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■"X -' 
 
 LIFE OF WASHINGTON 
 
 BY / ot^*'-^ 
 
 VIRGINIA F. TOWNSEND 
 
 ILLUSTRATED 
 
 NEW YORK 
 WORTHINGTON CO., 747 BROADWAY 
 
 1887 
 

 Copyright, 1887 
 By VIRGINIA F. TOWNSEND 
 
 Press of J. J. Little S: Co. 
 Astor Place, New York. 
 
To THE MILLIONS WHO SIT AROUND THE FIRESIDES OF 
 AMERICA, WHOSE FREEDOM HE FOUGHT FOR, AND WHOSE 
 LIBERTIES HE WON, THIS LIFE OF GEORGE WASHINGTON IS 
 DEDICATED, BY ITS AUTHOR. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 So many lives of George Washington have 
 already been written that a new one perhaps re- 
 quires some justification. 
 
 The character and deeds of the man who stands 
 in the foreground of American history may be 
 regarded from many sides. 
 
 The brief biography in these pages must, at 
 the beginning, claim to be a woman's way of 
 looking at George Washington. 
 
 In going over the familiar ground, the author 
 believes she has entered some by-paths where she 
 has gained a new view of the figure which stands 
 in solitary majesty in the heart and imagination 
 of the American people. 
 
 The author has also endeavored, while adhering 
 strictly to the truths of history, to set the great 
 scenes and crises in the career of Washington in 
 
6 Preface, 
 
 a picturesque and dramatic form before her 
 readers. 
 
 The limits of this sketch do not, of course, 
 admit of the broad Unes and the grouping of 
 stately figures with which other writers have 
 filled their larger historic canvases. 
 
 To George Washington, when he reached the 
 splendor of his power and greatness, his Virginia 
 farm and his Mount Vernon fireside were the 
 dearest objects of his ambitions and affections. 
 
 The author hopes that the real man, not only 
 the great general, the wise statesman, but he who 
 moved about that Virginia farm and sat at that 
 Mount Vernon fireside, may live and breathe in 
 these pages. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. PAGE 
 
 Sixteen Years 13 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 From Boyhood to Manhood 34 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 The Young Hope of Virginia 48 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 Winning His Spurs 63 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 Braddock's Battle-field 75 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 The Knight Sans Peur et Sans Reproche 88 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 Lover and Soldier 103 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 Marriage and Mount Vernon iii 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 England and America 135 
 
8 Contents, 
 
 CHAPTER X. PAGB 
 
 Gathering of the Storm 159 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 The American Revolution 175 
 
 CHAPTER XH. 
 The Commander-in-Chief 187 
 
 CHAPTER XIH. 
 The Peace 2o5 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 The First President of the United States 217 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 The Grand, Simple Life : The Sun Turning West- ' 
 ward 237 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 To THE End — December 17, 1799 251 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 Portrait Frontispiece. 
 
 FACING PAGE 
 
 ^ Cave Castle. The Residence of the Washing- 
 tons IN Yorkshire, England i6 
 
 ^ The Home of George Washington's Boyhood 22 
 
 ^Washington. A Virginia Colonel at Forty 32 
 
 ' Washington's Telescope 38 
 
 ^ Lafayette — The Friend of America. This was 
 
 Painted by C. W. Peale in 1778 48 
 
 ^ Washington's First Headquarters on Wills' 
 
 Creek 64 
 
 ' vWashington and Lafayette 80 
 
 /[Bible Used at the Inauguration of Washington. 80 
 
 ' Washington Crossing the Delaware 96 
 
 ^ (jThe Boston Medal 112 
 
 "* (The Vernon Medal 112 
 
 Washington's Headquarters Near Newburgh 128 
 
 ' Battle of Princeton 136 
 
 ' Mrs. Washington at the Time of Her Marriage. 152 
 
lo List of Illustrations, 
 
 J FACING PAGE 
 
 Washington's English Coach i6o 
 
 ^ White House 176 
 
 Mount Vernon 192 
 
 Washington's Gold Watch 216 
 
 The Sword and the Staff 216 
 
 Washington's Last Watch Seal 216 
 
 Washington's Tomb 232 
 
 , Washington's Monument, in Union Square, New- 
 York 248 
 
LIFE OF 
 GEORGE WASHINGTON. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 SIXTEEN YEARS. 
 
 In an old family Bible — always a price- 
 less heirloom in a Virg-inia household — 
 many curious eyes have read this entry : 
 
 ^ ** George Washington, son to Augustine, 
 and Mary his wife, was born ye eleventh 
 day of February 173^, about ten in the 
 morning, and was baptized the 3d of 
 
 VApril following." 
 
 In an ancient, one-story homestead, 
 where the steep roof sloped down into 
 low, overhanging eaves, and where 
 
14 Life of George Washington, 
 
 either end, according to the fashion of 
 the time, was flanked by an immense 
 chimney, George Washington first saw 
 the Hght on the winter morning of Feb- 
 ruary 22d (N. S.), 1732. 
 
 History has preserved for us the 
 wide rejoicings, the gay pageants, the 
 grand ceremonials, which greeted a good 
 many births in the last century. The 
 one which lies recorded in such quaint 
 terms in the old family Bible must have 
 made a very slight ripple on the surface 
 of human affairs. There was no blazing 
 of bonfires, no ringing of bells, no beat- 
 ing of drums, because a boy was born 
 that day in the simple homestead on 
 Bridge's Creek. 
 
 Mary, only a little while ago the 
 beautiful belle of the Northern Neck, 
 with '' hair like flax, and cheeks like 
 
Sixteen Years, 1 5 
 
 Mav-blossoms," must have looked with 
 a young mother's pride and joy into 
 the eves of her first-born ; the father 
 must have welcomed the goodly son of 
 his second marriage, and the two boys 
 of the first one, and the friends and 
 neighbors of the quiet old colonial set- 
 tlement, must have brought o^reetinofs 
 and congratulations in the kindly fash- 
 ion of a century and a half ago. 
 
 The child, whose beorinninofs were so 
 simple, came of a stanch old English 
 race. Its roots could easily be traced 
 up to the century that succeeded the 
 Norman Conquest. The heads of the 
 family held estates and bore their part 
 bravely in the fierce wars and the gay 
 pageants of the time. Their names oc- 
 cur, in more or less varying forms, in 
 old, yellow, time-worn records. One 
 
1 6 Life of George Washingto7i. 
 
 who searches will find that those early 
 Washingtons always made an honorable 
 figure, and always played their part 
 manfiilly in their time and place. 
 
 Loyalty seems to have been in their 
 blood, for they held to the failing fort- 
 unes of the Stuarts, and one of them 
 lost his life under the gallant, headlong 
 Prince Rupert at the storming, of Bris- 
 tol. Then hard times befell. It is 
 likely the Washingtons, like many 
 other brave souls, had to pay dearly 
 for their adhesion to that bad, lost 
 cause. During the Protectorate two of 
 the brothers emigrated to America, and 
 settled themselves in the wild, beautiful 
 country between the Rappahannock and 
 Potomac rivers. Here the strong qual- 
 ities of the race would be sure to make 
 their mark. One of these English 
 
cave castle. the residence of the washingtons in york- 
 shire, england. from this home two brothers, 
 cavaliers, emigrated to america during 
 \^romwell's reign. 
 
Sixteen Years. 1 7 
 
 brothers settled on Bridge's Creek, mar- 
 ried, owned a large estate, became a 
 magistrate, and one of the leading men 
 of the colony. His descendants inher- 
 ited and improved his estate, of which 
 the old homestead, where his great- 
 grandson, George Washington, was 
 born, formed a part. 
 
 Not long after his birth the family 
 changed their residence for one on the 
 Rappahannock. The pleasant meadow 
 which surrounded the house and 
 stretched down to the river must have 
 been among the earliest things in 
 George Washington's memory. On 
 this meadow, bordered by the browm, 
 glancing river, he spent many days of 
 his free, happy boyhood. One fancies 
 him, always tall and stalwart for his 
 years, running and shouting amid the 
 
1 8 Life of George Washington. 
 
 tall green grass, chasing the butterflies 
 through the red clover and wild daisies ; 
 watching with grave, blue, childish eyes 
 the swift current of the Rappahannock ; 
 setting his toy canoes afloat on the 
 stream ; laying snares for squirrels and 
 rabbits — a busy, swift-footed, keen-eyed 
 boy, gaining in this free, wide, out-door 
 life those tastes and habits which were 
 to become the passion of his later 
 years. 
 
 The material for a biography is, at 
 this early period, rather scanty. The 
 story of the hatchet and the cherry sap- 
 ling, whether true or not, is singularly 
 characteristic. It shows the strone im- 
 pression which the sensitive conscience 
 of the child must have made on those 
 around him. Nobody would ever have 
 thought of relating such a story in con- 
 
Sixteen Years, 19 
 
 nection with the boyhood of Napoleon 
 Bonaparte. 
 
 George Washington had a singularly 
 happy childhood in that old Westmore- 
 land home, where the wide meadow 
 sloped down to the river. He had 
 been born into a good place. Those 
 first years struck their roots into a 
 simple, wholesome, vigorous life. We 
 can imagine him, a shy, grave, slender- 
 limbed boy, going to the '' old field 
 schoolhouse " where he learned to read 
 and write, and acquired some rudiment- 
 ary arithmetic. He had, too, the ines- 
 timable blessing of a sensible, high- 
 minded mother. There was a good 
 deal of the old Roman matron in the 
 character of the Virginia planter's 
 wife. Her oldest son inherited from 
 her that dignity of presence and man- 
 
20 Lif^ of George Washington, 
 
 ner which afterward made so profound 
 an impression on all who came in con- 
 tact with him. He was brought up in 
 an atmosphere of great reserve and 
 formality, and his early training left its 
 mark on him throughout his life. Mrs. 
 Washino^ton exacted a deference from 
 her sons in curious contrast with the 
 freer habits of our own times. It is 
 difficult to fancy that group of stalwart 
 boys, with their young sister, ever sport- 
 ing in wild merriment about the stately 
 mother. They must have been early 
 trained to habits of prompt, implicit 
 obedience. Even after he had reached 
 manhood it was Washino^ton's habit to 
 address his mother, in his letters, as 
 '' Honored Madam," an example which 
 You nor America has not thouo^ht it wase 
 to follow. 
 
THE HOME OF GEORGE WASHINGTON'S BOYHOOD. 
 
Sixteen Years. 2 1 
 
 Yet, with all her hlg^h notions of 
 maternal authority, Mrs. Washington 
 does not appear to have been a severe 
 parent. It is doubtful whether there 
 was a happier home on all the Western 
 Continent in the second quarter of the 
 last century than that low, steep-roofed 
 Westmoreland cottage. 
 
 George Washington's early advan- 
 taofes were mea^-er enouo^h when com- 
 pared with those of the present genera- 
 tion. But he had a home-trainino^ of 
 more value than many books. His out- 
 door life, too, was admirably adapted to 
 develop his health and the singularly 
 keen perceptions with which nature had 
 endowed him. Almost from infancy he 
 showed a passionate love of all athletic 
 sports, and a little later led his com- 
 rades in all those feats which taxed 
 
2 2 Life of George Washington, 
 
 their young strength and agility. Boys 
 are keen judges of character. They 
 were not lone In learn In q- there was 
 one on whose word and Innate sense of 
 justice they could always rely. It be- 
 came the custom to refer all their child- 
 ish disputes to him for final settlement. 
 We can Imagine the shy, silent boy, so 
 brave and alert among his comrades, sit- 
 ting In the lonof winter evenlno-s in a cor- 
 ner of the great-mouthed chimney, and, 
 while the hugfe blazinof Ioq^s filled the low- 
 celled room with ruddy light, drinking in 
 the tales of his elders; stirring tales of 
 wild beasts In the woods and Indian wars 
 on the border. All his young blood must 
 have been fired as he listened ; but nobody 
 dreamed what a role the silent boy In the 
 corner was to take a little later in scenes 
 like those whose recital charmed away the 
 
Sixteen Years, 23 
 
 long winter evenings In the old colonial 
 farmhouses. 
 
 George was only seven years old when 
 his half-brother Lawrence returned from 
 England, where he had been sent, as the 
 eldest son, to complete his education. 
 This was a great event In the boy's life. 
 Lawrence, trained and accomplished by 
 foreign travel, study, and polished soci- 
 ety, was fourteen years the senior of his 
 brother. The youth and the boy became 
 tenderly attached to each other. George 
 had that Immense admiration for Law- 
 rence which a young, undeveloped boy 
 often feels for an elder brother familiar 
 with the world. He made the young 
 Oxford graduate his model In all things. 
 Lawrence was worthy of this affection and 
 trust. He had the strong character, the 
 high virtues, of his race. His example 
 
24 Life of George Washingtoit. 
 
 must have been of Infinite benefit to his 
 young brother. 
 
 Indeed, the more one regards the early 
 life of George Washington, the more one 
 perceives how admirably It was adapted 
 to the development and training of the 
 man for the great part he was to play on 
 the stacre of the world. 
 
 That early home was not shadowed and 
 chilled, like so many young lives of great 
 men, by struggles with poverty and lack 
 of sympathy. The boy who was grow- 
 ing up In the quiet colonial neighborhood, 
 with the vast, solemn wildernesses of the 
 New World all about him, was, no doubt, 
 far happier than any prince at that day 
 in the old one. 
 
 It Is probable that the boy's first real 
 acquaintance with grief was occasioned 
 by the death of his father. At eleven 
 
Sixteen Years. 2 5 
 
 he could understand somethlnof of what 
 that meant for hlmseh", his widowed 
 mother, his three young brothers and 
 their sister. Happily, Lawrence was at 
 home at this sad time. The young 
 captain had long been absent with his 
 regiment in the West Indies, under Ad- 
 miral Vernon. His marriage with Anne 
 Fairfax, which would Insure his settling 
 down on his share of the estate, had 
 been on the eve of taking place, and 
 was only delayed by the death of his 
 father. 
 
 The widow and her young family 
 were left with ample means. Her hus- 
 band showed his estimation of her char- 
 acter by appointing her guardian of 
 their children's property. She proved 
 herself equal to that high trust, and to 
 the heavy and varied responsibilities 
 
26 Life of George Washington, 
 
 which her husband's loss devolved on 
 her. 
 
 Lawrence married the eldest daughter 
 of the Fairfaxes and settled at his own 
 home, which he named Mount Vernon, 
 in remembrance of his old commander. 
 The intimacy which now sprang up be- 
 tween George and the family of his sister- 
 in-law was of great importance to the boy 
 at this formative period of his life. The 
 Fairfaxes were among the most influen- 
 tial people of the province. Polished and 
 cultivated, with the habits and traditions 
 they had brought from their ancient 
 country-seat in Yorkshire, they repre- 
 sented much that was best and worthiest 
 in the old colonial society. Their house 
 at Belvoir, a few miles below Mount 
 Vernon, was full of gay young people 
 of both sexes, and it must have resem- 
 
Si xt 6671 Y6ars. 2 7 
 
 bled in its leadino^ features an Eno^lish 
 country-house of the higher class, though 
 this, probably, had something of the 
 larger freedom and more robust life of 
 the New World. Here came, to be al- 
 most one of the household in a little 
 while, the blue-eyed, grave-faced, rather 
 overgrown boy from the Rappahannock, 
 keenly observant of all that was going 
 on about him ; a little shy, with a con- 
 sciousness of awkward movements and 
 rustic manners among all these well- 
 bred people, and showing his best in 
 the out-door feats and games, where he 
 was sure to be the leader. 
 
 There seems to have been no thought 
 on the part of the boy's relatives of 
 sendine him abroad and o^ivino^ him the 
 advantages which his elder brother had 
 enjoyed. Perhaps the early tastes he 
 
28 Life of George Washington, 
 
 manifested had somediing to ^o with 
 this. They were of the most practical 
 kind, and the whole aim oi his education 
 was merely "to equip him for the ordi- 
 nary business of life." He went to live 
 a while with Augustine, his younger half- 
 brother, and in the neighborhood was a 
 school, to which he was sent, and which 
 was at least an improvement o\\ the old 
 one. 
 
 So, in studies at school, and frequent 
 visits at Mount \'ernon and Belvoir, the 
 years went by, and the grave, shy, 
 silent boy reached his fourteenth birth- 
 day. 
 
 Then a longing to enter the navy 
 took possession oi him. The mother's 
 disapproval was the only thing that 
 stood in the way. This was at last 
 overcome. Airs. Washington was pre- 
 
Sixteen Years. 29 
 
 vailed on to give a reluctant consent. 
 The midshipman's warrant was procured. 
 The trunk was aboard the ship. Then 
 the mother's heart failed her. 
 
 Thoughts of her boy's youth, of the 
 long separation between them, of the 
 hardships and perils before him, con- 
 quered the resolute woman. She again 
 earnestly opposed his departure. That 
 of course, ended the matter. George 
 swallowed his disappointment — it must 
 have been a bitter one at that age — and 
 returned to school, where he continued 
 for the next few years. He showed 
 great delight in the study and practice 
 of land-surveys. Whatever he did was 
 done thoroughly. There was none of 
 the haste and carelessness of youth in 
 his work. His field-books, where he 
 made his diagrams, and entered his 
 
30 Life of Geoi^ge Washington, 
 
 measurements and boundaries, were mod- 
 els In all respects. Order, promptness, 
 exactness, were a part of his being. 
 
 The schooldays were pleasantly va- 
 ried with frequent visits at Mount Ver- 
 non and Belvoir. At each of these 
 places he enjoyed a refined and grace- 
 ful family life, at a period when tastes 
 are formed and impressions are most 
 vivid. 
 
 One cannot restrain a smile over por- 
 tions of that minute code of manners 
 and morals. Yet what a true, earnest 
 young soul shines through all the prim 
 rules, the painstaking details ! How 
 resolute the boy was to do his best ! 
 How careful in all that concerned his 
 morals and his manners ! 
 
 He had been born in the Georofian 
 age. He bore the name of its second 
 
Sixteen Years, 31 
 
 monarch. There was one subject which 
 must have held a large place in the 
 horizon of George Washington's boy- 
 hood. Little as we realize it now, it 
 was the burning question of three dec- 
 ades with Great Britain and her prov- 
 inces. On its decision hung the dearest 
 interests of the colonies, their religion, 
 their laws, their future. Would the 
 long struggle between the House of 
 Brunswick and the House of Stuart end 
 at last for the German Elector or the 
 Papist Pretender ? Tremendous issues 
 hung on the settlement of a question 
 which every man must have felt was 
 doubtful, until after the Battle of Cullo- 
 den. This took place the summer that 
 George Washington was thirteen years 
 old. With what eagfer interest he must 
 have drunk in the story of that battle, 
 
32 Life of George Washington. 
 
 when the first vessel brought the news 
 across the summer seas ! How his 
 whole soul must have kindled with joy 
 at tidings of the victory ! How little 
 that young boy dreamed then that he 
 — the son of the Westmoreland planter 
 — was fated, a few years later, to deal 
 the House of Brunswick its heaviest 
 blow ! 
 
 'Lord Fairfax, the tall, gaunt, eccen- 
 tric old English nobleman, who, in his 
 youth, had figured at courts and en- 
 joyed every advantage of high birth 
 and breeding, was at Belvoir. The old 
 nobleman had a passion for hunting. 
 In the midst of his horses and hounds 
 he was always chasing the game to 
 cover in the Virginia woods, with all 
 the fiery eagerness with which, in his 
 youth, he had followed the trail over 
 
WASHINGTON. A VIRGINIA COLOMiL AT FORTY. 
 
Sixteen Yeurs, 33 
 
 the Yorkshire moors. He found in the 
 young schoolboy a companion after his 
 own heart, as eager for the hounds, as 
 bold in the saddle, as skilled in the 
 chase. The woods afforded splendid sport. 
 The two were always out hunting to- 
 gether. The old nobleman, with his 
 Oxford training, his memories of 
 courts, his stories of the Blues — the 
 regiment of which he had been a mem- 
 ber — his keen knowledge of men, 
 learned to like and trust the boy who 
 came on occasional visits to Belvoir. 
 
 3 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 FROM BOYHOOD TO MANHOOD. 
 
 At sixteen, George Washington no 
 longer seemed a boy. His figure had 
 shot up slender and tall, while his out- 
 door life, his surveys, and his sports 
 had laid the foundations of his splendid 
 health. It is easy to imagine him at 
 this period, with the down of early 
 manhood upon his chin, with his clear, 
 gray-blue, honest eyes, and his grave, 
 noble, strongly marked features. I Im- 
 agine him, too, a little formal in bearing 
 and speech, not altogether self-possessed 
 in a drawing-room, or likely to put 
 young girls at their ease. He had no 
 gift of small talk — none of the grace 
 
From Boyhood to Manhood. 35 
 
 and lightness of the mere carpet knight. 
 The great moral qualities which were 
 alike to impress friend and foe, the dig- 
 nity of presence and bearing which, in 
 later years, so often overawed those 
 with whom he was brought into social 
 relations, could, at this time, only have 
 been dimly discerned by the most acute 
 observer. In the proudest dream of his 
 youth, too, that boy of sixteen had no 
 prescience of his future greatness. 
 
 He probably, at this period, seemed 
 to ordinary people a grave, quiet, un- 
 assuming youth, with nothing brilliant or 
 striking on the surface. Those who 
 knew him best must have felt that his 
 strong love of justice, his keen sense of 
 honor, and his perfect integrity were a 
 fairer promise for his future than the 
 most captivating graces of mind or 
 
36 Life of George Washington. 
 
 manner. They knew, too, what a fiery- 
 temper lurked under the modest bear- 
 ing- ; and what wrath would flame out 
 at any story of wrong or meanness or 
 treachery. 
 
 Lord Fairfax gave a remarkable proof 
 of his appreciation of young Washing- 
 ton at this juncture. The old noble- 
 man held vast tracts of land from the 
 Crown. They lay, largely unexplored, 
 beyond the Blue Ridge. It must have 
 astonished everybody when he suddenly 
 proposed that the boy with whom he 
 had hunted so many days in the Vir- 
 ginia woods should set out on a sur- 
 vey of these lands. The offer was 
 eagerly accepted. From that hour we 
 hear no more of George Washington's 
 schooldays. 
 
 He set out at once, accompanied by 
 
From Boyhood to Manhood. 7)7 
 
 one of the young Fairfaxes. They went 
 through a pass in the Blue Ridge and 
 entered the beautiful Valley of the Shen- 
 andoah. They camped in the woods ; 
 they lived on game. The hardy, ad- 
 venturous life suited Washington admi- 
 rably. He surveyed wide tracts among 
 the mountains and about the South Po- 
 tomac ; he was absent some weeks ; his 
 work, on his return, gave the amplest 
 satisfaction to Lord Fairfax. 
 
 The old nobleman's influence probably 
 secured young Washington's appoint- 
 ment soon afterward as public surveyor. 
 He spent the next three years in this 
 congenial work. He lived much of the 
 time in the wildernesses and in the 
 wild, varied, unexplored country beyond 
 the Blue Ridge. It was a splendid 
 training for him. What a mercy it was 
 
38 Life of George Washmgton. 
 
 that nobody thought of sending him at 
 this period to Oxford, to waste his stal- 
 wart youth in class-recitations and dim 
 college libraries ! The years that 
 awaited him held tasks heavier than 
 had ever fallen to human lot; and for 
 these he needed the trained eye, that 
 took in everything with a lightning 
 glance ; he needed the iron nerves, that 
 no hail of bullets, no war-whoop of sav- 
 ages, could shake; and he needed a 
 frame seasoned by sun and tempest, by 
 exposure and hardship, until it seemed 
 to have the fiber of some mighty oak 
 of the forest. 
 
 With his swift temper and his strong 
 will, George Washington was not likely 
 to be always a saint in those days. But 
 so far as we know, he was singularly free 
 from the follies and vices of youth. He 
 
Washington's telescope. 
 
