
Carolina felicity of having nothing to do.” A rough people lived upon
that frontier in his day, who showed themselves very anxious to be put
upon the southern side of the line; for, if taken into Virginia, “they
must have submitted to some sort of order and government; whereas in
North Carolina every one does what seems best in his own eyes.” “They
pay no tribute,” he laughs, “either to God or to Cæsar.” It would not be
amiss, he thinks, were the clergy in Virginia, once in two or three
years--not to make the thing burdensome--to “take a turn among these
gentiles.” “’Twould
[Illustration: JAMES BLAIR]
look a little apostolical,” he argues, with the characteristic twinkle
in his eye, “and they might hope to be requited for it hereafter, if
that be not thought too long to tarry for their reward.” A stray parson
was to be found once and again even at the depths of the forest--on the
Virginian side--though to find his humble quarters you must needs thread
“a path as narrow as that which leads to heaven, but much more dirty”;
but a stray parson was no great evangel. Colonel Byrd was too sound a
gentleman not to be a good churchman; but he accounted it no sin to see
where the humor lurks even in church. “Mr. Betty, the parson of the
parish, entertained us with a good, honest sermon,” he chronicles upon
occasion; “but whether he bought it, or borrowed it, would have been
uncivil in us to inquire. Be that as it will, he is a decent man, with a
double chin that fits gracefully over his band.... When church was done
we refreshed our teacher with a glass of wine, and then, receiving his
blessing, took horse.” ’Tis likely Colonel Byrd would have found small
amusement in narrating the regular course of his life, his great errands
and permanent concerns of weighty business. That he could as well leave
to his biographer, should he chance to have one. For himself, he chose
to tell the unusual things he had seen and heard and taken part in, and
to make merry as well as he might by the way.
The Virginian writers were not all country gentlemen. There were austere
and stately scholars, too, like the Reverend William Stith, who had held
modest livings in more than one parish, had served the House of
Burgesses as chaplain, and the college, first as instructor and then as
president, until at length, having won “perfect leisure and retirement,”
he set himself in his last days to straighten into order the confusion
of early Virginian history. “Such a work,” he reflected, “will be a
noble and elegant entertainment for my vacant hours, which it is not in
my power to employ more to my own satisfaction, or the use and benefit
of my country.” What with his scholarly love of documents set forth at
length, however, his painstaking recital of details, and his roundabout,
pedantic style, his story of the first seventeen years of the colony
lingered through a whole volume; and his friends’ laggard subscriptions
to that single prolix volume discouraged him from undertaking another.
There was neither art nor quick movement enough in such work, much as
scholars have prized it since, to take the taste of a generation that
lived its life on horseback and spiced it with rough sport and direct
speech. They could read with more patience the plain, business-like
sentences of the Reverend Hugh Jones’s _Present State of Virginia_, and
with more zest the downright, telling words in which the Reverend James
Blair, “commissary” to the Bishop of London, spoke of their affairs.
James Blair, though born and bred in Scotland, educated at Edinburgh,
and engaged as a minister at home till he was close upon thirty years of
age, was as much a Virginian in his life and deeds as any man born in
the Old Dominion. ’Twas he who had been the chief founder of the College
of William and Mary, and who had served it as president through every
vicissitude of fortune for fifty years. For fifty years he was a member,
too, of the King’s Council in the colony, and for fifty-eight the chief
adviser of the mother Church in England concerning ecclesiastical
affairs in Virginia. “Probably no other man in the colonial time did so
much for the intellectual life of Virginia” as did this “sturdy and
faithful” Scotsman. To the colonists, oftentimes, he seemed overbearing,
dictatorial even, and, for all their “gentlemanly conformity to the
Church of England,” they did not mean to suffer any man to be set over
them as bishop in Virginia; while to the royal governors he seemed
sometimes a headstrong agitator and demagogue, so stoutly did he stand
up for the liberties of the people among whom he had cast his lot. He
was in all things a doughty Scot. He made very straight for the ends he
deemed desirable; dealt frankly, honestly, fearlessly with all men
alike; confident of being in the right even when he was in the wrong;
dealing with all as he thought he ought to deal, “whether they liked it
or not”; incapable of discouragement, as he was also incapable of
dishonor; a stalwart, formidable master of all work in church and
college, piling up every day to his credit a great debt of gratitude
from the colony, which honored him without quite liking him.
It was very noteworthy that masterful men of many kinds took an
irresistible liking to Virginia, though they were but sent upon an
errand to it. There was Alexander Spotswood, for example, who, after he
had been twelve years Lieutenant-Governor in the stead of his lordship
the Earl of Orkney, spent eighteen more good years, all he had left,
upon the forty-odd thousand acres of land he had acquired in the fair
colony, as a country gentleman, very busy developing the manufacture of
iron, and as busy as there was any need to be as Postmaster-General of
the colonies. He came of a sturdy race of gentlemen, had seen service
along with Marlborough and my uncle Toby “with the army in Flanders,”
had gone much about the world upon many errands and seen all manner of
people, and then had found himself at last in Virginia when he was past
forty. For all its rough life, he liked the Old Dominion well enough to
adopt it as his home. There was there, he said, “less swearing, less
profaneness, less drunkenness and debauchery, less uncharitable feuds
and animosities, and less knavery and villany than in any part of the
world” where his lot had been. Not all of his neighbors were gentlemen;
not very many could afford to send their sons to England to be educated.
Men of all sorts had crowded into Virginia: merchants and gentlemen not
a few, but also commoner men a great many--mariners, artisans, tailors,
and men without settled trades or handicrafts of any kind. Spotswood had
found it no easy matter when he was Governor to deal patiently with a
House of Burgesses to which so many men of “mean understandings” had
been sent, and had allowed himself to wax very sarcastic when he found
how ignorant some of them were. “I observe,” he said, tartly, “that the
grand ruling party in your House has not furnished chairmen of two of
your standing committees who can spell English or write common-sense, as
the grievances under their own handwriting will manifest.”
’Twas not a country, either, where one could travel much at ease, for
one must ford the streams for lack of bridges, and keep an eye sharply
about him as he travelled the rude forest roads when the wind was high
lest a rotten tree should fall upon him. Nature was so bountiful,
yielded so easy a largess of food, that few men took pains to be
thrifty, and some parts of the colony were little more advanced in the
arts of life than North Carolina, where, Colonel Byrd said, nothing was
dear “but law, physic, and strong drink.” No doubt the
[Illustration: ALEXANDER SPOTSWOOD]
average colonist in Virginia, when not sobered by important cares, was
apt to be a fellow of coarse fibre, whose
“addiction was to courses vain;
His companies unlettered, rude, and shallow;
His hours fill’d up with riots, banquets, sports;
And never noted in him any study,
Any retirement, any sequestration
From open haunts and popularity.”
But to many a scapegrace had come “reformation in a flood, with such a
heady current, scouring faults,” as to make a notable man of him. There
were at least the traditions of culture in the colony, and enough men of
education and refinement to leaven the mass. Life ran generously, even
if roughly, upon the scattered plantations, and strong, thinking,
high-bred men had somehow a mastery and leadership in it all which made
them feel Virginia their home and field of honor.
Change of time and of affairs, the stir of growing life in Virginia as
she ceased from being a mere colony and became a sturdy commonwealth,
boasting her own breed of gentlemen, merchants, scholars, and statesmen,
laid upon the Washingtons, as upon other men, a touch of transformation.
Seventy-six years had gone by since John Washington came out of
Bedfordshire and took up lands on Bridges’ Creek in Westmoreland in
Virginia, and still his children were to be found in the old seats he
had chosen at the first. They had become thorough Virginians with the
rest, woven into the close fibre of the new life. Westmoreland and all
the counties that lay about it on the Northern Neck were strictly of a
piece with the rest of Virginia, for all they had waited long to be
settled. There the Washingtons had become country gentlemen of
comfortable estate upon the accepted model. John had begotten Lawrence,
and Lawrence had begotten Augustine. John had thriftily taken care to
see his offspring put in a way to prosper at the very first. He had
acquired a substantial property of his own where the land lay very
fertile upon the banks of the Potomac, and he had, besides, by three
marriages, made good a very close connection with several families that
had thriven thereabouts before him. He had become a notable figure,
indeed, among his neighbors ere he had been many years in the colony--a
colonel in their militia, and their representative in the House of
Burgesses; and they had not waited for his death to call the parish in
which he lived Washington Parish. His sons and grandsons, though they
slackened a little the pace he had set them in his energy at the outset,
throve none the less substantially upon the estates he had left them,
abated nothing of the dignity and worth they had inherited, lived
simply, and kept their place of respect in the parish and state. Wars
came and went without disturbing incident for them, as the French moved
upon the borders by impulse of politics from over sea; and then long
peace set in, equally without incident, to stay a whole generation,
while good farming went quietly forward, and politicians at home and in
the colonies planned another move in their game. It was in the
mid-season of this time of poise, preparation, and expectancy that
George Washington was born, on the 22d of February, in the year 1732,
“about ten in the morning,” William Gooch, gentlest of Marlborough’s
captains, being Governor in Virginia. He came into the world at the
plain but spacious homestead on Bridges’ Creek, fourth son, fifth child,
of Augustine Washington, and of the third generation from John
Washington, son of the one-time rector of Purleigh. The homestead stood
upon a green and gentle slope that fell away, at but a little distance,
to the waters of the Potomac, and from it could be seen the broad
reaches of the stream stretching wide to the Maryland shore beyond, and
flooding with slow, full tide to the great bay below. The spot gave
token of the quiet youth of the boy, of the years of grateful peace in
which he was to learn the first lessons of life, ere war and the
changing fortunes of his country hurried him to the field and to the
council.
[Illustration: FAC-SIMILE OF THE ENTRY OF WASHINGTON’S BIRTH IN HIS
MOTHER’S BIBLE]
A VIRGINIAN BREEDING
CHAPTER II
George Washington was cast for his career by a very scant and homely
training. Augustine Washington, his father, lacked neither the will nor
the means to set him handsomely afoot, with as good a schooling, both in
books and in affairs, as was to be had; he would have done all that a
liberal and provident man should do to advance his boy in the world, had
he lived to go with him through his youth. He owned land in four
counties, more than five thousand acres all told, and lying upon both
the rivers that refresh the fruitful Northern Neck; besides several
plots of ground in the promising village of Fredericksburg, which lay
opposite his lands upon the Rappahannock; and one-twelfth part of the
stock of the Principio Iron Company, whose mines and furnaces in
Maryland and Virginia yielded a better profit than any others in the two
colonies. He had commanded a ship in his time, as so many of his
neighbors had in that maritime province, carrying iron from the mines to
England, and no doubt bringing convict laborers back upon his voyage
home again. He himself raised the ore from the mines that lay upon his
own land, close to the Potomac, and had it carried the easy six miles to
the river. Matters were very well managed there, Colonel Byrd said, and
no pains were spared to make the business profitable. Captain Washington
had represented his home parish of Truro, too, in the House of
Burgesses, where his athletic figure, his ruddy skin, and frank gray
eyes must have made him as conspicuous as his constituents could have
wished. He was a man of the world, every inch, generous, hardy,
independent. He lived long enough, too, to see how stalwart and capable
and of how noble a spirit his young son was to be, with how manly a
bearing he was to carry himself in the world; and had loved him and made
him his companion accordingly. But the end came for him before he could
see the lad out of boyhood. He died April 12, 1743, when he was but
forty-nine years of age, and before George was twelve; and in his will
there was, of course, for George only a younger son’s portion. The
active gentleman had been twice married, and there were seven children
to be provided for. Two sons of the first marriage survived. The bulk of
the estate went, as Virginian custom dictated, to Lawrence, the eldest
son. To Augustine, the second son, fell most of the rich lands in
Westmoreland. George, the eldest born of the second marriage, left to
the guardianship of his young mother, shared with the four younger
children the residue of the estate. He was to inherit his father’s farm
upon the Rappahannock, to possess, and to cultivate if he would, when he
should come of age; but for the rest his fortunes were to make. He must
get such serviceable training as he could for a life of independent
endeavor. The two older brothers had been sent to England to get their
schooling and preparation for life, as their father before them had been
to get his--Lawrence to make ready to take his father’s place when the
time should come; Augustine, it was at first planned, to fit himself for
the law. George could now look for nothing of the kind. He must
continue, as he had begun, to get such elementary and practical
instruction as was to be had of schoolmasters in Virginia, and the young
mother’s care must stand him in the stead of a father’s pilotage and
oversight.
Fortunately Mary Washington was a wise and provident mother, a woman of
too firm a character and too steadfast a courage to be dismayed by
responsibility. She had seemed only a fair and beautiful girl when
Augustine Washington married her, and there was a romantic story told of
how that gallant Virginian sailor and gentleman had literally been
thrown at her feet out of a carriage in the London streets by way of
introduction--where she, too, was a visiting stranger out of Virginia.
But she had shown a singular capacity for business when the romantic
days of courtship were over. Lawrence Washington, too, though but
five-and-twenty when his father died and left him head of the family,
proved himself such an elder brother as it could but better and elevate
a boy to have. For all he was so young, he had seen something of the
world, and had already made notable friends. He had not returned home
out of England until he was turned of twenty-one, and he had been back
scarcely a twelvemonth before he was off again, to seek service in the
war against Spain. The colonies had responded with an unwonted
willingness and spirit in 1740 to the home government’s call for troops
to go against the Spaniard in the West Indies; and Lawrence Washington
had sought and obtained a commission as captain in the Virginian
regiment which had volunteered for the duty. He had seen those terrible
days at Cartagena, with Vernon’s fleet and Wentworth’s army, when the
deadly heat and blighting damps of the tropics wrought a work of death
which drove the English forth as no fire from the Spanish cannon could.
He had been one of that devoted force which threw itself twelve hundred
strong upon Fort San Lazaro, and came away beaten with six hundred only.
He had seen the raw provincials out of the colonies carry themselves as
gallantly as any veterans through all the fiery trial; had seen the
storm and the valor, the vacillation and the blundering, and the shame
of all the rash affair; and had come away the friend and admirer of the
gallant Vernon, despite his headstrong folly and sad miscarriage. He had
reached home again, late in the year 1742, only to see his father
presently snatched away by a sudden illness, and to find himself become
head of the family in his stead. All thought of further service away
from home was dismissed. He accepted a commission as major in the
colonial militia, and an appointment as adjutant-general of the military
district in which his lands lay; but he meant that for the future his
duties should be civil rather than military in the life he set himself
to live, and turned very quietly to the business and the social duty of
a proprietor among his neighbors in Fairfax County, upon the broad
estates to which he gave the name Mount Vernon, in compliment to the
brave sailor whose friend he had become in the far, unhappy South.
Marriage was, of course, his first step towards domestication, and the
woman he chose brought him into new connections which suited both his
tastes and his training. Three months after his father’s death he
married Anne Fairfax, daughter to William Fairfax, his neighbor. ’Twas
William Fairfax’s granduncle Thomas, third Lord Fairfax, who had in that
revolutionary year
[Illustration: THOMAS, SIXTH LORD FAIRFAX]
1646 summoned Colonel Henry Washington to give into his hands the city
of Worcester, and who had got so sharp an answer from the King’s stout
soldier. But the Fairfaxes had soon enough turned royalists again when
they saw whither the Parliament men would carry them. A hundred healing
years had gone by since those unhappy days when the nation was arrayed
against the King. Anne Fairfax brought no alien tradition to the
household of her young husband. Her father had served the King, as her
lover had--with more hardship than reward, as behooved a soldier--in
Spain and in the Bahamas; and was now, when turned of fifty, agent here
in Virginia to his cousin Thomas, sixth Baron Fairfax, in the management
of his great estates, lying upon the Northern Neck and in the fruitful
valleys beyond. William Fairfax had been but nine years in the colony,
but he was already a Virginian like his neighbors, and, as collector of
his Majesty’s customs for the South Potomac and President of the King’s
Council, no small figure in their affairs--a man who had seen the world
and knew how to bear himself in this part of it.
In 1746 Thomas, Lord Fairfax, himself came to Virginia--a man strayed
out of the world of fashion at fifty-five into the forests of a wild
frontier. The better part of his ancestral estates in Yorkshire had been
sold to satisfy the creditors of his spendthrift father. These untilled
stretches of land in the Old Dominion were now become the chief part of
his patrimony. ’Twas said, too, that he had suffered a cruel
misadventure in love at the hands of a fair jilt in London, and so had
become the austere, eccentric bachelor he showed himself to be in the
free and quiet colony. A man of taste and culture, he had written with
Addison and Steele for the _Spectator_; a man of the world, he had
acquired, for all his reserve, that easy touch and intimate mastery in
dealing with men which come with the long practice of such men of
fashion as are also men of sense. He brought with him to Virginia,
though past fifty, the fresh vigor of a young man eager for the free
pioneer life of such a province. He tarried but two years with his
cousin, where the colony had settled to an ordered way of living. Then
he built himself a roomy lodge, shadowed by spreading piazzas, and
fitted with such simple appointments as sufficed for comfort at the
depths of the forest, close upon seventy miles away, within the valley
of the Shenandoah, where a hardy frontier people had but begun to
gather. The great manor-house he had meant to build was never begun. The
plain comforts of “Green way Court” satisfied him more and more easily
as the years passed, and the habits of a simple life grew increasingly
pleasant and familiar, till thirty years and more had slipped away and
he was dead, at ninety-one--broken-hearted, men said, because the King’s
government had fallen upon final defeat and was done with in America.
It was in the company of these men, and of those who naturally gathered
about them in that hospitable country, that George Washington was bred.
“A stranger had no more to do,” says Beverley, “but to inquire upon the
road where any gentleman or good housekeeper lived, and there he might
depend upon being received with hospitality”; and ’twas certain many
besides strangers would seek out the young major at Mount Vernon whom
his neighbors had hastened to make their representative in the House of
Burgesses, and the old soldier of the soldierly house of Fairfax who
was President of the King’s Council, and so next to the Governor
himself. A boy who was much at Mount Vernon and at Mr. Fairfax’s seat,
Belvoir, might expect to see not a little that was worth seeing of the
life of the colony. George was kept at school until he was close upon
sixteen; but there was ample vacation-time for visiting. Mrs. Washington
did not keep him at her apron-strings. He even lived, when it was
necessary, with his brother Augustine, at the old home on Bridges’
Creek, in order to be near the best school that was accessible, while
the mother was far away on the farm that lay upon the Rappahannock. Mrs.
Washington saw to it, nevertheless, that she should not lose sight of
him altogether. When he was fourteen it was proposed that he should be
sent to sea, as so many lads were, no doubt, from that maritime
province; but the prudent mother preferred he should not leave Virginia,
and the schooling went on as before--the schooling of books and manly
sports. Every lad learned to ride--to ride colt or horse, regardless of
training, gait, or temper--in that country, where no one went afoot
except to catch his mount in the pasture. Every lad, black or white,
bond or free, knew where to find and how to take the roving game in the
forests. And young Washington, robust boy that he was, not to be daunted
while that strong spirit sat in him which he got from his father and
mother alike, took his apprenticeship on horseback and in the tangled
woods with characteristic zest and ardor.
He was, above all things else, a capable, executive boy. He loved
mastery, and he relished acquiring the most effective means of mastery
in all practical affairs. His very exercise-books used at school gave
proof of it. They were filled, not only with the rules, formulæ,
diagrams, and exercises of surveying, which he was taking special pains
to learn, at the advice of his friends, but also with careful copies of
legal and mercantile papers, bills of exchange, bills of sale, bonds,
indentures, land warrants, leases, deeds, and wills, as if he meant to
be a lawyer’s or a merchant’s clerk. It would seem that, passionate and
full of warm blood as he was, he conned these things as he studied the
use and structure of his fowling-piece, the bridle he used for his
colts, his saddlegirth, and the best ways of mounting. He copied these
forms of business as he might have copied Beverley’s account of the way
fox or ’possum or beaver was to be taken or the wild turkey trapped. The
men he most admired--his elder brothers, Mr. Fairfax, and the gentlemen
planters who were so much at their houses--were most of them sound men
of business, who valued good surveying as much as they admired good
horsemanship and skill in sport. They were their own merchants, and
looked upon forms of business paper as quite as useful as ploughs and
hogsheads. Careful exercise in such matters might well enough accompany
practice in the equally formal minuet in Virginia. And so this boy
learned to show in almost everything he did the careful precision of the
perfect marksman.
In the autumn of 1747, when he was not yet quite sixteen, George quit
his formal schooling, and presently joined his brother Lawrence at Mount
Vernon, to seek counsel and companionship. Lawrence had conceived a
strong affection for his manly younger brother. Himself a man of spirit
and honor, he had a high-hearted man’s liking for all that he saw that
was indomitable and well-purposed in the lad, a generous man’s
tenderness
[Illustration: MOUNT VERNON AT THE PRESENT DAY]
in looking to the development of this thoroughbred boy; and he took him
into his confidence as if he had been his own son. Not only upon his
vacations now, but almost when he would, and as if he were already
himself a man with the rest, he could live in the comradeship that
obtained at Belvoir and Mount Vernon. Men of all sorts, it seemed, took
pleasure in his company. Lads could be the companions of men in
Virginia. Her outdoor life of journeyings, sport, adventure, put them,
as it were, upon equal terms with their elders, where spirit, audacity,
invention, prudence, manliness, resource, told for success and
comradeship. Young men and old can be companions in arms, in sport, in
woodcraft, and on the trail of the fox. ’Twas not an indoor life of
conference, but an outdoor life of affairs in this rural colony. One
man, indeed, gave at least a touch of another quality to the life
Washington saw. This was Lord Fairfax, who had been almost two years in
Virginia when the boy quit school, and who was now determined, as soon
as might be, to take up his residence at his forest lodge within the
Blue Ridge. George greatly struck his lordship’s fancy, as he did that
of all capable men, as a daring lad in the hunt and a sober lad in
counsel; and, drawn into such companionship, he learned a great deal
that no one else in Virginia could have taught him so well--the
scrupulous deportment of a high-bred and honorable man of the world; the
use of books by those who preferred affairs; the way in which strength
may be rendered gracious, and independence made generous. A touch of Old
World address was to be learned at Belvoir.
His association with Lord Fairfax, moreover, put him in the way of
making his first earnings as a surveyor. Fairfax had not come to
America merely to get away from the world of fashion in London and bury
himself in the wilderness. His chief motive was one which did him much
more credit, and bespoke him a man and a true colonist. It was his
purpose, he declared, to open up, settle, and cultivate the vast tracts
of beautiful and fertile land he had inherited in Virginia, and he
proved his sincerity by immediately setting about the business. It was
necessary as a first step that he should have surveys made, in order
that he might know how his lands lay, how bounded and disposed through
the glades and upon the streams of the untrodden forests; and in young
Washington he had a surveyor ready to his hand. The lad was but sixteen,
indeed; was largely self-taught in surveying; and had had no business
yet that made test of his quality. But surveyors were scarce, and boys
were not tender at sixteen in that robust, out-of-door colony. Fairfax
had an eye for capacity. He knew the athletic boy to be a fearless
woodsman, with that odd, calm judgment looking forth at his steady gray
eyes; perceived how seriously he took himself in all that he did, and
how thorough he was at succeeding; and had no doubt he could run his
lines through the thicketed forests as well as any man. At any rate, he
commissioned him to undertake the task, and was not disappointed in the
way he performed it. Within a very few weeks Washington conclusively
showed his capacity. In March, 1748, with George Fairfax, William
Fairfax’s son, for company, he rode forth with his little band of
assistants through the mountains to the wild country where his work lay,
and within the month almost he was back again, with maps and figures
which showed his lordship very clearly what lands he had upon the
sparkling Shenandoah and the swollen upper waters of the Potomac. ’Twas
all he wanted before making his home where his estate lay in the
wilderness. Before the year was out he had established himself at
Greenway Court; huntsmen and tenants and guests had found their way
thither, and life was fairly begun upon the rough rural barony.
It had been wild and even perilous work for the young surveyor, but just
out of school, to go in the wet springtime into that wilderness, when
the rivers were swollen and ugly with the rains and melting snows from
off the mountains, where there was scarcely a lodging to be had except
in the stray, comfortless cabins of the scattered settlers, or on the
ground about a fire in the open woods, and where a woodman’s wits were
needed to come even tolerably off. But there was a strong relish in such
an experience for Washington, which did not wear off with the novelty of
it. There is an unmistakable note of boyish satisfaction in the tone in
which he speaks of it. “Since you received my letter in October last,”
he writes to a young comrade, “I have not sleep’d above three nights or
four in a bed, but, after walking a good deal all the day, I lay down
before the fire upon a little hay, straw, fodder, or bear-skin,
whichever is to be had, with man, wife, and children, like a parcel of
dogs and cats; and happy is he who gets the berth nearest the fire.... I
have never had my clothes off, but lay and sleep in them, except the few
nights I have lay’n in Frederick Town.” For three years he kept steadily
at the trying business, without loss either of health or courage, now
deep in the forests laboriously laying off the rich bottom lands and
swelling hill-sides of that wild but goodly country between the
mountains, now at Greenway Court with his lordship, intent upon the
busy life there,--following the hounds, consorting with huntsmen and
Indians and traders, waiting upon the ladies who now and again visited
the lodge; when other occupations failed, reading up and down in his
lordship’s copy of the _Spectator_, or in the historians who told the
great English story. His first success in surveying brought him frequent
employment in the valley. Settlers were steadily making their way
thither, who must needs have their holdings clearly bounded and defined.
Upon his lordship’s recommendation and his own showing of what he knew
and could do, he obtained appointment at the hands of the President and
Master of William and Mary, the colony’s careful agent in the matter, as
official surveyor for Culpeper County, “took the usual oaths to his
Majesty’s person and government,” and so got for his work the privilege
of authoritative public record.
Competent surveyors were much in demand, and, when once he had been
officially accredited in his profession, Washington had as much to do
both upon new lands and old as even a young man’s energy and liking for
an independent income could reasonably demand. His home he made with his
brother at Mount Vernon, where he was always so welcome; and he was as
often as possible with his mother at her place upon the Rappahannock, to
lend the efficient lady such assistance as she needed in the business of
the estate she held for herself and her children. At odd intervals he
studied tactics, practised the manual of arms, or took a turn at the
broadsword with the old soldiers who so easily found excuses for
visiting Major Washington at Mount Vernon. But, except when winter
weather forbade him the fields, he was abroad, far and near, busy with
his surveying, and incidentally making trial of his neighbors up and
down all the country-side round about, as his errands threw their open
doors in his way. His pleasant bearing and his quiet satisfaction at
being busy, his manly, efficient ways, his evident self-respect, and his
frank enjoyment of life, the engaging mixture in him of man and boy,
must have become familiar to everybody worth knowing throughout all the
Northern Neck.
But three years put a term to his surveying. In 1751 he was called
imperatively off, and had the whole course of his life changed, by the
illness of his brother. Lawrence Washington had never been robust; those
long months spent at the heart of the fiery South with Vernon’s
fever-stricken fleet had touched his sensitive constitution to the
quick, and at last a fatal consumption fastened upon him. Neither a trip
to England nor the waters of the warm springs at home brought him
recuperation, and in the autumn of 1751 his physician ordered him to the
Bahamas for the winter. George, whom he so loved and trusted, went with
him, to nurse and cheer him. But even the gentle sea-air of the islands
wrought no cure of the stubborn malady. The sterling, gifted, lovable
gentleman, who had made his quiet seat at Mount Vernon the home of so
much that was honorable and of good report, came back the next summer to
die in his prime, at thirty-four. George found himself named executor in
his brother’s will, and looked to of a sudden to guard all the interests
of the young widow and her little daughter in the management of a large
estate. That trip to the Bahamas had been his last outing as a boy. He
had enjoyed the novel journey with a very keen and natural relish while
it promised his brother health. The radiant air of those summer isles
had touched him with a new pleasure, and the cordial hospitality of the
homesick colonists had added the satisfaction of a good welcome. He had
braved the small-pox in one household with true Virginian punctilio
rather than refuse an invitation to dinner, had taken the infection, and
had come home at last bearing some permanent marks of a three weeks’
sharp illness upon him. But he had had entertainment enough to strike
the balance handsomely against such inconveniences, had borne whatever
came in his way very cheerily, with that wholesome strength of mind
which made older men like him, and would have come off remembering
nothing but the pleasure of the trip had his noble brother only found
his health again. As it was, Lawrence’s death put a final term to his
youth. Five other executors were named in the will; but George, as it
turned out, was to be looked to to carry the burden of administration,
and gave full proof of the qualities that had made his brother trust him
with so generous a confidence.
His brother’s death, in truth, changed everything for him. He seemed of
a sudden to stand as Lawrence’s representative. Before they set out for
the Bahamas Lawrence had transferred to him his place in the militia,
obtaining for him, though he was but nineteen, a commission as major and
district adjutant in his stead; and after his return, in 1752,
Lieutenant-Governor Dinwiddie, the crown’s new representative in
Virginia, added still further to his responsibilities as a soldier by
reducing the military districts of the colony to four, and assigning to
him one of the four, under a renewed commission as major and
adjutant-general. His brother’s will not only named him an executor, but
also made him residuary legatee of the estate of Mount Vernon in
[Illustration: LAWRENCE WASHINGTON
(From a portrait, by an unknown artist, in the possession of Lawrence
Washington, Alexandria, Virginia)]
case his child should die. He had to look to the discipline and
accoutrement of the militia of eleven counties, aid his mother in her
business, administer his brother’s estate, and assume on all hands the
duties and responsibilities of a man of affairs when he was but just
turned of twenty.
The action of the colonial government in compacting the organization and
discipline of the militia by reducing the number of military districts
was significant of a sinister change in the posture of affairs beyond
the borders. The movements of the French in the West had of late become
more ominous than ever; ’twas possible the Virginian militia might any
day see an end of that “everlasting peace” which good Mr. Beverley had
smiled to see them complacently enjoy, and that the young major, who was
now Adjutant-General of the Northern Division, might find duties abroad
even more serious and responsible than his duties at home. Whoever
should be commissioned to meet and deal with the French upon the western
rivers would have to handle truly critical affairs, decisive of the fate
of the continent, and it looked as if Virginia must undertake the
fateful business. The northern borders, indeed, were sadly harried by
the savage allies of the French; the brunt of the fighting hitherto had
fallen upon the hardy militiamen of Massachusetts and Connecticut in the
slow contest for English mastery upon the continent. But there was
really nothing to be decided in that quarter. The French were not likely
to attempt the mad task of driving out the thickly set English
population, already established, hundreds of thousands strong, upon the
eastern coasts. Their true lines of conquest ran within. Their strength
lay in their command of the great watercourses which flanked the
English colonies both north and west. ’Twas a long frontier to hold,
that mazy line of lake and river that ran all the way from the Gulf of
St. Lawrence to the wide mouths of the sluggish Mississippi. Throughout
all the posts and settlements that lay upon it from end to end there
were scarcely eighty thousand Frenchmen, while the English teemed upon
the coasts more than a million strong. But the forces of New France
could be handled like an army, while the English swarmed slowly
westward, without discipline or direction, the headstrong subjects of a
distant government they would not obey, the wayward constituents of a
score of petty and jealous assemblies tardy at planning, clumsy at
executing plans. They were still far away, too, from the mid-waters of
the lakes and from the royal stream of the Mississippi itself, where
lonely boats floated slowly down, with their cargoes of grain, meat,
tallow, tobacco, oil, hides, and lead, out of the country of the
Illinois, past the long, thin line of tiny isolated posts, to the
growing village at New Orleans and the southern Gulf. But they were to
be feared, none the less. If their tide once flowed in, the French well
knew it could not be turned back again. It was not far away from the
Ohio now; and if once settlers out of Pennsylvania and Virginia gained a
foothold in any numbers on that river, they would control one of the
great highways that led to the main basins of the continent. It was
imperative they should be effectually forestalled, and that at once.
The Marquis Duquesne, with his quick soldier blood, at last took the
decisive step for France. He had hardly come to his colony, to serve his
royal master as Governor upon the St. Lawrence, when he determined to
[Illustration:
FRENCH AND ENGLISH
IN
NORTH AMERICA
1755
]
occupy the upper waters of the Ohio, and block the western passes
against the English with a line of military posts. The matter did not
seem urgent to the doubting ministers at Versailles. “Be on your guard
against new undertakings,” said official letters out of France; “private
interests are generally at the bottom of them.” But Duquesne knew that
it was no mere private interest of fur trader or speculator that was at
stake now. The rivalry between the two nations had gone too far to make
it possible to draw back. Military posts had already been established by
the bold energy of the French at Niagara, the key to the western lakes,
and at Crown Point upon Champlain, where lake and river struck straight
towards the heart of the English trading settlements upon the Hudson.
The English, accepting the challenge, had planted themselves at Oswego,
upon the very lake route itself, and had made a port there to take the
furs that came out of the West, and, though very sluggish in the
business, showed purpose of aggressive movement everywhere that
advantage offered. English settlers by the hundred were pressing towards
the western mountains in Pennsylvania, and down into that “Virginian
Arcady,” the sweet valley of the Shenandoah: thrifty Germans, a few;
hardy Scots-Irish, a great many--the blood most to be feared and
checked. It was said that quite three hundred English traders passed the
mountains every year into the region of the Ohio. Enterprising gentlemen
in Virginia--Lawrence and Augustine Washington among the rest--had
joined influential partners in London in the formation of an Ohio
Company for the settlement of the western country and the absorption of
the western trade; had sent out men who knew the region to make interest
with the Indians and fix upon points of vantage for trading-posts and
settlements; had already set out upon the business by erecting
storehouses at Will’s Creek, in the heart of the Alleghanies, and,
farther westward still, upon Redstone Creek, a branch of the Monongahela
itself.
It was high time to act; and Duquesne, having no colonial assembly to
hamper him, acted very promptly. When spring came, 1753, he sent fifteen
hundred men into Lake Erie, to Presque Isle, where a fort of squared
logs was built, and a road cut through the forests to a little river
whose waters, when at the flood, would carry boats direct to the
Alleghany and the great waterway of the Ohio itself. An English
lieutenant at Oswego had descried the multitudinous fleet of canoes upon
Ontario carrying this levy to its place of landing in the lake beyond,
and a vagrant Frenchman had told him plainly what it was. It was an army
of six thousand men, he boasted, going to the Ohio, “to cause all the
English to quit those parts.” It was plain to every English Governor in
the colonies who had his eyes open that the French would not stop with
planting a fort upon an obscure branch of the Alleghany, but that they
would indeed press forward to take possession of the Ohio, drive every
English trader forth, draw all the native tribes to their interest by
force or favor, and close alike the western lands and the western trade
in very earnest against all the King’s subjects.
Governor Dinwiddie was among the first to see the danger and the need
for action, as, in truth, was very natural. In office and out, his study
had been the colonial trade, and he had been merchant and official now a
long time. He was one of the twenty stockholders of the Ohio Company,
and had come to his governorship in Virginia with his eye upon the
western country. He had but to look about him to perceive that Virginia
would very likely be obliged to meet the crisis unaided, if, indeed, he
could induce even her to meet it. Governor Hamilton, of Pennsylvania,
also saw how critically affairs stood, it is true, and what ought to be
done. His agents had met and acted with the agents of the Ohio Company
already in seeking Indian alliances and fixing upon points of vantage
beyond the Alleghanies. But the Pennsylvania Assembly could by no
argument or device be induced to vote money or measures in the business.
The placid Quaker traders were as stubborn as the stolid German farmers.
They opposed warlike action on principle. The Germans opposed it because
they could not for the life of them see the necessity of parting with
their money to send troops upon so remote an errand. Dinwiddie did not
wait or parley. He acted first, and consulted his legislature
afterwards. It was in his Scots blood to take the business very
strenuously, and in his traders blood to take it very anxiously. He had
kept himself advised from the first of the movements of the French.
Their vanguard had scarcely reached Presque Isle ere he despatched
letters to England apprising the government of the danger. Answer had
come very promptly, too, authorizing him to build forts upon the Ohio,
if he could get the money from the Burgesses; and meantime, should the
French trespass further, “to require of them peaceably to depart.” If
they would not desist for a warning, said his Majesty, “we do hereby
strictly charge and command you to drive them off by force of arms.”
Even to send a warning to the French was no easy matter when the King’s
letter came and the chill autumn rains were at hand. The mountain
streams, already swollen, presently to be full of ice, would be very
dangerous for men and horses, and the forests were likely enough to teem
with hostile savages, now the French were there. A proper messenger was
found and despatched, nevertheless--young Major George Washington, of
the Northern District. The errand lay in his quarter; his three years of
surveying at the heart of the wilderness had made him an experienced
woodsman and hardy traveller, had tested his pluck and made proof of his
character; he was well known upon the frontier, and his friends were
very influential, and very cordial in recommending him for this or any
other manly service that called for steadiness, hardihood, and resource.
Dinwiddie had been a correspondent of Lawrence Washington’s ever since
the presidency of the Ohio Company had fallen to the young Virginian
upon the death of his neighbor Thomas Lee, writing to him upon terms of
intimacy. He knew the stock of which George, the younger brother, came,
and the interests in which he might be expected to embark with ardor; he
could feel that he took small risk in selecting such an agent. Knowing
him, too, thus through his family and like a friend, he did not hesitate
in writing to Governor Hamilton, of Pennsylvania, to speak of this youth
of twenty-one as “a person of distinction.”
Washington performed his errand as Dinwiddie must have expected he
would. He received his commission and the Governor’s letter to the
French commandant on the last day of October, and set out the same day
for the mountains. Jacob Vanbraam, the Dutch soldier of fortune who had
been his fencing-master at Mount Vernon, accompanied him as interpreter,
and Christopher Gist, the hardy, self-reliant frontier trader, whom the
Ohio Company had employed to make interest for them among the Indians of
the far region upon the western rivers which he knew so well, was
engaged to act as his guide and counsellor; and with a few servants and
packhorses he struck straight into the forests in the middle of bleak
November. It was the 11th of December before the jaded party rode, in
the cold dusk, into the drenched and miry clearing where the dreary
little fort stood that held the French commander. Through two hundred
and fifty miles and more of forest they had dragged themselves over
swollen rivers, amidst an almost ceaseless fall of rain or snow, with
not always an Indian trail, even, or the beaten track of the bison, to
open the forest growth for their flagging horses, and on the watch
always against savage treachery. It had become plain enough before they
reached their destination what answer they should get from the French.
Sixty miles nearer home than these lonely headquarters of the French
commander at Fort Le Bœuf they had come upon an outpost where the French
colors were to be seen flying from a house from which an English trader
had been driven out, and the French officers there had uttered brutally
frank avowal of their purpose in that wilderness as they sat at wine
with the alert and temperate young Virginian. “It was their absolute
design,” they said, “to take possession of the Ohio, and, by G--, they
would do it.... They were sensible the English could raise two men for
their one, yet they knew their motions were too slow and dilatory to
prevent any undertaking of theirs.” The commandant at Fort Le Bœuf
received the wayworn ambassador very courteously, and even graciously--a
thoughtful elderly man, Washington noted him, “with much the air of a
soldier”--but would make no profession even that he would consider the
English summons to withdraw; and the little party of Englishmen
presently turned back amidst the winter’s storms to carry through the
frozen wilderness a letter which boasted the French lawful masters of
all the continent beyond the Alleghanies. When Washington reached
Williamsburg, in the middle of January, 1754, untouched by even the
fearful fatigues and anxieties of that daring journey, he had
accomplished nothing but the establishment of his own character in the
eyes of the men who were to meet the crisis now at hand. He had been at
infinite pains, at every stage of the dreary adventure, to win and hold
the confidence of the Indians who were accounted friends of the English,
and had displayed an older man’s patience, address, and fortitude in
meeting all their subtle shifts; and he had borne hardships that tried
even the doughty Gist. When the horses gave out, he had left them to
come by easier stages, while he made his way afoot, with only a single
companion, across the weary leagues that lay upon his homeward way.
Gist, his comrade in the hazard, had been solicitously “unwilling he
should undertake such a travel, who had never been used to walking
before this time,” but the imperative young commander would not be
stayed, and the journey was made, spite of sore feet and frosts and
exhausting weariness. He at least knew what the French were about, with
what strongholds and forces, and could afford to await orders what to do
next.
COLONEL WASHINGTON
CHAPTER III
Dinwiddie had not been idle while Washington went his perilous errand.
He had gotten the Burgesses together by the 1st of November, before
Washington had left the back settlements to cross the wilderness, and
would have gotten a liberal grant of money from them had they not fallen
in their debates upon the question of the new fee charged, since his
coming, for every grant out of the public lands of the colony, and
insisted that it should be done away with. “Subjects,” they said, very
stubbornly, “cannot be deprived of the least part of their property
without their consent;” and such a fee, they thought, was too like a tax
to be endured. They would withhold the grant, they declared, unless the
fee was abolished, notwithstanding they saw plainly enough in how
critical a case things stood in the West; and the testy Governor very
indignantly sent them home again. He ordered a draft of two hundred men
from the militia, nevertheless, with the purpose of assigning the
command to Washington and seeing what might be done upon the Ohio,
without vote of Assembly. A hard-headed Scotsman past sixty could not be
expected to wait upon a body of wrangling and factious provincials for
leave to perform his duty in a crisis, and, inasmuch as the object was
to save their own lands, and perhaps their own persons, from the French,
could hardly be blamed for proposing in his anger that they be taxed
for the purpose by act of Parliament. “A Governor,” he exclaimed, “is
really to be pitied in the discharge of his duty to his King and country
in having to do with such obstinate, self-conceited people!” Some money
he advanced out of his own pocket. When Washington came back from his
fruitless mission, Dinwiddie ordered his journal printed and copies sent
to all the colonial Governors. “As it was thought advisable by his
Honour the Governor to have the following account of my proceedings to
and from the French on Ohio committed to print,” said the modest young
major, “I think I can do no less than apologize, in some measure, for
the numberless imperfections of it.” But it was a very manly recital of
noteworthy things, and touched the imagination and fears of every
thoughtful man who read it quite as near the quick as the urgent and
repeated letters of the troubled Dinwiddie.
Virginia, it turned out, was, after all, more forward than her neighbors
when it came to action. The Pennsylvania Assembly very coolly declared
they doubted his Majesty’s claim to the lands on the Ohio, and the
Assembly in New York followed suit. “It appears,” they said, in high
judicial tone, “that the French have built a fort at a place called
French Creek, at a considerable distance from the river Ohio, which may,
but does not by any evidence or information appear to us to be, an
invasion of any of his Majesty’s colonies.” The Governors of the other
colonies whose safety was most directly menaced by the movements of the
French in the West were thus even less able to act than Dinwiddie. For
the Virginian Burgesses, though they would not yield the point of the
fee upon land grants, did not mean to leave Major Washington in the
lurch, and before an expedition could be got afoot had come together
again to vote a sum of money. It would be possible with the sum they
appropriated to put three or four hundred men into the field; and as
spring drew on, raw volunteers began to gather in some numbers at
Alexandria--a ragged regiment, made up for the most part of idle and
shiftless men, who did not always have shoes, or even shirts, of their
own to wear; anxious to get their eightpence a day, but not anxious to
work or submit to discipline. ’Twas astonishing how steady and how
spirited they showed themselves when once they had shaken their lethargy
off and were on the march or face to face with the enemy. A body of
backwoodsmen had been hurried forward in February, ere spring had
opened, to make a clearing and set to work upon a fort at the forks of
the Ohio; but it was the 2d of April before men enough could be
collected at Alexandria to begin the main movement towards the frontier,
and by that time it was too late to checkmate the French. The little
force sent forward to begin fortifications had set about their task very
sluggishly and without skill, and their commander had turned back again
with some of his men to rejoin the forces behind him before the petty
works he should have stayed to finish were well begun. When, therefore,
on the 17th of April, the river suddenly filled with canoes bearing an
army of more than five hundred Frenchmen, who put cannon ashore, and
summoned the forty men who held the place to surrender or be blown into
the water, there was no choice but to comply. The young ensign who
commanded the little garrison urged a truce till he could communicate
with his superiors, but the French commander would brook no delay. The
boy might either take his men off free and unhurt, or else fight and
face sheer destruction; and the nearest succor was a little force of one
hundred and fifty men under Colonel Washington, who had not yet topped
the Alleghanies in their painful work of cutting a way through the
forests for their field-pieces and wagons.
The Governor’s plans had been altered by the Assembly’s vote of money
and the additional levy of men which it made possible. Colonel Joshua
Fry, whom Dinwiddie deemed “a man of good sense, and one of our best
mathematicians,” had been given the command in chief, and Washington had
been named his second in command, with the rank of lieutenant-colonel.
“Dear George,” wrote Mr. Corbin, of the Governor’s Council, “I enclose
you your commission. God prosper you with it!” and the brunt of the work
in fact fell upon the younger man. But three hundred volunteers could be
gotten together; and, all too late, half of the raw levy were sent
forward under Washington to find or make a way for wagons and ordnance
to the Ohio. The last days of May were almost at hand before they had
crossed the main ridge of the Alleghanies, so inexperienced were they in
the rough labor of cutting a road through the close-set growth and over
the sharp slopes of the mountains, and so ill equipped; and by that time
it was already too late by a full month and more to forestall the
French, who had only to follow the open highway of the Alleghany to
bring what force they would to the key of the West at the forks of the
Ohio. As the spring advanced, the French force upon the river grew from
five to fourteen hundred men, and work was pushed rapidly forward upon
fortifications such as the little band of Englishmen they had ousted
had not thought of attempting--a veritable fort, albeit of a rude
frontier pattern, which its builders called Duquesne, in honor of their
Governor. Washington could hit upon no watercourse that would afford him
quick transport; ’twould have been folly, besides, to take his handful
of ragged provincials into the presence of an intrenched army. He was
fain to go into camp at Great Meadows, just across the ridge of the
mountains, and there await his Colonel with supplies and an additional
handful of men.
It was “a charming field for an encounter,” the young commander thought,
but it was to be hoped the enemy would not find their way to it in too
great numbers. An “Independent Company” of provincials in the King’s pay
joined him out of South Carolina, whence they had been sent forward by
express orders from England; and the rest of the Virginia volunteers at
last came up to join their comrades at the Meadows--without good Colonel
Fry, the doughty mathematician, who had sickened and died on the way--so
that there were presently more than three hundred men at the camp, and
Washington was now their commander-in-chief. The officers of the
Independent Company from South Carolina, holding their commissions from
the King, would not, indeed, take their orders from Washington, with his
colonial commission merely; and, what was worse, their men would not
work; but there was no doubt they would fight with proper dignity and
spirit for his Majesty, their royal master. The first blood had already
been drawn, on the 28th of May, before reinforcements had arrived, when
Washington had but just come to camp. Upon the morning of that day
Washington, with forty men, guided by friendly Indians, had come upon a
party of some thirty Frenchmen where they lurked deep within the
thickets of the dripping forest, and, with thrust of bayonet when the
wet guns failed, had brought them to a surrender within fifteen minutes
of the first surprise. No one in the Virginian camp doubted that there
was war already, or dreamed of awaiting the action of diplomats and
cabinets over sea. The French had driven an English garrison from the
forks of the Ohio with threats of force, which would certainly have been
executed had there been need. These men hidden in the thickets at Great
Meadows would have it, when the fight was over, that they had come as
messengers merely to bear a peaceful summons; but did it need thirty odd
armed men to bear a message? Why had they lurked for five days so
stealthily in the forest; and why had they sent runners back posthaste
to Fort Duquesne to obtain support for their diplomacy? Washington might
regret that young M. Jumonville, their commander, had lost his life in
the encounter, but he had no doubt he had done right to order his men to
fire when he saw the French spring for their arms at the first surprise.
Now, at any rate, war was unquestionably begun. That sudden volley fired
in the wet woods at the heart of the lonely Alleghanies had set the
final struggle ablaze. It was now either French or English in America:
it could no longer be both. Jumonville with his thirty Frenchmen was
followed ere many weeks were out by Coulon de Villiers with seven
hundred--some of them come all the way from Montreal at news of what had
happened to France’s lurking ambassadors in the far-away mountains of
Virginia. On the 3d of July they closed to an encounter at “Fort
Necessity,” Washington’s rude intrenchments upon the Great Meadows.
There were three hundred and fifty Englishmen with him able to fight,
spite of sickness and short rations; and as the enemy began to show
themselves at the edges of the neighboring woods through the damp mists
of that dreary morning, Washington drew his little force up outside
their works upon the open meadow. He “thought the French would come up
to him in open field,” laughed a wily Indian, who gave him counsel
freely, but no aid in the fight; but Villiers had no mind to meet the
gallant young Virginian in that manly fashion. Once, indeed, they rushed
to his trenches, but, finding hot reception there, kept their distance
afterwards. Villiers brought them after that only “as near as possible
without uselessly exposing the lives of the King’s subjects,” and poured
his fire in from the cover of the woods. For nine hours the unequal
fight dragged on, the French and their Indians hardly showing themselves
outside the shelter of the forest, the English crouching knee-deep in
water in their rude trenches, while the rain poured incessantly,
reducing their breastworks to a mass of slimy mud, and filling all the
air with a chill and pallid mist. Day insensibly darkened into night in
such an air, and it was eight o’clock when the firing ceased and the
French asked a parley. Their men were tired of the dreary fight, their
Indian allies threatened to leave them when morning should come, and
they were willing the English should withdraw, if they would, without
further hurt or molestation. The terms they offered seemed very
acceptable to Washington’s officers as the interpreter read them out,
standing there in the drenching downpour and the black night. “It
rained so hard we could hardly keep the candle lighted to read them by,”
said an officer; but there was really no choice what to do. More than
fifty men lay dead or wounded in the flooded camp; the ammunition was
all but spent; the French strength had hardly been touched in the fight,
and might at any moment be increased. Capitulation was inevitable, and
Washington did not hesitate.
