• * r% *, ♦•■•• A <>*. & *C <> *o • * * ,6* \* v ... °«. ,*. «^ A «- .J •' ** of v* V^V %^^V> v*<^V %f *' ^ #fe: \/ .'111- V .•• »* .•••.*< dQi ^ <£ • »*' ^ *. ^Q* »l J ,\ /C~ GEORGE WASHINGTON (From a portrait (minted iu 1772 by C. W. Peule, now owned by General George Washington Custle Lee, of Lexington, Virginia) GEORGE WASHINGTON BY WOODROW WILSON ILLUSTRATED BY HOWARD PYLE NEW YORK AND LONDON HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS >__ ; v^ Copyright, 18%, by Harper & Brothers All rights reserved. TO E. A W. "WITHOUT WHOSE SYMPATHY AND COUNSEL LITERARY WORK WOULD LACK INSPIRATION CONTENTS OHAP. PAGE I. In Washington's Day 3 II. A Virginian Breeding . . t 45 III. Colonel Washington 69 IV. Mount Vernon Days 99 V. The Heat of Politics ...... 117 VI. Piloting a Revolution 153 VII. General Washington . . 179 VIII. The Stress of Victory 213 IX. First in Peace 233 X. The First President of the United States. . . . 265 Index 315 ILLUSTEATIOJSTS GEORGE WASHINGTON Frontispiece HEAD-PIECE. . " 3 FACSIMILE OF THE ENTRY OF WASHINGTON'S BIRTH . . Page 41 Washington's retreat from great meadows . . . Facing p. 70 WASHINGTON AND MARY PHILIPSE " 92 LEAVING MOUNT VERNON FOR THE CONGRESS OF THE COLONIES . , " 100 IN THE RALEIGH TAVERN " 140 TAIL-PIECE Page 149 WASHINGTON AND STEUBEN AT VALLEY FORGE . . . Facing p. 200 TAIL-PIECE Page 209 TAIL-PIECE " 262 THOMPSON, THE CLERK OF CONGRESS, ANNOUNCING TO WASHINGTON, AT MOUNT VERNON, HIS ELECTION TO THE PRESIDENCY Facing p. 266 DEATH OF WASHINGTON " 304 TAIL-PIECE Page 314 IN WASHINGTON'S DAY EORGE WASHINGTON was bred a gentleman and a man of honor in the free school of Virginian society, with the generation that first learned what it meant to maintain English communities in America in safety and a self-respect- ing independence. He was born in a season of quiet peace, when the plot of colonial history was thickening noiselessly and almost without observation, lie came to his first man- hood upon the first stir of revolutionary events ; caught in their movement, he served a rough apprenticeship 4 GEORGE WASHINGTON in arms at the thick of the French and Indian war; the Revolution found him a leader and veteran in affairs at forty four; every turn of fortune confirmed him in his executive habit of foresight and mastery ; death spared him, stalwart and commanding, until, his rising career rounded and complete, no man doubt- ed him the first character of his age. " Virginia gave us this imperial man," and with him a companion race of statesmen and masters in affairs. It was her natural gift, the times and her character being Avhat they were; and Washington's life showed the whole process of breeding by which she conceived so great a generosity in manliness and public spirit. The English colonies in America lay very tranquil in 1732, the year in which Washington was born. It fell in a season betweentimes, when affairs lingered, as if awaiting a change. The difficulties and anxieties of first settlement were long ago past and done with in all the principal colonies. They had been hardening to their " wilderness work," some of them, these hundred years and more. England could now reckon quite six hundred thousand subjects upon the long Atlantic sea- board of the great continent which had lain remote and undiscovered through so many busy ages, until daring sailors hit upon it at last amidst the stir of the ad- venturous fifteenth century ; and there was no longer any thought that her colonists would draw back or falter in what they had undertaken. They had grown sedate even and self-poised, with somewhat of the air of old communities, as they extended their settlements upon the coasts and rivers and elaborated their means of self - government amidst the still forests, and each had already a bearing and character of its own. 'Twas IN WASHINGTON'S DAY 5 easy to distinguish the New-Englander from the man of the southern colonies ; and the busy middle prov- inces that stretched back from the great bay at New York and from the waters of the spreading Delaware had also a breed of their own, like neither the men of the south nor the men of the northeast. Each region had bred for itself its characteristic communities, hold- ing their own distinctive standards, knowing their own special purposes, living their own lives with a certain separateness and independence. Virginia, the oldest of the colonies, was least to be distinguished by any private character of her own from the rural communities of England herself. Her popula- tion had come to her almost without selection through- out every stage of quick change and troubled fortune that England had seen during the fateful days since James Stuart became king; and Englishmen in Vir- ginia were in no way radically distinguishable from Englishmen in England, except that they were provin- cials and frontiersmen. They had their own tasks and ways of life, indeed, living, as they did, within the old forests of a virgin continent, upon the confines of the world. But their tastes and temperament, spite of change and seclusion, they had in common with Eng- lishmen at home. They gave leave to their opinions, too, with a like downright confidence and hardihood of belief, never doubting they knew how practical affairs should go. They had even kept the English character as they had received it, against the touch of time and social revolution, until Virginians seemed like elder Englishmen. England changed, but Virginia did not. There landed estates spread themselves with an ample acreage along the margins of the streams that every- q GEORGE WASHINGTON where threaded the virgin woodland ; and the planter drew about him a body of dependants who knew no other master; to whom came, in their seclusion, none of that quick air of change that had so stirred in Eng- land throughout all her century of revolution. Some were his slaves, bound to him in perpetual subjection. Others were his tenants, and looked upon him as a sort of patron. In Maryland, where similar broad estates lay upon every shore, the law dubbed a great property here and there a "manor," and suffered it to boast its separate court baron and private jurisdiction. Vir- ginian gentlemen enjoyed independence and authority without need of formal title. There was but one centre of social life in Virginia : at Williamsburg, the village capital, where the Govern- or had his " palace," where stood the colonial college, where there were taverns and the town houses of sun- dry planters of the vicinage, and where there was much gay company and not a little formal ceremonial in the season. For the rest, the Old Dominion made shift to do without towns. There was no great mart to which all the trade of the colony was drawn. Ships came and went upon each broad river as upon a highway, taking and discharging freight at the private wharves of the several plantations. For every planter was his own merchant, shipping his tobacco to England, and import- ing thence in return his clothes, bis tools, his house- hold fittings, his knowledge of the London fashions and of the game of politics at home. His mechanics he found among his own slaves and dependants. Their "quarters" and the offices of his simple establishment showed almost like a village of themselves where they stood in irregular groups about his own square, broad- IN WASHINGTON'S DAY 7 gabled house, with its airy hall and homelike living- rooms. He might have good plate upon his sideboard and on his table, palatable old wine in his cellar, and on the walls about him portraits of the stately men and dames from whom he took his biood and breeding. But there was little luxury in his life. Plain comfort and a homely abundance sufficed him. He was a gen- tleman, owned all he saw around him, exercised author- ity, and enjoyed consideration throughout the colony ; but he was no prince. He lived always in the style of a provincial and a gentleman commoner, as his neigh- bors and friends did. Slaves, dependants, and planters, however, did not by any means make up the tale of Virginia's population. She had been peopled out of the common stock of Englishmen, and contained her own variety. Most of the good land that lay upon the lower courses of the James, the York, the Rappahannock, and the Potomac rivers, and upon the bay on either hand, had been absorbed into the es- tates of the wealthier planters, who began to conceive themselves a sort of aristocracy; but not a few plain men owned their own smaller tracts within the broad stretches of country that lay back from the rivers or above their navigable depth. Upon the western front of the colony lived sturdy frontiersmen ; and no man was so poor that he might not hope by thrift to hold his own with the best in the country. Few could own slaves in any number, for the negroes counted less than a third in a reckoning of the whole population. There were hired servants besides, and servants bound for a term of years by indenture; even criminals who could be had of the colony for private service ; but most men must needs work their own plots of ground and devise 8 GEORGE WASHINGTON a domestic economy without servants. A wholesome democratic spirit pervaded the colony, which made even the greater planters hesitate to give themselves airs. A few families that had thriven best and longest, and had built up great properties for themselves, did indeed lay claim, as royal governors found to their great dis- pleasure, to a right to be heard before all others in the management of the government. But they could of course show no title but that of pride and long prac- tice. 'Twas only their social weight in the parish ves- tries, in the Council, and in the House of Burgesses that gave them ascendency. It was the same in church as in state. Virginia prided herself upon having maintained the Establish- ment without schism or sour dissent ; but she had main- tained it in a way all her own, with a democratic con- stitution and practice hardly to be found in the canons. Nominally the Governor had the right of presentation to all livings ; but the vestries took care he should sel- dom exercise it, and, after they had had their own way for a century, claimed he had lost it by prescription. They chose and dismissed and ruled their ministers as they would. And the chief planters were nowhere greater figures than in the vestries of their own par- ishes, where so many neighborhood interests were passed upon — the care of the poor, the survey of estates, the correction of disorders, the tithe rates, and the main- tenance of the church and minister. Sometimes the church building was itself the gift of the chief land- owner of the parish ; and the planters were always the chief rate-payers. Their leadership was natural and un- challenged. They enjoyed in their own neighborhood a sort of feudal pre-eminence, and the men about them IN WASHINGTON'S DAY 9 easily returned in thought and estimation to that elder order of English life in which the chief proprietor of the country-side claimed as of course the homage of his neighbors. There were parishes, not a few, indeed, in which there was no such great planter to command consideration by a sort of social primacy. It was, after all, only here and there, and in the older parts of the colony, that affairs awaited the wish of privileged individuals. But it was the ascendency of the greater planters which most struck the imagination, and which gave to Virginia something of the same air and tone and turn of opinion that existed in England, with its veritable aristocracy, its lordly country gentlemen, its ancient distinctions of class and manners. Those who took counsel in England concerning colo- nial affairs had constant occasion to mark the sharp contrast between the easy-going Virginians, who were no harder to govern than Englishmen everywhere, and the men of the northeastern colonies, with their dry reserve and their steadfast resolution not to be gov- erned at all. These seemed unlike Englishmen else- where ; a whit stiffer, shrewder, more self-contained and circumspect. They were, in fact, a peculiar people. Into New England had come a selected class, picked out of the general mass of Englishmen at home by test of creed. " God sifted the whole nation," one of their own preachers had told them, at election-time, in the far year 1668, " that he might send choice grain out into this wilderness." But the variety of the old life in England had been lost in the sifting. The Puritan, for all he was so strong and great a figure in his day, was but one man among a score in the quick and vari- ous English life. His single standard and manner of 10 GEORGE WASHINGTON living, out of the many that strove for mastery in the old seats where the race was bred, had been transferred to New England ; and he had had separate and undis- puted ascendency there to build new commonwealths as he would. The Puritan Commonwealth in England had been the government of a minority. Cromwell had done his work of chastening with a might and fervor which he found, not in the nation, but in himself and in the stout men-at-arms and hardy reformers who stood with him while he purified England and brought upon all her foes a day of reckoning. The people had stood cowed and uneasy while he lived, and had broken into wild excess of joy at their release when he died. But in New England an entire community consented to the Puritan code and mastery with a hearty acquiescence. It was for this liberty. they had come over sea. And the thoughtful, strong-willed men who were their leaders had built, as they wished, a polity that should last. Time wrought its deep changes in New England, as elsewhere, but the stamp set upon these Puritan set- tlements by the generation that founded them was not effaced. Trade made its characteristic mark upon them. Their merchants had presently their own fleets and markets. Their hardy people took more and more to the sea, lived the rough life of the ocean ways with a relish, beat in their small craft up and down the whole coast of the continent, drove bargains everywhere, and everywhere added a touch to their reputation as doughty sea-dogs and shrewd traders. The population that after a while came to New England did not stay to be sifted before attempting the voyage out of the Old World, and the quaint sedateness of the settlements began to be broken by a novel variety. New men beset the old IN WASHINGTON'S DAY H order; a rough democracy began to make itself felt; and new elements waxed bold amidst the new condi- tions that time had wrought. The authority of the crown at last made a place of command for itself, de- spite every stubborn protest and astute evasion. It be- came necessary to be a trifle less observant of sect and creed, to cultivate, as far as might be, a temper of tol- erance and moderation. But it was a slow change at best. The old order might be modified, but it could not so soon be broken. New England, through all her ju- risdictions, remained a body of churches, as well as a body of towns, submissive to the doctrine and discipline of her learned clergy, keeping the old traditions dis- tinct, indubitable, alike in her schools and her meeting- houses. Even in Rhode Island, where there had from the first been such diversity of creed and license of in- dividual belief, there was little variety of type among the people, for all they counted themselves so free to be what they would. There was here a singular as- sortment, no doubt, of the units of the stock, but it was of the Puritan stuff, none the less, through all its variety. New England, indeed, easily kept her character, for she lived apart. Her people mustered a full hundred thousand strong before the seventeenth century was out ; her towns numbered many score, both upon the margins of the sea and within the forests ; but she still lay within a very near frontier, pushed back only a short journey from the coast. Except where the towns of Connecticut ran in broken line close to the westward strait of Long Island Sound, a broad wilderness of un- touched woodland, of thicketed hills and valleys that no white man yet had seen, stretched between them 12 GEORGE WASHINGTON and Hudson's river, where New York's settlements lay upon the edge of a vast domain, reaching all the way to the great lakes and the western rivers. Not till 1725 did adventurous settlers dare go so far as the Berk- shire Hills. "Our country," exclaimed Colonel Byrd, of Virginia, who had seen its wild interior, "has now been inhabited more than a hundred and thirty years, and still we hardly know anything of the Appalachian Mountains, which are nowhere above two hundred and fifty miles from the sea." A full century after the coming of the Pilgrims, New England, like Virginia, was still a frontier region, shut close about on every hand by thick forests beset by prowling bands of sav- ages. She had as yet no intimate contact with the other colonies whose fortunes she was to share. Her simple life, quickened by adventure, but lacking the full pulse of old communities, kept, spite of slow change, to a single standard of conduct, made her one community from end to end, her people one people. She stood apart and compact, still soberly cultivating, as of old, a life and character all her own. Colonel Byrd noted how " New England improved much faster than Vir- ginia," and was fain to think that " though these peo- ple may be ridiculed for some Pharisaical particularities in their worship and behavior, yet they were very use- ful subjects, as being frugal and industrious, giving no scandal or bad example." Public men in England, who had to face these " particularities in behavior," would hardly have agreed that the men of New England were good subjects, though they must have admitted their excellent example in thrift, and Virginia's need to im- itate it. This contrast between the northern and southern set IN WASHINGTON'S DAT 13 tlements was as old as their establishment, for Virginia had from the first been resorted to by those who had no other purpose than to better their fortunes, while New England had been founded to be the home of a creed and discipline; but it was not until the Common- wealth was set up in England that the difference began to be marked, and to give promise of becoming per- manent. The English in Virginia, like the bulk of their countrymen at home, had stood aghast at a king's death upon the scaffold, and had spoken very hotly, in their loyalty, of the men who had dared do the impious deed of treason ; but when the Guinea, frigate, brought the Commonwealth's commission into the river to demand their submission, even Sir William Berkeley, the re- doubtable Cavalier Governor, who had meant stub- bornly to keep his province for the second Charles, saw he must yield ; perceived there was too nice a balance of parties in the colony to permit an execution of his plans of resistance ; heard too many plain men in his Council, and out of it, declare themselves very much of a mind with the Puritans for the nonce in politics — very willing to set up a democracy in Virginia which should call itself a part of the Puritan state in Eng- land. But a great change had been wrought in Vir- ginia while the Commonwealth lasted. When the Com- monwealth's frigate came in at the capes she counted scarcely fifteen thousand settlers upon her plantations, but the next twenty years saw her transformed. By 1670 quite twenty-five thousand people were added to the reckoning ; and of the new-comers a great multi- tude had left England as much because they hated the Puritans as because they desired Virginia. They were drawn out of that great majority at home to whom 14 GEORGE WASHINGTON Cromwell had not dared resort to get a new parlia- ment in the stead of the one he had " purged." Many of them were of the hottest blood of the Cavaliers. It was in these years Virginia got her character and received her leading gentry for the time to come — the years while the Commonwealth stood and royalists de- spaired, and the years immediately following the Ees- toration, when royalists took heart again and English- men turned with a new ardor to colonization as the times changed. Among the rest in the great migration came two brothers, John and Lawrence Washington, of a stock whose loyalty was as old as the Conquest. They came of a Norman family, the men of whose elder branch had for two hundred years helped the stout Bishops of Durham keep the border against the Scots ; and in every branch of which men had sprung up to serve the king, the state, and the church with steadfastness and honor: dashing soldiers ready for the field at home or abroad, stout polemical priors, lawyers who knew the learning of their day and made their way to high posts in chancery, thrifty burghers, gallant courtiers, prosperous merchants — public-spirited gentle- men all. It was Colonel Henry Washington, cousin to the Virginian refugees, who had been with Eupert when he stormed Bristol, and who, with a handful of men, had made good an entrance into the town when all others were beaten back and baffled. It was he who had held Worcester for his master even after he knew Charles to be a prisoner in the hands of the par- liamentary forces. "Procure his Majesty's commands for the disposal of this garrison," was all he would an- swer when Fairfax summoned him to surrender; "till then I shall make good the trust reposed in me. The IN WASHINGTON'S DAY 15 worst I know and fear not ; if I had, the profession of a soldier had not been began." But it was an ill time to revive the traditions of the knights of Durham; loyalty only brought ruin. The Reverend Lawrence Washington, uncle to the gallant colonel who was the King's Governor at Worcester, had been cast out of his living at Purleigh in 1643 by order of Parliament, upon the false charge that he was a public tippler, oft drunk, and loud to rail against the Parliament and its armies ; but really because, with all his race, he was a royalist, and his living one of the best in Essex. It was his sons who left off hoping to see things mend in England and betook themselves to Virginia. His ruin had come upon him while they were yet lads. He had been a brilliant university scholar, fellow and lector of Brase- nose, and rector of Oxford ; but he could give his sons neither a university career nor hope of fortune in the humble parish pitying friends had found for him in an obscure village of Essex ; and when he was dead they saw no reason why they should stay longer in Eng- land, where Cromwell was master. John Washington, the oldest son of the unfortunate rector, reached Virginia in 1656, having made his way to the colony as " second man " to Edward Prescott, merchant and ship-owner, in whose company he had come ; and his brother Lawrence, after passing to and fro between England and the colony several times upon errands of business, presently joined him in per- manent residence upon the " northern neck " of rich land that lay between the Rappahannock and the Po- tomac rivers. It was a region where every settlement as yet was new. A few families had fixed themselves upon it when Maryland drove Captain Clayborne and 1G GEORGE WASHINGTON his Virginian partisans forth from Kent Island in the years 1637 and 1038; and they had mustered numbers enough within a few years to send a representative to the House of Burgesses at Jamestown. But it was not till 1648 that the Assembly gave their lands a regular constitution as the County of Northumberland ; for it was to this region the Indians had been driven by the encroachment of the settlements on the James and York, and for a while the Assembly had covenanted with the red men to keep it free from settlers. When once the ban was removed, however, in 1618, coloniza- tion set in apace — from the older counties of Virginia, from Maryland across the river and England over sea, from New England even, as if by a common impulse. In 1651 the Assembly found it necessary to create the two additional counties of Gloucester and Lancaster, and in 1653 still another, the County of Westnn > re- land, for the region's proper government, so quickly did it fill in ; for the tide out of England already be- gan to show its volume. The region was a natural sent of commerce, and merchants out of the trading ports of England particularly affected it. Kich land was abun- dant, and the Potomac ran strong and ample there, to carry the commerce alike of Virginia amLMaryland to the bay, upon whose tributaries and inlets lay all the older settlements of both colonies. Lawrence Wash- ington, though he still described himself, upon occa- sion, as " of Luton, County Bedford, merchant," found his chief profit where he made his home, with his brother John, in the new County of Westmoreland in Virginia. About them lived young men and old, come, like themselves, out of England, or drawn from the older settlements by the attractions of the goodly re- IN WASHINGTON'S DAY 17 gion, looking out, as it did, on either hand to a broad river and an easy trade. They felt it scarcely an ex- patriation to live there, so constantly did ships come and go between their wharves and the home ports at Bristol and London. It soon grew to be nothing sin- gular to see well-to-do men go every year to England upon some errand of profit or pleasure. It was with such a region and such stirring neigh- bors that the young Washingtons identified themselves while they were yet youths in their twenties; and there they prospered shrewdly with the rest. Prudent men and men of character readily accumulated estates in the untouched glades and forests of Westmoreland. The season of their coming, moreover, sadly as things seemed to go in 1656, turned out propitious. The Kes- toration opened a new era in the settlement of the country. Englishmen bestirred themselves to take act- ual possession of all the great coast -line they had so long claimed without occupying. "The Dutch had enjoyed New Netherland during the distractions of the reign of Charles I. without any other interruption" than the seizure of their post upon the Connecticut by the New-Englanders, and the aggressions alike of Swedes and English upon the Delaware ; but the min- isters of Charles II., though " for some time perplexed in what light to view them, whether as subjects or as aliens, determined at length that New Netherland ought in justice to be resumed," and the thing was presently accomplished in true sovereign fashion by force of arms. To the ducal province of New York, Penn presently added the thrifty Quaker colony which so promptly created a busy town and mart of trade at Philadelphia, and which pushed its rural settlements 18 GEORGE WASHINGTON back so speedily into the fertile lands that lay towards the west. Then, while the new colonizing impulse still ran strong, New Jersey, too, was added, with her limits at one end upon the Hudson and the great bay at New York, where she depended upon one rival for a port of entry, and at the other upon the Delaware, where an- other rival presided over the trade of her southern highway to the sea. To the southward straggling set- tlements upon Albemarle Sound grew slowly into the colony of North Carolina ; and still other settlements, upon the rivers that lay towards Florida, throve so bravely that Charleston presently boasted itself a sub- stantial town, and South Carolina had risen to be a considerable colony, prosperous, well ordered, and show- ing a quick life and individuality of her own. A new migration had come out of England to the colonies, and Englishmen looked with fresh confidence to see their countrymen build an empire in America. And yet perhaps not an empire of pure English blood. New York was for long scarcely the less a Dutch prov- ince, for all she had changed owners, and saw English- men crowd in to control her trade. There were Swedes still upon the Delaware; and Pennsylvania mustered among her colonists, besides a strange mixture out of many nations — Germans, French, Dutch, Finns, and English. Even in Virginia, which so steadily kept its English character, there were to be found groups of French Huguenots and Germans who had been given an ungrudging welcome ; and South Carolina, though strongly English too, had taken some of her best blood out of France when Louis so generously gave the world fifty thousand families of the finest breed of his king- dom by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685). IN WASHINGTON'S DAY 19 The second quarter of the eighteenth century saw Scots-Irish enter Virginia and the middle colonies in hosts that for a time numbered ten thousand by the year. Pennsylvania alone, in the single year 1729, could reckon five thousand of these sturdy people who had come to multiply and strengthen her settlements. It was to the middle colonies that most foreigners came, and their coming gave to the towns and farms of that region a variety of tongues and customs, of manners and trades and ways of life and worship, to be found nowhere else. Boston, with all its trade and seafaring, had no touch of that cosmopolitan character which New York had taken on quite inevitably in the course of her varying fortunes, and which Philadelphia had assumed by choice; and rural Virginia scarcely felt amidst her scattered plantations the presence of the few families who lived by standards that were not Eng- lish. The common feature of the new time, with its novel enterprises and its general immigration, was that the colonies everywhere, whether young or old, felt a keen stimulation and a new interest in affairs beyond their borders. A partial exchange of population be- gan, a noticeable intercolonial migration. Whole con- gregations came out of New England to found towns in New Jersey, and individuals out of every colony vent- ured more freely than before to exchange one region for another, in order to coax health or fortune. Pop- ulation was thus not a little compacted, while the colo- nies were drawn by insensible degrees to feel a certain community of interest and cultivate a certain commu- nity of opinion. An expanding life, widened fields of enterprise and adventure, quickened hopes, and the fair prospects of a 20 GEORGE WASHINGTON growing empire everywhere heartened strong men in the colonies to steady endeavor when the new century opened — the scheming, calculating eighteenth century, so unimpassioned and conventional at first, so tempest- uous at last. The men of the colonies were not so new as their continent in the ways of civilization. They were Old World men put upon fresh coasts and a forest frontier, to make the most of them, create markets, build a new trade, become masters of vast resources as yet untouched and incalculable ; and they did their work for the most part with unmatched spirit and energy, notwithstanding they were checked and hampered by the statutes of the realm. The Navigation Acts forbade the use of any but English ships in trade ; forbade all trade, besides, which did not run direct to and from the ports of England. The colonies must not pass England by even in their trade with one another. What they could not produce themselves they must bring straight from England ; what they had to dispose of they must send straight to England. If they would exchange among themselves they must make England by the way, so that English merchants should be their middlemen and factors ; or else, if they must needs carry direct from port to port of their own coasts, they must pay such duties as they would have paid in English ports had they actually gone the intermediate voyage to Eng- land preferred by the statutes. 'Twas the " usage of other nations" besides England "to keep their planta- tion trade to themselves" in that day, as the Parliament itself said and no man could deny, and 'twas the purpose of such restrictions to maintain "a greater correspond- ence and kindness between " England and her subjects in America, "keeping them in a firmer dependence," IN WASHINGTON'S DAY 21 and at the same time " rendering them yet more bene- ficial and advantageous " to English seamen, merchants, wool-growers, and manufacturers ; but it cost the colo- nists pride and convenience and profit to obey. Some, who felt the harness of such law too smartly, consoled themselves by inventing means to escape it. The coast was long; was opened by many an unused harbor, great and small ; could not everywhere and al- ways be watched by king's officers; was frequented by a tolerant people, who had no very nice conscience about withholding taxes from a sovereign whose messages and commands came quickly over sea only when the wind held fair for weeks together ; and cargoes could be got both out and in at small expense of secrecy and no expense at all in duties. In short, smuggling was easy. 'Twas a time of frequent wars, moreover, and privateering com- missions were to be had for the asking ; so that French ships could be brought in with their lading, condemned, and handsomely sold, without the trouble of paying French prices or English port clues. Privateering, too, was cousin-german to something still better; 'twas but a sort of formal apprenticeship to piracy ; and the quiet, unused harbors of the coast showed many a place where the regular profession might be set up. Veritable pirates took the sea, hunted down what commerce they would — English no less than French and Dutch and Spanish — rendezvoused in lonely sounds, inlets, and rivers where king's officers never came, and kept very respectable company when they came at last to dispose of their plunder at New York or Charleston, being men very learned in subterfuges and very quick-fingered at brib- ing. And then there was " the Ked Sea trade," whose merchants sent fleets to Madagascar in the season to ex- oo GEORGE WASHINGTON change cargoes with rough men out of the Eastern seas, of whom they courteously asked no questions. The larger ports were full of sailors who waited to be en- gaged, not at regular wages, but " on the grand ac- count " ; and it took many weary years of hangman's labor to bring enough pirates to the gallows to scotch the ugly business. In 1717 it was reported in the colo- nies that there were quite fifteen hundred pirates on the coast, full one-half of whom made their headquarters, very brazenly, at New Providence in the Bahamas ; and there were merchants and mariners by the score who had pangs of keen regret to see the breezy trade go down, as the century drew on a decade or two, because of the steady vigilance and stern endeavor of Governors who had been straitly commanded to suppress it. • The Navigation Acts bred an irritation in the colonies which grew with their growth and strengthened with their consciousness of strength and capacity. Not be- cause such restrictions were uncommon, but because the colonies were forward and exacting. There was, indeed, much to commend the legislation they resented. It at- tracted the capital of English, merchants to the American trade, it went far towards securing English supremacy on the seas, and it was strictly within the powers of Parliament, as no man could deny. Parliament had an undoubted right to regulate imperial interests, of this or any other kind, even though it regulated them unreason- ably. But colonies that reckoned their English popula- tion by the hundred thousand and lived by trade and adventure would not long have brooked such a policy of restraint had they had the leisure to fret over it. They did not as yet have the leisure. The French stood men- acingly at their western gates, through which the great IN WASHINGTON'S DAY 23 fur trade made its way ; where the long rivers ran which threaded the central valleys of the continent ; where the Mississippi stretched itself from north to south like a great body of dividing waters, flanking all the coast and its settlements — where alone a true mastery of the con- tinent and its resources could be held. It would be time enough to reckon with Parliament touching the carrying trade when they had made good their title to what they were to trade withal. The French had been a long time about their work, for they had done it like subjects, at the bidding of an ambitious king, rather than like free men striving as they pleased for themselves. But what they had done they had done systematically and with a fixed policy that did not vary, though ministers and even dynasties might come and go. The English had crowded to the coasts of the continent as they pleased, and had mustered their tens of thousands before the French reckoned more than a few hundreds. But the French had hit upon the mighty river St. Lawrence, whose waters came out of the great lakes and the heart of the continent ; their posts were garrisons ; what men they had they put forward, at each step of discovery, at some point of vantage upon lake or river, whence they were not easily dislodged. Their shrewd fur-traders and dauntless priests struck everywhere into the heart of the forests, leading forward both trade and conquest, until at last, through the country of the Illinois and out of far Lake Michigan, the streams had been found which ran down into the west to the flooding Missis- sippi. Colonists were sent to the mouth of the vast river, posts presently dotted its banks here and there throughout its length, trade passed up and down its 24 GEORGE WASHINGTON spreading stream, and the English, their eyes at last caught by the stealthy movement, looked in a short space to see French settlements " running all along from our lakes by the back of Virginia and Carolina to the Bay of Mexico." This was a business that touched the colonies to the quick. New York had her western frontiers upon the nearer lakes. Thence, time out of mind, had come the best furs to the markets at Albany, brought from tribe to tribe out of the farthest regions of the northwest. New England, with the French at her very doors, had to look constantly to her northern borders to keep them against the unquiet savage tribes the French every year stirred up against her. Virginia felt the French power among her savage neighbors too, the moment her peo- ple ventured across the Blue Kidge into the valley where many an ancient war-path ran ; and beyond the Alleghanies she perceived she must stand in the very presence almost of the French themselves. English fron- tiersmen and traders, though they had no advancing military posts behind them, were none the less quick to go themselves deep into the shadowed wilderness, there to meet the French face to face in their own haunts. The Carolinas were hardly settled before their more ad- venturous spirits went straight into the far valley of the Tennessee, and made trade for themselves there against the coming of the French. Out of Virginia, too, and out of Pennsylvania, as well as out of New York, traders pressed towards the West, and fixed their lonely huts here and there along the wild banks of the Ohio. 'Twas diamond cut diamond when they met their French rivals in the wigwams of the Indian villages, and their canoes knew the waterways of the wilderness as well as any IN WASHINGTON'S DAY 25 man's. 