From Boyhood to Manhood, 39 
 
 led a happy, busy life at this period. The 
 rough experiences of the wildernesses 
 were alternated with visits to Belvoir, 
 where the refining social and educa- 
 tional Influences of his boyhood could 
 still maintain their ascendency. He re- 
 turned here to follow the hounds once 
 more with Lord Fairfax, to read In the 
 old nobleman's library the Spectator and 
 English history, and to visit his favorite 
 brother at Mount Vernon. During these 
 days he must have grown familiar with 
 the lives of the greatest of England's 
 patriots and statesmen. His soul must 
 have been fired with the histories of 
 Eliot and Pym, of Hampden and Milton. 
 The young Westmoreland surveyor was 
 yet to prove that he too belonged to 
 that mighty breed of heroes. How lit- 
 tle he dreamed — that manly, modest 
 
40 Life of George Washington, 
 
 youth — as he pored over those records 
 of daring and self-sacrifice and life-long 
 patriotism, that his name was to rank 
 in history among the noblest of those 
 whose lives he was drinking in with 
 such ardor in his brief vacations ! 
 
 During these years the great question 
 on which hung the future of North 
 America was coming to the front. It 
 could not, in the nature of things, be 
 otherwise. The peace of Aix-la-Cha- 
 pelle had left the English and French 
 boundaries on the Western Continent an 
 open question. Each nation laid abso- 
 lute claim to the vast territories beyond 
 the Alleghanies. Each, too, no doubt 
 felt its claim to be the supreme one. 
 Each was eager to occupy the land in 
 advance, and thus establish the right 
 of possession. 
 
From Boyhood to Manhood, 41 
 
 The French claim was, no doubt, a 
 strong one. Their explorers and mis- 
 sionaries had penetrated far beyond any 
 others into the vast western wildernesses, 
 and they insisted on their double right 
 of discovery and possession. They had 
 scattered forts and outposts in this im- 
 mense region, and they were bent on 
 uniting Canada by a long chain of forts 
 with Louisiana. 
 
 This resolution brouo^ht the two na- 
 tions into direct antagonism. If the 
 French claims were once admitted, the 
 future development of the English colo- 
 nists would be confined to the narrow 
 area between the Atlantic and the Alle- 
 ghanies. The great continent which 
 stretched to the West, and which the 
 Americans had long regarded as the 
 fair heritage of their descendants, would 
 
42 Life of George Washington. 
 
 become the home of an alien and hos- 
 tile race. 
 
 The young nation, settled sparsely 
 along the sea-board, had strong in- 
 stincts of the splendid career that lay 
 before her. That vast, unexplored, in- 
 land world would afford the fitting field 
 on which her untried energies could 
 freely expand. It was of transcend- 
 ent importance to secure the ground 
 at once. The English colonists met the 
 French claims by boldly insisting on 
 their prior ones. They declared that 
 **when they had established a settle- 
 ment on the eastern coasts of America 
 their rights extended in the same lati- 
 tude from sea to sea," and they now 
 demanded the cession of the coasts of 
 the Bay of Fundy, and the destruction 
 of every French fort in the territory. 
 
From Boyhood to Manhood, 43 
 
 At this time there was not a single 
 white settlement in all the great world 
 beyond the Alleghanies. But a com- 
 pany, among whom Washington's elder 
 brothers were prominent, had obtained 
 from the Crown a grant of immense 
 tracts in the Ohio Valley. Their pur- 
 pose was to occupy the land at once 
 with settlements and garrisons. Here, 
 again, the French had forestalled them. 
 Their posts were already planted, their 
 roads laid out in the disputed terri- 
 tory. 
 
 This encroachment was not to be 
 borne. The English company resolved 
 to eject the intruders by peaceful ways, 
 if possible ; if not, by the old stern one 
 of battle. 
 
 A sudden war spirit spread through 
 the colonies. Everybody felt that the 
 
44 Life of George Washington, 
 
 enemy must be at once driven out of 
 their strongholds. The militia were 
 put in training. Washington shared 
 the popular feeling. He . had early 
 given evidence that he inherited the 
 martial spirit of his race. In his child- 
 hood **he liked to make soldiers of his 
 schoolmates. They had their mimic pa- 
 rades, reviews, and sham fights under 
 him." All this, probably, had gone on 
 in that old, green, wild-daisied meadow 
 which bordered the Rappahannock. 
 
 George was eighteen now. It should 
 always be borne in mind that, with his 
 tall form, strong and erect as a young 
 oak, with his grave features, his re- 
 served, manly bearing, he gave an Im- 
 pression of being considerably older 
 than he was. Stirred by the talk and 
 example all about him, he took lessons 
 
From Boyhood to Manhood. . 45 
 
 in fencing also, and practiced for a while 
 with immense ardor. 
 
 At this juncture, however, Lawrence's 
 health, which had always been delicate, 
 broke down. He had desired to pro- 
 cure for his young brother a major's 
 commission, but all these plans had now 
 to be deferred. The physicians insisted 
 on change of air, and at their advice 
 the brothers, so strongly attached to 
 each other, sailed for Barbadoes in Sep- 
 tember, 1 75 1. This was the only time 
 that Georofe Washineton ever set foot 
 on any soil but his native one. 
 
 The novel world, the mild climate, 
 the quiet life, all had varied attractions 
 until the younger of the travelers had a 
 severe attack of small-pox. The illness 
 lasted for about three weeks. He al- 
 ways retained some slight marks of it. 
 
46 Life of George Washington, 
 
 On his recovery, George Washington 
 went to a theater. It must have 
 formed a memorable event in his Hfe, 
 for he had never visited one before. It 
 was afterward observed that he always 
 showed a decided taste for the drama. 
 
 No chano^e of climate could avert 
 the doom that was hanging over Law- 
 rence. With that restlessness which ac- 
 companies pulmonary disease, he re- 
 solved to seek Bermuda in the early 
 spring. George left him and returned 
 home, intending to rejoin his brother 
 with his sister-in-law. But all these 
 plans were put to flight by the sudden 
 appearance of Lawrence, who barely 
 reached Mount Vernon to die there. 
 
 He left a large estate. Its manage- 
 ment now devolved almost entirely on 
 George. The property was to revert to 
 
From Boyhood to Manhood. 47 
 
 him in case Lawrence's only daughter 
 should die without heirs. The months 
 that followed must have been crowded 
 with varied tasks and heavy responsi- 
 bilities for a youth who had hardly 
 reached his majority. Heavier ones, 
 however, were soon to follow. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE YOUNG HOPE OF VIRGINIA. 
 
 Governor Dinwiddie, of Virginia, 
 was looking about for the right per- 
 son to send on a mission to the put- 
 posts of the French and the wigwams 
 of the Indians. The white men were 
 using every art to draw the western 
 tribes into an alHance. The mission 
 would be of immense importance to the 
 colonies. It required a man of varied 
 qualities — cool, hardy, of tried courage 
 and great sagacity. He would have to 
 deal with the wily French commanders 
 of the garrisons ; with the treacherous 
 savages of the frontiers. He would 
 take his life in his hands. 
 
LAFAYRTTK — THE FklENU OF AMERICA. THIS WAS PAINTKIJ i;Y 
 C. W. PEALE IN 1778. 
 
The Young Hope of Virginia, 49 
 
 George Washington was finally chosen 
 for an expedition whose delicacy and 
 danger required such a varied equip- 
 ment. It was characteristic that he set 
 off the very day that he received his 
 credentials. He was twenty-two at that 
 time. 
 
 The whole story of the journey reads 
 like a romance. It is not possible to 
 tell it within the limits of this sketch. 
 It was slow, toilsome traveling by the 
 swollen rivers, through the solitary 
 wildernesses. The little party which ac- 
 companied Washington was composed 
 of an Indian interpreter, several hardy 
 frontiersmen, and Christopher Gist, an 
 intrepid pioneer, who had a long ac- 
 quaintance with Indian character and 
 life. 
 
 Under the lowering November sky, 
 
50 Life of George Washington, 
 
 they pushed on to Logstown. The 
 winter had come early that year. 
 Fierce storms made the way through 
 the wild country almost impassable. 
 But they reached the Indian quarters at 
 last, and, after various delays, held the 
 council on which so much depended. 
 Washington conducted himself at this 
 juncture with great tact and discretion. 
 His experience with the Indians in his 
 government surveys must have served 
 him immensely now. The young white 
 man succeeded in gaining the confi- 
 dence of the savages. They offered 
 him the sacred pledge of wampum ; 
 they declared him and his people their 
 brothers ; they promised to resist all 
 the efforts of the French to draw them 
 into a treaty ; and, at his own request, 
 they agreed to furnish him with an 
 
The Young Hope of Virginia. 51 
 
 escort to Venango — the headquarters of 
 the enemy. ^ 
 
 Another long journey dS seventy miles 
 through the wilderness f<pllowed. Bit- 
 ter weather, fierce tempests, and heavy 
 snows combined to make the way long 
 and perilous. At last, on the 4th of 
 December, 1753, the tired party caught 
 sight of the French colors flying at the 
 lonely outpost of Venango. They were, 
 to George Washington, the unwelcome 
 sign of the intruder and foe. How lit- 
 tle he could dream that a day — still in 
 far distant years — was coming when 
 those colors would fly for him at the 
 masthead, and move in closest alliance 
 with his own to the battle ! 
 
 The travel-worn party was received 
 and entertained with a rough hospital- 
 ity. Washington, however, soon per- 
 
52 Life of George Washington. 
 
 ceived that secret efforts were on foot 
 to detach his Indian allies from their 
 allegiance to the English. They were 
 welcomed at headquarters with open 
 arms, and plied with liquor; and the 
 whole party was detained at Venango by 
 every conceivable stratagem. But Wash- 
 ington at last succeeded in getting off 
 with his sachems. 
 
 Four more days of bitter travel 
 throuo^h the winter wildernesses broug-ht 
 them to the fort on French Creek, 
 fifteen miles from Lake Erie. Here 
 Washington and his interpreter were 
 received with great military form at the 
 gate, and conducted to the officer In 
 command, an ancient, silver-haired chev- 
 alier, who united the bearing of the 
 soldier to all the grace and ceremony 
 of the old French school. 
 
The Young Hope of Virginia, 53 
 
 Nothing could exceed the courtesy of 
 Washington's reception. He announced 
 his errand, deHvered the governor's 
 messages and papers, and, with his 
 native frankness, would have entered 
 at once on the business which had 
 brought him, in the depths of the 
 winter, to the fort on French Creek. 
 But the chevalier politely declined to 
 receive the documents in the absence 
 of his superior, who was hourly ex- 
 pected from the next post. 
 
 On the arrival of the captain, the 
 formalities of presentation were again 
 gone through with, and the officers 
 held a private council over the Gover- 
 nor's complaints and covert threats in 
 case the French did not peaceably 
 evacuate the territory into which they 
 had forced themselves. 
 
54 Life of George Washington, 
 
 Washington was not, of course, ad- 
 mitted to the conference. But the next 
 two days were consumed in private 
 councils. The young Virginian had 
 evidently thrust his head into the lion's 
 mouth. He had now to match himself 
 with veterans well-seasoned in all the 
 arts and diplomacy of French camps 
 and courts. It was, doubtless, in his 
 disfavor that he could not speak a word 
 of their tongue. ** But he made the 
 most of his time. He took notes of 
 the plan, dimensions, and strength of 
 the fort, and of everything about it ; 
 he gave orders to his people also to 
 take an exact account of the canoes 
 already at hand, and of those that were 
 being constructed, to carry troops down 
 the river in the spring. " Nothing 
 seems to have escaped his keen, trained 
 
The Young Hope of Virginia, 55 
 
 observation. But though he was treat- 
 ed — so far as appears — with unvary- 
 ing courtesy during his whole stay, he 
 saw clearly that subtle schemes were 
 at work to undermine his influence with 
 the savages and to retard his move- 
 ments. When it came to any discus- 
 sion of business, his questions were 
 evaded, his remonstrances unheeded. 
 He could get no satisfaction from these 
 people, with their polished manners and 
 their slippery talk. At that lonely out- 
 post, surrounded by foes, in the midst of 
 intrigues, he was filled with distrust and 
 anxiety. Here again, as before, the 
 sachems of the party were plied with 
 liquor. In order to detain them awhile 
 at the fort, a promise of guns was held 
 out to them — an irresistible temptation 
 to savages. 
 
56 Life of George Washington. 
 
 ♦ 
 Washington's coolness and resolution, 
 
 at this crisis, barely extricated his party 
 from the toils of the enemy. The 
 chevalier at last delivered a sealed re- 
 ply to the governor's letter. The In- 
 dians, bent on receiving their guns, 
 besought him to delay his departure 
 until the next morninof. He consented 
 at last. The French were oblieed to 
 keep their word and deliver their pres- 
 ents at the time appointed, after which 
 the little company embarked in their 
 frail canoes on French Creek. The 
 stream was swollen, turbid, and full of 
 ice. The navio^ation was so daneerous 
 that it was five or six days before the 
 travelers once more cauo^ht sieht of the 
 French colors floating triumphantly at 
 Venango. Here Washington was forced 
 to part from his Indians for a day or 
 
The Young Hope of Virginia. 57 
 
 two, as one of the chiefs had met with 
 an accident. The young commander 
 had thus far maintained his ascendency 
 over his sarv^age alHes, but he naturally 
 feared the result of French influence in 
 his absence. The circumstances, how- 
 ever, would not admit of delay, and on 
 the 25th of December he and his little 
 party of white men set out for home. 
 The wonder was that he ever lived to 
 tell the tale of that winter journey. 
 Even the pack-horses broke down amid 
 the terrible hardships of the frozen wil- 
 derness. Washington was forced to dis- 
 mount and make his way as he could 
 through the hurtling tempests and the 
 heavy snows. At last he and Gist 
 strapped their packs on their backs, 
 took their guns, and, leaving the jaded 
 men and beasts to make their slower 
 
58 Life of George Washington. 
 
 progress, struck bravely into the ice- 
 bound forests. 
 
 Here new perils awaited them. They 
 feared that Indians, incited by the 
 French, were lurking on their path. 
 At a settlement where they stopped, 
 and which bore the inauspicious name 
 of Murdering Town, they engaged a 
 guide, as the travelers were wholly un- 
 acquainted with the trackless wilds 
 through which they must pass. Though 
 he seemed eager for the work, " took 
 Washington's pack upon his back," and 
 insisted that he had chosen the most 
 direct course, Gist's suspicions were 
 soon aroused. The veteran backwoods- 
 man was used to the ways of Indians. 
 He feared this one was playing them 
 false. 
 
 After they had proceeded a number 
 
The Young Hope of Virginia, 59 
 
 of miles through the forest, Washing- 
 ton's strength gave out. Anxiety may 
 have had something to do with this, for 
 he shared his companion's suspicions. 
 The Indian grew sullen. At last, when 
 they reached an opening in the woods, 
 where he had contrived to be some dis- 
 tance in advance, he suddenly turned 
 and fired on the white men. His aim, 
 happily, missed both. 
 
 They were not altogether unprepared. 
 Gist, accustomed to the stern vengeance 
 of the frontier, would have put the In- 
 dian to death on the spot. But his 
 companion, whose young wrath one 
 would suspect would naturally be 
 roused to swift vengeance, now inter- 
 posed to spare the savage's life, and 
 Gist reluctantly consented. 
 
 The guide pretended that his gun 
 
6o Life of George Washington. 
 
 had gone off by accident. The travel- 
 ers thought it the best pohcy to accept 
 his explanation and permit him to de- 
 part to his cabin. Conscious of the 
 peril of remaining in his vicinity, they 
 pushed on through the long, bitter 
 night and the whole of the next day, 
 not knowing but any instant the ter- 
 rible war-whoop, the brandished toma- 
 hawk, might bring them to bay. 
 
 They reached the Alleghany to find 
 the great river filled with masses of 
 drifting ice. A day was spent in mak- 
 ing a rude raft that would enable them 
 to cross. It was launched after sunset. 
 The strong current swept Washington 
 off the logs into the water. It seemed 
 for the moment that all was over, and 
 that the brave young life which the 
 savage's aim had missed, and the winter 
 
The Young Hope of Virginia, 6i 
 
 tempests and the snow-bound wilder- 
 nesses had spared, would be swallowed' 
 up in th^ cold, hurrying waters. But 
 with a last effort Washington caught at 
 one of the raft-logs, and barely saved 
 himself from drowning. 
 
 The raft, partly guided by their poles, 
 drifted to a low island in the river, 
 where the half-frozen men managed to 
 land, and watch out the terrible night. 
 The next morning they succeeded in 
 picking their way over the closely 
 packed ice to the river-bank. That 
 night they reached the house of one of 
 the frontiersmen who traded with the 
 Indians. Under this rude, hospitable 
 roof their perils were over. 
 
 Two weeks later Washington laid the 
 letter of the French commander before 
 Governor Dinwiddie. The great quali- 
 
62 Life of George Washington, 
 
 ties which the young officer had dis- 
 played in this mission, the coolness, 
 the sagacity, the consummate tact 
 with which he had dealt with shrewd 
 Frenchman and wily Indian, the cour- 
 age with which he had carried himself 
 through all the varied perils which had 
 beset him, made a vivid impression 
 throughout the province. " From that 
 moment," we read, ''he was the rising 
 hope of Virginia." 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 WINNING HIS SPURS. 
 
 The troubles on the frontier thick- 
 ened. It was evident there was no 
 way of settling them but the old, hard 
 one of battle. Forces were raised in 
 the province, and the command of the 
 little army was offered to Washington. 
 It was like his native modesty to de- 
 cline so heavy a responsibility, and he 
 was accordingly appointed second in 
 command. 
 
 It would take long to tell how the 
 mistakes, delays, and obstinacies of 
 others, on whom he was forced to de- 
 pend, tried his soul and half-paralyzed 
 his utmost energies. He could not 
 
64 Life of George Washington, 
 
 know how all these vexations and fail- 
 ures — so hard for youth to bear — were 
 training him for the great work which 
 would not begin for him until he had 
 reached the prime of his years. 
 
 On a rainy May morning of the year 
 1754, the first gun was fired in the 
 long struggle for possession of the Val- 
 ley of the Ohio. We all know that 
 Washington was in this battle ; that 
 Jumonville, the young French com- 
 mander, was killed; we know that the 
 Americans won the day, and sent home 
 twenty-one prisoners to the colony. 
 This battle roused all the instincts of 
 the soldier. *' I heard the bullets 
 whisde," Washington wrote to his 
 brother, in the flush of that first vic- 
 tory, '' and, believe me, there is some- 
 thing charming in the sound." 
 
Washington's first headquartkks on wills' creek. 
 
Winning His Spurs. 65 
 
 This speech — so Horace Walpole 
 relates — was afterward repeated to 
 George II. ''He would not say so, if 
 he had been used to hear many," was 
 the king's significant comment. 
 
 He, at least, could speak from expe- 
 rience. The second of the monarchs 
 whom the House of Brunswick had 
 given to England had the passion, the 
 obstinacy, and the coarseness of his 
 race; but he had its virtues also; and 
 among these was the valor he had 
 proved on the great battle-fields of 
 Oudenarde and Dettingen. 
 
 Many years afterward, somebody had 
 the curiosity to ask Washington if he had 
 ever written those words to his brother. 
 **If I said so," was the reply, that at 
 once explained and excused a speech 
 so unlike himself, '* I was very young." 
 
66 Life of George Washington, 
 
 But that natural elation over his first 
 victory was followed by days of cruel 
 disappointment, severe hardships, and 
 hopes deferred. The young commander 
 had soon to face another side of war 
 than that swift whistling of bullets 
 which had roused all his martial in- 
 stincts. Patience, fortitude, forbearance, 
 were qualities which he was called to 
 exercise in the most trying situations. 
 The incompetency, obstinacy, and jeal- 
 ousy of those under whom he served 
 were at the bottom of his difficulties. 
 In the early summer he found himself 
 reduced to extremities. The supplies 
 failed ; the troops were starving. Even 
 the Indians grew impatient and dis- 
 gusted with remainmg in the service of 
 the white men. 
 
 Under such circumstances the end 
 
Winning His Spurs. 67 
 
 could not fail to come swiftly. On the 
 1st of July, after a rapid and toilsome 
 march in sultry weather, over rough 
 roads, with half-famished troops, Wash- 
 ington drew up his small forces on the 
 grassy plains of the Great Meadows. 
 In the center of these stood a fort pro- 
 tected by trenches and palisades, and 
 which Washington, with a grim humor, 
 had named "Fort Necessity — because of 
 the pinching famine which had prevailed 
 during its construction." 
 
 The retreat had not taken place an 
 hour too soon. A brother-in-law of the 
 young Jumonville who had been shot in 
 that memorable skirmish which opened 
 the long contest. Captain de Villiers by 
 name, was in pursuit of Washington 
 with a large force of French and Indians, 
 eager to avenge the death of his relative. 
 
68 Life of George Washington, 
 
 A deserter had brought the French 
 Captain intelHgence of Washington's en- 
 campment at Great Meadows, and of 
 the famished condition of the troops. 
 
 Washington meanwhile had made the 
 most of his time. He had endeavored 
 to enlarofe and strenofthen Fort Neces- 
 sity. He had worked with his men, 
 sharing their heaviest labors, '' felling 
 the trees, and rolling up the trunks to 
 form a breastwork." He must some- 
 times have smiled grimly to himself as 
 he recalled his flush of triumph over 
 his first victory. That had been fol- 
 lowed by months which demanded the 
 exercise of constant patience and the 
 severest self-control — months filled with 
 harassing cares and cruel disappoint- 
 ments. 
 
 At this critical juncture a fresh mis- 
 
Winning His Spurs, 69 
 
 fortune occurred. Most of his Indian 
 allies, disheartened by the near approach 
 of an enemy greatly superior in num- 
 bers, deserted the white men. 
 
 Washington's courage held out against 
 this accumulation of difficulties until on 
 the morning of the 3d of July, when, as 
 he was at work, with his half- starved 
 troops, on the fort, a sentinel came in, 
 wounded and bleeding. The enemy was 
 at hand ! 
 
 Washington drew up his men outside 
 of the works, and awaited the onset. 
 Before noon there was sharp firing of 
 musketry among the trees on the rising 
 ground that surround the Great Mead- 
 ows, but the enemy were too remote to 
 do any harm. 
 
 Washington was on the alert. He 
 suspected an ambuscade. He ordered 
 
70 Life of George Washington. 
 
 his men to keep their posts, and not 
 to fire a gun until the enemy should 
 come in sight. The French still kept 
 under cover, while their musketry rat- 
 tled in the woods. At last, Washington 
 ordered his jaded troops to fall back 
 into the trenches, and fire whenever the 
 foe ventured in sight. In this way the 
 long summer day was spent in skirmish- 
 in e between the two armies. Mean- 
 while, the rain poured in torrents into 
 the trenches. The troops were half- 
 drowned ; many of the muskets became 
 unfit for use. 
 
 It was eight o'clock at night when 
 the French sent a request for a parley. 
 Washington was at first reluctant to 
 grant it. He knew the wiles of the foe, 
 and feared this was only a ruse by 
 which they intended to introduce a spy 
 
Winning His Spurs, 71 
 
 inside the fort. But, while he hesitated, 
 a second messenger arrived, requesting 
 that an officer might be sent to treat, 
 under a parole. 
 
 Washington was forced to accede. 
 There was nothing to be done now but 
 to surrender to the enemy, who had 
 closed in on his starving troops with 
 forces that it would be certain destruc- 
 tion to face in battle. The terms 
 which the enemy offered were twice re- 
 jected. The third time the paper was 
 read by a flaring candle, in a fast fall- 
 ing rain, where the dim light was with 
 difficulty kept from going out, and, amid 
 the blackness of the short summer night, 
 the French terms were accepted. 
 