The next morning saw his wretched force making their way back again
along the rude road they had cut through the forests. They had neither
horses nor wagons to carry their baggage. What they could they burned;
and then set out, sore stricken in heart and body, their wounded
comrades and their scant store of food slung upon their backs, and
dragged themselves very wearily all the fifty miles to the settlements
at home. Two of the King’s Independent Companies from New York ought to
have joined them long ago, but had gotten no farther than Alexandria
when the fatal day came at the Great Meadows. North Carolina had
despatched three hundred and fifty of her militiamen, under an
experienced officer, to aid them, but they also came too late. It had
been expected that Maryland would raise two hundred and fifty men, and
Pennsylvania had at last voted money, to be spent instead of blood, for
she would levy no men; but no succor had come from any quarter when it
should. The English were driven in, and all their plans were worse than
undone.
It was a bitter trial for the young Virginian commander to have his
first campaign end so disastrously--to be worsted in a petty fight, and
driven back hopelessly outdone. No one he cared for in Virginia blamed
him. His ragged troops had borne themselves like men in the fight; his
own gallantry no man could doubt. The House of Burgesses thanked him and
voted money to his men. But it had been a rough apprenticeship, and
Washington felt to the quick the lessons it had taught him. The
discouraging work of recruiting at Alexandria, the ragged idlers to be
governed there, the fruitless drilling of listless and insolent men, the
two months’ work with axe and spade cutting a way through the forests,
the whole disheartening work of making ready for the fight, of seeking
the enemy, and of choosing a field of encounter, he had borne as a
stalwart young man can while his digestion holds good. He had at least
himself done everything that was possible, and it had been no small
relief to him to write plain-spoken letters to the men who were supposed
to be helping him in Williamsburg, telling them exactly how things were
going and who was to blame--letters which showed both how efficient and
how proud he was. He had even shown a sort of boyish zest in the affair
when it came to actual fighting with Jumonville and his scouts hidden in
the forest. He had pressed to the thick of that hot and sudden skirmish,
and had taken the French volleys with a lad’s relish of the danger. “I
heard the bullets whistle,” he wrote his brother, “and believe me there
is something charming in the sound.” But after he had stood a day in the
flooded trenches of his wretched “fort” at Great Meadows, and fought
till evening in the open with an enemy he could not see, he knew that he
had been taught a lesson; that he was very young at this terrible
business of fighting; and that something more must be learned than could
be read in the books at Mount Vernon. He kept a cheerful front in the
dreary retreat, heartening his men bravely by word and example of
steadfastness; but it was a sore blow to his pride and his hopes, and he
must only have winced without protest could he have heard how Horace
Walpole called him a “brave braggart” for his rodomontade about the
music of deadly missiles.
He had no thought, however, of quitting his duty because his first
campaign had miscarried. When he had made his report at Williamsburg he
rejoined his demoralized regiment at Alexandria, where it lay but an
hour’s ride from Mount Vernon, and set about executing his orders to
recruit once more, as if the business were only just begun. Captain
Innes, who had brought three hundred and fifty men from North Carolina
too late to be of assistance at the Meadows, and who had had the chagrin
of seeing them take themselves off home again because there was no money
forthcoming to pay them what had been promised, remained at Will’s
Creek, amidst the back settlements, to command the King’s provincials
from South Carolina who had been with Washington at the Meadows, and the
two Independent Companies from New York, who had lingered so long on the
way; and to build there a rough fortification, to be named Fort
Cumberland, in honor of the far-away Duke who was commander-in-chief in
England. Dinwiddie, having such hot Scots blood in him as could brook no
delays, and having been bred no soldier or frontiersman, but a merchant
and man of business, would have had Washington’s recruiting despatched
at once, like a bill of goods, and a new force sent hot-foot to the Ohio
again to catch the French while they were at ease over their victory and
slackly upon their guard at Duquesne. When he was flatly told it was
impossible, he turned to other plans, equally ill considered, though no
doubt equally well meant. By October he had obtained of the Assembly
twenty thousand pounds, and from the government at home ten thousand
more in good specie, such as was scarce in the colony--for the sharp
stir of actual fighting had had its effect alike upon King and
Burgesses--and had ordered the formation and equipment of ten full
companies for the frontier. But the new orders contained a sad civilian
blunder. The ten companies should all be Independent Companies; there
should be no officer higher than a captain amongst them. This, the good
Scotsman thought, would accommodate all disputes about rank and
precedence, such as had come near to making trouble between Washington
and Captain Mackay, of the Independent Company from South Carolina,
while they waited for the French at Great Meadows.
Washington at once resigned, indignant to be so dealt with. Not only
would he be reduced to a captaincy under such an arrangement, but every
petty officer would outrank him who could show the King’s commission. It
was no tradition of his class to submit to degradation of rank thus by
indirection and without fault committed, and his pride and sense of
personal dignity, for all he was so young, were as high-strung as any
man’s in Virginia. He had shown his quality in such matters already, six
months ago, while he lay in camp in the wilderness on his way towards
the Ohio. The Burgesses had appointed a committee of their own to spend
the money they had voted to put his expedition afoot in the spring, lest
Dinwiddie should think, were they to give him the spending of it, that
they had relented in the matter of the fees; and these gentlemen, in
their careful parsimony, had cut the officers of the already straitened
little force down to such pay and food as Washington deemed unworthy a
gentleman’s acceptance. He would not resign his commission there at the
head of his men upon the march, but he asked to be considered a
volunteer without pay, that he might be quit of the humiliation of being
stinted like a beggar. Now that it was autumn, however, and wars stood
still, he could resign without reproach, and he did so very promptly, in
spite of protests and earnest solicitations from many quarters. “I am
concerned to find Colonel Washington’s conduct so imprudent,” wrote
Thomas Penn. But the high-spirited young officer deemed it no imprudence
to insist upon a just consideration of his rank and services, and
quietly withdrew to Mount Vernon, to go thence to his mother at the
“ferry farm” upon the Rappahannock, and see again all the fields and
friends he loved so well.
It was a very brief respite. He had been scarcely five months out of
harness when he found himself again in camp, his plans and hopes once
more turned towards the far wilderness where the French lay. He had set
a great war ablaze that day he led his forty men into the thicket and
bade them fire upon M. Jumonville and his scouts lurking there; and he
could not, loving the deep business as he did, keep himself aloof from
it when he saw how it was to be finished. Horace Walpole might laugh
lightly at the affair, but French and English statesmen alike--even
Newcastle, England’s Prime-Minister, as busy about nothing as an old
woman, and as thoroughly ignorant of affairs as a young man--knew that
something must be done, politics hanging at so doubtful a balance
between them, now that Frederick of Prussia had driven France, Austria,
and Russia into league against him. The French Minister in London and
the British Minister in Paris vowed their governments still loved and
trusted one another, and there was no declaration of war. But in the
spring of 1755 eighteen French ships of war put to sea from Brest and
Rochefort, carrying six battalions and a new Governor to Canada, and as
many ships got away under press of sail from English ports to intercept
and destroy them. Transports carrying two English regiments had sailed
for Virginia in January, and by the 20th of February had reached the
Chesapeake. The French ships got safely in at the St. Lawrence despite
pursuit, losing but two of their fleet, which had the ill luck to be
found by the English befogged and bewildered off the coast. The colonies
were to see fighting on a new scale.
The English ministers, with whom just then all things went either by
favor or by accident, had made a sorry blunder in the choice of a
commander. Major-General Edward Braddock, whom they had commissioned to
take the two regiments out and act as commander-in-chief in America, was
a brave man, a veteran soldier, bred in a thorough school of action, a
man quick with energy and indomitable in resolution; but every quality
he had unfitted him to learn. Self-confident, brutal, headstrong, “a
very Iroquois in disposition,” he would take neither check nor
suggestion. But energy, resolution, good soldiers, and a proper
equipment might of themselves suffice to do much in the crisis that had
come, whether wisdom held the reins or not; and it gave the Old Dominion
a thrill of quickened hope and purpose to see Keppel’s transports in the
Potomac and Braddock’s redcoats ashore at Alexandria.
The transports, as they made their way slowly up the river, passed
beneath the very windows of Mount Vernon, to put the troops ashore only
eight miles beyond. Washington had left off being soldier for
Dinwiddie, but he had resigned only to avoid an intolerable indignity,
not to shun service, and he made no pretence of indifference when he saw
the redcoats come to camp at Alexandria. Again and again was he early in
the saddle to see the stir and order of the troops, make the
acquaintance of the officers, and learn, if he might, what it was that
fitted his Majesty’s regulars for their stern business. The
self-confident gentlemen who wore his Majesty’s uniform and carried his
Majesty’s commissions in their pockets had scant regard, most of them,
for the raw folk of the colony, who had never been in London or seen the
set array of battle. They were not a little impatient that they must
recruit among such a people. The transports had brought but a thousand
men--two half-regiments of five hundred each, whose colonels had
instructions to add two hundred men apiece to their force in the colony.
Six companies of “rangers,” too, the colonists were to furnish, and one
company of light horse, besides carpenters and teamsters. By all these
General Braddock’s officers set small store, deeming it likely they must
depend, not upon the provincials, but upon themselves for success. They
were at small pains to conceal their hearty contempt for the people they
had come to help.
But with Washington it was a different matter. There was that in his
proud eyes and gentleman’s bearing that marked him a man to be made
friends with and respected. A good comrade he proved, without pretence
or bravado, but an ill man to scorn, as he went his way among them,
lithe and alert, full six feet in his boots, with that strong gait as of
a backwoodsman, and that haughty carriage as of a man born to have his
will.
[Illustration: GENERAL EDWARD BRADDOCK]
He won their liking, and even their admiration, as a fellow of their own
pride and purpose. General Braddock, knowing he desired to make the
campaign if he might do so without sacrifice of self-respect, promptly
invited him to go as a member of his staff, where there could be no
question of rank, asking him, besides, to name any young gentlemen of
his acquaintance he chose for several vacant ensigncies in the two
regiments. The letter of invitation, written by Captain Orme,
aide-de-camp, was couched in terms of unaffected cordiality. Washington
very gladly accepted, in a letter that had just a touch of the young
provincial in it, so elaborate and over-long was its explanation of its
writer’s delicate position and self-respecting motives, but with so much
more of the proud gentleman and resolute man that the smile with which
Captain Orme must have read it could have nothing of disrelish in it.
The young aide-de-camp and all the other members of the General’s
military “family” found its author, at any rate, a man after their own
hearts when it came to terms of intimacy among them.
By mid-April the commander-in-chief had brought five Governors together
at Alexandria, in obedience to his call for an immediate
conference--William Shirley, of Massachusetts, the stout-hearted old
lawyer, every inch “a gentleman and politician,” who had of a sudden
turned soldier to face the French, for all he was past sixty; James De
Lancey, of New York, astute man of the people; the brave and energetic
Horatio Sharpe, of Maryland; Robert Hunter Morris, fresh from the latest
wrangles with the headstrong Quakers and Germans of Pennsylvania; and
Robert Dinwiddie, the busy merchant Governor of the Old Dominion, whose
urgent letters to the government at home had brought Braddock and his
regiments to the Potomac. Plans were promptly agreed upon. New York and
New England, seeing war come on apace, were astir no less than Virginia,
and in active correspondence with the ministers in London. Two regiments
had already been raised and taken into the King’s pay; the militia of
all the threatened colonies were afoot; in all quarters action was
expected and instant war. Governor Shirley, the council agreed, should
strike at once at Niagara with the King’s new provincial regiments, in
the hope to cut the enemy’s connections with their western posts;
Colonel William Johnson, the cool-headed trader and borderer, who had
lived and thriven so long in the forests where the dreaded Mohawks had
their strength, should lead a levy from New England, New York, and New
Jersey to an attack upon Crown Point, where for twenty-four years the
French had held Champlain; and Lieutenant-Colonel Monckton, of the
King’s regulars, must take a similar force against Beauséjour in Acadia,
while General Braddock struck straight into the western wilderness to
take Duquesne. ’Twere best to be prompt in every part of the hazardous
business, and Braddock turned from the conference to push his own
expedition forward at once. “After taking Fort Duquesne,” he said to
Franklin, “I am to proceed to Niagara; and after having taken that, to
Frontenac, if the season will allow time; and I suppose it will, for
Duquesne can hardly detain me above three or four days; and then I can
see nothing that can obstruct my march to Niagara.” “To be sure, sir,”
quietly replied the sagacious Franklin; “if you arrive well before
Duquesne with these fine troops, so well provided with artillery, the
fort ... can probably make but a short resistance.” But there was the
trouble. ’Twould have been better, no doubt, had a route through
Pennsylvania been chosen, where cultivated farms already stretched well
into the West, with their own roads and grain and cattle and wagons to
serve an army with; but the Virginia route had been selected (by
intrigue of gentlemen interested in the Ohio Company, it was hinted),
and must needs be made the best of. There was there, at the least, the
rough track Washington’s men had cut to the Great Meadows. This must be
widened and levelled for an army with its cumbrous train of artillery,
and its endless procession of wagons laden with baggage and provisions.
To take two thousand men through the dense forests with all the military
trappings and supplies of a European army would be to put, it might be,
four miles of its rough trail between van and rear of the struggling
line, and it would be a clumsy enemy, as fighting went in the woods, who
could not cut such a force into pieces--“like thread,” as Franklin said.
The thing was to be attempted, nevertheless, with stubborn British
resolution. It was the 19th of May before all the forces intended for
the march were finally collected at Fort Cumberland, twenty-two hundred
men in all--fourteen hundred regulars, now the recruits were in; nearly
five hundred Virginians, horse and foot; two Independent Companies from
New York; and a small force of sailors from the transports to rig tackle
for the ordnance when there was need on the rough way. And it was the
10th of June when the advance began, straight into that “realm of
forests ancient as the world” that lay without limit upon all the
western ways. It was a thing of infinite difficulty to get that
lumbering train through the tangled wilderness, and it kept the temper
of the truculent Braddock very hot to see how it played havoc with every
principle and practice of campaigning he had ever heard of. He charged
the colonists with an utter want alike of honor and of honesty to have
kept him so long awaiting the transportation and supplies they had
promised, and to have done so little to end with, and so drew Washington
into “frequent disputes, maintained with warmth on both sides”; but the
difficulties of the march presently wrought a certain forest change upon
him, and disposed him to take counsel of his young Virginian aide--the
only man in all his company who could speak out of knowledge in that
wild country. On the 19th, at Washington’s advice, he took twelve
hundred men and pressed forward with a lightened train to a quicker
advance, leaving Colonel Dunbar to bring up the rest of the troops with
the baggage. Even this lightened force halted “to level every mole-hill,
and to erect bridges over every brook,” as Washington chafed to see, and
“were four days in getting twelve miles”; but the pace was better than
before, and brought them at last almost to their destination.
On the 9th of July, at mid-day, they waded the shallow Monongahela, but
eight miles from Duquesne, making a brave show as the sun struck upon
their serried ranks, their bright uniforms, their fluttering banners,
and their glittering arms, and went straight into the rough and shadowed
forest path that led to the French post. Upon a sudden there came a man
bounding along the path to meet them, wearing the gorget of a French
officer, and the forest behind him swarmed with a great host of but
half-discovered men. Upon signal given, these spread themselves to the
right and left within the shelter of the forest, and from their covert
poured a deadly fire upon Braddock’s advancing lines. With good British
pluck the steady regulars formed their accustomed ranks, crying, “God
save the King!” to give grace to the volleys they sent back into the
forest; the ordnance was brought up and swung to its work; all the force
pressed forward to take what place it could in the fight; but where was
the use? Washington besought General Braddock to scatter his men too,
and meet the enemy under cover as they came, but he would not listen.
They must stand in ranks, as they were bidden, and take the fire of
their hidden foes like men, without breach of discipline. When they
would have broken in spite of him, in their panic at being slaughtered
there in the open glade without sight of the enemy, Braddock beat them
back with his sword, and bitterly cursed them for cowards. He would have
kept the Virginians, too, back from the covert if he could, when he saw
them seek to close with the attacking party in true forest fashion. As
it was, they were as often shot down by the terror-stricken regulars
behind them as by their right foes in front. They alone made any head in
the fight; but who could tell in such a place how the battle fared? No
one could count the enemy where they sprang from covert to covert. They
were, in fact, near a thousand strong at the first meeting in the
way--more than six hundred Indians, a motley host gathered from far and
near at the summons of the French, sevenscore Canadian rangers, seventy
odd regulars from the fort, and thirty or forty French officers, come
out of sheer eagerness to have a hand in the daring game. Contrecœur
could not spare more Frenchmen from his little garrison, his connections
at the lakes being threatened, and he sorely straitened for men and
stores. He was staking everything, as it was, upon this encounter on the
way. If the English should shake the savages off, as he deemed they
would, he must no doubt withdraw as he could ere the lines of siege were
closed about him. He never dreamed of such largess of good fortune as
came pouring in upon him. The English were not only checked, but beaten.
They had never seen business like this. ’Twas a pitiful, shameful
slaughter--men shot like beasts in a pen there where they cowered close
in their scarlet ranks. Their first blazing volleys had sent the craven
Canadians scampering back the way they had come; Beaujeu, who led the
attack, was killed almost at the first onset; but the gallant youngsters
who led the motley array wavered never an instant, and readily held the
Indians to their easy work. Washington did all that furious energy and
reckless courage could to keep the order of battle his commander had so
madly chosen, to hold the regulars to their blind work and hearten the
Virginians to stay the threatened rout, driving his horse everywhere
into the thick of the murderous firing, and crying upon all alike to
keep to it steadily like men. He had but yesterday rejoined the advance,
having for almost two weeks lain stricken with a fever in Dunbar’s camp.
He could hardly sit his cushioned saddle for weakness when the fight
began; but when the blaze of the battle burst, his eagerness was
suddenly like that of one possessed, and his immunity from harm like
that of one charmed. Thrice a horse was shot under him, many bullets cut
his clothing, but he went without a wound. A like mad energy drove
Braddock storming up and down the breaking lines; but he was mortally
stricken at last, and Washington alone remained to exercise such
control as was possible when the inevitable rout came.
It was impossible to hold the ground in such fashion. The stubborn
Braddock himself had ordered a retreat ere the fatal bullet found him.
Sixty-three out of the eighty-six officers of his force were killed or
disabled; less than five hundred men out of all the thirteen hundred who
had but just now passed so gallantly through the ford remained unhurt;
the deadly slaughter must have gone on to utter destruction. Retreat was
inevitable--’twas blessed good fortune that it was still possible. When
once it began it was headlong, reckless, frenzied. The men ran wildly,
blindly, as if hunted by demons whom no man might hope to
resist--haunted by the frightful cries, maddened by the searching and
secret fire of their foes, now coming hot upon their heels. Wounded
comrades, military stores, baggage, their very arms, they left upon the
ground, abandoned. Far into the night they ran madly on, in frantic
search for the camp of the rear division, crying, as they ran, for help;
they even passed the camp, in their uncontrollable terror of pursuit,
and went desperately on towards the settlements. Washington and the few
officers and provincials who scorned the terror found the utmost
difficulty in bringing off their stricken General, where he lay wishing
to die. Upon the fourth day after the battle he died, loathing the sight
of a redcoat, they said, and murmuring praises of “the blues,” the once
despised Virginians. They buried his body in the road, that the army
wagons might pass over the place and obliterate every trace of a grave
their savage enemies might rejoice to find and desecrate.
He had lived to reach Dunbar’s camp, but not to see the end of the
shameful rout. The terror mastered the rear-guard too. They destroyed
their artillery, burned their wagons and stores, emptied their powder
into the streams, and themselves broke into a disordered, feverish
retreat which was a mere flight, their craven commander shamefully
acquiescing. He would not even hold or rally them at Fort Cumberland,
but went on, as if upon a hurried errand, all the way to Philadelphia,
leaving the fort, and all the frontier with it, “to be defended by
invalids and a few Virginians.” “I acknowledge,” cried Dinwiddie, “I was
not brought up to arms; but I think common-sense would have prevailed
not to leave the frontier exposed after having opened a road over the
mountains to the Ohio, by which the enemy can the more easily invade us.
The whole conduct of Colonel Dunbar seems to be monstrous.” And so,
indeed, it was. But the colonies at large had little time to think of
it. Governor Shirley had gone against Niagara only to find the French
ready for him at every point, now that they had read Braddock’s papers,
taken at Duquesne, and to come back again without doing anything.
Beauséjour had been taken in Acadia, but it lay apart from the main
field of struggle. Johnson beat the French off at Lake George when they
attacked him, and took Dieskau, their commander; but he contented
himself with that, and left Crown Point untouched. There were other
frontiers besides those of Virginia and Pennsylvania to be looked to and
guarded. For three long years did the fortunes of the English
settlements go steadily from danger to desperation, as the French and
their savage allies advanced from victory to victory. In 1756 Oswego was
taken; in 1757, Fort William Henry. Commander succeeded
[Illustration:
Washington Gage Gates
THE BURIAL OF BRADDOCK]
commander among the English, only to add blunder to blunder, failure to
failure. And all the while it fell to Washington, Virginia’s chief stay
in her desperate trouble, to stand steadfastly to the hopeless work of
keeping three hundred and fifty miles of frontier with a few hundred men
against prowling bands of savages, masters of the craft of swift and
secret attack, “dexterous at skulking,” in a country “mountainous and
full of swamps and hollow ways covered with woods.”
For twenty years now settlers had been coming steadily into this
wilderness that lay up and down upon the nearer slopes of the great
mountains--Germans, Scots-Irish, a hardy breed. Their settlements lay
scattered far and near among the foot-hills and valleys. Their men were
valiant and stout-hearted, quick with the rifle, hard as flint when they
were once afoot to revenge themselves for murdered wives and children
and comrades. But how could they, scattered as they were, meet these
covert sallies in the dead of night--a sudden rush of men with torches,
the keen knife, the quick rifle? The country filled with fugitives, for
whom Washington’s militiamen could find neither food nor shelter. “The
supplicating tears of the women, and moving petitions of the men,” cried
the young commander, “melt me into such deadly sorrow that I solemnly
declare, if I know my own mind, I could offer myself a willing sacrifice
to the butchering enemy, provided that would contribute to the people’s
ease.... I would be a willing offering to savage fury, and die by inches
to save a people.” It was a comfort to know, at the least, that he was
trusted and believed in. The Burgesses had thanked him under the very
stroke of Braddock’s defeat, in terms which could not be doubted
sincere. In the very thick of his deep troubles, when he would have
guarded the helpless people of the border, but could not, Colonel
Fairfax could send him word from Williamsburg, “Your good health and
fortune are the toast at every table.” “Our Colonel,” wrote a young
comrade in arms, “is an example of fortitude in either danger or
hardships, and by his easy, polite behavior has gained not only the
regard but affection of both officers and soldiers.” But it took all the
steadiness that had been born or bred in him to endure the strain of the
disheartening task, from which he could not in honor break away. His
plans, he complained, were “to-day approved, to-morrow condemned.” He
was bidden do what was impossible. It would require fewer men to go
against Duquesne again and remove the cause of danger than to prevent
the effects while the cause remained. Many of his officers were careless
and inefficient, many of his men mutinous. “Your Honor will, I hope,
excuse my hanging instead of shooting them,” he wrote to the Governor;
“it conveyed much more terror to others, and it was for example’ sake
that we did it.” It was a test as of fire for a young colonel in his
twenties.
But a single light lies upon the picture. Early in 1756, ere the
summer’s terror had come upon the border, and while he could be spared,
he took horse and made his way to Boston to see Governor Shirley, now
acting as commander-in-chief in the colonies, and from him at first hand
obtain settlement of that teasing question of rank that had already
driven the young officer once from the service. He went very bravely
dight in proper uniform of buff and blue, a white-and-scarlet
[Illustration: WASHINGTON AND MARY PHILIPSE]
cloak upon his shoulders, the sword at his side knotted with red and
gold, his horse’s fittings engraved with the Washington arms, and
trimmed in the best style of the London saddlers. With him rode two
aides in their uniforms, and two servants in their white-and-scarlet
livery. Curious folk who looked upon the celebrated young officer upon
the road saw him fare upon his way with all the pride of a Virginian
gentleman, a handsome man, and an admirable horseman--a very gallant
figure, no one could deny. Everywhere he was fêted as he went;
everywhere he showed himself the earnest, high-strung, achieving youth
he was. In New York he fell into a new ambush, from which he did not
come off without a wound. His friend Beverly Robinson must needs have
Miss Mary Phillipse at his house there, a beauty and an heiress, and
Washington came away from her with a sharp rigor at his heart. But he
could not leave that desolate frontier at home unprotected to stay for a
siege upon a lady’s heart; he had recovered from such wounds before, had
before that left pleasure for duty; and in proper season was back at his
post, with papers from Shirley which left no doubt who should command in
Virginia.
At last, in 1758, the end came, when William Pitt thrust smaller men
aside and became Prime-Minister in England. Amherst took Louisbourg,
Wolfe came to Quebec, and General Forbes, that stout and steady soldier,
was sent to Virginia to go again against Duquesne. The advance was slow
to exasperation in the view of every ardent man like Washington, and
cautious almost to timidity; but the very delay redounded to its success
at last. ’Twas November before Duquesne was reached. The Indians
gathered there, seeing winter come on, had not waited to meet them; and
the French by that time knew themselves in danger of being cut off by
the English operations in the North. When Forbes’s forces, therefore, at
last entered those fatal woods again, where Braddock’s slaughtered men
had lain to rot, the French had withdrawn; nothing remained but to enter
the smoking ruins of their abandoned fort, hoist the King’s flag, and
re-name the post Fort Pitt; and Washington turned homeward again to seek
the rest he so much needed. It had been almost a bloodless campaign, but
such danger as it had brought Washington had shared to the utmost. The
French had not taken themselves off without at least one trial of the
English strength. While yet Forbes lay within the mountains a large
detachment had come from Duquesne to test and reconnoitre his force.
Colonel Mercer, of the Virginian line, had been ordered forward with a
party to meet them. He stayed so long, and the noise of the firing came
back with so doubtful a meaning to the anxious ears at the camp, that
Washington hastened with volunteers to his relief. In the dusk the two
bodies of Englishmen met, mistook each other for enemies, exchanged a
deadly fire, and were checked only because Washington, rushing between
their lines, even while their pieces blazed, cried his hot commands to
stop, and struck up the smoking muzzles with his sword. ’Twas through no
prudence of his he was not shot.
For a long time his friends had felt a deep uneasiness about his health.
They had very earnestly besought him not to attempt a new campaign. “You
will in all probability bring on a relapse,” George Mason had warned
him, “and render yourself incapable of serving the public at a time when
there may be the utmost occasion. There is nothing more certain than
that a gentleman of your station owes the care of his health and his
life not only to himself and his friends, but to his country.” But he
had deemed the nearest duty the most imperative; and it was only after
that duty was disposed of that he had turned from the field to seek home
and new pleasures along with new duties. The winter brought news from
Quebec of the fall of the French power in America, which made rest and
home and pleasure the more grateful and full of zest.
MOUNT VERNON DAYS
CHAPTER IV
On a May day in 1758, as he spurred upon the way to Williamsburg, under
orders from the frontier, Washington rode straight upon an adventure he
had not looked for. He was within a few hours’ ride of the little
capital; old plantations lay close upon the way; neighborly homes began
to multiply; and so striking a horseman, riding uniformed and attended,
could not thereabouts go far unrecognized. He was waylaid and haled to
dinner, despite excuses and protests of public business calling for
despatch. There was a charming woman to be seen at the house, his friend
told him, if a good dinner was not argument enough--and his business
could not spoil for an hour’s stay in agreeable company. And so, of a
sudden, under constraint of Virginian hospitality, he was hurried into
the presence of the gracious young matron who was at once, and as if of
right, to make his heart safe against further quest or adventure. Martha
Custis was but six-and-twenty. To the charm of youth and beauty were
added that touch of quiet sweetness and that winning grace of
self-possession which come to a woman wived in her girlhood, and widowed
before age or care has checked the first full tide of life. At seventeen
she had married Daniel Parke Custis, a man more than twenty years her
senior; but eight years of quiet love and duty as wife and mother had
only made her youth the more gracious in that rural land of leisure and
good neighborhood; and a year’s widowhood had been but a suitable
preparation for perceiving the charm of this stately young soldier who
now came riding her way upon the public business. His age was her own;
all the land knew him and loved him for gallantry and brave capacity; he
carried himself like a prince--and he forgot his errand to linger in her
company. Dinner was soon over, and his horses at the door; there was the
drilled and dutiful Bishop, trained servant that he was, leading his
restless and impatient charge back and forth within sight of the windows
and of the terrace where his young Colonel tarried, absorbed and
forgetful; man and beast alike had been in the service of the unhappy
Braddock, and might seem to walk there lively memorials of duty done and
undertaken. But dusk came; the horses were put up; and the next morning
was well advanced before the abstracted young officer got at last to his
saddle, and spurred on belated to Williamsburg. His business concerned
the preparations then afoot for General Forbes’s advance upon Duquesne.
“I came here at this critical juncture,” said Washington to the
President of the Council, “by the express order of Sir John St. Clair,
to represent in the fullest manner the posture of our affairs at
Winchester”--lack of clothes, arms, and equipage, lack of money, lack of
wise regulations touching rank and discipline. General Forbes had been
in Philadelphia a month already, awaiting the formation of his army in
Virginia; Sir John St. Clair, his quartermaster-general, had come into
the province to see that proper plans were made and executed; it was
necessary that matters should be pressed forward very diligently and at
once; and Washington,
[Illustration:
Patrick Henry Washington Pendleton
LEAVING MOUNT VERNON FOR THE CONGRESS OF THE COLONIES]
when once at the seat of government, was not slack to urge and
superintend official action. But, the troublesome business once in
proper course, he turned back to seek Mrs. Custis again, this time at
her own home, ere he went the long distance of the frontier. The onset
was made with a soldier’s promptness and audacity. He returned to his
post, after a delay too slight to deserve any reasonable man’s remark,
and yet with a pledge given and taken which made him look forward to the
end of the campaign with a new longing as to the winning of a real home
and an unwonted happiness.
This was not his first adventure in love, but it was his last, and gave
him a quiet joy which stood him in stead a whole lifetime. No young
Virginian could live twenty-six years amidst fair women in that hale and
sociable colony without being touched again and again by the quick
passion; and this man had the blood of a lover beyond his fellows.
Despite the shyness of a raw lad who lived much in the open, he had
relished the company of lively women from the first, meeting their gay
sallies sometimes with a look from his frank blue eyes that revealed
more than he knew. Love had first found him out in earnest six years
ago, when he was but just turned of twenty; and it had taken all the
long while since to forget his repulse at the hands of a fair young
beauty in that day of passion. Mary Phillipse had but taken his fancy
for a moment, because he could not pass such a woman by and deem himself
still a true Virginian. It was more serious that he had been much in the
company, these last years, of a fair neighbor of the vivacious house of
Cary, whose wit and beauty had haunted him in the very thick of
campaigns upon the frontier, and who still mastered his heart now and
again, with a sort of imperious charm, in the midst of this very happy
season when he knew Martha Custis his veritable heart’s mistress for the
future. It may well have made him glad of misadventures in the past to
know his heart safe now.
The campaign dragged painfully, far into the drear autumn. December had
come before the captured post on the Ohio could be left to the keeping
of Colonel Mercer and a little garrison of provincials. But when at last
he was free again there was no reason why Washington should wait longer
to be happy, and he was married to Martha Custis on the 6th of January,
1759. The sun shone very bright that day, and there was the fine glitter
of gold, the brave show of resplendent uniforms, in the little church
where the marriage was solemnized. Officers of his Majesty’s service
crowded there, in their gold lace and scarlet coats, to see their
comrade wedded; the new Governor, Francis Fauquier, himself came, clad
as befitted his rank; and the bridegroom took the sun not less gallantly
than the rest, as he rode, in blue and silver and scarlet, beside the
coach and six that bore his bride homeward amidst the thronging friends
of the country-side. The young soldier’s love of a gallant array and a
becoming ceremony was satisfied to the full, and he must have rejoiced
to be so brave a horseman on such a day. For three months of deep
content he lived with his bride at her own residence, the White House,
by York River side, where their troth had been plighted, forgetting the
fatigues of the frontier, and learning gratefully the new life of quiet
love and homely duty.
These peaceful, healing months gone by, he turned once more to public
business. Six months before his marriage he had been chosen a member of
the House of Burgesses for Frederick County--the county which had been
his scene of adventure in the old days of surveying in the wilderness,
and in which ever since Braddock’s fatal rout he had maintained his
headquarters striving to keep the border against the savages. Small
wonder that he led the poll taken there in Winchester, where through so
many seasons men had seen him bear himself like a capable man and a
gallant, indomitable soldier. ’Twas no unwelcome duty, either, to take
his young wife to Williamsburg in “the season,” when all Virginia was in
town in the persons of the Burgesses and the country gentry come to
enjoy the festivities and join in the business then sure to be afoot.
The young soldier was unused to assemblies, however, and suffered a keen
embarrassment to find himself for a space too conspicuous amidst the
novel parliamentary scene. He had hardly taken his seat when the
gracious and stately Robinson, Speaker of the House and Treasurer of the
colony these twenty years, rose, at the bidding of the Burgesses, to
thank him for the services of which all were speaking. This sudden
praise, spoken with generous warmth there in a public place, was more
than Washington knew how to meet. He got to his feet when Mr. Speaker
was done, but he could not utter a syllable. He stood there, instead,
hot with blushes, stammering, all a-tremble from head to foot. “Sit
down, Mr. Washington,” cried the Speaker; “your modesty is equal to your
valor, and that surpasses the power of any language that I possess.”
Again and again, as the years passed, Washington returned at each
session to Williamsburg to take his place in the Assembly; and with
custom came familiarity and the ease and firmness he at first had lacked
upon the floor. His life broadened about him; all the uses of peace
contributed to give him facility and knowledge and a wide comradeship in
affairs. Along with quiet days as a citizen, a neighbor, and a country
gentleman, came maturity and the wise lessons of a various experience.
No man in Virginia lived more or with a greater zest henceforth than
Colonel Washington. His marriage brought him great increase of wealth,
as well as increase of responsibility. Mr. Custis had left many thousand
acres of land, and forty-five thousand pounds sterling in money, a
substantial fortune to the young wife and the two little children who
survived him; and Washington had become, by special decree of the
Governor and Council in General Court, trustee and manager of the whole.
It needed capacity and knowledge and patience of no mean order to get
good farming out of slaves, and profitable prices out of London
merchants; to find prompt and trustworthy ship-masters by whom to send
out cargoes, and induce correspondents over sea to ship the perishable
goods sent in return by the right vessels, bound to the nearest river;
and the bigger your estate the more difficult its proper conduct and
economy, the more disastrous in scale the effects of mismanagement. No
doubt the addition of Mrs. Custis’s handsome property to his own broad
and fertile acres at Mount Vernon made Colonel Washington one of the
wealthiest men in Virginia. But Virginian wealth was not to be counted
till crops were harvested and got to market. The current price of
tobacco might leave you with or without a balance to your credit in
London, your only clearing-house, as it chanced. Your principal
purchases, too,
[Illustration: “THE WHITE HOUSE,” ON THE PAMUNKEY]
must be made over sea and through factors. Both what you sold and what
you bought must take the hazards of the sea voyage, the whims of sea
captains, the chances of a foreign market. To be farmer and merchant at
once, manage your own negroes and your own overseers, and conduct an
international correspondence; to keep the run of prices current, duties,
port dues, and commissions, and know the fluctuating rates of exchange;
to understand and meet all changes, whether in merchants or in markets,
three thousand miles away, required an amount of information, an
alertness, a steady attention to detail, a sagacity in farming and a
shrewdness in trade, such as made a great property a burden to idle or
inefficient men. But Washington took pains to succeed. He had a great
zest for business. The practical genius which had shone in him almost
prematurely as a boy now grew heartily in him as a man of fortune.
Messrs. Robert Cary & Company, his factors in London, must soon have
learned to recognize his letters, in the mere handling, by their bulk.
No detail escaped him when once he had gotten into the swing of the
work. They must be as punctilious as he was, they found, in seeing to
every part of the trade and accounting with which he intrusted them, or
else look to lose his lucrative patronage. He was not many years in
learning how to make the best tobacco in Virginia, and to get it
recognized as such in England. Barrels of flour marked “George
Washington, Mount Vernon,” were ere long suffered to pass the inspectors
at the ports of the British West Indies without scrutiny. It was worth
while to serve so efficient a man to his satisfaction; worth while or
not, he would not be served otherwise.
He had emerged, as it were, after a tense and troubled youth, upon a
peaceful tract of time, where his powers could stretch and form
themselves without strain or hurry. He had robust health, to which he
gave leave in unstinted work, athletic strength, and an insatiable
relish for being much afoot and in the open, which he satisfied with
early rounds of superintendence in the fields where the men were at
their task’s, with many a tireless ride after the hounds, or steadfast
wait at the haunts of the deer; a planning will that craved some
practical achievement every day, which he indulged by finding tasks of
betterment about the estate and keeping his men at them with unflagging
discipline; a huge capacity for being useful and for understanding how
to be so, which he suffered his neighbors, his parish, his county, the
colony itself, to employ when there was need. To a young man, bred these
ten years in the forests and in the struggle of warfare upon a far
frontier, it had been intolerable to live tamely, without executive
tasks big and various enough to keep his energy from rust. The clerical
side of business he had learned very thoroughly in camp, as well as the
exceeding stir and strain of individual effort--the incessant letter
writing necessary to keep promised performance afoot, the reckoning of
men and of stores, the nice calculations of time and ways and means; the
scrutiny of individual men, too, which is so critical a part of
management, and the slow organization of effort: he had been in a fine
school for these things all his youth, and would have thought shame to
himself not to have learned temperance, sagacity, thrift, and patience
wherewith to use his energy. His happy marriage did him the service to
keep him from restlessness. His love took his allegiance, and held him
to his home as to a post of honor and reward. He had never before had
leave to be tender with children, or show with what a devotion he could
preside over a household all his own. His home got strong hold upon him.
His estates gave him scope of command and a life of action. ’Twas no
wonder he kept his factors busy, and shipped goods authenticated by the
brand.
The soldierly young planter gave those who knew him best, as well as
those who met him but to pass, the impression of a singular restraint
and self-command, which lent a peculiar dignity and charm to his speech
and carriage. They deemed him deeply passionate, and yet could never
remember to have seen him in a passion. The impression was often a
wholesome check upon strangers, and even upon friends and neighbors, who
would have sought to impose upon him. No doubt he had given way to
bursts of passion often enough in camp and upon the march, when
inefficiency, disobedience, or cowardice angered him hotly and of a
sudden. There were stories to be heard of men who had reason to remember
how terrible he could be in his wrath. But he had learned, in the very
heat and discipline of such scenes, how he must curb and guard himself
against surprise, and it was no doubt trials of command made in his
youth that had given him the fine self-poise men noted in him now. He
had been bred in a strict school of manners at Belvoir and Greenway
Court, and here at his own Mount Vernon in the old days, and the place
must have seemed to him full of the traditions of whatsoever was just
and honest and lovely and of good report as he looked back to the time
of his gentle brother. It was still dangerous to cross or thwart him,
indeed. Poachers might look to be caught and soundly thrashed by the
master himself if he chanced their way. Negligent overseers might expect
sharp penalties, and unfaithful contractors a strict accounting, if
necessary work went wrong by their fault. He was exacting almost to the
point of harshness in every matter of just right or authority. But he
was open and wholesome as the day, and reasonable to the point of pity
in every affair of humanity, through it all. Now it was “my rascally
overseer, Hardwick,” in his diary, when certain mares were sent home
“scarce able to highlone, much less to assist in the business of the
plantations”; but not a month later it was “my worthy overseer,
Hardwick, lying in Winchester of a broken leg.” It was not in his way to
add anything to the penalties of nature.
A quiet simplicity of life and a genuine love of real sport rid him of
morbid humors. All up and down the English world, while the eighteenth
century lasted, gentlemen were commonly to be found drunk after
dinner--outside New England, where the efficient Puritan Church had
fastened so singular a discipline in manners upon a whole society--and
Virginian gentlemen had a reputation for deep drinking which they had
been at some pains to deserve. A rural society craves excitement, and
can get it very simply by such practices. There is always leisure to
sleep afterwards, even though your dinner come in the middle of the day;
and there is good reason you should be thirsty if you have been since
daybreak in the saddle. To ride hard and to drink hard seemed to go
together in Virginia as inevitably as the rhymes in a song; and ’twas
famous hard riding after the fox over the rough fields and through the
dense thickets. If Washington drank only small beer or cider and a
couple of glasses of Madeira at dinner, it was no doubt because he had
found his quick blood tonic enough, and had set himself a hard regimen
as a soldier. He did not scruple to supply drink enough for the
thirstiest gathering when he presented himself to the voters of the
country-side as a candidate for the House of Burgesses. “A hogshead and
a barrel of punch, thirty-five gallons of wine, forty-three gallons of
strong cider, and dinner for his friends,” was what he cheerfully paid
for at his first election, and the poll footed but a few hundred votes
all told. Mount Vernon saw as much company and as constant merriment and
good cheer as any house in Virginia; and the master was no martinet to
his guests, even though they came upon professional errands. “Doctor
Laurie came here, I may add drunk,” says his quiet diary, without
comment, though the doctor had come upon summons to attend Mrs.
Washington, and was next morning suffered to use his lancet for her
relief. No doubt a good fellow when sober, and not to be lightly chidden
when drunk, like many a gallant horseman and gentleman who joined the
meet of the country-side at the hospitable place to follow the hounds
when the hunting was good. There was fox-hunting winter and summer, in
season and out, but the sport was best in the frosty days of January and
February, when the year was young and the gentlemen of the country round
gathered at Belvoir or Gunston Hall or Mount Vernon two or three times a
week to warm their blood in the hale sport, and dine together
afterwards--a cordial company of neighbors, with as many topics of good
talk as foxes to run to cover. The hunt went fastest and most
incessantly when Lord Fairfax came down from his lodge in the Valley
and joined them for days together in the field and at the table.
Washington loved horses and dogs with the heartiest sportsman of them
all. He had a great gusto for stalking deer with George Mason on the
broad forested tracts round Gunston Hall, and liked often to take gun or
rod after lesser game when the days fell dull; but best of all he loved
a horse’s back, and the hard ride for hours together after the dogs and
a crafty quarry--a horse it put a man to his points to ride, a country
where the running was only for those who dared. His own mounts could
nowhere be bettered in Virginia. There was full blood of Araby in his
noble Magnolia, and as good hunting blood as was to be found in the
colony in his Blueskin and Ajax, Valiant and Chinkling. His hounds he
bred “so flew’d, so sanded,” so matched in speed and habit, that they
kept always tune and pace together in the field. “A cry more tuneable
was never holla’d to, nor cheered with horn,” than theirs when they were
let “spend their mouths” till echo replied “as if another chase were in
the skies.” ’Twas first to the stables for him always in the morning,
and then to the kennels.
It had been hard and anxious work to get his affairs into prosperous
shape again when the war was over, and those long, hopeless summers on
the stricken frontier. Stock, buildings, fences--everything had to be
renewed, refitted, repaired. For the first two or three years there were
even provisions to buy, so slow was the place to support itself once
more. Not only all his own ready money, but all he got by his marriage
too, and more besides, was swallowed up, and he found himself in debt
before matters were finally set to rights and profitable crops made and
marketed. But, the thing once done, affairs cleared and became easy as
if of their own accord in the business of the estate. The men he had to
deal with presently knew their master: the young planter had matured his
plans and his discipline. Henceforth his affairs were well in hand, and
he could take his wholesome pleasures both handsomely and with a free
heart. There was little that was debonair about the disciplined and
masterful young soldier. He had taken Pallas’s gift: “Self-reverence,
self-knowledge, self-control, these three alone lead life to sovereign
power. And because right is right, to follow right were wisdom in the
scorn of consequence.” But he took heed of his life very genially, and
was matured by pleasure no less than by duty done. He loved a game of
cards in almost any company, and paid his stakes upon the rubber like
every other well-conducted man of his century. He did not find
Annapolis, or even Philadelphia, too far away to be visited for the
pleasure of seeing a good horse-race or enjoying a round of balls and
evenings at the theatre, to shake the rustic dulness off of a too
constant stay at home. Mrs. Washington enjoyed such outings, such little
flings into the simple world of provincial fashion, as much as he did;
and they could not sit waiting all the year for the short season at
Williamsburg.
A young man at once so handsome, so famous, and so punctilious in point
of dress as Colonel Washington could not but make a notable figure in
any society. “I want neither lace nor embroidery,” was the order he sent
to London. “Plain clothes, with a gold or silver button (if worn in
genteel dress), are all I desire. My stature is six feet; otherwise
rather slender than corpulent.” But he was careful the material, the
color, and the fit should be of the best and most tasteful, and that
very elegant stuffs should be provided from over sea for Mrs. Washington
and her children, and very substantial for the servants who were to be
in attendance upon the household--a livery of white and scarlet. ’Twas a
point of pride with Virginians to know how to dress, both well and in
the fashion; and the master of Mount Vernon would have deemed it an
impropriety to be less careful than his neighbors, less well dressed
than his station and fortune warranted. He watched the tradesmen
sharply. “’Tis a custom, I have some reason to believe, with many
shopkeepers and tradesmen in London,” he wrote bluntly to the Messrs.
Cary, “when they know goods are bespoken for exportation, to palm
sometimes old, and sometimes very slight and indifferent, goods upon us,
taking care at the same time to advance the price,” and he wished them
informed that their distant customers would not be so duped.
He longed once and again to be quit of the narrow life of the colony,
and stretch himself for a little upon the broader English stage at home.
“But I am tied by the leg,” he told his friends there, “and must set
inclination aside. My indulging myself in a trip to England depends upon
so many contingencies, which, in all probability, may never occur, that
I dare not even think of such a gratification.” But the disappointment
bred no real discontent. There could be no better air or company to come
to maturity in than were to be had there in Virginia, if a young man
were poised and master of himself. “We have few things here striking to
European travellers (except our abundant woods),” he professed, when he
wrote to his kinsman Richard Washington in England; “but little variety,
a welcome reception among a few friends, and the open and prevalent
hospitality of the country”; but it was a land that bred men, and men of
affairs, in no common fashion.
Especially now, after the quickening of pulses that had come with the
French war, and its sweep of continental, even of international, forces
across the colonial stage, hitherto set only for petty and sectional
affairs. The colonies had grown self-conscious and restless as the plot
thickened and thrust them forward to a rôle of consequence in the empire
such as they had never thought to play, and the events which succeeded
hurried them to a quick maturity. It was a season a young man was sure
to ripen in, and there was good company. The House of Burgesses was very
quiet the year Washington first took his place in it and stood abashed
to hear himself praised; but before Mr. Robinson, its already veteran
Speaker, was dead, a notable change had set in. Within five years,
before the country on the St. Lawrence and the lakes was well out of the
hands of the French, the Parliament in England had entered upon measures
of government which seemed meant of deliberate purpose to set the
colonies agog, and every body of counsellors in America stood between
anger and amazement to see their people in danger to be so put upon.
The threat and pressure of the French power upon the frontiers had made
the colonies thoughtful always, so long as it lasted, of their
dependence upon England for succor and defence should there come a time
of need. Once and again--often enough to keep them sensible how they
must stand or fall, succeed or fail, with the power at home--their own
raw levies had taken part with the King’s troops out of England in some
clumsy stroke or other against a French stronghold in the North or a
Spanish fortress in the South; and now at last they had gone with
English troops into the field in a national cause. Provincials and
redcoats had joined for a final grapple with the French, to settle once
and for all who should be owners and masters on the coveted continent.
The issue had been decisive. By the summer of 1760 Washington could
write his kinsman in England that the French were so thoroughly drubbed
and humbled that there remained little to do to reduce Canada from end
to end to the British power. But the very thoroughness of the success
wrought a revolution in the relations of the colonies to the
mother-country. It rid them of their sense of dependence. English
regiments had mustered their thousands, no doubt, upon the battle-fields
of the war in order that the colonies might be free to possess the
continent, and it was hard to see how the thing could have been
accomplished without them. But it had been accomplished, and would not
need to be done again. Moreover, it had shown the colonial militia how
strong they were even in the presence of regulars. They had almost
everywhere borne an equal part in the fighting, and, rank and file, they
had felt with a keen resentment the open contempt for their rude
equipment and rustic discipline which too many arrogant officers and
insolent men among the regulars had shown. They knew that they had
proved themselves the equals of any man in the King’s pay in the
fighting, and they had come out of the hot business confident that
henceforth, at any rate, they could dispense with English troops and
take care of themselves. They had lost both their fear of the French and
their awe of the English.
THE HEAT OF POLITICS
CHAPTER V
’Twas hardly an opportune time for statesmen in London to make a new and
larger place for England’s authority in America, and yet that was what
they immediately attempted. Save Chatham and Burke and a few discerning
men who had neither place nor power, there was no longer any one in
England who knew, though it were never so vaguely, the real temper and
character of the colonists. ’Twas matter of common knowledge and
comment, it is true, that the men of Massachusetts were beyond all
reason impatient of command or restraint, affecting an independence
which was hardly to be distinguished from contumacy and insubordination;
but what ground was there to suppose that a like haughty and
ungovernable spirit lurked in the loyal and quiet South, or among the
prudent traders and phlegmatic farmers who were making the middle
colonies so rich, and so regardful of themselves in every point of gain
or interest? Statesmen of an elder generation had had a sure instinct
what must be the feeling of Englishmen in America, and had, with “a wise
and salutary neglect,” suffered them to take their own way in every
matter of self-government. Though ministry after ministry had asserted a
rigorous and exacting supremacy for the mother-country in every affair
of commerce, and had determined as they pleased what the colonies
should be suffered to manufacture, and how they should be allowed to
trade--with what merchants, in what commodities, in what bottoms, within
what limits--they had nevertheless withheld their hands hitherto from
all direct exercise of authority in the handling of the internal affairs
of the several settlements, had given them leave always to originate
their own legislation and their own measures of finance, until
self-government had become with them a thing as if of immemorial
privilege. Sir William Keith, sometime Governor of Pennsylvania, had
suggested to Sir Robert Walpole that he should raise revenue from the
colonies. “What!” exclaimed that shrewd master of men. “I have Old
England set against me, and do you think I will have New England
likewise?”