'Twas they who learned at first hand what the French were doing. They were like scouts sent out to view the ground to be fought for. This hazardous meeting of rival nations at the heart of the continent meant many a deep change in the fort- unes of the colonies. European politics straightway en- tered their counsels. Here was an end of their sepa- rateness and independence of England. Charles and James and William all showed that they meant to be veritable sovereigns, and had no thought but that the colonists in America, like all other Englishmen, should be their subjects ; and here was their opportunity to be masters upon an imperial scale and with an imperial ex- cuse. In Europe, England beheld France her most for- midable foe ; she must look to it that Louis and his min- isters take no advantage in America. The colonies, no less than the Channel itself, were become the frontiers of an empire — and there must be no trespass upon Eng- lish soil by the French. The colonists must be rallied to the common work, and, if used, they must be ruled and consolidated. As it turned out, the thing was quite impossible. The colonies had too long been separate ; their charac- ters, their tempers, their interests, were too diverse and distinct ; they were unused to co-operate, and unwilling ; they were too slow to learn submission in anything. The plan of grouping several of them under a single governor was attempted, but they remained as separate under that arrangement as under any other. Massachu- setts would interest herself in nothing beyond her own jurisdiction that did not immediately touch her safety or advantage; New York cared little what the French did, if only the Iroquois could be kept quiet and she 26 GEORGE WASHINGTON could get her furs in the season, and find a market for them abroad or among the French themselves ; Virginia had no eye for any movement upon the frontiers that did not menace her own fair valleys within the moun- tains with hostile occupation; the Carolinas were as yet too young to be serviceable, and New Jersey too remote from points of danger. Nowhere could either men or supplies be had for use against the French except by the vote of a colonial assembly. The law of the empire might be what it would in the mouths of English judges at home ; it did not alter the practice of the col- onies. The courts in England might say with what emphasis they liked that Virginia, " being a conquered country, their law is what the King pleases " ; it was none the less necessary for the King's Governor to keep on terms with the people's representatives. " Our government is so happily constituted," writes Colonel Byrd to his friend in the Barbadoes, " that a governor must first outwit us before he can oppress us. And if ever he squeeze money out of us, he must first take care to deserve it." Every colony held stoutly to a like practice, with a like stubborn temper, which it was mere folly to ignore. One and all they were even then " too proud to submit, too strong to be forced, too enlightened not to see all the consequences which must arise" should they tamely consent tc be rulea by royal command or parliamentary enactment. Their obedience must be had on their own terms, or else not had at all. Governors saw this plainly enough, though the ministers at home could not. Many a governor had his temper sadly soured by the contentious obstinacy of the colonial as- sembly he was set to deal with. One or two died of sheer exasperation. But the situation was not altered a whit. IN WASHINGTON'S DAY 27 When there is friction there must, sooner or later be adjustment, if affairs are to go forward at all, and this contest between imperial system and colonial indepen- dence at last brought some things that had been vague to a very clear definition. 'Twas plain the colonies would not of themselves combine to meet and oust the French. They would supply neither men nor money, moreover. England must send her own armies to Amer- ica, fight France there as she would have fought her in Europe, and pay the reckoning herself out of her own treasurjf, getting from the colonies, the while, only such wayward and niggardly aid as they chose to give. The colonies, meanwhile, might gather some of the fruits of experience; might learn how safe it was to be selfish, and how unsafe, if they hoped to prosper and be free ; might perceive where their common interests lay, and their common power; might in some degree steady their lives and define their policy against the coming of more peaceful times. Two wars came and went which brought France and England to arms against each other in America, as in Europe, but they passed away without decisive incident in the New World, and there followed upon them thirty years of uneventful peace, during which affairs hung at a nice balance, and the colonies took counsel, each for itself, how they should prosper. Virginia, meanwhile, had got the charter she was to keep. From the Potomac to the uncertain border of the Carolinas she had seen her counties fill with the men who were to decide her destiny. Her people, close upon a hundred thousand strong, had fallen into the or- der of life they were to maintain. They were no longer colonists merely, but citizens of a commonwealth of 28 GEORGE WASHINGTON which they began to be very proud, not least because they saw a noble breed of public men spring out of their own loins to lead them. Though they were scat- tered, they were not divided. There was, after all, no real isolation for any man in Virginia, for all that he lived so much apart and was a sort of lord within his rustic barony. In that sunny land men were constantly abroad, looking to their tobacco and the labor of all kinds that must go forward, but would not unless they looked to it, or else for the sheer pleasure of bestriding a good horse, being quit of the house, and breathing free in the genial air. Bridle-paths everywhere threaded the forests; it was no great matter to ride from house to house among one's neighbors; there were county- court days, moreover, to draw the country-side together, whether there was much business or little to be seen to. Men did not thrive thereabouts by staying within doors, but by being much about, knowing their neighbors, ob- serving what ships came and went upon the rivers, and what prices were got for the cargoes they carried away ; learning what the news was from Williamsburg and London, what horses and cattle were to be had, and what dogs, of what breeds. It was a country in which news and opinions and friendships passed freely current; where men knew each other with a rare leisurely in- timacy, and enjoyed their easy, unforced intercourse with a keen and lasting relish. It was a country in which men kept their individuali- ty very handsomely withal. If there was no town life, there were no town manners either, no village conven- tionalities to make all men of one carriage and pattern and manner of living. Every head of a family was head also of an establishment, and could live with a self- IN WASHINGTON'S DAY 29 respect and freedom which were subject to no man's private scrutiny. He had leave, in his independence, to be himself quite naturally, and did not need to justify his liberty by excuses. And yet he had responsibilities too, and a position which steadied and righted him al- most in spite of himself. It required executive capacity to make his estate pay, and an upright way of life to maintain his standing. If he was sometimes loud and hectoring, or over-careless what he said or did, 'twas commonly because he was young or but half come into his senses; for his very business, of getting good crops of tobacco and keeping on dealing terms with his neigh- bors, demanded prudence and a conduct touched with consideration. He had to build his character very care- fully by the plumb to keep it at an equilibrium, though he might decorate it, if it were but upright, as freely, as whimsically even, as he chose, with chance traits and self-pleasing tastes, with the full consent and tolerance of the neighborhood. He was his own man, might have his own opinions if he held them but courteously enough, might live his own life if he but lived it cleanly and without offence. 'Twas by their living rather than by their creed or their livelihood that men were assessed and esteemed. It was not a life that bred students, though it was a life that begot thoughtfulness and leadership in affairs. Those who fell in the way of getting them had not a few books upon their shelves, because they thought every gentleman should have such means of knowing what the world had said and done before his day. But they read only upon occasion, when the weather darkened, or long evenings dragged because there were no guests in the house. Not much systematic education was pos- 30 GEORGE WASHINGTON sible where the population was so dispersed and sepa- rate. A few country schools undertook what was ab- solutely necessary, and gave instruction in such practi cal branches as every man must know something of who was to take part in the management of private and pub- lic business. For the rest, those who chose could get the languages from private tutors, when they were to be had, and then go over sea to read at the universities, or to Williamsburg when at last the colony had its own college of William and Mary. More youths went from the Northern Neck to England for their education, no doubt, than from any other part of Virginia. The counties there were somewhat closer than the rest to the sea, bred more merchants and travellers, kept up a more intimate correspondence both by travel and by letter with Bristol and London and all the old English homes. And even those who stayed in Virginia had most of them the tradition of refinement, spoke the mother tongue purely and with a proper relish, and maintained themselves somehow, with perhaps an added touch of simplicity that was their own, in the practices of a cul- tivated race. No one in Virginia thought that " becoming a mere scholar" was "a desirable education for a gentleman." He ought to "become acquainted with men and things rather than books." Books must serve only to deepen and widen the knowledge he should get by observation and a free intercourse with those about him. When Virginians wrote, therefore, you might look to find them using, not studied phrases, but a style that smacked fresh of all the free elements of good talk — not like scholars or professed students, but like gentlemen of leisure and cultivated men of affairs — with a subtle, not IN WASHINGTON'S DAY 31 unpleasing flavor of egotism, and the racy directness of speech, withal, that men may use who are sure of their position. Such was the writing of Robert Beverley, whose History and Present State of Virginia, published in London in 1705, spoke at first hand and authorita- tively of affairs of which the world had heard hitherto only by uncertain report. He did not write the manly book because he had a pricking ambition to be an au- thor, but because he loved Virginia, and wished to give such an account of her affairs as would justify his pride in her. He came of an ancient English family, whose ample means were scarcely more considerable in Virginia than they had been in Beverley, in Yorkshire. He had himself been carefully educated in England, and had learned to feel very much at home there ; but the at- tractions of the old home did not wean him from his love of the new, where he had been born — that quiet land where men dealt with one another so frankly, where Nature was so genial in all her moods, and men so without pretence. Official occupations gave him oc- casion while yet a very young man to handle familiar- ly the records of the colony, the intimate letters of its daily life, and he took a proud man's pleasure in ex- tracting from them, and from the traditions of those who still carried much of the simple history in their own recollections of a stirring life, a frank and genial story of what had been done and seen in Virginia. And so his book became " the living testimony of a proud and generous Virginian " — too proud to conceal his opinions or withhold censure where it was merited, too generous not to set down very handsomely whatever was admirable and of good report in the life of his peo- ple. His own manly character, speaking out every- 32 GEORGE WASHINGTON where, as it does, in lively phrase and candid meaning, is itself evidence of the wholesome native air he so praises in Virginia. He thought himself justified in loving a country where "plantations, orchards, and gardens constantly afford fragrant and delightful walks. In their woods and fields they have an unknown variety of vegetables and other rarities of nature to discover and observe. They have hunting, fishing, and fowling, with which they entertain themselves in a thousand ways. Here is the most good nature and hospitality practised in the world, both towards friends and strangers ; but the worst of it is this generosity is attended now and then with a little too much intemperance. The neighborhood is at much the same distance as in the country in Eng- land, but with this advantage, that all the better sort of people have been abroad and seen the world, by which means they are free from that stiffness and formality which discover more civility than kindness. And be- sides, the goodness of the roads and the fairness of the weather bring people oftener together." Of a like quality of genuineness and good breeding is the writing of Colonel William Byrd, the accomplished master of Westover, who was of the same generation. He may well have been the liveliest man in Virginia, so piquant and irrepressible is the humor that runs through almost every sentence he ever wrote. It must be he wrote for pastime. He never took the pains to publish anything. His manuscripts lay buried a hundred years or more in the decent sepulture of private possession ere they were printed, but were even then as quick as when they were written. Beverley had often a grave smile for what he recorded, or a quiet sarcasm of tone in the IN WASHINGTON'S DAT 33 telling of it. " The militia are the only standing forces in Virginia," he says, very demurely, and " they are happy in the enjoyment of an everlasting peace.' 1 But Colonel Byrd is very merry, like a man of sense, not contriving the jest, but only letting it slip, revealing it; looks very shrewdly into things, and very wisely, too, but with an easy eye, a disengaged conscience, keeping tally of the score like one who attends but is not too deeply concerned. He was, in fact, very deeply en- gaged in all affairs of importance — no man more deeply or earnestly ; but when he wrote 'twas not his chief business to speak of that. He was too much of a gen- tleman and too much of a wit to make grave boast of what he was doing. No man born in Virginia had a greater property than he, a house more luxuriously appointed, or a part to play more princely ; and no man knew the value of position and wealth and social consideration more ap- preciatively. His breeding had greatly quickened his perception of such things. He had had a long training abroad, had kept very noble company alike in England and on the Continent, had been called to the bar in the Middle Temple and chosen a Fellow of the Royal Society, and so had won his freedom of the world of letters and of affairs. Yet he had returned to Virginia, as all her sons did, with only an added zest to serve and enjoy her. Many designs for her development throve because of his interest and encouragement; he sought her advantage jealously in her Council, as her agent in England, as owner of great tracts of her fertile lands. 'Twas he who brought to her shores some of her best settlers, gave her promise of veritable towns at Rich- mond and Petersburg, fought arbitrary power wherever 3 34 GEORGE WASHINGTON it showed itself in her government, and proved himself in every way " a true and worthy inheritor of the feel- ings and opinions of the old cavaliers of Virginia." But through all his busy life he carried himself like the handsome, fortunate man he was, with a touch of gayety, a gallant spirit of comradeship, a zest for good books, spirited men, and comely women — heartily, like a man who, along with honor, sought the right pleasures of the world. Nothing daunted the spirits of this manly gentleman, not even rough work at the depths of the forest, upon the public business of determining the southern boun- dary-line of the colony, or upon the private business of seeing to his own distant properties in North Carolina. It gave him only the better chance to see the world ; and he was never at a loss for something to do. There were stray books to be found even in the cabins of the remotest settlers ; or, if not, there was the piquant liter- ary gossip of those laughing times of Queen Anne, but just gone by, to rehearse and comment upon. Colonel Byrd was not at a loss to find interesting ways in which even a busy man might make shift to enjoy " the Caro- lina felicity of having nothing to do." A rough people lived upon that frontier in his day, who showed them- selves very anxious to be put upon the southern side of the line; for, if taken into Virginia, "they must have submitted to some sort of order and government ; whereas in North Carolina every one does what seems best in his own eyes." " They pay no tribute," he laughs, " either to God or to Caesar." It would not be amiss, he thinks, were the clergy in Virginia, once in two or three years — not to make the thing burdensome — to "take a turn among these gentiles." " 'T would IN WASHINGTON'S DAY 35 look a little apostolical," he argues, with the character- istic twinkle in his eye, " and they might hope to be re- quited for it hereafter, if that be not thought too long to tarry for their reward." A stray parson was to be found once and again even at the depths of the forest — on the Virginian side — though to find his humble quar- ters you must needs thread " a path as narrow as that which leads to heaven, but much more dirty"; but a stray parson was no great evangel. Colonel Byrd was too sound a gentleman not to be a good churchman ; but he accounted it no sin to see w r here the humor lurks even in church. " Mr. Betty, the parson of the parish, entertained us with a good, honest sermon," he chroni- cles upon occasion ; " but whether he bought it, or bor- rowed it, would have been uncivil in us to inquire Be that as it will, he is a decent man, with a double chin that fits gracefully over his band. . . . When church was done we refreshed our teacher with a glass of wine, and then, receiving his blessing, took horse." 'Tis likely Colonel Byrd would have found small amusement in narrating the regular course of his life, his great errands and permanent concerns of weighty business. That he could as well leave to his biographer, should he chance to have one. For himself, he chose to tell the unusual things he had seen and heard and taken part in, and to make merry as well as he might by the way. The Virginian writers were not all country gentle- men. There were austere and stately scholars, too, like the Keverend William Stith, who had held modest liv- ings in more than one parish, had served the House of Burgesses as chaplain, and the college, first as instructor and then as president, until at length, having won "per- fect leisure and retirement," he set himself in his last 36 GEORGE WASHINGTON days to straighten into order the confusion of early Vir- ginian history. " Such a work," he reflected, " will be a noble and elegant entertainment for my vacant hours, which it is not in my power to employ more to my own satisfaction, or the use and benefit of my country." What with his scholarly love of documents set forth at length, however, his painstaking recital of details, and his roundabout, pedantic style, his story of the first sev- enteen years of the colony lingered through a whole volume ; and his friends' laggard subscriptions to that single prolix volume discouraged him from undertaking another. There was neither art nor quick movement enough in such work, much as scholars have prized it since, to take the taste of a generation that lived its life on horseback and spiced it with rough sport and direct speech. They could read with more patience the plain, business-like sentences of the Reverend Hugh Jones's Present State of Virginia, and with more zest the downright, telling words in which the Reverend James Blair, " commissary " to the Bishop of London, spoke of their affairs. James Blair, though born and bred in Scotland, edu- cated at Edinburgh, and engaged as a minister at home till he was close upon thirty years of age, was, as much a Yirginian in his life and deeds as any man born in the Old Dominion. 'Twas he who had been the chief founder of the College of William and Mary, and who had served it as president through every vicissitude of fortune for fifty years. For fifty years he was a mem- ber, too, of the Kings Council in the colony, and for fifty-eight the chief adviser of the mother Church in England concerning ecclesiastical affairs in Virginia. " Probably no other man in the colonial time did so IN WASHINGTON'S DAY 37 much for the intellectual life of Virginia" as did this " sturdy and faithful " Scotsman. To the colonists, oftentimes, he seemed overbearing, dictatorial even, and, for all their " gentlemanly conformity to the Church of England," they did not mean to suffer any man to be set over them as bishop in Virginia ; while to the royal governors he seemed sometimes a headstrong agitator and demagogue, so stoutly did he stand up for the lib- erties of the people among whom he had cast his lot. He was in all things a doughty Scot. He made very straight for the ends he deemed desirable; dealt frank- ly, honestly, fearlessly with all men alike ; confident of being in the right even when he was in the wrong ; deal- ing with all as he thought he ought to deal, " whether they liked it or not"; incapable of discouragement, as he was also incapable of dishonor ; a stalwart, formidable master of all work in church and college, piling up every day to his credit a great debt of gratitude from the colony, which honored him without quite liking him. It was very noteworthy that masterful men of many kinds took an irresistible liking to Virginia, though they were but sent upon an errand to it. There was Alex- ander Spotswood, for example, who, after he had been twelve years Lieutenant-Governor in the stead of his lordship the Earl of Orkney, spent eighteen more good years, all he had left, upon the forty -odd thousand acres of land he had acquired in the fair colony, as a country gentleman, very busy developing the manufacture of iron, and as busy as there was any need to be as Post- master-General of the colonies. He came of a sturdy race of gentlemen, had seen service along with Marlbor- ough and my uncle Toby " with the army in Flanders," had gone much about the world upon many errands 38 GEORGE WASHINGTON and seen all manner of people, and then had found him- self at last in Virginia when he was past forty. For all its rough life, he liked the Old Dominion well enough to adopt it as his home. There was there, he said, " less swearing, less profaneness, less drunkenness and debauchery, less uncharitable feuds and animosities, and less knavery and villany than in any part of the world " where his lot had been. Not all of his neigh- bors were gentlemen ; not very many could afford to send their sons to England to be educated. Men of all sorts had crowded into Virginia : merchants and gentle- men not a few, but also commoner men a great many — mariners, artisans, tailors, and men without settled trades or handicrafts of any kind. Spotswood had found it no easy matter when he was Governor to deal patiently with a House of Burgesses to which so many men of " mean understandings " had been sent, and had allowed himself to wax very sarcastic when he found how igno- rant some of them were. " I observe," he said, tartly, "that the grand ruling party in your House has not furnished chairmen of two of your standing committees who can spell English or write common - sense, as the grievances under their own handwriting will manifest." 'Twas not a country, either, where one could travel much at ease, for one must ford the streams for lack of bridges, and keep an eye sharply about him as he travelled the rude forest roads when the wind was high lest a rotten tree should fall upon him. Nature was so bountiful, yielded so easy a largess of food, that few men took pains to be thrifty, and some parts of the colony were little more advanced in the arts of life than North Carolina, where, Colonel Byrd said, nothing was dear " but law, physic, and strong drink." No doubt the IN WASHINGTON'S DAY 39 average colonist in Virginia, when not sobered by im- portant cares, was apt to be a fellow of coarse fibre, whose ' ' addiction was to courses vain ; His companies unlettered, rude, and shallow ; His hours fill'd up with riots, banquets, sports ; And never noted in him any study, Any retirement, any sequestration From open haunts and popularity." Bat to many a scapegrace had come "reformation in a flood, with such a heady current, scouring faults," as to make a notable man of him. There were at least the traditions of culture in the colony, and enough men of education and refinement to leaven the mass. Life ran generously, even if roughly, upon the scattered plantations, and strong, thinking, high-bred men had somehow a mastery and leadership in it all which made them feel Virginia their home and field of honor. Change of time and of affairs, the stir of growing life in Virginia as she ceased from being a mere colony and became a sturdy commonwealth, boasting her own breed of gentlemen, merchants, scholars, and statesmen, laid upon the Washingtons, as upon other men, a touch of transformation. Seventy-six years had gone by since John Washington came out of Bedfordshire and took up lands on Bridges' Creek in Westmoreland in Virginia, and still his children were to be found in the old seats he had chosen at the first. They had become thorough Virginians with the rest, woven into the close fibre of the new life. Westmoreland and all the counties that lay about it on the Northern Neck were strictly of a piece with the rest of Virginia, for all they had waited long to be settled. There the Washingtons had become 40 GEORGE WASHINGTON country gentlemen of comfortable estate upon the ac- cepted model. John had begotten Lawrence, and Law- rence had begotten Augustine. John had thriftily taken care to see his offspring put in a way to prosper at the very first. He had acquired a substantial property of his own where the land lay very fertile upon the banks of the Potomac, and he had, besides, by three marriages, made good a very close connection with several fami- lies that had thriven thereabouts before him. He had become a notable figure, indeed, among his neighbors ere he had been many years in the colony — a colonel in their militia, and their representative in the House of Burgesses; and they had not waited for his death to call the parish in which he lived Washington Parish. His sons and grandsons, though they slackened a little the pace he had set them in his energy at the outset, throve none the less substantially upon the estates he had left them, abated nothing of the dignity and worth they had inherited, lived simply, and kept their place of respect in the parish and state. Wars came and went without disturbing incident for them, as the French moved upon the borders by impulse of politics from over sea ; and then long peace set in, equally without incident, to stay a whole generation, while good farming went quietly forward, and politicians at home and in the colonies planned another move in their game. It was in the mid-season of this time of poise, preparation, and expect- ancy that George Washington was born, on the 22d of February, in the year 1732, " about ten in the morning," William Gooch, gentlest of Marlborough's captains, be- ing Governor in Virginia. He came into the world at the plain but spacious homestead on Bridges' Creek, fourth son, fifth child, of Augustine Washington, and of IN WASHINGTON'S DAY 41 the third generation from John Washington, son of the one-time rector of Purleigh. The homestead stood upon a green and gentle slope that fell away, at but a little distance, to the waters of the Potomac, and from it could be seen the broad reaches of the stream stretching wide to the Maryland shore beyond, and flooding with slow, full tide to the great bay below. The spot gave token of the quiet youth of the boy, of the years of grateful peace in which he was to learn the first lessons of life, ere war and the changing fortunes of his coun- try hurried him to the field and to the council. FAC-SIMILE OF THE ENTRY OF WASHINGTON'S BIRTH IN HIS MOTHER'S BIBLE A VIKGINIAN BREEDING CHAPTER II George Washington was cast for his career by a very scant and homely training. Augustine Washington, his father, lacked neither the will nor the means to set him handsomely afoot, with as good a schooling, both in books and in affairs, as was to be had ; he would have done all that a liberal and provident man should do to advance his boy in the world, had he lived to go with him through his youth. He owned land in four coun- ties, more than five thousand acres all told, and lying upon both the rivers that refresh the fruitful Northern Neck; besides several plots of ground in the promising village of Fredericksburg, which lay opposite his lands upon the Eappahannock ; and one-twelfth part of the stock of the Principio Iron Company, whose mines and furnaces in Maryland and Virginia yielded a better prolit than any others in the two colonies. He had com- manded a ship in his time, as so many of his neighbors had in that maritime province, carrying iron from the mines to England, and no doubt bringing convict labor- ers back upon his voyage home again. He himself raised the ore from the mines that lay upon his own land, close to the Potomac, and had it carried the easy six miles to the river. Matters were very well managed there, Colonel Byrd said, and no pains were spared to make the business profitable. Captain Washington had 46 GEORGE WASHINGTON represented his home parish of Truro, too, in the House of Burgesses, where his athletic figure, his ruddy skin, and frank gray eyes must have made him as conspicuous as his constituents could have wished. He was a man of the world, every inch, generous, hardj^, independent. He lived long enough, too, to see how stalwart and capable and of how noble a spirit his young son was to be, with how manly a bearing he was to carry himself in the world ; and had loved him and made him his compan- ion accordingly. But the end came for him before he could see the lad out of boyhood. He died April 12, 1743, when he was but forty-nine years of age, and be- fore George was twelve ; and in his will there was, of course, for George only a younger son's portion. The active gentleman had been twice married, and there were seven children to be provided for. Two sons of the first marriage survived. The bulk of the estate went, as Virginian custom dictated, to Lawrence, the eldest son. To Augustine, the second son, fell most of the rich lands in Westmoreland. George, the eldest born of the second marriage, left to the guardianship of his young mother, shared with the four younger children the residue of the estate. He was to inherit his father's farm upon the Rappahannock, to possess, and to cultivate if he would, when he should come of age ; but for the rest his fort- unes were to make. He must get such serviceable training as he could for a life of independent endeavor. The two older brothers had been sent to England to get their schooling and preparation for life, as their father before them had been to get his — Lawrence to make ready to take his father's place when the time should come ; Augustine, it was at first planned, to fit himself for the law. George could now look for nothing of the A VIRGINIAN BREEDING 47 kind. He must continue, as he had begun, to get such elementary and practical instruction as was to be had of schoolmasters in Virginia, and the young mother's care must stand him in the stead of a fathers pilotage and oversight. Fortunately Mary Washington was a wise and provi- dent mother, a woman of too firm a character and too steadfast a courage to be dismayed by responsibility. She had seemed only a fair and beautiful girl when Augustine Washington married her, and there was a romantic story told of how that gallant Yirginian sailor and gentleman had literally been thrown at her feet out of a carriage in the London streets by way of introduc- tion — where she, too, was a visiting stranger out of Vir- ginia. But she had shown a singular capacity for busi- ness when the romantic days of courtship were over. Lawrence Washington, too, though but five-and-twenty when his father died and left him head of the family, proved himself such an elder brother as it could but bet- ter and elevate a boy to have. For all he was so young, he had seen something of the world, and had already made notable friends. He had not returned home out of England until he was turned of twenty-one, and he had been back scarcely a twelvemonth before he was off again, to seek service in the war against Spain. The colonies had responded with an unwonted willingness and spirit in 1710 to the home government's call for troops to go against the Spaniard in the West Indies ; and Lawrence Washington had sought and obtained a com- mission as captain in the Virginian regiment which had volunteered for the duty. He had seen those terrible days at Cartagena, with Vernon's fleet and Wentworth's army, when the deadly heat and blighting damps of the 48 GEORGE WASHINGTON tropics wrought a work of death which drove the Eng- lish forth as no fire from the Spanish cannon could. He had been one of that devoted force which threw itself twelve hundred strong upon Fort San Lazaro, and came away beaten with six hundred only. He had seen the raw provincials out of the colonies carry themselves as gal- lantly as any veterans through all the fiery trial ; had seen the storm and the valor, the vacillation and the blunder- ing, and the shame of all the rash affair; and had come away the friend and admirer of the gallant Vernon, de- spite his headstrong folly and sad miscarriage. He had reached home again, late in the year 1742, only to see his father presently snatched away by a sudden illness, and to find himself become head of the family in his stead. All thought of further service away from home was dismissed. He accepted a commission as major in the colonial militia, and an appointment as adjutant- general of the military district in which his lands lay ; but he meant that for the future his duties should be civil rather than military in the life he set himself to live, and turned very quietly to the business and the social duty of a proprietor among his neighbors in Fairfax County, upon the broad estates to which he gave the name Mount Vernon, in compliment to the brave sailor whose friend he had become in the far, un- happy South. Marriage was, of course, his first step towards domes- tication, and the woman he chose brought him into new connections which suited both his tastes and his train- ing. Three months after his father's death he married Anne Fairfax, daughter to William Fairfax, his neigh- bor. 'Twas William Fairfax's grand uncle Thomas, third Lord Fairfax, who had in that revolutionary year A VIRGINIAN BREEDING 49 1646 summoned Colonel Henry Washington to give into his hands the city of Worcester, and who had got so sharp an answer from the King's stout soldier. But the Fair- faxes had soon enough turned royalists again when they saw whither the Parliament men would carry them. A hundred healing years had gone by since those unhappy days when the nation was arrayed against the King. Anne Fairfax brought no alien tradition to the house- hold of her young husband. Her father had served the King, as her lover had — with more hardship than re- ward, as behooved a soldier — in Spain and in the Baha- mas; and was now, when turned of fifty, agent here in Virginia to his cousin Thomas, sixth Baron Fairfax, in the management of his great estates, lying upon the Northern Neck and in the fruitful valleys beyond. William Fairfax had been but nine years in the colony, but he was already a Virginian like his neighbors, and, as collector of his Majesty's customs for the South Po- tomac and President of the King's Council, no small figure in their affairs — a man who had seen the world and knew how to bear himself in this part of it. In 1746 Thomas, Lord Fairfax, himself came to Vir- ginia — a man strayed out of the world of fashion at fifty-five into the forests of a wild frontier. The better part of his ancestral estates in Yorkshire had been sold to satisfy the creditors of his spendthrift father. These untilled stretches of land in the Old Dominion were now become the chief part of his patrimony. 'Twas said, too, that he had suffered a cruel misadventure in love at the hands of a fair jilt in London, and so had become the austere, eccentric bachelor he showed himself to be in the free and quiet colony. A man of taste and cult- ure, he had written with Addison and Steele for the 4 50 GEORGE WASHINGTON Spectator / a man of the world, he had acquired, for all his reserve, that easy touch and intimate mastery in dealing with men which come with the long practice of such men of fashion as are also men of sense. He brought with him to Virginia, though past fifty, the fresh vigor of a young man eager for the free pioneer life of such a province. He tarried but two years with his cousin, where the colony had settled to an ordered way of living. Then he built himself a roomy lodge, shadowed by spreading piazzas, and fitted with such simple appointments as sufficed for comfort at the depths of the forest, close upon seventy miles away, within the valley of the Shenandoah, where a hardy frontier people had but begun to gather. The great manor-house he had meant to build was never begun. The plain comforts of " Green way Court" satisfied him more and more easily as the years passed, and the habits of a simple life grew increasingly pleasant and familiar, till thirty years and more had slipped away and he was dead, at ninety-one — broken-hearted, men said, because the King's government had fallen upon final defeat and was done with in America. It was in the company of these men, and of those who naturally gathered about them in that hospita- ble country, that George Washington was bred. "A stranger had no more to do," says Beverley, " but to in- quire upon the road where any gentleman or good housekeeper lived, and there he might depend upon be- ing received with hospitality"; and 'twas certain many besides strangers would seek out the young major at Mount Yernon whom his neighbors had hastened to make their representative in the House of Burgesses, and the old soldier of the soldierly house of Fairfax A VIRGINIAN BREEDING 51 who was President of the King's Council, and so next to the Governor himself. A boy who was much at Mount Yernon and at Mr. Fairfax's seat, Belvoir, might expect to see not a little that was worth seeing of the life of the colony. George was kept at school until he was close upon sixteen ; but there was ample vaca- tion-time for visiting. Mrs. Washington did not keep him at her apron-strings. He even lived, when it was necessary, with his brother Augustine, at the old home on Bridges' Creek, in order to be near the best school that was accessible, while the mother was far away on the farm that lay upon the Rappahannock. Mrs. Wash- ington saw to it, nevertheless, that she should not lose sight of him altogether. When he was fourteen it was proposed that he should be sent to sea, as so many lads were, no doubt, from that maritime province ; but the prudent mother preferred he should not leave Virginia, and the schooling went on as before — the schooling of books and manly sports. Every lad learned to ride — to ride colt or horse, regardless of training, gait, or temper — in that country, where no one went afoot except to catch his mount in the pasture. Every lad, black or white, bond or free, knew where to find and how to take the roving game in the forests. And young Washing- ton, robust boy that he was, not to be daunted while that strong spirit sat in him which he got from his father 'and mother alike, took his apprenticeship on horseback and in the tangled woods with characteristic zest and ardor. He was, above all things else, a capable, executive boy. He loved mastery, and he relished acquiring the most effective means of mastery in all practical affairs. His very exercise-books used at school gave proof of it. 52 GEORGE WASHINGTON They were filled, not only with the rules, formulae, dia- grams, and exercises of surveying, which he was taking- special pains to learn, at the advice of his friends, but also with careful copies of legal and mercantile papers, bills of exchange, bills of sale, bonds, indentures, land warrants, leases, deeds, and wills, as if he meant to be a lawyer's or a merchant's clerk. It would seem that, pas- sionate and full of warm blood as he was, he conned these things as he studied the use and structure of his fowling-piece, the bridle he used for his colts, his saddle- girth, and the best ways of mounting. He copied these forms of business as he might have copied Beverley's account of the way fox or 'possum or beaver was to be taken or the wild turkey trapped. The men he most admired — his elder brothers, Mr. Fairfax, and the gentle- men planters who were so much at their houses — were most of them sound men of business, who valued good surveying as much as they admired good horsemanship and skill in sport. They were their own merchants, and looked upon forms of business paper as quite as useful as ploughs and hogsheads. Careful exercise in such matters might well enough accompany practice in the equally formal minuet in Virginia. And so this boy learned to show in almost everything he did the careful precision of the perfect marksman. In the autumn of 1747, when he was not yet quite sixteen, George quit his formal schooling, and presently joined his brother Lawrence at Mount Vernon, to seek counsel and companionship. Lawrence had conceived a strong affection for his manly younger brother. Him- self a man of spirit and honor, he had a high-hearted man's liking for all that he saw that was indomitable and well-purposed in the lad, a generous man's tender- A VIRGINIAN BREEDING 53 ness in looking to the development of this thoroughbred boy; and he took him into his confidence as if he had been his own son. Not only upon his vacations now, but almost when he would, and as if he were already him- self a man with the rest, he could live in the comrade- ship that obtained at Belvoir and Mount Vernon. Men of all sorts, it seemed, took pleasure in his company. Lads could be the companions of men in Virginia. Her outdoor life of journeyings, sport, adventure, put them, as it were, upon equal terms with their elders, where spirit, audacity, invention, prudence, manliness, resource, told for success and comradeship. Young men and old can be companions in arms, in sport, in woodcraft, and on the trail of the fox. 