 The next morning the draggled little 
 army marched out of its stronghold. 
 They went bravely — those half-starved 
 
72 Life of George Washington, 
 
 men — with drums beating, and colors 
 flying, and all the honors of war. 
 Washington at last brought the small 
 force of Virginia volunteers in safety to 
 Wills' Creek, where they found ample 
 provisions, which, by the most shameful 
 negligence, had not been forwarded to 
 them. 
 
 Here Washington left his troops to 
 recover their strength, while he pro- 
 ceeded to Williamsburg to lay his mili- 
 tary report before the governor. 
 
 A little later the young captain and 
 his officers received the thanks of the 
 House of Burgesses for their bravery 
 and their gallant defense of their 
 country. 
 
 But, grateful as this recognition of his 
 services was to Washington, he knew 
 that the old influences which had made 
 
Win7iing His Spurs, ' y^, 
 
 his campaign so disastrous were still at 
 work, and that they would confuse and 
 cripple all his future action. 
 
 Matters culminated at last when Gov- 
 ernor Dinwiddie interfered in delicate 
 questions of military rank. Washing- 
 ton's sensitive honor was deeply ag- 
 grieved when he learned that his col- 
 onel's commission would in future allow 
 him neither rank nor emolument. He 
 refused to retain an empty title. He 
 immediately resigned his commission 
 and returned home. 
 
 He settled at Mount Vernon — Law- 
 rences young daughter having recently 
 died — and was soon absorbed in the cares 
 of his estate, in superintending his moth- 
 er's affairs, and in promoting the welfare 
 of his young brothers and sister. 
 
 In the rural life and work so dear to 
 
74 Life of George Washington, 
 
 him the sense of his late wrongs and 
 disasters would have been gradually 
 superseded by other interests; but the 
 march of events did not permit him to 
 remain long in that congenial life. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 braddock's battle-field. 
 
 In 171^3, General Braddock came out 
 from England. He was a brave officer, 
 seasoned by long service, for he had 
 been forty years in the Guards. He 
 was by temperament and habit a mar- 
 tinet. His religion was military rou- 
 tine. He had one of those obstinate, 
 inflexible natures, which can never 
 adapt themselves to new surroundings 
 and expedients. He would lead his 
 troops to battle in rude American wil- 
 dernesses, or to the wild warfare of an 
 Indian ambush, in the same fashion that 
 he would have paraded them in St. 
 James's Park. He could not conceive 
 
76 Life of George Washington, 
 
 of carrying on a campaign in a new, 
 unsettled country after any methods 
 but those of the old continental battle- 
 fields, with which he was so familiar. 
 
 Thoroughly brave and honorable, 
 there was not, probably, an English 
 general at that time less fitted to take 
 command of an American army than 
 the one which England now sent out 
 as Commander-in-Chief to her Colonies. 
 
 At this period Washington was, as 
 we have seen, absorbed in the care of 
 his estates. His aofricultural tastes were 
 his strongest ones. Even in his youth 
 they always contended with his mili- 
 tary proclivities, and in later years 
 became the one passion of his life. 
 
 But now the booming of cannon 
 among the quiet shades of Mount Ver- 
 non, the stately ships of war on the 
 
Braddock' s Battle-field. jy 
 
 Potomac, the military stir and din all 
 about him, roused the temper of the 
 soldier. Washington grew eager to join 
 Braddock's forces as a volunteer. He 
 longed to witness a brilliant campaign, 
 under the command of a famous gen- 
 eral, with all the military equipment of 
 the Old World at his command. This 
 desire was not long in reaching the 
 Commander - in - Chief He, probably, 
 heard on all sides praises of the young 
 Virginia colonel. The latter was soon 
 offered a position on the staff. The 
 acceptance of this high honor would 
 involve considerable expense, while no 
 pay was attached to the position. But 
 military ardor was now uppermost. 
 Washington became one of General 
 Braddock's aids-de-camp. 
 
 The army from over the seas moved 
 
78 Life of George Washington, 
 
 slowly through the summer weather. 
 Encumbered by immense baggage- 
 trains, and all sorts of superfluous stores, 
 the troops toiled over rugged roads, that 
 had first to be broken, through trackless 
 wildernesses. Braddock, true to himself, 
 held rigidly to all the military rules and 
 ceremonials, so burdensome and su- 
 perfluous under such novel conditions. 
 He had no knowledge of the country, 
 and no idea of the methods of wild bush- 
 fighting, or of the habits of Indian 
 warfare. 
 
 All attempts to enlighten him proved 
 worse than futile. He would listen to 
 no representations from those familiar 
 with the country. Obstinate, and easily 
 offended, he snubbed all those who at- 
 tempted to give him the advice of which 
 he stood in such need. He more than 
 
Braddock' s Battle-field, 79 
 
 once resented Washington's attempts to 
 give him some information on matters 
 of vital importance ; but, during the 
 long advance, circumstances so often 
 proved the wisdom of the young aid- 
 de-camp's advice, that the general finally 
 condescended to act on it. 
 
 Washington was with the English 
 army on the fatal day of July 9, 
 1755. He had been taken seriously 
 ill on the march, but, though he suffered 
 intensely, he had persisted in keeping 
 at his post, until the general kindly in- 
 terposed and forbade him to proceed. 
 
 Washington was left behind, a guard 
 was assigned him, and he was placed 
 in the care of Dr. Craik, the life-long 
 physician and friend whose career and 
 fame are so closely interwoven with 
 Washington's. 
 
8o Life of George Washington, 
 
 Braddock's conduct on this occasion 
 proves that, despite all his obstinacy and 
 devotion to military punctilio, he was at 
 bottom a kind-hearted man. 
 
 The moment when the young aid- 
 de-camp watched the proud little army 
 move off into the wilderness without 
 him must have been a bitter one. But 
 he hoped to be able to rejoin the forces 
 in a couple of days. Braddock had 
 pledged his word of honor that he 
 should be allowed to witness the battle. 
 So his eagerness had brought him in 
 time to the front, almost at the risk of 
 his life. 
 
 That day, which was to fill so many 
 homes in England and America with 
 mourning, opened fair on the banks of 
 the Monongahela. What a picture of 
 life and color and movement the whole . 
 
washin(;ton and Lafayette. 
 
 BIBLE USED AT THE INAUGURATION OF WASHINGTON. 
 
Braddock's Battle-field, 8i 
 
 scene must have made, framed by the 
 green, ancient woods ! The soldiers, we 
 read, were marshaled at sunrise, and 
 seemed arrayed more for a fete than a 
 battle. One sees it all — the gay scar- 
 let uniforms, the brown water elancine 
 in the sunlight, the bayonets flashing 
 bright against the summer green, as 
 the army moved proudly along to the 
 " Grenadiers' March ; " the colors flying, 
 the drums beating, the fifes playing. 
 It was a orallant sitrht — such as the 
 
 o o 
 
 New World had never witnessed. It 
 made an impression on Washington 
 that was never effaced. In after years, 
 when he himself stood at the head of 
 armies, he used to say that these troops, 
 as they moved across the ford and 
 alonof the river banks, the sunlio^ht 
 flashing on the scarlet lines and the 
 
 6 
 
82 Life of George Washington, 
 
 burnished steel, formed the most beauti- 
 ful si^ht he ever beheld. 
 
 The Indians lay in wait along the 
 line of march. These savage hordes 
 were to make that day one of the sad- 
 dest in early American history. They 
 had been hovering on the track for 
 days. They had chosen their time and 
 place well. They were always sure to 
 do that. 
 
 Suddenly, from behind trees and 
 thickets, and in ravines, broke the ter- 
 rible war-whoop. English soldiers had 
 never heard that sound. The next 
 moment a deadly fire burst from the 
 forest. 
 
 Every schoolboy knows the story of 
 Braddock's defeat. One cannot wonder 
 that it came, sharp and sudden and ter- 
 rible, as it did. Everything had been 
 
Braddock's Battle-field, 83 
 
 badly managed. Nothing had been 
 done to guard against a surprise. 
 There was no foe to be met In honest 
 warfare ; there was only that fearful 
 yelling, that terrible uproar, to be heard, 
 while the constant firing from unseen 
 hands laid low the flower of the 
 army. 
 
 Washington — ^just from his sick-bed — 
 rode calm and fearless amid the rain of 
 the bullets. No war-whoop could shake 
 his trained nerves, no Indian ambus- 
 cade take him by surprise. In the 
 midst of the carnaofe — officers and men 
 falling thick around him — he did all 
 that man could to rally the troops, and 
 retrieve the fortunes of the day. 
 
 He was a splendid mark for the foe. 
 Many a gun In the forest was aimed 
 at him, but each shot fell harmless as 
 
84 Life of George Washington, 
 
 though from magic armor. Years after- 
 ward, Washington met an old Indian 
 sachem, who related the story of that 
 day, and confessed that he and his 
 comrades had frequently aimed their 
 guns at him as he dashed, a conspicu- 
 ous mark, into every part of the field. 
 But, when no shot took effect, they 
 gave up firing. The sachem and his 
 band believed that the Great Spirit 
 had given the young officer the 
 charmed life that could not be lost 
 in battle. 
 
 Had the soldiers heeded his orders — 
 had they ''raked the ravines with 
 grape-shot " — the day, even then, might 
 have been saved. But the bravest sol- 
 diers were paralyzed. They could have 
 held their own against any foe in the 
 field. The Indian rifle was leveled by 
 
Braddock's Battle-field. 85 
 
 unseen hands in the shelter of the 
 woods, while the yells of demons shook 
 the air and unnerved the soldiers. In 
 vain '' Washington sprang from his 
 horse, wheeled and pointed a field- 
 piece toward the woods. His example 
 could not inspire the men with courage. 
 Not a platoon would quit the line of 
 march ; not a soldier scale the hill on 
 the right, where the firing was heavi- 
 est." 
 
 The end came at last, in headlong 
 flight. At sunset the broken lines fled 
 along the banks of the Monongahela, 
 a wreck of the proud army that had 
 crossed the river in the morning, with 
 drums beating and banners ikying, eager 
 for the fray, and sure of a swift victory 
 over their French and Indian foe. 
 
 On the battle-field lay hundreds of 
 
86 Life of George Washington, 
 
 the dead and wounded. The enemy, 
 busied there with scalping and plunder, 
 did not long pursue the routed army. 
 
 Braddock, like his officers, had car- 
 ried himself with consummate bravery 
 throughout the dreadful scene. Horse 
 after horse was killed under him, but 
 he still remained in the thick of the 
 battle, and when at last he fell, mor- 
 tally wounded, it was with difficulty 
 they could get him from the field, 
 where he desired to die. He saw his 
 mistake when it was too late to re- 
 deem it. In the long retreat, amid 
 which the brave, obstinate, old sol- 
 dier was tenderly guarded and cared 
 for, he must have remembered his 
 young aid's advice that he should 
 throw out flanking parties, and be pre- 
 pared for Indian ambuscades. If he 
 
BraddocM s Battle-field. Z"] 
 
 had heeded the warning he would not 
 have lost the day. 
 
 General Braddock died fojjr days 
 later at Great Meadows, the scene of 
 Washington's surrender. The dying 
 soldier was very grateful for the atten- 
 tions that soothed his last hours ; in 
 proof of which he bequeathed his young 
 aid his favorite horse — a splendid ani- 
 mal — and Bishop, his faithful body- 
 servant. 
 
. CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE KNIGHT SANS PEUR ET SANS RE- 
 
 PROCHE. 
 
 Washington reached Mount Vernon 
 before that disastrous month had closed. 
 His health had suffered greatly. But 
 his country could not leave him time to 
 recruit. The defeat of Braddock had 
 filled the orovince with consternation. 
 It had shaken that old faith in the in- 
 vincibility of British troops, which was 
 a part of the creed of every American. 
 Bewildered alarm had taken the place 
 of the old blind confidence. Less than 
 three weeks after his return, George 
 Washington was appointed commander 
 of all the forces in the colony. 
 
Sans Peur et Sans Reproche, 89 
 
 His mother now interposed. She 
 had been accustomed to having her 
 authority treated with the utmost def- 
 erence, and perhaps did not fully real- 
 ize that her son was now no lonofer the 
 lad whose naval career she had once 
 checked on its threshold. Her letters 
 entreated him — her first-born — not to 
 risk a life so precious in another of 
 those savage frontier battles. But, with 
 all his habitual deference to the mater- 
 nal wishes, Washington could not, at 
 this critical moment, suffer them to be 
 paramount to the claims of his country. 
 And on the 14th of September he re- 
 paired to Winchester, where he. estab- 
 lished his headquarters. 
 
 Vexing questions met him on the 
 threshold of his new career. Parties 
 arose and quarrels ensued, on matters 
 
90 Life of George Washington. 
 
 of rank and precedence, between the 
 kine's officers and those who held 
 commissions from the colonial gov- 
 ernors. All this struck at the basis of 
 his own authority. Washington at last 
 determined to refer these matters to 
 General Shirley, at Boston, the Com- 
 mander-in-Chief who had succeeded 
 Braddock. 
 
 The journey, which began on Febru- 
 ary 4, 1756, forms a bright little epi- 
 sode in this harassing period. Wash- 
 ington was accompanied by his aid-de- 
 camp and an officer of light horse. 
 They made the long winter journey on 
 horseback, with servants in livery, in 
 the old Virginia style. The small party 
 was in the heyday of youth and hope. 
 They stopped in Philadelphia and New 
 York, and no doubt the picturesque 
 
Sans Peur et Sa7is Reproche. 91 
 
 little cavalcade made a brilliant impres- 
 sion on the society of the old colonial 
 cities. For the first time Washington 
 entered New England and beheld Bos- 
 ton — -the busy, quaint, old commercial 
 town by the bay — little dreaming" of 
 the part he was yet to play in her his- 
 tory. 
 
 The journey must have been full of 
 novel experiences and social pleasures 
 to the young colonel and his friends. 
 To this period belongs the story of his 
 acquaintance with Miss Mary Philipse, 
 the beautiful sister-in-law of his friend, 
 Beverly Robinson. He met the young 
 lady on his return to New York, and 
 there is no doubt that her varied 
 charms produced a powerful impression 
 on his fancy and heart. 
 
 Washington had all a brave soldier's 
 
92 Life of George Washington, 
 
 delight in the society of women. There 
 was a great deal of the tender chivalry 
 of the old knight, "without fear and 
 without reproach," in his nature. But 
 his busy life in American frontier wil- 
 dernesses had afforded him little time 
 or opportunity for the indulgence of 
 any romance. The presence of this 
 eleeant woman had the added charm of 
 novelty to one always susceptible to the 
 o-races of her sex. His admiration was 
 no secret to anybody who saw them 
 together. There seems to be no doubt 
 that Mary Philipse — the New York 
 belle of that winter of 1756 — would 
 have had another suitor for her hand 
 had Washington remained longer in the 
 city. But at the critical moment he 
 was summoned to Virginia, and, a little 
 later, Captain Morris — his aid-de-camp 
 
Sans Peur et Sans Reproche. 93 
 
 in the Braddock campaign — made the 
 most of his time, and won the heart, 
 hand, and fortune of the young woman. 
 Whatever disappointment Washington 
 may have felt, he took it philosophi- 
 cally. He was, at this time, in the 
 midst of scenes likely to dissipate all 
 soft memories and regrets. A terrible 
 panic had seized the country about him. 
 The Indians were ravaging the front- 
 iers. This meant burning houses and 
 slauofhterinof families. The white set- 
 tiers were flying in wild terror before 
 them. That fair Valley of the Shenan- 
 doah — its pleasant homes wasted by the 
 savaee — was now one wide scene of 
 havoc arid desolation. It seemed on 
 the point of relapsing into the primitive 
 wilderness from which civilization and 
 industry had rescued it — about to be- 
 
94 Life of George Washington, 
 
 come again the hunting-ground of the 
 Indian, the haunt of the wild beast. 
 
 On his arrival at Winchester, Wash- 
 ington found the inhabitants frantic with 
 fear. Every hour brought its fresh tale 
 — true or false — of families massacred, 
 or besieofed and famishinor in the stock- 
 aded forts, to which they had fled for 
 shelter. The people were in agonies of 
 terror lest the savages were on their 
 way to attack the town. The helpless 
 inhabitants — their imaginations inflamed 
 by the belief of their imminent peril — 
 lived over all the horrors of an Indian 
 massacre, from the first paralyzing war- 
 whoop to the last scene of scalped 
 bodies and burninof homes. In this ex- 
 tremity they turned to Washington as 
 their sole hope and defender. Women 
 gathered about him, ''holding up their 
 
Sans Peur et Sans Repi^oche. 95 
 
 children, and imploring him with tears 
 and cries to save them from the sav- 
 ages. He looked around him on the 
 suppliant crowd, with a countenance 
 beaming with pity, and a heart wrung 
 with anguish." 
 
 Washington's position, at this time, 
 ** shut up in a frontier town, destitute 
 of forces, surrounded by savage foes," 
 was one replete with anxiety and trial. 
 It miofht have shaken the nerves of a 
 veteran commander, and he was a 
 young man of only twenty-four. 
 
 But he acted with his usual prompt 
 energy. The first thing to be done 
 was to lay the condition of affairs 
 before the sfovernor. His letter must 
 have had something of the effect of a 
 thunderbolt, for Dinwiddie, usually so 
 dilatory and confused in his movements, 
 
96 Life of George Washmgton. 
 
 instantly dispatched orders for militia 
 from the upper counties to march to 
 Washington's assistance. Happily, the 
 danger was averted. The Indians went 
 away to their hunting-grounds with cap- 
 tives and spoils, and Winchester was 
 spared. 
 
 As time went on, all sorts of delays, 
 vexations, and interferences fretted Wash- 
 ington's ardent spirit, and wore on his 
 health. It is a miserable story, on the 
 details of which the limits of this volume 
 make it impossible to dwell. The gov- 
 ernor, narrow, obstinate, and soured, be- 
 cause Washinorton had been elevated to 
 the command in preference to a favorite 
 of his own, exercised a petty tyranny 
 over all the young officer's movements. 
 The latter often found his suggestions 
 unheeded or imperfectly carried out. 
 
Sans Peur et Sans Reproche, 97 
 
 His statements met with indefinite and 
 ambiguous replies. Nothing could have 
 been more irritating to a mind of 
 George Washington's clear, practical 
 quality than the lax, confused methods 
 of his superior. 
 
 The unpleasant relations which con- 
 tinued to exist between* the two were, 
 no doubt, aggravated by the governor's 
 character, which was one singularly lia- 
 ble to relapse into doubt and indecision 
 at critical moments. He was easily 
 offended, too ; impatient of contradiction, 
 he was even absurd enough to make 
 complaints regarding the manner of his 
 subordinate's correspondence. A little 
 Scottish faction, intent on disgusting 
 Washington, so that he would resign 
 and make room for his rival, added 
 fresh fuel to the governor's hostility. 
 
98 Life of George Washington. 
 
 It was in defiance of all the young 
 colonel's remonstrances that Dinwiddie 
 insisted on making headquarters at Fort 
 Cumberland, and, to strengthen this post, 
 he ordered a withdrawal of the necessary- 
 troops and supplies from other forts and 
 from Winchester. By this unwise move- 
 ment he weakefned the defenses of the 
 frontier, and threw military affairs into 
 infinite confusion, besides incurring enor- 
 mous losses and expenses. 
 
 All these thinors must have made that 
 
 o 
 
 year's service a bitter one to George 
 Washington. He had the ardent spirit 
 of his years, for they were, as we have 
 seen, only twenty-four. He had the 
 fiery temper of his race. He could not 
 look into the future and see how all 
 these vexations and trials were training 
 him in the long patience, the varied re- 
 
Sans Peur et Sans Reproche. 99 
 
 sources, the steady courage with which 
 he was yet to play his part on the 
 world's stage — a part the greatest that 
 had ever yet fallen to man. 
 
 But the year, that must have seemed 
 so long in passing, was now drawing 
 to a close. Frequent illnesses warned 
 Washington that incessant care and 
 anxiety were undermining his health. 
 He struggled on for awhile ; but the 
 increasing violence of his attacks forced 
 him to yield at last to the urgent solici- 
 tations of his friend, the army surgeon, 
 Dr. Craik. Washinofton once more re- 
 signed his post and retired to Mount 
 Vernon. 
 
 Governor Dinwiddle's administration 
 came to a close with the opening of the 
 new year, and he returned to England. 
 
 For some months after Washington's 
 
loo Life of George Washington. 
 
 return to Mount Vernon, the condition 
 of his health seriously alarmed his 
 friends. But the splendid forces of his 
 constitution at last rallied, and tided 
 him over the danger. He did not, 
 however, resume his command at Win- 
 chester until the following April. He 
 did so under brightening auspices. The 
 new governor had not arrived from 
 England, but his representative appreci- 
 ated Washington's character and serv- 
 ices, and was ready to aid him in all 
 his plans. 
 
 Of more importance than all else, 
 William Pitt was now at the head of 
 the British Cabinet. The American cam- 
 paign felt at once the inspiration of 
 his genius. Parliament' had resolved to 
 carry on the war in the colonies with 
 new vigor. Large supplies were to be 
 
Sans Peur et Sa7ts Reproche. loi 
 
 forwarded from England. The old ques- 
 tion of rank between the king's and 
 the provincial officers, which had been 
 the occasion of so much bitter feeling, 
 was, by Pitt's wisdom and tact, happily 
 settled. 
 
 This must have been a source of 
 great satisfaction to Washington. The 
 year before he had made that long 
 winter's journey to Boston in the hope 
 of obtaining a king's commission. He 
 had been disappointed. Before he re- 
 turned to Mount Vernon he had made 
 a last fruitless effort for the prize his 
 services had so richly earned, and which 
 would have established his authority on 
 a secure basis. It is a curious fact, 
 however, that George Washington was 
 destined never to hold a king's com- 
 mission. 
 
I02 Life of George Washington. 
 
 The young commander gathered his 
 scattered forces at Winchester and dili- 
 gently disciplined the recruits. They 
 were about nine hundred strong. They 
 were destitute of nearly all the equip- 
 ment necessary for an army. His let- 
 ters to his superiors made forcible rep- 
 resentations of the condition of the Vir- 
 ginia troops, but without producing the 
 desired effect. He at last, however, re- 
 ceived orders to repair to Williamsburg 
 and lay the case in person before the 
 Council. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 LOVER AND SOLDIER. 
 
 Washington, with his habitual prompt- 
 ness, started for the old county-town of 
 Williamsburg. Bishop, the long-trained 
 military servant who had been the dying 
 bequest of General Braddock, accom- 
 panied his master. 
 
 How little the young officer, bur- 
 dened with military cares and responsi- 
 bilities, dreamed that the journey from 
 Winchester to Williamsburg was to be 
 the most eventful of his life ! The 
 story of that day sheds over those 
 stern times a sudden glow of romance. 
 It broke across Washington's life in 
 the most undreamed-of way, when the 
 
I04 Life of George Washington, 
 
 soldier's heart and brain were absorbed 
 in thoughts and cares for his country. 
 But that brief interlude of romance was 
 to make the joy and content of all the 
 years to come. 
 