But men had come into authority in England now who lacked this stout
sagacity, and every element of sound discretion. English arms and
English money, they could say, had swept the French power from America
in order that the colonies might no longer suffer menace or rivalry. A
great debt had been piled up in the process. Should not the colonies,
who had reaped the chief benefit, bear part of the cost? They had
themselves incurred burdensome debts, no doubt, in the struggle, and
their assemblies would very likely profess themselves willing to vote
what they could should his Majesty call upon them and press them. But an
adequate and orderly system of taxation could not be wrought out by the
separate measures of a dozen petty legislatures; ’twere best the
taxation should be direct and by Parliament, whose authority, surely, no
man outside turbulent Boston would be mad enough seriously to question
or resist. It would, in any event, be wholesome, now the colonies were
likely to grow lusty as kingdoms in their roomy continent, to assert a
mother’s power to use and restrain--a power by no means lost because too
long unexercised and neglected. It was with such wisdom the first step
was taken. In March, 1764, Parliament voted it “just and necessary that
a revenue be raised in America,” passed an act meant to secure duties on
wines and sugars, and took measures to increase the efficiency of the
revenue service in America.
George Grenville was Prime-Minister. He lacked neither official capacity
nor acquaintance with affairs. He thought it just the colonists should
pay their quota into the national treasury, seeing they were so served
by the national power; and he declared that in the next session of
Parliament he should propose certain direct taxes in addition to the
indirect already in force. He saw no sufficient reason to doubt that the
colonies would acquiesce, if not without protest, at least without
tumult or dangerous resistance. It was a sad blunder. Virginia resented
threat and execution alike in such a matter as deeply as did litigious
Massachusetts. A long generation ago, in the quiet year 1732, when bluff
Sir Robert was Prime-Minister, there had been an incident which Governor
Keith, maybe, had forgotten. The ministry had demanded of Massachusetts
that she should establish a fixed salary for her governors by a standing
grant; but she had refused, and the ministers had receded. The affair
had not been lost upon the other colonies. That sturdy onetime royal
Governor, Alexander Spotswood, in Virginia, had noted it very
particularly, and spoken of it very bluntly, diligent servant of the
crown as he was, to Colonel William Byrd, when he came his way on his
“progress to the mines.” He declared “that if the Assembly in New
England would stand bluff, he did not see how they could be forced to
raise money against their will, for if they should direct it to be done
by act of Parliament, which they have threatened to do (though it be
against the right of Englishmen to be taxed but by their
representatives), yet they would find it no easy matter to put such an
act in execution.” No observing man could so much as travel in Virginia
without finding very promptly what it was that gave point and poignancy
to such an opinion. That quiet gentleman the Rev. Andrew Burnaby, Vicar
of Greenwich, was in Virginia in 1759, and saw plainly enough how
matters stood. “The public or political character of the Virginians,” he
said, “corresponds with their private one; they are haughty and jealous
of their liberties, impatient of restraint, and can scarcely bear the
thought of being controlled by any superior power. Many of them consider
the colonies as independent states, not connected with Great Britain
otherwise than by having the same common King and being bound to her
with natural affection.” Not only so, but “they think it a hardship not
to have an unlimited trade to every part of the world.” All this, and
more, Grenville might have learned by the simple pains of inquiry. One
had but to open his eyes and look to see how imperious a race had been
bred in the almost feudal South; and, for all they had never heard
revolutionary talk thence, ministers ought to have dreaded the leisure
men had there to think, the provocation to be proud, the necessity to be
masterful and individual, quite as much as they had ever dreaded the
stubborn temper and the quick capacity for united action they had once
and again seen excited in New England.
[Illustration: TAZEWELL HALL, THE HOUSE OF THE RANDOLPHS
(After a print in _Omitted Chapters of History in the Life and Papers of
Edward Randolph_.
By Courtesy of G. P. Putnam’s Sons)]
[Illustration: WILLIAM AND MARY COLLEGE
(From an old print)]
It was not necessary to try new laws to see what the colonies would do
if provoked. The difficulty already encountered in enforcing the laws of
trade was object-lesson enough; and the trouble in that matter had grown
acute but yesterday. For long, indeed, no one in the colonies questioned
the right of Parliament to regulate their trade; but it was notorious
that the laws actually enacted in that matter had gone smoothly off in
America only because they were not seriously enforced. “The trade hither
is engrossed by the Saints of New England,” laughed Colonel Byrd, “who
carry off a great deal of tobacco without troubling themselves with
paying that impertinent duty of a penny a pound.” The Acts of Trade
practically forbade direct commerce with foreign countries or their
dependencies, especially in foreign bottoms; but ships from France,
Spain, and the Canary Isles came and went very freely, notwithstanding,
in colonial ports; for royal officials liked to enjoy a comfortable
peace and the esteem of their neighbors, and very genially winked at
such transgressions. Cargoes without number were sent to the Dutch and
Spanish West Indies every year, and as many brought thence, which were
undoubtedly forfeit under the navigation laws Parliament had been at
such pains to elaborate and enforce; and privateering as well as
smuggling had for long afforded the doughty seamen of Boston, Salem,
Charleston, and New York a genteel career of profit. Things had come to
such a pass that where business went briskly the people of the colonial
ports demanded as of right “a full freedom of illegal trade,” and broke
sometimes into riot when it was denied them. The Boston _News Letter_
had been known very courteously to mourn the death of a worthy collector
of his Majesty’s customs because, “with much humanity,” he had been
used to take “pleasure in directing masters of vessels how they ought to
avoid the breach of the Acts of Trade.” Sea captains grew accustomed to
very confidential relations with owners and consignees, and knew very
well, without official counsel, how to take the advice “not to declare
at the Custom-house”; and things went very easily and cordially with all
parties to the understanding.
In 1761 that understanding was of a sudden rudely broken and the trouble
began, which Grenville had the folly to add to. The Board of Trade
determined to collect the duties on sugar, molasses, and rum, so long
and so systematically evaded in the trade between New England and the
West Indies, at whatever cost of suit and scrutiny, and directed their
agents in Boston to demand “writs of assistance” from the courts, giving
them leave to enter what premises they would in search of smuggled
goods. There were instant exasperation and resistance. General
search-warrants, opening every man’s door to the officers of the law,
with or without just and explicit ground of suspicion against him, no
English subject anywhere would submit to; and yet these writs authorized
nothing less. Issued under a questionable extension to America of an
exceptional power of the Court of Exchequer, they violated every
precedent of the common law, no less than every principle of prudent
administration; and the excitement which they provoked was at once deep
and ominous. Sharp resistance was made in the courts, and no officer
ever ventured to serve one of the obnoxious writs. Such challenge of the
process was uttered by colonial counsel upon trial of the right,
moreover, that ministers would be without excuse should they ignore the
warning, so explicit and so eloquent of revolutionary purpose. It was
James Otis who uttered it. He had but the other day carried the royal
commission in his pocket as Advocate-General in his Majesty’s Court of
Admiralty; but he would not have scrupled, even as his Majesty’s
servant, he said, to oppose the exercise of a power which had already
cost one King his head and another his throne. To oppose in such a case
was to defend the very constitution under which the King wore his crown.
That constitution secured to Englishmen everywhere the rights of
freemen; the colonists had, besides, the plain guarantees of their own
charters; if constitution and charter failed, or were gainsaid, the
principles of natural reason sufficed for defence against measures so
arrogant and so futile. No lawyer could justify these extraordinary
writs; no King with an army at his back could ever force them to
execution.
Protest not only, but defiance, rang very clear in these fearless words;
and ministers must avow themselves very ignorant should they pretend
they did not know how Mr. Otis had kindled fire from one end of the
colonies to the other. But Grenville was resolute to take all risks and
push his policy. He did not flinch from the enforcement of the measures
of 1764, and in the session of 1765 calmly fulfilled his promise of
further taxation. He proposed that the colonists should be required to
use revenue stamps upon all their commercial paper, legal documents,
pamphlets, and newspapers; and that, at once as a general measure of
convenience and a salutary exhibition of authority, his Majesty’s troops
stationed in the plantations should be billeted on the people.
Parliament readily acquiesced. It was thus Grenville purposed
“defraying the expenses of defending, protecting, and securing” the
colonies; but he came near losing them instead. The act was passed in
March; it was not to go into effect until November; but the colonists
did not keep him waiting until November for their protests. It was the
voice of a veritable tempest that presently came over sea to the ear of
the startled minister. And it was not the General Court of turbulent
Massachusetts, but the House of Burgesses of loyal Virginia that first
spoke the general indignation. Already in the autumn of 1764, upon the
mere threat of what was to come, that House had spoken very urgently
against the measures proposed, in a memorial to King and Parliament,
which, amidst every proper phrase of loyalty and affection, had plainly
declared it the opinion of his Majesty’s subjects in Virginia that such
acts would be in flat violation of their undoubted rights and liberties;
and the committee by which that memorial was drawn up had contained
almost every man of chief consequence in the counsels of the colony, the
King’s Attorney-General himself not excepted. But it was one thing to
protest against measures to come and quite another to oppose their
execution when enacted into laws. The one was constitutional agitation;
the other, flat rebellion--little less. It was very ominous to read the
words of the extraordinary resolutions passed by the Burgesses on the
30th of May, 1765, after the Stamp Act had become law, and note the tone
of restrained passion that ran through them. They declared that from the
first the settlers of “his Majesty’s colony and dominion” of Virginia
had possessed and enjoyed all the privileges, franchises, and immunities
at any time enjoyed by the people of Great Britain itself; and that
this, their freedom, had been explicitly secured to them by their
charters, “to all intents and purposes as if they had been abiding and
born within the realm of England”; “that the taxation of the people by
themselves or by persons chosen by themselves to represent them” was “a
distinguishing characteristic of British freedom, without which the
ancient constitution” of the realm itself could not subsist; “and that
his Majesty’s liege people of this most ancient colony” had
“uninterruptedly enjoyed the right of being thus governed by their
assemblies in the article of their taxes and internal police,” had never
forfeited or relinquished it, and had seen it “constantly recognized by
the Kings and people of Great Britain.”
Spoken as it was in protest against actual legislation already adopted
by Parliament in direct despite of all such privileges and immunities,
this declaration of rights seemed to lack its conclusion. The
constitutional rights of Virginians had been invaded. What then?
_Resolved_, therefore, “that his Majesty’s liege people, the inhabitants
of this colony, are not bound to yield obedience to any law or ordinance
whatever designed to impose any taxation whatsoever upon them, other
than the laws or ordinances of the General Assembly aforesaid,” and
“that any person who shall, by speaking or writing, assert or maintain”
the contrary “shall be deemed an enemy of his Majesty’s colony.” Such
had been the uncompromising conclusion drawn by the mover of the
resolutions. What other conclusion could any man draw if he deemed the
colonists men, and proud men at that? But the Burgesses would not go so
far or be so explicit. They feared to speak treason; they were content
to protest of their rights, and let the issue bring conclusions to
light. It had been hot fighting to get even that much said. The men
hitherto accepted always as leaders in the House had wished to hold it
back from rash and heated action, and there had been bitter debates
before even those significant premises for a revolutionary conclusion
had been forced to adoption. Old leaders and new, young men and old
alike, had willingly united in the memorial of 1764; but now that the
Stamp Act was law, conservative members shrank from doing what must look
so like a flat defiance of Parliament. Only young men would have had the
audacity to urge such action; only very extraordinary young men would
have had the capacity to induce the House to take it. But such young men
were at hand, their leader as veritable a democrat as had ever taken the
floor in that assembly.
Patrick Henry was not of the aristocracy of the colony. Good Scots blood
ran in his veins, quickened by the lively strain of an old Welsh stock.
His father came of a race of scholars, and, good churchman though he
was, knew his Livy and his Horace better than his Bible. His mother came
of a vivacious line of easy-going wits and talkers, which but a touch
more of steadiness and energy might any day have made famous. His father
had served his county of Hanover very capably and acceptably as
surveyor, colonel, magistrate, and his uncle had been beloved as the
faithful pastor of quiet parishes. But they had been no long time in the
colony; they lived back from the tide-water counties where the real
aristocracy had its strength and supremacy; they were of that middle
class of yeomen-gentlemen who love liberty but do not affect rank. “A
vigorous aristocracy favors the growth of personal eminence even in
those who are not of it, but only near it,” and these plain men of the
middle counties were the more excellent and individual in the
cultivation of their powers by reason of the contact. But there was a
touch of rusticity, a neglect of polish, a rough candor of speech, about
them which set them apart and distinguished them sharply enough when
they came into the presence of the courtly and formal gentlemen who
practised the manners of London in the river counties. Patrick Henry, at
any rate, must have seemed a very rustic figure to the Burgesses when he
first came to take his seat amongst them on a May day in 1765. He was
known, indeed, to many. This was the man, they must have known, who had
won so strange a verdict from a jury two years ago in the celebrated
parsons’ case at Hanover court-house, against the law and the evidence.
But his careless dress and manner, his loose, ungainly figure, his
listless, absent bearing, must have set many a courtly member staring.
For such men as Washington, indeed, there can have been nothing either
strange or unattractive in the rough exterior and unstudied ways of the
new member. Punctilious though he was himself in every point of dress
and bearing, Washington’s life had most of it been spent with men who
looked thus, and yet were stuff of true courage and rich capacity
within. The manner of a man could count as no test of quality with him.
His experience had covered the whole variety of Virginian life. He was
an aristocrat by taste, not by principle. And Patrick Henry had, in
fact, come to the same growth as he in essential quality and principle,
though by another way. Henry’s life had been wilful, capricious, a bit
haphazard, Washington’s all the while subject to discipline; but both
men had touched and seen the whole energy of the commonwealth, knew its
hope, could divine its destiny. There was but one Virginia, and they
were her children. It could not take long to bring them to an
understanding and comradeship in affairs.
It was characteristic of the new member that he should step at once and
unhesitatingly to a place of leadership when debate of the Stamp Act
stirred the House, and that he should instantly sweep the majority into
his following with a charm and dash of eloquence that came like a
revelation upon the quiet assembly. He was but twenty-nine years old,
but he had spent all his life in learning how the world went, and by
what manner of speech it was moved and governed. He had roamed the woods
with no thought but for sport, or a quiet hour with a book or his fancy
in the shade of the trees. He had kept a country store, and let gossip
and talk of affairs of colony and country-side take precedence of
business. Finally he had turned with a permanent relish to the law, and
had set himself to plead causes for his neighbors in a way that made
judges stare and juries surrender at discretion. In everything he had
seemed to read the passions of men. Books no less than men, the chance
company of an old author no less than the constant talk of the
neighborly land he lived in, seemed to fill him with the quick
principles of the people and polity to which he belonged, and to lend
him as inevitably every living phrase in which to utter them. The
universal sympathy and insight which made his pleasantry so engaging to
men of every stamp rendered his power no less than terrible when he
turned to play upon their passions. He was not conscious of any audacity
when he sprang to his feet upon the instant he saw the House resolved
into committee to consider the Stamp Act. It was of the ardor of his
nature to speak when conviction moved him strongly, without thought of
propriety or precedence; and it was like him to stand there absorbed,
reading his resolutions from a fly-leaf torn from an old law-book.
It seemed no doubt a precious piece of audacity in the eyes of the
prescriptive leaders of the House to hear this almost unknown man
propose his high recital of Virginia’s liberties and his express
defiance of Parliament--in tones which rang no less clear and confident
upon the clause which declared “his Majesty’s liege people” of the
colony in no way bound to yield obedience, than in the utterance of the
accepted matter of his premises. Debate flamed up at once, hot, even
passionate. The astounding, moving eloquence of the young advocate, his
instant hold upon the House, the directness with which he purposed and
executed action in so grave a matter, stirred the pulses of his
opponents and his followers with an equal power, and roused those who
would have checked him to a vehemence as great as his own. The old
leaders of the House, with whom he now stood face to face in this
critical business, were the more formidable because of the strong reason
of their position. No one could justly doubt that they wished to see the
Old Dominion keep and vindicate her liberty, but they deemed it folly to
be thus intemperately beforehand with the issue. Almost to a man they
were sprung of families who had come to Virginia with the great
migration that had brought the Washingtons, in the evil day when so many
were fleeing England to be quit of the Puritan tyranny--royalists all,
and touched to the quick with the sentiment of loyalty. ’Twas now a
long time since Cromwell’s day, indeed; generations had passed, and a
deep passion for Virginia had been added to that old reverence for the
wearer of the crown in England. But these men prided themselves still
upon their loyalty; made it a point of honor to show themselves no
agitators, but constitutional statesmen. It made them grave and deeply
anxious to see the privileges that were most dear to them thus violated
and denied, but it did not make them hasty to quarrel with the
Parliament of the realm. They had intended opposition, but they feared
to throw their cause away by defiance. ’Twas as little wise as dignified
to flout thus at the sovereign power before all means had been exhausted
to win it to forbearance.
It was not the least part of the difficulty to face the veteran Speaker,
John Robinson, so old in affairs, so stately in his age, so gravely
courteous, and yet with such a threat of good manners against those who
should make breach of the decorous traditions of the place. But the men
chiefly to be feared were on the floor. There was Richard Bland, “wary,
old, experienced,” with “something of the look,” a Virginian wit said,
“of old musty parchments, which he handleth and studieth much,” author
of a “treatise against the Quakers on water-baptism”; with none of the
gifts of an orator, but a veritable antiquarian in law and the
precedents of public business, a very formidable man in counsel. Quiet
men trusted him, and thought his prudence very wise. George Wythe was no
less learned, and no less influential. Men knew him a man of letters,
bringing the knowledge of many wise books to the practice of affairs,
and set great store by his sincerity, as artless as it was human, and
sweetened with good feeling. It made Randolph and Pendleton and
Nicholas, the elder orators of the House, seem the more redoubtable that
they should have such men as these at their elbows to prompt and steady
them. And yet they would have been formidable enough of themselves.
Edmund Pendleton had not, indeed, the blood or the breeding that gave
his colleagues prestige. He had won his way to leadership by his own
steady genius for affairs. He read nothing but law-books, knew nothing
but business, cared for nothing but to make practical test of his
powers. But he took all his life and purpose with such a zest, made
every stroke with so serene a self-possession, was so quick to see and
act upon every advantage in his business of debate, and was withal so
transparent, bore himself with such a grace and charm of manner, was so
obviously right-minded and upright, that it meant a great deal to the
House to hear him intervene in its discussions with his melodious voice,
his cool, distinct, effective elocution. Robert Carter Nicholas added to
like talents for business and debate a reverent piety, a title to be
loved and trusted without question, which no man ever thought to
gainsay. And Peyton Randolph, with his “knowledge, temper, experience,
judgment, integrity” as of a true Roman spirit, was a sort of prince
among the rest. No man could doubt he wished Virginia to have her
liberties. He had gone over sea to speak for her in Dinwiddie’s day,
though he was the King’s attorney, and had lost his office for his
boldness. But there were traditions of loyalty and service in his
breeding which no man might rightly ignore. His father before him had
won knighthood and the royal favor by long and honorable service as his
Majesty’s attorney in the colony. Pride and loyalty had gone hand in
hand in the annals of a proud race, and had won for the Randolphs a
prestige which made it impossible Sir John’s son should very long be
kept from the office he had so honorably inherited. And so Peyton
Randolph was now once again the King’s attorney. It was not as the
King’s officer, however, but as an experienced Parliamentary tactician,
a trained debater, a sound man of affairs, that he had set himself to
check Henry in his revolutionary courses.
Henry found himself, in truth, passionately set upon. Even threats were
uttered, and abuse such as proud men find ill to bear. They cried
“Treason! treason!” upon him when he dared declare the King would do
well to look to the fate of Cæsar and Charles the First for profitable
examples. But he was not daunted a whit. “If this be treason, make the
most of it,” was his defiance to them. One ally who might have stood
with him, had he known, was absent. Richard Henry Lee would have brought
to his support a name as ancient and as honorable as any in the colony,
and an eloquence scarcely less than his own. But, as it was, he was left
almost alone, and won his battle with no other aid than very plain men
could lend by vote and homely utterance. The vote was very close, but
enough. Randolph flung out of the House, muttering in his heat that he
“would have given five hundred guineas for a single vote.” Henry, taking
the triumph very simply, as was his wont, and knowing his work for the
session done, quietly made his way homeward that very day, striding
unconcernedly down Duke of Gloucester Street, chatting with a friend,
his legs clad in buckskin as if for the frontier, his saddle-bags and
the reins of his lean nag slung carelessly over his arm.
[Illustration: PEYTON RANDOLPH]
The Assembly had adopted Henry’s declaration of rights, not his
resolution of disobedience, and had softened a little the language he
would have used; but its action seemed seditious enough to Fauquier, the
Governor, and he promptly dissolved them. It did little good to send
Virginians home, however, if the object was to check agitation. The
whole manner of their life bred thought and concert of action. Where men
have leave to be individual, live separately and with a proud
self-respect, and yet are much at each other’s tables, often in vestry
council together, constantly coming and going, talking and planning
throughout all the country-side, accustomed to form their opinions in
league, and yet express each man his own with a dash and flavor of
independence; where there is the leisure to reflect, the habit of joint
efforts in business, the spirit to be social, and abundant opportunity
to be frank withal, if you will--you may look to see public views form
themselves very confidently, and as easily without assemblies as with
them. Washington had taken no part in the stormy scenes of the House,
but had sat calmly apart rather, concerned and thoughtful. He was not
easily caught by the excitement of a sudden agitation. He had the
soldier’s steady habit of self-possession in the presence of a crisis,
and his own way of holding things at arm’s-length for scrutiny--“like a
bishop at his prayers,” a wag said. He had a soldier’s loyalty, too, and
slowness at rebellion. His thought, no doubt, was with the
conservatives, whatever may have been the light that sprang into his
quiet eye when Henry’s voice rang out so like a clarion, calling
Virginia to her standard; and he went home, upon the dissolution, to
join and aid his neighbors in the slow discussion which must shape
affairs to an issue.
“The Virginia Resolutions” had run like a flame through the
colonies--not as the Burgesses had adopted them, but as Henry had drawn
them, with their express threat of disobedience. Nor was that all.
October, 1765, saw delegates from nine colonies come together in New
York, at the call of Massachusetts, to take counsel what should be done.
Every one knew that Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia, the only
colonies absent from the “congress,” would have sent delegates too had
their Governors not prevented them by the dissolution of their
Assemblies before they could act on the call. A deep excitement and
concern had spread everywhere throughout the settlements. Not only did
the impending enforcement of the act engross “the conversation of the
speculative part of the colonists,” as Washington wrote to Francis
Dandridge in London; it promised to engross also the energies of very
active, and it might be very violent, men in many quarters, and it began
to grow evident that some part of government itself would be brought to
a standstill by its processes. “Our courts of judicature,” declared
Washington, “must inevitably be shut up; for it is impossible (or next
of kin to it), under our present circumstances, that the act of
Parliament can be complied with ...; and if a stop be put to our
judicial proceedings, I fancy the merchants of Great Britain trading to
the colonies will not be among the last to wish for a repeal of it.” The
congress at New York drew up nothing less than a bill of rights and
immunities, and sent resolutions over sea which arrested the attention
of the world. The Virginian Assembly despatched like papers for itself;
and Richard Henry Lee, when he had assisted to draw its memorials,
hastened home to form in his own Cavalier county a “Westmoreland
Association,” whose members (four Washingtons among the rest) bound
themselves by a solemn covenant to “exert every faculty to prevent the
execution of the said Stamp Act in any instance whatsoever within this
colony.” The ministry could not stand the pressure. They gave way to
Lord Rockingham, and the act was repealed.
Meanwhile Washington, his calm temper unshaken, was slowly coming to a
clear vision of affairs in all their significance. Fox-hunting did not
cease. He was much in the saddle and at table with the Fairfaxes, whom
nothing could shake from their allegiance, and who looked with sad
forebodings upon the temper the colony was in. It was proper they should
speak so if they deemed it just, and Washington had no intolerance for
what they urged. But George Mason, the neighbor whom he most trusted,
was of a very different mind, and strengthened and confirmed him in
other counsels. Mason was six years his senior; a man, too, cast by
nature to understand men and events, how they must go and how be guided.
They conferred constantly, at every turn of their intimate life, in the
field or in the library, mounted or afoot in the forests, and came very
deliberately and soberly to their statesman’s view. Randolph and
Pendleton and Wythe and Bland had themselves turned, after the first
hesitation, to act with ardent men like Lee in framing the memorials to
King, Lords, and Commons which were to go from the Burgesses along with
the resolutions of the Stamp Act Congress in New York; and Washington,
who had never hesitated, but had only gone slowly and with his eyes
open, with that self-poise men had found so striking in him from the
first, came steadily with the rest to the at last common purpose of
resolute opposition. The repeal of the act came to all like a great
deliverance.
Governor Fauquier had deemed it his duty to dissolve the Assembly upon
the passage of Henry’s resolutions, but he had acted without passion in
the matter, and had kept the respect of the men he dealt with. He was
not a man, indeed, to take public business very seriously, having been
bred a man of fashion and a courtier rather than a master of affairs. He
loved gay company and the deep excitement of the gaming-table, not the
round of official routine. Affable, generous, elegant, a scholar and
real lover of letters, he vastly preferred the talk of vivacious women
and accomplished men to the business of the General Court, and was a man
to be liked rather than consulted. Washington, always admitted to the
intimacy of official circles at Williamsburg, very likely relished the
gallant Fauquier better than the too officious Dinwiddie. It was,
unhappily, no portent to see a man still devoted to dissipation at
sixty-two, even though he were Governor of one of his Majesty’s colonies
and a trusted servant of the crown; and Fauquier’s gifts as a man of wit
and of instructed tastes made his companionship no less acceptable to
Washington than to the other men of discernment who frequented the
ballrooms and receptions, ate formal dinners, and played quiet games of
cards during the brief season at the little capital. It did not
seriously disturb life there that the Governor upheld the power of
Parliament to tax, while the Burgesses strenuously opposed it.
Washington, for one, did not hesitate on that account to be seen often
in friendly talk with the Governor, or to accept frequent
[Illustration: GEORGE MASON]
invitations to the “palace.” He was of the temper which has so
distinguished the nobler sort of Englishmen in politics: he might regard
opposition as a public duty, but he never made it a ground of personal
feeling or private spite. In a sense, indeed, he had long been regarded
as belonging to official circles in the colony, more intimately than any
other man who did not hold office. He had been put forward by the
Fairfaxes in his youth; men in the Council and at the head of affairs
had been his sponsors and friends from the first; he had been always,
like his brother before him, a member of one of the chief groups in the
colony for influence and a confidential connection with the public
business. It was even understood that he was himself destined for the
Council, when it should be possible to put him in it without seeming to
give too great a preponderance to the Fairfax interest, already so much
regarded in its make-up.
The first flurry of differing views and conflicting purposes among the
Virginian leaders had passed off. The judgment of high-spirited men
everywhere sustained Henry--gave him unmistakable authentication as a
leader; put all public men in the way of understanding their
constituents. Some were bold and some were timid, but all were animated
by the same hope and purpose, and few were yet intemperate. “Sensible of
the importance of unanimity among our constituents,” said Jefferson
afterwards, looking back to that time when he was young and in the first
flush of his radical sentiments, “although we often wished to have gone
faster, we slackened our pace, that our less ardent colleagues might
keep up with us; and they, on their part, differing nothing from us in
principle, quickened their gait somewhat beyond that which their
prudence might of itself have advised.” Patrick Henry was received to
the place he had earned; and although the older leaders resumed that
sway in counsel to which their tried skill and varied experience in
affairs fairly entitled them, there was no longer any jealous exclusion
of new men. Henry’s fame crept through the colonies as the man who had
first spoken the mind not of Virginians only, but of all just men, with
regard to the liberties of Englishmen in America. Before a year was out
Richard Bland himself, parchment man and conservative that he was, had
written and published a pamphlet entitled “An Inquiry into the Rights of
the British Colonies,” which said nothing less than that in all that
concerned her internal affairs Virginia was “a distinct, independent
state,” though “united with the parent state by the closest league and
amity, and under the same allegiance.” A colony “treated with injury and
violence,” he exclaimed, “is become an alien.” When antiquarians and
lawyers, fresh from poring upon old documents, spoke thus, there were
surely signs of the times.
The government at home kept colonial sentiment very busy. Even Lord
Rockingham’s government, with Burke to admonish it, coupled its repeal
of the stamp duties with a “declaratory act” which sought to quiet
controversy by giving the lie direct to every argument urged against its
authority in the colonies. “Parliament has power to bind the colonies in
all cases whatsoever,” was its round assertion:--“a resolution for
England’s right to do what the Treasury pleased with three millions of
freemen,” cried Chatham. Though Rockingham’s government would not act on
that right, its successors would without scruple; and they were soon
about it, for Rockingham’s ministry retained office scarcely a
twelvemonth. Grenville was, indeed, discredited; but Grafton and
Townshend were as bad, as stubborn in temper, as reckless in policy. The
year 1767 saw taxes proposed and enacted on glass, paper, painters’
colors, and tea imported into the colonies, with a purpose to pay fixed
salaries to the crown’s officers in the colonies out of the proceeds;
and the contested ground was all to go over again. To show their temper,
the new ministers suspended the legislative powers of the Colonial
Assembly in New York for refusing to make provision for troops quartered
upon the colony. To complete their fiscal arrangements they presently
created a custom-house and board of revenue commissioners for America.
It was an ominous year, and set opinion forward not a little in the
colonies.
The House of Burgesses broke, at its next session (1768), into fresh
protests and remonstrances, and there was no one to restrain or rebuke
it. Fauquier was dead, and gone to his reckoning; the reins of
government were in the hands of gentle John Blair, President of the
Council, a Virginian every inch, and with never a thought of checking
his fellow-colonists in the expression of their just opinions. The
autumn brought Lord Botetourt, the new Governor-General, who came in
showy state, and with genial display of courtly manners and good
feeling; but his arrival made little difference. The Burgesses smiled to
see him come to open their session of 1769 with pageant of coach and
six, brave display of royal insignia, and the manner of a sovereign
meeting Parliament; and turned from him almost in contempt to denounce
once more the course of the ministers, argue again the rights of
America, declare they would draw the colonies together in concerted
opposition, and call upon the other colonies to concur with them alike
in their principles and in their purpose. Botetourt came hot foot to
dissolve them; but they only shifted their place of meeting, gathered
again at the private house of Mr. Anthony Hay, and there resolved no
longer to import the things which Parliament had taxed in despite of
them. George Mason had drawn the resolutions, at Washington’s request,
and Washington himself presented them.
Mason’s thought had hastened very far along the path of opposition under
the whip of England’s policy; and Washington’s quite as far. The
government had not only sent troops to Boston and dissolved every
Assembly that protested, but had advised the King to press prosecutions
for treason in the colonies, and, should there be deemed sufficient
ground, transport the accused to England to be tried by special
commission. It was this last measure that had provoked the Burgesses to
their hottest outburst. “At a time when our lordly masters in Great
Britain will be satisfied with nothing less than the deprivation of
American freedom,” wrote Washington to Mason, with a sudden burst of
passion, “it seems highly necessary that something should be done to
avert the stroke, and maintain the liberty which we have derived from
our ancestors.... That no man should scruple, or hesitate a moment, to
use a-ms in defence of so valuable a blessing, on which all the good and
evil of life depends, is clearly my opinion. Yet a-ms, I would beg leave
to add, should be the last resource.” Addresses to the throne and
remonstrances to Parliament had failed: it remained to try “starving
their trades and manufactures,” to see if that at last would arrest
their attention. No doubt even that would prove of little avail; but it
was at least peaceable and worth the trial. The next month, accordingly,
he got unhesitatingly to his feet in the private meeting of the
Burgesses at Mr. Hay’s and moved George Mason’s resolutions; nor did he
forget to subscribe his quota to the fund which was to defray the
expenses of the “association” there formed.
The next evening he attended the “Queen’s Birth-Night” at the palace
with the same naturalness of demeanor and frankness of dealing towards
the Governor as before. Botetourt was not all show and gallantly, but
was a genuine man at bottom. He had come to Virginia thinking the
colonists a pleasure-loving people who could be taken by display and
cajoled by hospitality: he had been told they were such in London. But
he knew his mistake almost as soon as he had made it; and was prompt,
even while he upheld prerogative, to do what he could to deal with them
in a liberal and manly spirit. He had acquiesced very heartily at the
outset of his administration in a decision of the Council that writs of
assistance could not legally be issued in Virginia,--for the process had
been tried there too. He made such representations with regard to the
state of the colony to the ministers at home as were both just and wise;
was assured in reply that the ministers were willing to make every
necessary concession; pledged his word in Virginia that there should be
a substantial change of policy; and died the sooner (October 15, 1770)
because the government would not, after all, redeem his promises. “Your
Governor is becoming very popular, as we are told here,” wrote Arthur
Lee to his brother, from London, “and I have the worst proof of it in
the increased orders for fineries from the ladies.” Virginians did not
find it easy to break an immemorial habit in order to starve the English
trades and manufactures; and it was more than once necessary to urge and
renew the non-importation agreements alike among the Burgesses and
merchants at Williamsburg and by means of local associations throughout
the colony. But Washington was punctilious to observe to the letter the
agreements he had himself proposed. Again and again he bade his
mercantile agents in London assist him to guard against any inadvertent
breach of them: not to send him the articles Parliament had picked out
for taxation in the colonies.
Life still continued to go, it is true, with something of the old
sumptuousness at Mount Vernon. It was in June, 1768, that Colonel
Washington ordered a new chariot, “made in the newest taste, handsome,
genteel, and light, to be made of the best seasoned wood, and by a
celebrated workman,” which was to cost him, fittings and all, £133. For
all he grew uneasy lest the colonies’ disagreement with England should
come at last to a conflict of arms, he pushed his private interests with
no abatement of thoroughness or self-possession, as if there were no
fear but that things would long enough stand as they were. He had not
run surveyor’s lines for Lord Fairfax, or assisted to drive the French
from the Ohio, without seeing what fair lands lay upon the western
rivers awaiting an owner; and, though there was still doubt how titles
were to be established in that wilderness, he took care, through the
good offices of an old comrade in arms, at least to be quietly
beforehand with other claimants in setting up such titles as might be
where the land lay richest and most accessible. “A silent management”
was what he advised, “snugly carried on under the guise of hunting other
game,” lest there should be a premature rush thither that would set
rival interests a-clashing. A strange mixture of the shrewdness of the
speculator and the honesty of the gentleman--claims pushed with privacy,
but without trickery or chicane--ran through his letters to Captain
Crawford, and drew as canny replies from the frontiered soldier.
Business gave way often to sport and pleasure, too, as of old, when
politics fell dull between sessions. Now it was the hunt; then a gunning
party in the woods; and again a day or two aboard his schooner, dropping
down the river, and drawing the seine for sheepsheads upon the bar at
Cedar Point. Even politics was mixed with diversion. He must needs give
a ball at Alexandria on the evening of his election to the House which
was to meet Lord Botetourt, no less than on other like occasions, of
whatever kind the business of the Assembly was likely to be. He did not
lose his passion for fine horse-flesh, either, at the thickest of the
plot. In 1770 he was with Governor Eden, of North Carolina, at the
Jockey Club races in Philadelphia, no doubt relieved by the news that
all but the tea tax had been repealed. The next year it was the races in
Annapolis that claimed him; and in 1773 Jacky Custis held him again at
Philadelphia on the same errand. It was wholesome to be thus calmly in
pursuit of diversion in the intervals of trying business. It bespoke a
hearty life and a fine balance in the man.
There was one matter to which Washington felt it his bounden duty as a
soldier and a man of honor to devote his time and energies, whether
politics pressed or not. A grant of two hundred thousand acres of the
western lands had been promised by the government of the colony to
those who enlisted for the war against the French and Indians in 1754;
but nothing had ever been done to fulfil the promise, and Washington
undertook to act as agent for his comrades in the business. In the
autumn of 1770, accordingly, he turned away for a space from the
deepening trouble in the east to plunge once more into the western ways
and search out proper tracts for the grant along the reaches of the
Ohio. ’Twas a two-months journey, for he did not stop till he had gone
close upon three hundred miles beyond Fort Pitt. And when he was home
again no one in the government who could lend a hand in the matter got
any peace from the stirring, thorough man until the business was put
finally into shape. There was a tidy profit in the grant for himself;
for his own share was large, and he providently bought, besides, the
shares of others who were unwilling to spend or co-operate in the
matter. But there were months upon months of weary, unrequited service
for his comrades, too, given with hearty diligence and without grudging.
Their portions were as well placed as his own, they were to find, when
it came to the survey. He came off from the business very rich in
western lands--buying the Great Meadows, among the rest, for memory’s
sake--but richer still in the gratitude and admiration of the men for
whom he had labored.
Meanwhile events darkened ominously. A new administration had been
formed in England under Lord North, and had begun its government by
repealing all the taxes of 1769 except that on tea. But it was
Parliament’s right to tax them that the colonists were fighting, not the
taxes themselves, and one tax was as hateful as a hundred. The year had
been marked in sinister fashion, moreover, by a broil between townsmen
and troops in the streets of Boston, in which arms had been used and men
slain, and in the heated imaginations of the colonists the affair had
taken on the ugly aspect of a massacre. The year 1771 went quietly
enough for Virginians. Botetourt was dead, and that good merchant of
York, William Nelson, President of the Council, sat in the place of
authority throughout the year. Although the whole country refused the
taxed tea, the attention of the ministers, as it happened, was fixed
chiefly upon Massachusetts, where trade centred at a growing port and
opposition had a local habitation. In Virginia there was no place to
send troops to, unless the whole country were occupied, and so long as
Mr. Nelson was acting Governor, Colonel Washington could go without
preoccupation to the races, and gentlemen everywhere follow their own
devices in the quiet counties. There was rioting--rebellion, even--in
North Carolina, so uneasily did affairs go there; but Governor Tryon was
a soldier as well as a despot, and did not need to trouble his neighbors
about that. It was not until the first months of 1772 that Virginians
began to read plain signs of change in the face of their new Governor,
John Murray, Earl Dunmore--a dark and distant man, who seemed to the
Virginians to come like a satrap to his province, who brought a soldier
with him for secretary and confidential adviser, set up a fixed
etiquette to be observed by all who would approach him, spoke abruptly
and without courtesy, displayed in all things an arbitrary temper, and
took more interest, it presently appeared, in acquiring tracts of
western land than in conducting the government of the colony. The year
of his coming was marked by the secret destruction of the
revenue-schooner _Gaspé_ in Rhode Island, and by many significant flaws
of temper here and there throughout the colonies; and 1773 saw affairs
at last come to a crisis.
Dunmore had summoned the Burgesses to meet him upon his first coming,
but had liked their proud temper as little as they liked his, and was
careful not to call them together again till March, 1773, though he had
promised to convene them earlier. There was instant trouble. In view of
the affair of the _Gaspé_, Parliament had again resolved upon the trial
of malcontents in England, and the Burgesses were hot at seeing the
sentiments of the colonies so flouted. Conservative men would still have
waited to try events, but their fellow-members of quicker pulse were
diligent to disappoint them. Leadership fell to those who were bold
enough to take it; and Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee, Dabney Carr,
and Thomas Jefferson, radicals all, drew together, a self-constituted
committee of guidance. Evening after evening they met in a private room
at the Raleigh, with now and again one or two other like spirits called
into counsel, to consult what should be done. Richard Henry Lee proposed
that the colonies should be invited to join Virginia in appointing
committees of correspondence, through which to devise steady concert of
action, and that Virginia’s committee, to be appointed at once, should
be instructed to look into the character of the new court of trial
lately established in Rhode Island. Dabney Carr was directed to move the
resolutions, and the eloquence of Lee and Henry won for them an instant
and hearty acceptance. Dunmore promptly dissolved the Assembly, and
Washington
[Illustration:
Thomas Jefferson Patrick Henry
R. H. Lee F. L. Lee
IN THE OLD RALEIGH TAVERN]
was free to set out for New York to place Jacky Custis at King’s
College, lingering on the way in Philadelphia to see the races, and pick
up the talk of the hour during half a dozen evenings at the rooms of the
Jockey Club, at the balls and assemblies of the gay town, and at the
hospitable tables of his friends.
The opening of the year had found Washington in a very genial humor, his
letters touched with pleasantry and gossip. “Our celebrated fortune,
Miss French, whom half the world was in pursuit of,” he wrote, in
February, to Colonel Bassett, “bestowed her hand on Wednesday last,
being her birthday (you perceive, I think myself under a necessity of
accounting for the choice), on Mr. Ben Dulany, who is to take her to
Maryland.... Mentioning of one wedding puts me in mind of another”--and
so through the news of Miss More, “remarkable for a very frizzled head
and good singing,” and the rest of the neighborhood talk. But the year
turned out a very sad one for him. He had been scarcely ten days back
from New York when Patsy Custis, whom he loved as his own daughter,
died. It called forth all the latent Christian faith of the thoughtful,
steadfast man to withstand the shock. And Master Jack Custis, the girl’s
wayward brother, gave him little but anxiety. He would not study, for
all Washington was so solicitous he should have the liberalizing outlook
of books, and be made “fit for more useful purposes than horse-racer,”
and though he was but twenty, could hardly be induced to see the year
out at college before getting married.
It was no doubt very well that public affairs of the first consequence
called Washington’s mind imperatively off from these private anxieties,
which could not but be dwarfed in the presence of transactions which
threatened to shake the continent. As the year drew on, the government
in England undertook to force cargoes of the East India Company’s tea
into the ports. When all resisted, and Boston, more forward even than
the rest, threw three hundred and forty odd chests of tea into the
harbor, acts passed Parliament giving dangerous increase of power to the
Governor of Massachusetts, and directing that Boston port be closed to
all commerce on and after the first day of June; and it became evident
that vigorous action must be taken in response. The Burgesses in
Virginia (May, 1774) resolved that June 1st should be set apart as a day
of fasting and prayer--prayer that civil war might be averted and the
people of America united in a common cause. Again Dunmore dissolved
them; but they gathered in the long room of the Raleigh tavern, and
there resolved to urge a congress of all the colonies, and to call a
convention for Virginia to meet at that place on the first day of August
to take action for the colony. They showed no spleen towards the
Governor. Washington dined with him the very day of the dissolution,
spent the evening at the palace, even rode out with him to his farm on
the following morning and breakfasted there; and the Burgesses did not
fail to give the ball they had planned in honor of Lady Dunmore and her
daughters on the evening of the day they had held their meeting in the
“Appolo room” at the Raleigh. But there were fasting and prayer on the
1st of June; the convention met on the first day of August; very
outspoken resolutions were adopted; and Peyton Randolph, Richard Henry
Lee, Patrick Henry, Richard Bland, Edmund Pendleton, George Washington,
and Benjamin Harrison were directed to attend the congress of the
colonies appointed to meet in Philadelphia on the fifth day of
September. When the time came for the journey, Henry and Pendleton
joined Washington at Mount Vernon. It must have been with many grave
thoughts that the three companions got to horse and turned to ride
through the long August day towards the north.
PILOTING A REVOLUTION
CHAPTER VI
In the congress of 1774 the leaders of Virginia were for the first time
brought into face-to-face conference with the men of the other colonies.
In 1765 Fauquier had dissolved the Burgesses with such sharp despatch,
upon the passage of Mr. Henry’s resolutions, that they were all gone
home before the call for a congress to act upon the stamp duties could
reach them. But in 1774 they were not to be so cheated. They had
themselves issued the call for a congress this time, and dissolution
could not drive them home. Their leaders could at least linger at the
Raleigh and concert means to have their way, House or no House. A
convention took the place of the Assembly; and seven leading members of
the House were sent to Philadelphia, with as full authority to speak and
act for the colony as if the Burgesses themselves had commissioned them.
Mr. Harrison declared in Philadelphia that “he would have come on foot
rather than not come”; and quiet Richard Bland, that “he would have gone
if it had been to Jericho.” Colonel Harrison struck his new colleagues
from the North as a bit rough in his free Southern speech and manner;
and Mr. Bland seemed to them “a plain, sensible man,” such as would be
more given to study than to agitation. If such men, artless and steady
as any downright country gentleman of old England, held so high a fancy
for the business of the congress, it was easy to conclude what the
hastier, younger men would be likely to plan and do; and the
Massachusetts delegates found themselves greatly heartened.
John Adams, Thomas Cushing, Samuel Adams, and Robert Treat Paine were
the representatives of Massachusetts. It was their people who had most
provoked Parliament to be high-handed and aggressive. The struggle with
the ministry at home had taken shape in Boston. It had come to actual
riot there. All the continent and all England had seen how stubborn was
the temper, how incorrigible the spirit of resistance, in that old seat
of the Puritan power, always hard set and proud in its self-willed
resolution to be independent; and all eyes were turned now upon Cushing
and Paine and this “brace of Adamses,” who had come, it was thought, to
hurry the congress into radical courses. Kindness, applause,
hospitality, “studied and expensive respect,” had attended them at every
stage of their long ride from Boston to Philadelphia. The country was
much stirred by the prospect of a general “congress of committees” at
Philadelphia; and the delegates from Massachusetts were greeted as they
passed even more generously than the rest, because their people had been
the first to suffer in this bad business; because their chief port at
Boston was closed, and red-coated sentries were on their streets. It
behooved the Massachusetts men, however, not to suffer themselves to be
misled. Many looked upon them askance; some distrusted them heartily.
Their own hot-headed mob had provoked the “massacre,” of which they made
so much. They had wantonly destroyed private property when they threw
the tea into their harbor to show the government their spirit. There had
been more than a touch of violence, more than a little turbulence, and a
vast deal of radical and revolutionary talk in all that they had done;
and the colonies were full yet of men who had no tolerance for anything
that transgressed, were it never so little, the moderate limits of
constitutional agitation. “There is an opinion which does in some degree
obtain in the other colonies that the Massachusetts gentlemen, and
especially of the town of Boston, do affect to dictate and take the lead
in continental measures; that we are apt, from an inward vanity and
self-conceit, to assume big and haughty airs,” said Joseph Hawley, who,
for all he had grown old as a quiet Massachusetts lawyer among his
neighbors, had kept his shrewd eyes abroad. “It is highly probable,” he
told John Adams, with a wholesome bluntness, “that you will meet
gentlemen from several of the other colonies fully equal to yourselves
or any of you in their knowledge of Great Britain, the colonies, law,
history, government, commerce.... By what we from time to time see in
the public papers, and what our Assembly and committees have received
from the Assemblies and committees of the more southern colonies, we
must be satisfied that they have men of as much sense and literature as
any we can, or ever could, boast of.” It was mere counsel of prudence
that they should play their part in the congress with modesty and
discretion.
Not Cushing and Paine, but the Adamses, carried the strength of the
Massachusetts delegation; and it was Samuel Adams, rather than John, who
was just now the effective master in the great Bay Colony--“master of
puppets,” his enemies called him. Hale, bluff, adroit, plain, a man of
the people, he had grown old in the business of agitation. Fifty-two
years he had lived, planning always for others, never for himself. He
had “never looked forward in his life,” he frankly said; “never planned,
laid a scheme, or framed a design of laying up anything for himself or
others after him”; had let all his private business go neglected, and
lived upon the petty salary of a small public office, the indulgence of
fortune, and the good offices of the friends and neighbors who loved
him. He was in Philadelphia now wearing the plain suit and spending the
modest purse with which his friends and partisans had fitted him
out--the very impersonation of the revolution men were beginning so to
fear. No man had ever daunted him; neither could any corrupt him. He was
possessed with the instinct of agitation: led the people, not the
leaders; cared not for place, but only for power; showed a mastery of
means, a self-containment, a capacity for timely and telling speech,
that marked him a statesman, though he loved the rough ways of a
people’s government, and preferred the fierce democracy of the town
meeting to the sober dignity of senates. Like an eagle in his high
building and strength of audacious flight, but in instinct and habit a
bird of the storm. Not over-nice what he did, not too scrupulous what he
devised, he was yet not selfish, loved the principles he had given his
life to, and spent himself without limit to see them triumph.
John Adams, his cousin, was of a very different mould: a younger man by
thirteen years; no man of the people, but with a taste rather for the
exclusive claims of education and breeding; self-regardful; a thought
too calculating; too quick-witted to be patient with dull men, too
self-conscious to be at ease with great ones; and yet public-spirited
withal, and generous in action if not in judgment; of great powers, if
only he could manage to use them without jealousy. Samuel Adams thought
only of his end, not of himself; seldom spoke of himself, indeed; seemed
a sort of subtle engine for the people’s business. John Adams thought of
himself always, and yet mastered himself to play a great part with the
nobility of a man of genius, if not with the grace of a man of modesty
and self-forgetful devotion. For the time he could even hold back with
his wily cousin, resign leadership in the congress to Virginia, and act
in all things the wise part of those who follow.
It was a circumstance full of peril that the delegates of the several
colonies should at such a juncture be strangers to one another, and
provincials all, nowhere bred to continental affairs. Only since the
passage of the Stamp Act had they taken any thought for each other.
There was no assurance that even the best leaders of a colony could rise
to the statesman’s view and concert measures to insure the peace of an
empire. Rising lawyers like John Adams, brusque planters like Colonel
Harrison, well-to-do merchants like Thomas Mifflin, might bring all
honesty and good intention to the task and yet miserably fail. A
provincial law practice, the easy ascendency of a provincial country
gentleman, the narrow round of provincial trade, might afford capable
men opportunity to become enlightened citizens, but hardly fitted them
to be statesmen. The real first business of the delegates was to become
acquainted, and to learn how to live in the foreign parts to which most
of them had come. There was a continual round of entertainment in the
hospitable town, therefore, a universal exchange of courtesies, a rush
of visiting and dining, a flow of excellent wine, a rich abundance of
good cheer, such as for a while made the occasion seem one of festivity
rather than of anxious counsel. Many of the delegates had come to town a
week or more before the date set for the congress, and had settled to an
acquaintance before it was time to effect an organization; but the
gentlemen from Maryland and Virginia, more familiar with the journey,
arrived almost upon the day. They made an instant impression upon their
new colleagues. John Adams promptly declared them “the most spirited and
consistent of any,” and deemed Mr. Lee particularly “a masterly man.”