'Twas not an indoor life of conference, but an outdoor life of affairs in this rural colony. One man, indeed, gave at least a touch of an- other quality to the life Washington saw. This was Lord Fairfax, who had been almost two years in Vir- ginia when the boy quit school, and who was now deter- mined, as soon as might be, to take up his residence at his forest lodge within the Blue Ridge. George greatly struck his lordship's fancy, as he did that of all capable men, as a daring lad in the hunt and a sober lad in counsel ; and, drawn into such companionship, he learned a great deal that no one else in Virginia could have taught him so well — the scrupulous deportment of a high-bred and honorable man of the world ; the use of books by those who preferred affairs ; the way in which strength may be rendered gracious, and independence made generous. A touch of Old World address was to be learned at Belvoir. His association with Lord Fairfax, moreover, put him in the way of making his first earnings as a surveyor. 54 GEORGE WASHINGTON Fairfax had not come to America merely to get away from the world of fashion in London and bury himself in the wilderness. His chief motive was one which did him much more credit, and bespoke him a man and a true colonist. It was his purpose, he declared, to open up, settle, and cultivate the vast tracts of beautiful and fertile land he had inherited in Virginia, and he proved his sincerity by immediately setting about the business. It was necessary as a first step that he should have sur- veys made, in order that he might know how his lands lay, how bounded and disposed through the glades and upon the streams of the untrodden forests ; and in young Washington he had a surveyor ready to his hand. The lad was but sixteen, indeed; was largely self-taught in surveying ; and had had no business yet that made test of his quality. But surveyors were scarce, and boys were not tender at sixteen in that robust, out-of-door colony. Fairfax had an eye for capacity. He knew the athletic boy to be a fearless woodsman, with that odd, calm judgment looking forth at his steady gray eyes; perceived how seriously he took himself in all that he did, and how thorough he was at succeeding ; and had no doubt he could run his lines through the thicketed forests as well as any man. At any rate, he commis- sioned him to undertake the task, and was not disap- pointed in the way he performed it. Within a very few weeks Washington conclusively showed his capacity. In March, 1748, with George Fairfax, William Fairfax's son, for company, he rode forth with his little band of assistants through the mountains to the wild country where his work lay, and within the month almost he was back again, with maps and figures which showed his lordship very clearly what lands he had upon the A VIRGINIAN BREEDING 55 sparkling Shenandoah and the swollen upper waters of the Potomac. 'Twas all he wanted before making his home where his estate lay in the wilderness. Before the year was out he had established himself at Greenway Court; huntsmen and tenants and guests had found their way thither, and life was fairly begun upon the rough rural barony. It had been wild and even perilous work for the young surveyor, but just out of school, to go in the wet spring- time into that wilderness, when the rivers were swollen and ugly with the rains and melting snows from off the mountains, where there was scarcely a lodging to be had except in the stray, comfortless cabins of the scat- tered settlers, or on the ground about a fire in the open woods, and where a woodman's wits were needed to come even tolerably off. But there was a strong relish in such an experience for Washington, which did not wear off with the novelty of it. There is an unmistaka- ble note of boyish satisfaction in the tone in which he speaks of it. " Since you received my letter in October last," he writes to a young comrade, " I have not sleep'd above three nights or four in a bed, but, after walking a good deal all the day, I lay down before the fire upon a little hay, straw, fodder, or bear-skin, whichever is to be had, with man, wife, and children, like a parcel of clogs and cats ; and happy is he who gets the berth nearest the fire. . . . I have never had my clothes off, but lay and sleep in them, except the few nights I have lay'n in Frederick Town." For three years he kept steadily at the trying business, without loss either of health or courage, now deep in the forests laboriously laying off the rich bottom lands and swelling hill -sides of that wild but goodly country between the mountains, now at 5 6 GEORGE WASHINGTON Greenway Court with his lordship, intent upon the busy life there, — following the hounds, consorting with hunts- men and Indians and traders, waiting upon the ladies who now and again visited the lodge ; when other occu- pations failed, reading up and down in his lordship's copy of the Spectator, or in the historians who told the great English story. His first success in surveying brought him frequent employment in the valley. Settlers were steadily making their way thither, who must needs have their holdings clearly bounded and defined. Upon his lordship's recommendation and his own showing of what he knew and could do, he obtained appointment at the hands of the President and Master of William and Mary, the colony's careful agent in the matter, as official sur- veyor for Culpeper County, " took the usual oaths to his Majesty's person and government," and so got for his work the privilege of authoritative public record. Competent surveyors were much in demand, and, when once he had been officially accredited in his pro- fession, Washington had as much to do both upon new lands and old as even a young man's energy and liking for an independent income could reasonably demand. His home he made with his brother at Mount Vernon, where he was always so welcome ; and he was as often as possible with his mother at her place upon the Rappa- hannock, to lend the efficient lady such assistance as she needed in the business of the estate she held for herself and her children. At odd intervals he studied tactics, practised the manual of arms, or took a turn at the broadsword with the old soldiers who so easily found excuses for visiting Major Washington at Mount Ver- non. But, except when winter weather forbade him the fields, he was abroad, far and near, busy with his sur- A VIRGINIAN BREEDING 57 veying, and incidentally making trial of his neighbors up and down all the country-side round about, as his errands threw their open doors in his way. His pleas- ant bearing and his quiet satisfaction at being busy, his manly, efficient ways, his evident self-respect, and his frank enjoyment of life, the engaging mixture in him of man and boy, must have become familiar to everybody worth knowing throughout all the Northern Neck. But three years put a term to his surveying. In 1751 he was called imperatively off, and had the whole course of his life changed, by the illness of his brother. Law- rence Washington had never been robust ; those long months spent at the heart of the fiery South with Ver- non's fever-stricken fleet had touched his sensitive con- stitution to the quick, and at last a fatal consumption fastened upon him. Neither a trip to England nor the waters of the warm springs at home brought him re- cuperation, and in the autumn of 1751 his physician ordered him to the Bahamas for the winter. George whom he so loved and trusted, went with him, to nurse and cheer him. But even the gentle sea -air of the islands wrought no cure of the stubborn malady. The sterling, gifted, lovable gentleman, who had made his quiet seat at Mount Yernon the home of so much that was honorable and of good report, came back the next summer to die in his prime, at thirty-four. George found himself named executor in his brother's will, and looked to of a sudden to guard all the interests of the young widow and her little daughter in the management of a large estate. That trip to the Bahamas had been his last outing as a boy. He had enjoyed the novel journey with a very keen and natural relish while it promised his brother health. The radiant air of those summer 58 GEORGE WASHINGTON isles had touched him with a new pleasure, and the cor- dial hospitality of the homesick colonists had added the satisfaction of a good welcome. He had braved the small-pox in one household with true Virginian punctilio rather than refuse an invitation to dinner, had taken the infection, and had come home at last bearing some per- manent marks of a three weeks' sharp illness upon him. But he had had entertainment enough to strike the bal- ance handsomely against such inconveniences, had borne whatever came in his way very cheerily, with that whole- some strength of mind which made older men like him, and would have come off remembering nothing but the pleasure of the trip had his noble brother only found his health again. As it was, Lawrence's death put a final term to his youth. Five other executors were named in the will ; but George, as it turned out, was to be looked to to carry the burden of administration, and gave full proof of the qualities that had made his brother trust him with so generous a confidence. His brother's death, in truth, changed everything for him. He seemed of a sudden to stand as Lawrence's representative. Before they set out for the Bahamas Lawrence had transferred to him his place in the militia, obtaining for him, though he was but nineteen, a com- mission as major and district adjutant in his stead ; and after his return, in 1752, Lieutenant-Governor Din w id- die, the crown's new representative in Virginia, added still further to his responsibilities as a soldier by re- ducing the military districts of the colony to four, and assigning to him one of the four, under a renewed commission as major and adjutant-general. His broth- er's will not only named him an executor, but also made him residuary legatee of the estate of Mount Vernon in A VIRGINIAN BREEDING 59 case his child should die. He had to look to the disci- pline and accoutrement of the militia of eleven counties, aid his mother in her business, administer his brother's estate, and assume on all hands the duties and responsi- bilities of a man of affairs when he was but just turned of twenty. The action of the colonial government in compacting the organization and discipline of the militia by reduc- ing the number of military districts was significant of a sinister change in the posture of affairs beyond the borders. The movements of the French in the West had of late become more ominous than ever; 'twas possible the Virginian militia might any day see an end of that " everlasting peace" which good Mr. Beverley had smiled to see them complacently enjoy, and that the young major, who was now Adjutant-General of the Northern Division, might find duties abroad even more serious and responsible than his duties at home. Whoever should be commissioned to meet and deal with the French upon the Avestern rivers would have to handle truly crit- ical affairs, decisive of the fate of the continent, and it looked as if Virginia must undertake the fateful busi- ness. The northern borders, indeed, were sadly har- ried by the savage allies of the French ; the brunt of the fighting hitherto had fallen upon the hardy militiamen of Massachusetts and Connecticut in the slow contest for English mastery upon the continent. But there was really nothing to be decided in that quarter. The French were not likely to attempt the mad task of driving out the thickly set English population, already established, hundreds of thousands strong, upon the eastern coasts. Their true lines of conquest ran within. Their strength lay in their command of the great watercourses which 60 GEORGE WASHINGTON flanked the English colonies both north and west. 'Twas a long frontier to hold, that mazy line of lake and river that ran all the way from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the wide mouths of the sluggish Mississippi. Throughout all the posts and settlements that lay upon it from end to end there were scarcely eighty thousand Frenchmen, while the English teemed upon the coasts more than a million strong-. But the forces of New France could be handled like an army, while the English swarmed slowly westward, without discipline or direction, the headstrong subjects of a distant government they would not obey, the wayward constituents of a score of petty and jealous assemblies tardy at planning, clumsy at executing plans. They were still far away, too, from the mid-waters of the lakes and from the royal stream of the Mississippi itself, where lonely boats floated slowly down, with their cargoes of grain, meat, tallow, tobacco, oil, hides, and lead, out of the country of the Illinois, past the long, thin line of tiny isolated posts, to the growing village at New Orleans and the southern Gulf. But they were to be feared, none the less. If their tide once flowed in, the French well knew it could not be turned back again. It was not far away from the Ohio now ; and if once settlers out of Pennsylvania and Virginia gained a foothold in any numbers on that river, they would control one of the great highways that led to the main basins of the continent. It was imperative they should be effectually forestalled, and that at once. The Marquis Duquesne, with his quick soldier blood, at last took the decisive step for France. lie had hard- ly come to his colony, to serve his royal master as Gov- ernor upon the St. Lawrence, when he determined to A VIRGINIAN BREEDING 61 occupy the upper waters of the Ohio, and block the western passes against the English with a line of military posts. The matter did not seem urgent to the doubting- ministers at Versailles. " Be on your guard against new undertakings," said official letters out of France ; " private interests are generally at the bottom of them.' 5 But Duquesne knew that it was no mere private interest of fur trader or speculator that was at stake now. The rivalry between the two nations had gone too far to make it possible to draw back. Military posts had al- ready been established by the bold energy of the French at Niagara, the key to the western lakes, and at Crown Point upon Champlain, where lake and river struck straight towards the heart of the English trading set- tlements upon the Hudson. The English, accepting the challenge, had planted themselves at Oswego, upon the very lake route itself, and had made a port there to take the furs that came out of the West, and, though very sluggish in the business, showed purpose of ag- gressive movement everywhere that advantage offered. English settlers by the hundred were pressing towards the western mountains in Pennsylvania, and down into that " Virginian Arcady," the sweet valley of the Shen- andoah : thrifty Germans, a few ; hardy Scots-Irish, a great many — the blood most to be feared and checked. It was said that quite three hundred English traders passed the mountains every year into the region of the Ohio. Enterprising gentlemen in Virginia — Lawrence and Augustine Washington among the rest — had joined influential partners in London in the formation of an Ohio Company for the settlement of the western coun- try and the absorption of the western trade ; had sent out men who knew the region to make interest with 62 GEORGE WASHINGTON the Indians and fix upon points of vantage for trading- posts and settlements; had already set out upon the busi- ness by erecting storehouses at Will's Creek, in the heart of the Alleghanies, and, farther westward still, upon Redstone Creek, a branch of the Monongahela itself. It was high time to act; and Duquesne, having no colonial assembly to hamper him, acted very promptly. When spring came, 1753, he sent fifteen hundred men into Lake Erie, to Presque Isle, where a fort of squared logs was built, and a road cut through the forests to a little river whose waters, when at the flood, would carry boats direct to the Alleghany and the great waterway of the Ohio itself. An English lieutenant at Oswego had descried the multitudinous fleet of canoes upon Ontario carrying this levy to its place of landing in the lake beyond, and a vagrant Frenchman had told him plainly what it was. It was an army of six thousand men, he boasted, going to the Ohio, " to cause all the English to quit those parts." It was plain to every English Gov- ernor in the colonies who had his eyes open that the French would not stop with planting a fort upon an ob- scure branch of the Alleghany, but that they would indeed press forward to take possession of the Ohio, drive every English trader forth, draw all the native tribes to their interest by force or favor, and close alike the western lands and the western trade in very earnest against all the King's subjects. Governor Dinwiddie was among the first to see the danger and the need for action, as, in truth, was very natural. In office and out, his study had been the co- lonial trade, and he had been merchant and official now a long time. He was one of the twenty stockholders of the Ohio Company, and had come to his governorship A VIRGINIAN BREEDING 63 in Virginia with his eye upon the western country. He had but to look about him to perceive that Virginia would very likely be obliged to meet the crisis unaided, if, indeed, he could induce even her to meet it. Gov- ernor Hamilton, of Pennsylvania, also saw how critical- ly affairs stood, it is true, and what ought to be done. His agents had met and acted with the agents of the Ohio Company already in seeking Indian alliances and fixing upon points of vantage beyond the Alleghanies. But the Pennsylvania Assembly could by no argument or device be induced to vote money or measures in the business. The placid Quaker traders were as stubborn as the stolid German farmers. They opposed warlike ac- tion on principle. The Germans opposed it because they could not for the life of them see the necessity of parting with their money to send troops upon so remote an errand. Dinwiddie did not wait or parley. He acted first, and consulted his legislature afterwards. It was in his Scots blood to take the business very strenu- ously, and in his trader's blood to take it very anxious- ly. He had kept himself advised from the first of the movements of the French. Their vanguard had scarce- ly reached Presque Isle ere he despatched letters to Eng- land apprising the government of the danger. Answer had come very promptly, too, authorizing him to build forts upon the Ohio, if he could get the money from the Burgesses ; and meantime, should the French trespass further, " to require of them peaceably to depart." If they would not desist for a warning, said his Majesty, " we do hereby strictly charge and command you to drive them off by force of arras." Even to send a warning to the French was no easy matter when the King's letter came and the chill au- 64 GEORGE WASHINGTON turan rains were at hand. The mountain streams, al- ready swollen, presently to be full of ice, would be very dangerous for men and horses, and the forests were likely enough to teem with hostile savages, now the French were there. A proper messenger was found and despatched, nevertheless — young Major George Washington, of the Northern District. The errand lay in his quarter ; his three years of surveying at the heart of the wilderness had made him an experienced woods- man and hardy traveller, had tested his pluck and made proof of his character ; he was well known upon the frontier, and his friends were very influential, and very cordial in recommending him for this or any other manly service that called for steadiness, hardihood, and resource. Dinwiddie had been a correspondent of Law- rence Washington's ever since the presidency of the Ohio Company had fallen to the young Virginian upon the death of .his neighbor Thomas Lee, writing to him upon terms of intimacy. He knew the stock of which George, the younger brother, came, and the interests in which he might be expected to embark with ardor ; he could feel that he took small risk in selecting such an agent. Knowing him, too, thus through his family and like a friend, he did not hesitate in writing to Governor Hamilton, of Pennsylvania, to speak of this }^outh of twenty-one as " a person of distinction." Washington performed his errand as Dinwiddie must have expected he would. He received his commission and the Governor's letter to the French commandant on the last da}^ of October, and set out the same day for the mountains. Jacob Vanbraam, the Dutch soldier of fortune who had been his fencing-master at Mount Ver- non, accompanied him as interpreter, and Christopher A VIRGINIAN BREEDING 65 Gist, the hardy, self-reliant frontier trader, whom the Ohio Company had employed to make interest for them among the Indians of the far region upon the western rivers which he knew so well, was engaged to act as his guide and counsellor ; and with a few servants and pack- horses he struck straight into the forests in the middle of bleak November. It was the 11th of December be- fore the jaded party rode, in the cold dusk, into the drenched and miry clearing where the dreary little fort stood that held the French commander Through two hundred and fifty miles and more of forest they had dragged themselves over swollen rivers, amidst an almost ceaseless fall of rain or snow, with not always an Indian trail, even, or the beaten track of the bison, to open the forest growth for their flagging horses, and on the watch always against savage treacherv. It had become plain enough before they reached their destination what answer they should get from the French. Sixty miles nearer home than these lonely headquarters of the French commander at Fort Le Boeuf they had come upon an outpost where the French colors were to be seen flying from a house from which an English trader had been driven out, and the French officers there had uttered brutally frank avowal of their purpose in that wilderness as they sat at wine with the alert and temperate young Virginian. " It was their absolute design," they said, " to take possession of the Ohio, and, by G — , they would do it. . . . They were sensible the English could raise two men for their one, yet they knew their motions were too slow and dilatory to prevent any un- dertaking of theirs." The commandant at Fort Le Bceuf received the wayworn ambassador very courte- ously, and even graciously — a thoughtful elderly man, 66 GEORGE WASHINGTON Washington noted him, " with much the air of a soldier" — but would make no profession even that he would consider the English summons to withdraw ; and the little party of Englishmen presently turned back amidst the winter's storms to carry through the frozen wilder- ness a letter which boasted the French lawful masters of all the continent beyond the Alleghanies. When Washington reached Williamsburg, in the middle of January, 175i, untouched by even the fearful fatigues and anxieties of that daring journey, he had accom- plished nothing but the establishment of his own char- acter in the eyes of the men who were to meet the crisis now at hand. He had been at infinite pains, at every stage of the dreary adventure, to win and hold the con- fidence of the Indians who were accounted friends of the English, and had displayed an older man's patience, address, and fortitude in meeting all their subtle shifts ; and he had borne hardships that tried even the doughty Gist. When the horses gave out, he had left them to come by easier stages, while he made his way afoot, with only a single companion, across the weary leagues that lay upon his homeward way. Gist, his comrade in the hazard, had been solicitously " unwilling he should undertake such a travel, who had never been used to walking before this time," but the imperative young commander would not be stayed, and the journe}^ was made, spite of sore feet and frosts and exhausting weari- ness. He at least knew what the French were about, with what strongholds and forces, and could afford to await orders what to do next. COLONEL WASHINGTON CHAPTER III Dinwiddie had not been idle while Washington went his perilous errand. He had gotten the Burgesses to- gether by the 1st of November, before Washington had left the back settlements to cross the wilderness, and would have gotten a liberal grant of money from them had they not fallen in their debates upon the question of the new fee charged, since his coming, for every grant out of the public lands of the colony, and insisted that it should be done away with. " Subjects," they ' said, very stubbornly, " cannot be deprived of the least part of their propert}^ without their consent ;" and such a fee, they thought, was too like a tax, to be endured. They would withhold the grant, they declared, unless the fee was abolished, notwithstanding they saw plainly enough in how critical a case things stood in the West ; and the testy Governor very indignantly sent them home again. He ordered a draft of two hundred men from the militia, nevertheless, with the purpose of as- signing the command to Washington and seeing what might be done upon the Ohio, without vote of Assembly. A hard-headed Scotsman past sixty could not be ex- pected to wait upon a body of wrangling and factious provincials for leave to perform his duty in a crisis, and, inasmuch as the object was to save their own lands, and perhaps their own persons, from the French, could 70 GEORGE WASHINGTON hardly be blamed for proposing in his anger that they be taxed for the purpose by act of Parliament. " A Governor," he exclaimed, " is really to be pitied in the discharge of his duty to his King and country in having to do with such obstinate, self-conceited people !" Some money he advanced out of his own pocket. When Washington came back from his fruitless mission, Din- widdie ordered his journal printed and copies sent to all the colonial Governors. " As it was thought advisa- ble by his Honour the Governor to have the following account of my proceedings to and from the French on Ohio committed to print,-' said the modest young major, " I think I can do no less than apologize, in some meas- ure, for the numberless imperfections of it." But it was a very manly recital of noteworthy things, and touched the imagination and fears of every thoughtful man who read it quite as near the quick as the urgent and re- peated letters of the troubled Dinwiddie. Virginia, it turned out, was, after all, more forward than her neighbors when it came to action. The Penn- sylvania Assembly very coolly declared they doubted his Majesty's claim to the lands on the Ohio, and the Assembly in New York followed suit. " It appears," they said, in high judicial tone, " that the French have built a fort at a place called French Creek, at a consid- erable distance from the river Ohio, which may, but does not by any evidence or information appear to us to be, an invasion of any of his Majesty's colonies." The Governors of the other colonies whose safety was most directly menaced by the movements of the French in the West were thus even less able to act than Dinwid- die. For the Virginian Burgesses, though they would not yield the point of the fee upon land grants, did not COLONEL WASHINGTON 71 mean to leave Major Washington in the lurch, and be- fore an expedition could be got afoot had come together again to vote a sum of money. It would be possible with the sura they appropriated to put three or four hundred men into the field ; and as spring drew on, raw volunteers began to gather in some numbers at Alexan- dria — a ragged regiment, made up for the most part of idle and shiftless men, who did not always have shoes, or even shirts, of their own to wear ; anxious to get their eightpence a day, but not anxious to work or submit to discipline. 'Twas astonishing how steady and how spirited they showed themselves when once they had shaken their lethargy off and were on the march or face to face with the enemy. A body of backwoodsmen had been hurried forward in February, ere spring had opened, to make a clearing and set to work upon a fort at the forks of the Ohio ; but it was the 2d of April be- fore men enough could be collected at Alexandria to be- gin the main movement towards the frontier, and by that time it was too late to checkmate the French. The little force sent forward to begin fortifications had set about their task very sluggishly and without skill, and their commander had turned back again with some of his men to rejoin the forces behind him before the petty works he should have stayed to finish were well begun. When, therefore, on the 17th of April, the river sudden- ly filled with canoes bearing an army of more than five hundred Frenchmen, who put cannon ashore, and sum- moned the forty men who held the place to surrender or be blown into the water, there was no choice but to comply. The young ensign who commanded the little garrison urged a truce till he could communicate with his superiors, but the French commander would brook 72 GEORGE WASHINGTON no delay. The boy might either take his men off free and unhurt, or else fight and face sheer destruction ; and the nearest succor was a little force of one hundred and fifty men under Colonel Washington, who had not yet topped the Alleghanies in their painful work of cutting a way through the forests for their field -pieces and wagons. The Governor's plans had been altered by the Assem- bly's vote of money and the additional levy of men which it made possible. Colonel Joshua Fry, whom Dinwiddie deemed " a man of good sense, and one of our best mathematicians," had been given the command in chief, and Washington had been named his second in command, with the rank of lieutenant-colonel. " Dear George," wrote Mr. Corbin, of the Governor's Council, " I enclose you your commission. God prosper you with it !" and the brunt of the work in fact fell upon the younger man. But three hundred volunteers could be gotten together ; and, all too late, half of the raw levy were sent forward under Washington to find or make a way for wagons and ordnance to the Ohio. The last days of May were almost at hand before they had crossed the main ridge of the Alleghanies, so inexperi- enced were they in the rough labor of cutting a road through the close-set growth and over the sharp slopes of the mountains, and so ill equipped ; and by that time it was already too late by a full month and more to forestall the French, who had only to follow the open highway of the Alleghany to bring what force they would to the key of the West at the forks of the Ohio. As the spring advanced, the French force upon the river grew from five to fourteen hundred men, and work w T as pushed rapidly forward upon fortifications such as the COLONEL WASHINGTON 73 little band of Englishmen they had ousted had not thought of attempting — a veritable fort, albeit of a rude frontier pattern, which its builders called Duquesne, in honor of their Governor. Washington could hit upon no watercourse that would afford him quick transport; 'twould have been folly, besides, to take his handful of ragged provincials into the presence of an intrenched army. He was fain to go into camp at Great Meadows, just across the ridge of the mountains, and there await his Colonel with supplies and an additional handful of men. It was " a charming field for an encounter," the young commander thought, but it was to be hoped the enemy would not find their way to it in too great numbers. An " Independent Company " of provincials in the King's pay joined him out of South Carolina, whence they had been sent forward by express orders from England ; and the rest of the Virginia volunteers at last came up to join their comrades at the Meadows — with- out good Colonel Fry, the doughty mathematician, who had sickened and died on the way — so that there were presently more than three hundred men at the camp, and Washington was now their commander-in-chief. The officers of the Independent Company from South Carolina, holding their commissions from the King, would not, indeed, take their orders from Washington, with his colonial commission merely ; and, what was worse, their men would not work ; but there was no doubt they would fight with proper dignity and spirit for his Majesty, their royal master. The first blood had already been drawn, on the 28th of May, before rein- forcements had arrived, when Washington had but just come to camp. Upon the morning of that day Wash- 74 GEORGE WASHINGTON ington, with forty men, guided by friendly Indians, had come upon a party of some thirty Frenchmen where they lurked deep within the thickets of the dripping forest, and, with thrust of bayonet when the wet guns failed, had brought them to a surrender within fifteen minutes of the first surprise. No one in the Virginian camp doubted that there was war already, or dreamed of awaiting the action of diplomats and cabinets over sea. The French had driven an English garrison from the forks of the Ohio with threats of force, which would certainly have been executed had there been need. These men hidden in the thickets at Great Meadows would have it, when the fight was over, that they had come as messengers merely to bear a peaceful summons ; but did it need thirty odd armed men to bear a mes- sage ? Why had they lurked for five days so stealthily in the forest ; and why had they sent runners back post- haste to Fort Duquesne to obtain support for their diplomacy 1 Washington might regret that young M. Jumonville, their commander, had lost his life in the encounter, but he had no doubt he had done right to order his men to fire when he saw the French spring for their arms at the first surprise. Now, at any rate, Avar was unquestionably begun. That sudden volley fired in the wet woods at the heart of the lonely Alleghanies had set the final struggle ablaze. It was now either French or English in Amer- ica: it could no longer be both. Jumonville with his thirty Frenchmen was followed ere many weeks were out by Coulon de Villiers with seven hundred — some of them come all the way from Montreal at news of what had happened to France's lurking ambassadors in the far - away mountains of Virginia. On the 3d of July COLONEL WASHINGTON 75 they closed to an encounter at " Fort Necessity," Wash- ington's rude intrenchments upon the Great Meadows. There were three hundred and fifty Englishmen with him able to fight, spite of sickness and short rations ; and as the enemy began to show themselves at the edges of the neighboring woods through the damp mists of that dreary morning, Washington drew his little force up outside their works upon the open meadow. He "thought the French would come up to him in open field," laughed a wily Indian, who gave him counsel freely, but no aid in the fight ; but Yilliers had no mind to meet the gallant young Virginian in that manly fashion. Once, indeed, they rushed to his trenches, but, finding hot reception there, kept their distance after- wards. Yilliers brought them after that only " as near as possible without uselessly exposing the lives of the King's subjects," and poured his fire in from the cover of the woods. For nine hours the unequal fight dragged on, the French and their Indians hardly showing them- selves outside the shelter of the forest, the English crouching knee -deep in water in their rude trenches, while the rain poured incessantly, reducing their breast- works to a mass of slimy mud, and filling all the air with a chill and pallid mist. Day insensibly darkened into night in such an air, and it was eight o'clock when the firing ceased and the French asked a parley. Their men were tired of the dreary fight, their Indian allies threatened to leave them when morning should come, and they were willing the English should withdraw, if they would, without further hurt or molestation. The terms they offered seemed very acceptable to Washing- ton's officers as the interpreter read them out, standing there in the drenching downpour and the black night. 