 Washington had crossed the Pamun- 
 key — a small branch of the York River 
 — and was spurring his horse ahead, 
 when he was accosted by Mr. Chamber- 
 layne, the proprietor of the grounds on 
 which he had landed, wh(5 now insisted 
 on his stopping to dinner. Washington 
 declined, feeling it impossible to spare 
 the precious moments. But the other 
 would take no refusal. There was com- 
 pany at the house that day, among 
 whom was the beautiful young widow, 
 Martha Parke Custis, of whose charms 
 Washington could not have failed to 
 hear, though there seems to be no 
 
Lover and Soldier, 105 
 
 record of his having met her before. 
 Mr. Chamberlayne announced the pres- 
 ence of the lady as a fresh inducement 
 for Washington to pause. It is likely 
 that this fact turned the scale, for the 
 latter at last consented to dismount, 
 and, a little later, the host had the 
 pleasure of introducing the young officer 
 to the guests assembled under the hos- 
 pitable roof 
 
 The young widow whom he met at 
 the gay little dinner party, must have 
 been very charming at that period. 
 We all know what a beautiful old 
 woman she made. She was about three 
 months younger than Washington, who 
 was now twenty-six. Her figure was 
 small and graceful. Her eyes and hair 
 were of dark hazel. The world is 
 familiar with that delicate, refined, 
 
io6 Life of George Washhigton, 
 
 womanly face. It is precisely the sort 
 of one w(! conld imai^ine lookinir down 
 on us from amid a g-allery of ancient 
 portraits, with bearded knii^dits and fair 
 women, in some old Kn<disli castle. 
 Mrs. Custis, like Washington, had come 
 of one (jf the ancient families of the 
 proud old colony. She had, like him, 
 moved in its highest social life, and 
 been nurtured amid its habits and tra- 
 ditions. 
 
 The young widow had been left 
 with a large fortune, which she shared 
 with her two children — a boy and 
 girl. 
 
 Washington's heart — so the story 
 runs — was taken by surprise. Witli the 
 bright hazel eyes shining upon him, the 
 dinner hour passed like a happy dream. 
 With all his gallant feeling for woman, 
 
Lover and Soldier. loj 
 
 his bearing toward her was, like him- 
 self, serious and dignified. i^erhaps it 
 never lost a touch of the ceremonious 
 formality in which he had been reared. 
 Yet his handv>>me presence and his 
 grave, courteous manner must have 
 had a great attraction for the women 
 whose charmed circle he occasionally 
 entered. 
 
 Bishop, with his long training under 
 General Braddock, was not likely to 
 fail in punctuality. He was at the door 
 with the horses on the moment. But 
 for once their owner ''loitered in the 
 path of duty/' Nothing affords stronger 
 evidence of the impression that Martha 
 Custis had made on ^^eorge Washing- 
 ton, than the fact that the remainder of 
 the day was passed in her society. The 
 restive horses pawed in vain at the 
 
io8 Life of George Washington, 
 
 door. Washington had resolved to ride 
 during the night to make up for the 
 lost hours. But the soft spell that held 
 him was too powerful to be broken. 
 At last the order to depart was counter- 
 manded. Bishop must have been im- 
 mensely astonished as he led the horses 
 back to their stalls. His master spent 
 the night under Mr. Chamberlayne's 
 roof. The next morning Washington 
 once more started for Williamsburg. 
 
 But the brave heart had never beat 
 so high, and softer moods must have 
 mingled with the young soldier's 
 thoughts of camp and battle-field, as he 
 spurred along the ancient Virginia turn- 
 pikes. That halt for dinner had been 
 his fate. 
 
 The remainder of the story must be 
 told briefly. The young commander, 
 
Lover and Soldier, 109 
 
 who had won his laurels so early, and 
 whose praise was on many lips, had 
 made a deep impression on the woman 
 he was so eager to win. Fortune, in 
 this instance, was kind to him. Mrs. 
 Custis's home was in the vicinity of 
 Williamsburg. Washington must have 
 met her frequently during the brief stay 
 that military affairs permitted him. In 
 their case nothing ruffled the course of 
 true love. The crowding war duties 
 that summoned him back to Winchester 
 allowed brief time for courtship. He 
 had a lover's fear lest, in his absence, 
 another should supplant him, and win 
 the prize he coveted. Matters appear 
 to have been arranged with a kind of 
 soldier-like promptness and decision be- 
 tween the pair. At all events the suitor 
 was successful. Before he left Will- 
 
no Life of George Washington, 
 
 iamsburg, Martha Custis had promised 
 George Washington she would be his 
 wife, and it was settled that their mar- 
 riage should take place at the close of 
 the campaign. 
 
•CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 MARRIAGE AND MOUNT VERNON. 
 
 The old familiar specters met Wash- 
 ington on his return to Winchester. 
 An idle camp had produced its inevi- 
 table results. The troops had grown 
 restless and wearied with the service. 
 The neighborhood in which they were 
 quartered, was offended by the frequent 
 disturbances of the soldiers, and tired of 
 the burden which their presence in- 
 volved. At last Washington received 
 the welcome order to break up camp 
 and repair to Fort Cumberland. 
 
 One event, however, greatly lightened 
 the trials of this summer. Washington 
 was now no longer the ardent young 
 
112 Life of George Washington, 
 
 soldier whose heart had bounded at the 
 whistling of the bullets. Military ambi- 
 tions had ceased to influence him. He 
 was looking forward eagerly to the 
 close of the campaign, when he would 
 resign his command and settle down at 
 Mount Vernon with the woman of his 
 choice. 
 
 With this purpose in view, he had 
 become a candidate for election to the 
 House of Burgesses. When the election 
 came off at Williamsburg, his presence 
 there was regarded by his friends as 
 all-important for his political Interests. 
 But it was characteristic that he would 
 not leave his command, even for a brief 
 time, and though he had received leave 
 of absence. 
 
 He had, too, during the encampment 
 at Winchester, enforced martial lav/ 
 
THE BOSTON MEDAL. 
 
 THE VERNON MEDAL. 
 
Marriage and Mount Vernon. 113 
 
 with a good deal of rigor. His severity 
 had sometimes endangered his popular- 
 ity. Several other candidates were in 
 the field. But the electors of Frederick 
 County, by a large majority, chose 
 George Washington for their represent- 
 ative. 
 
 The summer wore to its close. 
 Washington, with his sickly, disheart- 
 ened troops, was chafing in his camp at 
 Fort Cumberland. He must often have 
 asked himself, in bitterness of soul, if 
 this was the brilliant campaign which 
 had lured him from Mount Vernon, with 
 the stately ships of war moving slowly 
 along the Potomac, and the cannon 
 booming among the peaceful groves ! 
 
 A lover's impatience was now added 
 to the man's longings to resign his 
 commission and return to private life. 
 
114 Life of George Washington, 
 
 The soldier in him had had its brief 
 day. With his nature and character, his 
 dehght in war would be certain to be a 
 part only of his proud, aspiring youth. 
 All his hopes and ambitions, as we 
 have seen, centered now about the 
 home to which he was looking forward 
 with such passionate longings, and 
 which must have grown doubly dear to 
 him, when he thought of the beautiful 
 woman who would one day be its mis- 
 tress. 
 
 Meanwhile, in opposition to all his 
 remonstrances, a military road was be- 
 ing toilsomely opened through the heart 
 of Pennsylvania, from Raystown to Fort 
 Duquesne. Sixteen hundred men were 
 employed on this needless work, while 
 vast expenses were incurred in its pros- 
 ecution. But the British officers had 
 
Mar7'iage mid Mount Vernon, 1 1 5 
 
 conceived a terrible Idea of the old 
 " Braddock Road," and the Pennsyl- 
 vania traders, who had their own Inter- 
 ests to serve, threw all their influence 
 in favor of a new route through the 
 province. 
 
 It must have been a happy day for 
 Washington when he received orders to 
 break up the camp at Fort Cumberland 
 and move with his forces to Raystown, 
 where the British Army was assembled 
 under the command of General Forbes. 
 The young Virginia colonel met with 
 a most courteous reception, and found 
 that his opinions had great weight with 
 the Commander-in-Chief, both in private 
 and in war councils. 
 
 Notwithstanding the vast bodies of 
 men engaged during the summer in 
 opening the road, they had only ad- 
 
ii6 Life of George Washington. 
 
 vanced forty-five miles. Fifty more 
 through the primeval wilderness had 
 yet to be penetrated before Duquesne 
 would be reached. Meanwhile, a mili- 
 tary post had been established at Loyal- 
 hanna by Colonel Bouquet. With a 
 body of nearly two thousand men under 
 his command, he was tempted to dis- 
 patch eight hundred into the enemy's 
 country. An enterprise of this kind 
 naturally possessed a strong attraction 
 for the soldiers. Washington, familiar 
 with the ground and the foe, used 
 all his influence to defeat the expe- 
 dition ; but it was in vain. The idea 
 of a dashing military exploit seized the 
 imagination of the officers ; and, having 
 learned nothing from the terrible les- 
 sons of past Indian warfare, Major 
 Grant set off into the wilderness at the 
 
Marriage and Mount Vernon. 1 1 7 
 
 head of eight hundred picked soldiers. 
 A part of this force was composed of 
 Washington's Virginia regiment, '' sent 
 forward by him from Cumberland, under 
 Major Lewis." 
 
 It was the old story of Braddock's 
 defeat — on a smaller scale this time. 
 Former experience had not made Major 
 Grant wiser or more wary. With fool- 
 hardy recklessness he led his troops 
 into the enemy's land. Again the sol- 
 diers found themselves in the fatal am- 
 bush ; again the dreadful war-whoop 
 filled the air. A fearful scene of rout 
 and carnage followed. Fifty Virginians, 
 familiar with Indian habits of fighting, 
 were, happily, on the ground. They had 
 been placed in charge of the baggage. 
 They came now, under Captain Bullitt, 
 to the rescue. The little company 
 
ii8 I-if^ of George Washi7tgton, 
 
 formed a barricade with the wagons, 
 ralHed a part of the panic-stricken sol- 
 diers, gave a brief check to the enemy, 
 gathered the fugitives, and made a 
 rapid retreat. Grant and Lewis barely 
 succeeded in saving their lives by sur- 
 render to a French officer. 
 
 Washington, at Raystown, learned the 
 sad story which so amply justified his 
 opposition to the enterprise. Bitterly 
 as he must have felt the defeat, it could 
 hardly have taken him by surprise. 
 His old faith in the invincibility of Brit- 
 ish troops had, as we have seen, long 
 since disappeared. The laurels those 
 seasoned veterans had won on Conti- 
 nental battle-fields were doomed to 
 wither fatally in American wildernesses 
 and amid Indian ambuscades. 
 
 But the defeat only won fresh honors 
 
Alarriagc and Mount Vernon. J 19 
 
 for the Virginia troops, who had so 
 bravely brought off the detachment at 
 the critical moment, it must hav(i been 
 a proud day for their Colonel, when 
 they received the puljlic compliments of 
 the British General. A litthj later Cap- 
 tain Bullitt was honored with a major's 
 commission. The regular army was at 
 last forced to acknowledge the valor of 
 those provincial troops whom they had 
 so long regarded with undisguised con- 
 tempt. 
 
 Washington received fresh honors. 
 He had now the command of a division 
 ''partly composed of his own men, 
 which was to keep in advance ui the 
 main body, clear the roads, throw out 
 scouting parties, and repel Indian at- 
 tacks." 
 
 On the 5th of November the whole 
 
I20 Life of George Washington. 
 
 army was at last assembled at Loyal- 
 hanna. With the winter close at 
 hand, with fifty miles to traverse 
 through the wilderness, it seemed that 
 Washington's predictions were again to 
 be fulfilled, and that another years 
 campaign was about to be brought to 
 an ignoble close. 
 
 A council of war was held. It was 
 decided that a further advance that 
 season was impossible. At this criti- 
 cal moment, how^ever, three prisoners 
 were brought into camp. Their report 
 of the condition of affairs at Fort Du- 
 quesne, of the desertion of the Indians, 
 of the garrison, without hope of re-en- 
 forcements or supplies, fired the flag- 
 ging courage of the council. It was at 
 last resolved to push forward. The 
 march was again resumed, and this 
 
Marriage and Mount Vernon. 121 
 
 time, tardily taught by experience, 
 " without tents or baggage, and with 
 only a light train of artillery." 
 
 Washington still kept the advance. 
 The road beyond Loyalhanna, strewn 
 with human bones, afforded an eloquent 
 commentary on the late methods of In- 
 dian warfare. That sad spectacle must 
 have silenced the last voice that had 
 been raised in opposition to Washing- 
 ton. But the army kept on unmolested 
 in its mournful march through the No- 
 vember wilderness. The fifty miles were 
 at last traversed, and F'ort Duquesne 
 rose in sight. 
 
 The army now advanced with every 
 precaution. They anticipated a resolute 
 defense ; but they were disappointed. 
 The French fort, so long the terror of 
 the frontier, the object of so many 
 
122 Life of Geo7^ge lVashingto7i, 
 
 hopes and fears, and for which so much 
 precious blood had been spilled, was 
 doomed to fall at last without a blow ! 
 
 An hour came which must have 
 seemed to reward Washington for all 
 the wrongs, toils, and perils he had 
 undergone. On November 25, 1758, he 
 marched with the advanced guard into 
 Fort Duquesne, and planted the English 
 colors where the French had waved so 
 long. The enemy had departed the 
 night before. They were reduced to 
 extremities. No re-enforcements had ap- 
 peared. The foe was within a day's 
 march. "The French commander em- 
 barked his troops at night in bateaux, 
 blew up his magazines, set fire to the 
 fort, and retreated down the river by 
 the light of the flames." 
 
 This closed the long struggle between 
 
Marriage and Mount Vernon, 123 
 
 the French and English races for pos- 
 session of the land beyond the Allegha- 
 nies. To-day, the busy, crowded city of 
 Pittsburo^ stands on the old site of 
 Fort Duquesne, and on the very spot 
 where the checkered military career of 
 George Washington seemed to have 
 closed forever in victory. 
 
 At the end of that year Washington 
 resigned his commission, and retired 
 from the service. His health had been 
 shaken by anxieties and hardships ; 
 but he had seen the grand object of 
 long, struggling years attained. The 
 *' Old French War " was ended. Pros- 
 perity once more smiled upon his native 
 province. The Indians at last sub- 
 mitted to their conquerors, and a treaty 
 of peace had been concluded with all the 
 tribes between the Ohio and the lakes. 
 
124 ^^fo ^/ Geo7^ge Washington, 
 
 Tidings of that victory must have 
 thrilled the whole land. The old haunt- 
 ing terror had disappeared. There was 
 a flash of joy on every face. The name 
 of George Washington was to be for- 
 ever associated with the hour of deliv- 
 erance and thanksgiving. 
 
 He must have turned his back on 
 the scenes of his late warfare with a 
 heart full of unutterable gladness and 
 gratitude. Mount Vernon was awaiting 
 him. The fair face of the woman he 
 was to wed, would welcome the victor 
 with smiles. In her society, and amid 
 the rest and quiet of his home, his 
 health would rally again. The outlook 
 must have been very fair to George 
 Washington in those closing winter 
 days of 1758. 
 
 On the 1 6th of the following January, 
 
Marriage and Mount Vernon. 125 
 
 he and Martha Custis were married at 
 the White House, near WilHamsburg, 
 the residence of the bride. The wed- 
 ding was celebrated with all the gayety 
 and lavish hospitality of the old colonial 
 time, and its traditions floated down to 
 later generations. 
 
 The three months that followed were 
 spent by the newly-married pair in the 
 bride's home, after which they repaired 
 to Mount Vernon. Before they left 
 Williamsburg, Washington had taken his 
 seat in the House of Burgesses. An 
 amusing little incident occurred on his 
 installation. The members had secretly 
 agreed that the young Colonel should 
 be received among them with a signal 
 mark of respect. 
 
 When he took his seat for the first 
 time, the Speaker, who was a personal 
 
126 Life of George Washington. 
 
 friend of the new member, thanked him 
 on behalf of the colony, in some glow- 
 ing periods, for the splendid services 
 which he had rendered his country. 
 
 Washington was quite overcome by 
 this unexpected honor. He rose to re- 
 ply; but the courage that had carried 
 him undaunted through the storm of the 
 bullets, the nerves that had held them- 
 selves calm amid the yells of the Indian 
 ambuscade, failed the young hero now. 
 He stood blushing, stammering, trem- 
 bling before the House, and could not 
 utter a word. 
 
 The Speaker came gracefully to his 
 aid. ''Sit down, Mr. Washington," he 
 said. '' Your modesty equals your 
 valor, and that surpasses the power of 
 any language I possess." 
 
 This little scene has a peculiar inter- 
 
Marriage and Mount Vernon, 127 
 
 est, because it forms Washington's in- 
 troduction to civil life. We can imagine 
 the pride' and amusement with which 
 his newly wedded wife must have list- 
 ened, a little later, to the story. 
 
 George Washington spent the next 
 sixteen years at Mount Vernon. He 
 now settled himself down to his place 
 in life, and to fulfill, with his native 
 conscientious thoroughness, the varied 
 duties and responsibilities of a large 
 landed proprietor. 
 
 The domain which he had inherited 
 stretched fair and ample about him, 
 with its noble groves, its vast wood- 
 lands — haunts of deer and foxes and 
 wild game — its fields, ripening through 
 the long summer into splendid harvests. 
 The borders of the estate were washed 
 by more than ten miles of tide-water. 
 
128 Life of George Washington, 
 
 The mansion stood on a height which 
 commanded a magnificent view up and 
 down the Potomac, and the grounds 
 were laid out in the EngHsh fashion of 
 those days. Here Washington Hved his 
 hospitable, busy, happy life. It does 
 not seem possible that any man during 
 the last century could have had sixteen 
 years of pleasanter existence than those 
 which fell to the proprietor of Mount 
 Vernon. He had, of course, the super- 
 intendence of a large estate, and the 
 inevitable cares and responsibilities 
 which that involved. But the work was 
 thoroughly congenial, and the burden 
 lay lightly on that strong, energetic 
 manhood. Business, too, was varied 
 with pleasure — with visits to Annapolis, 
 the gay little seat of the Maryland gov- 
 ernment ; with dinners at home and 
 
Marriage and Mount Vernon. 129 
 
 among the neighboring gentry. Wash- 
 ington's social instincts were strong. 
 He was the most hospitable of hosts. 
 His own personal tastes and habits 
 were simple, but his position demanded, 
 and his fortune justified, an ample and 
 generous style of living. The old colo- 
 nial society in which he moved, reflected 
 a good deal of the ceremony, the pomp, 
 the stately grace of the Old World. 
 Washington's long intimacy with the 
 Fairfaxes, his intercourse with British 
 officers, must have had its influence 
 upon his tastes. Mrs. Washington, no 
 doubt, indulged her own. She had 
 brought an ample fortune to Mount 
 Vernon. She would naturally desire to 
 live in a style befitting its mistress. 
 Nobody familiar with her picture, and 
 skillful at reading faces, can doubt that 
 
130 Life of George Washington, 
 
 she would enjoy the refinements and 
 elegancies of life. Though her husband 
 always appeared on horseback, she had 
 her chariot and postilions in livery for 
 her own use and for her guests. 
 
 Washington carried some of the old 
 military habits Into his home life. He 
 rose early, and his simple breakfast of 
 tea and Indian cakes could not have 
 occupied many minutes. When the 
 meal was over, he mounted his horse 
 and rode over his estate, giving the 
 most careful attention to its varied 
 management, and taking part in the 
 manual labor whenever that was neces- 
 sary. He kept his own accounts, and 
 balanced his books with the same ex- 
 actness with which he had drawn up 
 the social codes of his boyhood, and the 
 surveyor's charts of his youth. If he 
 
Marriage and Mount Vernon, 131 
 
 was a kind, he must have been also an 
 exacting, master. Shiftless ways, care- 
 less work, would never long escape the 
 keen, all-observant eyes; and, where the 
 offense was voluntary, would be likely 
 to meet with small indulgence. But 
 nobody who had dealings with the pro- 
 prietor of Mount Vernon ever had cause 
 to question that high sense of justice 
 which oroverned him in each relation of 
 
 o 
 
 life. 
 
 When the hunting season came on, 
 Washington's old passion for the chase 
 was sure to revive. He was out sev- 
 eral times each week with his neigh- 
 bors and his hounds. The woods re- 
 sounded with the shouts of the riders 
 and the baying of the dogs. The hunt 
 was followed by a grand dinner-party 
 at some residence in the neighborhood. 
 
132 Life of George Washington, 
 
 Washington enjoyed a day like this im- 
 mensely. It always brought out the 
 social and jovial side of his character. 
 
 The Potomac also afforded him vast 
 enjoyment, with the fishing in its waters 
 and the hunting on its borders. There 
 were seasons when the herring came 
 up the river in vast shoals, and the 
 servants mustered on the banks to 
 draw in the seine, which must have 
 been accomplished with much labor and 
 fun. Then there were canvas-back 
 ducks to be found among the reeds 
 and bushes along the banks of the 
 noble river. 
 
 As. one dwells on the picture of those 
 fair surroundings, of the happy, varied 
 in-door and out-door life at Mount Ver- 
 non, it seems a good deal like reading 
 some idyl of the poets. 
 
Marriage and Mount Vernon. 133 
 
 To crown all the rest, Washington's 
 domestic life was a very happy one. 
 The wife he had chosen appears to 
 have been remarkably adapted to a 
 man of his tastes and temperament. 
 The name of Martha Washington is 
 dear to Americans. Had it not been 
 for the long seven years' trial of the 
 Revolution, the world would never have 
 known what sort of woman reigned 
 amid the elegant seclusion of Mount 
 Vernon. She who, when the time came, 
 left, uncomplainingly, that home of 
 grace and ease, to endure the priva- 
 tions and hardships of the camp at 
 Morristown and the terrible winter at 
 Valley Forge, proved herself worthy of 
 the immortal name she bears, and de- 
 serves her place in the grateful memory 
 of a nation. 
 
134 Life of George Washington, 
 
 Those sixteen years have been truly 
 called "the halcyon season of Washing- 
 ton's life." The busy, dignified, gracious 
 master of Mount Vernon was not much 
 given to poetic fancies. Yet it would 
 not have been strange if, during those 
 smooth, prosperous years, he had some- 
 times wondered what there was left to 
 ask, had the ancient fable come true 
 again, and the Fates brought to his 
 door all honors and all fortunes for his 
 choosing. 
 
 He may, it is true, have felt a regret 
 that no children came to bear his name 
 and prattle about his knee ; but he 
 showed for his wife's boy and girl the 
 interest and tenderness of a father. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 ENGLAND AND AMERICA. 
 
 It was impossible for a man like 
 Georofe Washington to be absorbed in 
 
 o o 
 
 interests and affections that were wholly 
 personal. All the great questions which 
 at that time were agitating Europe, and, 
 more especially, the legislation of the 
 mother country, her domestic and colo- 
 nial policy, must have been charged 
 with vital interest for him. The great 
 statesmen of the England of his day — 
 the ministers who made her government 
 and shaped her history, during the mid- 
 dle of the century — must have been fre- 
 quent subjects of discussion when the 
 host and his guests rode over the 
 
136 Life of George Washington. 
 
 grounds or sat at the hospitable board 
 of Mount Vernon. 
 
 Washington had been, like all the 
 Virginia colonists, brought up in an 
 atmosphere of intense loyalty to the 
 mother country. England was home to 
 them. They were proud of her power, 
 of her high place among the nations of 
 Europe. They regarded her glory as 
 their own. We have seen that loyalty 
 was in the fiber of the old Washington 
 breed. The race qualities were strong 
 in their American descendant. He had 
 dreamed in his youth that he should 
 some time visit England, and see the 
 ancient cradle of his house ; but the 
 charms of Martha Custis and the cares 
 of Mount Vernon, had prevented his 
 carrying out the wish, until it was 
 finally abandoned. 
 
England and America, 137 
 
 We have seen that there was one 
 dread which, for thirty years, haunted 
 the scant populations along the eastern 
 seaboard of America. It was a dread 
 which the New England Puritan and 
 the Virginia planter alike shared with 
 all Protestant England. Their common 
 peril must have drawn the colonies in 
 closer sympathy with the mother coun- 
 try. Crises came when the Pretender 
 shook all Great Britain — when even 
 George II., courageous with the cour- 
 age of his hard old race, almost gave 
 up everything for lost, and determined 
 to die fighting valiantly in his palace 
 for the crown and kingdom that the 
 Stuarts had come back to claim. 
 