Joseph Hawley’s prediction was fulfilled. “The Virginia and indeed all
the Southern delegates appear like men of importance,” said Silas Deane;
“I never met, nor scarcely had an idea of meeting, with men of such
firmness, sensibility, spirit, and thorough knowledge of the interests
of America.” Mr. Lynch of South Carolina, though he wore “the
manufacture of this country,” and was in all things “plain, sensible,
above ceremony,” seemed to Mr. Deane to carry with him “more force in
his very appearance than most powdered folks in their conversation.”
The high bearing and capacity of the Southern delegates came upon the
New England men like a great surprise: where they had expected to see
rustic squires they found men of elegance and learning. But there was,
in fact, no good reason to wonder at the natural leadership of these
men. Their life had bred them more liberally than others. It required a
much more various capacity and knowledge of the world to administer a
great property and live the life of a local magnate in the South than
sufficed to put a man at the front of trade or of legal practice in
Boston or New York or Philadelphia.
[Illustration: WASHINGTON
(From the portrait by Rembrandt Peale in the Vice-President’s Room at
the Capitol, Washington)]
The Southern colonies, besides, had lived more in sympathy with the life
of the empire than had their Northern neighbors. Their life had depended
directly upon that of England hitherto, and had partaken of it with a
constant zest. They had no rival trade; they had wanted no rival
government. The general air of the wide empire had blown in all ordinary
seasons through their affairs, and they had cultivated none of that
shrewd antagonism towards the home government which had so sharpened the
wits and narrowed the political interests of the best men in New
England. They had read law because they were men of business, without
caring too much about its niceties or meaning to practise it in
litigation. They had read their English history without feeling that
they were separate from it. Their passion for freedom was born not of
local feeling so much as of personal pride and the spirit of those who
love old practices and the just exemptions of an ancient constitution.
It was the life they had lived, and the conceptions of personal dignity
and immemorial privilege that had gone always with it, that gave them so
striking an air of mastery. It was not simply because the Massachusetts
delegates kept themselves prudently in the background and the rest
yielded to her pretensions that Virginia was accorded primacy in the
congress: it was also because her representatives were men to whom power
naturally fell, and because she had won so honorable a place of
leadership already in the common affairs of the continent.
Colonel Washington, striking and forceable man though he was, did not
figure as a leader among the Virginian delegates. Peyton Randolph was
elected president of the congress; Richard Henry Lee and Patrick Henry
stood forth as the Virginian leaders on the floor. “If you speak of
solid information and sound judgment, Colonel Washington is
unquestionably the greatest man on that floor,” was Henry’s confident
and generous verdict; but Washington was no politician, and did not
stand in exactly the same class with the rest. He had headed committees
and presided over popular meetings among his own neighbors in Fairfax,
and had been prompt to join them in speaking with high spirit against
the course of the ministry in England. He had been forward in urging and
punctiliously careful in practising non-importation. He had declared
Gage’s conduct in Boston “more becoming a Turkish bashaw than an English
governor.” But he was a man of action rather than of parliaments. “I
will raise one thousand men, enlist them at my own expense, and march
myself at their head for the relief of Boston,” had been his impetuous
utterance in the Virginian convention--“the most eloquent speech that
ever was made,” Mr. Lynch declared. “I have heard he said,” reported an
admiring Philadelphian--“I have heard he said he wished to God the
liberties of America were to be determined by a single combat between
himself and George!” But his fellow Virginians understood him better.
They had chosen him for force and sobriety; not as an orator, but as the
first soldier and one of the first characters of the commonwealth; and
he had made the impression they expected. He had not been put upon their
committee of correspondence, or been appointed with Nicholas and
Pendleton and Lee and Henry to draw resolutions and remonstrances; but
when it came to choosing those who should represent the Old Dominion in
the congress, but two names stood before his in the vote. Peyton
Randolph, 104; Richard Henry Lee, 100; George Washington, 98; Patrick
Henry, 89; Richard Bland, 79; Benjamin Harrison, 66; Edmund Pendleton,
62--such had been the preference of the convention. The Northern
delegates admired his “easy, soldier-like air and gesture” and his
modest and “cool but determined” style and accent when he spoke; and
wondered to see him look scarce forty, when they recalled how his name
had gone through the colonies twenty years ago, when he had met the
French so gallantly at Great Meadows, and with Braddock at the forks of
the Ohio.
The Massachusetts delegates had reason to admire his manly openness,
too, and straightforward candor. An old comrade in arms whom he
esteemed--a Virginian now in regular commission, and stationed with the
troops in Boston--had written him very damaging things about the
“patriot” leaders of the beset town; of their “tyrannical oppression
over one another,” and “their fixed aim at total independence,” and had
charged them roundly with being no better than demagogues and rebels.
Washington went at once to the men accused, to learn from their own lips
their principles and intentions, taking Richard Henry Lee and discreet
Dr. Shippen along with him as his sponsors and witnesses. “Spent the
evening at home with Colonel Lee, Colonel Washington, and Dr. Shippen,
who came in to consult us,” was John Adams’s entry in his diary for
September 28th. No doubt Samuel Adams found the interview a trying one,
and winced a little under the examination of the calm and steady
soldier, going so straight to the point, for all his Virginian ceremony.
There had been many outward signs of the demagogue in Adams’s career. He
had been consciously and deliberately planning and scheming for
independence ever since 1768, and had made public avowal of his purpose
no longer ago than last year. It must have taxed even his adroit powers
to convince these frank Virginians that his purpose was not rebellion,
but liberty; that he venerated what they venerated, and wished only what
they wished. But the truth somehow lay open before the evening was gone.
There was frank cordiality in the parting: Washington was convinced of
their genuineness and sobriety. “Though you are led to believe by venal
men,” he replied to Captain Mackenzie, “that the people of Massachusetts
are rebellious, setting up for independency, and what not, give me
leave, my good friend, to tell you that you are abused, grossly abused.
This I advance with a degree of confidence and boldness which may claim
your belief, having better opportunities for knowing the real sentiments
of the people you are among, from the leaders of them, in opposition to
the present measures of the administration, than you have from those
whose business it is not to disclose truths, but to misrepresent facts
in order to justify as much as possible to the world their own conduct.”
The Massachusetts men had come to a better understanding of the
game--began to see how cautiously it must be played, how slowly and how
wisely. It was a critical business, this of drawing all the colonies
into a common congress, as if to create a directing body for the
continent, without constitution or warrant. The establishment of
committees of correspondence had seemed little short of seditious, for
it was notorious the committees were formed to concert action against
the government at home; but this “congress of committees” was an even
more serious matter. Would the colonies venture a continental
organization to defy Parliament? Dangerous differences of opinion were
blown hot between neighbors by such measures. Some of the best men in
America were opposed to the course which was now evidently to be taken.
So long as it was merely a matter of protest by the colonies severally,
they had no criticism to make--except perhaps that Mr. Otis and Mr.
Henry had held unnecessarily high language, and had been bold and
defiant beyond measure; but when they saw how the opposition gathered
head, hastened from protest to concerted resistance, put popular
conventions into the place of lawful legislative assemblies, and
advanced at length to a continental organization, they deemed it high
time to bestir themselves, vindicate their loyalty to his Majesty’s
government, and avert a revolution. They were not men to be trifled
with. Had they been able to unite upon active measures, had they
advanced from defence to aggressive action, they might have rendered
themselves formidable beyond possibility of defeat. Everywhere men of
substance and of influence were to be found by the score who were
opposed to a revolutionary agitation, such as this that now seemed to be
gathering head. Even in Massachusetts men who bore the best and the
oldest names of the commonwealth were of this number; in New York and
Pennsylvania, at the very heart of the continent, they could, it was
believed, boast a majority, as well as to the far southward, in the low
country of South Carolina and Georgia. No one, they declared, but
designing politicians and men without property, those who had much to
gain and nothing to lose by the upsetting of law and ordered government,
wished to see this contest with the ministry pushed to extremes. They
wished no less than others to see the colonies keep their lawful and
chartered liberties, but the thing must be accomplished soberly, and
without loss of things equally dear--of honor, and the maintenance of an
unbroken English Empire.
The nice balance of parties was disclosed in the congress itself. The
Pennsylvanian delegation was led by Joseph Galloway, a man in the prime
of life, full of force and learning, who had been Speaker of the
provincial House these eight years by the almost unanimous choice of his
colleagues, and who now stood forth to utter the real voice of his
colony in proposing measures of accommodation. He proposed that the home
government be asked to sanction the establishment of a confederate
parliament for America, composed of delegates to be chosen every third
year by the legislatures of the several colonies, and acting under a
governor-general to be appointed by the crown. Edward Rutledge, of South
Carolina, hot orator for liberty though he was, declared it an “almost
perfect plan,” and was eager to see it adopted; influential members from
almost every quarter gave it their hearty support, Mr. John Jay, of New
York, among the rest; and it was defeated only by the narrow majority of
a single colony’s vote. Chatham might very justly commend the congress
of 1774 as conspicuous among deliberative bodies for its “decency,
firmness, and wisdom,” its “solidity of reasoning, force of sagacity,
and wisdom of conclusion, under such a complication of circumstances,”
for the complication of circumstances was such as even he did not fully
comprehend. For seven weeks of almost continuous session did it hammer
its stiff business into shape, never wearying of deliberation or debate,
till it could put forth papers to the world--an address to the King,
memorials to the people of Great Britain and to the people of British
America, their fellow-subjects, and a solemn declaration of
rights--which should mark it no revolutionary body, but a congress of
just and thoughtful Englishmen, in love, not with license or rebellion,
but with right and wholesome liberty. Their only act of aggression was
the formation of an “American Association” pledged against trade with
Great Britain till the legislation of which they complained should be
repealed. Their only intimation of intention for the future was a
resolution to meet again the next spring, should their prayers not
meanwhile be heeded.
Washington turned homeward from the congress with thoughts and purposes
every way deepened and matured. It had been a mere seven weeks’
conference; no one had deemed the congress a government, or had spoken
of any object save peace and accommodation; but no one could foresee the
issue of what had been done. A spirit had run through those
deliberations which gave thoughtful men, as they pondered it, a new idea
of the colonies. It needed no prophet to discern beyond all this sober
and anxious business a vision of America united, armed, belligerent for
her rights. There was no telling what form of scornful rejection awaited
that declaration of rights or the grave pleading of that urgent memorial
to the crown. It behooved every man to hold himself in readiness for the
worst; and Washington saw as clearly as any man at how nice a hazard
things stood. He had too frank a judgment upon affairs to cheat himself
with false hopes. “An innate spirit of freedom first told me that the
measures which administration hath for some time been and now are most
violently pursuing are repugnant to every principle of natural justice,”
had been his earnest language to Bryan Fairfax ere he set out for the
congress; “whilst much abler heads than my own hath fully convinced me
that it is not only repugnant to natural right, but subversive of the
laws and constitution of Great Britain itself, in the establishment of
which some of the best blood of the kingdom hath been spilt.... I could
wish, I own,” he had added, “that this dispute had been left to
posterity to determine”; but he knew more clearly than ever before, as
he rode homeward from the congress through the autumn woods, that it had
not been; that Lee and Henry and Mason were rightly of the same mind and
purpose with the men from Massachusetts; that conference had only united
and heartened those who stood for liberty in every colony; that there
could be no compromise--perhaps no yielding either--and that every man
must now take his soberest resolution for the times to come.
He turned steadily to his private business for the winter, nevertheless,
as was his wont--pushed forward the preparation and settlement of his
western lands, and stood guard, as before, over the soldiers’ grants
upon the Ohio, against official bad faith and negligence. “For a year or
two past there has been scarce a moment that I could properly call my
own,” he declared to a friend who solicited his promise to act as
guardian to his son. “What with my own business, my present ward’s, my
mother’s, which is wholly in my hands, Colonel Fairfax’s, Colonel
Mercer’s, and the little assistance I have undertaken to give in the
management of my brother Augustine’s concerns, together with the share I
take in public affairs, I have been constantly
[Illustration: CARPENTER’S HALL, PHILADELPHIA]
engaged in writing letters, settling accounts, and negotiating one piece
of business or another; by which means I have really been deprived of
every kind of enjoyment, and had almost fully resolved to engage in no
fresh matter till I had entirely wound up the old.” He promised to
undertake the new charge, nevertheless. It was stuff of his nature to
spend himself thus, and keep his powers stretched always to a great
compass.
With the new year (1775) public affairs loomed big again, and ominous.
The petitions of the congress at Philadelphia had been received in
England almost with contempt. Chatham, indeed, with that broad and noble
sagacity which made him so great a statesman, had proposed that
America’s demands should be met, to the utmost length of repeal and
withdrawal of menace, and that she should be accorded to the full the
self-government she demanded in respect of taxation and every domestic
concern. “It is not cancelling a piece of parchment,” he cried, “that
can win back America,” the old fire burning hot within him; “you must
respect her fears and her resentments.” The merchants, too, in fear for
their trade, urged very anxiously that there should be instant and ample
concession. But the King’s stubborn anger, the Parliament’s
indifference, the ministry’s incapacity, made it impossible anything
wise or generous should be done. Instead of real concession there was
fresh menace. The ministry did, indeed, offer to exempt from taxation
every colony that would promise that by its own vote it would make
proper contribution to the expenses of public defence and imperial
administration--in the hope thereby to disengage the lukewarm middle
colonies from the plot now thickening against the government. But
Massachusetts was at once proclaimed in rebellion, every port in New
England was declared closed against trade, New England fishermen were
denied access to the Newfoundland fisheries, and ten thousand fresh
troops were ordered to Boston. Neither the pleas of their friends nor
the threats of their enemies reached the ears of the colonists promptly
from over sea that portentous spring; but they were not slow to perceive
that they must look for no concessions; and they did not wait upon
Parliament in their preparation for a doubtful future. Upon the very day
the “congress of committees” at Philadelphia adjourned, a “provincial
congress” in Massachusetts, formed of its own authority in the stead of
the House of Delegates the Governor had but just now dissolved, had
voted to organize and equip the militia of the colony and to collect
stores and arms. Virginia had been equally bold, and almost equally
prompt, far away as she seemed from the King’s troops at Boston. By the
end of January Charles Lee could write from Williamsburg: “The whole
country is full of soldiers, all furnished, all in arms.... Never was
such vigor and concord heard of, not a single traitor, scarcely a silent
dissentient.”
“Every county is now arming a company of men for the avowed purpose of
protecting their committees,” Dunmore had reported to the ministry
before the year 1774 was out, “and to be employed against government if
occasion require. As to the power of government which your lordship
directs should be exerted to counteract the dangerous measures pursuing
here, I can assure your lordship that it is entirely disregarded, if not
wholly overturned. There is not a justice of peace in Virginia that acts
except as a committeeman; the abolishing of courts of justice was the
first step taken, in which the men of fortune and pre-eminence joined
equally with the lowest and meanest.” Company after company, as it
formed, asked Colonel Washington to assume command over it, not only in
his own county of Fairfax, but in counties also at a distance--and he
accepted the responsibility as often as it was offered to him. “It is my
full intention,” he said, simply, “to devote my life and fortune to the
cause we are engaged in, if needful”; and he had little doubt any longer
what was to come. He found time, even that stirring year, to quicken his
blood once and again, nevertheless, while winter held, by a run with the
hounds: for he was not turned politician so sternly even yet as to throw
away his leisure upon anything less wholesome than the hale sport he
loved.
On the 20th of May, 1775, the second Virginian convention met, not in
Williamsburg, but at Richmond, and its chief business was the arming of
the colony. Maryland had furnished the ironical formula with which to
justify what was to be done: “Resolved, unanimously, that a
well-regulated militia, composed of the gentlemen freeholders and other
freemen, is the natural strength and only stable security of a free
government; and that such militia will relieve our mother-country from
any expense in our protection and defence, will obviate the pretence of
a necessity for taxing us on that account, and render it unnecessary to
keep any standing army--ever dangerous to liberty--in this province.”
Mr. Henry accepted the formula with great relish, in the convention at
Richmond, in his resolution “that the colony be immediately put into a
posture of defence,” but he broke with it in the speech with which he
supported his measures of preparation. In that there was no plan or
pretence of peace, but, instead, a plain declaration of war. Once more
did Edmund Pendleton, Richard Bland, Mr. Nicholas, and Colonel Harrison
spring to their feet to check him, as in the old days of the Stamp Act.
Once more, nevertheless, did he have his way, completely, triumphantly.
What he had proposed was done, and his very opponents served upon the
committee charged with its accomplishment. It was not doing more than
other colonies had done; it was only saying more; it was only dealing
more fearlessly and frankly with fortune. Even slow, conservative men
like John Dickinson, of Pennsylvania, shielded themselves behind only an
“if.” “The first act of violence on the part of administration in
America,” they knew, “or the attempt to reinforce General Gage this
winter or next year, will put the whole continent in arms, from Nova
Scotia to Georgia.”
What they feared very speedily came to pass. ’Twas hardly four weeks
from the day Mr. Henry proclaimed a state of war in the convention at
Richmond before the King’s regulars were set upon at Lexington and
Concord and driven back in rout to their quarters by the swarming
militia-men of Massachusetts. On the 19th of April they had set out
across a peaceful country to seize the military stores placed at
Concord. Before the day was out they had been fairly thrown back into
Boston, close upon three hundred of their comrades gone to a last
reckoning; and the next morning disclosed a rapidly growing provincial
army drawn in threatened siege about them. In the darkness of that very
night (April 20th), at the command of Dunmore, a force of marines was
landed from an armed sloop that lay in James River, in Virginia, to
seize the gunpowder stored at Williamsburg. The Virginians in their turn
sprang to arms, and Dunmore was forced, ere he could rid himself of the
business, to pay for the powder taken--pay Captain Patrick Henry, at the
head of a body of militia under arms.
On the 10th of May the second Continental Congress met at Philadelphia,
with business to transact vastly different from that to which the first
“congress of committees” had addressed itself--not protests and
resolves, but quick and efficient action. The very day it met, a body of
daring provincials under Ethan Allen had walked into the open gates at
Ticonderoga and taken possession of the stout fortress “in the name of
the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress”; and two days later a
similar exploit secured Crown Point to the insurgents. Active war had
begun; an army was set down before Boston--a rude army that had grown to
be sixteen thousand strong within the first week of its rally; the
country was united in a general resistance, and looked to the congress
to give it organization and guidance. Colonel Washington had come to the
congress in his provincial uniform, and found himself a great deal
sought after in its committees. Not only the drawing of state papers
which would once more justify their cause and their resort to arms in
the eyes of the world, but the actual mustering and equipment of an
army, quick fortification, the gathering of munitions and supplies, the
raising of money and the organization of a commissariat, the restraint
of the Indians upon the frontier, was the business in hand, and
Washington’s advice was invaluable when such matters were afoot. He
showed no hesitation as to what should be done. His own mind had long
ago been made up; and the sessions of the congress were not ended before
Virginia was committed beyond all possibility of drawing back. The 1st
of June saw her last House of Burgesses convene; for by the 8th of the
month Dunmore was a fugitive--had seen the anger of a Williamsburg mob
blaze hot against him, and had taken refuge upon a man-of-war lying in
the river. The province was in revolution, and Washington was ready to
go with it.
It meant more than he thought that he had come to Philadelphia habited
like a soldier. It had not been his purpose to draw all eyes upon him:
it was merely his instinctive expression of his own personal feeling
with regard to the crisis that had come. But it was in its way a
fulfilment of prophecy. When the first Virginian convention chose
delegates to attend the congress of 1774, “some of the tickets on the
ballot assigned reasons for the choice expressed in them. Randolph
should preside in congress; Lee and Henry should display the different
kinds of eloquence for which they were renowned; Washington should
command the army, if an army should be raised; Bland should open the
treasures of ancient colonial learning; Harrison should utter plain
truths; and Pendleton should be the penman for business.” No wonder the
gentlemen from Virginia, coming with such confidence to the congress,
made the instant impression they did for mastery and self-poise! “There
are some fine fellows come from Virginia,” Joseph Reed had reported,
“but they are very high. We understand they are the capital men of the
colony.” Washington alone awaited his cue. Now he was to get it, without
expecting it. The irregular army swarming before Boston was without
standing or government. It had run hastily together out of four
colonies; was subject to no common authority; hardly knew what
allegiance it bore; might fall to pieces unless it were adequately
commanded. The congress in Philadelphia was called upon to recognize and
adopt it, give it leave and authority to act for all the colonies, give
it a commander, and summon the whole country to recruit it. There was an
obvious political necessity that the thing should be done, and done
promptly. Massachusetts did not wish to stand alone; New England wanted
the active assistance of the other colonies; something must be attempted
to secure common action. The first thing to do was to choose an
acceptable and efficient leader, and to choose him outside New England.
To John Adams the choice seemed simple enough. There was no soldier in
America, outside New England--nor inside either--to be compared, whether
in experience or distinction, with Washington, the gallant,
straightforward, earnest Virginian he had learned so to esteem and trust
there in Philadelphia. He accordingly moved that congress “adopt the
army at Cambridge,” and declared that he had “but one gentleman in mind”
for its command--“a gentleman from Virginia, who was among us,” he said,
“and very well known to all of us; a gentleman whose skill and
experience as an officer, whose independent fortune, great talents, and
excellent universal character, would command the approbation of all
America, and unite the cordial exertions of all the colonies better than
any other person in the union.” Washington, taken unawares, rose and
slipped in confusion from the room. Some of his own friends doubted the
expediency of putting a Virginian at the head of a New England army, but
the more clear-sighted among the New-Englanders did not, and the
selection was made, after a little hesitation, unanimously.
Washington accepted his commission with that mixture of modesty and
pride that made men love and honor him. “You may believe me, my dear
Patsy,” were his simple words to his wife, “when I assure you in the
most solemn manner, that, so far from seeking this appointment, I have
used every endeavor in my power to avoid it, not only from my
unwillingness to part with you and the family, but from a consciousness
of its being a trust too great for my capacity.... But as it has been a
kind of destiny that has thrown me upon this service, I shall hope that
my undertaking it is designed to answer some good purpose.... It was
utterly out of my power to refuse this appointment, without exposing my
character to such censures as would have reflected dishonor upon myself
and given pain to my friends.” He spoke in the same tone to the
congress. “I beg it may be remembered,” he said, “by every gentleman in
this room, that I this day declare with the utmost sincerity I do not
think myself equal to the command I am honored with.” His commission was
signed on the 19th of June; on the 21st he was on the road to the
north--the road he had travelled twenty years ago to consult with
Governor Shirley in Boston upon questions of rank, and to fall into Mary
Phillipse’s snare by the way; the road he had ridden after the races,
but three years ago, to put Jacky Custis at college in New York. “There
is something charming to me in the conduct of Washington,” exclaimed
John Adams; and it was wholesome for the whole country that such a man
should be put at the head of affairs. Many ignoble things were being
done in the name of liberty, and an ugly tyranny had been brought to
every man’s door--“the tyranny of his next-door neighbor.” There were
men by the score in the colonies who had no taste or sympathy for the
rebellion they now saw afoot--common men who knew little or nothing of
the mother-country, as well as gentlemen of culture who loved her
traditions and revered her crown; farmers and village lawyers, as well
as merchants at the ports who saw their living gone and ruin staring
them in the face. But the local committees and the “Sons of Liberty”
everywhere saw to it that such men should know and dread and fearfully
submit to the views of the majority. Government was suspended: there was
nowhere so much as a justice of the peace acting under the authority of
the crown. There might have been universal license had the rabble not
seen their leaders so noble, so bent upon high and honorable purposes.
It was an object-lesson in the character of the revolution to see
Washington ride through the colonies to take charge of an insurgent
army. And no man or woman, or child even, was likely to miss the lesson.
That noble figure drew all eyes to it; that mien as if the man were a
prince; that sincere and open countenance, which every man could see was
lighted by a good conscience; that cordial ease in salute, as of a man
who felt himself brother to his friends. There was something about
Washington that quickened the pulses of a crowd at the same time that it
awed them, that drew cheers which were a sort of voice of worship.
Children desired sight of him, and men felt lifted after he had passed.
It was good to have such a man ride all the open way from Philadelphia
to Cambridge in sight of the people to assume command of the people’s
army. It gave character to the thoughts of all who saw him.
GENERAL WASHINGTON
CHAPTER VII
Matters had not stood still before Boston to await a commander sent by
congress. While Washington waited for his commission and made ready for
his journey there had been fighting done which was to simplify his task.
General William Howe had reached Boston with reinforcements on the 25th
of May, and quite ten thousand troops held the city, while a strong
fleet of men-of-war lay watchfully in the harbor. There was no hurry, it
seemed, about attacking the sixteen thousand raw provincials, whose long
lines were drawn loosely about the town from Charlestown Neck to Jamaica
Plain. But commanding hills looked across the water on either hand--in
Charlestown on the north and in Dorchester on the southeast--and it
would be well, Howe saw, to secure them, lest they should be occupied by
the insurgents. On the morning of the 17th of June, however, while
leisurely preparations were a-making in Boston to occupy the hills of
Charlestown, it was discovered that the provincials had been beforehand
in the project. There they were in the clear sun, working diligently at
redoubts of their own upon the height. Three thousand men were put
across the water to drive them off. Though they mustered only seventeen
hundred behind their unfinished works, three several assaults and the
loss of a thousand men was the cost of dislodging them. They withheld
their fire till the redcoats were within fifty--nay, thirty--yards of
them, and then poured out a deadly, blazing fire which no man could face
and live. They were ousted only when they failed of powder and despaired
of reinforcements. Veteran officers who had led the assault declared the
regulars of France were not more formidable than these militia-men, whom
they had despised as raw peasants. There was no desire to buy another
American position at that price; and Washington had time enough for the
complimentary receptions and addresses and the elaborate parade of
escort and review that delayed his journey to headquarters.
He reached Cambridge on the 2d of July, and bore himself with so
straightforward and engaging a courtesy in taking command that the
officers he superseded could not but like him: jealousy was disarmed.
But he found neither the preparations nor the spirit of the army to his
liking. His soldierly sense of order was shocked by the loose
discipline, and his instinct of command by the free and easy insolence
of that irregular levy; and his authority grew stern as he labored to
bring the motley host to order and effective organization. “The people
of this government have obtained a character,” his confidential letters
declared, “which they by no means deserved--their officers, generally
speaking, are the most indifferent kind of people I ever saw. I dare say
the men would fight very well (if properly officered), although they are
an exceedingly dirty and nasty people.... It is among the most difficult
tasks I ever undertook in my life to induce these people to believe that
there is, or can be, danger till the bayonet is pushed at their breasts.
Not that it proceeds from any uncommon prowess, but rather from an
unaccountable kind of stupidity in the lower class of these people,
which, believe me, prevails but too generally among the officers of the
Massachusetts part of the army, who are nearly of the same kidney with
the privates.” He had seen like demoralization and slackness in the old
days at Winchester, on the wild frontier, but he had expected to find a
better spirit and discipline in the New England levies.
His first disgust, however, soon wore off. He was not slow to see how
shrewd and sturdy these uncouth, intractable ploughboys and farmers
could prove themselves upon occasion. “I have a sincere pleasure in
observing,” he wrote to congress, “that there are materials for a good
army, a great number of able-bodied men, active, zealous in the cause,
and of unquestionable courage.” There was time enough and to spare in
which to learn his army’s quality. “Our lines of defence are now
completed,” he could tell Lund Washington on the 20th of August, “as
near so at least as can be--we now wish them to come out as soon as they
please; but they discover no inclination to quit their own works of
defence; and as it is almost impossible for us to get at them, we do
nothing but watch each other’s motions all day at the distance of about
a mile.” He could even turn away from military affairs to advise that
“spinning should go forward with all possible despatch” on the estate at
home, and to say, “I much approve of your sowing wheat in clean ground,
although you should be late in doing it.” Once more he settled to the
old familiar work, this time upon a great scale, of carrying a difficult
enterprise forward by correspondence. Letters to the Continental
Congress at Philadelphia, letters to the provincial congresses of the
New England colonies, letters to subordinate (sometimes insubordinate)
officers at distant posts, letters to intimate friends and influential
men everywhere, setting forth the needs and situation of the army,
advising measures of organization, supply, and defence, pointing out
means that might be used and mistakes that must be avoided, commanding,
dissuading, guiding, forecasting, poured steadily forth from those busy
headquarters, where the commander-in-chief was always to be found,
intent, deeply employed, calmly imperative, never tiring, never
hesitating, never storming, a leader and master of men and affairs. He
was in his prime, and all the forty-three years of his strenuous life he
had been at school to learn how such a task as this was to be performed.
He had found the army not only without proper discipline and equipment,
but actually without powder; and the winter had come and was passing
away before even that primary and perilous need could be supplied. The
men of that extemporized army had been enlisted but for a few months’
service. When their brief terms of enlistment ran out they incontinently
took themselves off; and Washington’s most earnest appeals to the
continental and provincial congresses to provide for longer enlistments
and an adequate system of recruitment did not always suffice to prevent
his force from perilously dwindling away under his very eyes. It was a
merciful providence that disposed the British to lie quiet in Boston.
Such authority as he had, Washington used to the utmost, and with a
diligence and foresight which showed all his old policy of Thorough.
Under his orders a few fast vessels were fitted out and armed as
privateers at the nearest safe ports. Marblehead volunteers in the army
were put aboard them for crews, and the enemy’s supplies were captured
upon the seas and brought overland--the much-needed powder and all--into
the American camp, while men-of-war which might have swept the coast lay
just at hand in the harbor. No opportunity was missed either to disturb
the British or to get what the army needed; and the ministers at home,
as well as the commanders in Boston, grew uneasy and apprehensive in the
presence of so active and watchful an opponent. He was playing the game
boldly, even a bit desperately at times. More than once, as the slow
months of siege dragged by, he would have hazarded a surprise and sought
to take the city by storm, had not the counsel of his officers
persistently restrained him.
Only in the north was there such fighting as he wished to see.
Montgomery had pushed through the forests and taken Montreal (November
12th, 1775). At the same time Washington had sent a force of some twelve
hundred men, under Benedict Arnold, to see what could be done against
the little garrison at Quebec. The journey had cost Arnold four hundred
men; but with what he had left he had climbed straight to the Heights of
Abraham and summoned the British at their gates. When they would neither
surrender nor fight, he had sat down to wait for Montgomery; and when he
came, with barely five hundred men, had stormed the stout defences, in a
driving snow-storm, in the black darkness that came just before the
morning on the last day of the year. Had Montgomery not been killed in
the assault, the surprise would have succeeded; and Arnold had no cause
to be ashamed of the gallant affair. Failure though it was, it heartened
the troops before Boston to think what might be done under such
officers.
The monotony of the long, anxious season was broken at Cambridge by a
touch now and again of such pleasures as spoke of home and gracious
peace. In midwinter Mrs. Washington had driven into camp, come all the
way from Virginia, with proper escort, in her coach and four, her horses
bestridden by black postilions in their livery of scarlet and white; and
she had seemed to bring with her to the homely place not only the
ceremonious habit, but the genial and hospitable air of Virginia as
well. Many a quiet entertainment at headquarters coaxed a little ease of
mind out of the midst of even that grim and trying winter’s work while
she was there.
With the first month of spring Washington determined to cut inaction
short and make a decisive stroke. He had been long enough with the army
now to presume upon its confidence and obedience, though he followed his
own counsels. Siege cannon had been dragged through the unwilling
forests all the way from Ticonderoga; the supplies and the time had
come; and on the morning of the 5th of March, 1776, the British stared
to see ramparts and cannon on Dorchester Heights. “It was like the work
of the genii of Aladdin’s wonderful lamp,” declared one of their
astonished officers. Why they had themselves neglected to occupy the
hills of Dorchester, and had waited so patiently till Washington should
have time and such guns as he needed, was a question much pressed at
home in England; and their stupidity was rewarded now. They had suffered
themselves to be amused all night by a furious cannonading out of
Roxbury, Somerville, and East Cambridge, while two thousand men, a
battery of heavy ordnance, and hundreds of wagons and ox-carts with
timber, bales of hay, spades, crowbars, hatchets, hammers, and nails,
had been gotten safely to the Dorchester hills. When they saw what had
happened they thought of the assault upon Bunker’s Hill, and hesitated
what to do. A violent storm blew up while they waited, rendering an
attack across the water impracticable, and when the calmer morning of
the 6th dawned it was too late; the American position was too strong.
Neither the town nor the harbor could safely be held under fire from
Dorchester Heights. There was nothing for it but to evacuate the place,
and no one gainsaid their departure. By the 17th they were all embarked,
eight thousand troops and nine hundred loyalist citizens of Boston, and
had set sail towards the north for Halifax. They were obliged to leave
behind them more than two hundred cannon and a great quantity of
military stores of every kind--powder, muskets, gun-carriages,
small-arms--whatever an army might need. When Washington established
himself in General Howe’s headquarters, in Mrs. Edwards’s comfortable
lodging-house at the head of State Street, he could congratulate himself
not only on a surprising victory brilliantly won, but on the possession,
besides, of more powder and better stores and equipments than he could
have dreamed of in his camp at Cambridge. He caught up his landlady’s
little granddaughter one day, set her on his knee, as he liked to do,
and asked her, smiling, which she liked the better, the redcoats or the
provincials.
“The redcoats,” said the child.
“Ah, my dear,” said the young general, a blithe light in his blue eyes,
“they look better, but they don’t fight. The ragged fellows are the boys
for fighting.”
But he did not linger at Boston. He knew that its capture did not end,
but only deepened, the struggle. Reinforcements would be poured out of
England with the spring, and the next point of attack would
unquestionably be New York, the key to the Hudson. Here again was a city
flanked about on either hand by water, and commanded by heights--the
heights of Brooklyn. A garrison must be left in Boston, and New York
must be held for the most part by a new levy, as raw, as ill organized
and equipped, as factious, as uncertain in capacity and purpose, as that
which had awaited his discipline and guidance before Boston. It was an
army always a-making and to be made. The sea was open, moreover. The
British could enter the great harbor when they pleased. The insurgents
had no naval force whatever with which to withstand them on the water.
There were a score of points to be defended which were yet without
defence on the long island where the town lay, and round about the
spreading arms of the sea that enclosed it; and there were but eighteen
thousand militia-men mustered for the formidable task, in the midst of
an active loyalist population. The thing must be attempted,
nevertheless. The command of the Hudson would very likely turn out to be
the command of the continent, and the struggle was now to be to the
death.
It was too late to draw back. The royal authority had, in fact, been
everywhere openly thrown off, even in the middle colonies, where
allegiance and opinion hung still at so doubtful a balance. For
Washington the whole situation must have seemed to be summed up in what
had taken place in his own colony at home. Dunmore, when he fled to the
men-of-war in the bay, had called upon all who were loyal to follow him;
had even offered freedom to all slaves and servants who would enlist in
the force he should collect for the purpose of “reducing the colony to
a proper sense of its duty.” Unable to do more, he had ravaged the
coasts on either hand upon the Bay, and had put men ashore within the
rivers to raid and burn, making Norfolk, with its loyalist merchants,
his headquarters and rendezvous. Driven thence by the provincial
militia, he had utterly destroyed the town by fire, and was now refuged
upon Gwynn’s Island, striking when he could, as before, at the
unprotected hamlets and plantations that looked everywhere out upon the
water. Virginia’s only executive, these nine months and more, had been
her Committee of Safety, of which Edmund Pendleton was president.
Washington had hardly begun his work of organization and defence at New
York before North Carolina (April 12th, 1776) authorized her delegates
in the congress at Philadelphia to join in a declaration of
independence; and the next month (May 15th) the congress advised the
colonies to give over all show and pretence of waiting for or desiring
peace or accommodation: to form complete and independent governments of
their own, and so put an end to “the exercise of every kind of authority
under the crown.” The next step was a joint Declaration of Independence,
upon a motion made in congress by Richard Henry Lee, in eager obedience
to the express bidding of a convention met in the hall of the Burgesses
at Williamsburg to frame a constitution for Virginia. His motion was
adopted by the votes of every colony except New York. It was a bitter
thing to many a loyal man in the colonies to see such things done, and
peace rendered impossible. Not even those who counted themselves among
the warmest friends of the colonial cause were agreed that it was wise
thus to throw off one government before another was put in its
place--while there was as yet no better guidance in that distracted time
than might be had from a body of gentlemen in Philadelphia who possessed
no power but to advise. But the radicals were in the saddle. Washington
himself came down from New York to urge that the step be taken. He
deemed such radicalism wise; for he wished to see compromise abandoned,
and all minds set as sternly as his own in the resolve to fight the
fight out to the bitter end. “I have never entertained an idea of an
accommodation,” he said, “since I heard of the measures which were
adopted in consequence of the Bunker’s Hill fight”; and his will
hardened to the contest after the fashion that had always been
characteristic of him when once the heat of action was upon him. He grew
stern, and spoke sometimes with a touch of harshness, in the presence of
his difficulties at New York; because he knew that they were made for
him in no small part by Americans who were in the British interest, and
whom he scorned even while scrupulous to be just in what he did to
thwart and master them. “It requires more serenity of temper, a deeper
understanding, and more courage than fell to the lot of Marlborough to
ride in this whirlwind,” said John Adams; and the young
commander-in-chief had them all. But his quiet was often that of a metal
at white heat, and he kindled a great fire with what he touched.
No strength of will, however, could suffice to hold New York and its
open harbor against a powerful enemy with such troops as Washington
could drill and make between April and July. On the 28th of June British
transports began to gather in the lower bay. Within a few days they had
brought thirty thousand men, armed and equipped as no other army had
ever been in America. It was impossible to prevent their landing, and
they were allowed to take possession of Staten Island unopposed.
Men-of-war passed untouched through the Narrows, and made their way at
will up the broad Hudson, unhurt by the batteries upon either shore.
General Howe remembered Dorchester and Charlestown Heights, and directed
his first movement against Washington’s intrenched position on the hills
of Brooklyn, where quite half the American army lay. For a little space
he waited, till his brother, Admiral Lord Howe, should come to act with
him in negotiation and command. Lord Howe was authorized to offer pardon
for submission, and very honorably used a month and more of good
fighting time in learning that the colonists had no desire to be
pardoned. “No doubt we all need pardon from Heaven for our manifold sins
and transgressions,” was Governor Trumbull’s Connecticut version of the
general feeling, “but the American who needs the pardon of his Britannic
Majesty is yet to be found.” On the 22d of August, accordingly, General
Howe put twenty thousand men ashore at Gravesend Bay. On the 27th, his
arrangements for an overwhelming attack succeeding at every point, he
drove the five thousand Americans thrown out to oppose him back into
their works upon the heights, with a loss of four hundred killed and
wounded and a thousand taken. Still mindful of Bunker’s Hill, he would
not storm the intrenchments, to which Washington himself had brought
reinforcements which swelled his strength upon the heights to ten
thousand. He determined, instead, to draw lines of siege about them, and
at his leisure take army, position, stores, and all. Washington, seeing
at once what Howe intended, and how possible it was, decided to
withdraw immediately, before a fleet should be in the river and his
retreat cut off. It was a masterly piece of work. The British commander
was as much astounded to see Brooklyn Heights empty on the morning of
August 30th as he had been to see Dorchester Heights occupied that
memorable morning six months before. Washington had taken ten thousand
men across that broad river, with all their stores and arms, in a single
night, while a small guard kept up a sharp fire from the breastworks,
and no sound of the retreat reached the dull ears of the British
sentries.
But the sharp fighting and bitter defeat of the 27th had sadly, even
shamefully, demoralized Washington’s raw troops, and he knew he must
withdraw from New York. All through September and a part of October he
held what he could of the island, fighting for it almost mile by mile as
he withdrew--now cut to the quick and aflame with almost uncontrollable
anger to see what cowards his men could be; again heartened to see them
stand and hold their ground like men, even in the open. The most that he
could do was to check and thwart the powerful army pressing steadily
upon his front and the free fleet threatening his flanks. He repulsed
the enemy at Harlem Heights (September 16th); he kept his ground before
them at White Plains, despite the loss of an outpost at Chatterton Hill
(October 28th); he might possibly have foiled and harassed them the
winter through had not General Greene suffered a garrison of three
thousand of the best-trained men in the army to be penned up and taken,
with a great store of artillery and small-arms besides, in Fort
Washington, on the island (November 16th). After such a blow there was
nothing for it but to abandon the Hudson and retreat through New Jersey.
His generals growing insubordinate, Washington could not even collect
his divisions and unite his forces in retreat. His men deserted by the
score; whole companies took their way homeward as their terms of
enlistment expired with the closing of the year; barely three thousand
men remained with him by the time he had reached Princeton. Congress, in
its fright, removed to Baltimore; hundreds of persons hurried to take
the oath of allegiance upon Howe’s offer of pardon; and the British
commanders deemed the rebellion at an end.
They did not understand the man they were fighting. When he had put the
broad Delaware between his dwindling regiments and the British at his
heels, he stopped, undaunted, to collect force and give his opponents a
taste of his quality. Such an exigency only stiffened his temper, and
added a touch of daring to his spirit. Charles Lee, his second in
command, hoping to make some stroke for himself upon the Hudson, had
withheld full half the army in a safe post upon the river, in direct
disobedience to orders, while the British drove Washington southward
through New Jersey; but Lee was now happily in the hands of the enemy,
taken at an unguarded tavern where he lodged, and most of the troops he
had withheld found their way at last to Washington beyond the Delaware.
Desperate efforts at recruiting were made. Washington strained his
authority to the utmost to keep and equip his force, and excused himself
to congress very nobly. “A character to lose,” he said, “an estate to
forfeit, the inestimable blessing of liberty at stake, and a life
devoted must be my excuse.” What he planned and did won him a character
with his foes. Before the year was out he had collected six thousand
men, and was ready to strike a blow at the weak, extended line--Hessian
mercenaries for the most part--which Howe had left to hold the Delaware.
On Christmas Day he made his advance, and ordered a crossing to be made
in three divisions, under cover of the night. Only his own division,
twenty-five hundred strong, effected the passage. ’Twas ten hours’
perilous work to cross the storm-swept river in the pitchy darkness,
amidst the hazards of floating ice, but not a man or a gun was lost.
There was a nine miles’ march through driving snow and sleet after the
landing before Trenton could be reached, the point of attack, and two
men were frozen to death as they went. General Sullivan sent word that
the guns were wet: “Tell him to use the bayonet,” said “Washington, “for
the town must be taken.” And it was taken--in the early morning, at the
point of the bayonet, with a loss of but two or three men. The surprise
was complete. Colonel Rahl, the commander of the place, was mortally
wounded at the first onset, and nine hundred Hessians surrendered at
discretion.
When he had gotten his prisoners safe on the south side of the river,
Washington once more advanced to occupy the town. It was a perilous
place to be, no doubt, with the great unbridged stream behind him; but
the enemy’s line was everywhere broken, now that its centre had been
taken; had been withdrawn from the river in haste, abandoning its cannon
even and its baggage at Burlington; and Washington calmly dared to play
the game he had planned. It was not Howe who came to meet him, but the
gallant Cornwallis, no mean adversary, bringing eight thousand men.
Washington let him come all the way to the Delaware without himself
stirring, except to put a small tributary stream between his men and the
advancing columns; and the confident Englishman went to bed that night
exclaiming, “At last we have run down the old fox, and we’ll bag him in
the morning.” Then, while a small force kept the camp-fires burning and
worked audibly at the ramparts the cold night through, the fox was up
and away. He put the whole of his force upon the road to Princeton and
New Brunswick, where he knew Cornwallis’s stores must be. As the
morning’s light broadened into day (January 3d, 1777) he met the British
detachment at Princeton in the way, and drove it back in decisive rout,
a keen ardor coming into his blood as he saw the sharp work done. “An
old-fashioned Virginia fox-hunt, gentlemen,” he exclaimed, shouting the
view-halloo. Had his troops been fresh and properly shod to outstrip
Cornwallis at their heels, he would have pressed on to New Brunswick and
taken the stores there; but he had done all that could be done with
despatch, and withdrew straight to the heights of Morristown. Cornwallis
could only hasten back to New York. By the end of the month the
Americans were everywhere afoot; the British held no posts in New Jersey
but Paulus Hook, Amboy, and New Brunswick; and Washington had issued a
proclamation commanding all who had accepted General Howe’s offer of
pardon either to withdraw within the British lines or to take oath of
allegiance to the United States. Men loved to tell afterwards how
Frederick the Great had said that it was the most brilliant campaign of
the century.
Congress took steps before the winter was over to secure long
enlistments, and substitute a veritable army for the three months’
levies with which Washington had hitherto been struggling to make shift.
After the affair at Trenton, Washington had been obliged to pledge his
own private fortune for their pay to induce the men whose terms of
enlistment were to expire on New Year’s Day--more than half his
force--to stay with him but a few weeks more, till his plan should be
executed. Now he was authorized to raise regiments enlisted till the war
should end, and to exercise almost dictatorial powers in everything that
might affect the discipline, provisioning, and success of his army.
There was need, for the year witnessed fighting of tremendous
consequence. The British struck for nothing less than complete
possession of the whole State of New York, throughout the valleys of the
Hudson and the Mohawk. General Howe, who had above twenty thousand men
in New York city, was to move up the Hudson; General Burgoyne, with
eight thousand men, from Canada down Lake Champlain; Colonel St. Leger,
with a small but sufficient force, down into the valley of the Mohawk,
striking from Oswego, on Ontario; and the colonies were to be cut in
twain, New England hopelessly separated from her confederates, by the
converging sweep of three armies, aggregating more than thirty-three
thousand men. But only the coast country, it turned out, was tenable
ground for British troops. Sir Guy Carleton had attempted Champlain out
of Canada the year before, and had gone back to Quebec without touching
Ticonderoga, so disconcerted had he been by the price he had had to pay
for his passage up the lake to a small force and an extemporized fleet
under Benedict Arnold. This time Burgoyne, with his splendid army, made
short work of Ticonderoga (July, 1777), and drove General Schuyler and
his army back to their posts beyond the Hudson; but the farther he got
from his base upon the lake into the vast forests of that wide frontier,
the more certainly did he approach disaster. No succor came. St. Leger
was baffled, and sent in panic back the way he had come. Howe did not
ascend the river. The country swarmed with gathering militia. They would
not volunteer for distant campaigns; but this invading host, marching by
their very homes into the deep forest, roused and tempted them as they
had been roused at Concord, and they gathered at its rear and upon its
flanks as they had run together to invest Boston. A thousand men
Burgoyne felt obliged to leave in garrison at Ticonderoga; a thousand
more, sent to Bennington to seize the stores there, were overwhelmed and
taken (August 16th). Quite twenty thousand provincials presently beset
him, and he had but six thousand left wherewith to save himself. He
crossed the river, for he still expected Howe; and there was stubborn
fighting about Saratoga (September 19th, October 7th), in which Arnold
once more made his name in battle. But the odds were too great;
Burgoyne’s supplies were cut off, his troops beaten; there was nothing
for it but capitulation (October 17th). He had been trapped and taken by
a rising of the country.
Howe had not succored him, partly because he lacked judgment and
capacity, partly because Washington had thwarted him at every turn. From
his position at Morristown, Washington could send reinforcements to the
north or recall them at will, without serious delay; and Howe, in his
hesitation, gave him abundant time to do what he would. It was Sir
William’s purpose to occupy the early summer, ere Burgoyne should need
him, in an attack on Philadelphia. On the 12th of June, accordingly, he
threw a force of eighteen thousand men into New Jersey. But Washington
foiled him at each attempt to advance by hanging always upon his flank
in such a position that he could neither be safely ignored nor forced to
fight; and the prudent Howe, abandoning the march, withdrew once more to
New York. But he did not abandon his project against Philadelphia. He
deemed it the “capital” of the insurgent confederacy, and wished to
discredit congress and win men of doubtful allegiance to his standard by
its capture; and he reckoned upon some advantage in drawing Washington
after him to the southward, away from Burgoyne’s field of operations in
the north. Though July had come, therefore, and Burgoyne must need him
presently, he put his eighteen thousand men aboard the fleet and carried
them by sea to the Chesapeake. Washington was sorely puzzled. He had
taken it for granted that Howe would go north, and he had gone south!
“Howe’s in a manner abandoning Burgoyne is so unaccountable,” he said,
“that I cannot help casting my eyes continually behind me;” and he
followed very cautiously, ready upon the moment to turn back, lest the
movement should prove a feint. But there was no mistake. Howe entered
the Delaware, and, being frightened thence by reports of obstructions in
the river, went all the long four hundred miles about the capes of
Chesapeake, and put his army ashore at Elkton for its advance upon
Philadelphia. It was then the 25th of August. Washington met him
(September 11th) behind the fords of the Brandywine, and, unable to
check Cornwallis on his flank, was defeated. But for him defeat was
never rout: his army was still intact and steady; and he held his foe
yet another fortnight on the road ere the “capital” could be entered
(September 27th). Burgoyne was by that time deep within the net spread
for him at Saratoga. On the morning of the 4th of October, in a thick
mist, Washington threw himself upon Howe’s main force encamped across
the village street of Germantown, and would have overwhelmed it in the
surprising onset had not two of his own columns gone astray in the fog,
attacked each other, and so lost the moment’s opportunity. General Howe
knew very soon how barren a success he had had. The end of November came
before he had made himself master of the forts upon the Delaware below
the “capital” and removed the obstructions from the river to give access
to his fleet; the British power was broken and made an end of in the
north; and Washington was still at hand as menacing and dangerous as
ever. Dr. Franklin was told in Paris that General Howe had taken
Philadelphia. “Philadelphia has taken Howe,” he laughed.
Philadelphia kept Howe safely through the winter, and his officers made
themselves easy amidst a round of gayeties in the complacent town, while
Washington went to Valley Forge to face the hardships and the intrigues
of a bitter season. A deep demoralization fell that winter, like a
blight, upon all the business of the struggling confederacy. The
congress, in its exile at York, had lost its tone and its command in
affairs. It would have lost it as completely in Philadelphia, no doubt,
for it was no longer the body it had been. Its best members were
withdrawn to serve their respective states in the critical business, now
everywhere in hand, of reorganizing their governments; and it itself was
no government at all, but simply a committee of advice, which the
states heeded or ignored as they pleased. Oftentimes but ten or twelve
members could be got together to transact its business. It suffered
itself to fall into the hands of intriguers and sectional politicians.