76 GEORGE WASHINGTON " It rained so hard we could hardly keep the candle lighted to read them by," said an officer ; but there was really no choice what to do. More than fifty men lay dead or wounded in the flooded camp ; the ammunition was all but spent ; the French strength had hardly been touched in the fight, and might at any moment be in- creased. Capitulation was inevitable, and Washington did not hesitate. The next morning saw his wretched force making their way back again along the rude road they had cut through the forests. They had neither horses nor wagons to carry their baggage. What they could they burned ; and then set out, sore stricken in heart and body, their wounded comrades and their scant store of food slung upon their backs, and dragged themselves very wearily all the fifty miles to the settlements at home. Two of the King's Independent Companies from New York ought to have joined them long ago, but had gotten no farther than Alexandria when the fatal day came at the Great Meadows. North Carolina had despatched three hundred and fifty of her militiamen, under an experi- enced officer, to aid them, but they also came too late. It had been expected that Maryland would raise two hundred and fifty men, and Pennsylvania had at last voted money, to be spent instead of blood, for she would levy no men ; but no succor had come from any quarter when it should. The English were driven in, and all their plans were worse than undone. It was a bitter trial for the young Virginian com- mander to have his first campaign end so disastrously — to be worsted in a petty fight, and driven back hope- lessly outdone. No one he cared for in Virginia blamed him. His ragged troops had borne themselves like men WASHINGTON S RETREAT FROM GREAT MEADOWS COLONEL WASHINGTON 77 in the fight; his own gallantry no man could doubt. The House of Burgesses thanked him and voted money to his men. But it had been a rough apprenticeship, and Washington felt to the quick the lessons it had taught him. The discouraging work of recruiting at Alexan- dria, the ragged idlers to be governed there, the fruit- less drilling of listless and insolent men, the two months' work with axe and spade cutting a way through the forests, the whole disheartening work of making ready for the fight, of seeking the enemy, and of choosing a field of encounter, he had borne as a stalwart young man can while his digestion holds good. He had at least himself clone everything that was possible, and it had been no small relief to him to write plain-spoken letters to the men who were supposed to be helping him in Williamsburg, telling them exactly how things were going and who was to blame — letters which showed both how efficient and how proud he was. He had even shown a sort of boyish zest in the affair when it came to actual fighting with Jumonville and his scouts hidden in the forest. He had pressed to the thick of that hot and sudden skirmish, and had taken the French volleys with a lad's relish of the danger. " I heard the bullets whistle," he wrote his brother, " and believe me there is something charming in the sound." But after he had stood a day in the flooded trenches of his wretched " fort " at Great Meadows, and fought till evening in the open with an enemy he could not see, he knew that he had been taught a lesson ; that he was very young at this terrible business of fighting; and that something more must be learned than could be read in the books at Mount Yernon. He kept a cheerful front in the dreary retreat, heartening his men bravely by word and 78 GEORGE WASHINGTON example of steadfastness ; but it was a sore blow to his pride and his hopes, and he must only have winced without protest could he have heard how Horace Wal- pole called him a " brave braggart" for his rodomontade about the music of deadly missiles. He had no thought, however, of quitting his duty be- cause his first campaign had miscarried. When he had made his report at Williamsburg he rejoined his demor- alized regiment at Alexandria, where it lay but an hour's ride from Mount Yernon, and set about executing his orders to recruit once more, as if the business were only just begun. Captain Innes, who had brought three hun- dred and fifty men from North Carolina too late to be of assistance at the Meadows, and who had had the cha- grin of seeing them take themselves off home again be- cause there was no money forthcoming to pay them what had been promised, remained at Will's Creek, amidst the back settlements, to command the King's provincials from South Caroling who had been with Washington at the Meadows, and the two Independent Companies from New York, who had lingered so long on the way; and to build there a rough fortification, to be named Fort Cum- berland, in honor of the far-away Duke who was com- mander-in-chief in England. Dinwiddie, having such hot Scots blood in him as could brook no delays, and having been bred no soldier or frontiersman, but a mer- chant and man of business, would have had Washing- ton's recruiting despatched at once, like a bill of goods, and a new force sent hot-foot to the Ohio again to catch the French while they were at ease over their victory and slackly upon their guard at Duquesne. When he was flatly told it was impossible, he turned to other plans, equally ill considered, though no doubt equally well COLONEL WASHINGTON 79 meant. By October he had obtained of the Assembly twenty thousand pounds, and from the government at home ten thousand more in good specie, such as was scarce in the colony — for the sharp stir of actual fight- ing had had its effect alike upon King and Burgesses — and had ordered the formation and equipment of ten full companies for the frontier. But the new orders contained a sad civilian blunder. The ten companies should all be Independent Companies ; there should be no officer higher than a captain amongst them. This, the £ood Scotsman thought, would accommodate all dis- putes about rank and precedence, such as had come near to making trouble between Washington and Captain Mackay, of the Independent Company from South Caro- lina, while they waited for the French at Great Meadows. Washington at once resigned, indignant to be so dealt with. Not only would he be reduced to a captaincy un- der such an arrangement, but every pett}^ officer would outrank him who could show the King's commission. It was no tradition of his class to submit to degradation of rank thus by indirection and without fault committed, and his pride and sense of personal dignity, for all he was so young, were as high-strung as any man's in Vir- ginia. He had shown his quality in such matters already, six months ago, while he lay in camp in the wilderness on his way towards the Ohio. The Burgesses had appoint- ed a committee of their own to spend the money they had voted to put his expedition afoot in the spring, lest Dinwiddie should think, were they to give him the spend- ing of it, that they had relented in the matter of the fees ; and these gentlemen, in their careful parsimony, had cut the officers of the already straitened little force down to such pay and food as Washington deemed unworthy a 80 GEORGE WASHINGTON gentleman's acceptance. He would not resign his com- mission there at the head of his men upon the march, but he asked to be considered a volunteer without pay, that he might be quit of the humiliation of being stinted like a beggar. Now that it was autumn, however, and wars stood still, he could resign without reproach, and he did so very promptly, in spite of protests and earnest solici- tations from many quarters. " I am concerned to find Colonel Washington's conduct so imprudent," wrote Thomas Penn. But the high-spirited young officer deemed it no imprudence to insist upon a just considera- tion of his rank and services, and quietly withdrew to Mount Vernon, to go thence to his mother at the "ferry farm" upon the Rappahannock, and see again all the fields and friends he loved so well. It was a very brief respite. He had been scarcely five months out of harness when he found himself again in camp, his plans and hopes once more turned towards the far wilderness where the French lay. He had set a great war ablaze that day he led his forty men into the thicket and bade them fire upon M. Jumonville and his scouts lurking there ; and he could not, loving the deep business as he did, keep himself aloof from it when he saw how it was to be finished. Horace Walpole might laugh lightly at the affair, but French and English states- men alike — even Newcastle, England's Prime-Minister, as busy about nothing as an old woman, and as thorough- ly ignorant of affairs as a young man — knew that some- thing must be done, politics hanging at so doubtful a bal- ance between them, now that Frederick of Prussia had driven France, Austria, and Russia into league against him. The French Minister in London and the British Minister in Paris vowed their governments still loved COLONEL WASHINGTON 81 and trusted one another, and there was no declaration of war. But in the spring of 1755 eighteen French ships of war put to sea from Brest and Rochefort, carrying six battalions and a new Governor to Canada, and as many ships got away under press of sail from English ports to intercept and destroy them. Transports carrying two English regiments had sailed for Virginia in Januar}', and by the 20th of February had reached the Chesa- peake. The French ships got safely in at the St. Law- rence despite pursuit, losing but two of their fleet, which had the ill luck to be found by the English befogged and bewildered off the coast. The colonies were to see fighting on a new scale. The English ministers, with whom just then all things went either by favor or by accident, had made a sorry blunder in the choice of a commander. Major-General Edward Braddock, whom they had commissioned to take the two regiments out and act as commander-in-chief in America, was a brave man, a veteran soldier, bred in a thorough school of action, a man quick with energy and indomitable in resolution ; but every quality he had un- fitted him to learn. Self-confident, brutal, headstrong, " a very Iroquois in disposition," he would take neither check nor suggestion. But energy, resolution, good soldiers, and a proper equipment might of themselves suffice to do much in the crisis that had come, whether wisdom held the reins or not ; and it gave the Old Do- minion a thrill of quickened hope and purpose to see Keppel's transports in the Potomac and Braddock's red- coats ashore at Alexandria. The transports, as they made their way slowly up the river, passed beneath the very windows of Mount Ver- non, to put the troops ashore only eight miles beyond. 82 GEORGE WASHINGTON Washington had left off being soldier for Dinwiddie, but he had resigned only to avoid an intolerable indignity, not to shun service, and he made no pretence of indiffer- ence when he saw the redcoats come to camp at Alex- andria. Again and again was he early in the saddle to see the stir and order of the troops, make the acquaint- ance of the officers, and learn, if he might, what it was that fitted his Majesty's regulars for their stern business. The self-confident gentlemen who wore his Majesty's uniform and carried his Majesty's commissions in their pockets had scant regard, most of them, for the raw folk of the colony, who had never been in London or seen the set array of battle. They were not a little impatient that they must recruit among such a people. The trans- ports had brought but a thousand men — two half-regi- ments of five hundred each, whose colonels had instruc- tions to add two hundred men apiece to their force in the colony. Six companies of " rangers," too, the colo- nists were to furnish, and one company of light horse, besides carpenters and teamsters. By all these General Braddock's officers set small store, deeming it likely they must depend, not upon the provincials, but upon them- selves for success. They were at small pains to conceal their hearty contempt for the people they had come to help. But with. Washington it was a different matter. There was that in his proud eyes and gentleman's bear- ing that marked him a man to be made friends with and respected. A good comrade he proved, without pre- tence or bravado, but an ill man to scorn, as he went his way among them, lithe and alert, full six feet in his boots, with that strong gait as of a backwoodsman, and that haughty carriage as of a man born to have his will. COLONEL WASHINGTON 83 He won their liking, and even their admiration, as a fel- low of their own pride and purpose. General Braddock, knowing he desired to make the campaign if he might do so without sacrifice of self-respect, promptly invited him to go as a member of his staff, where there could be no question of rank, asking him, besides, to name any young gentlemen of. his acquaintance he chose for sev- eral vacant ensigncies in the two regiments. The letter of invitation, written by Captain Or me, aide-de-camp, was couched in terms of unaffected cordiality. Wash- ington very gladly accepted, in a letter that had just a touch of the young provincial in it, so elaborate and over-long was its explanation of its writer's delicate po- sition and self-respecting motives, but with so much more of the proud gentleman and resolute man that the smile with which Captain Orme must have read it could have nothing of disrelish in it. The young aide-de-camp and all the other members of the General's military " family " found its author, at any rate, a man after their own hearts when it came to terms of intimacy among them. By mid- April the commander-in-chief had brought five Governors together at Alexandria, in obedience to his call for an immediate conference — William Shirley, of Massachusetts, the stout-hearted old lawyer, every inch "a gentleman and politician," who had of a sudden turned soldier to face the French, for all he was past sixty ; James De Lancey, of New York, astute man of the people ; the brave and energetic Horatio Sharpe, of Maryland ; Robert Hunter Morris, fresh from the latest wrangles with the headstrong Quakers and Germans of Pennsylvania; and Robert Dinwiddie, the busy mer- chant Governor of the Old Dominion, whose urgent let- 84 GEORGE WASHINGTON ters to the government at home had brought Braddock and his regiments to the Potomac. Plans were prompt- ly agreed upon. New York and New England, seeing war come on apace, were astir no less than Virginia, and in active correspondence with the ministers in Lon- don. Two regiments had already been raised and taken into the King's pay ; the militia of all the threatened colonies were afoot ; in all quarters action was expected and instant war. Governor Shirley, the council agreed, should strike at once at Niagara with the King's new provincial regiments, in the hope to cut the enemy's connections with their western posts ; Colonel William Johnson, the cool-headed trader and borderer, who had lived and thriven so long in the forests where the dread- ed Mohawks had their strength, should lead a levy from New England, New York, and New Jersey to an attack upon Crown Point, where for twenty -four years the French had held Champlain ; and Lieutenant - Colonel Monckton, of the King's regulars, must take a similar force against Beausejour in Acadia, while General Brad- dock struck straight into the western wilderness to take Duquesne. 'Twere best to be prompt in every part of the hazardous business, and Braddock turned from the conference to push his own expedition forward at once. " After taking Fort Duquesne," he said to Franklin,- " I am to proceed to Niagara ; and after having taken that, to Frontenac, if the season will allow time ; and I sup- pose it will, for Duquesne can hardly detain me above three or four days ; and then I can see nothing that can obstruct my march to Niagara." " To be sure, sir," qui- etly replied the sagacious Franklin ; " if you arrive well before Duquesne with these fine troops, so well provided with artillery, the fort . . . can probably make but a COLONEL WASHINGTON 85 short resistance." But there was the trouble. 'Twould have been better, no doubt, had a route through Penn- sylvania been chosen, where cultivated farms already stretched well into the West, with their own roads and grain and cattle and wagons to serve an army with ; but the Virginia route had been selected (by intrigue of gen- tlemen interested in the Ohio Company, it was hinted), and must needs be made the best of. There was there, at the least, the rough track Washington's men had cut to the Great Meadows. This must be widened and lev- elled for an army with its cumbrous train of artillery, and its endless procession of wagons laden with baggage and provisions. To take two thousand men through the dense forests with all the military trappings and supplies of a European army would be to put, it might be, four miles of its rough trail between van and rear of the struggling line, and it would be a clumsy enemy, as fighting went in the woods, who could not cut such a force into pieces — " like thread," as Franklin said. The thing was to be attempted, nevertheless, with stubborn British resolution. It was the 19th of May before all the forces intended for the march were finally collected at Fort Cumberland, twenty-two hundred men in all — fourteen hundred regulars, now the recruits were in ; nearly five hundred Virginians, horse and foot ; two Independent Companies from New York ; and a small force of sailors from the transports to rig tackle for the ordnance when there was need on the rough way. And it was the 10th of June when the advance began, straight into that " realm of forests ancient as the world" that lay without limit upon all the western ways. It was a thing of infinite difficulty to get that lumbering train through the tangled wilderness, and it 86 GEORGE WASHINGTON kept the temper of the truculent Bracldock very hot to see how it played havoc with every principle and prac- tice of campaigning he had ever heard of. He charged the colonists with an utter want alike of honor and of honesty to have kept him so long awaiting the transpor- tation and supplies they had promised, and to have done so little to end with, and so drew Washington into "frequent disputes, maintained with warmth on both sides " ; but the difficulties of the march presently wrought a certain forest change upon him, and disposed him to take counsel of his young Virginian aide— the only man in all his company who could speak out of knowledge in that wild country. On the 19th, at Washington's advice, he took twelve hundred men and pressed forward with a lightened train to a quicker ad- vance, leaving Colonel Dunbar to bring up the rest of the troops with the baggage. Even this lightened force halted " to level every mole-hill, and to erect bridges over every brook," as Washington chafed to see, and " were four days in getting twelve miles"; but the pace was better than before, and brought them at last almost to their destination. On the 9th of July, at mid- day, they waded the shallow Monongahela, but eight miles from Duquesne, making a brave show as the sun struck upon their serried ranks, their bright uniforms, their fluttering banners, and their glittering arms, and went straight into the rough and shadowed forest path that led to the French post. Upon a sudden there came a man bound- ing along the path to meet them, wearing the gorget of a French officer, and the forest behind him swarmed with a great host of but half-discovered men. Upon signal given, these spread themselves to the right and COLONEL WASHINGTON 87 left within the shelter of the forest, and from their cov- ert poured a deadly fire upon Braddock's advancing lines. With good British pluck the steady regulars formed their accustomed ranks, crying, " God save the King!" to give grace to the volleys they sent back into the forest ; the ordnance was brought up and swung to its work ; all the force pressed forward to take what place it could in the fight ; but where was the use ? Washington besought General Braddock to scatter his men too, and meet the enemy under cover as they came, but he would not listen. They must stand in ranks, as they were bidden, and take the fire of their hidden foes like men, without breach of discipline. When they would have broken in spite of him, in their panic at being slaughtered there in the open glade without sight of the enemy, Braddock beat them back with his sword, and bitterly cursed them for cowards. He would have kept the Virginians, too, back from the covert if he could, when he saw them seek to close with the attack- ing party in true forest fashion. As it was, they were as often shot down by the terror-stricken regulars be- hind them as by their right foes in front. They alone made any head in the fight ; but who could tell in such a place how the battle fared? No one could count the enemy where they sprang from covert to covert. They were, in fact, near a thousand strong at the first meeting in the way — more than six hundred Indians, a motley host gathered from far and near at the summons of the French, sevenscore Canadian rangers, seventy odd regulars from the fort, and thirty or forty French offi- cers, come out of sheer eagerness to have a hand in the daring game. Contrecoeur could not spare more French- men from his little garrison, his connections at the lakes 88 GEORGE WASHINGTON being threatened, and he sorely straitened for men and stores. lie was staking everything, as it was, upon this encounter on the way. If the English should shake the savages off, as he deemed they would, he must no doubt withdraw as he could ere the lines of siege were closed about him. He never dreamed of such largess of good fortune as came pouring in upon him. The English were not only checked, but beaten. They had never seen business like this. 'Twas a pitiful, shameful slaughter — men shot like beasts in a pen there where they cowered close in their scarlet ranks. Their first blazing volleys had sent the craven Canadians scamper- ing back the way they had come ; Beaujeu, who led the attack, was killed almost at the first onset ; but the gal- lant youngsters who led the motley array wavered never an instant, and readily held the Indians to their easy work. Washington did all that furious energy and reck- less courage could to keep the order of battle his com- mander had so madly chosen, to hold the regulars to their blind work and hearten the Virginians to stay the threatened rout, driving his horse everywhere into the thick of the murderous firing, and crying upon all alike to keep to it steadily like men. He had but yesterday rejoined the advance, having for almost two weeks lain stricken with a fever in Dunbar's camp. He could hardly sit his cushioned saddle for weakness when the fight began ; but when the blaze of the battle burst, his eagerness was suddenly like that of one possessed, and his immunity from harm like that of one charmed. Thrice a horse was shot under him, many bullets cut his clothing, but he went without a wound. A like mad energy drove Braddock storming up and down the breaking lines; but he was mortally stricken at last, COLONEL WASHINGTON 89 and Washington alone remained to exercise such control as was possible when the inevitable rout came. It was impossible to hold the ground in such fashion. The stubborn Braddock himself had ordered a retreat ere the fatal bullet found him. Sixty-three out of the eighty-six officers of his force were killed or disabled ; less than five hundred men out of all the thirteen hun- dred who had but just now passed so gallantly through the ford remained unhurt ; the deadly slaughter must have gone on to utter destruction. Ketreat was inevita- ble — 'twas blessed good fortune that it was still possi- ble. When once it began it was headlong, reckless, frenzied. The men ran wildly, blindly, as if hunted by demons whom no man might hope to resist — haunted by the frightful cries, maddened by the searching and secret fire of their foes, now coming hot upon their heels. Wounded comrades, military stores, baggage, their very arms, they left upon the ground, abandoned. Far into the night they ran madly on, in frantic search for the camp of the rear division, crying, as they ran, for help; they even passed the camp, in their uncontrol- lable terror of pursuit, and went desperately on towards the settlements. Washington and the few officers and provincials who scorned the terror found the utmost difficulty in bringing off their stricken General, where he lay wishing to die. Upon the fourth day after the battle he died, loathing the sight of a redcoat, they said, and murmuring praises of " the blues," the once despised Virginians. They buried his body in the road, that the army wagons might pass over the place and obliterate every trace of a grave their savage enemies might re- joice to find and desecrate. He had lived to reach Dunbar's camp, but not to see 90 GEORGE WASHINGTON the end of the shameful rout. The terror mastered the rear-guard too. They destroyed their artillery, burned their wagons and stores, emptied their powder into the streams, and themselves broke into a disordered, fever- ish retreat which was a mere flight, their craven com- mander shamefully acquiescing. He would not even hold or rally them at Fort Cumberland, but went on, as if upon a hurried errand, all the way to Philadel- phia, leaving the fort, and all the frontier with it, "to be defended by invalids and a few Virginians." u I acknowledge," cried Dinwiddie, " I was not brought up to arms; but I think common -sense would have prevailed not to leave the frontier exposed after hav- ing opened a road over the mountains to the Ohio, by which the enemy can the more easily invade us. The whole conduct of Colonel Dunbar seems to be monstrous." And so, indeed, it was. But the colonies at large had little time to think of it. Governor Shir- ley had gone against Niagara only to find the French ready for him at every point, now that they had read Braddock's papers, taken at Duquesne, and to come back again without doing anything. Beausejour had been taken in Acadia, but it lay apart from the main field of struggle. Johnson beat the French off at Lake George when they attacked him, and took Dieskau, their com- mander ; but he contented himself with that, and left Crown Point untouched. There were other frontiers besides those of Virginia and Pennsylvania to be looked to and guarded. For three long years did the fortunes of the English settlements go steadily from danger to desperation, as the French and their savage allies ad- vanced from victory to victory. In 1756 Oswego was taken ; in 1757, Fort William Henry. Commander sue- COLONEL WASHINGTON 91 ceedecl commander among the English, only to add blun- der to blunder, failure to failure. And all the while it fell to Washington, Virginia's chief stay in her desperate trouble, to stand steadfastly to the hopeless work of keeping three hundred and fifty miles of frontier with a few hundred men against prowling bands of sav- ages, masters of the craft of swift and secret attack, " dexterous at skulking," in a country " mountainous and full of swamps and hollow ways covered with woods." For twenty years now settlers had been coming steadily into this wilderness that lay up and down upon the nearer slopes of the great mountains — Germans, Scots-Irish, a hardy breed. Their settlements lay scat- tered far and near among the foot-hills and valleys. Their men were valiant and stout-hearted, quick with the rifle, hard as flint when they were once afoot to re- venge themselves for murdered wives and children and comrades. But how could they, scattered as they were, meet these covert sallies in the dead of night — a sudden rush of men with torches, the keen knife, the quick rifle? The country filled with fugitives, for whom Washing- ton's militiamen could find neither food nor shelter. " The supplicating tears of the women, and moving pe- titions of the men," cried the young commander, " melt me into such deadly sorrow that I solemnly declare, if I know my own mind, I could offer myself a willing sacrifice to the butchering enemy, provided that would contribute to the people's ease. ... I would be a will- ing offering to savage fury, and die by inches to save a people." It was a comfort to know, at the least, that he was trusted and believed in. The Burgesses had thanked him under the very stroke of Braddock's defeat, 92 GEORGE WASHINGTON in terms which could not be doubted sincere. In the very thick of his deep troubles, when he would have guarded the helpless people of the border, but could not, Colonel Fairfax could send him word from Williams- burg, " Your good health and fortune are the toast at every table." " Our Colonel," wrote a young comrade in arms, "is an example of fortitude in either danger or hardships, and by his easy, polite behavior has gained not only the regard but affection of both officers and soldiers." But it took all the steadiness that had been born or bred in him to endure the strain of the dis- heartening task, from which he could not in honor break away. His plans, he complained, were " to-da\ T approved, to-morrow condemned." He was bidden do what was impossible. It would require fewer men to go against Duquesne again and remove the cause of danger than to prevent the effects while the cause re- mained. Many of his officers were careless and ineffi- cient, many of his men mutinous. " Your Honor will, I hope, excuse my hanging instead of shooting them," he wrote to the Governor; "it conveyed much more terror to others, and it was for example' sake that we did it." It was a test as of lire for a young colonel in his twenties. But a single light lies upon the picture. Early in 1756, ere the summer's terror had come upon the bor- der, and while he could be spared, he took horse and made his way to Boston to see Governor Shirley, now acting as commander-in-chief in the colonies, and from him at first hand obtain settlement of that teasing ques- tion of rank that had already driven the young officer once from the service. He went very bravely dight in proper uniform of buff and blue, a white -and -scarlet '/ WASHINGTON AND MARY PHILTPSK COLONEL WASHINGTON 93 cloak upon his shoulders, the sword at his side knotted with red and gold, his horse's fittings engraved with the Washington arms, and trimmed in the best style of the London saddlers. With him rode two aides in their uniforms, and two servants in their white -and -scarlet livery. Curious folk who looked upon the celebrated young officer upon the road saw him fare upon his way with all the pride of a Virginian gentleman, a hand- some man, and an admirable horseman — a very gallant figure, no one could deny. Everywhere he was feted as he went ; everywhere he showed himself the earnest, high-strung, achieving youth he was. In New York he fell into a new ambush, from which he did not come off without a wound. His friend Beverly Robinson must needs have Miss Mary Philipse at his house there, a beauty and an heiress, and Washington came away from her with a sharp rigor at his heart. But he could not leave that desolate frontier at home unprotected to stay for a siege upon a lady's heart ; he had recovered from such wounds before, had before that left pleasure for duty; and in proper season was back at his post, with papers from Shirley which left no doubt who should command in Virginia. At last, in 1758, the end came, when William Pitt thrust smaller men aside and became Prime-Minister in England. Amherst took Louisbourg, Wolfe came to Quebec, and General Forbes, that stout and steady sol- dier, was sent to Virginia to go again against Duquesne. The advance was slow to exasperation in the view of every ardent man like Washington, and cautious almost to timidity ; but the very delay redounded to its success at last. 'Twas November before Duquesne was reached. The Indians gathered there, seeing winter come on, had 94 GEORGE WASHINGTON not waited to meet them ; and the French by that time knew themselves in danger of being cut off by the Eng- lish operations in the North. When Forbes's forces, therefore, at last entered those fatal woods again, where Braddock's slaughtered men had lain to rot, the French had withdrawn ; nothing remained but to enter the smoking ruins of their abandoned fort, hoist the King's flag, and re-name the post Fort Pitt ; and Washington turned homeward again to seek the rest he so much needed. It had been almost a bloodless campaign, but such danger as it had brought Washington had shared to the utmost. The French had not taken themselves off without at least one trial of the English strength. While yet Forbes lay within the mountains a large de- tachment had come from Duquesne to test and recon- noitre his force. Colonel Mercer, of the Virginian line, had been ordered forward with a party to meet them. He stayed so long, and the noise of the firing came back with so doubtful a meaning to the anxious ears at the camp, that Washington hastened with volunteers to his relief. In the dusk the two bodies of Englishmen met, mistook each other for enemies, exchanged a dead- ly fire, and were checked only because Washington, rushing between their lines, even while their pieces blazed, cried his hot commands to stop, and struck up the smoking muzzles with his sword. 'Twas through no prudence of his he was not shot. For a long time his friends had felt a deep uneasiness about his health. They had very earnestly besought him not to attempt a new campaign. " You will in all probability bring on a relapse," George Mason had warned him, " and render yourself incapable of serving the public at a time when there may be the utmost oc- COLONEL WASHINGTON 95 casion. There is nothing more certain than that a uncompromising uncle had written him. have heard that, in consequence of your non-compliance with their request, they had burnt my house and laid the plantation in ruin. You ought to have considered yourself as my representative.'' Kept though it from harm, he :he place had suffered many things for lack of his personal care. There -xas some part of the be done over again that had con- 234 GEORGE WASHINGTON fronted him when he came to take possession of the old plantation with his bride after the neglects of the French war. But Virginia was more changed than Mount Yernon. He had left it a colony, at odds with a royal Governor; he returned to find it a State, with Benjamin Harrison, that stout gentleman and good planter, for Governor, by the free suffrages of his fellow Virginians. There had been no radical break with the aristocratic tradi- tions of the past. Mr. Harrison's handsome seat at Lower Brandon lay where the long reaches of the James marked the oldest regions of Virginia's life upon broad, half-feudal estates ; where there were good wine and plate upon the table, and gentlemen kept old customs bright and honored in the observance. But the face of affairs had greatly changed, nevertheless. The old generation of statesmen had passed away, almost with the colony, and a younger generation was in the saddle, notwithstanding a gray-haired figure here and there. Bichard Bland had died in the year of the Declaration ; Peyton Randolph had not lived to see it. Edmund Pendleton, after presiding over Virginia's making as a State, as chairman of her revolutionary Committee of Safety, was now withdrawn from active affairs to the bench, his fine figure marred by a fall from his horse, his old power as an advocate transmuted into the cooler talents of the judge. Patrick Henry, the ardent leader of the Revolution, had been chosen the State's first Governor, in the year of the Declaration of Indepen- dence ; three years later Thomas Jefferson had suc- ceeded him in the office, the philosophical radical of times of change ; the choice of Mr. Harrison had but completed the round of the new variety in affairs. Men FIRST IN PEACE 235 who, like Eichard Henry Lee, had counselled revolution and the breaking of old bonds, were now in all things at the front of the State's business ; and younger men, of a force and power of origination equal to their own, were pressing forward, as if to hurry a new generation to the stage which had known nothing but indepen- dence and a free field for statesmanship. Among the rest, James Madison, only a little more than ten years out of college, but already done with serving his no- vitiate in the Congress of the Confederation, a pub- licist and leader in the Old Dominion at thirty-two. Edmund Eandolph, of the new generation of the com- monwealth's great family of lawyers, like his forebears in gifts and spirit, was already received, at thirty, into a place of influence among public men. John Marshall, just turned of twenty-eight, but a veteran of the long war none the less, having been at the thick of the fight- ing, a lieutenant and a captain among the Virginian forces, from the time Dunmore was driven from Nor- folk till the eve of Yorktown, was, now that that duty was done, a lawyer in quiet Fauquier, drawing to him- self the eyes of every man who had the perception to note qualities of force and leadership. James Monroe had come out of the war at twenty -five to go at once into the public councils of his State, an equal among his elders. Young men came forward upon every side to take their part in the novel rush of affairs that followed upon the heels of revolution. Washington found himself no stranger in the new State, for all it had grown of a sudden so unlike that old community in which his own life had been formed. He found a very royal welcome awaiting him at his home-coming. The old commonwealth loved a hero 236 GEORGE WASHINGTON still as much as ever; was as loyal to him now as it had been in the far-away days of the French war, when Dinwiddie alone fretted against him ; received him with every tribute of affection ; offered him gifts, and loved him all the better for refusing them. But he must have felt that a deep change had come upon his life, none the less, and even upon his relations with his old familiars and neighbors. He had gone away hon- ored indeed, and marked for responsible services among his people — a Burgess as a matter of course, a notable citizen, whose force no man who knew him could fail to remark ; but by no means accounted greatest, even among the men who gathered for the colony's business at Williamsburg; chosen only upon occasion for spe- cial services of action ; no debater or statesman, so far as ordinary men could see ; too reserved to be popular with the crowd, though it should like his frankness and taking address, and go out of its way to see him on horseback ; a man for his neighbors, who could know him, not for the world, w 7 hich he refused to court. But the war had suddenly lifted him to the view of all mankind ; had set him among the great captains of the world ; had marked him a statesman in the midst of affairs — more a statesman than a soldier even, men must have thought who had read his letters or heard them read in Congress, on the floor or in the commit- tee rooms ; had drawn to himself the admiration of the very men he had been fighting, the very nation whose dominion he had helped to cast off. He had come home perhaps the most famous man of his day, and could not take up the old life where he had left it off, much as he wished to ; was obliged, in spite of himself, to play a new part in affairs. FIRST IN PEACE 237 For a few weeks, indeed, after he had reached Mount Vernon, Nature herself assisted him to a little privacy and real retirement. The winter (1783-4) was an un- commonly severe one. Snow lay piled, all but impas- sable, upon the roads; frosts hardened all the country against travel ; he could not get even to Fredericksburg to see his aged mother ; and not many visitors, though they were his near neighbors, could reach him at Mount Vernon. " At length, my dear Marquis," he could write to Lafayette in his security, " I am become a private citizen on the banks of the Potomac ; and under the shadow of my own vine and my own fig-tree, free from the bustle of a camp and the busy scenes of public life, I am solacing myself with those tranquil enjoyments of which the soldier, who is ever in pursuit of fame, the statesman, whose watchful days and sleepless nights are spent in devising schemes to promote the welfare of his own, perhaps the ruin of other countries, as if this globe was insufficient for us all, and the courtier, who is al- ways watching the countenance of his prince, can have very little conception. I have not only retired from all public employments, but I am retiring within myself. . . . Envious of none, I am determined to be pleased with all ; and this, my dear friend, being the order of my march, I will move gently down the stream of time until I sleep with my fathers." The simple gentleman did not yet realize what the breaking up of the frosts would bring. With the spring the whole life of the world seemed to come pouring in upon him. Men of note everywhere pressed their correspondence upon him ; no stranger visited America but thought first of Mount Vernon in planning where he should go and what he should see; 238 GEORGE WASHINGTON new friends and old sat every day at his table ; a year and a half had gone by since his home-coming before he could note in his diary (June 30th, 1785) : " Dined with only Mrs. Washington, which, I believe, is the first in- stance of it since my retirement from public life" — for some visitors had broken their way even through the winter roads. Authors sent him what they wrote; in- ventors submitted their ideas and models to him ; every- thing that was being said, everything that was being done, seemed to find its way, if nowhere else, to Mount Yernon — till those who knew his occupations could speak of Washington, very justly, as " the focus of polit- ical intelligence for the New World." He would not alter his way of living even in the face of such over- whelming interruptions. His guests saw him for a lit- tle after dinner, and once and again, it might be, in the evening also ; but he kept to his business throughout all the working hours of the day ; was at his desk even before breakfast, and after breakfast was always early in the saddle and off to his farms. Only at table did he play the host, lingering over the wine to give and call for toasts and relax in genial con- versation, losing, as the months passed by, some of the deep gravity that had settled upon him in the camp, and showing once more an enjoying relish for " a pleas- ant story, an unaffected sally of wit, or a burlesque de- scription," as in the old days after