 Fourteen years after the battle of 
 Culloden had forever settled the suc- 
 cession in favor of the Brunswick line, 
 
138 Life of George Washington, 
 
 George III. ascended the English 
 throne. This event was the occasion 
 of great rejoicings throughout the 
 realm. The young sovereign, unlike 
 the previous monarchs of his house, 
 was a native of England. At the time 
 of his accession he showed some quali- 
 ties which touched the popular heart 
 and imagination. People everywhere 
 rang the changes on the purity, the 
 piety, the filial character of the young 
 King. He was yet to prove that his 
 intellect was of the narrowest order ; 
 while his education, under his arbitrary 
 mother, Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, had 
 unhappily strengthened all the defects 
 of his character. 
 
 " George, be a King ! " was the ad- 
 vice which she constantly rung in his 
 ears through his childhood ; and he 
 
England and America, 139 
 
 proved, through his long life, that the 
 words had made an ineffaceable impres- 
 sion on a nature at once narrow, big- 
 oted, and hopelessly obstinate. Indeed, 
 his limited understanding and his lack 
 of imagination, made it impossible for 
 him to conceive that there could be 
 any side of a question but the one 
 which he approved. Nobody suspected, 
 however, at the time of his accession, 
 the lurking insanity which was to make 
 the closing years of his reign almost as 
 tragic as King Lear's. 
 
 No doubt the colonies shared in Eng- 
 land's rejoicings, when a vessel brought 
 the first tidings of the new reiorn to 
 America. Bonfires probably blazed and 
 bells rang, to emulate the celebrations 
 three thousand miles away. How little 
 anybody at that time could have fore- 
 
140 Life of George Washington, 
 
 seen that the new king's obstinacy and 
 tyranny would, less than thirty years 
 later, force his loyal colonies into the 
 rebellion which was to separate them 
 forever from his crown ! 
 
 This is not the place to enter on the 
 long chapter of colonial wrongs. It 
 may be said here, however, that their 
 history proves that America's affection 
 for England never met with a response. 
 This fact was largely due to the selfish 
 commercial instincts of Great Britain. 
 It was the interest of her manufactures 
 and commerce to restrict and suppress 
 the growth and independence of the 
 young nation beyond the sea. Eng- 
 land's legislation for America, inspired 
 by the selfishness and jealousy of her 
 commercial classes, was intolerably op- 
 pressive. Many of the industries of the 
 
England and America. 141 
 
 country were ruined ; nearly all lan- 
 guished under restraints and prohibi- 
 tions interposed solely for the benefit 
 of Great Britain. 
 
 America, with her vast seaboard, saw 
 her ports closed by navigation laws 
 against foreign vessels. She was forced 
 to carry her exports only to countries 
 belonging to Great Britain. All her 
 imports must be made from England 
 and in English ships. Even the trade 
 between one colony and another was 
 hampered and prohibited in ways that 
 now seem incredible. 
 
 A people whose instincts of freedom 
 had been nourished alike by their history 
 and traditions, and by the noble country 
 which they were everywhere reclaiming 
 from savage and wild beast, could not 
 tamely submit to injustice and oppression. 
 
142 Life of George Washington, 
 
 America, with the prescience of her 
 great future opening before her, was 
 jealous for her Hberties, and resolved to 
 maintain them at any cost. 
 
 There was, consequently, no question 
 on which the colonies were so sensitive 
 as that of taxation. This, as they had 
 no representation in the English Parlia- 
 ment, they regarded as slavery. Any 
 attempt of the mother country to raise 
 a revenue from colonial imports was 
 certain to raise a storm among the 
 people. 
 
 During the long, peaceful administra- 
 tion of Sir Robert Walpole, while the 
 House of Brunswick held its insecure 
 tenure of crown and kingdom, the deli- 
 cate matter of colonial taxation was 
 wisely kept in the background. But 
 after the accession of George III., Par- 
 
England and America, 143 
 
 liament boldly affirmed its right to tax 
 the colonies. Various duties were im- 
 posed, and the following year the hated 
 Stamp Act was passed. 
 
 It was ominous that the first protest 
 against the Stamp Act, should come 
 from the old, aristocratic Province of 
 Virginia. Her history, her traditions, 
 the forms of her domestic and social 
 life, naturally tended to bring the oldest 
 of the colonies in closer sympathy than 
 her younger sisters with the mother 
 country. 
 
 Washington was in his seat In the 
 House of Burgesses on that memorable 
 May day when the young lawyer, Pat- 
 rick Henry, made the Immortal speech 
 which to this day fires one's heart to 
 read. 
 
 As Washinorton listened to that stern 
 
144 ^^y*^ ^f George Washingto7i. 
 
 arraignment of the English Govern- 
 ment, that splendid defense of Ameri- 
 can liberties, his soul must have glowed 
 with patriotic ardor. 
 
 His letters, after his return home, 
 show the new trend of his thoughts, 
 and the anxious outlook with which he 
 was beginning to regard the future of 
 his country. His pages are no longer 
 filled with tranquil pictures of the happy- 
 life at Mount Vernon. A shadow, des- 
 tined to deepen with every year, has 
 fallen across the peaceful days. 
 
 Washington was a young man — only 
 thirty-three — when he listened to that 
 speech of Patrick Henry's, which rung 
 like a tocsin throughout Virginia, and 
 thrilled the heart of America. The 
 dream of a last appeal to arms was 
 still far off, but there were signs in the 
 
England and America, 145 
 
 times — there was a general feeling of 
 suspicion and resentment in the very air 
 — which no keen observer could fail to 
 detect, and which must have criven 
 every lover of his country many a mo- 
 ment of anxious forebodine. 
 
 The repeal of the Stamp Act, in the 
 following year, at first gave the country 
 great satisfaction; but this was soon 
 succeeded by fresh disappointment and 
 indignation. A fatal clause was added 
 to the repeal. England reaffirmed, in 
 the strongest manner, her right to tax 
 her colonies. A little later, fresh im- 
 posts on various articles of commerce, 
 proved that she was bent on exercising, 
 in the most arbitrary manner, the right 
 she arrogated to herself 
 
 The years which lie between the 
 
 speech of Patrick Henry before the 
 10 
 
146 Life of George Washington, 
 
 Virginia House of Burgesses and the 
 opening of the Revolution, are a well- 
 trodden track of American history. 
 Every schoolboy is familiar with that 
 ground. Popular discontent and agi- 
 tation continued to spread through the 
 land. Fear and distrust of England 
 slowly supplanted the old reverence 
 and loyalty. The mother country laid 
 her hand with heavier weight upon her 
 colonies. More and more she began to 
 assume the character of their oppressor 
 and foe. 
 
 The consciousness that their common 
 liberties were in peril, the conviction 
 that their only hope must lie in an in- 
 timate union of interests and measures, 
 drew the provinces closer together. The 
 feeling of alienation and jealousy which, 
 at the beginning, existed more or less 
 
England and America. 147 
 
 among them, slowly disappeared. The 
 colonies agreed on retaliatory measures. 
 A compact, that they would import no 
 articles on which imposts had been 
 laid, struck a blow at the heart of 
 British commerce. 
 
 America had founded many hopes on 
 the good-will which she believed the 
 kinof rnust cherish toward her. But it 
 be^an to be more and more evident 
 that these hopes were futile. As the 
 real character of the third monarch of the 
 House of Brunswick came to the surface, 
 he showed that his naturally arbitrary in- 
 stincts were not held in check by an 
 enlightened understanding. His faults 
 had, as we have seen, been strength- 
 ened by his unfortunate training. Many 
 of the traditions on which the youth of 
 the future King of England had been 
 
148 Life of George Washington, 
 
 nurtured were despotic enough for the 
 atmosphere about the cradle of PhiHp 
 II. or of Louis XIV. With his char- 
 acter and his education it was impos- 
 sible that George III. should be any- 
 thing but the powerful, inveterate foe 
 of American freedom. 
 
 Durine the decade which succeeded 
 his accession, his popularity had greatly 
 waned at home. The corruption and 
 obsequiousness of the ministers and para- 
 sites with whom he surrounded himself, 
 gradually estranged the loyalty of his 
 people. It was impossible to disguise 
 the fact that venality and subserviency 
 were the real passports to the sovereign's 
 favor. All the noblest sentiments, all the 
 patriot instincts of the nation, were out- 
 raged by the character and measures of 
 those on whom the monarch bestowed his 
 
England and America, 149 
 
 confidence, and to whom he confided the 
 most precious interests and the highest 
 oflfices of the state. 
 
 The wisest and best men of the nation, 
 the men who had made the prosperity 
 and glory of England at home and 
 abroad, and who had inherited the spirit 
 and teachings of Hampden and Pym, of 
 Russell and Vane, were ignored at the 
 court, while they beheld the nation bur- 
 dened with taxes, to support the minions 
 of the king. All this time it became 
 more and more evident to the real states- 
 men of England, that a storm was brew- 
 ing beyond the seas, and that the meas- 
 ures of the government to suppress the 
 liberties and ruin the manufactures of 
 America, would at last goad the colo- 
 nies to desperation. 
 
 But other interests were, for a while, 
 
150 Life of George Washington, 
 
 lost sight of in the all-absorbing one of 
 the Middlesex election, which shook Eng- 
 land like an earthquake. The contest, 
 whatever disguises of form and name it 
 might take, was the old one between the 
 liberties of the people and the preroga- 
 tive of the king — a contest which had 
 made the history of the seventeenth cent- 
 ury lurid with civil wars, and ended at 
 last by setting the House of Brunswick 
 on the throne that the Stuarts had lost. 
 During the long battle of the Middle- 
 sex election, the name of John Wilkes 
 became the most popular in England, 
 and the letters of Junius held up, in the 
 light of their terrible irony, the false 
 policy of the king and the incapacity 
 and shameless venality of his ministers. 
 While the right of John Wilkes to his 
 seat in the House of Commons, and the 
 
England and America, 151 
 
 arraignment of the government by Junius, 
 were convulsing England, the long strug- 
 gle must have been watched with eager 
 interest across the seas, in the quiet 
 home by the Potomac. 
 
 Though the owner had reached the 
 prime of his years, his name was not one 
 familiar to English lips. Far behind him 
 now lay his stormy youth. Just before 
 him a mightier storm was gathering. 
 
 Washington had been, during the 
 years that brought him to middle life, a 
 profoundly interested observer of the 
 critical relations between England and 
 America. His love of country was his 
 deepest feeling. No purer flame of pa- 
 triotism ever burned in the soul of an- 
 cient hero, than that which shone with 
 calm, steady light in the heart of the 
 simple Westmoreland planter. He was 
 
152 Life of George Washington, 
 
 to prove, when the time came, that no 
 sacrifice of Hfe or fortune, of home or 
 happiness, would be too great for his 
 country. 
 
 Deeply as he resented the conduct of 
 England, he maintained, through this 
 time that tried men's souls, his calmness 
 of speech and attitude. Yet, as one 
 high-handed measure of Parliament fol- 
 lowed another, and revealed the temper 
 of the government and its purpose to 
 crush the young liberties of America, 
 Washington could not conceal from 
 himself the fact that there might come 
 a day when his country would have no 
 choice but the last appeal of freemen. 
 
 But this reflection was unutterably 
 painful. Washington had the tempera- 
 ment with which old associations and 
 habits are powerful. He had no delight 
 
1 1 1/'///. 
 
 MRS. WASHINGTON AT THE TIME OF HER MARRIAGE. 
 
England and America. 153 
 
 In the stormy atmosphere of revolutions 
 and rebellions. He long clung to the 
 hope that a better spirit would prevail in 
 the counsels of those who held the des- 
 tinies of America in their hands. He 
 knew that she had wise and powerful 
 friends in Parliament and near the 
 throne. That consciousness must have 
 given him courage in many a dark hour. 
 He must have felt a terrible recoil when- 
 ever he dwelt on the possibility of seeing 
 that flag in whose service he had won 
 such honors, and to which he had given 
 the best years of his youth, arrayed 
 aorainst him. Still, if the issue ever 
 came, he could never have doubted where 
 it would find him. 
 
 At this juncture it became important 
 that Washington should make a trip to 
 the Ohio River. The '* soldiers' claims," 
 
154 Life of George Washington, 
 
 as they were called, were not adjusted. 
 These meant the promised award of 
 lands to men who had served in the 
 '' Old French War." The Six Nations 
 had recently sold their territories south 
 of the Ohio to the British Crown. It 
 was necessary that Washington should 
 visit the wild lands, to select special 
 tracts for which he would make applica- 
 tion to government, in order that the 
 long-standing soldiers' claims should be 
 liquidated. 
 
 This journey must have formed a 
 bright episode amid the dark fears 
 and forebodings of that time. Wash- 
 ington set out in the pleasant Octo- 
 ber weather, with his favorite com- 
 panion. Dr. Craik. They visited the 
 scenes of their early exploits. The 
 two companions lived over their youth 
 
England and America, 155 
 
 again. They had friendly conferences 
 with the Indians. They swept in their 
 canoe down the broad current of the 
 Ohio. Deer bounded along the shores; 
 flocks of wild game darkened the sky 
 overhead. Here Washington could in- 
 dulge, to the top of his bent, his old 
 sporting proclivities. Once more, when 
 night fell, they encamped on the river 
 bank, and tasted the keen delight of a 
 hunter's supper. The winds of the 
 old Westmoreland meadow must have 
 seemed to blow through those wild, 
 free, happy days. They lie close to 
 the long, dark, stormy years on which 
 Washington was now to enter. Indeed, 
 this expedition to the Ohio may be said 
 to form the last real holiday of George 
 Washington's life. Splendid honors and 
 fetes awaited him long afterward ; but 
 
156 Life of George Washington, 
 
 these came when the close of the Rev- 
 olution had left him, as he pathetically- 
 said, "an old man." 
 
 During this journey Washington made 
 a visit to Fort Duquesne. It must have 
 been a thrilling moment when he looked 
 once more on the scene where his mili- 
 tary career had ended eleven years 
 before. The old days of hardships, 
 struggles, and cruel disappointments 
 could not fail to crowd on his memory 
 as he gazed on the familiar site. Log- 
 huts of Indian traders were scattered 
 about, where, a century later, the busy, 
 prosperous city of Pittsburg was to lift 
 its spires. 
 
 This 3^ear of 1770, in which Wash- 
 ington made his journey to the Ohio, 
 was memorable for the change which 
 took place in the British Cabinet — a 
 
England and A7nerica, 157 
 
 change which was to have so tremen- 
 dous an influence on the fortunes of 
 America. Lord North was placed at 
 the head of the British Government. 
 The new minister had none of the 
 ''divining genius" or the large aims of 
 the true statesman. He was as incapa- 
 ble of feeling the temper of the times 
 as he was of adapting himself to it. 
 He had no conception of a broad and 
 generous policy in dealing with the new 
 questions and events of his own age. 
 These he was alike unfitted, by under- 
 standing and character, to compre- 
 hend. 
 
 It seemed a terrible irony which, at 
 this crisis, placed the fortunes of the 
 American Colonies in the hands of Lord 
 North. He had one merit, however ; 
 he was a favorite with his royal master. 
 
158 Life of George Washington. 
 
 George III. had at last found a minis- 
 ter after his own heart. He could be 
 safely trusted to carry out to the bitter 
 end the oppressive policy of the 
 
 :ing. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 GATHERING OF THE STORM. 
 
 A NEW chapter in the history of Eng- 
 lish and American affairs opened with 
 Lord North's administration. He be- 
 gan, as was to be anticipated, with a 
 fatal mistake. All the colonial taxes 
 were to be revoked, except that on tea. 
 This was retained, as Lord North ex- 
 pressly stated, in order to prove the 
 RIGHT of England to tax America. The 
 colonies met this measure with one 
 which was certain to deal England a 
 blow where she was most sensitive ; 
 they entered into a wide covenant to 
 taste no tea. 
 
 Here, again, it was significant that 
 
i6o Life of George Washington, 
 
 Virginia led her sister colonies. The 
 method of retaliation originated with her 
 Assembly. 
 
 In the midst of this public excitement 
 a great gloom fell upon Mount Vernon 
 in the loss of its only daughter. She 
 had always been delicate, and sickened 
 suddenly in her seventeenth year. 
 
 Washington's public position involved 
 frequent absences from home. He 
 now returned to find the young girl, 
 to whom he was so deeply attached, in 
 the last stages of consumption. In his 
 o-rief he knelt at her bedside and 
 poured out prayers for her recovery. 
 This was one of the instances in which 
 Washington's feelings overcame his 
 usual reserve. His religion was deep 
 and fervent, but it was not emotional. 
 It partook of the strength and reticence 
 
WASHINGTON'S ENGLISH COACH. 
 
Gathering of the Storm, i6i 
 
 of his own character. A time was 
 drawing near which was to test his 
 piety. This was to prove, through 
 long, dark hours, the chief support 
 and solace of the soldier. But the 
 young life for which he pleaded was 
 doomed. His adopted daughter ex- 
 pired on the 9th of June, 1773. 
 
 Outside of that mourning home events 
 marched rapidly. The proscribed tea- 
 chests lay piled in the storehouses of 
 the East India Company. Lord North 
 now removed the export tax, sup- 
 posing, with his usual fatuity in all 
 that concerned the colonies, that the 
 low price of the tea would at once se- 
 cure large sales. He had not the faint- 
 est idea of the wide-spread indignation 
 which his tyranny had aroused. The 
 
 company sent its teas to America, and 
 II 
 
1 62 Life of George Washington, 
 
 we all know how the cargoes came to 
 grief on that i8th of December, 1773, 
 when the ships lay at anchor In Boston 
 Harbor. 
 
 Matters had now reached a crisis. 
 Boston was, at this time, the most flour- 
 Ishlnor commercial town on the conti- 
 
 o 
 
 nent. Its inhabitants had, from the 
 beginning, been foremost in asserting 
 their independence, and Insisting on the 
 sacred rights of freemen. The Parlia- 
 ment, therefore, regarded the little town 
 by the sea as the *' hotbed of sedition." 
 When tidings of the destruction of the 
 tea cargoes reached England, the 
 enraged government resolved that a 
 signal example should be made of Bos- 
 ton. 
 
 On the loth of May, 1774, the act 
 for closing the port reached the town. 
 
Gathering of the Storm, 163 
 
 This was a memorable day in the history 
 of two worlds. It was on that day that 
 Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette as- 
 cended the throne of France. The 
 young sovereigns, when they first learned 
 of the death of the old king, had fallen 
 on their knees, exclaiming, '' O, God, 
 we are too young to reign ! " 
 
 No shadow of the o^uillotine loomed 
 darkly through the rejoicings of those 
 May days ; no thought of the devoted 
 little town on the far western coast, on 
 which England's bolt had fallen so heav- 
 ily, entered the thought of monarch or 
 courtier, amid the grand inaugurals of the 
 new reign. The simple facts of history 
 are often more incredible than the wild- 
 est romance. Time was to prove that 
 the Boston Port Bill and the fall of the 
 Bourbons had an intimate connection. 
 
164 Life of George Washington, 
 
 The bill which closed the port of Bos- 
 ton, and thus doomed to destruction the 
 most flourishing commercial town on the 
 continent, roused America. Each colony 
 regarded the blow as aimed at itself. 
 The letter, containing tidings of the bill, 
 was read in the Virginia House of Bur- 
 gesses. All business was suspended. 
 A protest was made, and the ist of 
 June — the day on which Boston was to 
 be blockaded at noon — set apart as a 
 day of humiliation, fasting, and prayer. 
 
 The next morning, when the Bur- 
 gesses re-assembled. Lord Dunmore, the 
 governor of the colony, dissolved the 
 House. The members immediately re- 
 paired to the old Raleigh Tavern, only 
 a few paces from the Capitol. Under the 
 old historic roof various memorable res- 
 olutions were passed. But the one 
 
Gathering of the Storm. 165 
 
 which proposed that the deputies of 
 the colonies should meet annually in 
 General Congress overshadows in im- 
 portance every other. 
 
 On the 1st of June, 1774, Washing- 
 ton, as his diary states, " fasted rigor- 
 ously and attended the services of his 
 church." It was the day when the 
 British vessels of war rode Mp at noon 
 and blockaded the port. The Virginia 
 gentleman who that day was fasting for 
 Boston, was to prove a little later that 
 he could also fight for her. 
 
 The progress of events only confirmed 
 the worst fears of every lover of his 
 country. It was evident that T^ngland 
 was bent, on crushing the liberties of 
 America. But while, during the sum- 
 mer, the busy wharves of Boston grew 
 silent under tlie black shadow of the 
 
1 66 Life of George Washington. 
 
 war-ships, and ruin crept slowly along 
 the quaint, narrow streets that, a little 
 while before, had been humming with life 
 and prosperity, a new spirit was awak- 
 ening throughout the land — a spirit that 
 was destined to sweep everything before 
 it. No man could, of course, forecast 
 the hour of the Revolution, or discern 
 what form' it would take at the begin- 
 ning. But the approach of that mighty 
 storm which was to rend two nations 
 apart, was felt in the air during all the 
 summer of 1774 — the last peaceful one 
 which America was to know for years. 
 
 A new mood was coming over the 
 people who inhabited the Atlantic sea- 
 board of America — the mood which 
 makes heroes of the men it possesses. 
 The country did not want leaders at 
 this time. The wisest heads and the 
 
Gathering of the Storm. 167 
 
 truest hearts of the nation came to her 
 aid. Frequent meetings gave expression 
 to the feehng of common danger, to the 
 sense of common duty. Fresh meas- 
 ures of coercion and oppression only 
 added fresh fuel to the popular resent- 
 ment. The question at issue between 
 England and America was fast becom- 
 inpf a life and death one to the colo- 
 nists. Freedom and slavery hung in 
 the balance for them and their pos- 
 terity. 
 
 Washington was in the thick of affairs 
 that summer. His position in his own 
 county, the weight of his character and 
 his word, made his example of immense 
 consequence at this crisis. The meet- 
 ings and conventions at which he was 
 chairman prove, as all his speeches and 
 letters do, his ardent sympathy with the 
 
1 68 Life of George Washington, 
 
 popular cause. When the hour of trial 
 came, nobody could doubt where It would 
 find him. 
 
 Yet his calm, sagacious mind could 
 not deceive him as to the tremendous 
 odds against his country, if it ever came 
 to a war with England. Could America, 
 he must often have questioned, send out 
 her half-trained yeomen and militia to 
 do battle with the most powerful foe in 
 the world ? The armies of Great Brit- 
 ain were flushed with the maofnificent 
 victories they had recently won under 
 the administration of Pitt. Washineton 
 knew perfectly the scorn with which 
 those seasoned veterans would regard 
 the raw levies of the provinces. But 
 the Old French War had been a rare 
 training-school for the colonial soldiers. 
 It had shown them the strength and 
 
GatheiHitg of the Stor7n, 169 
 
 resources of their country; the weak 
 points in the army of any enemy who 
 should meet them on their native soil. 
 Washington, too, had an unfaltering- 
 conviction of the right of his cause. It 
 was this conviction which lit up these 
 hours of doubt and anxiety with hope 
 and courage. He knew it was not the 
 part of a patriot to despair, so long as 
 there was a country to be defended, a 
 God of battles to appeal to. 
 
 Washington had been appointed a 
 delegate to the General Congress 
 which had been agreed on in the old 
 Raleigh Tavern, on the day when 
 Lord Dunmore dissolved the House of 
 Burgesses. The congress met, the 
 ^ 5th of September, in Carpenter's Hall, 
 in Philadelphia. The meeting was held 
 with closed doors. It was the most mo- 
 
i7o Life of George Washington, 
 
 mentous assembly that had ever gath- 
 ered on the Western Continent. An 
 eloquent writer says of this congress : 
 ** The most eloquent men of the various 
 colonies were now for the first time 
 brought together. They were known to 
 each other by fame, but were personally 
 strangers. The object which had called 
 them together was of incalculable mag- 
 nitude. The happiness of no less than 
 three millions of people, with that of all 
 their posterity, was staked on the wis- 
 dom and energy of their councils." 
 