It gave commissions in the army not according to merit, but upon a plan
carefully devised to advance no more officers from one section than from
another--even men like John Adams approving. Adams denounced claims of
seniority and service as involving “one of the most putrid corruptions
of absolute monarchy,” and suggested that the officers who did not
relish the idea of seeing the several states given “a share of the
general officers,” proportioned to the number of troops they had sent to
the army, had better take themselves off, and see how little they would
be missed. Worst of all, an ugly plot was hatched to displace
Washington; and the various distempers of different men for a brief
season gave it a chance to succeed. Some were impatient of Washington’s
“Fabian policy,” as they called it, and would have had him annihilate,
instead of merely checking, these invading hosts. “My toast,” cried John
Adams, “is a short and violent war.” Others envied Washington his power
and his growing fame, resented their own subordination and his
supremacy, and intrigued to put General Gates in his place. Had not
Gates won at Saratoga, and Washington lost at the Brandywine and at
Germantown? Schuyler had prepared the victory in the north; Arnold and
Morgan had done the fighting that secured it; but Gates had obtained the
command when all was ready, and was willing to receive the reward. With
a political committee-congress in charge of affairs, nothing was
impossible.
[Illustration: WASHINGTON’S HEADQUARTERS AT VALLEY FORGE]
Washington and his army were starving the while at Valley Forge, in
desperate straits to get anything to eat or anything to cover them in
that bitter season--not because there were no supplies, but because
congress had disorganized the commissary department, and the supplies
seldom reached the camp. The country had not been too heavily stricken
by the war. Abundant crops were everywhere sown and peacefully reaped,
and there were men enough to do the work of seed-time and harvest. It
was only the army that was suffering for lack of food and lack of men.
The naked fact was that the confederacy was falling apart for lack of a
government. Local selfishness had overmastered national feeling, and
only a few men like Washington held the breaking structure together.
Washington’s steadfastness was never shaken; and Mrs. Washington, stanch
lady that she was, joined him even at Valley Forge. The intrigue against
him he watched in stern silence till it was ripe and evident, then he
crushed it with sudden exposure, and turned away in contempt, hardly so
much as mentioning it in his letters to his friends. “Their own artless
zeal to advance their views has destroyed them,” he said. His soldiers
he succored and supplied as he could, himself sharing their privations,
and earning their love as he served them. “Naked and starving as they
are,” he wrote, “we cannot sufficiently admire the incomparable patience
and fidelity of the soldiers.” And even out of that grievous winter some
profit was wrung. Handsome sums of French money had begun of late to
come slowly into the confederate treasury--for France, for the nonce,
was quick with sympathy for America, and glad to lend secret aid against
an old foe. Presently, she promised, she would recognize the
independence of the United States, and herself grapple once more with
England. Meanwhile French, German, and Polish officers hurried
over sea to serve as volunteers with the raw armies of the
confederacy--adventurers, some of them; others sober veterans, gentlemen
of fortune, men of generous and noble quality--among the rest the boyish
Lafayette and the distinguished Steuben. Baron von Steuben had won
himself a place on the great Frederick’s staff in the Seven Years’ War,
and was of that studious race of soldiers the world was presently to
learn to fear. He joined Washington at Valley Forge, and turned the
desolate camp into a training-school of arms, teaching, what these
troops had never known before, promptness and precision in the manual of
arms, in massed and ordered movement, in the use of the bayonet, the
drill and mastery of the charge and of the open field. Neither
Washington nor any of his officers had known how to give this training.
The commander-in-chief had not even had a properly organized staff till
this schooled and thorough German supplied it, and he was valued in the
camp as he deserved. “You say to your soldier, ‘Do this,’ and he doeth
it,” he wrote to an old comrade in Prussia; “I am obliged to say to
mine, ‘This is the reason why you ought to do that,’ and then he does
it.” But he learned to like and to admire his new comrades soon enough
when he found what spirit and capacity there was in them for the field
of action.
The army came out of its dismal winter quarters stronger than it had
ever been before, alike in spirit and in discipline; more devoted to its
commander than ever, and more fit to serve him. At last the change to a
system of long enlistments had transformed it from a levy of militia
into an army steadied by service, unafraid of the field. The year
opened, besides, with a new hope and a new confidence. They were no
longer a body of insurgents even to the eye of Europe. News came to the
camp late in the night of the 4th of May (1778) that France had entered
into open alliance with the United States, and would send fleets and an
army to aid in securing their independence. Such an alliance changed the
whole face of affairs. England would no longer have the undisputed
freedom of the seas, and the conquest of her colonies in America might
turn out the least part of her task in the presence of European enemies.
She now knew the full significance of Saratoga and Germantown.
Washington’s splendid audacity and extraordinary command of his
resources in throwing himself upon his victorious antagonist at
Germantown as the closing move of a long retreat had touched the
imagination and won the confidence of foreign soldiers and statesmen
hardly less than the taking of Burgoyne at Saratoga. Parliament at last
(February, 1778) came to its senses: resolved to renounce the right to
tax the colonies, except for the regulation of trade, and sent
commissioners to America to offer such terms for submission. But it was
too late; neither congress nor the states would now hear of anything but
independence.
With a French fleet about to take the sea, it was necessary that the
British commanders in America should concentrate their forces.
Philadelphia, they had at last found out, was a burden, not a prize. It
had no strategic advantage of position; was hard to defend, and harder
to provision; was too far from the sea, and not far enough from
Washington’s open lines of operation. Before the summer’s campaign
began, Sir William Howe resigned his command and bade the town good-bye,
amidst elaborate festivities (May 18th, 1778). General Clinton, who
succeeded him, received orders from England to undo Howe’s work at once,
abandon Philadelphia, and concentrate his forces at New York. ’Twas
easier said than done. There were not transports enough to move his
fifteen thousand men by sea; only the three thousand loyalists who had
put themselves under his protection could be sent in the ships, with a
portion of his stores; he must cross the hostile country; and his march
was scarcely begun (June 18th) before Washington was at his heels, with
a force but little inferior to his own either in numbers or in
discipline. He might never have reached New York at all had not Charles
Lee been once more second in command in the American army. He had come
out of captivity, exchanged, and now proved himself the insubordinate
poltroon he was. He had never had any real heart in the cause. He owned
estates in Virginia, but he was not of the great Virginian family of the
Northern Neck. He was only a soldier of fortune, strayed out of the
British service on half-pay to seek some profit in the colonies, and
cared for no interest but his own. While a prisoner he had secretly
directed Howe’s movement against Philadelphia, and now he was to
consummate his cowardly treachery. Washington outstripped his opponent
in the movement upon New York, and determined to fall upon him at
Monmouth Court House, where, on the night of the 27th of June, Clinton’s
divisions lay separate, offering a chance to cut them asunder. On the
morning of the 28th, Lee was ordered forward with six thousand men to
enfold Clinton’s left wing--eight thousand men, the flower of the
British force--by gaining its flank, while Washington held his main body
ready to strike in his aid at the right moment. The movement was
perfectly successful, and the fighting had begun, when, to the amazement
and chagrin alike of officers and men, Lee began to withdraw. Lafayette
sent a messenger hot-foot for Washington, who rode up to find his men,
not attacking, but pursued. “What is the meaning of all this?” he
thundered, his wrath terrible to see. When Lee would have made some
excuse, he hotly cursed him, in his fury, for a coward, himself rallied
the willing troops, and led them forward again to a victory: won back
the field Lee had abandoned, and drove the enemy to the cover of a
morass. In the night that followed, Clinton hastily withdrew, leaving
even his wounded behind him, and Washington’s chance to crush him was
gone.
“Clinton gained no advantage except to reach New York with the wreck of
his army,” commented the observant Frederick over sea; “America is
probably lost for England.” But a great opportunity had been
treacherously thrown away, and the war dragged henceforth with every
painful trial of hope deferred. A scant three weeks after Clinton had
reached New York, the Count d’Estaing was off Sandy Hook, with a French
fleet of twelve ships of the line and six frigates, bringing four
thousand troops. The British fleet within the harbor was barely half as
strong; but the pilots told the cautious Frenchman that his larger ships
could not cross the bar, and he turned away from New York to strike at
Newport, the only other point now held by the British in all the
country. That place had hardly been invested, however, when Lord Howe
appeared with a stronger fleet than the French. D’Estaing was obliged
to draw off to meet him; a great storm sent both fleets into port to
refit instead of to fight; and the disgusted militia-men and
continentals, who had come to take the town with the French, withdrew in
high choler to see the fleet, without which they could do nothing, taken
off to Boston. When the autumn came Clinton felt free to send
thirty-five hundred men to the Southern coast, and Savannah was taken
(December 29th, 1778). Only in the far West, at the depths of the great
wilderness beyond the mountains, was anything done that promised
decisive advantage. George Rogers Clark, that daring Saxon frontiersman,
who moved so like a king through the far forests, swept the whole
country of the Illinois free from British soldiers and British authority
that winter of 1778-9, annexing it to the states that meant to be
independent; and a steady stream of immigration began to pour into the
opened country, as if to prepare a still deeper task of conquest for the
British at far New York.
But few noted in the East what gallant men were doing in the valley of
the Mississippi. They saw only that the British, foiled in New England
and the middle colonies, had changed their plans, and were now minded to
try what could be done in the South. There at last their campaigns
seemed about to yield them something. Savannah taken, they had little
trouble in overrunning Georgia, and every effort to dislodge them
failed; for Washington could not withdraw his army from before Clinton
at New York. Spain joined France in offensive alliance in April, 1779;
in August a combined French and Spanish fleet attempted an invasion of
England; all Europe seemed about to turn upon the stout little kingdom
in its unanimous fear and hatred of her arrogant supremacy upon the
seas. Everywhere there was war upon the ocean highways--even America
sending forth men of desperate valor, like John Paul Jones, to ravage
and challenge Britain upon her very coasts. But England’s spirit only
rose with the danger, and Washington waited all the weary year through
for his French allies. In 1780 it looked for a little as if the British
were indeed turned victors. In the spring Clinton withdrew the force
that had held Newport to New York, and, leaving General Knyphausen there
with a powerful force to keep Washington and the city, carried eight
thousand men southward to take Charleston. There were forces already in
the South sufficient to swell his army to ten thousand ere he invested
the fated town; and on the 12th of May (1780) it fell into his hands,
with General Lincoln and three thousand prisoners. Washington had sent
such succor as he could, but the British force was overwhelming, and
South Carolina was lost. South Carolina teemed with loyalists. The whole
country was swept and harried by partisan bands. The men who should have
swelled General Lincoln’s force knew not when their homes might be
plundered and destroyed, if they were to leave them. The planters of the
low country dared not stir for fear of an insurrection of their slaves.
In June, Clinton could take half his force back to New York, deeming the
work done. General Gates completed the disastrous record. On the 13th of
June he was given chief command in the South, and was told that the
country expected another “Burgoynade.” His force was above three
thousand, and he struck his blow, as he should, at Camden, where
Cornwallis had but two thousand men, albeit trained and veteran troops;
but the end was total, shameful rout (August 16th, 1780), and men knew
at last the incapacity of their “hero of Saratoga.” “We look on America
as at our feet,” said Horace Walpole.
Certainly things looked desperate enough that dark year. The congress
was sinking into a more and more helpless inefficiency. Definitive
articles of confederation had been submitted to the states nearly three
years ago (November, 1777), but they had not been adopted yet, and the
states had almost ceased to heed the requisitions of the congress at
all. Unable to tax, it paid its bills and the wages of its troops in
paper, which so rapidly fell in value that by the time the hopeless year
1780 was out, men in the ranks found a month’s pay too little with which
to buy even a single bushel of wheat. Washington was obliged to levy
supplies from the country round him to feed his army; and in spite of
their stanch loyalty to him, his men grew mutinous, in sheer disgust
with the weak and faithless government they were expected to serve.
Wholesale desertion began, as many as one hundred men a month going over
to the enemy, to get at least pay and food and clothing. The country
seemed not so much dismayed as worn out and indifferent; weary of
waiting and hoping; looking stolidly to see the end come. Washington was
helpless. Without the co-operation of a naval force, it was impossible
to do more than hold the British in New York. France, it was true, was
bestirring herself again. On the 10th of July a French fleet put in at
Newport and landed a force of six thousand men, under Count Rochambeau,
a most sensible and capable officer, who was directed to join Washington
and put himself entirely under his command. But a powerful British fleet
presently made its appearance in the Sound; the French admiral dared
not stir; Rochambeau dared not leave him without succor; and the
reinforcements that were to have followed out of France were blockaded
in the harbor of Brest.
Then, while things stood so, treason was added. Benedict Arnold, the man
whom Washington trusted with a deep affection, and whom the army loved
for his gallantry, entered into correspondence with the enemy; arranged
to give West Point and the posts dependent upon it into their hands;
and, his treason suddenly detected, escaped without punishment to the
British sloop of war that waited in the river for the British agent in
the plot. Washington was at hand when the discovery was made. His aides
were breakfasting with Arnold when the traitor was handed the note which
told him he was found out; and Arnold had scarcely excused himself and
made good his flight when the commander-in-chief reached the house. When
Washington learned what had happened, it smote him so that mighty sobs
burst from him, as if his great heart would break; and all the night
through the guard could hear him pacing his room endlessly, in a lonely
vigil with his bitter thoughts. He did not in his own grief forget the
stricken wife upstairs. “Go to Mrs. Arnold,” he said to one of his
officers, “and tell her that, though my duty required that no means
should be neglected to arrest General Arnold, I have great pleasure in
acquainting _her_ that he is now safe on board a British vessel.” Arnold
had deemed himself wronged and insulted by congress--but what officer
that Washington trusted might not? Who could be confided in if such men
turned traitors?
But a sudden turning of affairs marked the close of the year. Cornwallis
had penetrated too far into the Carolinas; had advanced into North
Carolina, and was beset, as Burgoyne had been, by a rising of the
country. He lost twelve hundred men at King’s Mountain (October 7th,
1780), as Burgoyne had lost a thousand at Bennington; and everywhere, as
he moved, he found himself checked by the best officers the long war had
bred--Nathanael Greene, who had been Washington’s right hand the war
through; Henry Lee, the daring master of cavalry, whom Washington loved;
the veteran Steuben; Morgan, who had won Saratoga with Arnold; and
partisan leaders a score, whom he had learned to dread in that wide
forested country. He was outgeneralled; his forces were taken in detail
and beaten, and he himself was forced at last into Virginia. By
midsummer, 1781, all his interior posts were lost, and he was cut off
from Charleston and Savannah by a country he dared not cross again. In
Virginia, though at first he raided as he pleased, he was checked more
and more as the season advanced by a growing force under Lafayette; and
by the first week in August he had taken counsel of prudence, and
established himself, seven thousand strong, at Yorktown, near the sea,
his base of supplies. Then it was that Washington struck the blow which
ended the war. At last Rochambeau was free to move; at last a French
fleet was at hand to block the free passage of the sea. The Count de
Grasse, with twenty-eight ships of the line, six frigates, and twenty
thousand men, was in the West Indies, and in August sent word to
Washington that he was about to bring his whole fleet to the Chesapeake,
as Washington had urged. Either the Chesapeake or New York, had been
[Illustration: THE ESCAPE OF ARNOLD]
Washington’s prayer to him. Making as if he were but moving about New
York from north to south for some advantage of position, Washington
suddenly took two thousand Continentals and four thousand Frenchmen,
under Rochambeau, all the long four hundred miles to York River in
Virginia, to find Cornwallis already entrapped there, as he had planned,
between Grasse’s fleet in the bay and Lafayette intrenched across the
peninsula with eight thousand men, now the French had loaned him three
thousand. A few weeks’ siege and the decisive work was done, to the
admiration of Cornwallis himself. The British army was taken. The
generous Englishman could not withhold an expression of his admiration
for the extraordinary skill with which Washington had struck all the way
from New York with six thousand men as easily as if with six hundred.
“But, after all,” he added, “your Excellency’s achievements in New
Jersey were such that nothing could surpass them.”
THE STRESS OF VICTORY
CHAPTER VIII
The victory at Yorktown brought neither peace nor ease in affairs. The
revolution was indeed accomplished--that every man could see who had the
candor to look facts in the face; but its accomplishment brought tasks
harder even than the tasks of war. Hostilities slackened--were almost
wholly done with before another spring had come. No more troops came
over sea. The ministry in England were discredited and ousted. Every one
knew that the proud mother country must yield, for all her stout
defiance of the world. But a long year dragged by, nevertheless, before
even preliminary articles of accommodation were signed; and still
another before definitive peace came, with independence and the full
fruits of victory. Meanwhile there was an army to be maintained, despite
desperate incompetence on the part of the congress and a hopeless
indifference among the people; and a government to be kept presentably
afoot, despite lack of money and lack of men. The Articles of
Confederation proposed at the heart of the war-time (November 15th,
1777) had at last been adopted (March 1st, 1781), in season to create at
least a government which could sign treaties and conclude wars, but
neither soon enough nor wisely enough to bring order out of chaos. The
states, glad to think the war over, would do nothing for the army,
nothing for the public credit, nothing even for the maintenance of
order; and the Articles of Confederation only gave the congress written
warranty for offering advice: they did not make its shadowy powers real.
It was beyond measure fortunate that at such a critical time as this
Washington still kept his command, still held affairs under the steady
pressure of his will. His successes had at last given him a place of
authority in the thoughts and affections of his countrymen in some sort
commensurate with his capacity and his vision in affairs. He had risen
to a very safe footing of power among all the people as the war drew
towards its close, filling their imaginations, and reigning among them
as securely as among his troops, who for so long had felt his will
wrought upon them day by day. His very reserve, and the large dignity
and pride of his stately bearing, made him seem the more like a hero in
the people’s eyes. They could understand a man made in this ample and
simple kind, give them but time enough to see him in his full
proportions. It answered to their thought of him to find him too proud
to dissemble, too masterful to brook unreasonable faults, and yet slow
to grow impatient, though he must wait a whole twelvemonth to see a plan
mature, or coax a half-score states to get a purpose made good. And they
could not deem him cold, though they found him self-possessed, keeping
his own counsel; for was not the country full of talk how passionately
he was like to act at a moment of crisis and in the field? They only
feared to lose a leader so reckless of himself when danger was sharpest.
“Our army love their general very much,” one of his officers had said,
“but they have one thing against him, which is the little care he takes
of himself in any action”; for he had seen how Washington pressed at
Trenton and at Princeton to the points that were most exposed, thinking
of his troops, not of himself. The spirit of fight had run high in him
the whole war through. Even during those dismal weeks of 1776, when
affairs looked darkest, and he had but a handful of men about him as he
all but fled before Howe through New Jersey, he had spoken, as if in the
very pleasantry of daring, of what he would do should things come to the
worst with him. His thought turned to those western fastnesses he knew
so well, where the highlands of his own state lay, and he spoke calmly
of a desperate venture thither. “Reed,” he exclaimed, to one of his
aides, “my neck does not feel as though it was made for a halter. We
must retire to Augusta County, in Virginia, and if overpowered, must
pass the Alleghany Mountains.” And when the last movement of the war
came, it was still with the same feeling that he drew his lines about
Cornwallis. “We may be beaten by the English,” he said; “it is the
chance of war; but there is the army they will never conquer.”
“The privates are all generals, but not soldiers,” the gallant
Montgomery had cried, in his hot impatience with the heady militia-men
he was bidden command; but it was not so in the presence of Washington,
when once these men had taken his measure. They were then “rivals in
praising him,” the Abbé Robin declared, “fearing him even when he was
silent, and retaining their full confidence in him after defeats and
disgrace.” The singular majesty and poise of this revolutionary hero
struck the French officers as infinitely more remarkable than his
mastery in the field and his ascendency in council. They had looked to
find him great in action, but they had not thought to see in him a
great gentleman, a man after their own kind in grace and courtesy and
tact, and yet so lifted above the manner of courts and drawing-rooms by
an incommunicable quality of grave sincerity which they were at a loss
how to describe. No one could tell whether it were a gift of the mind or
of the heart. It was certain only that it constituted the atmosphere and
apotheosis of the man. The Marquis de Chastellux noted, with a sort of
reverent awe for this hero not yet turned of fifty, how perfect a union
reigned between his physical and moral qualities. “One alone,” he
declared, “will enable you to judge of all the rest.” “It is not my
intention to exaggerate,” he said; “I wish only to express my impression
of a perfect whole, which cannot be the product of enthusiasm, since the
effect of proportion is rather to diminish the idea of greatness.”
Strangers who had noted his appearance in the earlier years of the war
had remarked the spirit and life that sat in Washington’s eyes: but when
the war was over, and its strain relaxed, they found those eyes grown
pensive, “more attentive than sparkling”; steady still, and noble in
their frankness and good feeling, but touched a little with care, dimmed
with watching. The Prince de Broglie found him “still as fresh and
active as a young man” in 1782, but thought “he must have been much
handsomer three years ago,” for “the gentlemen who had remained with him
during all that time said that he seemed to have grown much older.”
’Twould have been no marvel had he broken under the burden he had
carried, athletic soldier and hardened campaigner though he was. “This
is the seventh year that he has commanded the army and that he has
obeyed the congress: more need not be said,” the Marquis de Chastellux
declared, unconsciously uttering a very bitter gibe against the
government, when he meant only to praise its general.
Such service told the more heavily upon Washington because he had
rendered it in silence. No man among all the Revolutionary leaders, it
is true, had been more at the desk than he. Letters of command and
persuasion, reports that carried every detail of the army’s life and
hopes in their careful phrases, orders of urgency and of provident
arrangement, writings of any and every sort that might keep the hard war
afoot, he had poured forth incessantly, and as if incapable of fatigue
or discouragement. No one who was under orders, no man who could lend
the service a hand or take a turn at counsel, was likely to escape
seeing the commander-in-chief’s handwriting often enough to keep him in
mind of his tireless power to foresee and to direct. Washington seemed
present in every transaction of the war. And yet always and to every one
he seemed a silent man. What he said and what he wrote never touched
himself. He spoke seldom of motives, always of what was to be done and
considered; and even his secretaries, though they handled the multitude
of his papers, were left oftentimes to wonder and speculate about the
man himself--so frank and yet so reserved, so straightforward and simple
and yet so proud and self-contained, revealing powers, but somehow not
revealing himself. It must have seemed at times to those who followed
him and pondered what they saw that he had caught from Nature her own
manner while he took his breeding as a boy and his preparation as a man
amidst the forests of a wild frontier; that his character spoke in what
he did and without self-consciousness; that he had no moods but those of
action.
Nor did men know him for what he really was until the war was over. His
own officers then found they had something more to learn of the man they
had fought under for six years--and those six, all of them, years such
as lay bare the characters of men. What remained to be done during the
two trying, anxious years 1782 and 1783 seemed as if intended for a
supreme and final test of the qualities of the man whose genius and
character had made the Revolution possible. “At the end of a long civil
war,” said the Marquis de Chastellux, with a noble pride for his friend,
“he had nothing with which he could reproach himself”; but it was these
last years which were to crown this perfect praise with its full
meaning. In the absence of any real government, Washington proved almost
the only prop of authority and law. What the crisis was no one knew
quite so thoroughly or so particularly as he. It consisted in the
ominous fact that the army was the only organized and central power in
the country, and that it had deep reason for discontent and
insubordination. When once it had served its purpose greatly at
Yorktown, and the war seemed ended at a stroke, the country turned from
it in indifference--left it without money; talked of disbanding it
without further ceremony, and with no provision made for arrears of pay;
seemed almost to challenge it to indignation and mutiny. It was
necessary, for every reason of prudence and good statesmanship, to keep
the army still upon a war footing. There were sure signs of peace, no
doubt, but no man could foretell what might be the course of politics
ere England should have compounded her quarrel with
[Illustration: THE BUST BY ECKSTEIN
(Owned by Frederick McGuire, Esq., Washington)]
France and Spain, and ended the wars with which the Revolution had
become inextricably involved. ’Twere folly to leave the English army at
New York unchecked. Premature confidence that peace had come might bring
some sudden disaster of arms, should the enemy take the field again. The
army must be ready to fight, if only to make fighting unnecessary.
Washington would have assumed the offensive again, would have crushed
Clinton where he lay in New York; and the congress was not slack--as
slackness was counted there--in sustaining his counsels. But the
congress had no power to raise money; had no power to command. The
states alone could make it possible to tax the country to pay the army:
their thirteen governments were the only civil authority, and they took
the needs and the discontents of the army very lightly, deemed peace
secure and war expenses unnecessary, and let matters drift as they
would.
They came very near drifting to another revolution--a revolution such as
politicians had left out of their reckoning, and only Washington could
avert. After Yorktown, Washington spent four months in Philadelphia,
helping the congress forward with the business of the winter; but as
March of the new year (1782) drew towards its close, he rejoined the
army at Newburgh, to resume his watch upon New York. He had been
scarcely two months at his post when a letter was placed in his hands
which revealed, more fully than any observations of his own could have
revealed it, the pass to which affairs had come. The letter was from
Colonel Lewis Nicola, an old and respected officer, who stood nearer
than did most of his fellow-officers to the commander-in-chief in
intimacy and affection, and who felt it his privilege to speak plainly.
The letter was calm in temper, grave and moderate in tone, with
something of the gravity and method of a disquisition written upon
abstract questions of government; did not broach its meaning like a
revolutionary document. But what it proposed was nothing less, when read
between the lines, than that Washington should suffer himself to be made
king, and that so an end should be put to the incompetency and
ingratitude of a band of weak and futile republics. Washington met the
suggestion with a rebuke so direct and overwhelming that Colonel Nicola
must himself have wondered how he had ever dared make such a venture.
“Be assured, sir,” said the indignant commander, “no occurrence in the
course of the war has given me more painful sensations than your
information of there being such ideas existing in the army.... I am much
at a loss to conceive what part of my conduct could have given
encouragement to an address which to me seems big with the greatest
mischiefs that can befall my country. If I am not deceived in the
knowledge of myself, you could not have found a person to whom your
schemes are more disagreeable.... Let me conjure you, if you have any
regard for your country, concern for yourself or posterity, or respect
for me, to banish these thoughts from your mind, and never communicate,
as from yourself or any one else, a sentiment of the like nature.” He
was cut to the quick that his own officers should deem him an
adventurer, willing to advance his own power at the expense of the very
principles he had fought for. His thought must have gone back at a bound
to his old comradeship with his brother Lawrence, with the Fairfaxes,
George Mason, and the Lees, and all that free company of gentlemen in
the Northern Neck who revered law, loved liberty, and hated a usurper.
But he could not blink the just complaints and real grievances of the
army; nor did he wish to. Though others were angry after a manner he
scorned, no man’s grief or indignation was deeper than his that the army
should be left penniless after all it had suffered and done, and be
threatened, besides, with being turned adrift without reward or hope of
provision for the future. “No man possesses a more sincere wish to see
ample justice done to the army than I do,” he had declared to Colonel
Nicola; “and as far as my power and influence, in a constitutional way,
extend, they shall be employed to the utmost of my abilities to effect
it.” The pledge was fulfilled in almost every letter he wrote, private
or public. He urged the states, as he urged the congress, in season and
out of season, to see justice done the men who had won the Revolution,
and whom he loved as if they had been of his own blood. But even his
great voice went too long unheeded. “The spirit of party, private
interest, slowness, and national indolence slacken, suspend, and
overthrow the best concerted measures,” the Abbé Robin had observed,
upon his first coming with Rochambeau; and now measures were not so much
as concerted until a final menace from the army brought the country to
its senses. A troubled summer came and went, and another winter of
anxious doubt and ineffectual counsel. The very approach of peace, as it
grew more certain, quickened the angry fears of the army, lest peace
should be made a pretext, when it came, to disperse them before their
demands could be driven home upon the demoralized and reluctant
government they were learning to despise. Another spring and the
mischief so long maturing was ripe; it looked as if even Washington
could not prevent it. It had been rumored in Philadelphia, while the
winter held, “that the army had secretly determined not to lay down
their arms until due provision and a satisfactory prospect should be
afforded on the subject of their pay,” and that Washington had grown
unpopular among almost all ranks because of his harshness against every
unlawful means of securing justice. “His extreme reserve, mixed
sometimes with a degree of asperity of temper, both of which were said
to have increased of late, had contributed to the decline of his
popularity”--so ran the report--and it grew every week the more unlikely
he could check the treasonable purposes of his men.
In March, 1783, the mine was sprung; and then men learned, by a new
sign, what power there was in the silent man: how he could handle
disaffection and disarm reproach. An open address was spread broadcast
through the camp, calling upon the army to use its power to obtain its
rights, and inviting a meeting of the officers to devise a way. “Can you
consent to be the only sufferers by this Revolution?... If you can, ...
go, ... carry with you the ridicule, and, what is worse, the pity of the
world. Go, starve, and be forgotten.... But if you have sense enough to
discover, and spirit enough to oppose, tyranny, ... awake; attend to
your situation, and redress yourselves.” Such were its kindling phrases;
and no man need deceive himself with thinking they would go unheeded.
Washington showed his tact and mastery by assuming immediate control of
the movement, with a sharp rebuke for such a breach of manly propriety
and soldierly discipline, but with no thought to stay a righteous
protest. He himself summoned the officers; and when they had come
together stepped to the desk before them, with no show of anger or
offended dignity, but very gravely, with a sort of majesty it moved one
strangely to see, and taking a written paper from his pocket, adjusted
his spectacles to read it. “Gentlemen,” he said, very simply, “you will
permit me to put on my spectacles, for I have not only grown gray, but
almost blind, in the service of my country.” There were wet eyes upon
the instant in the room; no man stirred while he read--read words of
admonition, of counsel, and of hope which burned at the ear; and when he
was done, and had withdrawn, leaving them to do what they would, they
did nothing of which he could be ashamed. They spoke manfully, as was
right, of what they deemed it just and imperative the congress should do
for them; but they “_Resolved_, unanimously, that at the commencement of
the present war the officers of the American army engaged in the service
of their country from the purest love and attachment to the rights and
liberties of human nature, which motives still exist in the highest
degree; and that no circumstances of distress or danger shall induce a
conduct that may tend to sully the reputation and glory which they have
acquired at the price of their blood and eight years’ faithful
services.”
Washington knew, nevertheless, how black a danger lurked among these
distressed men; did not fail to speak plainly of it to the congress; and
breathed freely again only when the soldiers’ just demands had at last
in some measure been met, by at any rate the proper legislation. He grew
weary with longing for peace, when the work seemed done and his thoughts
had leisure to turn towards his home again. But once in all the
lengthened days of fighting had he seen Mount Vernon. He had turned
aside to spend a night or two there on his way to Yorktown, and he had
seen the loved place again for a little after the victory was won. Now,
amidst profitless days at Newburgh, or in counsel with the committees of
the congress upon business that was never finished, while affairs stood
as it were in a sort of paralysis, waiting upon the interminable
conferences of the three powers who haggled over definitive terms of
peace at Paris, home seemed to him, in his weariness, more to be desired
than ever before. Private griefs had stricken him at the very moment of
his triumph. Scarcely had the victory at Yorktown been celebrated when
he was called (November, 1781) to the death-bed of Jack Custis, his
wayward but dearly loved step-son, and had there to endure the sight of
his wife’s grief and the young widow’s hopeless sorrow added to his own.
The two youngest children he claimed for himself, with that wistful
fatherly longing that had always marked him; and Mount Vernon seemed to
him more like a haven than ever, where to seek rest and solace. The two
years he had yet to wait may well have seemed to him the longest of his
life, and may have added a touch of their own to what strangers deemed
his sternness.
He had seldom seemed so stern, indeed, as in one incident of those
trying months. An officer of the American army had been taken in a
skirmish, and the English had permitted a brutal company of loyalists,
under one Captain Lippincott, to take him from his prison in New York
and wantonly hang him in broad daylight on the heights near Middletown.
Washington at once notified the British commander that unless the
murderers were delivered up to be punished, a British officer would be
chosen by lot from among his prisoners to suffer in their stead; and,
when reparation was withheld, proceeded without hesitation to carry his
threat into execution. The lot fell upon Captain Charles Asgill, an
engaging youth of only nineteen, the heir of a great English family.
Lady Asgill, the lad’s mother, did not stop short of moving the very
French court itself to intervene to save her son, and at last the
congress counselled his release, the English commander having disavowed
the act of the murderers in whose place he was to suffer, and Washington
himself having asked to be directed what he should do. “Captain Asgill
has been released,” Washington wrote to Vergennes, in answer to the
great minister’s intercession. “I have no right to assume any particular
merit from the lenient manner in which this disagreeable affair has
terminated. But I beg you to believe, sir, that I most sincerely
rejoice, not only because your humane intentions are gratified, but
because the event accords with the wishes of his Most Christian
Majesty.” It lifted a great weight from his heart to have the innocent
boy go unhurt from his hands, and he wrote almost tenderly to him in
acquainting him with his release; but it was of his simple nature to
have sent the lad to the gallows, nevertheless, had things continued to
stand as they were at the first. He was inexorable to check perfidy and
vindicate the just rules of war. Men were reminded, while the affair
pended, of the hanging of André, Arnold’s British confederate in
treason, and how pitiless the commander-in-chief had seemed in sending
the frank, accomplished, lovable gentleman to his disgraceful death,
like any common spy, granting him not even the favor to be shot, like a
soldier. It seemed hard to learn the inflexible lines upon which that
consistent mind worked, as if it had gone to school to Fate.
But no one deemed him hard or stern, or so much as a thought more or
less than human, when at last the British had withdrawn from New York,
and he stood amidst his officers in Fraunce’s Tavern to say good-bye. He
could hardly speak for emotion: he could only lift his glass and say:
“With a heart full of love and gratitude, I now take my leave of you,
most devoutly wishing that your latter days may be as prosperous and
happy as your former ones have been glorious and honorable.... I cannot
come to each of you and take my leave,” he said, “but shall be obliged
if you will come and take me by the hand.” When General Knox, who stood
nearest, approached him, he drew him to him with a sudden impulse and
kissed him, and not a soldier among them all went away without an
embrace from this man who was deemed cold and distant. After the parting
they followed him in silence to Whitehall Ferry, and saw him take boat
for his journey.
And then, standing before the congress at Annapolis to resign his
commission, he added the crowning touch of simplicity to his just repute
as a man beyond others noble and sincere. “I have now the honor of
offering my sincere congratulations to congress,” he said, as he stood
amidst the august scene they had prepared for him, “and of presenting
myself before them to surrender into their hands the trust committed to
me, and to claim the indulgence of retiring from the service of my
country. Happy in the confirmation of our independence and sovereignty,
and pleased with the
[Illustration: FRAUNCE’S TAVERN, NEW YORK]
opportunity afforded the United States of becoming a respectable nation,
I resign with satisfaction the appointment I accepted with diffidence--a
diffidence in my abilities to accomplish so arduous a task, which,
however, was superseded by a confidence in the rectitude of our cause,
the support of the supreme power of the Union, and the patronage of
Heaven. The successful termination of the war has verified the most
sanguine expectations; and my gratitude for the interposition of
Providence and the assistance I have received from my countrymen
increases with every review of the momentous contest.... I consider it
my indispensable duty to close this last solemn act of my official life
by commending the interests of our dearest country to the protection of
Almighty God, and those who have the superintendence of them to His holy
keeping.” It was as if spoken on the morrow of the day upon which he
accepted his commission: the same diffidence, the same trust in a power
greater and higher than his own. The plaudits that had but just now
filled his ears at every stage of his long journey from New York seemed
utterly forgotten; he seemed not to know how his fellow countrymen had
made of him an idol and a hero; his simplicity was once again his
authentic badge of genuineness. He knew, it would seem, no other way in
which to act. A little child remembered afterwards how he had prayed at
her father’s house upon the eve of battle; how he had taken scripture
out of Joshua, and had cried, “The Lord God of gods, the Lord God of
gods, He knoweth, and Israel he shall know; if it be in rebellion, or if
in transgression against the Lord (save us not this day).” There was
here the same note of solemnity and of self-forgetful devotion, as if
duty and honor were alike inevitable.
On Christmas Eve, 1783, he was once more at Mount Vernon, to resume the
life he loved more than victory and power. He had a zest for the means
and the labor of succeeding, but not for the mere content of success. He
put the Revolution behind him as he would have laid aside a book that
was read; turned from it as quietly as he had turned from receiving the
surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown--interested in victory not as a
pageant and field of glory, but only as a means to an end. He looked to
find very sweet satisfaction in the peace which war had earned, as
sufficient a scope for his powers at home as in the field. Once more he
would be a Virginian, and join his strength to his neighbors’ in all the
tasks of good citizenship. He had seen nothing of the old familiar
places since that far-away spring of the year 1775, when he had left his
farming and his fox-hunting, amidst rumors of war, to attend the
congress which was to send him to Cambridge. He had halted at
Fredericksburg, indeed, with the Count de Rochambeau, two years ago, ere
he followed his army from York to its posts upon the Hudson. Mrs. Lewis,
his sister, had returned one day from visiting a neighbor in the quiet
town to look in astonishment upon an officer’s horses and attendants at
her door, and had entered to find her beloved brother stretched upon her
own bed within, sound asleep in his clothes, like a boy returned from
hunting. There had been a formal ball given, too, in celebration of the
victory, before the French officers and the commander-in-chief left
Fredericksburg to go northward again, and Washington had had the joy of
entering the room in the face of the gay company with his aged mother on
his arm, not a whit bent for all her seventy-four years, and as quiet as
a queen at receiving the homage of her son’s comrades in arms. He had
got his imperious spirit of command from her. A servant had told her
that “Mars George” had put up at the tavern. “Go and tell George to come
here instantly,” she had commanded; and he had come, masterful man
though he was. He had felt every old affection and every old allegiance
renew itself as he saw former neighbors crowd around him; and that
little glimpse of Virginia had refreshed him like a tonic--deeply, and
as if it renewed his very nature, as only a silent man can be refreshed.
But a few days in Fredericksburg and at Mount Vernon then had been only
an incident of campaigning, only a grateful pause on a march. Now at
last he had come back to keep his home and be a neighbor again, as he
had not been these nine years.
FIRST IN PEACE
CHAPTER IX
It was not the same Virginia, nor even the same home and neighborhood he
had gone from, that Washington came back to when the war was done. He
had left Mount Vernon in the care of Lund Washington, his nephew, while
the war lasted, and had not forgotten amidst all his letter writing to
send seasonable directions and maintain a constant oversight upon the
management of his estate. It was part of his genius to find time for
everything; and Mount Vernon had suffered something less than the
ordinary hazards and neglects of war. It had suffered less upon one
occasion, indeed, than its proud owner could have found it in his heart
to wish. In the spring of 1781 several British vessels had come
pillaging within the Potomac, and the anxious Lund had regaled their
officers with refreshments from Mount Vernon to buy them off from
mischief. “It would have been a less painful circumstance to me,” his
uncompromising uncle had written him, “to have heard that, in
consequence of your non-compliance with their request, they had burnt my
house and laid the plantation in ruin. You ought to have considered
yourself as my representative.” Kept though it was from harm, however,
the place had suffered many things for lack of his personal care. There
was some part of the task to be done over again that had confronted him
when he came to take possession of the old plantation with his bride
after the neglects of the French war.
But Virginia was more changed than Mount Vernon. He had left it a
colony, at odds with a royal Governor; he returned to find it a State,
with Benjamin Harrison, that stout gentleman and good planter, for
Governor, by the free suffrages of his fellow Virginians. There had been
no radical break with the aristocratic traditions of the past. Mr.
Harrison’s handsome seat at Lower Brandon lay where the long reaches of
the James marked the oldest regions of Virginia’s life upon broad,
half-feudal estates; where there were good wine and plate upon the
table, and gentlemen kept old customs bright and honored in the
observance. But the face of affairs had greatly changed, nevertheless.
The old generation of statesmen had passed away, almost with the colony,
and a younger generation was in the saddle, notwithstanding a
gray-haired figure here and there. Richard Bland had died in the year of
the Declaration; Peyton Randolph had not lived to see it. Edmund
Pendleton, after presiding over Virginia’s making as a State, as
chairman of her revolutionary Committee of Safety, was now withdrawn
from active affairs to the bench, his fine figure marred by a fall from
his horse, his old power as an advocate transmuted into the cooler
talents of the judge. Patrick Henry, the ardent leader of the
Revolution, had been chosen the State’s first Governor, in the year of
the Declaration of Independence; three years later Thomas Jefferson had
succeeded him in the office, the philosophical radical of times of
change; the choice of Mr. Harrison had but completed the round of the
new variety in affairs. Men who, like Richard Henry Lee, had counselled
revolution and the breaking of old bonds, were now in all things at the
front of the State’s business; and younger men, of a force and power of
origination equal to their own, were pressing forward, as if to hurry a
new generation to the stage which had known nothing but independence and
a free field for statesmanship. Among the rest, James Madison, only a
little more than ten years out of college, but already done with serving
his novitiate in the Congress of the Confederation, a publicist and
leader in the Old Dominion at thirty-two. Edmund Randolph, of the new
generation of the commonwealth’s great family of lawyers, like his
forebears in gifts and spirit, was already received, at thirty, into a
place of influence among public men. John Marshall, just turned of
twenty-eight, but a veteran of the long war none the less, having been
at the thick of the fighting, a lieutenant and a captain among the
Virginian forces, from the time Dunmore was driven from Norfolk till the
eve of Yorktown, was, now that that duty was done, a lawyer in quiet
Fauquier, drawing to himself the eyes of every man who had the
perception to note qualities of force and leadership. James Monroe had
come out of the war at twenty-five to go at once into the public
councils of his State, an equal among his elders. Young men came forward
upon every side to take their part in the novel rush of affairs that
followed upon the heels of revolution.
Washington found himself no stranger in the new State, for all it had
grown of a sudden so unlike that old community in which his own life had
been formed. He found a very royal welcome awaiting him at his
home-coming. The old commonwealth loved a hero still as much as ever;
was as loyal to him now as it had been in the far-away days of the
French war, when Dinwiddie alone fretted against him; received him with
every tribute of affection; offered him gifts, and loved him all the
better for refusing them. But he must have felt that a deep change had
come upon his life, none the less, and even upon his relations with his
old familiars and neighbors. He had gone away honored indeed, and marked
for responsible services among his people--a Burgess as a matter of
course, a notable citizen, whose force no man who knew him could fail to
remark; but by no means accounted greatest, even among the men who
gathered for the colony’s business at Williamsburg; chosen only upon
occasion for special services of action; no debater or statesman, so far
as ordinary men could see; too reserved to be popular with the crowd,
though it should like his frankness and taking address, and go out of
its way to see him on horseback; a man for his neighbors, who could know
him, not for the world, which he refused to court. But the war had
suddenly lifted him to the view of all mankind; had set him among the
great captains of the world; had marked him a statesman in the midst of
affairs--more a statesman than a soldier even, men must have thought who
had read his letters or heard them read in Congress, on the floor or in
the committee rooms; had drawn to himself the admiration of the very men
he had been fighting, the very nation whose dominion he had helped to
cast off. He had come home perhaps the most famous man of his day, and
could not take up the old life where he had left it off, much as he
wished to; was obliged, in spite of himself, to play a new part in
affairs.
For a few weeks, indeed, after he had reached Mount Vernon, Nature
herself assisted him to a little privacy and real retirement. The winter
(1783-4) was an uncommonly severe one. Snow lay piled, all but
impassable, upon the roads; frosts hardened all the country against
travel; he could not get even to Fredericksburg to see his aged mother;
and not many visitors, though they were his near neighbors, could reach
him at Mount Vernon. “At length, my dear Marquis,” he could write to
Lafayette in his security, “I am become a private citizen on the banks
of the Potomac; and under the shadow of my own vine and my own fig-tree,
free from the bustle of a camp and the busy scenes of public life, I am
solacing myself with those tranquil enjoyments of which the soldier, who
is ever in pursuit of fame, the statesman, whose watchful days and
sleepless nights are spent in devising schemes to promote the welfare of
his own, perhaps the ruin of other countries, as if this globe was
insufficient for us all, and the courtier, who is always watching the
countenance of his prince, can have very little conception. I have not
only retired from all public employments, but I am retiring within
myself.... Envious of none, I am determined to be pleased with all; and
this, my dear friend, being the order of my march, I will move gently
down the stream of time until I sleep with my fathers.” The simple
gentleman did not yet realize what the breaking up of the frosts would
bring.
With the spring the whole life of the world seemed to come pouring in
upon him. Men of note everywhere pressed their correspondence upon him;
no stranger visited America but thought first of Mount Vernon in
planning where he should go and what he should see; new friends and old
sat every day at his table; a year and a half had gone by since his
home-coming before he could note in his diary (June 30th, 1785): “Dined
with only Mrs. Washington, which, I believe, is the first instance of it
since my retirement from public life”--for some visitors had broken
their way even through the winter roads. Authors sent him what they
wrote; inventors submitted their ideas and models to him; everything
that was being said, everything that was being done, seemed to find its
way, if nowhere else, to Mount Vernon--till those who knew his
occupations could speak of Washington, very justly, as “the focus of
political intelligence for the New World.” He would not alter his way of
living even in the face of such overwhelming interruptions. His guests
saw him for a little after dinner, and once and again, it might be, in
the evening also; but he kept to his business throughout all the working
hours of the day; was at his desk even before breakfast, and after
breakfast was always early in the saddle and off to his farms.
Only at table did he play the host, lingering over the wine to give and
call for toasts and relax in genial conversation, losing, as the months
passed by, some of the deep gravity that had settled upon him in the
camp, and showing once more an enjoying relish for “a pleasant story, an
unaffected sally of wit, or a burlesque description,” as in the old days
after hunting. Strangers were often in awe of him. It did not encourage
talk in those who had little to say to sit in the presence of a man who
so looked his greatness in the very proportions of his strong figure
even, and whose grave and steady eyes so challenged the significance of
what was said. Young people would leave off dancing and romping when he
came into the room, and force him to withdraw, and peep at the fun from
without the door, unobserved. It was only among his intimates that he
was suffered and taken to be the simple, straightforward, sympathizing
man he was, exciting, not awe, but only a warm and affectionate
allegiance. “The General, with a few glasses of champagne, got quite
merry,” a young Englishman could report who had had the good luck to be
introduced by Richard Henry Lee, “and, being with his intimate friends,
laughed and talked a good deal.”
As much as he could, he resumed the old life, and the thoughts and
pastimes that had gone with it. Once more he became the familiar of his
hounds at the kennels, and followed them as often as might be in the
hunt at sunrise. He asked but one thing of a horse, as of old, “and that
was to go along. He ridiculed the idea that he could be unhorsed,
provided the animal kept on his legs.” The two little children, a tiny
boy and a romping, mischievous lassie, not much bigger, whom he had
adopted at Jack Custis’s death-bed, took strong hold upon his heart, and
grew slowly to an intimacy with him such as few ventured to claim any
longer amidst those busy days in the guest-crowded house. It seemed to
Lafayette a very engaging picture when he saw Washington and the little
toddling boy together--“a very little gentleman with a feather in his
hat, holding fast to one finger of the good General’s remarkable hand,
which (so large that hand!)” was all the tiny fellow could manage. These
children took Washington back more completely than anything else to the
old days when he had brought his bride home with her own little ones. He
felt those days come back, too, when he was on his horse in the open,
going the round of good twelve miles and more that carried him to all
the quarters of his plantation.
Once more he was the thorough farmer, ransacking books, when men and his
own observation failed him, to come at the best methods of cultivation.
Once more he took daily account of the character of his slaves and
servants, and of the progress of their work, talking with them when he
could, and gaining a personal mastery over them. Contracts for work he
drew up with his own hand, with a minuteness and particularity which
were sometimes whimsical and shot through with a gleam of grim humor. He
agreed with Philip Barter that if he would serve him faithfully as
gardener and keep sober at all other times, he would allow him “four
dollars at Christmas, with which to be drunk four days and four nights;
two dollars at Easter, to effect the same purpose; two dollars at
Whitsuntide, to be drunk for two days; a dram in the morning, and a
drink of grog at dinner, at noon”; and the contract was drawn, signed,
and witnessed with all formality. Philip no doubt found short shrift of
consideration from his thorough-going master if there was any
drunkenness in the garden beyond the limit of the eight days nominated
in the bond, and found the contract no jest in the end, for Washington
had small patience and no soft words for a breach of agreement, whatever
its kind. He would help men in distress with a generosity and wise
choice of means which few took the pains to exercise, but he had only
sharp rebuke for carelessness or neglect or any slackness in the
performance of a duty. Men who had cheated or sought to impose upon him
deemed him harsh and called him a hard master, so
[Illustration: WASHINGTON BRINGING HIS MOTHER INTO THE BALL-ROOM,
FREDERICKSBURG]
sharply did they smart after he had reckoned with them. He exacted the
uttermost farthing. But he spent it, with the other hand, to relieve
genuine suffering and real want, though it were deserved and the fruit
of a crying fault. In his home dealings, as in everything else, his mind
kept that trait by which men had been awed in the camp--that trick, as
if of Fate, of letting every act come at its consequences and its full
punishment or reward, as if he but presided at a process which was just
Nature’s own. When he succored distress, he did it in pity, not in
justice--not excusing fault, but giving leave to mercy. If he urged the
government to pension and reward the soldiers of the war, who had only
done their duty, he himself set an example. There were black pensioners
not a few about his own homestead. Bishop, his old body-servant, lived
like a retired gentleman in his cottage there; even Nelson, the good
sorrel who had borne him so bravely in the field till Yorktown, now went
forever unsaddled, free in his own pasture.
But, much as he loved his home and courted retirement amidst the duties
of a planter, the old life would not come back, was gone forever. He was
too famous, and there was an end on ’t. He could not go abroad without
drawing crowds about him. If he attended service on a Sunday away from
home, though it were in never so quiet a parish, the very walls of the
church groaned threateningly under the unaccustomed weight of people
gathered in the galleries and packed upon the floor to see the hero of
the Revolution. Not even a ride into the far west, to view his lands and
pull together his neglected business on the Ohio, was long enough to
take him beyond the reach of public affairs. On the 1st of September,
1784, with Dr. Craik for company, he set out on horseback to go by
Braddock’s road again into the west. For nearly five weeks he was deep
in the wilderness, riding close upon seven hundred miles through the
forested mountains, and along the remote courses of the long rivers that
ran into the Mississippi; camping out as in the old days when he was a
surveyor and a soldier in his ’prenticeship in these very wilds;
renewing his zest for the rough life and the sudden adventures of the
frontiersman. But, though he had come upon his own business, it was the
seat of a future empire he saw rather than his own acres scattered here
and there.