hunting. Strangers were often in awe of him. It did not encourage talk in those who had little to say to sit in the presence of a man who so looked his greatness in the very proportions of his strong figure even, and whose grave and steady eyes so challenged the significance of what was said. Young people would leave off dancing and romping FIRST IN PEACE 239 when he came into the room, and force him to with- draw, and peep at the fun from without the door, unob- served. It was only among his intimates that he was suffered and taken to be the simple, straightforward, sympathizing man he was, exciting, not awe, but only a warm and affectionate allegiance. " The General, with a few glasses of champagne, got quite merry," a young Englishman could report who had had the good luck to be introduced by Richard Henry Lee, " and, being with his intimate friends, laughed and talked a good deal." As much as he could, he resumed the old life, and the thoughts and pastimes that had gone with it. Once more he became the familiar of his hounds at the ken- nels, and followed them as often as might be in the hunt at sunrise. He asked but one thing of a horse, as of old, "and that was to go along. He ridiculed the idea that he could be unhorsed, provided the animal kept on his legs." The two little children, a tiny boy and a romping, mischievous lassie, not much bigger, Avhom he had adopted at Jack Custis's death-bed, took strong hold upon his heart, and grew slowly to an inti- macy with him such as few ventured to claim any longer amidst those busy days in the guest-crowded house. It seemed to Lafayette a very engaging picture when he saw Washington and the little toddling boy together — " a very little gentleman with a feather in his hat, hold- ing fast to one finger of the good General's remarkable hand, which (so large that hand!)" was all the tiny fel- low could manage. These children took Washington back more completely than anything else to the old days when he had brought his bride home with her own little ones. He felt those days come back, too, when he 240 GEORGE WASHINGTON was on his horse in the open, going the round of good twelve miles and more that carried him to all the quar- ters of his plantation. Once more he was the thorough farmer, ransacking books, when men. and his own observation failed him, to come at the best methods of cultivation. Once more he took daily account of the character of his slaves and servants, and of the progress of their work, talking with them when he could, and gaining a personal mastery over them. Contracts for work he drew up with his own hand, with a minuteness and particularity which were sometimes whimsical and shot through with a gleam of grim humor. He agreed with Philip Barter that if he would serve him faithfully as gardener and keep sober at all other times, he would allow him " four dollars at Christmas, with which to be drunk four days and four nights ; two dollars at Easter, to effect the same purpose; two dollars at Whitsuntide, to be drunk for two days ; a dram in the morning, and a drink of grog at dinner, at noon"; and the contract was drawn, signed, and witnessed with all formality. Philip no doubt found short shrift of consideration from his thorough -going master if there was any drunkenness in the garden beyond the limit of the eight days nomi- nated in the bond, and found the contract no jest in the end, for Washington had small patience and no soft words for a breach of agreement, whatever its kind. He would help men in distress with a generosity and wise choice of means which few took the pains to exer- cise, but he had only sharp rebuke for carelessness or neglect or any slackness in the performance of a duty. Men who had cheated or sought to impose upon him deemed him harsh and called him a hard master, so FIRST IN PEACE 241 sharply did they smart after he had reckoned with them. He exacted the uttermost farthing. But he spent it, with the other hand, to relieve genuine suffer- ing and real want, though it were deserved and the fruit of a crying fault. In his home dealings, as in every- thing else, his mind kept that trait by which men had been awed in the camp — that trick, as if of Fate, of letting every act come at its consequences and its full punishment or reward, as if he but presided at a process which was just Nature's own. When he succored dis- tress, he did it in pity, not in justice — not excusing fault, but giving leave to mercy. If he urged the government to pension and reward the soldiers of the war, who had only done their duty, he himself set an example. There were black pensioners not a few about his own home- stead. Bishop, his old body-servant, lived like a retired gentleman in his cottage there; even Nelson, the good sorrel who had borne him so bravely in the field till Yorktown, now went forever unsaddled, free in his own pasture. But, much as he loved his home and courted retire- ment amidst the duties of a planter, the old life would not come back, was gone forever. He was too famous, and there w T as an end on 't. He could not go abroad without drawing crowds about him. If he attended service on a Sunday away from home, though it were in never so quiet a parish, the very walls of the church groaned threateningly under the unaccustomed weight of people gathered in the galleries and packed upon the floor to see the hero of the Revolution. Not even a ride into the far west, to view his lands and pull together his neglected business on the Ohio, was long enough to take him beyond the reach of public affairs. On the 242 GEORGE WASHINGTON 1st of September, 1784, with Dr. Craik for company, he set out on horseback to go by Braddock's road again into the west. For nearly five weeks he was deep in the wilderness, riding close upon seven hundred miles through the forested mountains, and along the remote courses of the long rivers that ran into the Mississippi ; camping out as in the old days when he was a surveyor and a soldier in his 'prenticeship in these very wilds; re- newing his zest for the rough life and the sudden advent- ures of the frontiersman. But, though he had come upon his own lousiness, it was the seat of a future em- pire he saw rather than his own acres scattered here and there. When last he had ridden the long stages from settle- ment to settlement and cabin to cabin in this far coun- try of the Ohio, he had been a Virginian and nothing more, a colonial colonel merely, come to pick out lands for his comrades and himself, their reward for serving the crown against the French. A transformation had been worked upon him since then. He had led the armies of the whole county; had been the chief instru- ment of a new nation in winning independence ; had carried its affairs by his own counsels as no other man had done ; had seen through all the watches of those long campaigns the destinies and the hopes that were at stake. Now he saw the crowding immigrants come into the west with a new solicitude he had not felt be- fore. A new vision was in his thought. This western country was now a "rising world," to be kept or lost, husbanded or squandered, by the raw nation he had helped put upon its feet. His thought was stretched at last to a continental measure ; problems of statesman- ship that were national, questions of policy that had a FIRST IN PEACE 243 scope great as schemes of empire, stood foremost in his view. He returned home more engrossed than ever b} T interests not his own, but central to public affairs, and of the very stuff of politics. And so not the letters merely which poured in with every mail, not only his host of visitors, great and small — the Governor of the State, the President of Congress, foreign noblemen, soldiers, diplomatists, travellers, neighbors, friends, acquaintances, intruders — but his own unbidden thoughts as well, and the very sugges- tions of his own interest as a citizen and land-owner, drew him from his dreams of retirement and forced him upon the open stage again. Even hunting ceased be- fore many seasons were out. The savage boar-hounds which Lafayette had sent, in his kindness, from the Old World, proved too fierce and great a breed for even the sharp sport with the gray fox ; the old hunting com- panions were gone — the Fairfaxes over sea ; Belvoir de- serted and burned ; George Mason too much engaged — none but boys and strangers left to ride with. 'Twas poor sport, after all, without the right sportsmen. It must needs give way before a statesman's cares. Upon his first home-coming, Washington had found it hard to break himself of his habit of waking very early in the morning with a sense of care concerning the af- fairs of the clay, as if he were still in camp and in the midst of public duties. Now a new sense of responsi- bility possessed him, and more and more gained ascen- dency over him. He began to feel a deep anxiety lest a weak government should make independence little bet- ter than a reproach, and the country should fall into a hopeless im potency. At first he had been very san- guine. "Notwithstanding the jealous and contracted 244 GEORGE WASHINGTON temper which seems to prevail in some of the States," he wrote to Jonathan Trumbull in January, 1784, "yet I cannot but hope and believe that the good sense of the people will ultimately get the better of their preju- dices, and that order and sound policy, though they do not come so soon as one could wish, will be produced from the present unsettled and deranged state of public affairs. . . . Everything, my dear Trumbull, will come right at last, as we have often prophesied. My onl} 7 fear is that we shall lose a little reputation first." But the more he observed the temper of the time, the more uneasy he grew. " Like a young heir," he cried, " come a little prematurely to a large inheritance, we -shall wanton and run riot until we have brought our reputa- tion to the brink of ruin, and then, like him, shall have to labor with the current of opinion, when compelled, perhaps, to do what prudence and common policy point- ed out, as plain as any problem in Euclid, in the first instance. ... I think we have opposed Great Britain, and have arrived at the present state of peace and in- dependency, to very little purpose, if w T e cannot con- quer our own prejudices." For the present he saw little that could be done be- yond holding up the hands of the Congress, and increas- ing, as it might prove possible to do so, the meagre powers of the Confederation. " My political creed," he said, " is to be wise in the choice of delegates, support them like gentlemen while they are our representatives, give them competent powers for all federal purposes, support them in the due exercise thereof, and, lastly, to compel them to close attendance in Congress during their delegation." But his thoughts took wider scope as the months passed ; and nothing quickened them more FIRST IN PEACE 245 than his western trip. He saw how much of the future travelled with those slow wagon trains of immigrants into the west ; realized how they were leaving behind them the rivers that ran to the old ports at the sea, and going down into the valleys whose outlet was the great high- way of the Mississippi and the ports of the Gulf; how the great ridge of the Alleghanies lay piled between them and the older seats of settlement, with only here and there a gap to let a road through, only here and there two rivers lying close enough at their sources to link the east with the west ; and the likelihood of a separation between the two populations seemed to him as obvious as the tilt of the mountains upon either slope. " There is nothing which binds one country or one State to another but interest," he said. " Without this cement the western inhabitants, who more than probably will be composed in a great degree of foreign- ers, can have no predilection for us, and. a commercial connection is the only tie we can have upon them." " The western settlers," he declared, while still fresh from the Ohio, " stand as it were upon a pivot. The touch of a feather would turn them any way " — down the Mississippi to join their interests with those of the Spaniard, or back to the mountain roads and the head- waters of the eastern streams, to make for themselves a new allegiance in the east. He was glad to see the Spaniard so impolitic as to close the Mississippi against the commerce offered him, and hoped that things might stand so until there should have been " a little time al- lowed to open and make easy the ways between the At- lantic States and the western territory." The opening of the upper reaches of the Potomac to navigation had long been a favorite object with "Wash- 246 GEORGE WASHINGTON ington; now it seemed nothing less than a necessity. It had been part of the original scheme of the old Ohio Company to use this means of winning a way for com- merce through the mountains. Steps had been taken more than twenty years ago to act in the matter through private subscription ; and active measures for securing the necessary legislation from the Assemblies of Vir- ginia and Maryland were still in course when Washing- ton was called to Cambridge and revolution drew men's minds imperatively off from the business. In 1770 Washington had written to Jefferson of the project as a means of opening a channel for " the extensive trade of a rising empire"; now the empire of which he had had a vision was no longer Britain's, but America's own, and it was become a matter of exigent political necessity to keep that western country against estrange- ment, winning it by commerce and close sympathy to join itself with the old colonies in building up a free company of united States upon the great continent. Already the west was astir for the formation of new States. Virginia had taken the broad and national view of her duty that Washington himself held, and had ceded to the Confederation all her ancient claims to the lands that lay northwest of the Ohio River, re- serving for herself only the fair region that stretched south of that great stream, from her own mountains to the Mississippi. North Carolina would have ceded her western lands beyond the mountains also, had they been empty and unclaimed, like the vast territory that lay beyond the Ohio. But for many a year settlers had been crossing the mountains into those fertile valleys, and both this region and that which Virginia still kept showed many a clearing now and many a rude hamlet FIRST IN PEACE 247 where hardy frontiersmen were making a new home for civilization. Rather than be handed over to Congress, to be disposed of by an authority which no one else was bound to obey, North Carolina's western settlers de- clared they would form a State of their own, and North Carolina had to recall her gift of their lands to the Confederation before their plans of defiance could be checked and defeated. Virginia found her own fron- tiersmen no less ready to take the initiative in whatever affair touched their interest. Spain offered the United States trade at her ports, but refused to grant them the use of the lower courses of the Mississippi, lest terri- torial aggression should be pushed too shrewdly in that quarter ; and news reached the settlers beyond the mountains, in the far counties of North Carolina and Virginia, that Mr. Jay, the Confederation's Secretary for Foreign Affairs, had proposed to the Congress to yield the navigation of the Mississippi for a generation in ex- change for trade on the seas. They flatly declared they would give themselves, and their lands too, into the hands of England again rather than submit to be so robbed, cramped, and deserted. The New England States, on their part, threatened to withdraw from the Confederation if treaties were to be made to wait upon the assent of frontiersmen on the far Mississippi. The situation was full of menace of no ordinary sort. It could profit the Confederation little that great States like Virginia and New York had grown magnanimous, and were endowing the Confederation with vast gifts of territory in the west, if such gifts were but to loosen still further the already slackened bonds of the common government, leaving settlers in the unclaimed lands no allegiance they could respect. Without a national gov- 248 GEORGE WASHINGTON ernment spirited and strong enough to frame policies and command obedience, " we shall never establish a national character or be considered as on a respectable footing by the powers of Europe," Washington had said from the first. He had made a most solemn appeal to the States in his last circular to them, ere he resigned his commission, urging them to strengthen the powers of Congress, put faction and jealousy away, and make sure of " an indissoluble union under one federal head." " An option is still left to the United States of Amer- ica," he had told them, with all his plain and stately elo- quence ; " it is in their choice, and depends upon their conduct, whether they will be respectable and prosper- ous, or contemptible and miserable, as a nation. This is the time of their political probation." The hazards of that probation had been a burden upon his heart through all the toil of the Kevolution, and now it seemed as if the States must needs make every evil choice in meet- ing them. Congress could not so much as carry out the provisions of the treaty of peace, for its commissioners had made promises in the name of the States which the States would not redeem. England consequently re- fused to keep her part of the agreement and relinquish the western posts. She levied commercial war against the country, besides, without fear of reprisal ; for Con- gress had no power to regulate trade, and the States were too jealous of each other to co-operate in this or any other matter. English statesmen had consented to give up the colonies, and recognize their independence as a nation, rather than face any longer the world in arms; but they now looked to see them presently drop back into their hands again, out of sheer helplessness and hopeless division in counsel; and there were observ- FIRST IN PEACE 249 ant men in America who deemed the thing possible, though it Drought an intolerable fire into their blood to think of it. Other nations, too, were fast conceiving a like con- tempt for the Confederation. It was making no pro- vision for the payment of the vast sums of money it had borrowed abroad, in France and Holland and Spain ; and it could not make any. It could only ask the States for money, and must count itself fortunate to get enough to pay even the interest on its debts. It was this that foreign courts were finding out, that the Con- federation was a mere " government of supplication," as Randolph had dubbed it ; and its credit broke utterly down. Frenchman and Spaniard alike would only have laughed in contemptuous derision to see the whole fabric go to pieces, and were beginning to interest themselves with surmises as to what plunder it would afford. The States which lay neighbors to each other were embroiled in boundary disputes, and were fallen to levying duties on each other's commerce. They were individually in debt, besides, and were many of them resorting to issues of irredeemable paper money to relieve themselves of the inevitable taxation that must sooner or later pay their reckonings. " We are either a united people, or w r e are not so," cried Washington. "If the former, let us in all matters of general concern act as a nation which has a national character to support ; if we are not, let us no longer act a farce by pretending to it." As the months passed it began to look as if the farce might be turned into a tragedy. The troubles of the country, though he filled his let- ters with them and wrung his heart for phrases of pro- test and persuasion that would tell effectually in the 250 GEORGE WASHINGTON deep labor of working out the sufficient remedy of a roused and united opinion, though he deemed them per- sonal to himself, and knew his own fame in danger to be undone by them, did not break the steady self-possession of Washington's life at Mount Vernon. " It's astonish- ing the packets of letters that daily come for him, from all parts of the world," exclaimed an English visitor; but it was not till he had struggled to keep pace with his correspondence unassisted for a year and a half that he employed a secretary to help him. " Letters of friendship require no study," he wrote to General Knox ; "the communications are easy, and allowances are ex- pected and made. This is not the case with those that require researches, consideration, recollection, and the de— 1 knows what to prevent error, and to answer the ends for which they are written." He grew almost doc- ile, nevertheless, under the gratuitous tasks of courtesy thrust upon him. His gallantry, bred in him since a boy, the sense of duty to which he was born, his feel- ing that what he had done had in some sort committed him to serve his countrymen and his friends every- where, though it were only in answering questions, dis- posed him to sacrifice his comfort and his privacy to every one who had the slightest claim upon his atten- tion. He even found sitting for his portrait grow easy at last. " In for a penny, in for a pound, is an old adage," he laughed, writing to Francis Ilopkinson. " I am so hackneyed to the touches of the painter's pencil that I am now altogether at their beck ; and sit ' like Patience on a monument' whilst they are delineating the lines of my face. ... At first I was as impatient at the request, and as restive under the operation, as a colt is of the saddle. The next time I submitted very re- FIRST IN PEACE 251 luctantly, but with less flouncing. Now no dray-horse moves more readily to his thill than I do to the painter's chair." Besides the failure of the public credit, it con- cerned him to note the fact that, though he kept a hun- dred cows, he was obliged to buy butter for his innu- merable guests. He saw to it that there should be at least a very definite and efficient government upon his own estate, and, when there was need, put his own hand to the work. He "often works with his men himself — strips off his coat and labors like a common man," meas- ures with his own hands every bit of building or con- struction that is going forward, and " shows a great turn for mechanics," one of his guests noted, amidst com- ments on his greatness and his gracious dignity. It was such constancy and candor and spirit in living that took the admiration of all men alike upon the instant; and his neighbors every day saw here the same strenuous and simple gentleman they had known before ever the war began. It was through the opening of the Potomac, after all — the thing nearest his hand — that a way was found to cure the country of its malady of weakness and disorder. Washington had been chosen president of the Potomac Company, that it might have the advantage both of his name and of his capacity in affairs ; and he had gone upon a tour of inspection, with the directors of the com- pany, to the falls of the river in the summer of 1785, keeping steadily to the business he had come upon, and insisting upon being in fact a private gentleman busy with his own affairs, despite the efforts made everywhere he went to see and to entertain him ; and it presently became evident even to the least sanguine that the long-talked-of work was really to be carried through. A 252 GEORGE WASHINGTON visitor at Mount Vernon in the autumn of 1785 found Washington " quite pleased at the idea of the Baltimore merchants laughing at him, and saying it was a ridicu- lous plan, and would never succeed. They begin now, says the General, to look a little serious about the mat- ter, as they know it must hurt their commerce amaz- ingly." The scheme had shown its real consequence in the spring of that very year, when it brought commissioners from the two States that lay upon the river together in conference to devise plans of co-operation. Both Vir- ginia and Maryland had appointed commissioners, and a meeting had been set for March, 1785, at Alexandria. For some reason the Virginian commissioners were not properly notified of the place and time of conference. The meeting was held, nevertheless, a minority of the Virginian commissioners being present ; and, as if to give it more the air of a cordial conference of neigh- bors, Washington invited the representatives of both States to adjourn from Alexandria to Mount Vernon. There they sat, his guests, from Friday to Monday. He was not formally of the commission ; but conference was not confined to their formal sessions, and his coun- sel entered into their determinations. It was evident that two States were not enough to decide the questions submitted to them. Pennsylvania, at least, must be consulted before the full line of trade they sought could be drawn from the head -waters of the Ohio to the. head -waters of the Potomac; and if three States were to consult upon questions of trade which con- cerned the whole continent, why should not more be invited, and the conference be made general? Such was the train of suggestion, certainly, that ran in FIRST IN PEACE 253 Washington's mind, and which the commissioners car- ried home with them. Every sign of the time served to deepen its significance for Washington. Just before quitting the army he had ridden upon a tour of inspec- tion into the valley of the Mohawk, where a natural way, like this of the Potomac, ran from the northern settlements into the west. He knew that the question of joining the Potomac with the Ohio was but one item of a policy which all the States must consider and settle — nothing less than the policy which must make them an empire or doom them to remain a weak and petty confederacy. The commissioners did not put all that they had heard at Mount Yernon into their reports to their re- spective Assemblies. They recommended only that, besides co-operating with each other and with Penn- sylvania in opening a waj T to the western waters, Vir- ginia and Maryland should adopt a uniform system of duties and of commercial regulations, and should es- tablish uniform rules regarding their currencv. But the Maryland Assembly itself went further. It pres- ently informed the Virginian Legislature that it had not only adopted the measures recommended by the commissioners, but thought it wise to do something more. Delaware ought to be consulted, with a view to carrying a straight watercourse, by canal, from Chesa- peake Bay to the Delaware River; and, since conference could do no harm and bind nobody, it would be as well to invite all the States to confer with them, for the questions involved seemed far-reaching enough to justify it, if not to make it necessary. Governor Bowdoin, of Massachusetts, had that very year urged his Legislature to invite a general convention of the States in the in- 254 GEORGE WASHINGTON terest of trade. The whole country was in a tangle of disagreement about granting to Congress the power to lay imposts; Gardoqui, it was rumored, was insisting, for Spain, upon closing the Mississippi : 'twas evident enough conference was needed. Every thoughtful man might well pray that it would bring peace and accom- modation. When Maryland's suggestion was read in the Virginian Assembly, there was prompt acquiescence. Virginia asked all the States of the Union (January, 1786) to send delegates to a general conference to be held at Annapolis on the first Monday in September, to consider and recommend such additions to the powers of Congress as might conduce to a better regulation of trade. " There is more wickedness than ignorance in the conduct of the States, or, in other words, in the conduct of those who have too much influence in the government of them," Washington wrote hotly to Henry Lee, upon hearing to what lengths contempt of the authority of Congress had been carried ; " and until the curtain is withdrawn, and the private views and selfish principles upon which these men act are exposed to public notice, 1 have little hope of amendment with- out another convulsion." Perhaps the conference at Annapolis would withdraw the curtain and give the light leave to work a purification ; and he waited anx- iously for the issue. But when the commissioners assembled they found only five States represented — Virginia, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, and New York. Maryland had suddenly fallen indifferent, and had not appointed dele- gates. JSTew Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and North Carolina had appointed delegates, but they had not taken the trouble to come. Connecticut, South FIRST IN PEACE 255 Carolina, and Georgia had ignored the call altogether. The delegates who were in attendance, besides, had come with only the most jealously restricted powers; only New Jersey, in her great uneasiness at being neighbor to the powerful States of New York and Pennsylvania, had authorized her representatives to " consider how far a uniform system in their commercial regulations and other important matters might be neces- sary to the -common interest and permanent harmony of the several States." The other delegates had no such scope ; all deemed it futile to attempt their busi- ness in so small a convention ; and it was resolved to make another opportunity. Alexander Hamilton, of New York, drew up their address to the States, and in it made bold to adopt New Jersey's hint, and ask for a conference which should not merely consider questions of trade, but also "devise such further provisions as should appear to them necessary to render the constitu- tion of the federal government adequate to the exigen- cies of the Union." Hamilton held with Washington for a national government. He had been born, and bred as a lad, in the West Indies, and had never re- ceived the local pride of any colony-state into his blood. He had served with the army, too, in close intimacy with Washington, and, though twenty -five years his cap- tain's junior, had seen as clearly as he saw the deep hazards of a nation's birth. The Congress was indifferent, if not hostile, to the measures which the address proposed ; and the States would have acted on the call as slackly as before, had not the winter brought with it something like a threat of social revolution, and fairly startled them out of their negligent humor. The central counties of Massachu- 256 GEORGE WASHINGTON setts broke into violent rebellion, under one Shays, a veteran of the Kevolution — not to reform the govern- ment, but to rid themselves of it altogether; to shut the courts and escape the payment of debts and taxes. The insurgents worked their will for weeks together; drove out the officers of the law, burned and plun- dered at pleasure through whole districts, living upon the land like a hostile army, and were brought to a reckoning at last only when a force thousands strong had been levied against them. The contagion spread to Vermont and New Hampshire ; and, even when the outbreak had been crushed, the States concerned were irresolute in the punishment of the leaders, lihode Island declared her sympathy t with the insur- gents ; Vermont offered them asylum ; Massachusetts brought the leaders to trial and conviction only to par- don and set them free again. Congress dared do no more than make covert preparation to check a general rising. " You talk, my good sir," wrote Washington to Henry Lee, in Congress, "of employing influence to appease the present tumults in Massachusetts. I know not where that influence is to be found, or, if attainable, that it would be a proper remedy for the disorders. Influence is no government Let us have one by which our lives, liberties, and properties will be secured, ©r let us know the worst at once." It was an object-lesson for the whole country ; the dullest and the most lethar- gic knew now what slack government and financial dis- order would produce. The States one and all — save Khode Island — bethought them of the convention called to meet in Philadelphia on the second Monday in May, 1787, and delegates were appointed. Even Congress took the lesson to heart, and gave its sanction to the conference. FIRST IN PEACE 257 The Legislature of Virginia put Washington's name at the head of its own list of delegates, and after his name the names of Patrick Henry, Edmund Randolph, John Blair, James Madison, George Mason, and George Wythe — the leading names of the State, no man could doubt. But Washington hesitated. He had already de- clined to meet the Society of the Cincinnati in Phila- delphia about the same time, he said, and thought it would be disrespectful to that body, to whom lie owed much, " to be there on any other occasion." He even hinted a doubt whether the convention was constitu- tional, its avowed purposes being what they were, until Congress tardily sanctioned it. His real reason his in- timate friends must have divined from the first. They knew him better in such matters than he knew himself. He not only loved his retirement ; he deemed himself a soldier and man of action, and no statesman. The floor of assemblies had never seemed to him his princi- pal sphere of duty. He had thought of staying away from the House of Burgesses on private business twent}^ years ago, when he knew that the Stamp Act was to be debated. But it was not for the floor of the approach- ing convention that his friends wanted him ; they told him from the first he must preside. He was known to be in favor of giving the Confederation powers that would make it a real government, and he thought that enough ; but they wanted the whole country to see him pledged to the actual work, and, when they had per- suaded him to attend, knew that they had at any rate won the confidence of the people in their patriotic pur- pose. His mere presence would give them power. Washington and the other Virginians were prompt to be in Philadelphia on the day appointed, but only 17 258 GEORGE WASHINGTON the Pennsylvania!! delegates were there to meet them. They had to wait an anxious week before so many as seven States were represented. Meanwhile, those who gathered from day to day were nervous and appre- hensive, and there was talk of compromise and half- way measures, should the convention prove weak or threaten to miscarry. They remembered for many a long year afterwards how nobly Washington, "standing self-collected in the midst of them," had uttered brave counsels of wisdom in their rebuke. " It is too prob- able," he said, " that no plan we propose will be adopt- ed. Perhaps another dreadful conflict is to be sustained. If, to please the people, we offer what we ourselves disapprove, how can we afterwards defend our work? Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair. The event is in the hand of God." It was an utterance, they knew, not of statesmanship merely, but of character ; and it was that character, if anything could, that would win the people to their sup- port. When at last seven States were represented — a quorum of the thirteen— an organization was effected, and Washington unanimously chosen president of the convention. He spoke, when led to the chair, " of the novelty of the scene of business in which he was to act, lamented his want of better qualifications, and claimed the indulgence of the house towards the involuntary errors which his inexperience might occasion"; but no mere parliamentarian could have given mat anxious body such steadiness in business or such grave earnest- ness in counsel as it got from his presence and influence in the chair. Five more States were in attendance be- fore deliberation was very far advanced ; but he had the satisfaction to see his own friends lead upon the floor. FIRST IN PEACE 259 It was the plan which Edmund Randolph proposed, for his fellow Virginians, which the convention accepted as a model to work from ; it was James Madison, that young master of counsel, who guided the deliberations from day to day, little as he showed his hand in the work or seemed to put himself forward in debate. No speeches came from the president ; only once or twice did he break the decorum of his office to temper some difference of opinion or facilitate some measure of ac- commodation. It was the 17th of September when the convention at last broke up; the 19th when the Consti- tution it had wrought out was published to the country. All the slow summer through, Washington had kept counsel with the rest as to the anxious work that was going forward behind the closed doors of the long con- ference ; it was a grateful relief to be rid of the painful strain, and he returned to Mount Vernon like one whose part in the work was done. " I never saw him so keen for anything in my life as he is for the adoption of the new scheme of govern- ment," wrote a visitor at Mount Vernon to Jefferson ; but he took no other part than his correspondence af- forded him in the agitation for its acceptance. Through- out all those long four months in Philadelphia he had given his whole mind and energy to every process of difficult counsel by which it had been wrought to com- pletion ; but he was no politician. Earnestly as he com mended the plan to his friends, he took no public part either in defence or in advocacy of it. He read not only the Federalist papers, in which Hamilton and Madison and Jay made their masterly plea for the adoption of the Constitution, but also " every performance which has been printed on the one side and the other on the 260 GEORGE WASHINGTON great question," he said, so far as he was able to obtain them ; and he felt as poignantly as any man the deep excitement of the momentous contest. It disturbed him keenly to find George Mason opposing the Constitution — the dear friend from whom he had always accepted counsel hitherto in public affairs — and Richard Henry Lee and Patrick Henry, too, in their passionate attach- ment to what they deemed the just sovereignty of Vir- ginia. He could turn away with all his old self-pos- session, nevertheless, to discuss questions of culture and tillage, in the midst of the struggle, with Arthur Young over sea, and to write very gallant compliments to the Marquis de Chastellux on his marriage. " So your day has at length come," he laughed. " I am glad of it with all my heart and soul. It is quite good enough for you. Now you are well served for coming to right in favor of the American rebels all the way across the Atlantic Ocean, by catching that terrible contagion — domestic felicity — which, like the small-pox or the plague, a man can have only once in his life, because it commonly lasts him (at least with us in America — I don't know how you manage such matters in France) for his whole life- time." Ten months of deep but quiet agitation — the forces of opinion in close grapple — and the future seemed to clear. The Constitution was adopted, only two States dissenting. It had been a tense and stubborn fight : in such States as Massachusetts and New York, the con- certed action of men at the centres of trade against the instinctive dread of centralization or change in the re- gions that lay back from the rivers and the sea; in States like Virginia, where the mass of men waited to be led, the leaders who had vision against those who had FIRST IN PEACE 261 only the slow wisdom of caution and presentiment. But, though she acted late in the business, and some home-keeping spirits among even her greater men held back, Virginia did not lose the place of initiative she had had in all this weighty business of reform. Some- thing in her air or her life had given her in these latter years an extraordinary breed of public men — men liber- ated from local prejudice, possessed of a vision and an efficacy in affairs worthy of the best traditions of states- manship among the English race from which they were sprung, capable of taking the long view, of seeing the permanent lines of leadership upon great questions, and shaping ordinary views to meet extraordinary ends. Even Henry and Mason could take their discomfiture gracefully, loyally, like men bred to free institutions ; and Washington had the deep satisfaction to see his State come without hesitation to his view and hope. The new Constitution made sure of, and a time set by Congress for the elections and the organization of a new government under it, the country turned as one man to Washington to be the first President of the United States. " We cannot, sir, do without you," cried Gov- ernor Johnson, of Maryland, " and I and thousands more can explain to anybody but yourself why we cannot do without you." To make any one else President, it seemed to men everywhere, would be like crowning a subject while the king was by. But Washington held back, as he had held back from attending the Constitu- tional Convention. lie doubted his civil capacity, called himself an old man, said "it would be to forego repose and domestic enjoyment for trouble, perhaps for public obloquy." " The acceptance," he declared, " would be attended with more diffidence and reluctance than I 262 GEORGE WASHINGTON ever experienced before in my life." But he was not permitted to decline. Hamilton told him that his at- tendance upon the Constitutional Convention must be taken to have pledged him in the view of the country to take part also in the formation of the government. " In a matter so essential to the well-being of society as the prosperity of a newly instituted government," said the great advocate, " a citizen of so much consequence as yourself to its success has no option but to lend his ser- vices, if called for. Permit me to say it would be in- glorious, in such a situation, not to hazard the glory, however great, which he might have previously ac- quired." Washington of course yielded, like the simple-minded gentleman and soldier he was, when it was made thus a matter of duty. When the votes of the electors were opened in the new Congress, and it was found that they were one and all for him, he no longer doubted. Tie did not know how to decline such a call, and turned with all his old courage to the new task. THE FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES CHAPTER X The members of the new Congress were so laggard in coming together that it was the 6th of April, 1789, before both Houses could count a quorum, though the 4th of March had been appointed the day for their convening. Their first business was the opening and counting of the electoral votes ; and on the 7th Charles Thomson, the faithful and sedulous gentleman who had been clerk of every congress since that first one in the old colonial days fifteen years ago, got away on his long ride to Mount Yernon to notify Washington of his election. Affairs waited upon the issue of his errand. "Washington had for long known what was coming, and was ready and resolute, as of old. There had been no formal nominations for the presidency, and the votes of the electors had lain under seal till the new Congress met and found a quorum ; but it was an open secret who had been chosen President, and Washington had made up his mind what to do. Mr. Thomson reached Mount Yernon on the 14th, and found Washington ready to obey his summons at once. He waited only for a hasty ride to Fredericksburg to bid his aged mother farewell. She was not tender in the parting. Her last days had come, and she had set herself to bear with grim resolution the fatal disease that had long been upon her. She had never been tender, and these 266 GEORGE WASHINGTON latter days had added their touch of hardness. But it was a tonic to her son to take her farewell, none the less ; to hear her once more bid him God-speed, and once more command him, as she did, to his duty. On the morning of the 16th he took the northern road again, as so often before, and pressed forward on the way for New York. The setting out was made with a very heavy heart ; for duty had never seemed to him so unattractive as it seemed now, and his diffidence had never been so dis- tressing. " For myself the delay may be compared to a reprieve," he had written to Knox, when he learned how slow Congress was in coming together, " for in confidence I tell you that my movements to the chair of government will be accompanied by feelings not unlike those of a culprit who is going to the place of execution." When the day for his departure came, his diary spoke the same heaviness of heart. "About ten o'clock," he wrote, " I bade adieu to Mount Vernon, to private life, and to domestic felicity ; and, with a mind oppressed with more anxious and painful sensations than I have words to express, set out for New York." He did not doubt that he was doing right ; he doubted his capacity in civil affairs, and loved the sweet retire- ment and the free life he was leaving behind him. Grief and foreboding did not in the least relax his proud energy and promptness in action. He was not a whit the less resolute to attempt this new role, and stretch his powers to the uttermost to play it in master- ful fashion. He was only wistful and full of a sort of manly sadness ; lacking not resolution, but only alacrity. He had hoped to the last that he would be suffered THOMSON, THE CLERK OF CONGRESS, ANNOUNCING TO WASHINGTON, AT MOUNT VERNON, HIS ELECTION TO THE PRESIDENCY THE FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 267 to spend the rest of his days at Mount Yernon ; he knew the place must lack efficient keeping, and fall once more out of repair under hired overseers ; he feared his strength would be spent and his last years come ere he could return to look to it and enjoy it himself again. He had but just now been obliged to borrow a round sum of money to meet pressing obligations ; and the expenses of this very journey had made it necessary to add a full hundred pounds to the new debt. If the estate brought money so slowly in while he farmed it, he must count upon its doing even less while he was away ; and yet he had determined to accept no salary as President, but only his necessary expenses while in the discharge of his official duties, as in the old days of the war. It had brought distressing perplexities upon him to be thus drawn from his private business to serve the nation. Private cares passed off, no doubt, and were forgotten as the journey lengthened. But the other anxiety, how he should succeed in this large business of statesmanship to which he had been called, did not pass off ; the incidents of that memorable ride only served to heighten it. When he had ridden to Cambridge that anxious summer of 1775, he had been hailed by cheering crowds upon the wa} r , who admired the fine figure he made, and shouted for the cause he was destined to lead ; but he knew himself a soldier then, was but forty-three, and did not fear to find his duty uncongenial. The people had loved him and had thronged about him with looks and words it had quick- ened his heart to see and hear as he made his way from New York to Annapolis to resign his commission but six years ago ; but that was upon the morrow of a task accomplished, and the plaudits he heard upon the way 268 GEORGE WASHINGTON were but greetings to speed him the more happily homeward. Things stood very differently now. Though he felt himself grown old, he had come out to meet a hope he could not share, and it struck a subtle pain to his heart that the people should so trust him — should give him so royal a progress as he fared on his way to attempt an untried task. No king in days of kings' divinity could have looked for so heartfelt a welcome to his throne as this modest gentleman got to the office he feared to take. Not only were there civil fete and military parade at every stage of the journey; there was everywhere, besides, a run- ning together from all the country roundabout of peo- ple who bore themselves not as mere sight-seers, but as if they had come out of love for the man they were to see pass by. It was not their numbers but their manner that struck their hero with a new sense of responsibil- ity : their earnest gaze, their unpremeditated cries of welcome, their simple joy to see the new government put into the hands of a man they perfectly trusted. He was to be their guarantee of its good faith, of its respect for law and its devotion to liberty ; and they made him know their hope and their confidence in the very tone of their greeting. There was the manifest touch of love in the reception everywhere prepared for him. Refined women broke their reserve to greet him in the open road ; put their young daughters forward, in their en- thusiasm, to strew roses before him in the way ; brought tears to his eyes by the very artlessness of their affec- tion. When at last the triumphal journey was ended, the dispky of every previous stage capped and outdone by the fine pageant of his escort of boats from Newark and of his reception at the ferry stairs in New York, THE FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 269 the demonstration seemed almost more than he could bear. " The display of boats which attended and joined us," he confessed to his diary, "the decorations of the ships, the roar of the cannon, and the loud acclamations of the people which rent the skies as I walked along the streets, filled my mind with sensations as painful as they are pleasant"; for his fears foreboded scenes the opposite of these, when he should have shown him- self unable to fulfil the hopes which were the burden of all the present joy. It was the 27th of April when he reached New York. Notwithstanding his executive fashion of making haste, the rising of the country to bid him God-speed had kept him four days longer on the way than Mr. Thomson had taken to carry the summons to Mount Yern on. Three days more elapsed before Congress had completed its preparations for his inauguration. On the 30th of April, in the presence of a great concourse of people, who first broke into wild cheers at sight of him, and then fell si- lent again upon the instant to see him so moved, Wash- ington stood face to face with the Chancellor of the State upon the open balcony of the Federal Hall in Wall Street, and took the oath of office. " Do you solemnly swear," asked Livingston, "that you will faithfully exe- cute the office of President of the United States, and will, to the best of your ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States?" "I do solemnly swear," replied Washington, "that I will faith- fully execute the office of President of the United States, and will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States," and then, bending to kiss the Bible held before him, bowed his head and said " So help me God !" in tones no man could 270 GEORGE WASHINGTON mistake, so deep was their thrill of feeling. " Long live George Washington, President of the United States !" cried Livingston to the people ; and a great shout went up with the booming of the cannon in the narrow streets. Washington was profoundly moved, and, with all his extraordinary mastery of himself, could not hide his agitation. It was a company of friends, the Senators and Kepresentatives who stood about him within the Senate chamber as he read his address, after the taking of the oath. Some very old friends were there — men who had been with him in the first continental con- gress, men who had been his intimate correspondents the long years through, men who were now his close confidants and sworn supporters. Not many strangers could crowd into the narrow hall ; and it was not mere love of ceremony, but genuine and heartfelt respect, that made the whole company stand while he read. He visibly trembled, nevertheless, as he stood in their pres- ence, strong and steadfast man though he was, " and several times could scarce make out to read " ; shifted his manuscript uneasily from hand to hand ; gestured with awkward effort ; let his voice fall almost inaudi- ble ; was every way unlike himself, except for the sim- ple majesty and sincerity that shone in him through it all. His manner but gave emphasis, after all, to the words he was reading. " The magnitude and difficulty of the trust," he declared, " could not but overwhelm with despondence one who, inheriting inferior endow- ments from nature, and unpractised in the duties of civil administration, ought to be peculiarly conscious of his own deficiencies" ; and no one there could look at him and deem him insincere when he added, "All I dare THE FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 27 1 aver is that it has been my faithful study to collect my duty from a just appreciation of every circumstance by which it might be affected. All I dare hope is that, if in executing this task I have been too much swayed by a grateful remembrance of former instances, or by an affectionate sensibility to this transcendent proof of the confidence of my fellow-citizens, and have thence too little consulted my incapacity as well as disinclination for the weighty and untried cares before me, my error will be palliated by the motives which misled me, and its consequences be judged by my country with some share of the partiality with which they originated." His hearers knew how near the truth he struck when he said, " The smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained ; and the pres- ervation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the republican model of government, are justly consid- ered as deeply, perhaps as finally, staked on the experi- ment intrusted to the hands of the American people." It was, no doubt, " a novelty in the history of society to see a great people turn a calm and scrutinizing e}^e upon itself," as the people of America had done; "to see it carefully examine the extent of the evil " into which dis- union and disorder had brought it ; " patiently wait for two years until a remedy was discovered " ; and at last voluntarily adopt a new order and government " with- out having wrung a tear or a drop of blood from man- kind." But Washington knew that the praise deserved for such mastery and self-possession would be short- lived enough if the new government should fail or be discredited. It was the overpowering thought that he himself would be chiefly responsible for its success or 272 GEORGE WASHINGTON failure that shook his nerves as he stood there at the beginning of his task ; and no man of right sensibility in that audience failed to like him the better and trust him the more implicitly for his emotion. " It was a very touching scene," wrote Fisher Ames, of Massa- chusetts. " It seemed to me an allegory in which virtue was personified as addressing those whom she would make her votaries. Her power over the heart was never greater, and the illustration of her doctrine by her own example was never more perfect." " I feel how much I shall stand in need of the countenance and aid of every friend to myself, of every friend to the Revolution, and of every lover of good govern- ment," were Washington's words of appeal to Edward Rutledge, of South Carolina ; and he never seemed to his friends more attractive or more noble than now. The inauguration over, the streets fallen quiet again, the legislative business of the Houses resumed, Wash- ington regained his old self-possession, and turned to master his new duties with a calm thoroughness of pur- pose which seemed at once to pass into the action of the government itself. Perhaps it was true, as he thought, that he had been no statesman hitherto; though those who had known him would have declared themselves of another mind. He had carried the affairs of the Con- federation upon his own shoulders, while the war lasted, after a fashion the men of that time were not likely to forget, so full of energy had he been, so provident and capable upon every point of policy. His letters, too, since the war ended, had shown his correspondents the country over such an appreciation of the present, so sure a forecast of the future, so masculine an under- THE FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 273 standing of what waited to be done and of the means at hand to do it, that they, at least, accounted him their leader in peace no less than in war. But statesman- ship hitherto had been only incidental to his duties as a soldier and a citizen. It had been only an accident of the Kevoiution that he had had himself, oftentimes, to supply the foresight and the capacity in action which the halting congress lacked. He had had no experience at all in actual civil administration. He did not know his own abilities, or realize how rich his experience in affairs had, in fact, been. He went about his new tasks with diffidence, therefore, but with the full - pulsed heartiness, too, of the man who thoroughly trusts him- self, for the capacity at any rate of taking pains. Statesmanship was now his duty — his whole duty — and it was his purpose to understand and execute the office of President as he had understood and administered the office of General. He knew what need there was for caution. This was to be, " in the first instance, in a considerable degree, a government of accommodation as well as a government of laws. Much was to be done by prudence, much by conciliation, much by firmness." " I walk," he said, " on untrodden ground. There is scarcely an action the motive of which may not be subjected to a double in- terpretation. There is scarcely any part of my conduct which may not hereafter be drawn into precedent." But, though he sought a prudent course, he had no mind to be timid ; though he asked advice, he meant to be his own master. Washington had, no doubt, a more precise understand- ing of what the new government must be made to mean than any other man living, except, perhaps, Ham- is 274 GEORGE WASHINGTON ilton and Madison, the men whom he most consulted. The Confederation had died in contempt, despised for its want of dignity and power. The new government must deserve and get pre-eminent standing from the first. Its policy must make the States a nation, must stir the people out of their pettiness as colonists and provincials, and give them a national character and spirit. It was not a government only that was to be created, but the definite body of opinion also which should sustain and perfect it. It must be made w T orth believing in, and the best spirits of the country must be rallied to its support. It was not the question simply of how strong the government should be. Its action must, as Washington laid, be mixed of firmness, pru- dence, and conciliation, if it would win liking and loyal- ty as well as respect. It must cultivate tact as well as eschew weakness; must win as well as compel obedience. It was of the first consequence to the country, there- fore, that the man it had chosen to preside in this deli- cate business of establishing a government which should be vigorous without being overbearing was a thorough- bred gentleman, whose instincts would carry him a great way towards the solution of many a nice question of conduct. While he waited to be made President he called upon every Senator and [Representative then in attendance upon Congress, with the purpose to show them upon how cordial and natural a basis of personal acquaintance he wished, for his part, to see the govern- ment conducted ; but, the oath of office once taken, he was no longer a simple citizen, as he had been during those two days of waiting; the dignity of the govern- ment had come into his keeping with the office. Hence- forth he would pay no more calls, accept no in vita- THE FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 275 tions. On a da} 7 " fixed he would receive calls ; and he would show himself once a week at Mrs. Washington's general receptions. He would invite persons of official rank or marked distinction to his table at suitable in- tervals. There should be no pretence of seclusion, no parade of inaccessibility. The President should be a republican officer, the servant of the people. But he would not be common. It should be known that his office and authority were the first in the land. Every proper outward form of dignity, ceremony, and self-respect should be observed that might tell whole- somely upon the imagination of the people ; that might be made to serve as a visible sign, which no man could miss, that there was here no vestige of the old federal authority, at which it had been the fashion to laugh, but a real government, and that the greatest in the land. It was not that the President was not to be seen by anybody who had the curiosity to wish to see him. Many a fine afternoon he was to be seen walking, an unmistakable figure, upon the Battery, whither all per- sons of fashion in the town resorted for their daily promenade, his secretaries walking behind him, but otherwise unattended. Better still, he could be seen almost any day on horseback, riding in his noble way through the streets. People drew always aside to give him passage wherever he went, whether he walked or rode ; no doubt there was something in his air and bear- ing which seemed to expect them to do so ; but their respect had the alacrity of affection, and he would have borne himself with a like proud figure in his own Virginia. Some thought him stiff, but only the churl- ish could deem him un republican, so evident was it to every candid man that it was not himself but his office 276 GEORGE WASHINGTON he was exalting. His old passion for success was upon him, and he meant that this government of which he had been made the head should have prestige from the first. Count de Moustier, the French Minister to the United States, deeming America, no doubt, a protege of France, claimed the right to deal directly with the Pres- ident in person, as if upon terms of familiar privilege, when conducting his diplomatic business; but was checked very promptly. It was not likely a man bred in the proud school of Virginian country gentlemen would miss so obvious a point of etiquette as this. To demand intimacy was to intimate superiority, and Wash- ington's reply drew from the Count an instant apology. That the United States had every reason to hold France in loyal affection Washington gladly admitted with all stately courtesy ; but affection became servility when it lost self-respect, and France must approach the President of the United States as every other country did, through the properly constituted department. "If there are rules of proceeding," he said, quietly, " which have originated from the wisdom of statesmen, and are sanc- tioned by the common assent of nations, it would not be prudent for a young state to dispense with them altogether," — particularly a young state (his thought added) which foreign states had despised and might now try to patronize. These small matters would carry an infinite weight of suggestion with them, as he knew, and every suggestion that proceeded from the President should speak of dignity and independence. For the first few months of the new government's life these small matters that marked its temper and its self-respect were of as much consequence as its laws or its efficient organization for the tasks of actual adminis- THE FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 277 tration. The country evidently looked to Washington to set the tone and show what manner of government it was to have. Congress, though diligent and purpose- ful enough, could linger, meanwhile, the whole summer through upon its task of framing the laws necessary for the erection and organization of Departments of State, for Foreign Affairs, of the Treasury, and of War, and the creation of the office of Attorney-General — a simple administrative structure to suffice for the present. In the interval the treasury board of the Confederation and its secretaries of war and foreign affairs were continued in service, and the President found time to digest the business of the several departments preparatory to their reorganization. He sent for all the papers concerning their transactions since the treaty of peace of 1783, and mastered their contents after his own thorough fashion, making copious notes and abstracts as he read. He had been scarcely six weeks in office when he was stricken with a sharp illness. A malignant tumor in his thigh seemed to his physicians for a time to threaten mortification. It was three weeks before he could take the air again, stretched painfully at length in his coach ; even his stalwart strength was slow to rally from the draught made upon it by the disease, and its cure with the knife. There was deep anxiety for a little among those who knew, so likely did it seem that the life of the government was staked upon his life. He himself had looked very calmly into the doctor's troubled face, and had bidden him tell him the worst with that placid firmness that always came to him in moments of dan- ger. " I am not afraid to die," he said. " Whether to- night or twenty years hence makes no difference. I know that I am in the hands of a good Providence." A 278 GEORGE WASHINGTON chain had been stretched across the street in front of the house where he lay, to check the noisy traffic that might have disturbed him more deeply in his fever. But the government had not stood still the while. He had steadily attended to important matters as he could. 'Twas scarcely necessary he should be out of bed and abroad again to make all who handled affairs feel his mastery ; and by the time the summer was ended that mastery was founded upon knowledge. He understood the affairs of the new government, as of the old, better than any other man ; knew the tasks that waited to be attempted, the questions that waited to be answered, the difficulties that awaited solution, and the means at hand for solving them, with a grasp and thoroughness such as made it impossible henceforth that any man who might be called to serve with him in executive business, of whatever capacity in affairs, should be more than his counsellor. He had made himself once for all head and master of the government. By the end of September (1789) Congress had com- pleted its work of organization and Washington had drawn his permanent advisers about him. The federal courts, too, had been erected and given definitive juris- diction. The new government had taken distinct shape, and was ready to digest its business in detail. Wash- ington chose Alexander Hamilton to be Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Knox to be Secretary of War, Thomas Jefferson Secretar}^ of State, and Edmund Randolph Attorney - General — young men all, except Jefferson, and he was but forty-six. The fate of the government was certain to turn, first of all, upon questions of finance. It was hopeless pov- erty that had brought the Confederation into deep dis- THE FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 279 grace ; the new government had inherited from it noth- ing but a great debt ; and the first test of character to which the new plan in affairs would be put, whether at home or abroad, was the test of its ability to sustain its financial credit with businesslike thoroughness and statesmanlike wisdom. Alexander Hamilton was only thirty-two years old. He had been a spirited and capa- ble soldier and an astute and eloquent advocate ; but he had not had a day's experience in the administration of a great governmental department, and had never handled — so far as men knew, had never studied — ques- tions of public finance. Washington chose him, never- theless, without hesitation, for what must certainly turn out to be the most critical post in his administration. No man saw more clearly than Washington did how large a capacity for statesmanship Hamilton had shown in his masterly papers in advocacy of the Constitution. He had known Hamilton, moreover, through all the quick years that had brought him from precocious youth to wise maturity ; had read his letters and felt the singular power that moved in them ; and was ready to trust him with whatever task he would consent to assume. Henry Knox, that gallant officer of the Eevolution, had been already four years Secretary of War for the Confederation. In appointing him to the same office under the new Constitution, Washington was but re- taining a man whom he loved and to whom he had for long been accustomed to look for friendship and coun- sel. He chose Thomas Jefferson to handle the delicate questions of foreign affairs which must press upon the young state because, John Adams being Vice-President, there was no other man of equal gifts available who had 280 GEORGE WASHINGTON had so large an experience in the field of diplomacy. Again and again Jefferson had been chosen for foreign missions under the Confederation ; he was American Minister to France when Washington's summons called him to the Secretaryship of State ; and he came of that race of Virginian statesmen from whom Washington might reasonably count upon receiving a support touched with personal loyalty. Richard Henry Lee, Patrick Henry, and George Mason were home-keeping spirits, and doubted of the success of the new govern- ment ; but Jefferson, though he had looked upon its making from across the sea, approved, and was ready to lend his aid to its successful establishment. In ap- pointing Edmund Randolph to be Attorney - General, Washington was but choosing a brilliant young man whom he loved out of a great family of lawyers who had held a sort of primacy at the bar in Virginia ever since he could remember — almost ever since she had been called the Old Dominion. Knox was thirty-nine, Edmund Randolph thirty-six ; but if Washington chose voung men to be his comrades and guides in counsel, it was but another capital proof of his own mastery in af- fairs. Himself a natural leader, he recognized the like gift and capacity in others, even when fortune had not yet disclosed or brought them to the test. It was hard, in filling even the greater offices, to find men of eminence who were willing to leave the service of their States or the security and ease of private life to try the untrodden paths of federal government. The States were old and secure — so men thought — the fed- eral government was new and an experiment. The stronger sort of men, particularly amongst those bred to the law, showed, many of them, a great reluctance THE FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 281 to identify themselves with new institutions set up but live or six months ago ; and Washington, though he meant to make every liberal allowance for differences of opinion, would invite no man to stand with him in the new service who did not thoroughly believe in it. He was careful to seek out six of the best lawyers to be had in the country when he made up the Supreme Court, and to choose them from as many States — John Jay, of New York, to be chief justice ; John Kutledge, of South Carolina ; William Cushing, of Massachusetts ; John Blair, of Virginia ; James Wilson, of Pennsylvania, and R. H. Harrison, of Maryland — for he knew that the government must draw its strength from the men who administered it, and that the common run. of people must learn to respect it in the persons of its officers. But he was equally careful to find out in advance of every appointment what the man whom he wished to ask thought of the new government and wished its future to be. Many to whom he offered appointment declined ; minor offices seemed almost to go a-begging amongst men of assured position such as it was his ob- ject to secure. It needed all the tact and patience lie could command to draw about him a body of men such as the country must look up to and revere. His letters again went abroad by the hundred, as so often before, to persuade men to their duty, build a bulwark of right opinion round about the government, make his purposes clear and his plans effective. He would spare no pains to make the government both great and permanent. In October, 1789, his principal appointments all made, the government in full operation, and affairs standing still till Congress should meet again, he went upon a four weeks' tour through the eastern States, to put the 282 GEORGE WASHINGTON people in mind there, by his own presence, of the ex- istence and dignity of the federal government, and to make trial of their feeling towards it. They received him with cordial enthusiasm, for he was secure of their love and admiration ; and he had once more a royal progress from place to place all the way to far New Hampshire and back again. He studiously contrived to make it everywhere felt, nevertheless, by every turn of ceremonial and behavior, that he had come, not as the hero of the Revolution, but as the President of the United States. At Boston Governor Hancock sought by cordial notes and pleas of illness to force Washing- ton to waive the courtesy of a first call from him, and so give the executive of Massachusetts precedence, if only for old friendship's sake. But Washington would not be so defeated of his errand ; forced the perturbed old patriot to come to him, swathed as he was in flannels and borne upon men's shoulders up the stairs, received him with grim courtesy, and satisfied the gos- sips of the town once and for all that precedence be- longed to the federal government — at any rate, so long as George Washington was President. Having seen him and feted him, the eastern towns had seen and done homage to the new authority set over them. Washington was satisfied, and returned with a notice- able accession of spirits to the serious work of federal administration. No man stood closer to him in his purpose to strengthen and give prestige to the government than Hamilton ; and no man was able to discover the means with a surer genius. Hamilton knew who the well- wishers of the new government were, whence its strength was to be drawn, what it must do to approve THE FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 283 itself great and permanent, with an insight and thor- oughness Washington himself could not match : for Hamilton knew Washington and the seats of his strength in the country as that self-forgetful man him- self could not. He knew that it was the commercial classes of the country — such men as he had himself dwelt amongst at the great port at New York — who were bound by self-interest to the new government, which promised them a single policy in trade, in the stead of policies a half -score; and that the men who were standing to its support out of a reasoned prudence, out of a high-minded desire to secure good government and a place of consideration for their country amongst the nations of the world, were individuals merely, to be found only in small groups here and there, where a special light shone in some minds. He knew that Washington was loved most for his national character and purpose amongst the observant middle classes of substantial people in the richer counties of Pennsyl- vania, New Jersey, New York, and New England, while his neighbors in the South loved him with an individual affection only, and rather as their hero than as their leader in affairs. He saw that the surest way to get both popular support and international respect was to give to the government at once and in the outset a place of command in the business and material inter- ests of the country. Such a policy every man could comprehend, and a great body of energetic and influ- ential men would certainly support ; that alone could make the government seem real from the first — a veri- table power, not an influence and a shadow merely. Here was a man, unquestionably, who had a quick genius in affairs; and Washington gave him leave and 284 GEORGE WASHINGTON initiative with such sympathy and comprehension and support as only a nature equally bold and equally orig- inative could have given. Hamilton's measures jumped with Washington's purpose, ran with Washington's per- ception of national interests ; and they were with Wash- ington's aid put into execution with a promptness and decision which must have surprised the friends of the new government no less than it chagrined and alarmed its enemies. Having done its work of organization during its first summer session, the Congress came together again, Jan- uary 4th, 1790, to attempt the formulation of a policy of government, and Hamilton at once laid before it a " plan for the settlement of the public debt" which he had drawn and Washington had sanctioned. He proposed that provision should be made for the payment of the foreign debt in full — that of course ; that the domestic debt, the despised promises and paper of the Confeder- ation, should be funded and paid ; and that the debts contracted by the several States in the prosecution of the war for independence should be assumed by the general government as the debt of the nation. No one could doubt that the foreign debt must be paid in full : to that Congress agreed heartily and without hesitation. But there was much in the rest of the plan to give pru- dent men pause. To pay off the paper of the Confed- eration would be to give to the speculators, who had bought it up in the hope of just such a measure, a gra- tuity of many times what they had paid for it. To assume the State debts would be taken to mean that .the States were bankrupt or delinquent, that the federal government was to be their guardian and financial providence, and that the capital of the country must THE FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 285 look only to the government of the nation, not to the government of the States, for security and profitable employment. This was. nationalizing the government with a vengeance, and was a plain bid, besides, to win the moneyed class to its support. Members whose con- stituencies lay away from the centres of trade looked askance at such measures, and deemed them no better than handing the government over to the money lenders of the towns. But boldness and energy prevailed, as they had prevailed in the adoption of the Constitution itself, and both measures were carried through the Houses — the first at once, the second after a close and doubtful struggle — by stratagem and barter. Jefferson had been in France when Washington called him to assume the headship of foreign affairs at home ; had not reached New York on his return voyage until December 23d, 1789 ; and did not take his place in Wash- ington's council till March 21st, 1790. All of Hamilton's great plan had by that time passed Congress, except the assumption of the State debts. Upon that question a crisis had been reached. It had wrought Congress to a dangerous heat of feeling. Members from the South, where trade was not much astir and financial interests told for less than local pride and sharp jealousy of a too great central power, were set hotly against the measure ; most of the Northern members were as hotly resolved upon its adoption. Mr. Jefferson must have caught echoes and rumors of the great debate as he lingered at Monticello in order to adjust his private affairs be- fore entering upon his duties in the cabinet. The meas- ure had been lost at last in the House by the narrow margin of two votes. But the minority were in no humor to submit. They declined to transact any busi- 286 GEORGE WASHINGTON ness at all till they should be yielded to in this matter. There were even ugly threats to be heard that some would withdraw from Congress and force a dissolution of the Union rather than make concessions upon the one side or the other. It was to this pass that things had come when Mr. Jefferson reached the seat of government ; and his arrival gave Hamilton an opportunity to show how consummate a politician he could be in support of his statesmanship. The Southern members wanted the seat of the federal government established within their reach, upon the Potomac, where Congress might at least be rid of importunate merchants and money lenders clamoring at its doors, and of impracticable Quakers with their petitions for the abolition of slavery ; and were almost as hot at their failure to get their will in that matter as the Northern men were to find them- selves defeated upon the question of the State debts. Mr. Jefferson w T as fresh upon the field, w 7 as strong among the Southern members, w 7 as not embroiled or committed in the quarrel. Hamilton besought him to intervene. The success of the government was at stake, he said, and Mr. Jefferson could pluck it out of peril. Might it not be that the Southern men would consent to vote for the assumption of the State debts if the Northern members would vote for a capital on the Potomac? The suggestion came as if upon the thought of the moment, at a chance meeting on the street, as the two men w r alkecl and talked of matters of the day ; but it was very eloquently urged. Mr. Jefferson de- clared he w T as " really a stranger to the whole subject," but would be glad to lend what aid he could. Would not Mr. Hamilton dine with him the next day, to meet THE FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 287 and confer with a few of the Southern members? In the genial air of the dinner-table the whole difficulty was talked away. Two of the diners agreed to vote for the assumption of the State debts if Mr. Hamilton could secure a majority for a capital on the Potomac ; and Congress presently ratified the bargain. There was not a little astonishment at the sudden clearing of the skies. The waters did not go clown at once ; hints of a scandal and of the shipwreck of a fair name or two went about the town and spread to the country. But Congress had come out of its angry tangle of factions, calm had returned to the government, and Hamilton's plan stood finished and complete. He had nationalized the government as he wished. It was this fact that most struck the eye of Jefferson when he had settled to his work and had come to see affairs steadily and as a whole at the seat of govern- ment. He saw Hamilton supreme in the cabinet and in legislation — not because either the President or Con- gress was weak, but because Hamilton was a master in his new field, and both Congress and the President had accepted his leadership. It chagrined Jefferson deeply to see that he had himself assisted at Hamilton's tri- umph, had himself made it complete, indeed. He could not easily brook successful rivalry in leadership; must have expected to find himself, not Hamilton, preferred in the counsels of a Virginian President ; was beyond measure dismayed to see the administration already in the hands, as it seemed, of a man just two months turned of thirty -three. He began ere long to declare that he had been "most ignorantly and innocently made to hold the candle" to the sharp work of the Secretary of the Treasur} 7 , having been " a stranger to the circum- 288 GEORGE WASHINGTON stances." But it was not the circumstances of which lie had been ignorant; it was the effect of what he had done upon his own wish to play the chief role in the new government. When he came to a calm scrutiny of the matter, he did not like the assumption of the State debts, and, what was more serious for a man of politi- cal ambition, it was bitterly distasteful to the very men from whom he must look to draw a following when par- ties should form. He felt that he had been tricked ; he knew that he had been outrun in the race for leadership. What he did not understand or know how to reckon with was the place and purpose of Washington in the government. Hamilton had been Washington's aide and confidant when a lad of twenty, and knew in what way those must rule who served under such a chief. He knew that Washington must first be convinced and won; did not for a moment doubt that the President held the reins and was master; was aware that his own plans had prospered both in the making and in the adoption because the purpose they spoke was the purpose Washington most cherished. Washington had adopted the fiscal measures as his own ; Hamilton's strength consisted in having his confidence and support. Jefferson had slowly to discover that leadership in the cabinet was to be had, not by winning a majority of the counsellors who sat in it, but by winning Washington. That master- ful man asked counsel upon every question of conse- quence, but took none his own judgment did not ap- prove. He had chosen Hamilton because he knew his views, Jefferson only because he knew his influence, ability, and experience in affairs. When he did test Jefferson's views he found them less to his liking than he had expected. THE FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 289 He had taken Jefferson direct from France, where for five vears he had been watching a revolution come on apace, hurried from stage to stage, not by statesmen who were masters in the art and practice of freedom, like those who had presided in the counsels of America, but by demagogues and philosophers rather; and the subtle air of that age of change had crept into the man's thought. He had come back a philosophical radical rather than a statesman. He had yet to learn, in the practical air of America, what plain and steady policy must serve him to win hard-headed men to his following; and Washington found him a guide who needed watching. Foreign affairs, over which it was Jefferson's duty to preside, began of a sudden to turn upon the politics of France, where Jefferson's thought was so much eno-aged. The vear 1789, in which America gained self-possession and set up a government soberly planned to last, was the year in which France lost self- possession and set out upon a wild quest for liberty which was to cost her both her traditional polity and all the hopes she had of a new one. In that year broke the storm of the French revolution. It was a dangerous infection that went abroad from France in those first days of her ardor, and nowhere was it more likely to spread than in America. "Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven ! O times In which the meagre, stale, forbidding ways Of custom, law, and statute took at once The attraction of a country in romance ! When Reason seemed the most to assert her rights When most intent on making of herself A prime Enchantress, to assist the work 19 290 GEORGE WASHINGTON Which then was going forward in her name ! Not favored spots alone, but the whole earth, The beauty wore of promise, that which sets (As at some moments might not be uufelt Among the bowers of paradise itself) The budding rose above the rose full blown." Was not this spirit that had sprung to such sudden might in France the very spirit that had made America free, her people sovereign, her government liberal as men could dream of ? Was not France now more than ever America's friend and close ally against the world ? 