 The session of that first congress 
 lasted fifty-one days. No record of the 
 speeches exists. But all the great ques- 
 tions which had brouo[-ht them too^ether 
 were discussed by men who realized the 
 tremendous interests with which they 
 had been charged. The Stamp Act, the 
 
Gathering of the Storm. 171 
 
 Tea Tax, the Act for Quartering Troops, 
 the Boston Port Bill, and various other 
 illegal and oppressive measures of Great 
 Britain came up for discussion and con- 
 demnation before an assembly com- 
 posed of the wisest brains and noblest 
 hearts in America. *'To these grievous 
 acts and measures," solemnly declared the 
 small body of men in the old hall of the 
 Quaker town, "America cannot submit.'* 
 
 The spirit of their resolutions breathed 
 the temper of patriots and freemen. But 
 the members proved that the old loyal 
 feeling was not extinct, by a motion "to 
 prepare a loyal address to his majesty." 
 
 That first Congress did its great work 
 and closed. In the shortening autumn 
 days Washington rode down to Mount 
 Vernon. His heart must have been 
 heavy. The scenes in which he had 
 
172 Life of George Washington, 
 
 just been an actor had aroused all his 
 deep patriotism. His own future and 
 that of his country must have loomed 
 darkly before him. There was every 
 reason now to believe that England was 
 bent on driving her colonies to desper- 
 ation. In that case, Washington had 
 long settled with himself what supreme 
 call he must obey. Yet the thought of 
 leaving his beloved home, and the wife 
 whose heart had been so lately torn with 
 grief, must have cost him many a cruel 
 moment. 
 
 During the winter that followed, one 
 feeling and one purpose gained strength 
 throughout the country. Military meas- 
 ures — hitherto confined to New England 
 — were rapidly adopted by all the 
 colonies. While the men-of-war rode 
 in Boston Harbor, and General Gage, 
 
Gathering of the Storm, 173 
 
 with his British veterans, encamped on 
 the Common, the drum-beat, that herald 
 of war, began to be heard in the mid- 
 dle and southern provinces. Virginia 
 was not backward. Independent com- 
 panies were formed on her soil, and 
 their officers constantly repaired to 
 Washington for military instruction. 
 The old, peaceful days had passed for 
 Mount Vernon. A silence had settled 
 upon gay Belvoir, for its proprietor had 
 returned to England — a gloom had 
 gathered over Mount Vernon. As 
 Washington wandered among the an- 
 cient woodlands that winter, the winds 
 that moaned among the leafless 
 branches must have had a mournful 
 prophecy to his ear and heart. But 
 that season was too full of varied activ- 
 ities and demands to afford much time 
 
174 L^f^ ^f George Washington, 
 
 for solitary reflection. He was often 
 absent from home — summoned away to 
 musters and reviews. Mount Vernon 
 itself began to assume a military aspect 
 as the companies met there to drill. 
 All this must have seemed a good deal 
 like the old fencing days of Washing- 
 ton's youth. 
 
 The congress, in its petition to 
 George III., had solemnly reminded 
 him, that "from our sovereign there 
 can be but one appeal." Deeds, when 
 the worst came, would be sure to fol- 
 low such words. But all prayers and 
 warnings were disregarded. Contempt 
 for the character of the colonists, and 
 a fatal ignorance of their temper, pre- 
 vailed in English counsels ; and the 
 obstinate king and the subservient 
 minister went their own blind way. 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 
 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. 
 
 Nobody could, of course, foresee, in 
 those days which immediately preceded 
 the opening of the Revolution, where 
 the storm would burst. Yet nobody 
 was, perhaps, surprised that it first 
 broke in New England. Every child 
 can repeat the date of the pleasant 
 April morning when '' the shot was 
 fired that was heard round the world ; " 
 and the long seven years' drama of the 
 Revolution opened with the firing at 
 Lexington and the fight at Concord. 
 
 The news of that fight shook the 
 continent like an earthquake. As 
 
176 Life of George Washington, 
 
 breathless couriers carried the tale 
 through the land, the popular feeling, 
 like a mounting wave, swept every col- 
 ony into the Revolution. When the 
 news reached Virginia, a cry rang 
 through the ancient province, that 
 her liberties, like Massachusetts', were 
 doomed! There was a general spring- 
 ing to arms. All eyes were now turned 
 to Washington. He was everywhere 
 regarded as the one best fitted to take 
 command of the American forces. 
 
 Three weeks after the battle of Con- 
 cord the second General Congress met 
 in Philadelphia. Some of its members 
 still shrank from severing the last bond 
 which united them with Great Britain ; 
 and, even at that late hour, voices 
 pleaded that a final petition should be 
 sent to the government. It is a signifi- 
 
WHITE HOUSE. 
 
The ATnerican Revohition. 177 
 
 cant fact that Washington approved of 
 this motion. 
 
 But the ''humble and dutiful petition 
 to the king" encountered eloquent op- 
 position. It was felt that the hour for 
 appeals had passed, and that the one 
 for action had come. John Adams, 
 the delegate from Massachusetts, whose 
 voice had been so powerful in the first 
 congress, now strongly opposed any 
 further attempt at reconciliation, and it 
 was at last abandoned as hopeless. 
 
 A League was now formed, which, 
 among other powers, vested in Congress 
 the right to declare war or peace. 
 When Georofla — doubtful for awhile — 
 joined the confederacy it extended from 
 Nova Scotia to Florida. 
 
 That small body of delegates assem- 
 bled in the old Quaker City on the 
 12 
 
178 Life of George Washington, 
 
 threshold of the summer of 1775 had 
 an almost superhuman task laid upon 
 them. After the formation of the 
 League, which virtually constituted a 
 nation, the first question that faced it 
 was the raising and equipping an 
 army. 
 
 It must have been a breathless mo- 
 ment when John Adams rose in the 
 Congress, and moved that George 
 Washington, of Virginia, be appointed 
 Commander-in-Chief of the Colonial 
 Forces. When his name was brought 
 to the front, Washington sprang up 
 and darted into the library. The 
 old modesty, which, when he was a 
 young member of the Virginia House 
 of Burofesses, left him standinof blushinof 
 and speechless among his peers, had 
 not been overcome by sixteen years of 
 
The American Revolution. 179 
 
 public life. In a few days, however, 
 the appointment was made. Washing- 
 ton's sense of what he owed his coun- 
 try would not admit of his declining it. 
 But in the solemn moment of accepting 
 those vast, untried responsibilities, he 
 said a few words as sincere as his own 
 character : " I beg it may be remem- 
 bered by every gentleman in the room 
 that I this day declare, with the ut- 
 most sincerity, I do not think myself 
 equal to the command I am honored 
 with." 
 
 It was characteristic of him, too, that 
 he absolutely declined to accept any 
 salary for his services. 
 
 It is doubtful whether, at the open- 
 ing of the Revolution, any man made so 
 great sacrifices as George Washington. 
 To realize their extent, it must be re- 
 
i8o L^fc^ of Geo7'ge Washmgton, 
 
 membered that he left a paradise behind 
 him when he went from Mount Vernon. 
 The fiery spirit of his youth had long 
 been laid to rest. The thick of the bat- 
 tle had no charms for him now. He 
 had no military ambitions to gratify, no 
 personal interests to serve. The ques- 
 tions at issue between England and 
 America did not vitally affect his own 
 fortunes. He had every reason to be- 
 lieve, had he continued loyal to the 
 government, that the happy, prosperous 
 years of the past might still stretch far 
 into his future. His calm and reasona- 
 ble mind could never be the victim of 
 illusions. He must have foreseen all 
 the possibilities of defeat. In those 
 sterner times, he knew what fate might 
 await the leader of rebel armies. He 
 would not hide from himself the 
 
The American Revolution. i8i 
 
 chances of the prisoner's doom or the 
 traitor's death. 
 
 At the awful moment when he looked 
 these things in the face, George Wash- 
 ington must speak for himself. *' It is 
 my full intention, if needful," he wrote 
 to his brother, *'to devote life and fort- 
 une to the cause." 
 
 At this time his deepest solicitude 
 was for the wife whom he would leave 
 lonely and anxious at Mount Ver- 
 non. The letter of manly tenderness 
 which he wrote her on setting out for 
 the camp was one certain to appeal to 
 the heart and mind of a high-souled 
 woman. In that letter something of the 
 fervor of a young lover mingled with the 
 solemn temper of the hero. 
 
 He had previously taken every care 
 for his mother. He had removed her 
 
1 82 Life of George Washington. 
 
 from her country home to Fredericks- 
 burg, where she could remain In the 
 vicinity of friends, and yet be remote 
 from danger. The small dwelling of 
 one upright story, where the mother of 
 the deliverer of his country passed the 
 remainder of her days, stood on one of 
 the great northern and southern high- 
 ways. Couriers constantly passed that 
 simple home. One would bring news of 
 glorious triumphs, and another would 
 follow with stories of loss and disaster. 
 But the mother of Washington preserved 
 through all changes of fortune the digni- 
 fied serenity so characteristic of her. 
 
 The Commander-in-Chief received his 
 commission on the 20th of June, 1775. 
 The day after, he set out from Philadel- 
 phia for the army. 
 
 Less than twenty miles from the city, 
 
The American Revolution, 183 
 
 a courier, spurring in hot haste, met the 
 brilHant little cavalcade that was escort- 
 in or Washinofton throuofh the State, with 
 tidinofs of the Battle of Bunker Hill. 
 The general's first eager question, 
 ** How did the militia stand fire?" 
 shows the secret anxiety which the sol- 
 dier had carried all this time. He 
 knew that the raw New England levies 
 had undergone a terrible test. They 
 had met the British veterans in fair 
 fio^ht for the first time. 
 
 After hearinof the courier's account of 
 the fight, he exclaimed, ''The liberties 
 of the country are safe ! " 
 
 One seems almost to hear that tone 
 of confident exultation ringing down 
 through more than a century. 
 
 Those about the general remarked 
 that a weight of doubt and anxiety 
 
184 Life of George Washington, 
 
 seemed to have been lifted from his 
 soul. 
 
 On the 3d of July, George Washing- 
 ton took command of the armies at 
 Cambridge — a command which he de- 
 voutly hoped would close with the next 
 autumn, but which he was destined to 
 hold for the next eight years. 
 
 The shouts of the soldiers assembled 
 to welcome him, and the thunders of 
 artillery, first gave warning to the en- 
 emy, besieged in Boston, that the 
 Commander-in-Chief of the American 
 Forces — or, as they would have con- 
 temptuously termed them, the muster 
 of rebels — was in camp. 
 
 The tall figure, the noble face, the 
 dignified presence of the stately Vir- 
 ginian, must have been a sight never to 
 be forgotten by the spectators, as he 
 
The American Revolution, 185 
 
 wheeled his horse and drew his sword 
 under that elm whose ancient branches 
 still battle with the winter storms, and 
 grow green with the May. Every eye 
 in the camp, and among the vast throng 
 which had crowded into Cambridore, 
 gazed with awed admiration on the new 
 general. He was in the prime of his 
 manhood — forty-three at that time — and 
 just the ideal of a soldier in looks and 
 bearing. All who met Washington con- 
 cur in ascribing to him a singular maj- 
 esty of presence. It impressed those 
 who had been all their lives familiar 
 with courts. Lafayette, before his intro- 
 duction, instantly distinguished Washing- 
 ton amid the group of American officers 
 about him. 
 
 A strange scene met the eyes of the 
 new Commander-in-Chief that July morn- 
 
i86 Life of George Washington. 
 
 ing. He was not familiar with New 
 Enorland life and habits. He had been 
 brought up in an atmosphere of social 
 amenities and refinements. His own 
 temperament inclined him to a careful 
 observance of these. Something that 
 was noblest and finest in the old cava- 
 liers of his race was in their descend- 
 ant, who, that morning at Cambridge, 
 gazed astonished on the rude encamp- 
 ment of yeomanry. For he knew those 
 rustic, undisciplined, ill-appointed troops 
 had just matched their strength with 
 the proudest army and navy of the 
 world. 
 
CHAPTER XII.' 
 
 THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF. 
 
 No general of ancient or modern 
 times was probably ever more amazed 
 than was George Washington at sight 
 of the forces of which he had taken 
 command. The men had left their 
 plows, seized their firelocks, and 
 marched to the scene of action at the 
 call of their country. The tents must 
 have been a sight for laughter and 
 tears. They were made of sail-cloth or 
 stone, of birches or boards, of turf or 
 brush, as suited the resources and 
 tastes of the occupants. The soldiers 
 were destitute of arms, uniforms, stores 
 — every equipment that an army re- 
 
1 88 Life of George Washington, 
 
 quires. They had very Imperfect Ideas 
 of military order, and were liable to 
 strongly resent any attempt to exer- 
 cise necessary discipline. They were 
 bound together by a common love of 
 their country, a common sense of her 
 wrongs, and by the wrath of freemen 
 against the proud and powerful foe who 
 was bent on destroying their liberties. 
 
 In this temper of the yeoman soldiery 
 lay the strength of the army, the hope 
 of America. The hearts that throbbed 
 under those homespun coats burned 
 with an undying patriotism ; the hands, 
 brown as the furrows they had been 
 tilling, were eager to cross swords 
 again with the enemy that held com- 
 mand of Boston, and rode in insolent 
 triumph in the harbor. 
 
 The ride which Washington took that 
 
The Commander-in-Chief, 189 
 
 summer morning along the American 
 lines, stretching weak and irregular 
 from Winter Hill to Dorchester Neck, 
 was not calculated to inspire the new 
 chief with more sanguine hopes than 
 the sight of the encampment at Cam- 
 bridge. That first day of command 
 must have occasioned him the keenest 
 disappointment. The numbers and 
 equipment of the American forces had 
 been greatly exaggerated to him. 
 
 At the summit of Prospect Hill 
 Washington drew rein, and gazed on 
 the British encampment that lay before 
 him. He saw the flag to whose service 
 he had given the pride and strength of 
 his youth. The folds floated in triumph 
 from the summit of Bunker Hill, and 
 from the ships-of-the-line in the harbor. 
 He must have recalled the day — now 
 
190 Life of George Washington. 
 
 more than sixteen years ago — when he 
 planted that standard on the smoking 
 ruins of Fort Duquesne. Under that 
 flag now lay an army perfectly equipped 
 and admirably disciplined. Under him 
 was assembled a motley force of about 
 fourteen thousand levies, full of the 
 high, free spirit they had brought from 
 their native hills, and quite ready to 
 rebel or desert at any attempt to main- 
 tain military discipline. 
 
 As Washington gazed once more on 
 the wide-mouthed chimneys and steep- 
 roofed houses of Boston, he must have 
 recalled, too, that time when, with his 
 gay young companions, he clattered 
 into the narrow streets of the humming 
 little seaport. Those bustling streets 
 were silent now. The piers were rot- 
 ting about the wharves that had been 
 
The Commander-in-Chief, 191 
 
 so full of varied, busy life. England 
 had set her iron heel on all the activ- 
 ity and industry of the old days. 
 
 The British had taken possession of 
 Boston to find themselves blockaded 
 there by the American forces. These 
 were distributed in a long, semicircular 
 line, extending eight or nine miles. 
 The farthest northern post lay at Win- 
 ter Hill; the most southern, at Roxbury 
 and Dorchester Neck. 
 
 As Washington made his first survey 
 that summer morning ; as his keenly 
 observant eyes took in the weak points 
 in the long, straggling American lines, 
 he must have been astonished that such 
 an army could hold Gage and his vet- 
 erans blockaded in Boston for a day. 
 
 The first care of the general was, of 
 course, to improve and strengthen the 
 
192 Life of George Washington. 
 
 defenses of the camp. The whole army 
 soon gave evidence of a vigorous and 
 efficient command. As soon as the 
 main forts were strengthened by addi- 
 tional works, and something like mili- 
 tary order was established, Washington 
 grew eager to draw the enemy out of 
 Boston. He longed to bring his yeo- 
 man soldiery once more face to face 
 with Gage's seasoned troops ; but the en- 
 emy did not venture on an engagement. 
 
 The summer, the autumn, the winter 
 — with more than the usual rigor of a 
 New England winter — wore away, and 
 still the long, blockading cordon kept 
 the British closely imprisoned in Bos- 
 ton. The town, unable to break 
 through the besieging lines and obtain 
 supplies from the country around, be- 
 gan to suffer severely. 
 
The Commander-in-Chief. 193 
 
 That winter was full of new anxieties, 
 vexations, and trials for Washington. 
 There were times, during those first 
 months of command, when he bitterly 
 regretted having assumed it. It is not 
 singular that, amid such untried circum- 
 stances and responsibilities, even his 
 patience sometimes gave out. One of 
 his deepest annoyances was the general 
 insubordination of the troops. Washing- 
 ton at first misunderstood the tempera- 
 ment and character of the New Enofland 
 soldier. The latter's native independ- 
 ence, his openly expressed contempt for 
 rules and forms, shocked one who, by 
 nature and education, had a profound 
 regard for military rank and etiquette. 
 It took some time, and some bitter ex- 
 perience, for the General and the troops 
 
 under him to learn and appreciate the 
 
 13 
 
194 L^f^ of George Washington, 
 
 sterling qualities, the splendid staying 
 power, of each other. 
 
 As one reads the history of those 
 months, they seem more incredible than 
 the wildest romance. Mistake and inef- 
 ficiency, delay and parsimony, In every 
 department of service, filled the prompt, 
 fiery spirited commander with amaze- 
 ment and disQfust. Under his almost 
 perfect self-command burned a fierce 
 temper. He scorned petty characters 
 and dealings, and It was at first difficult 
 for him to make due consideration for 
 ideas, habits, practices, which formed 
 the antithesis of his own. 
 
 Washlno^ton's discouraofements must 
 have seemed to culminate on the day 
 that he learned there were but thirty- 
 two barrels of powder in camp. With 
 this amount of ammunition he was actu- 
 
The Commander-in- Chief, 1 9 5 
 
 ally besieging the British army in Bos- 
 ton ! At the time of his taking the 
 command, the Committee of Supplies 
 had made a return of three hundred 
 barrels. This instance affords a per- 
 fect illustration of the careless manage- 
 ment of military affairs, which so se- 
 verely tried Washington's soul at that 
 period. He lost no time in obtain- 
 ing fresh supplies. Happily, the enemy 
 made no sortie at this critical mo- 
 ment. Washington dispatched agents to 
 all quarters for lead and powder. No 
 quantity, however small, was to be re- 
 jected when the need was so imminent. 
 After immense exertions the American 
 camp was supplied with fresh ammunition. 
 In November Mrs. Washington joined 
 her husband at the headquarters which 
 had been provided for him in Cam- 
 
196 Life of George Washington, 
 
 bridge. She had made the long jour- 
 ney from Mount Vernon in her own 
 private carriage. There had been more 
 or less fear that the beautiful home of 
 the General of the rebel armies would 
 be marked out as an especial object of 
 British vengeance. Mrs. Washington, 
 however, had not shared this alarm, and 
 had declined the guard which * her 
 friends had offered when they advised 
 her to flee for safety. Washington him- 
 self did not believe she was in any 
 peril ; but he urged her to come to 
 him ; and, as we read of her long, slow 
 journey, with the escorts and guards 
 of honor, and the ceremonious recep- 
 tions that awaited her along the route, 
 we are reminded of the splendid prog- 
 ress of queens, in ancient times, through 
 their dominions. 
 
The Commander-m- Chief. 197 
 
 The presence of Mrs. Washington at 
 headquarters was a great relief to her 
 husband. Petty rivalries and jealousies 
 there had already added to his discom- 
 fort. His wife presided in her new 
 sphere with her usual grace and dig- 
 nity, and gave to the ancient Cam- 
 bridore mansion somethinor of the home 
 atmosphere of Mount Vernon. 
 
 During the whole of that winter the 
 wonder was — a wonder which has never 
 been fully explained — why the enemy, 
 the very flower of the British army, did 
 not sally in force from the town, break 
 through the weak besieging lines, and 
 carry defeat and dismay into the ranks 
 of the rebels. 
 
 But all those months the war-ships 
 rode in the harbor, the tramp of the 
 red-coats echoed throuofh the narrow 
 
iqB Life of George Washington. 
 
 streets, shaded by the gabled, steep- 
 roofed houses, and the militia still held 
 their lines unbroken from Winter Hill 
 to Dorchester Neck. 
 
 We all know how the monotony of 
 the siege was broken up at last. On 
 that cold March night of 1776, when 
 Washington intrenched himself at Dor- 
 Chester Heights, he held the city of 
 Boston in his power. On the 17th the 
 memorable embarkation took place, and 
 the last sail of the British fleet disap- 
 peared from Boston Harbor. 
 
 The next day, with drums beating 
 and colors flying, and amid the joyful 
 welcomes of the people, Washington 
 entered the town he had delivered from 
 its enemies. The American General had 
 won his first victory. 
 
 It does not fall within the compass of 
 
The Commander-in-Chief. 199 
 
 this brief biography to tell the long 
 story of the Revolution. Many eloquent 
 pens have written of the Siege of Bos- 
 ton, of the masterly retreat from Long 
 Island, of the late escape at the critical 
 moment from Nev/ York, of the weary 
 winter marchings through the Jerseys, of 
 the midnight crossing of the Delaware, 
 of the victories of Trenton and Prince- 
 ton, of the huts at Morristown and the 
 unutterable miseries of Valley Forge, of 
 the defeats of Brandywine and Ger- 
 mantown, until all these were crowned 
 at last with the splendid success and 
 the final surrender before the allied 
 armies at Yorktown. Each one of these 
 scenes forms a thrilling drama. Many 
 of them live, not only in the pages of 
 history, but in the ballads of the poet 
 and on the canvas of the painter. 
 
200 Life of George Washington, 
 
 The War of the Revolution was, from 
 the beginning, a war of defense. It was 
 in the very nature of things that it 
 should be so. It afforded comparatively 
 few opportunities for brilliant deeds, and 
 for those sudden displays of great mili- 
 tary genius which dazzle the imagina- 
 tion, and make the world hold its breath. 
 The ''American Fabias " was not a title 
 which Bonaparte would have coveted. 
 We know with what contempt he spoke 
 of the Revolution to Lafayette. But the 
 man who had the power to wait, knew, 
 and was always ready when the hour 
 came for him to strike. '• It is simply 
 unfair,'' says one of his biographers, 
 "to compare Washington with those 
 great generals who figure in the pages 
 of history, and who have won their fame 
 at the head of vast armies of veteran 
 
The Commander-in-Chief, 201 
 
 troops furnished with boundless supplies. 
 Those generals did not have an army 
 to create out of raw militia. They did 
 not have an empty treasury, an un- 
 housed, half-fed, half-clothed soldiery. 
 They did not have to write, as he did. 
 In *one dark moment of the disastrous 
 campaign of 1776, that ''five hundred dol- 
 lars would be of immense service to him." 
 With veteran generals, with the flower 
 of Hessian and British troops arrayed 
 against him, he had also to contend 
 with or silently endure the jealousies 
 and underminings of his subordinates, 
 the perpetual interference of Congress 
 with his military plans, and the igno- 
 rance, incapacity, and obstinacy of those 
 to whom he was obliofed to confide the 
 execution of his orders at most critical 
 moments. 
 