When last he had ridden the long stages from settlement to settlement
and cabin to cabin in this far country of the Ohio, he had been a
Virginian and nothing more, a colonial colonel merely, come to pick out
lands for his comrades and himself, their reward for serving the crown
against the French. A transformation had been worked upon him since
then. He had led the armies of the whole country; had been the chief
instrument of a new nation in winning independence; had carried its
affairs by his own counsels as no other man had done; had seen through
all the watches of those long campaigns the destinies and the hopes that
were at stake. Now he saw the crowding immigrants come into the west
with a new solicitude he had not felt before. A new vision was in his
thought. This western country was now a “rising world,” to be kept or
lost, husbanded or squandered, by the raw nation he had helped put upon
its feet. His thought was stretched at last to a continental measure;
problems of statesmanship that were national, questions of policy that
had a scope great as schemes of empire, stood foremost in his view. He
returned home more engrossed than ever by interests not his own, but
central to public affairs, and of the very stuff of politics.
And so not the letters merely which poured in with every mail, not only
his host of visitors, great and small--the Governor of the State, the
President of Congress, foreign noblemen, soldiers, diplomatists,
travellers, neighbors, friends, acquaintances, intruders--but his own
unbidden thoughts as well, and the very suggestions of his own interest
as a citizen and land-owner, drew him from his dreams of retirement and
forced him upon the open stage again. Even hunting ceased before many
seasons were out. The savage boar-hounds which Lafayette had sent, in
his kindness, from the Old World, proved too fierce and great a breed
for even the sharp sport with the gray fox; the old hunting companions
were gone--the Fairfaxes over sea; Belvoir deserted and burned; George
Mason too much engaged--none but boys and strangers left to ride with.
’Twas poor sport, after all, without the right sportsmen. It must needs
give way before a statesman’s cares.
Upon his first home-coming, Washington had found it hard to break
himself of his habit of waking very early in the morning with a sense of
care concerning the affairs of the day, as if he were still in camp and
in the midst of public duties. Now a new sense of responsibility
possessed him, and more and more gained ascendency over him. He began to
feel a deep anxiety lest a weak government should make independence
little better than a reproach, and the country should fall into a
hopeless impotency. At first he had been very sanguine. “Notwithstanding
the jealous and contracted temper which seems to prevail in some of the
States,” he wrote to Jonathan Trumbull in January, 1784, “yet I cannot
but hope and believe that the good sense of the people will ultimately
get the better of their prejudices, and that order and sound policy,
though they do not come so soon as one could wish, will be produced from
the present unsettled and deranged state of public affairs....
Everything, my dear Trumbull, will come right at last, as we have often
prophesied. My only fear is that we shall lose a little reputation
first.” But the more he observed the temper of the time, the more uneasy
he grew. “Like a young heir,” he cried, “come a little prematurely to a
large inheritance, we shall wanton and run riot until we have brought
our reputation to the brink of ruin, and then, like him, shall have to
labor with the current of opinion, when compelled, perhaps, to do what
prudence and common policy pointed out, as plain as any problem in
Euclid, in the first instance.... I think we have opposed Great Britain,
and have arrived at the present state of peace and independency, to very
little purpose, if we cannot conquer our own prejudices.”
For the present he saw little that could be done beyond holding up the
hands of the Congress, and increasing, as it might prove possible to do
so, the meagre powers of the Confederation. “My political creed,” he
said, “is to be wise in the choice of delegates, support them like
gentlemen while they are our representatives, give them competent powers
for all federal purposes, support them in the due exercise thereof, and,
lastly, to compel them to close attendance in Congress during their
delegation.” But his thoughts took wider scope as the months passed: and
nothing quickened them more than his western trip. He saw how much of
the future travelled with those slow wagon trains of immigrants into the
west; realized how they were leaving behind them the rivers that ran to
the old ports at the sea, and going down into the valleys whose outlet
was the great highway of the Mississippi and the ports of the Gulf; how
the great ridge of the Alleghanies lay piled between them and the older
seats of settlement, with only here and there a gap to let a road
through, only here and there two rivers lying close enough at their
sources to link the east with the west; and the likelihood of a
separation between the two populations seemed to him as obvious as the
tilt of the mountains upon either slope. “There is nothing which binds
one country or one State to another but interest,” he said. “Without
this cement the western inhabitants, who more than probably will be
composed in a great degree of foreigners, can have no predilection for
us, and a commercial connection is the only tie we can have upon them.”
“The western settlers,” he declared, while still fresh from the Ohio,
“stand as it were upon a pivot. The touch of a feather would turn them
any way”--down the Mississippi to join their interests with those of the
Spaniard, or back to the mountain roads and the head-waters of the
eastern streams, to make for themselves a new allegiance in the east. He
was glad to see the Spaniard so impolitic as to close the Mississippi
against the commerce offered him, and hoped that things might stand so
until there should have been “a little time allowed to open and make
easy the ways between the Atlantic States and the western territory.”
The opening of the upper reaches of the Potomac to navigation had long
been a favorite object with Washington; now it seemed nothing less than
a necessity. It had been part of the original scheme of the old Ohio
Company to use this means of winning a way for commerce through the
mountains. Steps had been taken more than twenty years ago to act in the
matter through private subscription; and active measures for securing
the necessary legislation from the Assemblies of Virginia and Maryland
were still in course when Washington was called to Cambridge and
revolution drew men’s minds imperatively off from the business. In 1770
Washington had written to Jefferson of the project as a means of opening
a channel for “the extensive trade of a rising empire”; now the empire
of which he had had a vision was no longer Britain’s, but America’s own,
and it was become a matter of exigent political necessity to keep that
western country against estrangement, winning it by commerce and close
sympathy to join itself with the old colonies in building up a free
company of United States upon the great continent.
Already the west was astir for the formation of new States. Virginia had
taken the broad and national view of her duty that Washington himself
held, and had ceded to the Confederation all her ancient claims to the
lands that lay northwest of the Ohio River, reserving for herself only
the fair region that stretched south of that great stream, from her own
mountains to the Mississippi. North Carolina would have ceded her
western lands beyond the mountains also, had they been empty and
unclaimed, like the vast territory that lay beyond the Ohio. But for
many a year settlers had been crossing the mountains into those fertile
valleys, and both this region and that which Virginia still kept showed
many a clearing now and many a rude hamlet where hardy frontiersmen
were making a new home for civilization. Rather than be handed over to
Congress, to be disposed of by an authority which no one else was bound
to obey, North Carolina’s western settlers declared they would form a
State of their own, and North Carolina had to recall her gift of their
lands to the Confederation before their plans of defiance could be
checked and defeated. Virginia found her own frontiersmen no less ready
to take the initiative in whatever affair touched their interest. Spain
offered the United States trade at her ports, but refused to grant them
the use of the lower courses of the Mississippi, lest territorial
aggression should be pushed too shrewdly in that quarter; and news
reached the settlers beyond the mountains, in the far counties of North
Carolina and Virginia, that Mr. Jay, the Confederation’s Secretary for
Foreign Affairs, had proposed to the Congress to yield the navigation of
the Mississippi for a generation in exchange for trade on the seas. They
flatly declared they would give themselves, and their lands too, into
the hands of England again rather than submit to be so robbed, cramped,
and deserted. The New England States, on their part, threatened to
withdraw from the Confederation if treaties were to be made to wait upon
the assent of frontiersmen on the far Mississippi.
The situation was full of menace of no ordinary sort. It could profit
the Confederation little that great States like Virginia and New York
had grown magnanimous, and were endowing the Confederation with vast
gifts of territory in the west, if such gifts were but to loosen still
further the already slackened bonds of the common government, leaving
settlers in the unclaimed lands no allegiance they could respect.
Without a national government spirited and strong enough to frame
policies and command obedience, “we shall never establish a national
character or be considered as on a respectable footing by the powers of
Europe,” Washington had said from the first. He had made a most solemn
appeal to the States in his last circular to them, ere he resigned his
commission, urging them to strengthen the powers of Congress, put
faction and jealousy away, and make sure of “an indissoluble union under
one federal head.” “An option is still left to the United States of
America,” he had told them, with all his plain and stately eloquence;
“it is in their choice, and depends upon their conduct, whether they
will be respectable and prosperous, or contemptible and miserable, as a
nation. This is the time of their political probation.” The hazards of
that probation had been a burden upon his heart through all the toil of
the Revolution, and now it seemed as if the States must needs make every
evil choice in meeting them. Congress could not so much as carry out the
provisions of the treaty of peace, for its commissioners had made
promises in the name of the States which the States would not redeem.
England consequently refused to keep her part of the agreement and
relinquish the western posts. She levied commercial war against the
country, besides, without fear of reprisal; for Congress had no power to
regulate trade, and the States were too jealous of each other to
co-operate in this or any other matter. English statesmen had consented
to give up the colonies, and recognize their independence as a nation,
rather than face any longer the world in arms; but they now looked to
see them presently drop back into their hands again, out of sheer
helplessness and hopeless division in counsel; and there were observant
men in America who deemed the thing possible, though it brought an
intolerable fire into their blood to think of it.
Other nations, too, were fast conceiving a like contempt for the
Confederation. It was making no provision for the payment of the vast
sums of money it had borrowed abroad, in France and Holland and Spain;
and it could not make any. It could only ask the States for money, and
must count itself fortunate to get enough to pay even the interest on
its debts. It was this that foreign courts were finding out, that the
Confederation was a mere “government of supplication,” as Randolph had
dubbed it; and its credit broke utterly down. Frenchman and Spaniard
alike would only have laughed in contemptuous derision to see the whole
fabric go to pieces, and were beginning to interest themselves with
surmises as to what plunder it would afford. The States which lay
neighbors to each other were embroiled in boundary disputes, and were
fallen to levying duties on each other’s commerce. They were
individually in debt, besides, and were many of them resorting to issues
of irredeemable paper money to relieve themselves of the inevitable
taxation that must sooner or later pay their reckonings. “We are either
a united people, or we are not so,” cried Washington. “If the former,
let us in all matters of general concern act as a nation which has a
national character to support; if we are not, let us no longer act a
farce by pretending to it.” As the months passed it began to look as if
the farce might be turned into a tragedy.
The troubles of the country, though he filled his letters with them and
wrung his heart for phrases of protest and persuasion that would tell
effectually in the deep labor of working out the sufficient remedy of a
roused and united opinion, though he deemed them personal to himself,
and knew his own fame in danger to be undone by them, did not break the
steady self-possession of Washington’s life at Mount Vernon. “It’s
astonishing the packets of letters that daily come for him, from all
parts of the world,” exclaimed an English visitor; but it was not till
he had struggled to keep pace with his correspondence unassisted for a
year and a half that he employed a secretary to help him. “Letters of
friendship require no study,” he wrote to General Knox; “the
communications are easy, and allowances are expected and made. This is
not the case with those that require researches, consideration,
recollection, and the de--l knows what to prevent error, and to answer
the ends for which they are written.” He grew almost docile,
nevertheless, under the gratuitous tasks of courtesy thrust upon him.
His gallantry, bred in him since a boy, the sense of duty to which he
was born, his feeling that what he had done had in some sort committed
him to serve his countrymen and his friends everywhere, though it were
only in answering questions, disposed him to sacrifice his comfort and
his privacy to every one who had the slightest claim upon his attention.
He even found sitting for his portrait grow easy at last. “_In for a
penny, in for a pound_, is an old adage,” he laughed, writing to Francis
Hopkinson. “I am so hackneyed to the touches of the painter’s pencil
that I am _now_ altogether at their beck; and sit ‘like Patience on a
monument’ whilst they are delineating the lines of my face.... At first
I was as impatient at the request, and as restive under the operation,
as a colt is of the saddle. The next time I submitted very reluctantly,
but with less flouncing. Now no dray-horse moves more readily to his
thill than I do to the painter’s chair.” Besides the failure of the
public credit, it concerned him to note the fact that, though he kept a
hundred cows, he was obliged to buy butter for his innumerable guests.
He saw to it that there should be at least a very definite and efficient
government upon his own estate, and, when there was need, put his own
hand to the work. He “often works with his men himself--strips off his
coat and labors like a common man,” measures with his own hands every
bit of building or construction that is going forward, and “shows a
great turn for mechanics,” one of his guests noted, amidst comments on
his greatness and his gracious dignity. It was such constancy and candor
and spirit in living that took the admiration of all men alike upon the
instant; and his neighbors every day saw here the same strenuous and
simple gentleman they had known before ever the war began.
It was through the opening of the Potomac, after all--the thing nearest
his hand--that a way was found to cure the country of its malady of
weakness and disorder. Washington had been chosen president of the
Potomac Company, that it might have the advantage both of his name and
of his capacity in affairs; and he had gone upon a tour of inspection,
with the directors of the company, to the falls of the river in the
summer of 1785, keeping steadily to the business he had come upon, and
insisting upon being in fact a private gentleman busy with his own
affairs, despite the efforts made everywhere he went to see and to
entertain him; and it presently became evident even to the least
sanguine that the long-talked-of work was really to be carried through.
A visitor at Mount Vernon in the autumn of 1785 found Washington “quite
pleased at the idea of the Baltimore merchants laughing at him, and
saying it was a ridiculous plan, and would never succeed. They begin
now, says the General, to look a little serious about the matter, as
they know it must hurt their commerce amazingly.”
The scheme had shown its real consequence in the spring of that very
year, when it brought commissioners from the two States that lay upon
the river together in conference to devise plans of co-operation. Both
Virginia and Maryland had appointed commissioners, and a meeting had
been set for March, 1785, at Alexandria. For some reason the Virginian
commissioners were not properly notified of the place and time of
conference. The meeting was held, nevertheless, a minority of the
Virginian commissioners being present; and, as if to give it more the
air of a cordial conference of neighbors, Washington invited the
representatives of both States to adjourn from Alexandria to Mount
Vernon. There they sat, his guests, from Friday to Monday. He was not
formally of the commission; but conference was not confined to their
formal sessions, and his counsel entered into their determinations. It
was evident that two States were not enough to decide the questions
submitted to them. Pennsylvania, at least, must be consulted before the
full line of trade they sought could be drawn from the head-waters of
the Ohio to the head-waters of the Potomac; and if three States were to
consult upon questions of trade which concerned the whole continent, why
should not more be invited, and the conference be made general? Such was
the train of suggestion, certainly, that ran in Washington’s mind, and
which the commissioners carried home with them. Every sign of the time
served to deepen its significance for Washington. Just before quitting
the army he had ridden upon a tour of inspection into the valley of the
Mohawk, where a natural way, like this of the Potomac, ran from the
northern settlements into the west. He knew that the question of joining
the Potomac with the Ohio was but one item of a policy which all the
States must consider and settle--nothing less than the policy which must
make them an empire or doom them to remain a weak and petty confederacy.
The commissioners did not put all that they had heard at Mount Vernon
into their reports to their respective Assemblies. They recommended only
that, besides co-operating with each other and with Pennsylvania in
opening a way to the western waters, Virginia and Maryland should adopt
a uniform system of duties and of commercial regulations, and should
establish uniform rules regarding their currency. But the Maryland
Assembly itself went further. It presently informed the Virginian
Legislature that it had not only adopted the measures recommended by the
commissioners, but thought it wise to do something more. Delaware ought
to be consulted, with a view to carrying a straight watercourse, by
canal, from Chesapeake Bay to the Delaware River; and, since conference
could do no harm and bind nobody, it would be as well to invite all the
States to confer with them, for the questions involved seemed
far-reaching enough to justify it, if not to make it necessary. Governor
Bowdoin, of Massachusetts, had that very year urged his Legislature to
invite a general convention of the States in the interest of trade. The
whole country was in a tangle of disagreement about granting to Congress
the power to lay imposts; Gardoqui, it was rumored, was insisting, for
Spain, upon closing the Mississippi: ’twas evident enough conference was
needed. Every thoughtful man might well pray that it would bring peace
and accommodation. When Maryland’s suggestion was read in the Virginian
Assembly, there was prompt acquiescence. Virginia asked all the States
of the Union (January, 1786) to send delegates to a general conference
to be held at Annapolis on the first Monday in September, to consider
and recommend such additions to the powers of Congress as might conduce
to a better regulation of trade. “There is more wickedness than
ignorance in the conduct of the States, or, in other words, in the
conduct of those who have too much influence in the government of them,”
Washington wrote hotly to Henry Lee, upon hearing to what lengths
contempt of the authority of Congress had been carried; “and until the
curtain is withdrawn, and the private views and selfish principles upon
which these men act are exposed to public notice, I have little hope of
amendment without another convulsion.” Perhaps the conference at
Annapolis would withdraw the curtain and give the light leave to work a
purification; and he waited anxiously for the issue.
But when the commissioners assembled they found only five States
represented--Virginia, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, and New York.
Maryland had suddenly fallen indifferent, and had not appointed
delegates. New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and North
Carolina had appointed delegates, but they had not taken the trouble to
come. Connecticut, South Carolina, and Georgia had ignored the call
altogether. The delegates who were in attendance, besides, had come with
only the most jealously restricted powers; only New Jersey, in her great
uneasiness at being neighbor to the powerful States of New York and
Pennsylvania, had authorized her representatives to “consider how far a
uniform system in their commercial regulations _and other important
matters_ might be necessary to the common interest and permanent harmony
of the several States.” The other delegates had no such scope; all
deemed it futile to attempt their business in so small a convention; and
it was resolved to make another opportunity. Alexander Hamilton, of New
York, drew up their address to the States, and in it made bold to adopt
New Jersey’s hint, and ask for a conference which should not merely
consider questions of trade, but also “devise such further provisions as
should appear to them necessary to render the constitution of the
federal government adequate to the exigencies of the Union.” Hamilton
held with Washington for a national government. He had been born, and
bred as a lad, in the West Indies, and had never received the local
pride of any colony-state into his blood. He had served with the army,
too, in close intimacy with Washington, and, though twenty-five years
his captain’s junior, had seen as clearly as he saw the deep hazards of
a nation’s birth.
The Congress was indifferent, if not hostile, to the measures which the
address proposed; and the States would have acted on the call as slackly
as before, had not the winter brought with it something like a threat of
social revolution, and fairly startled them out of their negligent
humor. The central counties of Massachusetts broke into violent
rebellion, under one Shays, a veteran of the Revolution--not to reform
the government, but to rid themselves of it altogether; to shut the
courts and escape the payment of debts and taxes. The insurgents worked
their will for weeks together; drove out the officers of the law, burned
and plundered at pleasure through whole districts, living upon the land
like a hostile army, and were brought to a reckoning at last only when a
force thousands strong had been levied against them. The contagion
spread to Vermont and New Hampshire; and, even when the outbreak had
been crushed, the States concerned were irresolute in the punishment of
the leaders. Rhode Island declared her sympathy with the insurgents;
Vermont offered them asylum; Massachusetts brought the leaders to trial
and conviction only to pardon and set them free again. Congress dared do
no more than make covert preparation to check a general rising. “You
talk, my good sir,” wrote Washington to Henry Lee, in Congress, “of
employing influence to appease the present tumults in Massachusetts. I
know not where that influence is to be found, or, if attainable, that it
would be a proper remedy for the disorders. _Influence_ is no
_government_. Let us have one by which our lives, liberties, and
properties will be secured, or let us know the worst at once.” It was an
object-lesson for the whole country; the dullest and the most lethargic
knew now what slack government and financial disorder would produce. The
States one and all--save Rhode Island--bethought them of the convention
called to meet in Philadelphia on the second Monday in May, 1787, and
delegates were appointed. Even Congress took the lesson to heart, and
gave its sanction to the conference.
The Legislature of Virginia put Washington’s name at the head of its own
list of delegates, and after his name the names of Patrick Henry, Edmund
Randolph, John Blair, James Madison, George Mason, and George Wythe--the
leading names of the State, no man could doubt. But Washington
hesitated. He had already declined to meet the Society of the Cincinnati
in Philadelphia about the same time, he said, and thought it would be
disrespectful to that body, to whom he owed much, “to be there on any
other occasion.” He even hinted a doubt whether the convention was
constitutional, its avowed purposes being what they were, until Congress
tardily sanctioned it. His real reason his intimate friends must have
divined from the first. They knew him better in such matters than he
knew himself. He not only loved his retirement; he deemed himself a
soldier and man of action, and no statesman. The floor of assemblies had
never seemed to him his principal sphere of duty. He had thought of
staying away from the House of Burgesses on private business twenty
years ago, when he knew that the Stamp Act was to be debated. But it was
not for the floor of the approaching convention that his friends wanted
him; they told him from the first he must preside. He was known to be in
favor of giving the Confederation powers that would make it a real
government, and he thought that enough; but they wanted the whole
country to see him pledged to the actual work, and, when they had
persuaded him to attend, knew that they had at any rate won the
confidence of the people in their patriotic purpose. His mere presence
would give them power.
Washington and the other Virginians were prompt to be in Philadelphia on
the day appointed, but only the Pennsylvanian delegates were there to
meet them. They had to wait an anxious week before so many as seven
States were represented. Meanwhile, those who gathered from day to day
were nervous and apprehensive, and there was talk of compromise and
halfway measures, should the convention prove weak or threaten to
miscarry. They remembered for many a long year afterwards how nobly
Washington, “standing self-collected in the midst of them,” had uttered
brave counsels of wisdom in their rebuke. “It is too probable,” he said,
“that no plan we propose will be adopted. Perhaps another dreadful
conflict is to be sustained. If, to please the people, we offer what we
ourselves disapprove, how can we afterwards defend our work? Let us
raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair. The event is
in the hand of God.” It was an utterance, they knew, not of
statesmanship merely, but of character; and it was that character, if
anything could, that would win the people to their support. When at last
seven States were represented--a quorum of the thirteen--an organization
was effected, and Washington unanimously chosen president of the
convention. He spoke, when led to the chair, “of the novelty of the
scene of business in which he was to act, lamented his want of better
qualifications, and claimed the indulgence of the house towards the
involuntary errors which his inexperience might occasion”; but no mere
parliamentarian could have given that anxious body such steadiness in
business or such grave earnestness in counsel as it got from his
presence and influence in the chair. Five more States were in attendance
before deliberation was very far advanced; but he had the satisfaction
to see his own friends lead upon the floor. It was the plan which
Edmund Randolph proposed, for his fellow Virginians, which the
convention accepted as a model to work from; it was James Madison, that
young master of counsel, who guided the deliberations from day to day,
little as he showed his hand in the work or seemed to put himself
forward in debate. No speeches came from the president; only once or
twice did he break the decorum of his office to temper some difference
of opinion or facilitate some measure of accommodation. It was the 17th
of September when the convention at last broke up; the 19th when the
Constitution it had wrought out was published to the country. All the
slow summer through, Washington had kept counsel with the rest as to the
anxious work that was going forward behind the closed doors of the long
conference; it was a grateful relief to be rid of the painful strain,
and he returned to Mount Vernon like one whose part in the work was
done.
“I never saw him so keen for anything in my life as he is for the
adoption of the new scheme of government,” wrote a visitor at Mount
Vernon to Jefferson; but he took no other part than his correspondence
afforded him in the agitation for its acceptance. Throughout all those
long four months in Philadelphia he had given his whole mind and energy
to every process of difficult counsel by which it had been wrought to
completion; but he was no politician. Earnestly as he commended the plan
to his friends, he took no public part either in defence or in advocacy
of it. He read not only the _Federalist_ papers, in which Hamilton and
Madison and Jay made their masterly plea for the adoption of the
Constitution, but also “every performance which has been printed on the
one side and the other on the great question,” he said, so far as he
was able to obtain them; and he felt as poignantly as any man the deep
excitement of the momentous contest. It disturbed him keenly to find
George Mason opposing the Constitution--the dear friend from whom he had
always accepted counsel hitherto in public affairs--and Richard Henry
Lee and Patrick Henry, too, in their passionate attachment to what they
deemed the just sovereignty of Virginia. He could turn away with all his
old self-possession, nevertheless, to discuss questions of culture and
tillage, in the midst of the struggle, with Arthur Young over sea, and
to write very gallant compliments to the Marquis de Chastellux on his
marriage. “So your day has at length come,” he laughed. “I am glad of it
with all my heart and soul. It is quite good enough for you. Now you are
well served for coming to fight in favor of the American rebels all the
way across the Atlantic Ocean, by catching that terrible
contagion--domestic felicity--which, like the small-pox or the plague, a
man can have only once in his life, because it commonly lasts him (at
least with us in America--I don’t know how you manage such matters in
France) for his whole lifetime.”
Ten months of deep but quiet agitation--the forces of opinion in close
grapple--and the future seemed to clear. The Constitution was adopted,
only two States dissenting. It had been a tense and stubborn fight: in
such States as Massachusetts and New York, the concerted action of men
at the centres of trade against the instinctive dread of centralization
or change in the regions that lay back from the rivers and the sea; in
States like Virginia, where the mass of men waited to be led, the
leaders who had vision against those who had only the slow wisdom of
caution and presentiment. But, though she acted late in the business,
and some home-keeping spirits among even her greater men held back,
Virginia did not lose the place of initiative she had had in all this
weighty business of reform. Something in her air or her life had given
her in these latter years an extraordinary breed of public men--men
liberated from local prejudice, possessed of a vision and an efficacy in
affairs worthy of the best traditions of statesmanship among the English
race from which they were sprung, capable of taking the long view, of
seeing the permanent lines of leadership upon great questions, and
shaping ordinary views to meet extraordinary ends. Even Henry and Mason
could take their discomfiture gracefully, loyally, like men bred to free
institutions; and Washington had the deep satisfaction to see his State
come without hesitation to his view and hope.
The new Constitution made sure of, and a time set by Congress for the
elections and the organization of a new government under it, the country
turned as one man to Washington to be the first President of the United
States. “We cannot, sir, do without you,” cried Governor Johnson, of
Maryland, “and I and thousands more can explain to anybody but yourself
why we cannot do without you.” To make any one else President, it seemed
to men everywhere, would be like crowning a subject while the king was
by. But Washington held back, as he had held back from attending the
Constitutional Convention. He doubted his civil capacity, called himself
an old man, said “it would be to forego repose and domestic enjoyment
for trouble, perhaps for public obloquy.” “The acceptance,” he declared,
“would be attended with more diffidence and reluctance than I ever
experienced before in my life.” But he was not permitted to decline.
Hamilton told him that his attendance upon the Constitutional Convention
must be taken to have _pledged_ him in the view of the country to take
part also in the formation of the government. “In a matter so essential
to the well-being of society as the prosperity of a newly instituted
government,” said the great advocate, “a citizen of so much consequence
as yourself to its success has no option but to lend his services, if
called for. Permit me to say it would be inglorious, in such a
situation, not to hazard the glory, however great, which he might have
previously acquired.”
Washington of course yielded, like the simple-minded gentleman and
soldier he was, when it was made thus a matter of duty. When the votes
of the electors were opened in the new Congress, and it was found that
they were one and all for him, he no longer doubted. He did not know how
to decline such a call, and turned with all his old courage to the new
task.
THE FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
CHAPTER X
The members of the new Congress were so laggard in coming together that
it was the 6th of April, 1789, before both Houses could count a quorum,
though the 4th of March had been appointed the day for their convening.
Their first business was the opening and counting of the electoral
votes; and on the 7th Charles Thomson, the faithful and sedulous
gentleman who had been clerk of every congress since that first one in
the old colonial days fifteen years ago, got away on his long ride to
Mount Vernon to notify Washington of his election. Affairs waited upon
the issue of his errand. Washington had for long known what was coming,
and was ready and resolute, as of old. There had been no formal
nominations for the presidency, and the votes of the electors had lain
under seal till the new Congress met and found a quorum; but it was an
open secret who had been chosen President, and Washington had made up
his mind what to do. Mr. Thomson reached Mount Vernon on the 14th, and
found Washington ready to obey his summons at once. He waited only for a
hasty ride to Fredericksburg to bid his aged mother farewell. She was
not tender in the parting. Her last days had come, and she had set
herself to bear with grim resolution the fatal disease that had long
been upon her. She had never been tender, and these latter days had
added their touch of hardness. But it was a tonic to her son to take her
farewell, none the less; to hear her once more bid him God-speed, and
once more command him, as she did, to his duty. On the morning of the
16th he took the northern road again, as so often before, and pressed
forward on the way for New York.
The setting out was made with a very heavy heart; for duty had never
seemed to him so unattractive as it seemed now, and his diffidence had
never been so distressing. “For myself the delay may be compared to a
reprieve,” he had written to Knox, when he learned how slow Congress was
in coming together, “for in confidence I tell you that my movements to
the chair of government will be accompanied by feelings not unlike those
of a culprit who is going to the place of execution.” When the day for
his departure came, his diary spoke the same heaviness of heart. “About
ten o’clock,” he wrote, “I bade adieu to Mount Vernon, to private life,
and to domestic felicity; and, with a mind oppressed with more anxious
and painful sensations than I have words to express, set out for New
York.” He did not doubt that he was doing right; he doubted his capacity
in civil affairs, and loved the sweet retirement and the free life he
was leaving behind him. Grief and foreboding did not in the least relax
his proud energy and promptness in action. He was not a whit the less
resolute to attempt this new rôle, and stretch his powers to the
uttermost to play it in masterful fashion. He was only wistful and full
of a sort of manly sadness; lacking not resolution, but only alacrity.
He had hoped to the last that he would be suffered
[Illustration: THOMSON, THE CLERK OF CONGRESS, ANNOUNCING TO WASHINGTON,
AT MOUNT VERNON, HIS ELECTION TO THE PRESIDENCY]
to spend the rest of his days at Mount Vernon; he knew the place must
lack efficient keeping, and fall once more out of repair under hired
overseers; he feared his strength would be spent and his last years come
ere he could return to look to it and enjoy it himself again. He had but
just now been obliged to borrow a round sum of money to meet pressing
obligations; and the expenses of this very journey had made it necessary
to add a full hundred pounds to the new debt. If the estate brought
money so slowly in while he farmed it, he must count upon its doing even
less while he was away; and yet he had determined to accept no salary as
President, but only his necessary expenses while in the discharge of his
official duties, as in the old days of the war. It had brought
distressing perplexities upon him to be thus drawn from his private
business to serve the nation. Private cares passed off, no doubt, and
were forgotten as the journey lengthened. But the other anxiety, how he
should succeed in this large business of statesmanship to which he had
been called, did not pass off; the incidents of that memorable ride only
served to heighten it. When he had ridden to Cambridge that anxious
summer of 1775, he had been hailed by cheering crowds upon the way, who
admired the fine figure he made, and shouted for the cause he was
destined to lead; but he knew himself a soldier then, was but
forty-three, and did not fear to find his duty uncongenial. The people
had loved him and had thronged about him with looks and words it had
quickened his heart to see and hear as he made his way from New York to
Annapolis to resign his commission but six years ago; but that was upon
the morrow of a task accomplished, and the plaudits he heard upon the
way were but greetings to speed him the more happily homeward. Things
stood very differently now. Though he felt himself grown old, he had
come out to meet a hope he could not share, and it struck a subtle pain
to his heart that the people should so trust him--should give him so
royal a progress as he fared on his way to attempt an untried task.
No king in days of kings’ divinity could have looked for so heartfelt a
welcome to his throne as this modest gentleman got to the office he
feared to take. Not only were there civil fête and military parade at
every stage of the journey; there was everywhere, besides, a running
together from all the country roundabout of people who bore themselves
not as mere sight-seers, but as if they had come out of love for the man
they were to see pass by. It was not their numbers but their manner that
struck their hero with a new sense of responsibility: their earnest
gaze, their unpremeditated cries of welcome, their simple joy to see the
new government put into the hands of a man they perfectly trusted. He
was to be their guarantee of its good faith, of its respect for law and
its devotion to liberty; and they made him know their hope and their
confidence in the very tone of their greeting. There was the manifest
touch of love in the reception everywhere prepared for him. Refined
women broke their reserve to greet him in the open road; put their young
daughters forward, in their enthusiasm, to strew roses before him in the
way; brought tears to his eyes by the very artlessness of their
affection. When at last the triumphal journey was ended, the display of
every previous stage capped and outdone by the fine pageant of his
escort of boats from Newark and of his reception at the ferry stairs in
New York, the demonstration seemed almost more than he could bear. “The
display of boats which attended and joined us,” he confessed to his
diary, “the decorations of the ships, the roar of the cannon, and the
loud acclamations of the people which rent the skies as I walked along
the streets, filled my mind with sensations as painful as they are
pleasant”; for his fears foreboded scenes the opposite of these, when he
should have shown himself unable to fulfil the hopes which were the
burden of all the present joy.
It was the 27th of April when he reached New York. Notwithstanding his
executive fashion of making haste, the rising of the country to bid him
God-speed had kept him four days longer on the way than Mr. Thomson had
taken to carry the summons to Mount Vernon. Three days more elapsed
before Congress had completed its preparations for his inauguration. On
the 30th of April, in the presence of a great concourse of people, who
first broke into wild cheers at sight of him, and then fell silent again
upon the instant to see him so moved, Washington stood face to face with
the Chancellor of the State upon the open balcony of the Federal Hall in
Wall Street, and took the oath of office. “Do you solemnly swear,” asked
Livingston, “that you will faithfully execute the office of President of
the United States, and will, to the best of your ability, preserve,
protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States?” “I do
solemnly swear,” replied Washington, “that I will faithfully execute the
office of President of the United States, and will, to the best of my
ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United
States,” and then, bending to kiss the Bible held before him, bowed his
head and said “So help me God!” in tones no man could mistake, so deep
was their thrill of feeling. “Long live George Washington, President of
the United States!” cried Livingston to the people; and a great shout
went up with the booming of the cannon in the narrow streets.
Washington was profoundly moved, and, with all his extraordinary mastery
of himself, could not hide his agitation. It was a company of friends,
the Senators and Representatives who stood about him within the Senate
chamber as he read his address, after the taking of the oath. Some very
old friends were there--men who had been with him in the first
continental congress, men who had been his intimate correspondents the
long years through, men who were now his close confidants and sworn
supporters. Not many strangers could crowd into the narrow hall; and it
was not mere love of ceremony, but genuine and heartfelt respect, that
made the whole company stand while he read. He visibly trembled,
nevertheless, as he stood in their presence, strong and steadfast man
though he was, “and several times could scarce make out to read”;
shifted his manuscript uneasily from hand to hand; gestured with awkward
effort; let his voice fall almost inaudible; was every way unlike
himself, except for the simple majesty and sincerity that shone in him
through it all. His manner but gave emphasis, after all, to the words he
was reading. “The magnitude and difficulty of the trust,” he declared,
“could not but overwhelm with despondence one who, inheriting inferior
endowments from nature, and unpractised in the duties of civil
administration, ought to be peculiarly conscious of his own
deficiencies”; and no one there could look at him and deem him insincere
when he added, “All I dare aver is that it has been my faithful study
to collect my duty from a just appreciation of every circumstance by
which it might be affected. All I dare hope is that, if in executing
this task I have been too much swayed by a grateful remembrance of
former instances, or by an affectionate sensibility to this transcendent
proof of the confidence of my fellow-citizens, and have thence too
little consulted my incapacity as well as disinclination for the weighty
and untried cares before me, my error will be palliated by the motives
which misled me, and its consequences be judged by my country with some
share of the partiality with which they originated.” His hearers knew
how near the truth he struck when he said, “The smiles of Heaven can
never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order
and right which Heaven itself has ordained; and the preservation of the
sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the republican model of
government, are justly considered as _deeply_, perhaps as _finally_,
staked on the experiment intrusted to the hands of the American people.”
It was, no doubt, “a novelty in the history of society to see a great
people turn a calm and scrutinizing eye upon itself,” as the people of
America had done; “to see it carefully examine the extent of the evil”
into which disunion and disorder had brought it; “patiently wait for two
years until a remedy was discovered”; and at last voluntarily adopt a
new order and government “without having wrung a tear or a drop of blood
from mankind.” But Washington knew that the praise deserved for such
mastery and self-possession would be short-lived enough if the new
government should fail or be discredited. It was the overpowering
thought that he himself would be chiefly responsible for its success or
failure that shook his nerves as he stood there at the beginning of his
task; and no man of right sensibility in that audience failed to like
him the better and trust him the more implicitly for his emotion. “It
was a very touching scene,” wrote Fisher Ames, of Massachusetts. “It
seemed to me an allegory in which virtue was personified as addressing
those whom she would make her votaries. Her power over the heart was
never greater, and the illustration of her doctrine by her own example
was never more perfect.” “I feel how much I shall stand in need of the
countenance and aid of every friend to myself, of every friend to the
Revolution, and of every lover of good government,” were Washington’s
words of appeal to Edward Rutledge, of South Carolina; and he never
seemed to his friends more attractive or more noble than now.
The inauguration over, the streets fallen quiet again, the legislative
business of the Houses resumed, Washington regained his old
self-possession, and turned to master his new duties with a calm
thoroughness of purpose which seemed at once to pass into the action of
the government itself. Perhaps it was true, as he thought, that he had
been no statesman hitherto; though those who had known him would have
declared themselves of another mind. He had carried the affairs of the
Confederation upon his own shoulders, while the war lasted, after a
fashion the men of that time were not likely to forget, so full of
energy had he been, so provident and capable upon every point of policy.
His letters, too, since the war ended, had shown his correspondents the
country over such an appreciation of the present, so sure a forecast of
the future, so masculine an understanding
[Illustration: THE FIRST PRESIDENTIAL MANSION, AT PEARL AND CHERRY
STREETS, NEW YORK]
[Illustration: WASHINGTON MANSION, 190 MARKET STREET, PHILADELPHIA]
of what waited to be done and of the means at hand to do it, that they,
at least, accounted him their leader in peace no less than in war. But
statesmanship hitherto had been only incidental to his duties as a
soldier and a citizen. It had been only an accident of the Revolution
that he had had himself, oftentimes, to supply the foresight and the
capacity in action which the halting congress lacked. He had had no
experience at all in actual civil administration. He did not know his
own abilities, or realize how rich his experience in affairs had, in
fact, been. He went about his new tasks with diffidence, therefore, but
with the full-pulsed heartiness, too, of the man who thoroughly trusts
himself, for the capacity at any rate of taking pains. Statesmanship was
now his duty--his whole duty--and it was his purpose to understand and
execute the office of President as he had understood and administered
the office of General.
He knew what need there was for caution. This was to be, “in the first
instance, in a considerable degree, a government of accommodation as
well as a government of laws. Much was to be done by prudence, much by
conciliation, much by firmness.” “I walk,” he said, “on untrodden
ground. There is scarcely an action the motive of which may not be
subjected to a double interpretation. There is scarcely any part of my
conduct which may not hereafter be drawn into precedent.” But, though he
sought a prudent course, he had no mind to be timid; though he asked
advice, he meant to be his own master.
Washington had, no doubt, a more precise understanding of what the new
government must be made to mean than any other man living, except,
perhaps, Hamilton and Madison, the men whom he most consulted. The
Confederation had died in contempt, despised for its want of dignity and
power. The new government must deserve and get pre-eminent standing from
the first. Its policy must make the States a nation, must stir the
people out of their pettiness as colonists and provincials, and give
them a national character and spirit. It was not a government only that
was to be created, but the definite body of opinion also which should
sustain and perfect it. It must be made worth believing in, and the best
spirits of the country must be rallied to its support. It was not the
question simply of how strong the government should be. Its action must,
as Washington said, be mixed of firmness, prudence, and conciliation, if
it would win liking and loyalty as well as respect. It must cultivate
tact as well as eschew weakness; must win as well as compel obedience.
It was of the first consequence to the country, therefore, that the man
it had chosen to preside in this delicate business of establishing a
government which should be vigorous without being overbearing was a
thoroughbred gentleman, whose instincts would carry him a great way
towards the solution of many a nice question of conduct. While he waited
to be made President he called upon every Senator and Representative
then in attendance upon Congress, with the purpose to show them upon how
cordial and natural a basis of personal acquaintance he wished, for his
part, to see the government conducted; but, the oath of office once
taken, he was no longer a simple citizen, as he had been during those
two days of waiting; the dignity of the government had come into his
keeping with the office. Henceforth he would pay no more calls, accept
no invitations. On a day fixed he would receive calls; and he would
show himself once a week at Mrs. Washington’s general receptions. He
would invite persons of official rank or marked distinction to his table
at suitable intervals. There should be no pretence of seclusion, no
parade of inaccessibility. The President should be a republican officer,
the servant of the people. But he would not be common. It should be
known that his office and authority were the first in the land. Every
proper outward form of dignity, ceremony, and self-respect should be
observed that might tell wholesomely upon the imagination of the people;
that might be made to serve as a visible sign, which no man could miss,
that there was here no vestige of the old federal authority, at which it
had been the fashion to laugh, but a real government, and that the
greatest in the land.
It was not that the President was not to be seen by anybody who had the
curiosity to wish to see him. Many a fine afternoon he was to be seen
walking, an unmistakable figure, upon the Battery, whither all persons
of fashion in the town resorted for their daily promenade, his
secretaries walking behind him, but otherwise unattended. Better still,
he could be seen almost any day on horseback, riding in his noble way
through the streets. People drew always aside to give him passage
wherever he went, whether he walked or rode; no doubt there was
something in his air and bearing which seemed to expect them to do so;
but their respect had the alacrity of affection, and he would have borne
himself with a like proud figure in his own Virginia. Some thought him
stiff, but only the churlish could deem him unrepublican, so evident was
it to every candid man that it was not himself but his office he was
exalting. His old passion for success was upon him, and he meant that
this government of which he had been made the head should have prestige
from the first. Count de Moustier, the French Minister to the United
States, deeming America, no doubt, a protégé of France, claimed the
right to deal directly with the President in person, as if upon terms of
familiar privilege, when conducting his diplomatic business; but was
checked very promptly. It was not likely a man bred in the proud school
of Virginian country gentlemen would miss so obvious a point of
etiquette as this. To demand intimacy was to intimate superiority, and
Washington’s reply drew from the Count an instant apology. That the
United States had every reason to hold France in loyal affection
Washington gladly admitted with all stately courtesy; but affection
became servility when it lost self-respect, and France must approach the
President of the United States as every other country did, through the
properly constituted department. “If there are rules of proceeding,” he
said, quietly, “which have originated from the wisdom of statesmen, and
are sanctioned by the common assent of nations, it would not be prudent
for a young state to dispense with them altogether,”--particularly a
young state (his thought added) which foreign states had despised and
might now try to patronize. These small matters would carry an infinite
weight of suggestion with them, as he knew, and every suggestion that
proceeded from the President should speak of dignity and independence.
For the first few months of the new government’s life these small
matters that marked its temper and its self-respect were of as much
consequence as its laws or its efficient organization for the tasks of
actual administration.
[Illustration: WASHINGTON
(After a painting by Edward Savage)]
The country evidently looked to Washington to set the tone and show what
manner of government it was to have. Congress, though diligent and
purposeful enough, could linger, meanwhile, the whole summer through
upon its task of framing the laws necessary for the erection and
organization of Departments of State, for Foreign Affairs, of the
Treasury, and of War, and the creation of the office of
Attorney-General--a simple administrative structure to suffice for the
present. In the interval the treasury board of the Confederation and its
secretaries of war and foreign affairs were continued in service, and
the President found time to digest the business of the several
departments preparatory to their reorganization. He sent for all the
papers concerning their transactions since the treaty of peace of 1783,
and mastered their contents after his own thorough fashion, making
copious notes and abstracts as he read.
He had been scarcely six weeks in office when he was stricken with a
sharp illness. A malignant tumor in his thigh seemed to his physicians
for a time to threaten mortification. It was three weeks before he could
take the air again, stretched painfully at length in his coach; even his
stalwart strength was slow to rally from the draught made upon it by the
disease, and its cure with the knife. There was deep anxiety for a
little among those who knew, so likely did it seem that the life of the
government was staked upon his life. He himself had looked very calmly
into the doctor’s troubled face, and had bidden him tell him the worst
with that placid firmness that always came to him in moments of danger.
“I am not afraid to die,” he said. “Whether to-night or twenty years
hence makes no difference. I know that I am in the hands of a good
Providence.” A chain had been stretched across the street in front of
the house where he lay, to check the noisy traffic that might have
disturbed him more deeply in his fever. But the government had not stood
still the while. He had steadily attended to important matters as he
could. ’Twas scarcely necessary he should be out of bed and abroad again
to make all who handled affairs feel his mastery; and by the time the
summer was ended that mastery was founded upon knowledge. He understood
the affairs of the new government, as of the old, better than any other
man; knew the tasks that waited to be attempted, the questions that
waited to be answered, the difficulties that awaited solution, and the
means at hand for solving them, with a grasp and thoroughness such as
made it impossible henceforth that any man who might be called to serve
with him in executive business, of whatever capacity in affairs, should
be more than his counsellor. He had made himself once for all head and
master of the government.
By the end of September (1789) Congress had completed its work of
organization and Washington had drawn his permanent advisers about him.
The federal courts, too, had been erected and given definitive
jurisdiction. The new government had taken distinct shape, and was ready
to digest its business in detail. Washington chose Alexander Hamilton to
be Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Knox to be Secretary of War,
Thomas Jefferson Secretary of State, and Edmund Randolph
Attorney-General--young men all, except Jefferson, and he was but
forty-six.
The fate of the government was certain to turn, first of all, upon
questions of finance. It was hopeless poverty that had brought the
Confederation into deep disgrace; the new government had inherited from
it nothing but a great debt; and the first test of character to which
the new plan in affairs would be put, whether at home or abroad, was the
test of its ability to sustain its financial credit with businesslike
thoroughness and statesmanlike wisdom. Alexander Hamilton was only
thirty-two years old. He had been a spirited and capable soldier and an
astute and eloquent advocate; but he had not had a day’s experience in
the administration of a great governmental department, and had never
handled--so far as men knew, had never studied--questions of public
finance. “Washington chose him, nevertheless, without hesitation, for
what must certainly turn out to be the most critical post in his
administration. No man saw more clearly than Washington did how large a
capacity for statesmanship Hamilton had shown in his masterly papers in
advocacy of the Constitution. He had known Hamilton, moreover, through
all the quick years that had brought him from precocious youth to wise
maturity; had read his letters and felt the singular power that moved in
them; and was ready to trust him with whatever task he would consent to
assume.
Henry Knox, that gallant officer of the Revolution, had been already
four years Secretary of War for the Confederation. In appointing him to
the same office under the new Constitution, “Washington was but
retaining a man whom he loved and to whom he had for long been
accustomed to look for friendship and counsel. He chose Thomas Jefferson
to handle the delicate questions of foreign affairs which must press
upon the young state because, John Adams being Vice-President, there was
no other man of equal gifts available who had had so large an
experience in the field of diplomacy. Again and again Jefferson had been
chosen for foreign missions under the Confederation; he was American
Minister to France when Washington’s summons called him to the
Secretaryship of State; and he came of that race of Virginian statesmen
from whom Washington might reasonably count upon receiving a support
touched with personal loyalty. Richard Henry Lee, Patrick Henry, and
George Mason were home-keeping spirits, and doubted of the success of
the new government; but Jefferson, though he had looked upon its making
from across the sea, approved, and was ready to lend his aid to its
successful establishment. In appointing Edmund Randolph to be
Attorney-General, Washington was but choosing a brilliant young man whom
he loved out of a great family of lawyers who had held a sort of primacy
at the bar in Virginia ever since he could remember--almost ever since
she had been called the Old Dominion. Knox was thirty-nine, Edmund
Randolph thirty-six; but if Washington chose young men to be his
comrades and guides in counsel, it was but another capital proof of his
own mastery in affairs. Himself a natural leader, he recognized the like
gift and capacity in others, even when fortune had not yet disclosed or
brought them to the test.
It was hard, in filling even the greater offices, to find men of
eminence who were willing to leave the service of their States or the
security and ease of private life to try the untrodden paths of federal
government. The States were old and secure--so men thought--the federal
government was new and an experiment. The stronger sort of men,
particularly amongst those bred to the law, showed, many of them, a
great reluctance to identity themselves with new institutions set up
but five or six months ago; and Washington, though he meant to make
every liberal allowance for differences of opinion, would invite no man
to stand with him in the new service who did not thoroughly believe in
it. He was careful to seek out six of the best lawyers to be had in the
country when he made up the Supreme Court, and to choose them from as
many States--John Jay, of New York, to be chief justice; John Rutledge,
of South Carolina; William Cushing, of Massachusetts; John Blair, of
Virginia; James Wilson, of Pennsylvania, and R. H. Harrison, of
Maryland--for he knew that the government must draw its strength from
the men who administered it, and that the common run of people must
learn to respect it in the persons of its officers. But he was equally
careful to find out in advance of every appointment what the man whom he
wished to ask thought of the new government and wished its future to be.
Many to whom he offered appointment declined; minor offices seemed
almost to go a-begging amongst men of assured position such as it was
his object to secure. It needed all the tact and patience he could
command to draw about him a body of men such as the county must look up
to and revere. His letters again went abroad by the hundred, as so often
before, to persuade men to their duty, build a bulwark of right opinion
round about the government, make his purposes clear and his plans
effective. He would spare no pains to make the government both great and
permanent.
In October, 1789, his principal appointments all made, the government in
full operation, and affairs standing still till Congress should meet
again, he went upon a four weeks’ tour through the eastern States, to
put the people in mind there, by his own presence, of the existence and
dignity of the federal government, and to make trial of their feeling
towards it. They received him with cordial enthusiasm, for he was secure
of their love and admiration; and he had once more a royal progress from
place to place all the way to far New Hampshire and back again. He
studiously contrived to make it everywhere felt, nevertheless, by every
turn of ceremonial and behavior, that he had come, not as the hero of
the Revolution, but as the President of the United States. At Boston
Governor Hancock sought by cordial notes and pleas of illness to force
Washington to waive the courtesy of a first call from him, and so give
the executive of Massachusetts precedence, if only for old friendship’s
sake. But Washington would not be so defeated of his errand; forced the
perturbed old patriot to come to him, swathed as he was in flannels and
borne upon men’s shoulders up the stairs, received him with grim
courtesy, and satisfied the gossips of the town once and for all that
precedence belonged to the federal government--at any rate, so long as
George Washington was President. Having seen him and fêted him, the
eastern towns had seen and done homage to the new authority set over
them. Washington was satisfied, and returned with a noticeable accession
of spirits to the serious work of federal administration.