'Twoulcl be niggardly to grudge her aid and love to the full in this day of her emulation of America's great ex- ample. The Bastile was down, tyranny at an end, Lafayette the people's leader. The gallant Frenchman himself could think of nothing more appropriate than to send the great key of the fallen fortress to Washington. But Washington's vision in affairs was not obscured. He had not led revolutionary armies without learning what revolution meant. " The revolution which has been effected in France," he said, " is of so wonderful a nature that the mind can hardly realize the fact" — his calm tones ringing strangely amidst the enthusiastic cries of the time. " I fear, though it has gone trium- phantly through the first paroxysm, it is not the last it has to encounter before matters are finally settled. The revolution is of too great a magnitude to be effected in so short a space and with the loss of so little blood." He hoped, but did not believe, that it would run its course without fatal disorders; and he meant, in any case, to keep America from the infection. She was her- self but "in a convalescent state," as he said, after her own great struggle. She was too observant still, more- THE FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 291 over, of European politics and opinion, like a province rather than like a nation — inclined to take sides as if she were still a child of the European family, who had flung away from her mother England to cling in pique to an ancient foe. Washington's first and almost single ob- ject, at every point of policy, was to make of the pro- vincial States of the Union a veritable nation, inde- pendent, at any rate, and ready to be great when its growth should come, and its self-knowledge. " Every true friend to this country," he said, at last, "must- see and feel that the policy of it is not to embroil ourselves with any nation whatever, but to avoid their disputes and their politics, and, if they will harass one another, to avail ourselves of the neutral conduct we have adopt- ed. Twenty years' peace, with such an increase of pop- ulation and resources as we have a right to expect, added to our remote situation from the jarring powers, will in all probability enable us, in a just cause, to bid defiance to any power on earth"; and such were his thought and purpose from the first. " I want an Amer- ican character," he cried, "that the powers of Europe may be convinced we act for ourselves, and not for others." He had been given charge of a nation in the making, and he meant it should form, under his care, an independent character. It was thus he proved himself no sentimentalist, but a statesman. It was stuff of his character, this purpose of independence. He would have played a like part of self-respect for himself among his neighbors on the Vir- ginian plantations ; and he could neither understand nor tolerate the sentiment which made men like Jefferson eager to fling themselves into European broils. Truly this man was the first American, the men about him 292 GEORGE WASHINGTON provincials merely, dependent still for their life and thought upon the breath of the Old World, unless, like Hamilton, they had been born and had stood aloof, or, like Gouverneur Morris, had divined Europe in her own capitals with clear, unenamoured eyes. Fortunately affairs could be held steadily enough to a course of wise neutrality and moderation at first, while France's revolu- tion wrought only its work of internal overthrow and destruction ; and while things went thus opinion began slowly to cool. 'Twas plain to be seen, as the months went by, that the work being done in France bore no real likeness at all to the revolution in America ; and wise men began to see it for what it was, a social dis- temper, not a reformation of government — effective enough as a purge, no doubt ; inevitable, perhaps ; a cure of nature's own devising; but by no means to be taken part in by a people not likewise stricken, still free to choose. At first Washington and a few men of like insight stood almost alone in their cool self-posses- sion. Every man of generous spirit deemed it his mere duty to extol the French, to join clubs after their man- ner, in the name of the rights of man, to speak every- where in praise of the revolution. But bv the time it became necessary to act — to declare the position and policy of the nation's government towards France — a sober second thought had come, and Washington's task was a little simplified. The crisis came with the year 1793. In 1792 France took arms against her European neighbors, let her mobs sack the King's palace, declared herself a republic, and put her monarch on trial for his life. The opening days of 1793 saw Louis dead upon the scaffold; England, Holland, Spain, and the Empire joined with the alliance THE FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 293 against the fevered nation ; and war as it were spread suddenly to all the world. Would not America succor her old ally ? Was there no compulsion in the name of liberty ? Would she stand selfishly off to save herself from danger? There was much in such a posture of affairs to give pause even to imperative men like Wash- ington. Those who favored France seemed the spokes- men of the country. The thoughtful men, to whom the real character of the great revolution over sea was beginning to be made plain, were silent. It would have required a veritable art of divination to distinguish the real sentiment of the country, upon which, after all, the general government must depend. " It is on great oc- casions only, and after time has been given for cool and deliberate reflection," Washington held, "that the real voice of the people can be known"; but a great risk must be run in waiting to know it. The measures already adopted by the government, though well enough calculated to render it strong, had not been equally well planned to make it popular. The power to tax, so jealously withheld but the other day from the Confederation, the new Congress had be^-un promptly and confidently to exercise upon a great scale, not only laying duties upon imports, the natural re- source of the general government, but also imposing taxes upon distilled spirits, and so entering the fiscal field of the States. Not only had the war debts of the States been assumed, but a national bank had been set up (1.791), as if still further to make the general govern- ment sure of a complete mastery in the field of finance. Jefferson and Randolph had fought the measure in the cabinet, as many a moderate man had fought it in Con- gress, and Washington had withheld his signature from 294 GEORGE WASHINGTON it till he should hear what they had to urge. But he had sent their arguments to Hamilton for criticism, and had accepted his answer in favor of the bank. Jeffer- son and Randolph had challenged the measure on the ground that it was without warrant in the Constitu- tion, which nowhere gave Congress the right to create corporations, fiscal or other. Hamilton replied that, besides the powers explicitly enumerated, the Constitu- tion gave to Congress the power to pass any measure " necessary and proper " for executing those set forth ; that Congress was itself left to determine what might thus seem necessary ; and that if it deemed the erection of a bank a proper means of executing the undoubted financial powers of the government, the constitutional question was answered. By accepting such a view Washington sanctioned the whole doctrine of "implied powers," which Jefferson deemed the very annulment of a written and explicit constitution. No bounds, Jefferson believed, could be set to the aggressive sweep of congressional pretension if the two Houses were to be given leave to do whatever they thought expedient in exercising their in any case great and commanding powers. No man could doubt, in the face of such meas- ures, what the spirit and purpose of Hamilton were, or of the President whom Hamilton so strangely domi- nated. Strong measures bred strong opposition. When the first Congress came together there seemed to be no par- ties in the country. All men seemed agreed upon a fair and spirited trial of the new Constitution. But an oppo- sition had begun to gather form before its two years' term was out ; and in the second Congress party lines began to grow definite — not for and against the Consti- THE FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 295 tution, bat for and against an extravagant use of con- stitutional powers. There was still a majority for the principal measures of the administration ; but the minor- ity had clearly begun to gather force both in the votes and in the debates. The reaction was unmistakable. Even Madison, Washington's stanch friend and inti- mate counsellor, who had at first been his spokesman in the House, began to draw back — first doubted and then opposed the policy of the Treasury. He had led the opposition to the bank, and grew more and more uneasy to note the course affairs were taking. It looked as if the administration were determined of set purpose to increase the expenses of the government, in order that they might add to the loans, which were so accept- able to influential men of wealth, and double the taxes which made the power of the government so real in the eyes of the people. Steps were urged to create a navy ; to develop an army with permanent organization and equipment ; and the President insisted upon vigorous action at the frontiers against the western Indians. This was part of his cherished policy. It was his way of fulfilling the vision that had long ago come to him, of a nation spreading itself down the western slopes of the mountains and over all the broad reaches of fertile land that looked towards the Mississippi ; but to many a member of Congress from the quiet settlements in the east it looked like nothing better than a waste of men and of treasure. The President seemed even a little too imperious in the business: would sometimes come into the Senate in no temper to brook delay in the consider- ation and adoption of what he proposed in such matters. When things went wrong through the fault of the com- manders he had sent to the frontier, he stormed in a 296 GEORGE WASHINGTON sudden fury, as sometimes in the old days of the war, scorning soldiers who must needs blunder and fail. The compulsion of his will grew often a little irksome to the minority in Congress; and the opposition slowly pulled itself together as the months went by to concert a definite policy of action. Washington saw as plainly as any man what was taking place. He was sensitive to the movements of opinion ; wished above all things to have the govern- ment supported by the people's approval ; was never weary of writing to those who were in a position to know, to ask them what they and their neighbors soberly thought about the questions and policies under debate ; was never so impatient as to run recklessly ahead of manifest public opinion. He knew how many men had been repelled by the measures he had supported Hamil- ton in proposing ; knew that a reaction had set in ; that even to seem to repulse France and to refuse her aid or sympathy would surely strengthen it. The men who were opposed to his financial policy were also the men who most loved France, now she was mad with revolu- tion. They were the men who dreaded a strong gov- ernment as a direct menace to the rights alike of in- dividuals and of the separate States ; the men who held a very imperative philosophy of separation and of revolt against any too great authority. If he showed himself cold towards France, he would certainly strengthen them in their charge that the new government craved power and was indifferent to the guarantees of freedom. But Washington's spirit was of the majestic sort that keeps a great and hopeful confidence that the right view will prevail; that the "standard to which the wise and honest will repair " is also the standard to which the THE FIRST PRESLDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 297 whole people will rally at last, if it be but held long and steadily enough on high to be seen of all. When the moment for action came he acted promptly, unhesitat- ingly, as if in indifference to opinion. The outbreak of war between France and England made it necessary he should let the country know what he meant to do. " War having actually commenced between France and Great Britain," he wrote to Jefferson in April, 1793, " it behooves the government of this country to use every means in its power to prevent the citizens thereof from embroiling us with either of those powers, by endeavor- ing to maintain a strict neutrality. I therefore require that you will give the subject mature consideration, that such measures as shall be deemed most likely to effect this desirable purpose may be adopted without delay. . . . Such other measures as may be necessary for us to pursue against events which it may not be in our power to avoid or control, you will also think of, and lay them before me at my arrival in Philadelphia ; for which place I shall set out to-morrow." He was at Mount Yernon when he despatched these instructions ; but it did not take him long to reach the seat of gov- ernment, to consult his cabinet, and to issue a proclama- tion of neutrality whose terms no man could mistake. It contained explicit threat of exemplary action against any who should presume to disregard it. That very month (April, 1793) Edrnond Charles Genet, a youth still in his twenties whom the new republic over sea had commissioned Minister to the United States, landed at Charleston. It pleased him to take posses- sion of the country, as if it were of course an appanage of France. He was hardly ashore before he had begun to arrange for the fitting out of privateers, to issue let- 298 GEORGE WASHINGTON ters of marque to American citizens, and to authorize French consuls at American ports to act as judges of ad- miralty in the condemnation of prizes. As he journeyed northward to Philadelphia he was joyfully confirmed in his views and purposes by his reception at the hands of the people. lie was everywhere dined and toasted and feted, as if he had been a favorite prince returned to his subjects. His speeches by the way rang in a tone of au- thority and patronage. He reached Philadelphia fairly mad with the sense of power, and had no conception of his real situation till he stood face to face with the Pres- ident. Of that grim countenance and cold greeting there could be but one interpretation; and the fellow winced to feel that at last he had come to a grapple with the country's government. It was, no doubt, in the eyes of the sobering man, a strange and startling thing that then took place. The country itself had not fully known Washington till then— or its own dignity either. It had deemed the proclamation of neutrality a party measure, into which the President had been led by the enemies of France, the partisans of England. Bat the summer undeceived everybody, even Genet. Not content with the lawless mischief he had set afoot on the coasts by the commissioning of privateersmen, that mad youth had hastened to send agents into the south and west to enlist men for armed expedi- tions against the Floridas and against New Orleans, on the coveted Mississippi; but his work was everywhere steadily undone. Washington acted slowly, deliberately even, with that majesty of self-control, that awful cour- tesy and stillness in wrath, that had ever made him a master to be feared in moments of sharp trial. One by one the unlawful prizes were seized ; justice was done THE FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 299 upon their captors ; the false admiralty courts were shut up. The army of the United States was made ready to check the risings in the south and west, should there be need ; the complaints of the British Minister were silenced by deeds as well as by words ; the clamor of those who had welcomed the Frenchman so like pro- vincials was ignored, though for a season it seemed the voice of the country itself ; and the humiliating work, which ought never to have been necessary, was at last made effective and complete. Towards the close of June, Washington ventured to go for a little while to Mount Yernon for rest. At once there was trouble. A privateer was found taking arms and stores aboard in the very river at Philadelphia; Jefferson allowed her to drop down to Chester, believ- ing Genet instead of the agents of the government ; and she was upon the point of getting to sea before Wash- ington could reach the seat of government. Jefferson was not in town when the President arrived. " What is to be done in the case of the Little Sarah, now at Chester?" came Washington's hot questions after him. " Is the Minister of the French Kepublic to set the acts of this government at defiance with impunity? And then threaten the executive with an appeal to the peo- ple ? What must the world think of such conduct, and of the United States in submitting to it? Circumstances press for decision ; and as you have had time to con- sider them, I wish to know your opinion upon them, even before to-morrow, for the vessel may then be gone." It was indeed too late to stop her : a gross vio- lation of neutrality had been permitted under the very eyes of the Secretary of State. Washington stayed henceforth in Philadelphia, in personal control of affairs. 300 GEORGE WASHINGTON It was an appeal to the people that finally delivered Genet into his hands. Washington revoked the exe- quatur of one Duplaine, French consul at Boston, for continuing to ignore the laws of neutrality; Genet de- clared he would appeal from the President to the sover- eign State of Massachusetts ; rumors of the silly threat got abroad, and Genet demanded of the President that he deny them. Washington answered with a chilling rebuke; the correspondence was given to the public prints; and at last the country saw the French Minister for what he was. A demand for his recall had been re- solved upon in the cabinet in August ; by February, 1794, the slow processes of diplomatic action were com- plete, and a successor had arrived. Genet did not vent- ure to return to his distracted country ; but he was as promptly and as readily forgotten in America. Some might find it possible to love France still ; but no one could any longer stomach Genet. Washington had divined French affairs much too clearly to be for a moment tempted to think with anything but contempt of the French party who had truckled to Genet. " The affairs of France," he said to Lee, in the midst of Genet's heyday, " seem to me to be in the highest paroxysm of disorder; not so much from the presence of foreign enemies, but because those in whose hands the government is intrusted are ready to tear each other to pieces, and will more than probably prove the worst foes the country has." It was his clear perception what the danger would be should America be drawn into the gathering European wars that had led him to accept a second term as President. It had been his wish to remain only four years in the arduous office : but he had no thought to leave a task unfinished ,* THE FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 301 knew that he was in the very midst of the critical busi- ness of holding the country to the course which should make it a self-respecting nation; and consented to submit himself once more to the vote of the electors. Parties were organizing, but there was no opposition to Washington. He received again a unanimous vote ; and John Adams was again chosen Yice- President. The second inauguration (March, 1793) seemed but a rou- tine confirmation of the first. But the elections to Congress showed a change setting in. In the Senate the avowed supporters of the administration had still a narrow majority ; but in the House they fell ten votes short of control ; and Washington had to put his policy of neutrality into execution against the mad Genet with nothing but doubts how he should be supported. The insane folly of Genet saved the President serious embar- rassment, after all ; made the evidence that Washington was right too plain to be missed by anybody ; and gave the country at last vision enough to see what was in fact the course of affairs abroad, within and without unhappy France. Before that trying year 1793 was out, an attack upon Hamilton in the House, though led by Madison, had failed ; Jefferson had left the cabinet ; and the hands of those who definitely and heartily sup- ported the President were not a little strengthened. There was sharp bitterness between parties — a bitter- ness sharper as yet, indeed, than their differences of view ; but the " federalists," who stood to the support of Washington and Hamilton, were able, none the less, to carry their more indispensable measures — even an act of neutrality which made the President's policy the explicit law of the land. The sober second thought of the country was slowly coming about to their aid. 302 GEORGE WASHINGTON The air might have cleared altogether had the right method of dealing with France been the only question that pressed ; but the ill fortune of the time forced the President to seem not only the recreant friend of France, but also the too complacent partisan of Eng- land. Great Britain seemed as mischievously bent upon forcing the United States to war as Genet himself had been. She would not withdraw her garrisons from the border posts; it was believed that she was inciting the Indians to their savage inroads upon the border, as the French had done in the old days ; she set herself to de- stroy neutral trade by seizing all vessels that carried the products of the French islands or were laden with pro- visions for their ports ; she would admit American ves- sels to her own West Indian harbors only upon suffer- ance, and within the limits of a most jealous restriction. It gave a touch of added bitterness to the country's feeling against her that she should thus levy as it were covert war upon the Union while affecting to be at peace with it, as if she counted on its weakness, es- pecially on the seas ; and Congress would have taken measures of retaliation, which must certainly have led to open hostilities, had not Washington intervened, de- spatching John Jay, the trusted Chief Justice, across sea as minister extraordinary, to negotiate terms of accom- modation; and so giving pause to the trouble. While the country waited upon the negotiation, it witnessed a wholesome object-lesson in the power of its new government. In March, 1791, Congress had passed an act laying taxes on distilled spirits : 'twas part of Hamilton's plan to show that the federal gov- ernment could and would use its great authority. The act bore nowhere so hard upon the people as in the vast THE FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 303 far counties of Pennsylvania and Virginia, beyond the mountains — and there the very allegiance of the people had been but the other day doubtful, as Washington very well knew. How w T ere they to get their corn to market over the long roads if they were not to be per- mitted to reduce its bulk and increase its value by turn- ing it into whiskey ? The tax seemed to them intoler- able, and the remedy plain. They would not pay it. They had not been punctilious to obey the laws of the States ; they would not begin obedience now by sub- mitting to the worst laws of the United States. At first they only amused themselves by tarring and feathering an exciseman here and there ; but resistance could not stop with that in the face of a government bent upon having its own way. Opposition organized itself and spread, till the writs of federal courts had been defied by violent mobs and the western counties of Pennsyl- vania were fairly quick with incipient insurrection. For two years Washington watched the slow gather- ing of the storm, warning those who resisted, keeping Congress abreast of him in preparation for action when the right time should come, letting all the country know what was afoot and prepare its mind for what was to come. It must have won him to a stern humor to learn that seven thousand armed men had gathered in mass- meeting on Braddock's field to defy him. At last he summoned an army of militia out of the States, sent it straight to the lawless counties, going with it himself till he learned there would be no serious resistance — and taught the country what was back of federal law. Hamilton had had his way, the country its lesson. " The servile copyist of Mr. Pitt thought he must have his alarms, his insurrections and plots against the Con- 304 GEORGE WASHINGTON stitution," sneered Jefferson. " It aroused the favorite purposes of strengthening government and increasing the public debt ; and therefore an insurrection was announced and proclaimed and armed against and marched against, but could never be found. And all this under the sanction of a name which has done too much good not to be sufficient to cover harm also. 11 " The powers of the executive of this country are more definite and better understood, perhaps, than those of any other country," Washington had said, " and my aim has been, and will continue to be, neither to stretch nor to relax from them in any instance whatever, unless com- pelled to it by imperious circumstances," and that was what he meant the country to know, whether the law's purpose was good or bad. The next year the people knew what Mr. Jay had done. He reached New York May 28th, 1796 ; and the treaty he brought with him was laid before the Senate on the 8th of June. On the 2d of July the country knew what he had agreed to and the Senate had rati- fied. There was an instant outburst of wrath. It swept from one end of the country to the other. The treaty yielded so much, gained so little, that to accept it seemed a veritable humiliation. The northwestern posts were, indeed, to be given up at last; the boundaries between English and American territory were to be determined by commissioners ; unrestricted commerce with England herself, and a free direct trade with her East Indian possessions, were conceded ; but not a word was said about the impressment of American seamen ; American claims for damages for unjust seizures in the West Indies were referred to a commission, along with American debts to Englishmen ; the coveted trade with DEATH OF WASHINGTON THE FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 305 the West Indian islands was secured only to vessels of seventy tons and under, and at the cost of renouncing the right to export sugar, molasses, coffee, cocoa, or cotton to Europe. Washington agreed with the Senate that ratifications of the treaty ought not to be ex- changed without a modification of the clauses respect- ing the West Indian trade, and October had come before new and better terms could be agreed upon ; but he had no doubt that the treaty as a whole ought to be accepted. The opposition party in Congress had refused to vote money for an efficient navy, and so had made it impossible to check British aggressions : they must now accept this unpalatable treaty as better at any rate than war. It was hard to stand steady in the storm. The coun- try took fire as it- had done at the passage of the Stamp Act. Harder things had never been said of king" and parliament than were now said of Washington and his advisers. Many stout champions stood to his defence — none stouter or more formidable than Hamilton, no longer a member of the cabinet, for imperative private interests had withdrawn him these six months and more, but none the less redoubtable in the field of con- troversy. For long, nevertheless, the battle went heav- ily against the treaty. Even Washington, for once, stood a little while perplexed, not doubting his own pur- pose, indeed, but very anxious what the outcome should be. Protests against his signing the treaty poured in upon him from every quarter of the country : many of them earnest almost to the point of entreaty, some hot with angry comment. His reply, when he vouchsafed any, was always that his very gratitude for the appro- bation of the country in the past fixed him but the more 20 306 GEORGE WASHINGTON firmly in his resolution to deserve it now by obeying his own conscience. " It is very desirable," he wrote to Hamilton, " to ascertain, if possible, after the paroxysm of the fever is a little abated, what the real temper of the people is concerning it ; for at present the cry against the Treaty is like that against a mad dog;" but he showed himself very calm to the general eye, mak- ing his uneasiness known only to his intimates. The cruel abuse heaped upon him cut him to the quick. " Such exaggerated and indecent terms," he cried, " could scarcely be applied to a Nero, a notorious defaulter, or even to a common pickpocket." But the men who sneered and stormed, talked of usurpation and impeach- ment, called him base, incompetent, traitorous even, were permitted to see not so much as the quiver of an e\ 7 elid as they watched him go steadily from step to step in the course he had chosen. At last the storm cleared ; the bitter months were over ; men at the ports saw at length how much more freely trade ran under the terms of the treaty, and re- membered that, while they had been abusing Jay and maligning the President, Thomas Pinckney had. ob- tained a treaty from Spain which settled the Florida boundary, opened the Mississippi without restriction, secured a place of deposit at New Orleans, and made commerce with the Spaniards as free as commerce with the French. The whole country felt a new impulse of prosperity. The " paroxysm of the fever " was over, and shame came upon the men who had so vilely abused the great President and had made him wish, in his bit- terness, that he were in his grave rather than in the Presidency ; who had even said that he had played false in the Revolution, and had squandered public moneys ; THE FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 307 who had gone beyond threats of impeachment and dared to hint at assassination! They saw the end of his term approach, and would have recalled their insults. But they had alienated his great spirit forever. When he had seen parties forming in his cabinet in the quiet days of his first term as President, he had sought to placate differences ; had tried to bring Ham- ilton and Jefferson to a cordial understanding which should be purged of partisan bias, as he meant his own judgments to be; had deemed parties unnecessary and loyalty to the new Constitution the only standard of preferment to office. But he had come to another mind in the hard years that followed. " I shall not, whilst I have the honor to administer the government, bring a man into any office of consequence knowingly," he de- clared in the closing days of 1795, " whose political tenets are adverse to the tenets which the general gov- ernment are pursuing ; for this, in my opinion, would be a sort of political suicide ;" and he left the Presidency ready to call himself very flatly a " Federalist" — of the party that stood for the Constitution and abated noth- ing of its powers. " You could as soon scrub a blacka- more white," he cried, "as to change the principle of a profest Democrat" — "he will leave nothing unattempt- ed to overturn the Government of this Country." Affairs fell very quiet again as the last year of his Presidency drew towards its close. Brisk trade under the new treaties heartened the country more and more ; the turbulent democratic clubs that had so noisily af- fected French principles and French modes of agitation were sobered and discredited, now the Keign of Terror had come and wrought its bloody work in France ; the country turned once more to Washington with its old 308 GEORGE WASHINGTON confidence and affection, and would have had him take the Presidency a third time, to keep the government steady in its new ways. Bat he would not have the hard office again. On the 19th of September, 1796, he published to the people a farewell address, quick with the solemn eloquence men had come to expect from him. He wrote to Hamil- ton and to Madison for advice as to what he should say, as in the old days of his diffident beginnings in the great office — though Hamilton was the arch-Federalist and Madison was turning Democrat — took their phrases for his thought where they seemed better than his own ; put the address forth as his mature and last counsel to the little nation he loved. " It w T as designed," he said, " in a more especial manner for the yeomanry of the country," and spoke the advice he hoped they might take to heart. The circumstances which had given his services a temporary value, he told them, were passed ; they had now a unified and national government, which might serve them for great ends. He exhorted them to preserve it intact, and not to degrade it in the using ; to put down party spirit, make religion, education, and good faith the guides and safeguards of their govern- ment, and keep it national and their own by excluding foreign influences and entanglements. 