202 Life of George Washington. 
 
 Between the morning fight at Concord 
 and the evacuation of New York by the 
 British troops, November 25, 1783 — the 
 last scene of the war — lay almost nine 
 years. No doubt it seemed more than 
 all the rest of their lives to our ances- 
 tors. A few days after the last scarlet 
 uniform had disappeared from the soil, a 
 scene occurred to which the pen of no 
 historian can do justice. Washington 
 took leave of his officers in the old 
 New York Tavern, near the ferry, 
 where a barge waited to convey him 
 across the Hudson to Paulus Hook. 
 That last interview, with all that it 
 meant, and all the memories that 
 crowded about the hour, overcame even 
 the great self-command of Washington. 
 He broke down like a child. He gazed 
 through blinding tears on the faces of 
 
The Commander-in-Chief, 203 
 
 the men who had shared with him un- 
 speakable toils, hardships, and perils. 
 As each officer approached, he silently 
 kissed the brown, bearded face with 
 more than a brother's tenderness. 
 
 Not a word was spoken. The officers 
 followed that beloved, stately figure as 
 it passed on foot through a corps of 
 light infantry to the ferry. When he 
 arrived there, Washington entered the 
 barge, removed his hat, and waved a 
 silent adieu. It requires very little effort 
 of imagination to see the tall figure 
 standing there, the grave, benignant 
 face, the' gray hair waving in the au- 
 tumn wind, and the dark barge moving 
 slowly away over the Hudson. 
 
 On the summer morning when he 
 took command of the American army 
 under the elm at Cambridge, Washing- 
 
204 Life of George Washington, 
 
 ton was in the prime of his years. But 
 the eight that followed had told heavily 
 on his great strength. There is some- 
 thing very touching in the manner with 
 which he apologized to the soldiers at 
 Newburg for using glasses, when he was 
 compelled to read a document in their 
 presence. " I am getting to be an old 
 man," he said. This was, it appears, 
 the way in which he began to regard 
 himself, though he had not, in reality, 
 yet crossed his fifty-second birthday. 
 
 . Nineteen days after the Commander- 
 in-Chief had parted with his officers in 
 New York, another memorable scene 
 took place. This was at Annapolis, 
 when, with a few simple and noble 
 words, Washington surrendered his com- 
 mand to Congress, and asked permission 
 to retire from the service of his country. 
 
The Commander-in-Chief. 205 
 
 A large audience witnessed that event 
 with breathless interest. The President 
 of Congress, who accepted the resigna- 
 tion, closed his address with a prophecy: 
 "■ The glory of your virtues will descend 
 to remotest generations ! " 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 THE PEACE. 
 
 The next day Washington started for 
 his beloved Mount Vernon. He reached 
 it that niofht. It was Christmas Eve. 
 Perhaps all that had gone before did 
 not seem too heavy a price to pay for 
 the rest and joy with which he kept the 
 ancient holiday under his own roof-tree ; 
 while he thought how a free nation, for 
 the first time, could keep the festival 
 with him. 
 
 He took up the old life with the old 
 zest. The highest ambition of the man 
 who had won the liberties of America 
 was, to use his own grandly simple 
 
The Peace. 207 
 
 [ 
 
 f 
 
 words, ''to be a farmer and live an 
 honest man." 
 
 He resumed his old ways of living, 
 although, during the winter of unusual 
 rigor which followed his return, he was 
 literally ''snow-bound" at Mount Ver- 
 non. His military habits still clung to 
 him, and on awakening in the morning 
 he would find himself listeninof for the 
 reveille of the camp. But with the re- 
 turn of spring he was engrossed with 
 the management of his estate. This 
 demanded all his time and energies, as 
 Mount Vernon showed, in almost every 
 department, the long absence of its 
 proprietor. Washington set himself at 
 work to repair the injuries his domain 
 had undergone, to improve the buildings, 
 and to beautify the grounds. He had 
 great enjoyment in laying these out 
 
2o8 Life of George Washington. 
 
 with ornamental shrubs and hedges, in 
 traihng ivies, and planting holly bushes. 
 He also had much delight in setting 
 out trees, of which he was almost as 
 great a lover — in a different way — as 
 Wordsworth. 
 
 The days seem to wear again the 
 idyllic charm of his youth. He could 
 not have felt that he was an old man, as he 
 rode in the mornings, still full of health 
 and vigor, about Mount Vernon. 
 
 But he had to pay the price of his 
 fame. The world would not leave the 
 deliverer of America alone in his con- 
 genial retirement. A constant stream 
 of guests now flowed to his door. 
 They consumed his time and were a 
 heavy tax on his resources, which had 
 been seriously strained during the war. 
 Washington's guests met with the sim- 
 
The Peace, 209 
 
 pie, dignified courtesy characteristic of 
 their host. Yet there is a touch of his 
 native shrewd humor in his manner 
 of alludinor to those who now crowded 
 his board. "They say," he writes, 
 '* they come out of respect to me. 
 Would not the word curiosity do as 
 well ? " 
 
 During the three years which fol- 
 lowed the close of the Revolution — 
 years which Washington spent under 
 his own roof — he was not free from 
 anxieties. His most earnest thought 
 was still for his country. In his retire- 
 ment he watched the progress of her 
 affairs with profound solicitude. There 
 was much in the condition of America 
 to give him intense anxiety. The 
 young nation had entered on an ex- 
 periment so vast that her wisest states- 
 14 
 
2IO Life of George Washington, 
 
 men might well recoil at the task be- 
 fore them. Everything was tentative in 
 the organization and policy of the new 
 government. The "Thirteen States" 
 were no longer bound together by the 
 pressure of a common peril. The tie 
 that had held them in war proved too 
 feeble for peace. The Confederacy 
 framed by the second congress, and 
 from which so much was hoped for 
 America and for humanity, proved, in 
 its practical workings, a failure. 
 
 This became so apparent at last, and 
 the condition of affairs grew so disas- 
 trous, that it became evident that the 
 only salvation of the country was in a 
 change of government. A convention, 
 composed of delegates from all. the 
 States, was summoned to meet in Phil- 
 adelphia. To that famous convention 
 
The Peace. 2 1 1 
 
 the United States of America owe their 
 Constitution. 
 
 The greatest man in the nation would 
 be certain to be required at this crisis. 
 Every eye was turned to Mount Ver- 
 non. Virginia placed him at the head 
 of the delecrates whom she sent to the 
 convention. Washington accepted the 
 nomination with extreme reluctance, but 
 the dangers of the time left him no 
 choice. He repaired to Philadelphia, to 
 find himself once more in the thick of 
 public life. On the first sitting of the 
 convention, May 25, 1788, he was 
 unanimously appointed president. 
 
 The long, memorable summer passed 
 away. Washington's presence and in- 
 fluence were, no doubt, a controlling 
 power in all the measures of that con- 
 vention. In September the great work 
 
212 Life of George Washington. 
 
 was finished, and the Constitution was 
 ofiven to the world. 
 
 The course of affairs now only per- 
 mitted him a brief return to his home. 
 In the following spring he was elected 
 President of the United States. 
 
 That high office had no attractions 
 for him ; but his friends spared no 
 argument or entreaties to induce him 
 to accept it. Their appeals to his sense 
 of duty were at last crowned with suc- 
 cess, and he took on his waxing years 
 and waning strength the heavy burden 
 which inhered in the title. 
 
 Before he set out for New York, then 
 the seat of government, he visited his 
 mother in her simple home at Freder- 
 icksburg. The meeting must have been 
 full of tender, solemn feeling for both. 
 She was very proud of her illustrious 
 
The Peace. 213 
 
 son, but she never manifested any ela- 
 tion over his success. She was an in- 
 vaHd af the time, and that meeting 
 proved their last one. 
 
 Washington's journey to New York 
 was like the progress of a beloved sov- 
 ereign throuofh his dominions. Wher- 
 ever he appeared the bells rang, the 
 cannon roared, and crowds thronged 
 the highways with welcoming huzzas. 
 
 But no scene in the eventful journey 
 made so deep an impression as the one 
 at Trenton, where the historic ** tri- 
 umphal arch " spanned the bridge. It 
 was a sunny afternoon when Washing- 
 ton, on the way to his inauguration, 
 reached the banks of the Delaware. 
 The terrible night, twelve years before, 
 when, in the darkest moment of his 
 country's fortunes, he crossed the river 
 
214 Life of George Washington. 
 
 amid the bitter cold, the blinding snow, 
 the drifting ice, must have risen before 
 him. And now crowds of fair women 
 had gathered in the pleasant April 
 afternoon, to honor the Father of his 
 Country. Young girls, dressed in 
 white, and lovely as the garlands that 
 crowned them, strewed flowers and sang 
 -^TH^g^ before him. Those two scenes 
 on the Delaware — the wild, black mid- 
 night, with its storming winds and 
 blinding snows, and the smiling spring 
 day, with the shouting crowds and the 
 joyous, flower-decked maidens — must 
 have hung forever afterward, cornpanion 
 pieces, in his memory. 
 
 The inauguration took place in New 
 York on the last day of April, 1789. 
 Nothing of the kind had ever occurred 
 in America. The scene was one of 
 
The Peace, 215 
 
 breathless Interest to the vast crowds 
 who witnessed It. It was a solemn mo- 
 ment for the country, when her victori- 
 ous general, who, at the close of the 
 war, had, with stern Indignation, refused 
 the crown his army was eager to place 
 on his head, came out on the balcony, 
 laid his hand, on the Bible and took his 
 oath of office. 
 
 Streets and windows and roofs of 
 houses were crowded with spectators. 
 Washington wore, the chronicles tell us, 
 " a full suit of dark brown cloth of 
 American manufacture, with a steel- 
 hllted dress-sword, white silk stockings, 
 and silver shoe-buckles." As we read 
 this, we are reminded that it all hap- 
 pened a hundred years ago. When the 
 oath was spoken, the folds of a flag 
 suddenly floated from the great cupola. 
 
2i6 Life of George Waslmigton. 
 
 At that signal, the artillery thundered 
 from the battery, and George Wash- 
 ington was President of the United 
 States. 
 
 The great soldier had now entered 
 upon a new field. It remained to be 
 proved whether those qualities which 
 had shone so conspicuous in the camp, 
 would be equally successful in the cabi- 
 net. Difficulties surrounded the new 
 President. A system of government 
 was on its trial. Washington had no 
 precedents, no traditions, to guide him. 
 The new Constitution had encountered 
 the most vehement opposition, and some 
 of the States had reluctantly, and with 
 very small majorities, consented to ac- 
 cept it. 
 
THE. SWORD AND 
 THE STAFF. 
 
 WASHINGTON'S G(JLD WATCH. 
 
 Washington's last 
 
 WATCH SEAL. 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED 
 STATES. 
 
 All sorts of new duties and relations 
 pressed upon the President. Not the 
 smallest of these were the social ones. 
 At the beginning, as was to be ex- 
 pected, crowds of company made terri- 
 ble inroads upon the precious time 
 which was needed for public affairs. 
 
 The arrival of Mrs. Washlnorton was 
 
 o 
 
 a great relief at this juncture. She 
 came to share the honors and cares of 
 her husband's new position, as she had 
 gone before to the hardships of the 
 camp, to the miseries of Valley Forge. 
 
2i8 Life of George Washington, 
 
 She used often to say that ** It had 
 been her fortune to hear the first can- 
 non at the opening, and the last at the 
 closing, of the campaign." 
 
 The position on which she entered 
 now as the first lady of the nation, as 
 the representative of American woman- 
 hood, was a wholly novel one, and must 
 have had many trials and embarrass- 
 ments for the wife of our first Presi- 
 dent. It Is not unlikely that she some- 
 times sighed, amid her new dignities, for 
 the old rough camp times, with all their 
 limitations and makeshifts. There is 
 somethlnof slofnificant in her habit of 
 alluding to her days of public ceremo- 
 nials as '' lost days." 
 
 But Martha Washington was equal to 
 the occasion, whether that summoned 
 her to the soldier's hut or the Presi- 
 
The First President, 219 
 
 dent's home. Some simple, noble words 
 which she wrote in New York, in the 
 winter of 1 789, deserve a place here. 
 There is the ring of a true woman's 
 feeling in every line: 
 
 ** I am still determined to be cheerful 
 and happy in whatever situation I may 
 be ; for I have also learned from expe- 
 rience that the greater part of our hap- 
 piness or misery depends on our dispo- 
 sitions and not on our circumstances. 
 We carry the seeds of the one or the 
 other about with us, wherever we go." 
 
 The wife who could write such words, 
 and live them, must have been a source 
 of unspeakable strength and comfort to 
 her husband amid all his various public 
 service, at the head of armies or as the 
 chief of the nation. 
 
 It is not surprising that a great habit 
 
2 20 Life of George Washington, 
 
 of absent-mindedness grew upon Wash- 
 ington. He was not always aware when 
 his wife addressed him. A little story- 
 has survived, which happily illustrates 
 their domestic relations. When the wife 
 found her husband in one of his fits of 
 abstraction, and wished to arrest his at- 
 tention, it became her habit to take 
 hold of one of his coat buttons. This 
 action never failed to arouse him. He 
 would stand still, giving her his undi- 
 vided attention, a pleased, tender look 
 in his eyes, as he gazed down on the 
 face and listened to the voice that was 
 sweetest to him on earth. 
 
 During the first summer of his admin- 
 istration the President had a severe ill- 
 ness. It lasted six weeks. His oak- 
 and-iron constitution at last triumphed 
 over it. But it is doubtful whether his 
 
The First President, ^ 221 
 
 health was not permanently shaken at 
 this time. 
 
 The multitude of questions which 
 faced him on his recovery was enough 
 to perplex the wisest, most far-seeing 
 statesman. The young republic, at 
 whose head he stood, saw its finances 
 impoverished, its frontiers insecure, its 
 foreign commerce in a most disastrous 
 condition. 
 
 Washington faced the situation with 
 the old couraofe of the soldier. He 
 formed his Cabinet, he exerted all his 
 influence to allay the jealousies of par- 
 ties, the dissensions of Congress — for 
 the tomahawk, buried for awhile, was at 
 its old work amonof the northwestern 
 settlements. 
 
 It would require volumes to furnish 
 an adequate history of the four years 
 
22 2 Life of George Washington. 
 
 of Washinor-ton's first administration. 
 
 o 
 
 And while he was in the thick of the 
 struofSfle, and p^rowinof old there, the 
 harvests were ripening in the pleasant 
 Virginia summers about Mount Vernon, 
 and he was looking to the close of 
 those four years' service with something 
 of the eager longing of a prisoner to 
 the day of his release. 
 
 But his anticipations were not to be 
 realized. His country made her supreme 
 voice heard again. She demanded, in 
 the name of her new liberties and her 
 present perils, the re-election of her 
 first President. After a bitter conflict 
 with himself, Washington again bowed 
 his head to the yoke, and consented to 
 retain his office for another four years. 
 ^ These were crowded for him with 
 great and unlooked-for events. The 
 
The First President, 223 
 
 most tremendous was the French Rev- 
 olution. That mighty upheaval of all 
 the social, political, and religious tradi- 
 tions of centuries not only convulsed 
 Europe, but made a powerful vibration 
 on our own shores. It was widely 
 insisted that the American Revolution 
 had paved the way for the French one. 
 No one could question that the former 
 had had an Immense influence on the 
 latter. We were bound to France by 
 many grateful memories and associa- 
 tions. She had acknowledored the inde- 
 
 o 
 
 pendence of and entered into a treaty 
 with the American republic, before it 
 had a recognized existence among the 
 nations. She had robbed her own scant 
 treasury to replenish our empty one. 
 Her officers had drawn their swords In 
 our cause. Her army and her navy had 
 
2 24 L^f^ of George Washington. 
 
 joined our forces and compelled the sur- 
 render of Lord Cornwallis, on the day 
 that established the independence of 
 the United States. The young Lafay- 
 ette had made himself dear to every 
 American. 
 
 The progress of the French Revolu- 
 tion had been watched with intense 
 solicitude in America. When the Bas- 
 tile fell — when the key of that ancient 
 prison-fortress had been sent by Lafay- 
 ette to Washington — one impulse thrilled 
 the heart of the nation. There was a 
 passionate sympathy for France in her 
 heroic resolve to cast off the yoke that 
 had oppressed her for ages. But as 
 months rolled on, and fresh tidings 
 crossed the sea, of the risings of the 
 mob, of the massacres of September, of 
 the beheading of the king, of the 
 
The Ft7^si President. 225 
 
 deadly work of the guillotine, the 
 wildest excitement shook America. 
 The interest in the affairs of France 
 superseded every other. Parties were 
 formed. Crowds gathered on the cor- 
 ners of the streets and talked the Red 
 Republicanism which the fierce mobs of 
 St. Antoine were shouting. 
 
 But the popular excitement reached 
 its climax when France, after sending 
 Louis XVI. to the guillotine, pro- 
 claimed war aofainst Eno^land. Amer- 
 lea's duty at this crisis became the 
 supreme question of the hour. ''Was 
 she now," asked the French party, with 
 fierce indignation, '' to stand coldly 
 aloof and watch the struggle between 
 her ancient foe and that France who, 
 in the hour of her utmost peril, had so 
 
 generously sprung to her defense ? " 
 15 
 
2 26 J^ifc of (icorge WasJnuQ;ton. 
 
 Gratitude, sympatliy, common principles 
 and aims, would, it appeared, force us 
 to take the side of France. Swept 
 away by the excitement of the time, a 
 large party in the nation insisted on 
 declarino- war with Enoland. 
 
 At this crisis the great qualities of 
 the statesman shone out conspicuous as 
 the soldier's had at the head of armies. 
 Washington, unmoved by the passions 
 of the hour, decided on neutrality. 
 Time has absolutely vindicated the wis- 
 dom of this decision ; but, at that 
 epoch, it greatly shook his popularity. 
 Public feeling, in many instances, set 
 strongly against him. He, who had 
 given such transcendent proofs of his 
 patriotism, was accused of a secret de- 
 sire to establish a monarchy. With all 
 his large-mindedness, he was acutely 
 
The First President, 227 
 
 sensitive to public opinion. The respon- 
 sibilities of that time, with the cruel 
 slanders that filled the air, wore heavily 
 upon his health and spirits. His splen- 
 did self-control occasionally broke down. 
 He once solemnly declared that he 
 would ''rather be in his grave than 
 President of the United States." 
 
 Fresh anxieties and complications fol- 
 lowed the arrival of the young Genet, 
 the minister whom the French republic 
 had sent to the United States. He 
 arrived, confident of the sympathy and 
 support of America. Received by 
 shouting thousands, welcomed with 
 feasts and ovations, he was little dis- 
 posed to regard the proclamation of 
 neutrality. He had landed at Charles- 
 ton. In his short sojourn there he 
 showed his temper by " issuing commis- 
 
2 28 J^tf(^ of George Washmgton, 
 
 sions for arming and equipping vessels 
 of war, and manning these with Amer- 
 ican seamen, to serve against the West 
 Indies ! " 
 
 Washington displayed great forbear- 
 ance under these provocations. But the 
 young, hot-headed minister, used to re- 
 cent French methods of dealing with 
 authorities, and believing himself sure 
 of popular support, was bent on carry- 
 ing out his own plans, regardless of all 
 proclamations of neutrality. 
 
 The President saw that prompt and 
 powerful measures were imperative, if 
 he would not see his country plunged 
 into a foreiofn war. It was a critical 
 moment. Genet retorted passionately 
 when Washineton Interfered. France 
 naturally resented the neutralit)^ which 
 appeared so ungrateful a return of her 
 
The First President. 229 
 
 past services. England scored up heavy 
 grievances against us. 
 
 No doubt the course of Washino-ton 
 
 o 
 
 at this juncture surprised and pained 
 many sincere lovers of their country. 
 The old revolutionary memories, the 
 sense of all we owed to France, burned 
 in many hearts through all that agi- 
 tated summer of 1 793. It savored to 
 them of black ingratitude to turn our 
 back on our ancient ally — the young 
 republic who had just entered into the 
 struggle with her mighty foe. 
 
 Events have justified Washington's 
 course, and proved its wise, far-seeing 
 statesmanship. But it is not impossible 
 that temperament had some influence 
 over his convictions at this crisis. With 
 all his intense love of liberty, there was 
 a side of his nature which was strongly 
 
230 Life of George Washington, 
 
 conservative, and this side, as well as 
 his feelings, must have recoiled at the 
 terrible cruelties of the French Revolu- 
 tion. 
 
 The death of Louis XVI. and Marie 
 Antoinette had been a great shock to 
 Washington. During the last years of 
 the Revolution, surprisingly familiar and 
 pleasant relations had, through the in- 
 fluence of Lafayette, existed between the 
 young French sovereigns and the Ameri- 
 can Commander-in-Chief The king, his 
 own treasury bankrupt, had still man- 
 aged to transmit finances to our impov- 
 erished armies. When the marquis, on 
 his return to France, presented himself 
 at court, the queen said to him, in her 
 gay, joyous manner, ''Give me good 
 news of our good Americans, of our 
 dear republicans ! " 
 
The First President, 231 
 
 She was the beautiful, happy Marie 
 Antoinette of the Tulleries and of ** Lit- 
 tle Trianon " when she said that. One 
 seems to see it all — the splendid court, 
 the lovely young queen, the stately 
 young marquis at his audience, and, 
 hovering in the background, the specter 
 of the guillotine, the shadow of the 
 dungeon of Olmiitz ! 
 
 Dangers thickened about the path of 
 the administration. In Pennsylvania the 
 discontent at last broke into open riots. 
 A military force of fifteen thousand men 
 was raised. They entered the western 
 counties. Their presence spread wide 
 terror among the insurgents. The nas- 
 cent rebellion, which, a little later, might 
 have become a civil war, was extin- 
 guished without bloodshed. 
 
 Differences, personal and political, in 
 
232 L^fe of George Washington. 
 
 the Cabinet threatened its dissolution, 
 and vastly augmented the President's 
 anxieties at this period. The Indians 
 continued their ravao^es alonpf the west- 
 ern frontier. England's behavior inflamed 
 the popular feeling. The frequent im- 
 pressment of American seamen, the fail- 
 ure of the government to give up the 
 posts at the south of the lakes, accord- 
 ing to treaty, were all deeply resented 
 in America. 
 
 Washington faced all these difficulties 
 at home and abroad with his tried sa- 
 gacity and his large moral courage. 
 His influence proved powerful enough 
 to keep the Cabinet from dissolution. 
 The French Government at last listened 
 to America's representations, and con- 
 sented to recall its minister. The 
 United States, in its turn, dispatched 
 
3=5? 
 
 Washington's tomb. 
 
The First President, 233 
 
 James Monroe to France. He was re- 
 ceived with open arms by the Assem- 
 bly, as he was well known to be in 
 sympathy with the republic. 
 
 Affairs had grown comparatively 
 smooth before the close of Washington's 
 second administration. There was a 
 universal desire that he would consent 
 to serve another term. This desire had 
 its root in the feelinor that the liberties 
 of the country were only safe while he 
 stood at the helm. Every argument 
 and entreaty — the agitation at home, 
 the warlike aspect of Europe — were 
 brought forward to induce him to re- 
 main at his post. But Washington 
 was inexorable. The great soul, the 
 strong frame, had grown tired at last. 
 They needed now the home of his 
 youth, the familiar scenes, the rest and 
 
234 ^^f^ ^f George Washington, 
 
 comfort of tranquil days at Mount 
 Vernon. 
 
 All his letters at this period bear pa- 
 thetic evidence of this lonofinof: ''The 
 remainder of my life," he wrote to his 
 old friend and fellow-soldier, Henry 
 Knox, ''which, in the course of nature, 
 cannot be long, will be occupied in 
 rural amusements ; I shall seclude my- 
 self as much as possible from the noisy 
 and bustling world." He adds an earn- 
 est desire to see his friends at Mount 
 Vernon, "more than twenty miles from 
 which, after I arrive there, it is not 
 likely that I shall ever be." 
 
 John Adams was elected second Presi- 
 dent of the United States. On the 3d 
 of March, 1797, Washington gave a fare- 
 well dinner. Many distinguished per- 
 sons were present, among whom were 
 
The First President, 235 
 
 conspicuous the new President and his 
 wife. 
 