No man stood closer to him in his purpose to strengthen and give
prestige to the government than Hamilton; and no man was able to
discover the means with a surer genius. Hamilton knew who the
well-wishers of the new government were, whence its strength was to be
drawn, what it must do to approve
[Illustration: CONGRESS HALL, 1700-1800]
itself great and permanent, with an insight and thoroughness Washington
himself could not match: for Hamilton knew Washington and the seats of
his strength in the country as that self-forgetful man himself could
not. He knew that it was the commercial classes of the country--such men
as he had himself dwelt amongst at the great port at New York--who were
bound by self-interest to the new government, which promised them a
single policy in trade, in the stead of policies a half-score; and that
the men who were standing to its support out of a reasoned prudence, out
of a high-minded desire to secure good government and a place of
consideration for their country amongst the nations of the world, were
individuals merely, to be found only in small groups here and there,
where a special light shone in some minds. He knew that Washington was
loved most for his national character and purpose amongst the observant
middle classes of substantial people in the richer counties of
Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, and New England, while his neighbors
in the South loved him with an individual affection only, and rather as
their hero than as their leader in affairs. He saw that the surest way
to get both popular support and international respect was to give to the
government at once and in the outset a place of command in the business
and material interests of the country. Such a policy every man could
comprehend, and a great body of energetic and influential men would
certainly support; that alone could make the government seem real from
the first--a veritable power, not an influence and a shadow merely.
Here was a man, unquestionably, who had a quick genius in affairs; and
Washington gave him leave and initiative with such sympathy and
comprehension and support as only a nature equally bold and equally
originative could have given. Hamilton’s measures jumped with
Washington’s purpose, ran with Washington’s perception of national
interests; and they were with Washington’s aid put into execution with a
promptness and decision which must have surprised the friends of the new
government no less than it chagrined and alarmed its enemies.
Having done its work of organization during its first summer session,
the Congress came together again, January 4th, 1790, to attempt the
formulation of a policy of government, and Hamilton at once laid before
it a “plan for the settlement of the public debt” which he had drawn and
Washington had sanctioned. He proposed that provision should be made for
the payment of the foreign debt in full--that of course; that the
domestic debt, the despised promises and paper of the Confederation,
should be funded and paid; and that the debts contracted by the several
States in the prosecution of the war for independence should be assumed
by the general government as the debt of the nation. No one could doubt
that the foreign debt must be paid in full: to that Congress agreed
heartily and without hesitation. But there was much in the rest of the
plan to give prudent men pause. To pay off the paper of the
Confederation would be to give to the speculators, who had bought it up
in the hope of just such a measure, a gratuity of many times what they
had paid for it. To assume the State debts would be taken to mean that
the States were bankrupt or delinquent, that the federal government was
to be their guardian and financial providence, and that the capital of
the country must look only to the government of the nation, not to the
government of the States, for security and profitable employment. This
was nationalizing the government with a vengeance, and was a plain bid,
besides, to win the moneyed class to its support. Members whose
constituencies lay away from the centres of trade looked askance at such
measures, and deemed them no better than handing the government over to
the money lenders of the towns. But boldness and energy prevailed, as
they had prevailed in the adoption of the Constitution itself, and both
measures were carried through the Houses--the first at once, the second
after a close and doubtful struggle--by stratagem and barter.
Jefferson had been in France when Washington called him to assume the
headship of foreign affairs at home; had not reached New York on his
return voyage until December 23d, 1789; and did not take his place in
Washington’s council till March 21st, 1790. All of Hamilton’s great plan
had by that time passed Congress, except the assumption of the State
debts. Upon that question a crisis had been reached. It had wrought
Congress to a dangerous heat of feeling. Members from the South, where
trade was not much astir and financial interests told for less than
local pride and sharp jealousy of a too great central power, were set
hotly against the measure; most of the Northern members were as hotly
resolved upon its adoption. Mr. Jefferson must have caught echoes and
rumors of the great debate as he lingered at Monticello in order to
adjust his private affairs before entering upon his duties in the
cabinet. The measure had been lost at last in the House by the narrow
margin of two votes. But the minority were in no humor to submit. They
declined to transact any business at all till they should be yielded to
in this matter. There were even ugly threats to be heard that some would
withdraw from Congress and force a dissolution of the Union rather than
make concessions upon the one side or the other.
It was to this pass that things had come when Mr. Jefferson reached the
seat of government; and his arrival gave Hamilton an opportunity to show
how consummate a politician he could be in support of his statesmanship.
The Southern members wanted the seat of the federal government
established within their reach, upon the Potomac, where Congress might
at least be rid of importunate merchants and money lenders clamoring at
its doors, and of impracticable Quakers with their petitions for the
abolition of slavery; and were almost as hot at their failure to get
their will in that matter as the Northern men were to find themselves
defeated upon the question of the State debts. Mr. Jefferson was fresh
upon the field, was strong among the Southern members, was not embroiled
or committed in the quarrel. Hamilton besought him to intervene. The
success of the government was at stake, he said, and Mr. Jefferson could
pluck it out of peril. Might it not be that the Southern men would
consent to vote for the assumption of the State debts if the Northern
members would vote for a capital on the Potomac? The suggestion came as
if upon the thought of the moment, at a chance meeting on the street, as
the two men walked and talked of matters of the day; but it was very
eloquently urged. Mr. Jefferson declared he was “really a stranger to
the whole subject,” but would be glad to lend what aid he could. Would
not Mr. Hamilton dine with him the next day, to meet
[Illustration: ELEANOR PARKE CUSTIS
(From the painting in possession of General Custis Lee)]
and confer with a few of the Southern members? In the genial air of the
dinner-table the whole difficulty was talked away. Two of the diners
agreed to vote for the assumption of the State debts if Mr. Hamilton
could secure a majority for a capital on the Potomac; and Congress
presently ratified the bargain. There was not a little astonishment at
the sudden clearing of the skies. The waters did not go down at once;
hints of a scandal and of the shipwreck of a fair name or two went about
the town and spread to the country. But Congress had come out of its
angry tangle of factions, calm had returned to the government, and
Hamilton’s plan stood finished and complete. He had nationalized the
government as he wished.
It was this fact that most struck the eye of Jefferson when he had
settled to his work and had come to see affairs steadily and as a whole
at the seat of government. He saw Hamilton supreme in the cabinet and in
legislation--not because either the President or Congress was weak, but
because Hamilton was a master in his new field, and both Congress and
the President had accepted his leadership. It chagrined Jefferson deeply
to see that he had himself assisted at Hamilton’s triumph, had himself
made it complete, indeed. He could not easily brook successful rivalry
in leadership; must have expected to find himself, not Hamilton,
preferred in the counsels of a Virginian President; was beyond measure
dismayed to see the administration already in the hands, as it seemed,
of a man just two months turned of thirty-three. He began ere long to
declare that he had been “most ignorantly and innocently made to hold
the candle” to the sharp work of the Secretary of the Treasury, having
been “a stranger to the circumstances.” But it was not the
circumstances of which he had been ignorant; it was the effect of what
he had done upon his own wish to play the chief rôle in the new
government. When he came to a calm scrutiny of the matter, he did not
like the assumption of the State debts, and, what was more serious for a
man of political ambition, it was bitterly distasteful to the very men
from whom he must look to draw a following when parties should form. He
felt that he had been tricked; he knew that he had been outrun in the
race for leadership.
What he did not understand or know how to reckon with was the place and
purpose of Washington in the government. Hamilton had been Washington’s
aide and confidant when a lad of twenty, and knew in what way those must
rule who served under such a chief. He knew that Washington must first
be convinced and won; did not for a moment doubt that the President held
the reins and was master; was aware that his own plans had prospered
both in the making and in the adoption because the purpose they spoke
was the purpose Washington most cherished. Washington had adopted the
fiscal measures as his own; Hamilton’s strength consisted in having his
confidence and support. Jefferson had slowly to discover that leadership
in the cabinet was to be had, not by winning a majority of the
counsellors who sat in it, but by winning Washington. That masterful man
asked counsel upon every question of consequence, but took none his own
judgment did not approve. He had chosen Hamilton because he knew his
views, Jefferson only because he knew his influence, ability, and
experience in affairs. When he did test Jefferson’s views he found them
less to his liking than he had expected.
He had taken Jefferson direct from France, where for five years he had
been watching a revolution come on apace, hurried from stage to stage,
not by statesmen who were masters in the art and practice of freedom,
like those who had presided in the counsels of America, but by
demagogues and philosophers rather; and the subtle air of that age of
change had crept into the man’s thought. He had come back a
philosophical radical rather than a statesman. He had yet to learn, in
the practical air of America, what plain and steady policy must serve
him to win hard-headed men to his following; and Washington found him a
guide who needed watching. Foreign affairs, over which it was
Jefferson’s duty to preside, began of a sudden to turn upon the politics
of France, where Jefferson’s thought was so much engaged. The year 1789,
in which America gained self-possession and set up a government soberly
planned to last, was the year in which France lost self-possession and
set out upon a wild quest for liberty which was to cost her both her
traditional polity and all the hopes she had of a new one. In that year
broke the storm of the French revolution.
It was a dangerous infection that went abroad from France in those first
days of her ardor, and nowhere was it more likely to spread than in
America.
“Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven! O times
In which the meagre, stale, forbidding ways
Of custom, law, and statute took at once
The attraction of a country in romance!
When Reason seemed the most to assert her rights
When most intent on making of herself
A prime Enchantress, to assist the work
Which then was going forward in her name!
Not favored spots alone, but the whole earth,
The beauty wore of promise, that which sets
(As at some moments might not be unfelt
Among the bowers of paradise itself)
The budding rose above the rose full blown.”
Was not this spirit that had sprung to such sudden might in France the
very spirit that had made America free, her people sovereign, her
government liberal as men could dream of? Was not France now more than
ever America’s friend and close ally against the world? ’Twould be
niggardly to grudge her aid and love to the full in this day of her
emulation of America’s great example. The Bastile was down, tyranny at
an end, Lafayette the people’s leader. The gallant Frenchman himself
could think of nothing more appropriate than to send the great key of
the fallen fortress to Washington.
But Washington’s vision in affairs was not obscured. He had not led
revolutionary armies without learning what revolution meant. “The
revolution which has been effected in France,” he said, “is of so
wonderful a nature that the mind can hardly realize the fact”--his calm
tones ringing strangely amidst the enthusiastic cries of the time. “I
fear, though it has gone triumphantly through the first paroxysm, it is
not the last it has to encounter before matters are finally settled. The
revolution is of too great a magnitude to be effected in so short a
space and with the loss of so little blood.” He hoped, but did not
believe, that it would run its course without fatal disorders; and he
meant, in any case, to keep America from the infection. She was herself
but “in a convalescent state,” as he said, after her own great struggle.
She was too observant still, moreover, of European politics and
opinion, like a province rather than like a nation--inclined to take
sides as if she were still a child of the European family, who had flung
away from her mother England to cling in pique to an ancient foe.
Washington’s first and almost single object, at every point of policy,
was to make of the provincial States of the Union a veritable nation,
independent, at any rate, and ready to be great when its growth should
come, and its self-knowledge. “Every true friend to this country,” he
said, at last, “must _see_ and _feel_ that the policy of it is not to
embroil ourselves with any nation whatever, but to avoid their disputes
and their politics, and, if they will harass one another, to avail
ourselves of the neutral conduct we have adopted. Twenty years’ peace,
with such an increase of population and resources as we have a right to
expect, added to our remote situation from the jarring powers, will in
all probability enable us, in a just cause, to bid defiance to any power
on earth”; and such were his thought and purpose from the first. “I want
an _American_ character,” he cried, “that the powers of Europe may be
convinced we act for _ourselves_, and not for _others_.” He had been
given charge of a nation in the making, and he meant it should form,
under his care, an independent character.
It was thus he proved himself no sentimentalist, but a statesman. It was
stuff of his character, this purpose of independence. He would have
played a like part of self-respect for himself among his neighbors on
the Virginian plantations; and he could neither understand nor tolerate
the sentiment which made men like Jefferson eager to fling themselves
into European broils. Truly this man was the first American, the men
about him provincials merely, dependent still for their life and
thought upon the breath of the Old World, unless, like Hamilton, they
had been born and had stood aloof, or, like Gouverneur Morris, had
divined Europe in her own capitals with clear, unenamoured eyes.
Fortunately affairs could be held steadily enough to a course of wise
neutrality and moderation at first, while France’s revolution wrought
only its work of internal overthrow and destruction; and while things
went thus opinion began slowly to cool. ’Twas plain to be seen, as the
months went by, that the work being done in France bore no real likeness
at all to the revolution in America; and wise men began to see
it for what it was, a social distemper, not a reformation of
government--effective enough as a purge, no doubt; inevitable, perhaps;
a cure of nature’s own devising; but by no means to be taken part in by
a people not likewise stricken, still free to choose. At first
Washington and a few men of like insight stood almost alone in their
cool self-possession. Every man of generous spirit deemed it his mere
duty to extol the French, to join clubs after their manner, in the name
of the rights of man, to speak everywhere in praise of the revolution.
But by the time it became necessary to act--to declare the position and
policy of the nation’s government towards France--a sober second thought
had come, and Washington’s task was a little simplified.
The crisis came with the year 1793. In 1792 France took arms against her
European neighbors, let her mobs sack the King’s palace, declared
herself a republic, and put her monarch on trial for his life. The
opening days of 1793 saw Louis dead upon the scaffold; England, Holland,
Spain, and the Empire joined with the alliance against the fevered
nation; and war as it were spread suddenly to all the world. Would not
America succor her old ally? Was there no compulsion in the name of
liberty? Would she stand selfishly off to save herself from danger?
There was much in such a posture of affairs to give pause even to
imperative men like Washington. Those who favored France seemed the
spokesmen of the country. The thoughtful men, to whom the real character
of the great revolution over sea was beginning to be made plain, were
silent. It would have required a veritable art of divination to
distinguish the real sentiment of the country, upon which, after all,
the general government must depend. “It is on great occasions only, and
after time has been given for cool and deliberate reflection,”
Washington held, “that the real voice of the people can be known”; but a
great risk must be run in waiting to know it.
The measures already adopted by the government, though well enough
calculated to render it strong, had not been equally well planned to
make it popular. The power to tax, so jealously withheld but the other
day from the Confederation, the new Congress had begun promptly and
confidently to exercise upon a great scale, not only laying duties upon
imports, the natural resource of the general government, but also
imposing taxes upon distilled spirits, and so entering the fiscal field
of the States. Not only had the war debts of the States been assumed,
but a national bank had been set up (1791), as if still further to make
the general government sure of a complete mastery in the field of
finance. Jefferson and Randolph had fought the measure in the cabinet,
as many a moderate man had fought it in Congress, and Washington had
withheld his signature from it till he should hear what they had to
urge. But he had sent their arguments to Hamilton for criticism, and had
accepted his answer in favor of the bank. Jefferson and Randolph had
challenged the measure on the ground that it was without warrant in the
Constitution, which nowhere gave Congress the right to create
corporations, fiscal or other. Hamilton replied that, besides the powers
explicitly enumerated, the Constitution gave to Congress the power to
pass any measure “necessary and proper” for executing those set forth;
that Congress was itself left to determine what might thus seem
necessary; and that if it deemed the erection of a bank a proper means
of executing the undoubted financial powers of the government, the
constitutional question was answered. By accepting such a view
Washington sanctioned the whole doctrine of “implied powers,” which
Jefferson deemed the very annulment of a written and explicit
constitution. No bounds, Jefferson believed, could be set to the
aggressive sweep of congressional pretension if the two Houses were to
be given leave to do whatever they thought expedient in exercising their
in any case great and commanding powers. No man could doubt, in the face
of such measures, what the spirit and purpose of Hamilton were, or of
the President whom Hamilton so strangely dominated.
Strong measures bred strong opposition. When the first Congress came
together there seemed to be no parties in the country. All men seemed
agreed upon a fair and spirited trial of the new Constitution. But an
opposition had begun to gather form before its two years’ term was out;
and in the second Congress party lines began to grow definite--not for
and against the Constitution, but for and against an extravagant use of
constitutional powers. There was still a majority for the principal
measures of the administration; but the minority had clearly begun to
gather force both in the votes and in the debates. The reaction was
unmistakable. Even Madison, Washington’s stanch friend and intimate
counsellor, who had at first been his spokesman in the House, began to
draw back--first doubted and then opposed the policy of the Treasury. He
had led the opposition to the bank, and grew more and more uneasy to
note the course affairs were taking. It looked as if the administration
were determined of set purpose to increase the expenses of the
government, in order that they might add to the loans, which were so
acceptable to influential men of wealth, and double the taxes which made
the power of the government so real in the eyes of the people. Steps
were urged to create a navy; to develop an army with permanent
organization and equipment; and the President insisted upon vigorous
action at the frontiers against the western Indians. This was part of
his cherished policy. It was his way of fulfilling the vision that had
long ago come to him, of a nation spreading itself down the western
slopes of the mountains and over all the broad reaches of fertile land
that looked towards the Mississippi; but to many a member of Congress
from the quiet settlements in the east it looked like nothing better
than a waste of men and of treasure. The President seemed even a little
too imperious in the business: would sometimes come into the Senate in
no temper to brook delay in the consideration and adoption of what he
proposed in such matters. When things went wrong through the fault of
the commanders he had sent to the frontier, he stormed in a sudden
fury, as sometimes in the old days of the war, scorning soldiers who
must needs blunder and fail. The compulsion of his will grew often a
little irksome to the minority in Congress; and the opposition slowly
pulled itself together as the months went by to concert a definite
policy of action.
Washington saw as plainly as any man what was taking place. He was
sensitive to the movements of opinion; wished above all things to have
the government supported by the people’s approval; was never weary of
writing to those who were in a position to know, to ask them what they
and their neighbors soberly thought about the questions and policies
under debate; was never so impatient as to run recklessly ahead of
manifest public opinion. He knew how many men had been repelled by the
measures he had supported Hamilton in proposing; knew that a reaction
had set in; that even to seem to repulse France and to refuse her aid or
sympathy would surely strengthen it. The men who were opposed to his
financial policy were also the men who most loved France, now she was
mad with revolution. They were the men who dreaded a strong government
as a direct menace to the rights alike of individuals and of the
separate States; the men who held a very imperative philosophy of
separation and of revolt against any too great authority. If he showed
himself cold towards France, he would certainly strengthen them in their
charge that the new government craved power and was indifferent to the
guarantees of freedom.
But Washington’s spirit was of the majestic sort that keeps a great and
hopeful confidence that the right view will prevail; that the “standard
to which the wise and honest will repair” is also the standard to which
the whole people will rally at last, if it be but held long and
steadily enough on high to be seen of all. When the moment for action
came he acted promptly, unhesitatingly, as if in indifference to
opinion. The outbreak of war between France and England made it
necessary he should let the country know what he meant to do. “War
having actually commenced between France and Great Britain,” he wrote to
Jefferson in April, 1793, “it behooves the government of this country to
use every means in its power to prevent the citizens thereof from
embroiling us with either of those powers, by endeavoring to maintain a
strict neutrality. I therefore require that you will give the subject
mature consideration, that such measures as shall be deemed most likely
to effect this desirable purpose may be adopted without delay.... Such
other measures as may be necessary for us to pursue against events which
it may not be in our power to avoid or control, you will also think of,
and lay them before me at my arrival in Philadelphia; for which place I
shall set out to-morrow.” He was at Mount Vernon when he despatched
these instructions; but it did not take him long to reach the seat of
government, to consult his cabinet, and to issue a proclamation of
neutrality whose terms no man could mistake. It contained explicit
threat of exemplary action against any who should presume to disregard
it.
That very month (April, 1793) Edmond Charles Genet, a youth still in his
twenties whom the new republic over sea had commissioned Minister to the
United States, landed at Charleston. It pleased him to take possession
of the country, as if it were of course an appanage of France. He was
hardly ashore before he had begun to arrange for the fitting out of
privateers, to issue letters of marque to American citizens, and to
authorize French consuls at American ports to act as judges of admiralty
in the condemnation of prizes. As he journeyed northward to Philadelphia
he was joyfully confirmed in his views and purposes by his reception at
the hands of the people. He was everywhere dined and toasted and fêted,
as if he had been a favorite prince returned to his subjects. His
speeches by the way rang in a tone of authority and patronage. He
reached Philadelphia fairly mad with the sense of power, and had no
conception of his real situation till he stood face to face with the
President. Of that grim countenance and cold greeting there could be but
one interpretation; and the fellow winced to feel that at last he had
come to a grapple with the country’s government. It was, no doubt, in
the eyes of the sobering man, a strange and startling thing that then
took place. The country itself had not fully known Washington till
then--or its own dignity either. It had deemed the proclamation of
neutrality a party measure, into which the President had been led by the
enemies of France, the partisans of England. But the summer undeceived
everybody, even Genet. Not content with the lawless mischief he had set
afoot on the coasts by the commissioning of privateersmen, that mad
youth had hastened to send agents into the south and west to enlist men
for armed expeditions against the Floridas and against New Orleans, on
the coveted Mississippi; but his work was everywhere steadily undone.
Washington acted slowly, deliberately even, with that majesty of
self-control, that awful courtesy and stillness in wrath, that had ever
made him a master to be feared in moments of sharp trial. One by one the
unlawful prizes were seized; justice was done upon their captors; the
false admiralty courts were shut up. The army of the United States was
made ready to check the risings in the south and west, should there be
need; the complaints of the British Minister were silenced by deeds as
well as by words; the clamor of those who had welcomed the Frenchman so
like provincials was ignored, though for a season it seemed the voice of
the country itself; and the humiliating work, which ought never to have
been necessary, was at last made effective and complete.
Towards the close of June, Washington ventured to go for a little while
to Mount Vernon for rest. At once there was trouble. A privateer was
found taking arms and stores aboard in the very river at Philadelphia;
Jefferson allowed her to drop down to Chester, believing Genet instead
of the agents of the government; and she was upon the point of getting
to sea before Washington could reach the seat of government. Jefferson
was not in town when the President arrived. “What is to be done in the
case of the _Little Sarah_, now at Chester?” came Washington’s hot
questions after him. “Is the Minister of the French Republic to set the
acts of this government at defiance _with impunity_? And then threaten
the executive with an appeal to the people? What must the world think of
such conduct, and of the United States in submitting to it?
Circumstances press for decision; and as you have had time to consider
them, I wish to know your opinion upon them, even before to-morrow, for
the vessel may then be gone.” It was indeed too late to stop her: a
gross violation of neutrality had been permitted under the very eyes of
the Secretary of State. Washington stayed henceforth in Philadelphia, in
personal control of affairs. It was an appeal to the people that
finally delivered Genet into his hands. Washington revoked the
_exequatur_ of one Duplaine, French consul at Boston, for continuing to
ignore the laws of neutrality; Genet declared he would appeal from the
President to the sovereign State of Massachusetts; rumors of the silly
threat got abroad, and Genet demanded of the President that he deny
them. Washington answered with a chilling rebuke; the correspondence was
given to the public prints; and at last the country saw the French
Minister for what he was. A demand for his recall had been resolved upon
in the cabinet in August; by February, 1794, the slow processes of
diplomatic action were complete, and a successor had arrived. Genet did
not venture to return to his distracted country; but he was as promptly
and as readily forgotten in America. Some might find it possible to love
France still; but no one could any longer stomach Genet.
Washington had divined French affairs much too clearly to be for a
moment tempted to think with anything but contempt of the French party
who had truckled to Genet. “The affairs of France,” he said to Lee, in
the midst of Genet’s heyday, “seem to me to be in the highest paroxysm
of disorder; not so much from the presence of foreign enemies, but
because those in whose hands the government is intrusted are ready to
tear each other to pieces, and will more than probably prove the worst
foes the country has.” It was his clear perception what the danger would
be should America be drawn into the gathering European wars that had led
him to accept a second term as President. It had been his wish to remain
only four years in the arduous office: but he had no thought to leave a
task unfinished;
[Illustration: WASHINGTON AND NELLY CUSTIS]
knew that he was in the very midst of the critical business of holding
the country to the course which should make it a self-respecting nation;
and consented to submit himself once more to the vote of the electors.
Parties were organizing, but there was no opposition to Washington. He
received again a unanimous vote; and John Adams was again chosen
Vice-President. The second inauguration (March, 1793) seemed but a
routine confirmation of the first. But the elections to Congress showed
a change setting in. In the Senate the avowed supporters of the
administration had still a narrow majority; but in the House they fell
ten votes short of control; and Washington had to put his policy of
neutrality into execution against the mad Genet with nothing but doubts
how he should be supported. The insane folly of Genet saved the
President serious embarrassment, after all; made the evidence that
Washington was right too plain to be missed by anybody; and gave the
country at last vision enough to see what was in fact the course of
affairs abroad, within and without unhappy France. Before that trying
year 1793 was out, an attack upon Hamilton in the House, though led by
Madison, had failed; Jefferson had left the cabinet; and the hands of
those who definitely and heartily supported the President were not a
little strengthened. There was sharp bitterness between parties--a
bitterness sharper as yet, indeed, than their differences of view; but
the “federalists,” who stood to the support of Washington and Hamilton,
were able, none the less, to carry their more indispensable
measures--even an act of neutrality which made the President’s policy
the explicit law of the land. The sober second thought of the country
was slowly coming about to their aid.
The air might have cleared altogether had the right method of dealing
with France been the only question that pressed; but the ill fortune of
the time forced the President to seem not only the recreant friend of
France, but also the too complacent partisan of England. Great Britain
seemed as mischievously bent upon forcing the United States to war as
Genet himself had been. She would not withdraw her garrisons from the
border posts; it was believed that she was inciting the Indians to their
savage inroads upon the border, as the French had done in the old days;
she set herself to destroy neutral trade by seizing all vessels that
carried the products of the French islands or were laden with provisions
for their ports; she would admit American vessels to her own West Indian
harbors only upon sufferance, and within the limits of a most jealous
restriction. It gave a touch of added bitterness to the country’s
feeling against her that she should thus levy as it were covert war upon
the Union while affecting to be at peace with it, as if she counted on
its weakness, especially on the seas; and Congress would have taken
measures of retaliation, which must certainly have led to open
hostilities, had not Washington intervened, despatching John Jay, the
trusted Chief Justice, across sea as minister extraordinary, to
negotiate terms of accommodation; and so giving pause to the trouble.
While the country waited upon the negotiation, it witnessed a wholesome
object-lesson in the power of its new government. In March, 1791,
Congress had passed an act laying taxes on distilled spirits: ’twas part
of Hamilton’s plan to show that the federal government could and would
use its great authority. The act bore nowhere so hard upon the people as
in the vast far counties of Pennsylvania and Virginia, beyond the
mountains--and there the very allegiance of the people had been but the
other day doubtful, as Washington very well knew. How were they to get
their corn to market over the long roads if they were not to be
permitted to reduce its bulk and increase its value by turning it into
whiskey? The tax seemed to them intolerable, and the remedy plain. They
would not pay it. They had not been punctilious to obey the laws of the
States; they would not begin obedience now by submitting to the worst
laws of the United States. At first they only amused themselves by
tarring and feathering an exciseman here and there; but resistance could
not stop with that in the face of a government bent upon having its own
way. Opposition organized itself and spread, till the writs of federal
courts had been defied by violent mobs and the western counties of
Pennsylvania were fairly quick with incipient insurrection.
For two years Washington watched the slow gathering of the storm,
warning those who resisted, keeping Congress abreast of him in
preparation for action when the right time should come, letting all the
country know what was afoot and prepare its mind for what was to come.
It must have won him to a stern humor to learn that seven thousand armed
men had gathered in mass-meeting on Braddock’s field to defy him. At
last he summoned an army of militia out of the States, sent it straight
to the lawless counties, going with it himself till he learned there
would be no serious resistance--and taught the country what was back of
federal law. Hamilton had had his way, the country its lesson. “The
servile copyist of Mr. Pitt thought he must have his alarms, his
insurrections and plots against the Constitution,” sneered Jefferson.
“It aroused the favorite purposes of strengthening government and
increasing the public debt; and therefore an insurrection was announced
and proclaimed and armed against and marched against, but could never be
found. And all this under the sanction of a name which has done too much
good not to be sufficient to cover harm also.” “The powers of the
executive of this country are more definite and better understood,
perhaps, than those of any other country,” Washington had said, “and my
aim has been, and will continue to be, neither to stretch nor to relax
from them in any instance whatever, unless compelled to it by imperious
circumstances,” and that was what he meant the country to know, whether
the law’s purpose was good or bad.
The next year the people knew what Mr. Jay had done. He reached New York
May 28th, 1796; and the treaty he brought with him was laid before the
Senate on the 8th of June. On the 2d of July the country knew what he
had agreed to and the Senate had ratified. There was an instant outburst
of wrath. It swept from one end of the country to the other. The treaty
yielded so much, gained so little, that to accept it seemed a veritable
humiliation. The northwestern posts were, indeed, to be given up at
last; the boundaries between English and American territory were to be
determined by commissioners; unrestricted commerce with England herself,
and a free direct trade with her East Indian possessions, were conceded;
but not a word was said about the impressment of American seamen;
American claims for damages for unjust seizures in the West Indies were
referred to a commission, along with American debts to Englishmen; the
coveted trade with
[Illustration: DEATH OF WASHINGTON]
the West Indian islands was secured only to vessels of seventy tons and
under, and at the cost of renouncing the right to export sugar,
molasses, coffee, cocoa, or cotton to Europe. Washington agreed with the
Senate that ratifications of the treaty ought not to be exchanged
without a modification of the clauses respecting the West Indian trade,
and October had come before new and better terms could be agreed upon;
but he had no doubt that the treaty as a whole ought to be accepted. The
opposition party in Congress had refused to vote money for an efficient
navy, and so had made it impossible to check British aggressions: they
must now accept this unpalatable treaty as better at any rate than war.
It was hard to stand steady in the storm. The country took fire as it
had done at the passage of the Stamp Act. Harder things had never been
said of king and parliament than were now said of Washington and his
advisers. Many stout champions stood to his defence--none stouter or
more formidable than Hamilton, no longer a member of the cabinet, for
imperative private interests had withdrawn him these six months and
more, but none the less redoubtable in the field of controversy. For
long, nevertheless, the battle went heavily against the treaty. Even
Washington, for once, stood a little while perplexed, not doubting his
own purpose, indeed, but very anxious what the outcome should be.
Protests against his signing the treaty poured in upon him from every
quarter of the country: many of them earnest almost to the point of
entreaty, some hot with angry comment. His reply, when he vouchsafed
any, was always that his very gratitude for the approbation of the
country in the past fixed him but the more firmly in his resolution to
deserve it now by obeying his own conscience. “It is very desirable,” he
wrote to Hamilton, “to ascertain, if possible, after the paroxysm of the
fever is a little abated, what the real temper of the people is
concerning it; for at present the cry against the Treaty is like that
against a mad dog;” but he showed himself very calm to the general eye,
making his uneasiness known only to his intimates. The cruel abuse
heaped upon him cut him to the quick. “Such exaggerated and indecent
terms,” he cried, “could scarcely be applied to a Nero, a notorious
defaulter, or even to a common pickpocket.” But the men who sneered and
stormed, talked of usurpation and impeachment, called him base,
incompetent, traitorous even, were permitted to see not so much as the
quiver of an eyelid as they watched him go steadily from step to step in
the course he had chosen.
At last the storm cleared; the bitter months were over; men at the ports
saw at length how much more freely trade ran under the terms of the
treaty, and remembered that, while they had been abusing Jay and
maligning the President, Thomas Pinckney had obtained a treaty from
Spain which settled the Florida boundary, opened the Mississippi without
restriction, secured a place of deposit at New Orleans, and made
commerce with the Spaniards as free as commerce with the French. The
whole country felt a new impulse of prosperity. The “paroxysm of the
fever” was over, and shame came upon the men who had so vilely abused
the great President and had made him wish, in his bitterness, that he
were in his grave rather than in the Presidency; who had even said that
he had played false in the Revolution, and had squandered public
moneys;
New-York, December 21.
[Illustration: Columbia Mourns.]
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
It is with the deepest grief that we announce to the public the
death of our _most distinguished_ fellow-citizen _Lieut. General
George Washington_. He died at Mount Vernon on Saturday evening,
the 13th inst. of an inflammatory affection of the throat, which
put a period to his existence in 23 hours.
The grief which we suffer on this truly mournful occasion, would be
in some degree aleviated, if we possessed abilities to do justice
to the merits of this _illustrious benefactor of mankind_; but,
conscious of our inferiority, we shrink from the sublimity of the
subject. To the impartial and eloquent historian, therefore, we
consign the high and grateful office of exhibiting the life of
_George Washington_ to the present age, and to generations yet
unborn, as a perfect model of all that is _virtuous_, _noble_,
_great_, and _dignified_ in man. Our feelings, however, will, not
permit us to forbear observing, that the very disinterested and
important services tendered by _George Washington_ to these United
States, both in the Field and in the Cabinet, have erected in the
hearts of his countrymen, monuments of sincere and unbounded
gratitude, which the mouldering hand of Time cannot deface; and
that in every quarter of the Globe, where a free Government is
ranked amongst the choicest blessings of Providence, and _virtue_,
_morality_, _religion_, and _patriotism_ are respected, THE NAME of
WASHINGTON WILL BE HELD IN _veneration_.
And as along the stream of TIME, his name
Expanded flies, and gathers all his fame.
NOTE.--The announcement of the death of Washington reproduced here
was printed originally as the leading editorial in the _New York
Gazette and General Advertiser_ of Saturday, December 21, 1799.
This daily newspaper was published by John Lang, Franklin Head, No.
16 Pearl Street.
who had gone beyond threats of impeachment and dared to hint at
assassination! They saw the end of his term approach, and would have
recalled their insults. But they had alienated his great spirit forever.
When he had seen parties forming in his cabinet in the quiet days of his
first term as President, he had sought to placate differences; had tried
to bring Hamilton and Jefferson to a cordial understanding which should
be purged of partisan bias, as he meant his own judgments to be; had
deemed parties unnecessary and loyalty to the new Constitution the only
standard of preferment to office. But he had come to another mind in the
hard years that followed. “I shall not, whilst I have the honor to
administer the government, bring a man into any office of consequence
knowingly,” he declared in the closing days of 1795, “whose political
tenets are adverse to the tenets which the general government are
pursuing; for this, in my opinion, would be a sort of political
suicide;” and he left the Presidency ready to call himself very flatly a
“Federalist”--of the party that stood for the Constitution and abated
nothing of its powers. “You could as soon scrub a blackamore white,” he
cried, “as to change the principle of a profest Democrat”--“he will
leave nothing unattempted to overturn the Government of this Country.”
Affairs fell very quiet again as the last year of his Presidency drew
towards its close. Brisk trade under the new treaties heartened the
country more and more; the turbulent democratic clubs that had so
noisily affected French principles and French modes of agitation were
sobered and discredited, now the Reign of Terror had come and wrought
its bloody work in France; the country turned once more to Washington
with its old confidence and affection, and would have had him take the
Presidency a third time, to keep the government steady in its new ways.
But he would not have the hard office again. On the 19th of September,
1796, he published to the people a farewell address, quick with the
solemn eloquence men had come to expect from him. He wrote to Hamilton
and to Madison for advice as to what he should say, as in the old days
of his diffident beginnings in the great office--though Hamilton was the
arch-Federalist and Madison was turning Democrat--took their phrases for
his thought where they seemed better than his own; put the address forth
as his mature and last counsel to the little nation he loved. “It was
designed,” he said, “in a more especial manner for the yeomanry of the
country,” and spoke the advice he hoped they might take to heart. The
circumstances which had given his services a temporary value, he told
them, were passed; they had now a unified and national government, which
might serve them for great ends. He exhorted them to preserve it intact,
and not to degrade it in the using; to put down party spirit, make
religion, education, and good faith the guides and safeguards of their
government, and keep it national and their own by excluding foreign
influences and entanglements. ’Twas a noble document. No thoughtful man
could read it without emotion, knowing how it spoke in all its solemn
sentences the great character of the man whose career was ended.
When the day came on which he should resign his office to John Adams,
the great civilian who was to succeed him, there was a scene which left
no one in doubt--not even Washington himself--what the people thought
of the leader they had trusted these twenty years. A great crowd was
assembled to see the simple ceremonies of the inauguration, as on that
April day in New York eight years ago; but very few in the throng
watched Adams. All eyes were bent upon that great figure in black
velvet, with a light sword slung at his side. No one stirred till he had
left the room, to follow and pay his respects to the new President. Then
they and all the crowd in the streets moved after him, an immense
company, going as one man, “in total silence,” his escort all the way.
He turned upon the threshold of the President’s lodgings and looked, as
if for the last time, upon this multitude of nameless friends. “No man
ever saw him so moved.” The tears rolled unchecked down his cheeks; and
when at last he went within, a great smothered common voice went through
the stirred throng, as if they sobbed to see their hero go from their
sight forever.
It had been noted how cheerful he looked, at thought of his release, as
he entered the hall of the Representatives, where Mr. Adams was to take
the oath. As soon as possible he was at his beloved Mount Vernon once
more, to pick up such threads as he might of the old life again. “I
begin my diurnal course with the sun,” he wrote, in grave playfulness,
to a friend; “if my hirelings are not in their places by that time, I
send them messages of sorrow for their indisposition; having put these
wheels in motion, I examine the state of things further; the more they
are probed the deeper I find the wounds which my buildings have
sustained by an absence and neglect of eight years; by the time I have
accomplished these matters breakfast (a little after seven o’clock,
about the time, I presume, that you are taking leave of Mrs. McHenry)
is ready; this being over, I mount my horse and ride round my farms,
which employs me until it is time to dress for dinner.... The usual time
of sitting at the table, a walk, and tea bring me within the dawn of
candlelight; previous to which, if not prevented by company, I resolve
that as soon as the glimmering taper supplies the place of the great
luminary I will retire to my writing-table and acknowledge the letters I
have received; when the lights are brought I feel tired and disinclined
to engage in this work, conceiving that the next night will do as well.
The next night comes, and with it the same causes for postponement, and
so on. Having given you the history of a day, it will serve for a year,
and I am persuaded that you will not require a second edition of it.” He
had kept his overseers under his hand all the time he was President; had
not forgotten to write to Dr. Young upon methods of cultivation; had
shown the same passion as ever for speeding and regulating at its best
every detail of his private business; but matters had gone ill for lack
of his personal supervision. He was obliged to sell no less than fifty
thousand dollars’ worth of his lands in the course of four or five years
to defray the great expenses he was put to in the Presidency and the
cost of bringing his estate into solvent shape again. He did not try to
begin anew; he only set things in order, and kept his days serene.
A spark of war was kindled by the new administration’s dealings with
France, and Washington was called once more to prepare for command,
should the fighting leave the sea and come ashore. But formal war did
not come. The flurry only kept him a little nearer the movements of
politics than he cared to be. He was the
[Illustration: HANOVER COURT-HOUSE]
[Illustration: THE OLD TOMB, MOUNT VERNON]
more uneasy to see how the Democrats bore themselves in the presence of
the moment’s peril; doubted the expediency of assigning men of that
party to places of command in the army; approved the laws passed against
aliens and against those who should utter seditious libel against the
government; showed again, and without reserve, how deeply his affections
were engaged on the side of the institutions he had so labored to set up
and protect; was intolerant towards any who sought to touch or question
at any point their new authority--imperious as of old in question of
action.
But it was his home that chiefly held his thought now. He had not
changed towards his friends through all the long years of public care
and engrossing business. An old comrade, who had come in his rough
frontier dress all the way from far Kentucky to Philadelphia to see the
President, had been told “that Washington had become puffed up with the
importance of his station, and was too much of an aristocrat to welcome
him in that garb.” But the old soldier was not daunted, pressed on to
make his call, and came back to tell his friends how the President and
his lady had both seen him and recognized him from the window, and had
hurried to the door to draw him cordially in. “I never was better
treated,” he said. “I had not believed a word against him; and I found
that he was ‘Old Hoss’ still.” ’Twas the same with his neighbors, and
with strangers too. He was the simple gentleman of the old days. A
strolling actor, riding Mount Vernon way on a day in July, stopped to
help a man and woman who had been thrown from their chaise, and did not
recognize the stalwart horseman who galloped up to his assistance till
the overturned vehicle had been set up again, they had dusted each the
other’s coat, and the stately stranger, saying he had had the pleasure
of seeing him play in Philadelphia, had bidden him come to the house
yonder and be refreshed. “Have I the honor of addressing General
Washington?” exclaimed the astonished player. “An odd sort of
introduction, Mr. Bernard,” smiled the heated soldier; “but I am pleased
to find you can play so active a part in private, and without a
prompter.”
Those who saw him now at Mount Vernon thought him gentler with little
children than Mrs. Washington even, and remembered how he had always
shown a like love and tenderness for them, going oftentimes out of his
way to warn them of danger, with a kindly pat on the head, when he saw
them watching the soldiers in the war days. Now all at Mount Vernon
looked forward to the evening. That “was the children’s hour.” He had
written sweet Nelly Custis a careful letter of advice upon love matters,
half grave, half playful, in the midst of his Presidency, when the
troubles with England were beginning to darken; she had always found him
a comrade, and had loved him with an intimacy very few could know. Now
she was to be married, to his own sister’s son, and upon his birthday,
February 22d, 1799. She begged him to wear the “grand embroidered
uniform,” just made for the French war, at her wedding; but he shook his
head and donned instead the worn buff and blue that had seen real
campaigns. Then the delighted girl told him, with her arm about his
neck, that she loved him better in that.
The quiet days went by without incident. He served upon a petty jury of
the county when summoned; and was more than content to be the simple
citizen again, great duties put by, small ones diligently resumed. Once
and again his anger flamed at perverse neglects and tasks ill done. Even
while he was President, he had stormed to find his horses put to the
chariot with unpolished hoofs upon a day of ceremony. But old age, and
the consciousness of a lifework done, had added serenity now to his
self-control; and at last the end came, when he was ready. On the 12th
of December, 1799, he was chilled through by the keen winds and cold
rain and sleet that beat upon him as he went his round about the farms.
He spent the evening cheerfully, listening to his secretary read; but
went to bed with a gathering hoarseness and cold, and woke in the night
sharply stricken in his throat. Physicians came almost at dawn, but the
disease was already beyond their control. Nothing that they tried could
stay it; and by evening the end had come. He was calm the day through,
as in a time of battle; knowing what betided, but not fearing it;
steady, noble, a warrior figure to the last; and he died as those who
loved him might have wished to see him die.
The country knew him when he was dead: knew the majesty, the nobility,
the unsullied greatness of the man who was gone, and knew not whether to
mourn or give praise. He could not serve them any more; but they saw his
light shine already upon the future as upon the past, and were glad.
They knew him now the Happy Warrior,
“Whose powers shed round him, in the common strife
Or mild concerns of ordinary life,
A constant influence, a peculiar grace;
But who, if he be called upon to face
Some awful moment to which Heaven has joined
Great issues, good or bad, for humankind,
Is happy as a Lover; and attired
With sudden brightness, like a man inspired;
And, through the heat of conflict, keeps the law
In calmness made, and sees what he foresaw.
* * * * *
A soul whose master-bias leans
To homefelt pleasures and to gentle scenes;
* * * * *
More brave for this, that he hath much to love:--
* * * the man, who, lifted high,
Conspicuous object in a nation’s eye,
Or left unthought of in obscurity,--
Who, with a toward or untoward lot,
Prosperous or adverse, to his wish or not,
Plays, in the many games of life, that one
Where what he most doth value must be won.”
INDEX
Acts of Trade, 121.
Adams, John, represents Massachusetts in Congress at Philadelphia, 154;
character of, 156-157;
opinion of, concerning Maryland and Virginia delegates to Congress
at Philadelphia, 158;
accused as rebel at Congress, 161-162;
proposes Washington as commander of Continental army, 173;
mentioned, 174, 188, 198;
Vice-President with Washington, 279;
elected Vice-President the second time, 301;
inaugurated as President, 309.
Adams, Samuel, represents Massachusetts in Congress at Philadelphia, 154;
character of, 155, 156;
accused as rebel at Congress, 161-162.
Ajax, Washington’s horse, mentioned, 110.
Alexandria, recruiting at, for western expedition, 71, 77;
Washington rejoins regiment at, 78;
Braddock’s regiment at, 82;
Braddock calls council of governors at, 83;
Potomac commissioners adjourn from, to Mount Vernon, 252.
Allen, Ethan, takes possession of Ticonderoga, 171.
Ames, Fisher, comment of, on inauguration of Washington, 272.
Amherst, General, takes Louisbourg, 93.
Annapolis, Washington resigns commission at, 226;
conference of States at, 254.
Army, Continental, created by Congress, 173;
Washington takes command of, 180;
unsatisfactory condition of, 182;
desertions from, 191;
hardships of, at Valley Forge, 199;
trained by Steuben, 200;
difficulty in maintaining, 206;
treatment of, after the war, 218;
efforts of Washington in behalf of, 221;
Washington’s loss of popularity with, 222;
disaffection in, 222-223;
resolution passed by officers of, 223.
Army and navy, steps for formation of, 295.
Arnold, Benedict, attempt of, to capture Quebec, 183;
Carleton checked by, 194, 198;
at Saratoga, 195;
treason of, 207.
Articles of Confederation, adopted by states, 213;
effect of, 214.
Asgill, Captain Charles, incident of, 225;
Washington’s gratification at release of, 225.
Attorney-General, creation of office of, by Congress, 277.
Barter, Philip, Washington’s gardener, makes agreement with
Washington, 240.
Beaujeu leads attack on Braddock and is killed, 88.
Beauséjour, expedition planned against, 84;
taken, 90.
Belvoir, seat of William Fairfax, 51;
life at, 53;
referred to, 107.
Bennington, Vermont, attack on, 195.
Berkeley, Sir William, resigns Virginia to the Commonwealth, 13.
Bernard, an actor, meeting of, with Washington, 312.
Betty, Parson, description of, by Colonel Byrd, 35.
Beverley, Robert, writings and character of, 31-32;
characterization of Virginia by, 32;
on Virginian hospitality, 50.
Bishop, servant of Washington, at Mrs. Custis’s, 100;
pensioned by Washington, 241.
Blair, James, “commissary” to the Bishop of London in Virginia,
character, influence, and breeding of, 36-37.
Blair, John, President of Virginia Council, 139;
appointed delegate to Philadelphia conference, 257;
appointed to Supreme Court, 281.
Bland, Richard, referred to, in connection with debate of Stamp Act, 130;
referred to, 135;
pamphlet of, on colonial rights, 138;
chosen delegate to Congress at Philadelphia, 148;
votes received by, as delegate to Congress, 161;
opposes Henry in convention, 170;
mentioned, 172;
death of, 234.
Blueskin, Washington’s horse, mentioned, 110.
Board of Trade, search-warrants issued by, 122.
Boston, Washington visits, in 1756, 92;
troops sent to, 140;
massacre in, 145;
“Tea Party,” 148;
port of, closed, 148;
fresh troops sent to, 168;
Continental troops in front of, 171;
reinforced by General Howe, 179;
evacuation of, by British, 185;
Washington occupies, 185;
D’Estaing’s fleet at, 204.
Boston _News Letter_, referred to, 121.
Botetourt, Lord, appointed Governor-General of Virginia, 139;
attempts to dissolve House of Burgesses, 140;
attitude of, towards colonists, 141;
death of, 141.
Bowdoin, Governor, of Massachusetts, urges convention of states, 253.
Braddock, Major-General Edward, made commander-in-chief in America, 81;
“a very Iroquois in disposition,” 81;
invites Washington to his staff, 83;
plan of, for attacking Fort Duquesne, 84;
force of, against Fort Duquesne, 85;
advance of, upon Duquesne, 85-86;
unreasonable temper of, on the advance, 86;
defeat of, 86 ff.;
stupid tactics of, 87;
bravery of, 88;
death of, 89;
buried in the road, 89;
losses in force of, 89;
papers of, taken at Duquesne, 90;
former master of Washington’s servant, 100;
referred to, 161.
Brandywine, the, Washington defeated at, 196.
Brest, French fleet blockaded at, 207.
Bridges’ Creek, homestead of Augustine Washington,
birthplace of George, 40-41;
Washington with his brother Augustine at, 51.
Broglie, Prince de, 216.
Bunker Hill, battle of, 179-180.
Burgesses, House of, Governor Spotswood on education of members of, 38;
Augustine Washton in, 46;
quarrels with Dinwiddie about land fee, 69;
grants money for an expedition to the Ohio, 71;
thanks Washington for service at Great Meadows, 77;
votes more money against the French, 79;
appoints committee to spend money granted, 79;
thanks Washington for his services with Braddock, 91;
Washington chosen member of, 103;
Washington’s election expenses to the, 109;
temper of, at time of Washington’s entrance, 113;
memorial of, to King, protesting against Stamp Act, 124-125;
action of, on resolutions concerning taxation, 125;
dissolved by Governor Fauquier, 133;
attempt of Botetourt to dissolve, 140;
resolution of, against importing taxed articles, 140;
convened by Dunmore, 146;
resolves to urge a Congress of all the colonies, 148;
gives a ball to Lady Dunmore, 148;
last meeting of, 172.
Burgoyne, General, plan of campaign of, 194;
capture of Ticonderoga by, 195;
movements of, 195;
capitulation of, 195, 197.
Burke, Edmund, knowledge of, of temper of colonies, 117.
Burnaby, Rev. Andrew, Vicar of Greenwich, views of, on public
character of Virginians in 1759, 120.
Byrd, Colonel William, remark of, concerning exploration
of the interior, 12;
remark of, concerning character of New-Englanders, 12;
on the powers of colonial governors, 26;
character and breeding of, 32 ff.;
influence of, in development of Virginia, 33-34;
undaunted spirits of, 34-35;
characteristics of, as a writer, 33-35;
remark of, about North Carolina, 34, 38;
description of Mr. Betty by, 35;
on Captain Washington’s management of iron mines, 45;
opinion of, regarding taxation, 119-120;
remark of, 120.
Camden, Cornwallis routs Gates at, 205.
Carleton, Sir Guy, attempt of, on Champlain, 194.
Carr, Dabney, meets with Henry and others to discuss
colonial affairs, 146.
Cartagena, Lawrence Washington at siege of, 47-48.
Cary, Miss, Washington’s relations with, 101.
Cary, Robert, & Company, Washington’s factors in London, 105;
carefully watched by Washington, 112.
Champlain, Lake, the French established upon, 61;
attempt at capture of, by Carleton, 194.
Charleston, creation of, 18;
a centre for pirates, 21;
taking of, by Clinton, 205.
Charlestown, occupied by Continental troops, 179;
captured by British, 180.
Chastellux, Marquis de, 216, 217, 218;
Washington’s congratulations of, on his marriage, 260.
Chatham, Lord, knowledge of, of temper of colonies, 117;
comment of, on Rockingham’s “declaratory act,” 138;
advocates conciliation of America, 167.
Chinkling, Washington’s horse, mentioned, 110.
Church, position of Established, in colonial Virginia, 8.
Clark, George Rogers, drives British from the Illinois, 204.
Clinton, General, succeeds General Howe, 202;
ordered to leave Philadelphia, 202;
attacked by Washington at Monmouth Court House, 202;
withdraws to New York, 203;
troops sent by, take Savannah, 204;
goes south, 205;
captures Charleston, 205;
returns north, 205.
Colonies, English, in America, population and condition of, in 1732, 4;
individual development of, 4-5;
contrast between Virginia and New England, 9, 13-14;
expansion of, after the Restoration, 17-18;
expulsion of the Dutch from, 17;
mixture of population in middle and southern, 18-19;
exchange of population amongst, 19;
nature of settlement of, 20;
operation of the Navigation Acts upon, 20;
smuggling and privateering in, 21;
piracy in, 21-22;
irritation of, with regard to Navigation Acts, 22;
early effects of the French power on, 23 ff.;
stubborn separateness and independence of, in respect
of government, 23-27;
drawn into European politics by presence of the
French in North America, 25;
separate action of, in dealing with the French, 25-26;
first feeling of independence among, 113-114;
effect of close of French war on, 113;
taxation of, best imposed by Parliament, 118;
resistance to port dues in, 122;
Stamp Act imposed on, 123-124;
spread of Henry’s resolutions through, 134;
delegates of, assemble in New York, 134;
custom-house and revenue commissioners created for, 139;
attitude of, towards Massachusetts, 154-155;
adopt Articles of Confederation, 213.
Concord, fighting begins at, 170.
Conference, at Annapolis, significance of, 254;
at Philadelphia, 256;
twelve states represented in, 258;
frames constitution, 259;
adjournment of, 259.
Congress, delegates to, from Virginia, 148;
at Philadelphia, 149;
delegates to, from Massachusetts, 154;
unfitness of, for counsel, 157;
leadership of Virginian delegates in, 158-159;
forms declaration of rights, 164-165;
adjournment of, 165;
second Continental, meets at Philadelphia (1775), 171;
business transacted by, 171;
appoints Washington commander of Continental Army, 173;
removes to Baltimore, 191;
Washington’s power increased by, 194;
inefficiency of, 197, 206;
policy of, with regard to western lands, 247;
Washington urges increase of power of, 248;
inability of, to pay national debts, 249;
Washington’s letter to Lee on contempt for authority of, 254;
indifference of, towards Hamilton’s proposal, 256;
weakness of, in face of rebellion, 256;
sanctions conference at Philadelphia, 256;
convening of first, under the Constitution, 265;
organizes various departments, 277;
measures adopted by, for settlement of public debt, 284;
bill defeated in, for assumption of state debts by government, 285;
compromise in, effected by Jefferson, 287;
taxes levied by, 293;
division in, over constitutional powers, 294;
changes in, 301;
lays taxes on distilled spirits, 302.
Congress at New York, delegates sent to, by nine colonies, 134;
bill of rights and immunities passed by, 134.
Connecticut fails to send delegates to Annapolis conference, 254.
Constitution, framed by conference at Philadelphia, 259;
impartial interest of Washington in discussions of, 259;
adoption of, 260.
Contrecœur, commander at Duquesne, against Braddock, 87-88.
Corbin, Richard, acquaints Washington with his commission
as lieutenant-colonel, 72.
Cornwallis, Lord, advances to meet Washington, 192;
defeat of detachment of, at Princeton, 193;
retreat of, to New York, 193;
defeats Gates at Camden, 205;
defeat of, at King’s Mountain, North Carolina, 208;
forced into Virginia, 208;
at Yorktown, 208, 209;
surrender of, 209;
admiration of, for Washington, 209.
Craik, Dr., accompanies Washington on western journey, 242.
Crawford, Captain, correspondence of, with Washington, 143.
Criminals, hired for private service in colonial Virginia, 7;
importation of, for servants, 45.
Cromwell, Oliver, the instrument and representative of a minority, 10.
Crown Point, a French post at, 61;
William Johnson chosen to lead attack upon, 84;
Johnson does not reach, 90;
taken possession of by insurgents, 171.
Culpeper County, Washington made official surveyor for, 56.
Cushing, Thomas, represents Massachusetts in Congress
at Philadelphia, 154.
Cushing, William, appointed to Supreme Court, 281.
Custis, Daniel Parke, first husband of Martha Custis, 99;
leaves property to wife and children, 104.
Custis, “Jack,” placed at King’s College by Washington, 147;
married, 147, 174;
death of, 224.
Custis, Martha, meets with Washington, 99;
previous life of, 99-100;
Washington becomes engaged to, 101;
marriage of, to Washington, 102.
Custis, Nelly, marriage of, 312.
Custis, “Patsy,” death of, 147.
Dandridge, Francis, Washington writes to, about Stamp Act, 134.
Deane, Silas, opinion of, of Southern delegates to Congress
at Philadelphia, 158.
Declaration of independence, motion for, adopted, 187.
De Lancey, James, Governor of New York, consults with
Braddock at Alexandria, 83.
Delaware, crossed by Washington, 191;
forts on, taken by Howe, 197;
delegates from, to Annapolis conference, 254.
Department of Foreign Affairs, organization of, 277.
Department of State organized by Congress, 277.
Department of the Treasury, organization of, 277.
Department of War organized by Congress, 277.
Dickinson, John, 170.
Dieskau, Count, defeated by Johnson at Lake George, 90.
Dinwiddie, Governor, appoints Washington adjutant-general
of a military district, 58;
member of Ohio company, 62-64;
activity of, against the French, 62-64;
authorized to warn the French from the Ohio, 63;
sends Washington to convey warning, 64;
correspondence of, with Lawrence Washington, 64;
speaks of young Washington as “a person of distinction,” 64;
contest with the Burgesses on the land fee, 69;
orders a draft of militia to be sent to the Ohio, 69;
feeling of, towards the Burgesses, 70;
orders Washington’s journal to the Ohio printed, 70;
impatience of, to reattack the French, 78;
resolves militia into independent companies, 79;
restrained in expenditure of money by committee of Burgesses, 79;
consults with Braddock at Alexandria, 83;
on the cowardice of Colonel Dunbar 90.
Dorchester Heights, 179;
occupied by Washington, 184.
Dunbar, Colonel, given command of Braddock’s rear division, 86;
craven behavior of, after Braddock’s defeat, 90.
Dunmore, John Murray, Earl of, becomes governor of Virginia, 145;
convenes House of Burgesses, 146;
reports of, on condition of Virginia, 168;
lands troops near Williamsburg, 170;
flight of, 172;
raids of, upon Virginia, 186-187.
Duplaine, French consul at Boston, 300.
Duquesne, the Marquis, becomes governor on the St. Lawrence, 60;
forestalls the English in the west, 62.
Duquesne, Fort, built by French on the Ohio, 73;
Braddock’s plan for attacking, 84;
Virginian route to, chosen by Braddock, 85;
Braddock’s defeat at, 86-89;
General Forbes sent to command expedition against, 93;
taken and renamed Fort Pitt, 94;
Forbes’s preparations for advancing against, 100.
Dutch, conquest of the, in America, 17;
presence of, in New York and Pennsylvania, 18.
Eden, Charles, Governor of North Carolina, accompanies
Washington to Philadelphia, 143.
Edict of Nantes, Revocation of, sends Huguenots to America, 18.
Education, unsystematic character of, in early Virginia, 29-30.
Elkton, Howe lands troops at, 196.
England, compelled to act for herself against the French in
America by the colonies, 27;
neglects government of colonies, 117-118;
attitude of, towards United States, 248;
war of, with France, 297;
covert hostilities of, against United States, 302;
John Jay sent to, 302;
treaty with, effected by John Jay, 304.
Estaing, Count d’, appears off New York, 203;
refits fleet, 204.
Fairfax, Anne, marries Lawrence Washington, 48;
family connections of, 48-49.
Fairfax, George, Washington’s companion in western surveying, 54.
Fairfax, Thomas, third Lord, summons Colonel H. Washington
at Worcester, 48-49.
Fairfax, Thomas, sixth Baron, estates of, in Northern Neck, 49;
life and character of, 49-50;
establishes himself in Virginia, 49-50;
liking of, for Washington, 53;
employs Washington as surveyor, 53-56;
purpose of, in coming to America, 54;
chief in hunting parties, 109.
Fairfax, William, family and career of, 48-49;
president of the King’s Council, 50-51;
Belvoir, seat of, 51, 53;
influence of, upon Washington, 51-53;
cheers Washington at the frontier, 92.
Fauquier, Francis, Governor of Virginia, present at Washington’s
marriage, 102;
dissolves House of Burgesses, 133;
tastes of, 136;
death of, 139.
Federal Hall, New York City, Washington takes oath of office in, 269.
Federalists support Washington, 301.
Finns in Pennsylvania, 18.
Forbes, General, sent to Virginia to command against Fort Duquesne, 93;
takes Duquesne, 94;
preparations of, for advancing against Duquesne, 100.
Fort Cumberland, built by Captain Innes at Will’s Creek, 78;
Braddock at, 85;
deserted by Colonel Dunbar, 90.
“Fort Necessity,” Washington’s intrenchments at Great Meadows, 75.
Fort Pitt, Fort Duquesne renamed, 94;
left in charge of Colonel Mercer, 101.
Fort Washington, surrender of, by General Greene, 190.
Fort William Henry taken by the French, 90.
France, money loaned by, 199;
forms alliance with United States, 201;
United States in debt to, 249;
effects of Revolution in, on America, 289;
progress of Revolution in, 292;
Washington’s attitude towards, 290-292, 296;
at war with England, 297;
war of, with United States threatened, 310.
Franklin, Benjamin, on Braddock’s plan for attacking Fort Duquesne, 84;
remark of, 197.
Fraunce’s Tavern, Washington’s farewell to officers at, 226.
Frederick County, Washington chosen member of House of Burgesses for, 103.
Frederick the Great, provokes formation of league against
himself, 80, 193;
comment of, 203.
Fredericksburg, 228, 265.
French, in Pennsylvania and the southern colonies, 18;
threatening power of, in North America, 22 ff.;
development of conquest by, in America, 23;
hold of, upon the fur trade, 23-24;
effect of power of, upon relations of colonies to England, 25;
separate action of colonies in dealing with, 25-26;
indecisive wars with, in America, 27;
movements of, in the West, 1752, 59-60;
aggressive efficiency of, 60;
warned from the Ohio by Dinwiddie, 64-66;
at Fort Le Bœuf, 65;
claims of, to the West, 66;
seize fort at forks of the Ohio, 71;
increase their force on the Ohio, 72;
build Fort Duquesne, 73;
attacked by Washington near Great Meadows, 73-74;
profess friendship for the English, 80-81;
send reinforcements to Canada, 81;
force of, against Braddock, 87;
lose Louisbourg, 93, Duquesne, 94, Quebec, 95;
volunteer for service in America, 200;
respect of, for Washington, 215.
French and Indian War, begun by Washington, 73-74;
action in, at Great Meadows, 74-75;
Braddock made commander-in-chief in, 81;
Braddock’s defeat in, 86 ff.;
goes heavily against the English, 90;
drags upon the frontier, 91;
goes against the French, 93-95;
effect of close of, on colonies, 113;
close of, 114.
French Revolution, beginning of, 289;
progress of, 292;
Washington’s attitude towards, 290-292, 296.
Fry, Colonel Joshua, made commander of western expedition, 72;
dies, 73.
Fur trade, early rivalry of French and English in the, 23-25;
effort of the English to control, at Oswego, 61.
Gage, General, 170
Galloway, Joseph, leader of Pennsylvania delegation, 164;
proposition of, in Congress, 164.
Gardoqui insists on closing the Mississippi, 254.
Gaspé, schooner, destruction of, 146.
Gates, General, 198;
defeated at Camden, South Carolina, 205.
Genet, Edmond Charles, minister from France, 297;
conduct of, in America, 298;
plans of, defeated by Washington, 298;
recall of, 300.
Georgia, prevented by governor from sending delegates
to “congress” in New York, 134;
over-run by British, 204;
fails to send delegates to Annapolis conference, 255.
Germans, in Pennsylvania and Virginia, 18;
settle in valley of Shenandoah, 61;
Pennsylvanian, oppose war with France, 63;
attacked by Indians on Virginian frontier, 91;
volunteer for service in America, 200.
Germantown, battle of, 197.
Gist, Christopher, agent of Ohio Company, 65;
goes with Washington to warn the French, 65;
solicitude of, for Washington, 66.
Gooch, William, Governor of Virginia, 40.
Grafton referred to, 139.
Grasse, Count de, co-operates with Washington before Yorktown, 209.
Great Meadows, Washington encamps at, 73;
“a charming field for an encounter,” 73;
Washington attacked by Villiers at, 74-75;
bought by Washington, 144;
referred to, 161.
Greene, General, surrender of Fort Washington by, 190;
harasses Cornwallis in North Carolina, 208.
Greenway Court, built by Lord Fairfax, 50;
Washington at, 55-56;
referred to, 107.
Grenville, George, Prime-Minister, favors direct taxation
of colonies, 119;
attempt of, to enforce collection of port dues, 122;
proposes Stamp Act, and billeting of troops in colonies, 123;
referred to, 139.
Gunston Hall, centre of sport, 109.
Hamilton, Alexander, address of, to the states, 255;
previous record of, 256;
favors adoption of Constitution, 259;
urges Washington to accept presidency, 262;
referred to, 273;
appointed Secretary of Treasury, 278;
Washington’s reasons for choice of, 279;
policy of, 282-283;
plans of, for settlement of public debt, 284;
Jefferson’s envy of, 287;
relations of, with Washington, 288;
referred to, 292;
arguments of, for National Bank, 294;
attacked in the House by Madison, 301;
defence of Washington by, 305;
referred to, 307;
Washington asks advice of, 308.
Hamilton, Governor, of Pennsylvania, acts with Ohio Company, 63.
Hancock, Governor, of Massachusetts, visit of, to Washington, 282.
Hardwick, Washington’s overseer, 108.
Harlem Heights, fight at, 190.
Harrison, Benjamin, chosen delegate to a congress in Philadelphia, 148;
referred to, 157;
votes received by, as delegate to congress, 161;
opposes Henry in convention, 170;
mentioned, 172;
Governor of Virginia, 234.
Harrison, R. H., appointed to Supreme Court, 281.
Hawley, Joseph, advice of, to representatives of Massachusetts
at Philadelphia, 155;
referred to, 158.
Hay, Anthony, Burgesses meet at house of, 140.
Henry, Patrick, family and character of, 126-127;
entrance of, into House of Burgesses, 127;
appearance and dress of, 127;
comparison of, with Washington, 127;
previous life of, 128;
leadership of, in debate of Stamp Act, 128-129;
triumph of, in debate of Stamp Act, 132;
influence on colonies of resolutions of, 134;
recognized as a leader, 138;
meets with Jefferson and others to discuss colonial affairs, 146;
chosen delegate to Congress at Philadelphia, 148-149;
leadership of, in Congress at Philadelphia, 159;
votes received by, as delegate to Congress, 161;
criticised for boldness, 163;
referred to, 165;
advocates arming colonists, 169;
heads militiamen against Dunmore, 171;
mentioned, 172;
chosen governor of Virginia, 234;
appointed delegate to conference at Philadelphia, 257;
opposes Constitution, 260;
referred to, 280.
Hessians surrendered to Washington, 192.
Holland, United States in debt to, 249.
Howe, Admiral Lord, assists General Howe at New York, 189;
offers pardon for submission, 189, 191.
Howe, General William, reinforces Boston, 179;
evacuates Boston, 185;
forces Washington from Brooklyn Heights, 189;
plans of, 194;
movements of, 195;
advance of, on Philadelphia checked by Washington, 196;
landing of, at Elkton, 196;
defeats Washington at the Brandywine, 196;
enters Philadelphia, 197;
attacked by Washington at Germantown, 197;
winters at Philadelphia, 197;
resigns command, 202.
Illinois, the French in the country of the, 23.
Independent Company, temper of, from South Carolina at Great Meadows, 73;
from New York fails to join Washington against the French, 76;
from New York and from South Carolina at Fort Cumberland, 78;
from New York with Braddock, 85.
Indians, Ohio Company, makes interest with, 61-62;
Washington’s efforts to retain friendship of, for the English, 66;
with Villiers at Great Meadows, 75;
Washington’s struggle with the, on the frontier, 91-92;
desert French at Duquesne, 93-94.
Innes, Captain, builds Fort Cumberland at Will’s Creek, 78.
Jay, John, supports proposition of Rutledge in Congress, 164;
proposition of, concerning Mississippi, 246;
favors adoption of Constitution, 259;
appointed chief-justice, 281;
sent by Washington to England, 302;
provisions of treaty effected by, 304.
Jefferson, Thomas, referred to, 137;
meets with Henry and others to discuss colonial affairs, 146;
becomes governor of Virginia, 234;
appointed Secretary of State, 278;
Washington’s reasons for choice of, 279;
compromise in Congress effected by, 287;
envy of, of Hamilton, 287;
relation of, with Washington, 288;
French influences on, 289;
opposition of, to National Bank, 293;
letter to, from Washington, concerning United States policy
towards France, 297;
neutrality violated by, 299;
leaves the cabinet, 301;
remark of, on Whiskey Rebellion, 304;
referred to, 307.
Johnson, Governor, of Maryland, urges Washington to
accept presidency, 261.
Johnson, Colonel William, chosen to lead attack on Crown Point, 84;
beats Dieskau at Lake George, 90.
Jones, Rev. Hugh, author of _Present State of Virginia_, 36.
Jones, John Paul, 205.
Jumonville, M., killed near Great Meadows, 74;
death of, begins French and Indian War, 74, 80.
Keith, Sir William, Governor of Pennsylvania, suggestion of,
for taxation of colonies, 118;
referred to, 119.
Keppel, Admiral, commands fleet sent to Virginia, 81.
Knox, General, Washington’s farewell to, 226;
letter to, from Washington, 266;
made Secretary of War, 278.
Knyphausen, General, left by Clinton in charge of New York, 205.
Lafayette, Marquis de, volunteers for service in America, 200, 202;
harasses Cornwallis in Virginia, 208;
letter of Washington to, 237;
remark of, concerning Washington’s home life, 239;
sends hounds to Washington, 243;
becomes people’s leader in French Revolution, 290.
Lake George, Dieskau beaten by Johnson at, 90.
Land fee, protest of the Virginia Burgesses concerning, 69.
Laurie, Dr., comes to Mount Vernon drunk, 109.
Lee, Arthur, referred to, 141.
Lee, Charles, 168;
second in command to Washington, 191;
taken prisoner, 191;
treachery of, 202.
Lee, Henry (“Light-horse Harry”), 208.
Lee, Richard Henry, referred to, 132;
forms association for resistance to Stamp Act, 135;
meets with Henry and others to discuss colonial affairs, 146;
chosen delegate to Congress at Philadelphia, 148;
leadership of, in Congress at Philadelphia, 159;
votes received by, as delegate to Congress, 161;
interview of, with Massachusetts delegates, 161-162;
referred to, 166;
mentioned, 172;
motion of, for declaration of independence, 187;
harasses Cornwallis in North Carolina, 208, 235;
Washington’s letter to, on contempt for authority of Congress, 254;
opposes Constitution, 260;
referred to, 280.
Lee, Thomas, president of Ohio Company, 64.
Lewis, Mrs., sister of Washington, 228.
Lexington, battle of, 170.
Lincoln, General, taken prisoner, 205.
Lippincott, Captain, hangs American officer, 224.
_Little Sarah_, the, 299.
Livingston, Chancellor of New York, administers oath of office
to Washington, 269.
Louisbourg taken by Amherst, 93.
Lower Brandon, estate of Benjamin Harrison, 234.
Lynch, Mr., delegate from South Carolina to Congress at Philadelphia, 158.
Mackay, Captain of Independent Company from South Carolina, 79.
Mackenzie, Captain, letter of, to Washington, 162.
Madison, James, leader in Virginian politics, 235;
appointed delegate to Philadelphia conference, 257;
part of, in the conference, 259;
favors adoption of Constitution, 259;
referred to, 274;
opposes policy of Treasury Department, 295;
attack of, on Hamilton, 301;
Washington asks advice of, 308.
Magnolia, Washington’s horse, mentioned, 110.
Marshall, John, becomes prominent, 235.
Maryland, resolution of, to arm colonists, 169;
takes measures for opening the Potomac, 246;
commissioners from, meet at Mount Vernon concerning Potomac, 252;
action of Assembly of, regarding trade, 253;
fails to send delegates to Annapolis conference, 254.
Mason, George, urges Washington to guard his health, 94-95;
Washington stalking deer with, 110;
conferences of, with Washington on state of colonies, 135;
draws up resolution for House of Burgesses, 140;
referred to, 166, 243, 280;
appointed delegate to Philadelphia conference, 257;
opposes Constitution, 260.
Massachusetts, independence of men of, 117;
resents direct taxation, 119;
refuses standing grant to governor, 119;
summons colonies to send delegates to New York, 134;
attitude of colonies towards, 154-155;
delegates from, at Congress, accused of rebellion, 161-162;
proclaimed in rebellion, 167-168;
provincial congress formed in, and votes to equip militia of, 168;
fails to send delegates to Annapolis conference, 254;
rebellion in, 256;
struggle in, over Constitution, 260.
Mercer, Colonel, engages Washington by mistake, 94;
Fort Pitt left in charge of, 102.
Mifflin, Thomas, member of Congress at Philadelphia, 157.
Mississippi, early power of the French on the, 23;
closed to commerce by the Spanish, 245;
opening of, 306.
Monckton, Colonel, directed to attack Beauséjour in Acadia, 84.
Monmouth Court House, battle of, 202.
Monroe, James, becomes prominent, 235.
Montgomery, General, captures Montreal, 183;
death of, 183, 215.
Montreal captured by Montgomery, 183.
Morgan, General, 198;
harasses Cornwallis in North Carolina, 208.
Morris, Gouverneur, 292.
Morris, Robert Hunter, Governor of Pennsylvania, consults
with Braddock at Alexandria, 83.
Morristown Heights, withdrawal of Washington to, 193.
Mount Vernon, named after Admiral Vernon, 48;
Washington as a boy at, 51-53, 56;
Washington visits, before Yorktown, 224;
Washington returns to, after the war, 228;
left in charge of Lund Washington, 233;
many visitors at, 237, 243;
Washington’s correspondence at, 250;
meeting of Potomac commissioners at, 252;
Washington leaves, to take presidency, 265;
retires to private life at, 309.
Moustier, Count de, French minister to the United States,
presumption of, 276.
Murray, John, Earl Dunmore. _See_ Dunmore.
National Bank, foundation of, 293.
Navigation Acts, policy of the, towards the colonies, 20;
evasion of the, 21;
irritation wrought by the, 22;
advantages gained to the colonies by the, 22.
Nelson, Washington’s horse, 241.
Nelson, William, president of Virginia Council, 145.
New Brunswick, British stores at, 193.
Newcastle, Duke of, aroused on the French war, 80.
New England, peculiar character of population in, 9-10;
persistent character of, amidst change, 10;
modification of, 10-11;
a body of churches, 11;
population and condition of, at end of seventeenth century, 11-12;
separate life of, 11-12;
difference between, and Virginia accentuated under the Commonwealth, 13;
emigration of congregations from, into New Jersey, 19;
astir in the French war, 84.
New Hampshire, fails to send delegates to Annapolis conference, 254;
rebellion in, 256.
New Jersey, establishment of, 18;
emigration of New England congregations to, 19;
sends delegates to Annapolis conference, 254.
New Orleans, growing French village at, 60;
Genet’s plans against, 298.
Newport, D’Estaing sails against, 204;
Rochambeau lands at, 206.
New Providence, in the Bahamas, headquarters of colonial pirates, 22.
New York, establishment of colony of, 17;
early preponderance of the Dutch in, 18;
a rival of the French in the fur trade, 24;
Assembly of, questions English claim to the Ohio, 70;
Independent Company from, fails to join Washington against
the French, 76;
Independent Companies from, under Innes at Will’s Creek, 78;
astir in the French war, 84;
Independent Companies from, with Braddock, 85;
legislative powers of Colonial Assembly of, suspended, 139;
majority in, opposed to revolution, 163;
opposes motion for declaration of independence, 187;
delegates from, to Annapolis conference, 254;
struggle in, over Constitution, 260.
New York City, cosmopolitan character of colonial, 19;
a centre for pirates, 21;
delegates of colonies assemble in, 134;
Washington’s plans for defence of, 186;
British arrive before, 188;
withdrawal of Washington from, 190;
Clinton retreats to, 203;
D’Estaing’s fleet appears off, 203;
Washington’s welcome in, as President, 268;
Washington takes oath of office in, 269.
Niagara, a French post at, 61;
Governor Shirley to lead attack upon, 84;
failure of Shirley’s expedition against, 90.
Nicholas, Robert Carter, member of House of Burgesses,
referred to in connection with debate of Stamp Act, 131;
opposes Henry in convention, 170.
Nicola, Colonel Lewis, proposal of, to make Washington king, 219-220.
Norfolk, Virginia, burned by Dunmore, 187.
North, Lord, Prime-Minister, repeals taxes, 144.
North Carolina, establishment of, 18;
characterization of, by Colonel Byrd, 34, 38;
sends militiamen to assist Washington against the French, 76;
prevented by governor from sending delegates to “congress”
in New York, 134;
riots in, 145;
delegates of, authorized to join in declaration of independence, 187;
uprising of, 208;
refusal of, to yield western land claims, 246;
fails to send delegates to Annapolis conference, 254.
“Northern Neck” of Virginia, settlement of, 15-16;
division of, into counties, 16;
a natural seat of commerce, 16;
immigration of the Washingtons into, 16;
intimate intercourse of, with England, 30;
of a piece with the rest of Virginia, 39;
property of Augustine Washington in, 45;
estates of Lord Fairfax in, 49.
Ohio, determination of Duquesne to occupy upper waters of, 60-61;
first movement of the French towards the, 62;
Dinwiddie determines to send militia to the, 69;
Washington’s journal to the, printed, 70;
fort begun at the forks of the, by the English, 71;
the fort seized by the French, 71;
French build Fort Duquesne on the, 73.
Ohio Company, formation of, 61;
establishment of posts by, in the west, 62;
Governor Dinwiddie member of, 62, 64;
Thomas Lee, president of the, 64;
Lawrence Washington president of the, 64;
interested in Virginia route to Duquesne, 85;
plans of, for opening the upper Potomac, 246.
Orme, Captain, invites Washington to Braddock’s staff, 83.
Oswego, English military post at, 61;
westward expedition of the French observed from, 62;
taken by the French, 90.
Otis, James, Advocate-General in Court of Admiralty, warns
ministers against enforcing search warrants, 123;
criticised for boldness, 163.
Paine, Robert Treat, represents Massachusetts in Congress
at Philadelphia, 154.
Parliament renounces right to tax colonies, 201.
Pendleton, Edmund, member of House of Burgesses, referred
to in connection with debate of Stamp Act, 131;
character of, 131;
referred to, 135;
chosen delegate to Congress at Philadelphia, 148-149;
vote received by, as delegate to Congress, 161;
opposes Henry in convention, 170;
referred to, 172;
president of Committee of Safety, 187;
becomes judge, 234.
Penn, Thomas, comment of, on Washington’s resignation from militia, 80.
Pennsylvania, establishment of colony of, 17;
mixed population of, 18;
immigration of Scots-Irish into, 19;
westward movement of settlers from, 60-61;
Assembly of, refuses to act against the French, 63;
Assembly of, doubts English claim to the Ohio, 70;
votes money to be used against the French, 76;
advantages of route through, to Duquesne, 85;
majority in, opposed to revolution, 163;
delegation from, led by Joseph Galloway, 164;
delegates from, to Annapolis conference, 254;
Whiskey Rebellion in, 303.
Philadelphia, creation of, 17;
cosmopolitan character of colonial, 19;
Congress at, 149, 171;
entered by Howe, 197;
British leave, 202.
Phillipse, Mary, interests Washington, 93, 101, 174.
Pinckney, Thomas, treaty of, with Spain, 306.
Piracy in the colonies, 21-22;
suppression of, 22.
Pitt, William, becomes Prime-Minister and ends the French war, 93 ff.
Planters, in colonial Virginia, mode of life of, 6, 28-29;
proportion of, in colonial Virginia, 7;
social position of, 8-9.
Poles volunteer for service in America, 200.
Potomac, Washington surveying on the, 55;
importance of, to commerce, 246;
Washington’s plans concerning, 246;
conference of commissioners concerning, at Mount Vernon, 252.
Potomac Company, Washington chosen president of, 251.
Presque Isle, French establish themselves at, 62.
Princeton, Washington retreats to, 191;
battle of, 193.
Principio Iron Company, interest of Augustine Washington in, 45;
Colonel Byrd on the management of, 45.
Privateering in the colonies, 21.
Puritan Commonwealth in England the government of a minority, 10.
Puritans, unlike other Englishmen, 9;
of the minority in England, 10;
ascendency of, in New England, 10.
Quakers of Pennsylvania oppose war with French, 63.
Quebec, Wolfe takes command of expedition against, 93;
taken, 95;
attempt of Arnold to capture, 183.
Rahl, Colonel, mortally wounded, 192.
Randolph, Edmund, becomes prominent, 235;
appointed delegate to conference at Philadelphia, 257;
part of, in the conference, 259;
appointed Attorney-General, 278;
Washington’s reasons for choice of, 280;
opposition of, to National Bank, 293.
Randolph, Peyton, member of House of Burgesses, referred
to in connection with debate of Stamp Act, 131;
previous life of, 132;
referred to, 135;
chosen delegate to Congress at Philadelphia, 148-149;
chosen president of Congress at Philadelphia, 159;
votes received by, as delegate to Congress, 160;
referred to, 172;
death of, 234.
Rangers, Virginian, added to Braddock’s forces, 82;
behavior of, in Braddock’s defeat, 87, 88, 89;
Braddock praises, 89.
“Red Sea trade,” the, 21-22.
Redstone Creek, Ohio Company establishes post on, 62.
Reed, Joseph, comment of, on Virginia delegates, 172.
Restoration, effect of, upon colonial settlement, 17.
Revolution, first battle of, 170;
goes against British, 203;
goes against Americans, 205;
favors Americans in the South, 208;
close of, 209;
effect of, on Washington, 216.
Rhode Island, Puritan though various, 11;
fails to send delegates to Annapolis conference, 254;
in sympathy with Shays, 256.
Richmond, Virginia convention meets in, 169.
Robin, Abbé, 215, 221.
Robinson, Beverly, entertains Washington in New York, 93.
Robinson, Speaker of House and Treasurer of Virginia, thanks
Washington for services, 103;
death of, referred to, 113.
Rochambeau, Count, lands men at Newport, 206;
assists Washington’s plans, 208, 228.
Rockingham, Lord, referred to, 135;
“declaratory act” under ministry of, 138.
Rutledge, Edward, supports proposition of Galloway in Congress, 164;
Washington’s appeal to, 272.
Rutledge, John, appointed to Supreme Court, 281.
St. Clair, Sir John, Washington at Williamsburg by order of, 100.
St. Lawrence, power of the French on the, 23.
St. Leger, General, plans of, 194;
failure of, 195.
San Lazaro, Fort, storming of, 48.
Saratoga, battle of, 195.
Savannah taken by British, 204.
Schuyler, General, driven from Ticonderoga, 195;
mentioned, 198.
Scots-Irish, in Virginia and the middle colonies, 19;
settlement of, in Shenandoah Valley. 61;
harassed by Indians on Virginian frontier, 91.
Search-warrants issued by Board of Trade, 122.
Servants, hired, in colonial Virginia, 7.
Settlers harassed by Indians on Virginian frontier, 91-92.
Sharpe, Horatio, Governor of Maryland, consults with
Braddock at Alexandria, 83.
Shays leads rebellion in Massachusetts, 256.
Shenandoah, Washington surveying on the, 55;
first movement of settlers into valley of, 61.
Shippen, Dr., interview of, with Massachusetts delegates, 161-162.
Shirley, William, Governor of Massachusetts, consults with
Braddock at Alexandria, 83;
to lead attack on Niagara, 84;
fails in attack, 90;
Washington’s visit to, in 1756, 92, 93, 174.
Slaves, proportion of, in colonial Virginia, 7.
Smuggling, in the colonies, 21;
common practice of, 121.
Society of the Cincinnati, Washington declines to meet, 257.
“Sons of Liberty,” 175.
South Carolina, establishment of, 18;
Independent Company from, at Great Meadows, 73;
provincials from, under Innes at Will’s Creek, 78;
majority in, opposed to revolution, 163;
in power of British, 205;
fails to send delegates to Annapolis conference, 254.
Spain, alliance of, with France and America, 204;
invasion of England attempted by, 204;
closes Mississippi River to commerce, 245, 247, 249;
treaty with, obtained by Pinckney, 306.
_Spectator_, the, Lord Fairfax a contributor to, 49-50;
Washington’s acquaintance with, 56.
Spotswood, Alexander, character of, and career in Virginia, 37-38;
judgment of Virginians by, 38;
on the education of Burgesses, 38;
referred to, 119.
Stamp Act, proposed by Grenville, 123;
passage of, 124;
protest against, by House of Burgesses, 124;
Henry’s leadership in debate of, 128-129;
repeal of, 135.
Steuben, Baron von, joins Washington at Valley Forge, 200;
harasses Cornwallis in North Carolina, 208.
Stith, Rev. William, character and writings of, 35-36.
Sullivan, General, 192.
Swedes on the Delaware, 18.
Taxation, Virginian Burgesses regard Dinwiddle’s land fee as, 69;
of colonies, best imposed by Parliament, 118;
imposed on wines and sugars, 1764, 119;
direct, of colonies, favored by George Grenville, 119;
disregard of, by officials and traders, 120;
ministry willing to remit, 167.
Thomson, Charles, clerk of Congress, notifies Washington
of his election, 265.
Ticonderoga, Allen takes possession of, 171;
captured by Burgoyne, 195.
Townshend, Charles, referred to, 139.
Trade, Ohio Company and the western, 61-62;
Acts of, 121.
Trenton captured by Washington, 192.
Trumbull, Governor, referred to, 189.
Trumbull, Jonathan, Jr., Washington’s letter to, 244.
Truro, parish of, represented by Augustine Washington, 46.
Tryon, Governor of North Carolina, 145.
Valiant, Washington’s horse, mentioned, 110.
Valley Forge, Washington winters at, 197, 199;
Mrs. Washington’s visit to, 199.
Vanbraam, Jacob, fencing-master at Mount Vernon, goes
with Washington to warn the French, 64.
Vergennes, intercession of, in behalf of Captain Asgill, 225.
Vermont, rebellion in, 256.
Vernon, Admiral, at Cartagena, 47-48.
Villiers, Coulon de, attacks Washington at Great Meadows, 74-75.
Virginia, general English character of colonial, 5;
fixed nature of society in, 5-6;
lack of towns in, 6;
independent plantation life in, 6-7, 28-29;
classes of population in, 7;
proportion of slaves in, 7;
democratic spirit in, 8;
position of Church in, 8;
position of Established Church in, 8;
contrasted with New England, 9;
temper of, at establishment of the Commonwealth, 13;
change in population of, during Commonwealth, 13-14;
emigration of John and Lawrence Washington to, 14;
French Huguenots and Germans in, 18;
meets the French in western fur trade, 24;
character and habits of society in, 28 ff.;
individuality of men in, 28-29;
education and study in, 29-30;
character of literary work in, 30-31;
travel in, 38;
culture mixed with rough life in, 39;
obliged to act alone against the French, 63;
English regiments for French war arrive in, 81;
route through, to Duquesne chosen by Braddock, 85;
forces of, with Braddock, 85;
resents direct taxation, 119;
loyalty of colonists to, 130;
prevented by governor from sending delegates to “congress”
in New York, 134;
passes bill of rights, 134;
leadership of delegates from, in Congress at Philadelphia, 158-159;
colonists of, armed, 168;
convention of, meets at Richmond, 169;
changes in, during the war, 234;
yields western land claims, 246;
commissioners from, meet at Mount Vernon concerning the Potomac, 252;
calls general conference at Annapolis, 254;
delegates from, to Annapolis conference, 254;
final adoption of national Constitution by, 260-261.
Walpole, Horace, calls Washington a “brave braggart,” 78, 80, 206.
Walpole, Sir Robert, answer of, to Keith, 118.
Washington, Augustine, father of George, 40;
character and occupations of, 45-46;
a representative in the House of Burgesses, 46;
death and will of, 46;
courtship and marriage of, 47.
Washington, Augustine (half-brother of George), estate and
education of, 46;
George with, at Bridges’ Creek, 51;
member of Ohio Company, 61.
Washington, George, breeding of, epitomized, 3;
birth of, 40;
birthplace of, 41;
age of, at his father’s death, 46;
interest of, in his father’s estate, 46;
under his mother’s care, 47;
as a boy at Mount Vernon and Belvoir, 50-51, 52-53, 56;
comradeships of, as a boy, at Belvoir and Mount Vernon, 50-53, 56;
kept at school till sixteen, 51;
at Bridges’ Creek with his brother Augustine, 51;
kept from going to sea, 51;
boyish relish of, for practical efficiency, 51-52;
quits school, 52;
intimacy of, with Lord Fairfax, 53-56;
surveyor for Lord Fairfax, 53-56;
letter of, on surveying experiences, 55;
boyish reading of, 56;
official appointment of, as surveyor, 56;
studies tactics and the broadsword at Mount Vernon, 56;
becomes known throughout the Northern Neck, 57;
goes to the Bahamas with Lawrence, 57;
made Lawrence’s executor, 57-58;
contracts the small-pox in the Bahamas, 58;
takes Lawrence’s place in the militia, 58;
put in charge of a military district, 58;
contingent interest in Mount Vernon, 58;
sent by Dinwiddie to warn the French from the Ohio, 64-66;
difficulties of the journey, 65-66;
endeavors to attach Indians to the English, 66;
appointed by Dinwiddie to command militia sent to the Ohio, 69;
journal of, to the Ohio printed, 70;
recruiting at Alexandria, 71;
commissioned lieutenant-colonel under Joshua Fry, 72;
sent forward to cut a road to the Ohio, 72;
establishes camp at Great Meadows, 73;
trouble of, with Independent Company at Great Meadows, 73;
succeeds Colonel Fry in command, 73;
spills first blood of the French war, 73-74;
attacked by Villiers at Great Meadows, 74-75;
capitulates and retreats, 76;
thanked by the House of Burgesses, 77;
letters of, on management of expedition to Ohio, 77;
likes the sound of bullets, 77;
laughed at by Horace Walpole, 78;
rejoins regiment at Alexandria, 78;
resigns command, 79;
Thomas Penn’s comment upon resignation of, 80;
visits Braddock’s regiment at Alexandria, 82;
accepts place on Braddock’s staff, 83;
disputes of, with Braddock during advance on Duquesne, 86;
advises division of Braddock’s force, 86;
in Braddock’s defeat, 87-89;
ill just before the battle, 88;
directs retreat alone, 89;
distress of, at sufferings of frontier settlers, 91;
thanked by the Burgesses for his services under Braddock, 91;
keeps the frontier against the Indians, 91-92;
cheered by Colonel Fairfax, 92;
behavior of, towards his comrades, 92;
hangs insubordinates, 92;
visits Governor Shirley on matter of rank, 92-93;
becomes interested in Mary Phillipse in New York, 93;
goes with Forbes against Fort Duquesne, 94;
in ill-health, 94;
George Mason to, on need of preserving himself for the country, 94-95;
meets Martha Custis, 99;
becomes engaged to Mrs. Custis, 101;
early love affairs of, 101;
marriage of, 102;
stay of, at the White House, 102;
takes wife to Williamsburg, 102;
chosen member of House of Burgesses, 103;
embarrassed on entering House of Burgesses, 103;
publicly thanked for services, 103;
management of estates by, 104;
home life of, 104-112, 251;
business ability of, 105-106;
attitude of, towards drinking, 108-109;
election expenses of, 109;
fondness of, for hunting, 109-110;
getting estates into condition, 110;
pleasure outings of, 111;
taste of, in clothes, 111;
desire of, to go to England, 112;
comparison of, with Henry, 127;
attitude of, towards debate on Stamp Act, 133;
views of, on enforcement of Stamp Act, 134;
confers with Mason on state of colonies, 135;
relations of, with Fauquier, 136;
letter of, to Mason on actions of Parliament, 140;
presents Mason’s resolution to House of Burgesses, 140-141;
encourages observance of importation resolution, 142;
buys new “chariot,” 142;
pre-empts lands in the west, 142;
employments of, 142-143;
gives ball at Alexandria, 143;
attends horse-races in Philadelphia, 143;
secures western land for comrades in French war, 143-144;
places “Jackie” Custis in King’s College, New York, 147;
letter to Colonel Bassett, 147;
chosen delegate to Congress at Philadelphia, 148-149;
not a leader in Congress at Philadelphia, 159-160;
criticism of, of Gage’s conduct, 160;
reported saying of, 160;
votes received by, as delegate to Congress, 161;
interview of, with Massachusetts delegates, 161-162;
foresees outcome of Congress’s actions, 165-166;
business affairs of, 166-167;
assumes command of Virginia companies, 169;
attends second Continental Congress, 171;
accepts command of army at Boston, 174, 214;
reverence of people for, 174;
reaches Cambridge, 180;
assumes command of army, 180;
correspondence of, from headquarters, 181;
privateers equipped by orders of, 182;
occupies Dorchester Heights, 184;
enters Boston, 185;
transfers defence to New York, 186;
favors motion for declaration of independence, 188;
evacuates Brooklyn Heights, 190;
withdrawal of, from New York City, 190;
retreat of, through New Jersey, 191;
crosses the Delaware, 191;
forces recruited by, 192;
captures Trenton, 192;
defeats British at Princeton, 193;
withdraws to Morristown, 193;
proclamation of, 193;
fortune of, pledged for payment of troops, 194;
causes Howe to retreat to New York, 196;
defeat of, at the Brandywine, 196;
attacks Howe at Germantown, 197;
winters at Valley Forge, 197;
plots against, 198;
trials of, at Valley Forge, 199;
joined by Steuben, 200;
attacks Clinton at Monmouth Court House, 202;
wrath of, at Lee’s cowardice, 202;
grief of, at Arnold’s treason, 207;
takes Cornwallis at Yorktown, 209;
courage of, 215;
effect of the war on, 216;
reserve of, in discharge of duty, 218;
advises with Congress, 219;
rejoins army at Newburgh, 219;
indignation of, at Colonel Nicola’s proposal, 220;
efforts of, in behalf of the army, 221;
loses popularity with the army, 222;
treatment of mutinous officers by, 222-223;
longing of, for home, 223;
sternness of, 224;
reply of, to Vergennes concerning Captain Asgill, 225;
gratification of, at release of Captain Asgill, 225;
farewell of, to officers, 226;
speech of, on resigning commission at Annapolis, 226-227;
prayer of, before battle, 227;
returns to Mount Vernon, 228;
simplicity of, 228;
attends ball with his mother, 228;
deference of, to his mother, 229;
rebukes his nephew, 233;
welcome of, on return to Virginia, 235;
privacy of, at Mount Vernon, 237;
letter of, to Lafayette, 237;
interruptions of, at Mount Vernon, 238;
as a host, 238;
affection of, for adopted children, 239;
agreement of, with gardener, 240;
strictness of, in business dealings, 241;
eagerness of people to see, 241;
makes journey to western lands, 242;
cares of, as statesman, 243;
anxiety of, for success of government, 243-244;
“political creed” of, 244;
forebodings of, for future of the West, 245;
efforts of, to open the Potomac, 246;
urges increase of Congress’s power, 248;
portraits of, 250;
makes tour of inspection as president of Potomac Company, 251;
invites commissioners on opening of the Potomac to Mount Vernon, 252;
letter of, to Henry Lee, 254;
criticises weakness of Congress, 256;
appointed delegate to Philadelphia conference, 257;
reluctance of, to attend conference at Philadelphia, 257;
opposes compromise in conference at Philadelphia, 258;
chosen president of conference, 258;
returns to Mount Vernon, 259;
intense interest of, in discussions of Constitution, 259;
congratulations of, to Chastellux on marriage, 260;
reluctance of, to accept presidency, 261;
accepts presidency, 262;
bids farewell to his mother, 265;
leaves Mount Vernon, 265;
feelings of, on leaving home, 266;
financial troubles of, 267;
journey of, to New York, 267;
present journey contrasted with former ones, 267;
welcome of, in New York, 268;
takes oath of office, 269;
emotion of, during inaugural address, 270-271;
inexperience of, in administration, 272-273;
fitness of, for office, 273;
dignity of, in office, 274-276;
illness of, 277;
familiarity of, with affairs of government, 278;
choice of cabinet by, 278;
care of, in federal appointments, 281;
makes tour of eastern states, 281-282;
sympathy of, with Hamilton’s policy, 284;
attitude of, towards French Revolution, 290-291, 292, 296;
object in national policy of, 291;
sanctions National Bank, 294;
frontier policy of, 295;
neutrality of, between France and England, 297;
frustrates plans of Genet, 298;
demands recall of Genet, 300;
elected to second term, 301;
sends John Jay to England, 302;
puts down Whiskey Rebellion, 303;
favors Jay’s treaty with England, 305;
abuse of, by the people, 305;
behavior of, under abuse, 306;
wisdom of, recognized, 306;
attempts reconciliation of Hamilton and Jefferson, 307;
declines third term, 308;
farewell address of, 308;
emotion of, on retirement from office, 309;
retires to Mount Vernon, 309-310;
connections of, with public life, 310;
treatment of old comrade by, 311;
gentleness of, with children, 312;
attends marriage of Nellie Custis, 312;
sickness and death of, 313-314.
Washington, Colonel Henry, holds Worcester for the king, 14, 48-49.
Washington, John, emigration of, to Virginia, 14-15;
ancestry of, 14-15;
settlement of, in “Northern Neck” of Virginia, 16-17;
life of, in Virginia, 40;
fortunes of descendants of, 40.
Washington, Rev. Lawrence, rector of Purleigh, 15, 41.
Washington, Lawrence, emigrant to Virginia, 14-15;
ancestry of, 14-15;
settlement of, in “Northern Neck” of Virginia, 16-17.
Washington, Lawrence (half-brother of George), estate and
education of, 46;
service of, at Cartagena, 47;
in the storming of Fort San Lazaro, 48;
head of the family and adjutant-general of the colonial militia, 48;
marriage of, 48-49;
member of the House of Burgesses, 50;
influence of, upon George, 50-53, 57;
illness and death of, 57;
makes George his executor and residuary legatee, 57-58;
member of Ohio Company, 61;
president of Ohio Company, 64;
correspondence of, with Dinwiddie, 64.
Washington, Lund, 181;
management of Mount Vernon by, 233.
Washington, Martha, outings of, with Washington, 111;
at Washington’s headquarters at Cambridge, 184;
at Valley Forge, 190.
Washington, Mary, courtship and marriage of, 47;
keeps George from going to sea, 51;
attends ball with Washington, 228;
Washington’s deference to, 229;
Washington bids farewell to, 265.
Washingtons, the, fortunes of, in the Northern Neck, 39-40.
Wentworth, commander of land forces at Cartagena, 47.
West Point, Arnold tries to betray, 207.
Whiskey Rebellion in Pennsylvania and Virginia, 303.
Whitehall Ferry, Washington at, 226.
White House, Washington’s stay at, 102.
White Plains, skirmish at, 190.
William and Mary, College of, 30;
chiefly founded by James Blair, 36.
Williamsburg, Virginia’s chief town, 6;
Washington belated at, by courting, 100;
Washington and wife at, 102;
Dunmore lands troops at, 171.
Will’s Creek, Ohio Company’s post at, 62;
Captain Innes builds Fort Cumberland at, 78.
Wilson, James, appointed to Supreme Court, 281.
Winchester, Washington on business concerning General Forbes at, 100.
Wolfe, General, takes command against Quebec, 93;
takes Quebec, 95.
Worcester, Colonel Henry Washington at, 14, 48-49.
Wythe, George, referred to, in connection with debate of Stamp Act, 130;
referred to, 135;
appointed delegate to Philadelphia conference, 257.
Yorktown, Virginia, Cornwallis arrives at, 208;
Cornwallis’s surrender at, 209.
Young, Arthur, correspondence of, with Washington, 260.
THE END
Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:
Mary Philipse => Mary Phillipse {pg 93}
leisure to reflect=> leisure te reflect {pg 133}
into Mary Philipse’s=> into Mary Phillipse’s {pg 174}
United States=> united States {pg 246}
Philipse, Mary, interests=> Phillipse, Mary, interests {pg 326}
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