 There was a great deal of hilarity at 
 the feast. But when the cloth was re- 
 moved, and Washington said, in his 
 quiet, impressive tones, '' Ladies and 
 gentlemen, this is the last time I shall 
 drink your health as a public man," 
 the gayety came to a sudden end. Each 
 guest at the board felt the solemn 
 meaninof for America of those words. 
 The clouds had not vanished from the 
 political horizon. There was still much 
 in the outlook to fill the heart of every 
 lover of his country with doubt and 
 foreboding, and the pilot who had 
 guided the ship through so many storms 
 was about to leave the helm. Amid such 
 thoughts the close of the feast could not 
 fail to be a sad one. 
 
236 Life of George Washington. 
 
 On the following day the adminis- 
 tration of Georofe Washington came to 
 an end. As he left Congress Hall, a 
 vast crowd followed him to his home, 
 eager for another look at that beloved 
 countenance. He turned and waved his 
 hat while they cheered ; the calm face 
 was radiant at that moment ; the gray 
 hairs streamed in the March wind. But 
 when he reached his own door there 
 was a swift chancre — sadness ofathered 
 over his face, tears blinded his eyes, 
 and our first President made his fare- 
 well to the people, and went back to 
 his private life, with a simple gesture. 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 THE GRAND, SIMPLE LIFE I THE SUN TURN- 
 ING WESTWARD. 
 
 As soon as possible, Washington set 
 out for Mount Vernon. His wife and 
 her granddaughter accompanied him. 
 With them, also, rode a young stranger, 
 who, though a foreigner, bore the name 
 of his host. When the dangers thick- 
 ened about his house, George Wash- 
 ington Lafayette had been sent by his 
 father to his old Commander-in-Chief. 
 
 The A^ustrian dungeon of Olmiitz had, 
 through those terrible years, saved La- 
 fayette's head from the guillotine. We 
 know how Washington's heart had 
 grieved for his friend — what vain efforts 
 
238 Life of George Washington. 
 
 he had made for his release. He felt a 
 father's interest in the boy who bore 
 his name, and whom so mournful a fate 
 had bequeathed to his love and care. 
 He could not look at the youth without 
 being reminded of the day, long ago, 
 when, dining in Philadelphia with his 
 officers, he first met the young mar- 
 quis, who had left his splendid home 
 and crossed the winter seas, to offer his 
 services to the cause of American free- 
 dom. 
 
 That was the beginning of the long, in- 
 timate friendship which existed between 
 the American general and the young 
 French nobleman. Differences of age, 
 of nationality, of temperament, of early 
 training, only seemed to augment the 
 affection with which the two men re- 
 garded each other. Their friendship 
 
The Graftd, Simple Life. 239 
 
 lights up the long, rugged years of the 
 Revolution with many a tender episode. 
 Their affection strengthened the souls of 
 each in many a bitter hour. The en- 
 thusiastic loyalty of his young friend 
 was doubly precious to Washington in 
 those cruel moments when some of his 
 own generals failed him. In his Aus- 
 trian dungeon, Lafayette must have 
 solaced many hours of his captivity in 
 thoughts of Washington, in memories 
 of Mount Vernon, where he had been 
 such a beloved and honored guest. 
 
 Once more Washington took up the 
 old life with greater zest than ever. 
 Aofain he miorht be seen on horseback 
 in the early mornings, riding about the 
 grounds, giving his orders, supervising 
 his workmen, inspecting improvements, 
 and planning others, while he watched 
 
 • 
 
240 L^fc of George Waslmigton. 
 
 the Virginia spriijg grow into summer 
 over the wide landscape. 
 
 *' I had rather Hve on a farm than be 
 the emperor of the world ! " he had 
 once exclaimed. *'And yet they are 
 chareine nie with wantinor to be a 
 king !" 
 
 But it was not altogether paradise at 
 Mount Vernon. Thouoh this was re- 
 mote from towns and hotels, guests from 
 all parts of the world, drawn hither by 
 various motives, poured in upon the 
 illustrious host, consumed his time, and 
 were a heavy strain upon resources 
 that had been greatly diminished. 
 
 Washington began to perceive the 
 need, at this time, of some person who 
 could relieve him from a share of the 
 burdens which these constant visitors 
 imposed. He had a young nephew, 
 
The Grand, Simple Life. 241 
 
 who bore the beloved name of Law- 
 rence — a favorite with Washington — 
 whom he invited to his home, and 
 whose services in the role of host 
 greatly reHeved his uncle. 
 
 With this nephew and young Lafayette 
 and his tutor, and Mrs. Washington's 
 pretty granddaughter, who was a great 
 favorite with her uncle, and who after- 
 ward married the nephew, there must 
 have been a great deal of gay young 
 life about the ancient rooms and halls. 
 Here came, to share this life for awhile, 
 in his strange, romantic exile, the Prince 
 of Orleans, Louis Philippe, afterward King 
 of France. 
 
 Indeed, Mount Vernon was the resort 
 
 of all sorts of distinguished and historic 
 
 persons, during the last years of its 
 
 owner. 
 
 16 
 
242 Life of George Washington, 
 
 The autumn after Washinofton's return 
 home he was gladdened by tidings that 
 Lafayette had been released from his 
 long captivity, and was on his way to 
 Paris. His son, eager to rejoin his fa- 
 ther and his family, sailed for home soon 
 afterward. 
 
 But it was not Washinofton's fortune 
 to long enjoy his hardly earned rest. 
 War clouds again loomed threatening 
 above the horizon. This time they 
 appeared in a new sky. The French 
 Government — its temper grown irritable 
 and exacting — refused to receive the 
 American minister who succeeded Mon- 
 roe. Three special envoys had been 
 sent by President Adams to France, with 
 the hope that a mutual treaty would ad- 
 just all disputes between the two gov- 
 ernments. The envoys had not found 
 
The Grand, Simple Life. 243 
 
 it possible to come to any agreement. 
 The Directory was confident that the 
 ancient relations of France with America 
 would prevent a war, and passed meas- 
 ures which struck a deadly blow at 
 American commerce. 
 
 These high-handed acts were the sig- 
 nal for a storm of indignation which 
 swept through the land. Ancient ties 
 yielded before the sense of present in- 
 justice. It seemed for awhile that war 
 was inevitable between France and 
 America. 
 
 President Adams was empowered to 
 raise an army of ten thousand men. 
 There was only one name which the 
 nation would consent to place at the 
 head of that army. 
 
 The Secretary of War carried in per- 
 son the commission to Washino^ton which 
 
244 I^^f^ of George Washington, 
 
 made him " Commander-in-Chief of all 
 the armies raised or to be raised." 
 
 So the old dream of a happy, tranquil 
 evening of life was rudely broken ! The 
 gray-haired soldier heard once more the 
 summons that had thrilled his heart in 
 his youth, and he prepared to answer 
 again the call of his country. 
 
 But his reluctance to do this was so 
 great that he only yielded on the con- 
 dition that " he should not be called 
 into the field until the army required his 
 presence there." 
 
 It soon became imperative that he 
 should leave Mount Vernon again. 
 Weeks followed that must have told 
 heavily on his waning vigor. He was 
 obliged to superintend the organization 
 of the new army, to appoint its officers, 
 to attend to infinite details, and to bear, 
 
The Graiidy Simple Life, 245 
 
 as he could, the old wearisome burden 
 of military cares. He did all this, too, 
 with his native scrupulous thoroughness. 
 
 The attitude of America now pro- 
 duced its effect. It became evident to 
 the most arrogant member of the Direc- 
 tory that the American people were re- 
 solved on sustaining their government. 
 France receded from her first position. 
 It was gracefully intimated to President 
 Adams that his representative should 
 be received ''with the respect due a 
 free, independent, and powerful nation." 
 
 So the clouds rolled away from the 
 horizon, and all America must have 
 drawn a breath of relief as they disap- 
 peared. 
 
 Washinofton returned once more to 
 Mount Vernon. Busy, crowded days 
 awaited him there. He had a vast cor- 
 
246 Life of George Washington, 
 
 respondence on army and other matters. 
 Each day he passed hours in his study, 
 and other hours in a personal super- 
 vision of his estate, and an attempt to 
 bring its varied affairs into order. He 
 dined out occasionally. He received, as 
 always, many guests under his own roof, 
 guests that not only included his own 
 countrymen, but many distinguished for- 
 eigners, who, visiting the republic, were 
 naturally curious to behold its most 
 illustrious citizen. His fine health, his 
 vigorous activity, were sources of con- 
 stant cono^ratulation amongf his friends. 
 
 He who had so longf moved at the 
 head of armies was still seen, in the 
 early mornings, riding with the old mili- 
 tary stateliness about Mount Vernon, 
 while the thin gray hair shone about 
 the fine, calm face. The eighteenth cent- 
 
The Grand, Simple Life, 247 
 
 ury had entered upon Its last month, 
 and George Washington was saying to 
 himself that he was drawing near his 
 sixty-eighth birthday. 
 
 His own land and the nations afar off 
 were praising him. That consciousness 
 could not fail to give him pleasure. 
 The approval of the wise and good had 
 always been precious to him. 
 
 It is pleasant now to feel that last 
 year must have been full of restful quiet 
 and content for him. He was in the one 
 spot on earth that he loved best. He 
 was absorbed in those healthful activi- 
 ties that were a part of himself The 
 commander of armies, the deliverer of a 
 nation, the first president of the Ameri- 
 can republic, aspired to no loftier name 
 than that of farmer. The long, stormy 
 years now lay behind him; he might 
 
248 Life of George Washington. 
 
 reasonably hope that some tranquil ones 
 stretched before him. His life had been 
 crowned with such success as had never 
 fallen to the lot of man. If the liorht 
 shone for him in the West, it was such 
 a li^ht as he could never have dreamed 
 of when it wore the radiant flush of the 
 dawn. 
 
 Yet there is a pathetic significance in 
 the words which Washington wrote to 
 Lafayette, fifteen years before, when the 
 two parted "on the way to Annapolis." 
 
 '' I often asked myself, as our carriages 
 separated, whether that was to be the 
 last sight I should ever have of you? 
 And though I wished to say ' no ! ' my 
 fears answered ' yes ! ' I called to mind 
 the days of my youth, and found they 
 had long since fled, to return no more ; 
 that I was now descending the hill I 
 
WASHINGTON S MoNUMKXnT, IN UNION SQUAKE, NHW YORK. 
 
The Grand, Si7nple Life, 249 
 
 had been fifty-two years climbing ; and 
 though I was blessed with a good con- 
 stitution, I was of a short-lived family, 
 and might soon expect to be entombed 
 in the mansion of my fathers." 
 
 This melancholy of a brave soul, able 
 to look its fate in the face with calm- 
 ness, recurs frequently in the talk and 
 correspondence of Washington, during 
 the crowded fifteen years which fol- 
 lowed that writinof. When he comes to 
 speak of himself, a minor key haunts 
 the words. There is a certain weariness 
 between the lines, as though the writer 
 had grown tired with the heat and bur- 
 den of the long day. There is no touch 
 of despondency or despair — -no false note 
 anywhere. That voice always rings 
 true to courage and cheer, to faith 
 in God and hope for man. But you 
 
250 Life of George Washington. 
 
 feel that, at times, when he withdrew 
 into himself, he looked forward to the 
 unbroken slumber with a certain quiet 
 loneingr — with an instinct, too, that the 
 end could not be, for him, very far off. 
 Despite his mothers great age — she 
 had died in the first summer of his 
 presidency — his own splendid health, 
 the Washington breed, as he had said 
 to Lafayette, was not a long-lived one. 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 TO THE END DECEMBER 1 7, 1799- 
 
 It was on a clear, calm morning, as 
 the record of 1799 runs, that Washing- 
 ton put the finishing touches to an in- 
 strument which had, of late, engrossed 
 much of his time. This was a folio of 
 thirty pages, containing instructions to 
 his steward for the management of 
 Mount Vernon in future years. The 
 whole folio was executed with all that 
 scrupulous neatness and detail with 
 which, in his boyhood, he had drawn 
 up his codes of manners and morals, or, 
 a little later, made out his surveys of 
 Lord Fairfax's estate. While he had 
 
252 L'if^ of George Washington. 
 
 been preparing these instructions for 
 his steward, he had appeared to those 
 about him in perfect health and vigor. 
 
 The fair morning settled into a 
 cloudy afternoon, and the next day- 
 brought wind and rain, and at night, 
 Washington writes in his diary, '' a 
 large circle around the moon." 
 
 The next morning, under the threat- 
 ening skies, Washington mounted his 
 horse about ten o'clock, and made the 
 usual rounds of his estate. A little 
 later, the world was to mourn that he 
 took that ride in the rough weather. 
 Many, too, would remember, with a 
 thrill of the ancient superstition, that 
 ''gray circle about the moon." It must 
 have been a long ride, for ''about one 
 o'clock " — he tells the story himself — 
 **it began to snow; soon after to hail, 
 
To the End — Dec, ij, 1799. ^h2) 
 
 and then turned to settle into a cold 
 rain." 
 
 Washington did not turn back for 
 the storm. He wore an overcoat, and 
 he who had spent so much of his youth 
 in wilderness and camp, would not be 
 easily alarmed by the weather. It must 
 have been very wild though, for, on 
 his return to the house, after three 
 o'clock, he thought the storm too 
 severe for a servant to go out with 
 the mails. The snowflakes hung in his 
 gray hair ; but he insisted that his 
 great-coat *' had kept him dry, and sat 
 down to dinner without changing his 
 dress." Those who observed him that 
 evening could not perceive any ill- 
 effects from the long exposure of the 
 day. 
 
 The next morning it continued to 
 
2 54 Life of George Washington, 
 
 snow, and Washington could not take 
 his usual ride. He began to complain 
 of a sore throat, but, as it seems to 
 have alarmed nobody, he must have 
 made light of it. When the weather 
 cleared, in the afternoon, he went out 
 to mark some trees which he wished 
 cut down. It is a curious fact that the 
 earliest account of George Washington's 
 activity begins with a tree, and ends 
 with one. When he returned to the 
 house that afternoon he had walked the 
 grounds of Mount Vernon for the last 
 time. 
 
 As the night came on, the hoarseness, 
 which had been apparent all day, in- 
 creased. He was very cheerful, how- 
 ever, as he sat in the parlor that even- 
 ing with his wife and his secretary, and 
 found plenty of amusement with the 
 
To the End — Dec. 17, 1799. 255 
 
 evening mails. To all suggestions that 
 he should do something to relieve his 
 cold, he answered, with the soldier's 
 hardihood, **You know I never take 
 anything for a cold ; let it go as it 
 came." 
 
 During the night, however, his dis- 
 tress became so great as to awaken 
 Mrs. Washington, who wished to sum- 
 mon a servant ; but he would not per- 
 mit this, lest she herself should take 
 cold. No one, of course, realized the 
 importance of prompt measures at this 
 time. No doubt Washington concealed, 
 as far as possible, the extent of his suf- 
 ferings from his wife. He probably 
 still clung to the belief that his illness 
 was *' only a cold." 
 
 Day broke at last. The secretary 
 was summoned. He found the general 
 
256 Life of George Washington, 
 
 breathing with difficulty, and barely 
 able to articulate. 
 
 By this time the household was 
 awake and alarmed. Physicians were 
 remote from Mount Vernon. At Wash- 
 ington's request, a messenger rode post- 
 haste to Alexandria, for the old comrade- 
 in-arms and life-long friend. Dr. Craik. 
 
 Meanwhile, they resorted to the old 
 methods of the time — bleedings and ex- 
 ternal applications. These afforded no 
 relief. In two or three hours Dr. Craik 
 was at the bedside, with other physi- 
 cians. New remedies, with additional 
 bleeding, were tried again. 
 
 But all efforts proved in vain. From 
 that gray winter's morning it was a 
 swift but sure ** descent to death." 
 The iron constitution did not yield 
 without struggles that prolonged the 
 
To the End — Dec. ij, 1799. 257 
 
 agony. The light of that brief Decem- 
 ber day was fading, when the sick man 
 called Mrs. Washington to his bedside. 
 In a desk in his room were two wills, 
 which he desired her to brinof him. 
 When she returned with these he ex- 
 amined them, gave her one to retain, 
 and asked her to burn the other. " 
 
 With this request George Washington 
 seems to have felt that his last work 
 was done. The death that had passed 
 him by on so many stormy battle-fields, 
 had come now, sudden and stealthy, 
 into the peace and security of home. 
 But the strong heart, that never faltered 
 at the summons of duty, that had kept, 
 through its long life, the faith and 
 purity of a little child, did not falter 
 at the last. 
 
 There is a touching simplicity and 
 17 
 
258 Life of George Washington, 
 
 dignity about that death-bed. It seems 
 a fitting close to the brave, patient, 
 heroic Hfe. Only a very small group 
 gathered in the plainly furnished room 
 — the broken-hearted wife, the physi- 
 cian and old friend, the trusted secre- 
 tary, and the faithful servant, watching 
 at the foot of the bed. 
 
 The difficulty of breathing made the 
 last hours agonizing. From the begin- 
 ning, any attenipt to swallow convulsed 
 and almost suffocated the sick man. 
 His sufferings made speech ^o painful 
 that he did not often attempt it. But 
 when, a little after sundown. Dr. Craik 
 approached the bed, Washington ad- 
 dressed him: ''Doctor, I die hard; but 
 I am not afraid to go. I believed from 
 my first attack that I should not sur- 
 vive it. My breath cannot last long." 
 
To the End — Dec, 17, 1799. 259 
 
 The doctor pressed his hand, unable to 
 reply, and retired to the fireside, where 
 he sat awhile in speechless grief. 
 
 The strong mind held its integrity to 
 the last. The old courage rings always 
 through the gathering darkness. But it 
 was evident that Washington was tired 
 of the struggle, and waiting and long- 
 ing for the summons when ** he would 
 answer to his name and stand in the 
 presence of his Maker." 
 
 Though he uttered no complaint, the 
 dreadful restlessness, the continued in- 
 quiries about the time, told, better than 
 words, to the anxious watchers, the final 
 sufferinofs. 
 
 When tlie other physicians, who had 
 left the chamber awhile, rejoined Dr. 
 Craik, Washington was assisted to sit 
 up in bed. '' I feel I am going," he 
 
26o Life of George Washington. 
 
 said. ''I thank you for your attentions, 
 but I pray you to take no more trouble 
 about me. Let me go off quietly; I 
 cannot last long." 
 
 The doctors continued their efforts to 
 relieve the patient. He was bled four 
 times. His few remarks show his thor- 
 ough conviction that all remedies were 
 useless, that the last hour was at hand. 
 He said, with a smile, to his secretary, 
 that '' he was certainly near his end ; 
 that, as it was the debt we must all 
 pay, he looked to it with perfect resig- 
 nation." 
 
 The long evening wore away. Be- 
 tween ten and eleven o'clock Washing- 
 ton's breathing grew easier. He with- 
 drew his hand from his secretary's and 
 felt his own pulse. That act shows 
 the habit of the soldier, as well as the 
 
To the End — Dec. 17, 1799. 261 
 
 clearness of his mind at the last mo- 
 ment. The secretary took that dear 
 hand and placed it in his bosom. He 
 called Dr, Craik. When the latter got 
 to the bedside, he saw that a change 
 had crept over the features. He placed 
 the dying man's hands over his face. 
 The stronof life went out at last as an 
 infant falls asleep. 
 
 The next morning, when the late 
 winter sun came over the horizon, 
 George Washington was lying dead in 
 the simple chamber at Mount Vernon. 
 
 The disease of which he died — acute 
 laryngitis — had not at that time been 
 differentiated from other inflammations 
 of the throat. His illness had lasted 
 less than forty-eight hours. 
 
 Washington's last words were ad- 
 dressed to his secretary, " It is well ! " 
 
262 Life of George Washington, 
 
 Nothing could be more fitting the char- 
 acter of the man — the close of his life. 
 
 The blow must have fallen with an 
 unspeakable shock upon the country. 
 Washington was hardly yet an old man. 
 It was not unreasonable to hope that 
 long, happy years would find him at 
 the fireside of Mount Vernon, or riding 
 in summer mornings, a noble, venerable 
 figure, among the ancient groves and 
 green pastures of Mount Vernon. 
 
 Even now one cannot avoid a regret 
 that death did not spare him for awhile, 
 to reap the fair harvest of so many 
 years of bitter toil and sacrifice ; to find 
 himself the central fio^ure in his coun- 
 try's heart and imagination, and to see 
 the young nation, whose liberties he 
 had won, brace her energies for that 
 long career of progress and prosperity, 
 
To the End — Dec, 17, 1799. 263 
 
 whose splendor has so far outstripped 
 his largest prophecy of her future. 
 
 Yet there seems something fitting in 
 the thougrht that the life of our Wash- 
 ington and the life of the century in 
 which he had acted his part should 
 close together. For the eighteenth cent- 
 ury had a lease of only sixteen more 
 days to run, when the winter morning 
 looked into the quiet chamber where 
 the great soldier and statesman lay in 
 the majesty of death. 
 
 In that hour of grief, everybody must 
 have remembered with thankfulness that 
 death had found George Washington 
 at last in the one place he would 
 have chosen to meet him. 
 
 The limits of this book do not per- 
 mit any extended analysis of character. 
 This much, however, may be said : 
 
264 Life of George Washmgton. 
 
 George Washington is never a per- 
 plexing study to the historian. His 
 nature was one of large, simple, massive 
 lines. It forms a singularly consistent, 
 harmonious, well-balanced whole. It 
 has the largeness, the calmness, the 
 majesty, of some ancient statue. 
 
 His mind was of an eminently prac- 
 tical order. One does not look to a 
 mind of this type for swift and dazzling 
 exhibitions of genius. The strong, 
 clear, robust quality of Washington's 
 intellect, its large wisdom, penetration, 
 and staying power, were evinced in 
 the most trying emergencies, as well as 
 in all the details of life. 
 
 But it was in the moral grandeur of 
 his character that the greatness of the 
 man will always consist — in his flawless 
 integrity, in his large magnanimity, in 
 
To the End — Dec, 17, 1799. 265 
 
 his unfaltering patience, and in his un- 
 swerving patriotism. 
 
 He must have had his faults — his 
 limitations. One is inclined to wonder 
 sometimes how he bore the ''crucial test 
 of the dreary intercourse of every-day 
 life." Yet the criticism that detected 
 flaws and weaknesses would, perhaps, 
 have been only that of the valet, who 
 never sees a hero in his master. 
 
 It has, for obvious reasons, been much 
 the habit of historians to compare 
 George Washington with Napoleon Bo- 
 naparte. The reasons for this are obvi- 
 ous. There were only a few years' dif- 
 ference — as history counts — in the ages 
 of the two men. For a short period the 
 time of their public careers coincided. 
 Each was a central figure in the history 
 of a continent. Each won its glorious 
 
266 Life of George Washington, 
 
 victories, and shaped Its political fort- 
 unes. But the essential differences In 
 the characters and genius of the two 
 men are illustrated by their ambitions. 
 That of one was to be the Emperor 
 of France — the conqueror of Europe ; 
 that of the other was to win the liber- 
 ties of his country, and to live and to 
 die ''an honest man and a farmer." 
 
 But when we reflect that the "judg- 
 ments of time are Inexorably moral," It 
 may not, perhaps, appear altogether one 
 of the Ironies of fate that the great 
 Virginian should end his days at Mount 
 Vernon, and that the great Corsican 
 should close his life on St. Helena. 
 
 George Washington has left the price- 
 less legacy of his memory to America — 
 he has left It, indeed, to the world. The 
 writer of this sketch can think of no 
 
To the End — Dec, 17, 1799. 267 
 
 more fitting words to close It than those 
 which a late English historian has added 
 to his portraiture of our first President : 
 '* No nobler figure stands in the fore- 
 front of a nation's history." 
 
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