'Twas a noble document. No thoughtful man could read it without emotion, knowing how it spoke in all its solemn sen- tences the great character of the man whose career was ended. When the day came on which he should resign his office to John Adams, the great civilian who was to succeed him, there was a scene which left no one in doubt— not even Washington himself — what the people THE FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 309 thought of the leader they had trusted these twenty years. A great crowd was assembled to see the simple ceremonies of the inauguration, as on that April day in New York eight years ago ; but very few in the throng watched Adams. All eyes were bent upon that great figure in black velvet, with a light sword slung at his side. No one stirred till he had left the room, to follow and pay his respects to the new President. Then they and all the crowd in the streets moved after him, an immense company, going as one man, " in total silence," his escort all the way. He turned upon the threshold of the President's lodgings and looked, as if for the last time, upon this multitude of nameless friends. " No man ever saw him so moved." The tears rolled un- checked down his cheeks; and when at last he went within, a great smothered common voice went through the stirred throng, as if they sobbed to see their hero go from their sight forever. It had been noted how cheerful he looked, at thought of his release, as he entered the hall of the Kepresenta- tives, where Mr. Adams was to take the oath. As soon as possible he was at his beloved Mount Vernon once more, to pick up such threads as he might of the old life again. " I begin my diurnal course with the sun," he wrote, in grave playfulness, to a friend ; " if my hirelings are not in their places by that time. I send them messages of sorrow for their indisposition ; having put these wheels in motion, I examine the state of things further; the more they are probed the deeper I find the wounds which my buildings have sustained by an absence and neglect of eight years ; by the time I have accomplished these matters breakfast (a little after seven o'clock, about the time, I presume, that you are 310 GEORGE WASHINGTON taking leave of Mrs. McIIenry) is ready; this being over, I mount my horse and ride round my farms, which employs me until it is time to dress for dinner. . . . The usual time of sitting at the table, a walk, and tea bring me within the dawn of candlelight ; previous to which, if not prevented by company, I resolve that as soon as the glimmering taper supplies the place of the great luminary I will retire to my writing-table and acknowl- edge the letters I have received ; when the lights are brought I feel tired and disinclined to engage in this work, conceiving that the next night will do as well. The next night comes, and with it the same causes for postponement, and so on. Having given you the his- tory of a da} 7 , it will serve for a year, and I am per- suaded that you will not require a second edition of it." He had kept his overseers under his hand all the time he was President ; had not forgotten to w r rite to Dr. Young upon methods of cultivation ; had shown the same passion as ever for speeding and regulating at its best every detail of his private business ; but matters had gone ill for lack of his personal supervision. He was obliged to sell no less than fifty thousand dollars' worth of his lands in the course of four or five years to defray the great expenses he was put to in the Presi- dency and the cost of bringing his estate into solvent shape again. He did not try to begin anew ; he only set things in order, and kept his days serene. A spark of war was kindled by the new administra- tion's dealings with France, and Washington was called once more to prepare for command, should the fighting leave the sea and come ashore. Put formal war did not come. The flurry only kept him a little nearer the movements of politics than he cared to be. He was the THE FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 31 1 more uneasy to see how the Democrats bore themselves in the presence of the moment's peril ; doubted the ex- pediency of assigning men of that party to places of command in the army ; approved the laws passed against aliens and against those who should utter seditious libel against the government; showed again, and without re- serve, how deeply his affections were engaged on the side of the institutions he had so labored to set up and protect ; was intolerant towards any who sought to touch or question at any point their new authority — imperious as of old in question of action. But it was his home that chiefly held his thought now. He had not changed towards his friends through all the long years of public care and engrossing business. An old comrade, who had come in his rough frontier dress all the way from far Kentucky to Philadelphia to see the President, had been told " that Washington had become puffed up with the importance of his station, and was too much of an aristocrat to welcome him in that garb." But the old soldier was not daunted, press- ed on to make his call, and came back to tell his friends how the President and his lady had both seen him and recognized him from the window, and had hurried to the door to draw him cordially in. " I never was better treated," he said. " I had not believed a word against him ; and I found that he was ' Old Hoss ' still." 'Twas the same with his neighbors, and with strangers too. He was the simple gentleman of the old days. A strolling actor, riding Mount Vernon way on a day in July, stopped to help a man and woman who had been thrown from their chaise, and did not recognize the stal- wart horseman who galloped up to his assistance till the overturned vehicle had been set up again, they had 312 GEORGE WASHINGTON dusted each the other's coat, and the stately stranger, saying he had had the pleasure of seeing him play in Philadelphia, had bidden him come to the house yonder and be refreshed. " Have I the honor of addressing General Washington ?" exclaimed the astonished player. " An odd sort of introduction, Mr. Bernard," smiled the heated soldier ; " but I am pleased to find you can play so active a part in private, and without a prompter." Those who saw him now at Mount Vernon thought him gentler with little children than Mrs. Washington even, and remembered how he had always shown a like love and tenderness for them, going oftentimes out of his way to warn them of danger, with a kindly pat on the head, when he saw them watching the soldiers in the war days. Now all at Mount Vernon looked for- ward to the evening. That " was the children's hour." He had written sweet Nelly Custis a careful letter of advice upon love matters, half grave, half pla3 T ful, in the midst of his Presidency, when the troubles with Eng- land were beginning to darken ; she had always found him a comrade, and had loved him with an intimacy very few could know. Now she was to be married, to his own sister's son, and upon his birthday, February 22d, 1799. She begged him to wear the " grand em- broidered uniform," just made for the French war, at her wedding; but he shook his head and donned in- stead the worn buff and blue that had seen real cam- paigns. Then the delighted girl told him, with her arm about his neck, that she loved him better in that. The quiet days went by without incident. He served upon a petty jury of the county when summoned ; and was more than content to be the simple citizen again, great duties put by, small ones diligently resumed. THE FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 313 Once and again his anger flamed at perverse neglects and tasks ill done. Even while he was President, he had stormed to find his horses put to the chariot with unpolished hoofs upon a day of ceremony. But old age, and the consciousness of a lifework done, had added serenity now to his self-control ; and at last the end came, when he was ready. On the 12th of December, 1799, he was chilled through by the keen winds and cold rain and sleet that beat upon him as he went his round about the farms. He spent the evening cheer- fully, listening to his secretary read ; but went to bed with a gathering hoarseness and cold, and woke in the night sharply stricken in his throat. Physicians came almost at dawn, but the disease was already beyond their control. Nothing that they tried could stay it ; and by evening the end had come. He was calm the day through, as in a time of battle ; knowing what be- tided, but not fearing it; steady, noble, a warrior figure to the last; and he died as those who loved him might have wished to see him die. The country knew him when he was dead : knew the majesty, the nobility, the unsullied greatness of the man who was gone, and knew not whether to mourn or give praise. He could not serve them any more; but they saw his light shine already upon the future as upon the past, and were glad. They knew him now the Happy Warrior, "Whose powers shed round him, in the common strife Or mild concerns of ordinary life, A constant influence, a peculiar grace, But who, if he be called upon to face Some awful moment to which Heaven has joined Great issues, good or bad 4 for humankind, 314 GEORGE WASHINGTON Is happy as a Lover; and attired With sudden brightness, like a man inspired ; And, through the heat of conflict, keeps the law In calmness made, and sees what he foresaw. ******* A soul whose master-bias leans To homefelt pleasures and to gentle scenes ; ******* More brave for this, that he hath much to love:- * * * the man, who, lifted high, Conspicuous object in a nation's eye, Or left unthottght of in obscurity, — Who, with a toward or untoward lot, Prosperous or adverse, to his wish or not, Plays, in the many games of life, that one Where what he most doth value must be won." INDEX Acts of Trade, 121. Adams, John, represents Massa- chusetts in Congress at Phila- delphia, 154 ; character of, 156- 157 ; opinion of, .concerning Ma- ryland and Virginia delegates to Congress at Philadelphia, 158 ; accused as rebel at Congress, 161-162 ; proposes Washington as commander of Continental army, 173 ; mentioned, 174, 188, 198; Vice-President with Wash- ington, 279 ; elected Vice-Presi- dent the second time, 301 ; in- augurated as President, 309. Adams, Samuel, represents Massa- chusetts in Congress at Phila- delphia, 154; character of, 155, 156 ; accused as rebel at Con- gress, 161-162. Ajax, Washington's horse, men- tioned, 110. Alexandria, recruiting at, for west- ern expedition, 71, 77 ; Wash- ington rejoins regiment at, 78 ; Braddock's regiment at, 82 ; Braddock calls council of gov- ernors at, 83; Potomac commis- sioners adjourn from, to Mount Vernon, 252. Allen, Ethan, takes possession of Ticonderoga, 171. Ames, Fisher, comment of, on in- auguration of Washington, 272 Amherst, General, takes Louis- bourg, 93. Annapolis, Washington resigns commission at, 226 ; conference of States at, 254. Army, Continental, created by Congress, 173; Washington takes command of, 180 ; unsatisfacto- ry condition of, 182 ; desertions from, 191; hardships of, at Val- ley Forge, 199 ; trained by Steu- ben, 200 ; difficulty in maintain- ing, 206 ; treatment of, after the war, 218 ; efforts of Washington in behalf of, 221; Washington's loss of popularity with, 222; dis- affection in, 222-223; resolution passed by officers of, 223. Army and navy, steps for forma- tion of, 295. Arnold, Benedict, attempt of, to capture Quebec, 183 ; Carleton checked by, 194, 198; at Sara- toga, 195 ; treason of, 207. Articles of Confederation, adopted by states, 213 ; effect of, 214. Asgill, Captain Charles, incident of, 225 ; Washington s gratifica- tion at release of, 225. Attorney-General, creation of of- fice of, by Congress, 277. Barter, Philip, Washington's gardener, makes agreement with Washington, 240. Beaujeu leads attack on Brad- dock and is killed, 88. Beausejour, expedition planned against, 84 ; taken, 90. Bel voir, seat of William Fairfax, 51 ; life at, 53 ; referred to, 107. Bennington, Vermont, attack on, 195. 316 INDEX Berkeley, Sir William, resigns Vir- ginia lo the Commonwealth, 13. Bernard, an actor, meeting of, with Washington, 312. Betty, Parson, description of, by Colonel Byrd, 35. Beverley, Robert, writings and character of, 31-32 ; character- ization of Virginia by, 32 ; on Virginian hospitality, 50. Bishop, servant of Washington, at Mrs. Custis's, 100 ; pensioned by Washington, 241. Blair, James, " commissary " to the Bishop of London in Virginia, character, influence, and breed- ing of, 36-37. Blair, John, President of Virginia Council, 139; appointed delegate to Philadelphia conference, 257 ; appointed to Supreme Court, 281. Bland, Richard, referred to, in con- nection with debate of Stamp Act, 130 ; referred to, 135 ; pam- phlet of, on colonial rights, 138 ; chosen delegate to Congress at Philadelphia, 148 ; votes re- ceived by, as delegate to Con- gress, 161 ; opposes Henry in convention, 170; mentioned, 172; death of, 234. Blueskin, Washington's horse, mentioned, 110. Board of Trade, search-warrants issued by, 122. Boston, Washington visits, in 1756, 92; troops sent to, 140; massa- cre in, 145 ; "Tea Party," 148 ; port of, closed, 148; fresh troops sent to, 168; Continental troops in front of, 171 ; reinforced by General Howe. 179 ; evacuation of, by British, 185 ; Washington occupies, 185 ; D'Estaing's fleet at, 204. Boston News Letter, referred to, 121. Botetourt, Lord, appointed Gov- ernor-General of Virginia, 139 ; attempts to dissolve House of Burgesses, 140 ; attitude of, tow- ards colonists, 141 ; death of, 141. Bowdoin, Governor, of Massachu- setts, urges convention of states, 253. Braddock, Major-General Edward, made commander-in-chief in America, 81; "a veiy Iroquois in disposition, "81; invites Wash- ington to his staff, 83 ; plan of, for attacking Fort Duquesne, 84 ; force of, against Fort Du- quesne, 85 ; advance of, upon Duquesne, 85-86 ; unreasonable temper of, on the advance, 86 ; defeat of, 86 ff. ; stupid tactics of, 87 ; bravery of, 88 ; death of, 89 ; buried in the road, 89 ; losses in force of, 89 ; papers of, taken at Duquesne, 90 ; former master of Washington's servant, 100 ; referred to, 161. Brandywine, the, Washington de- feated at, 196. Brest, French fleet blockaded at, 207. Bridges' Creek, homestead of Au- gustine Washington, birthplace of George, 40-41 ; Washington with his brother Augustine at, 51. Brou'lie, Prince de, 216. Bunker Hill, battle of, 179-180. Burgesses, House of, Governor Spotswoodon education of mem- bers of, 38 ; Augustine Wash- ton in, 46 ; quarrels with Din- widdle about land fee, 69; grants money for an expedition to the Ohio, 71 ; thanks Washington for service at Great Meadows, 77 ; votes more money against the French, 79 ; appoints com- mittee to spend money granted, 79 ; thanks Washington for his services with Braddock, 91 ; Washington chosen member of. 103 ; Washington's election ex- penses to the, 109 ; temper of, at time of Washington's en- trance, 113 ; memorial of, to King, protesting against Stamp Act, 124-125; action of, on resolutions concerning taxa- tion, 125; dissolved by Gov- INDEX 317 ernor Fauquier, 133 ; attempt of Botetourt to dissolve, 140 ; res- olution of, against importing taxed articles, 140 ; convened by Dnnmore, 146 ; resolves to urge a Congress of all the colo- nies, 148 ; gives a ball to Lady Dunmore, 148 ; last meeting of, 172, Burgoyne, General, plan of cam- paign of, 194 ; capture of Ticon- deroga by, 195 ; movements of, 195; capitulation of, 195, 197. Burke, Edmund, knowledge of, of temper of colonies, 117. Burnaby, Rev. Andrew, Vicar of Greenwich, views of, on public character of Virginians in 1759, 120. Byrd, Colonel William, remark of, concerning exploration of the interior, 12 ; remark of, concern- ing character of New-England- ers, 12 ; on the powers of colo- nial governors, 26; character and breeding of, 32 ft".; influence of, in development of Virginia. 33- 34 ; undaunted spirits of, 34-35 ; characteristics of, as a writer, 33- 35 ; remark of, about North Carolina, 34, 38 ; description of Mr. Betty by, 35; on Captain Washington's management of iron mines, 45; opinion of, re- garding taxation, 119-120 ; re- mark of, 120. Camden, Cornwallis routs Gates at, 205. Carleton, Sir Guy, attempt of, on Champlain. Carr, Dabney, meets with Henry and others to discuss colonial af- fairs, 146. C;irtngena, Lawrence Washington at siege of. 47-48. Cary, Miss, Washington's relations with, 101. Cary, Robert, & Company, Wash- ington's factors in London, 105; carefully watched by Washing- ton, 112. Champlain, Lake, the French es- tablished upon, 61 ; attempt at capture of, by Carleton, 194. Charleston, creation of, 18 ; a cen- tre for pirates, 21 ; taking of, by Clinton, 205. Charlestown, occupied by Conti- nental troops, 179 ; captured by British, 180. Chastellux, Marquis de, 216, 217, 218 ; Washington's congratula- tions of, on his miirt iage, 260. Chatham, Lord, knowledge of, of temper of colonies, 117; com- ment of, on Rockingham's " de- claratory act," 138 ; advocates conciliation of America, 167. Chinkling, Washington's horse, mentioned, 110. Church, position of Established, in colonial Virginia, 8. Clark, George Rogers, drives Brit- ish from the Illinois, 204. Clinton, General, succeeds General Howe, 202 ; ordered to have Phihidelphia, 202; attacked by Washington at Monmouth Court House, 202 ; withdraws to New York, 203 ; troops sent by, take Savannah, 204 ; goes south, 205; captures Charleston, 205; returns north, 205. Colonies, English, in America, population and condition of, in 1732, 4; individual development of, 4-5 ; contrast between Vir- ginia and New England, 9, 13- 14; expansion of, after the Res- toration, 17-18; expulsion of the Dutch from, 17; mixture of population in middle and south- ern, 18-19; exchange of popula- tion amongst, 19 ; nature of set- tlement of, 20; operation of the Navigation Acts upon, 20 ; smuggling and privateering in, 21; piracy in, 21-22 ; irrita- tion of, with regard to Naviga- tion Acts, 22 ; early effects of the French power on, 23 ft'. ; stub- born separateness and indepen- dence of, in respect of govern- ment, 23-27; drawn into Euro- pean politics by presence of the 318 INDEX French iu North America, 25; separate action of, in dealing with the French, 25-26; first feeling of independence among, 113-114; effect of close of French war on, 113; taxation of, best imposed by Parliament, 118; resistance to port dues in, 122 ; Stamp Act imposed on, 123-124; spread of Henry's resolutions through, 134; delegates of, as- semble in New York, 134 ; cus- tom-house and revenue commis- sioners created for, 139; attitude of, towards Massachusetts, 154- 155; adopt Articles of Confed- eration, 213. Concord, fighting begins at, 170. Conference, at Annapolis, signifi- cance of, 254; at Philadelphia. 256; twelve states represented in, 258 ; frames constitution, 259; adjournment of, 259. Congress, delegates to, from Vir- ginia, 148; at Philadelphia, 149; delegates to, from Massachusetts, 154; unfitness of, for counsel, 157 ; leadership of Virginian delegates in, 158-159; forms declaration of rights. 164-165; adjournment of, 165 ; second Continental, meets at Philadel- phia (1775), 171; business trans- acted by, 171; appoints Wash- ington commander of Continen- tal Army, 173; removes to Balti- more. 191; Washington's power increased by, 194 ; inefficiency of, 197, 2061 policy of, with re- gard to western lands, 247; Wash- ington urges increase of power of, 248; inability of, to pay na- tional debts, 249 ; Washington's letter to Lee on contempt for authority of, 254 ; indifference of, towards Hamilton's proposal, 256; weakness of, in face of re- bellion, 256; sanctions confer- ence at Philadelphia, 256; con- vening of first, under the Con- stitution, organizes vari- ous departments, 277; meas- ures adopted by, for settle- ment of public debt, 284; bill defeated in, for assumption of state debts by government, 285; compromise in, effected by Jef- ferson, 287; taxes levied by, 293; division in, over constiiu- tional powers, 294; changes in, 301; lays taxes on distilled Spir- its, 302. Congress at New York, delegates sent to, by nine colonies, 134; bill of rights and immunities passed by, 134. Connecticut fails to send delegates to Annapolis conference, 254. Constitution, framed by confer- ence at Philadelphia, 259; im- partial interest of Washington in discussions of, 259; adoption of, 260. Contrecceur, commander at Du- quesne, against Braddock, 87-88. Corbin, Richard, acquaints Wash- ington with his commission as lieutenant-colonel, 72. Corn wal lis, Lord, advances to meet Washington, 192; defeat of de- tachment of, at Princeton, 193 ; retreat of, to New York, 193 ; defeats Gates at Camden, 205; defeat of, at King's Mountain, North Carolina, 208 ; forced into Virginia, 208; at Yorktown, 208, 209; surrender of, 209; admira- tion of, for Washington, 209. Craik, Dr., accompanies Washing- ton on western journey, 242. Crawford, Captain, correspond- ence of, with Washington, 143. Criminals, hired for private service in colonial Virginia, 7; importa- tion of, for servants, 45. Cromwell, Oliver, the instrument and representative of a minor- ity, 10. Crown Point, a French post at, 61; William Johnson chosen to lead attack upon, 84 ; Johnson does not reach. 90 ; taken possession of by insurgents, 171. Culpeper County, Washington made official surveyor for, 56. Cushing, Thomas, represents Mas- INDEX 319 saclmsetts in Congress at Phila- delphia, 154. Cashing, William, appointed to Supreme Court, 281. Custis, Daniel Parke, first husband of Martha Custis, 99 ; leaves property to wife and children, 104. Custis, "Jack," placed at King's College by Washington, 147; married, 147, 174 ; death of, 224. Custis, Martha, meets with Wash- ington, 99 ; previous life of, 99-100 ; Washington becomes engaged to, 101; marriage of, to Washington, 102. Custis, Nelly, marriage of, 312. Custis, " Patsy," death of, 147. Dandridge, Francis, Washing- ton writes to, about Stamp Act, 134. Deane, Silas, opinion of, of South- ern delegates to Congress at Philadelphia, 158. Declaration of independence, mo tion for, adopted, 187. De Lancey, James, Governor of New York, consults with Brad- dock at Alexandria, 83. Delaware, crossed by Washington, 191; forts on, taken b}^ Howe, 197 ; delegates from, to Annap olis conference, 254. Department of Foreign Affairs, organization of, 277. Department of State organized by Congress, 277. Department of the Treasury, or- ganization of, 277. Department of War organized by Congress, 277. Dickinson, John, 170. Dieskau, Count, defeated by John- son at Lake George, 90. Dinwiddie, Governor, appoints Washington adjutant-general of a military district. 58; member of Ohio company, 62-64 ; activ- ity of, against the French, 62-64; authorized to warn the French from the Ohio, 63 ; sends Wash ington to convey warning. 64 ; correspondence of, with Law- rence Washington, 64; speaks of young Washington as ";i per- son of distinction," 64 ; contest with the Burgesses on the land fee, 69 ; orders a draft of mili- tia to be sent to the Ohio, 69 ; feeling of, towards the Burgess- es, 70; orders Washington's jour- nal to the Ohio printed, 70; im- patience of, to reattack the French, 78 ; resolves militia iu- to independent companies, 79 ; restrained in expenditure of money by committee of Bur- gesses, 79 ; consults with Brad- dock at Alexandria, 83; on the cowardice of Colonel Dunbar, 90. Dorchester Heights, 179 ; occu- pied by Washington, 184. Dunbar, Colonel, given command of Braddock's rear division, 86 ; craven behavior of, after Brad- dock's defeat, 90. Dunmore, John Murray, Earl of, becomes governor of Virginia, 145 ; convenes House of Bur- gesses, 146 ; reports of, on con- dition of Virginia, 168; lands troops near Williamsburg, 170 ; flight of, 172; raids of, upon Virginia, 186-187. Duplaine, French consul at Bos- ton, 300. Duquesne, the Marquis, becomes governor on the St. Lawrence, 60 ; forestalls the English in the west, 62. Duquesne, Fort, built by French on the Ohio, 73 ; Braddock's plan for attacking, 84; Virgin- ian route to, chosen by Brad- dock, 85 ; Braddock's defeat at, 86-89 ; General Forbes sent to command expedition against, 93 ; taken and renamed Fort Pitt, 94; Forbes's preparations for advancing against, 100. Dutch, conquest of the, in Amer- ica, 17; presence of, in New York and Pennsylvania, 18. 320 INDEX Eden, Charles, Governor of North Carolina, accompanies Wash- ington to Philadelphia, 143. Edict of Nantes, Revocation of, sends Huguenots to America, 18. Education, unsystematic charac- ter of, in early Virginia, 29-30. Elkton, Howe * lands troops at, 196. England, compelled to act for herself against the French in America by the colonies, 27 ; neglects government of colonies, 117-118 ; attitude of, towards United States, 248 ; war of, with France, 297; covert hostilities of, against United States, 302 ; John Jay sent to, 302; treaty with, effected by John Jay, 304. Estaiug, Count d', appears off New York, 203; refits fleet, 204. Fairfax, Anne, marries Law- rence Washington, 48 ; family connections of, 48-49. Fairfax, George, Washington's companion in western survey- ing, 54. Fairfax, Thomas, third Lord, sum- mons Colonel H. Washington at Worcester, 48-49. Fairfax, Thomas, sixth Baron, es- tates of, in Northern Neck, 49 ; life and character of. 49-50 ; establishes himself in Virginia, 49-50; liking of, for Washing- ton, 53; employs Washington as surveyor, 53-56; purpose of, in coming to America. 54 ; chief in hunting parties, 109. Fairfax, William, family and ca- reer of, 48-49; president of the King's Council, 50-51; Belvoir, seat of, 51, 53; influence of, upon Washington, 51-53; cheers Washington at the frontier, 92. Fauquier, Francis, Governor of Virginia, present at Washing- ton's marriage, 102 ; dissolves House of Burgesses, 133 ; tastes of, 136 ; death of, 139. Federal Hall, New York City, Washington takes oath of office in, 269. Federalists support Washington, 301. Finns in Pennsylvania, 18. Forbes, General, sent to Virginia to command against Fort Du- quesne, 93; takes Duquesne, 94; preparations of, for advancing against Duquesne, 100. Fort Cumberland, built by Cap tain Innes at Will's Creek, 78 ; Braddock at, 85 ; deserted by Colonel Dunbar, 90. "Fort Necessity," Washington's intrenohments at Great Mead- ows. 75. Fort Pitt, Fort Duquesne renamed, 94 ; left in charge of Colonel fier- cer, 101. Fort Washington, surrender of, by General Greene, 190. Fort William Henry taken by the French, 90. France, money loaned by, 199 ; forms alliance with United States, 201 ; United States in debt to, 249 ; effects of Revolution in, on Amer- ica, 289; progress of Revolution in, 292 ; Washington's attitude towards, 290-292, 296; at war with England, 297; war of, with United States threatened, 310. Franklin, Benjamin, on Braddoek's plan for attacking Fort Du- quesne, 84 ; remark of, 197. Fraunce's Tavern, Washington's farewell to officers at, 226. Frederick County, Washington chosen member of House of Burgesses for, 103. Frederick the Great, provokes for- mation of league against himself, 80, 193; comment of, 203. Fredericksburg, 228, 265. French, in Pennsylvania and the southern colonies, 18; threaten- ing power of, in North America, 22 ff. ; development of conquest bv, in America, 23; hold of, upon the fur trade, 23-24 ; effect of power of. upon relations of col- onies to England, 25 ; separate INDEX 321 action of colonies in dealing will), 25-26; indecisive wars with, in America, 27; movements of, in the West, 1752, 59-60 ; ag- gressive efficiency of, 60; warned from the Ohio by Dinwiddie, 64-66 ; at Fort Le Bceuf, 65 ; claims of, to the West. 66 ; seize fort at forks of the Ohio, 71 ; in- crease their force on the Ohio, 72; build Fort Duquesne, 73; at- tacked by Washington near Great Meadows, 73-74; profess friend- ship for the English, 80-81 ; send reinforcements to Canada, 81 ; force of, against Braddock, 87 ; lose Louisbourg, 93, Duquesne, 94, Quebec, 95 ; volunteer for service in America, 200; respect of, for Washington, 215. French and Indian War, begun by Washington, 73-74; action in, at Great Meadows, 74-75 ; Brad- dock made commander-in-chief in, 81; Braddock's defeat in, 86 ff. ; goes heavily against the Eng- lish, 90; drags upon the frontier, 91 ; goes against the French, 93- 95; effect of close of, on colo- nies, 113; close of, 114. French Revolution, beginning of, 289; progress of, 292; Washing- ton's attitude towards, 290-292, 296. Fry, Colonel Joshua, made com- mander of western expedition, 72 ; dies, 73. Fur trade, earlv rivalry of French and English In the, 23-25; effort of the English to control, at Os- wego, 61. Gage, General, 170. Galloway, Joseph, leader of Penn- sylvania delegation, 164; propo- sition of, in Congress, 164. Gardoqui insists on closing the Mississippi, 254. Gaspe, schooner, destruction of, 146. Gates, General, 198 ; defeated at Camden, South Carolina, 205. Genet, Edmond Charles, minister 21 from France, 297 ; conduct of, in America, 298 ; plans of, de- feated by Washington, 298 ; re- call of, 300. Georgia, prevented by governor from sending delegates to " con- gress " in New York, 134; over- run by British, 204; fails to send delegates to Annapolis con- ference, 255. Germans, in Pennsylvania and Virginia, 18 ; settle in valley of Shenandoah, 61; Pennsylvanian, oppose war with France, 63 ; attacked by Indians on Virgin- ian frontier, 91 ; volunteer for service in America, 200. Germantown, battle of, 197. Gist, Christopher, agent, of Ohio Company, 65; goes with Wash- ington to warn the French, 65 ; solicitude of, for Washington, 66. Gooch, William, Governor of Vir- ginia, 40. Grafton referred to, 139. Grasse, Count de, co-operates with Washington before Yorktown, 209. Great Meadows, Washington en- camps at. 73; "a charming field for an encounter," 73 ; Wash- ington attacked by Villiers at, 74-75 ; bought by Washington, 144; referred to, 161. Greene, General, surrender of Fort Washington by, 190 ; har- asses Cornwallis in North Caro- lina, 208. Greenway Court, built by Lord Fairfax, 50 ; Washington at, 55-56; referred to, 107. Grenville, George, Prime -Minis- ter, favors direct taxation of colonies, 119; attempt of, to en- force collection of port dues, 122 ; proposes Stamp Act, and billeting of troops in colonies, 123 ; referred to, 139. Gunston Hall, centre of sport, 109. Hamilton, Alexander, address of, to the states, 255 ; previous rec- 322 INDEX ord of, 256 ; favors adoption of Constitution, 259 ; urges Washington to accept presi- dency, 262; referred to,* 273; appointed Secretary of Treas- ury, 278; Washington's reasons for choice of, 279 ; policy of, 282-283 ; plans of, for settle- ment of public debt, 284 ; Jef- ferson's envy of, 287 ; relations of, with Washington, 288 ; re- ferred to, 292 ; arguments of, for National Bank, 294 ; attacked in the House by Madison, 301; defence of Washington by, 305 ; referred to, 307 ; Washington asks advice of, 308. Hamilton, Governor, of Pennsyl- vania, acts with Ohio Company, 63. Hancock, Governor, of Massachu- setts, visit of, to Washington, 282. Hard wick, Washington's overseer, 108. Harlem Heights, fight at, 190. Harrison, Benjamin, chosen dele- gate to a congress in Philadel- phia, 148; referred to, 157; votes received by, as delegate to con- gress, 161 ; opposes Henry in convention, 170 ; mentioned, 172 ; Governor of Virginia, 234. Harrison, R. H., appointed to Supreme Court, 281. Hawley, Joseph, advice of, to rep- resentatives of Massachusetts at Philadelphia, 155 ; referred to, 158. Hay, Anthony, Burgesses meet at house of, 140. Henry, Patrick, family and char- acter of, 126-127 ; entrance of, into House of Burgesses, 127; appearance and dress of, 127 ; comparison of, with Washing- ton, 127 ; previous life of, 128; leadership of, in debate of Stamp Act, 128-129 ; triumph of, in de- bate of Stamp Act, 132; influence on colonies of resolutions of, 134; recognized as a leader, 138 ; meets with Jefferson and others to discuss colonial affairs, 146 ; chosen delegate to Congress at Philadelphia, 148-149 ; leader- ship of, in Congress at Philadel- phia, 159 ; votes received by, as delegate to Congress, 161 ; criti- cised for boldness, 163 ; referred to, 165 ; advocates arming col- onists, 169; heads militiamen against Duumore, 171; mention- ed, 172 ; chosen governor of Virginia, 234 ; appointed dele- gate to conference at Philadel- phia, 257 ; opposes Constitution, 260 ; referred to, 280. Hessians surrendered to Wash- ington, 192. Holland, United States in debt to, 249. Howe, Admiral Lord, assists Gen- eral Howe at New York, 189 ; offers pardon for submission, 189, 191. Howe, General William, reinforces Boston, 179 ; evacuates Boston, 185 ; forces Washington from Brooklyn Heights, 189; plans of, 194 ; movements of, 195 ; ad- vanceof,on Philadelphiachecked by Washington, 196; landing of, at Elkton, 196 ; defeats Washington at the Brandy wine, 196 ; enters Philadelphia, 197 ; attacked by Washington at Ger- mantown, 197 ; winters at Phila- delphia, 197 ; resigns command, 202. Illinois, the French in the coun- try of the, 23. Independent Company, temper of, from South Carolina at Great Meadows, 73 ; from New York fails to join Washington against the French, 76 ; from New York and from South Carolina at Fort Cumberland, 78 ; from New York with Braddock, 85. Indians, Ohio Company, makes in- terest with, 61-62; Washington's efforts to retain friendship of, for the English, 66; with Villiers at Great Meadows, 75 ; Washing- INDEX 323 ton's struggle with the, on the frontier, 91-92 ; desert French at Duquesne, 93-94. Iunes, Captain, builds Fort Cum- berland at Will's Creek, 78. Jay, John, supports proposition of Rutledge in Congress, 164 ; proposition of, concerning Mis- sissippi, 246 ; favors adoption of Constitution, 259 ; appointed chief-justice, 281 ; sent by Wash- ington to England, 302 ; provi- sions of treaty effected by, 304. Jefferson, Thomas, referred to, 137 ; meets with Henry and others to discuss colonial affairs, 146 ; becomes governor of Vir- ginia, 234 ; appointed Secretary of State, 278 ; Washington's rea- sons for choice of, 279 ; compro- mise in Congress effected by, 287 ; envy of, of Hamilton, 287 ; re- lation of, with Washington, 288 ; French influences on, 289 ; op- position of, to National Bank, 293 ; letter to, from Washington, concerning United States policy towards France, 297 ; neutrality violated by, 299 ; leaves the cabinet, 301 ; remark of, on Whiskey Rebellion, 304; re- ferred to, 307. Johnson, Governor, of Maryland, urges Washington to accept presidency, 261. Johnson, Colonel William, chosen to lead attack on Crown Point, 84; beats Dieskau at Lake George, 90. Jones, Rev. Hugh, author of Pres- ent State of Virginia, 36. Jones, John Paul, 205. Jumonville, M., killed near Great Meadows, 74 ; death of, begins French and Indian War, 74, 80. Keith, Sir William, Governor of Pennsylvania, suggestion of, for taxation of colonies, 118 ; re- ferred to. 119. Keppel, Admiral, commands fleet sent to Virginia, 81. Knox, General, Washington's fare- well to, 226 ; letter to, from Washington, 266 ; made Secre- tary of War, 278. Knyphausen, General, left by Clin- ton in charge of New York, 205. Lafayette, Marquis de, volunteers for service in America, 200, 202; harasses Cornwallis in Virginia, 208 ; letter of Washington to, 237 ; remark of, concerning Washington's home life, 239 ; sends hounds to Washington, 243 ; becomes people's leader in French Revolution, 290. Lake George, Dieskau beaten by Johnson at, 90. Land fee, protest of the Virginia Burgesses concerning, 69. Laurie, Dr., comes to Mount Ver- non drunk. 109. Lee, Arthur, referred to, 141. Lee, Charles, 168 ; second in com- mand to Washington, 191; taken prisoner, 191; treachery of, 202. Lee, Henry (" Light -horse Har- ry"). 208. Lee, Richard Henry, referred to, 132 ; forms association for re- sistance to Stamp Act, 135 ; meets with Henry and others to discuss colonial affairs, 146; chosen delegate to Congress at Philadelphia, 148 ; leadership of, in Congress at Philadelphia, 159; votes received by, as delegate to Congress, 161 ; interview of, with Massachusetts delegates, 161-162 ; referred to, 166 ; men- tioned, 172 ; motion of, for dec- laration of independence, 187 ; harasses Cornwallis in North Carolina, 208, 235; Washing- ton's letter to, on contempt for authority of Congress, 254 ; op- poses Constitution, 260; referred to, 280. Lee, Thomas, president of Ohio Company, 64. Lewis, Mrs., sister of Washington, 228. Lexington, battle of, 170. 324 INDEX Lincoln, General, taken prisoner, 205. Lippincott, Captain, hangs Ameri- can officer, 224. Little Sarah, the, 299. Livingston, Chancellor of New York, administers oath of office to Washington, 269. Louisbourg taken by Amherst, 93. Lower Brandon, estate of Ben- jamin Harrison, 234. Lynch, Mr., delegate from South Carolina to Congress at Phila- delphia, 158. Mackay, Captain of Independent Company from South Carolina, 79. Mackenzie, Captain, letter of, to Washington, 162. Madison, James, leader in Virgini- an politics, 235; appointed dele- gate to Philadelphia conference, 257; part of, in the conference, 259; favors adoption of Consti- tution, 259 ; referred to, 274 ; opposes policy of Treasury De- partment, 295; attack of, on Hamilton, 301; Washington asks advice of, 308. Magnolia, Washington's horse, mentioned, 110. Marshall, John, becomes promi- nent, 235. Maryland, resolution of, to arm colonists, 169 ; takes measures for opening the Potomac, 246; com- missioners from, meet at Mount Vernon concerning Potomac, 252 ; action of Assembly of, re- garding trade, 253 ; fails to send delegates to Annapolis confer- ence, 254. Mason, George, \irges Washington to guard his health, 94-95 ; Wash- ington stalking deer with, 110; conferences of, with Washington on state of colonies, 135; draws up resolution for House of Bur- gesses, 140; referred to, 166, 243, 280; appointed delegate to Phil- adelphia conference, 257 ; op- poses Constitution, 260. J Massachusetts, independence of men of, 117 ; resents direct taxa- tion, 119; refuses standing grant to governor, 119; summons col- onies to send delegates to New York, 134; altitude of colonies to\vards,154-155 ; delegates from, at Congress, accused of rebellion, 161-162; proclaimed in rebel- lion, 167-168 ; provincial con- gress formed in, and votes to equip militia of, 168; fails to send delegates to Annapolis con- ference, 254; rebellion in, 256; struggle in, over Constitution, 260. Mercer, Colonel, engages Wash- ington by mistake, 94 ; Fort Pitt left in charge of, 102. Mifflin, Thomas, member of Con- gress at Philadelphia, 157. Mississippi, early power of the French on the, 23; closed to commerce by the Spanish, 245; opening of, 306. Monckton, Colonel, directed to attack Beauseiour in Acadia, 84. Monmouth Court House, battle of, 202. Monroe, James, becomes promi- nent, 235. Montgomery, General, captures Montreal, 183; death of, 183, 215. Montreal captured by Montgom- ery, 183. Morgan, General, 198 ;' harasses Corn wal lis in North Carolina, 208. Morris, Gouverneur, 292. Morris, Robert Hunter, Governor of Pennsylvania, consults with Braddock at Alexandria, 83. Morristown Heights, withdrawal of Washington to, 193. Mount Vernon, named after Ad- miral Vernon, 48 ; Washington as a boy at, 51-53, 56; Washing- ton visits, before Yorktown, 224; Washington returns to, after the war, 228; left in charge of Lund Washington, 233; many visitors INDEX 325 at, 237, 243; Washington's cor- respondence at, 250; meeting of Potomac commissioners at. 252; Washington leaves, to take presi- dency, 265; retires to private life at, 309. Moustier, Count de, French minis- ter to the United States, pre- sumption of, 276. Murray, John, Earl Dunmore. See Dim more. National Bank, foundation of, 293. Navigation Acts, policy of the, towards the colonies, 20 ; eva- sion of the,21 ; irritation wrought by the, 22; advantages gained to the colonies by the, 22. Nelson, Washington's horse, 241. Nelson, William, president of Vir- ginia Council, 145. New Brunswick. British stores at, 193. Newcastle, Duke of, aroused on the French war, 80. New England, peculiar character of population in, 9-10; persistent character of, amidst change, 10 ; modification of, 10-11 ; a body of churches, 11; population and condition of, at end of seven- teenth century, 11-12 ; separate life of, 11-12 ; difference be- tween, and Virginia accentuated under the Commonwealth, 13; emigration of congregations from, into New Jersey, 19; astir in the French war, 84. New Hampshire, fails to send del- egates to Annapolis conference, 254; rebellion in, 256. New Jersey, establishment of, 18 ; emigration of New England con- gregations to, 19 ; sends dele- gates to Annapolis conference. 254. New Orleans, growing French village at, 60 ; Genet's plans against, 298. Newport. D'Estaing sails against, 204 ; Roehambeau hinds at, 206. New Providence, in the Bahamas, headquarters of colonial pirates, 22. New York, establishment of colo- ny of, 17; early preponderance of the Dutch in, 18 ; a rival of the French in the fur trade, 24 ; Assembly of, questions English claim to the Ohio, 70; Indepen- dent Company from, fails to join Washington against the French, 76 ; Independent Com- panies from, under Innes at Will's Creek, 78; astir in the French war, 84 ; Independent Companies from, with Brad- dock, 85 ; legislative powers of Colonial Assembly of, suspend- ed, 139 ; majority in, opposed to revolution, 163 ; opposes mo- tion for declaration of inde- pendence, 187 ; delegates from, to Annapolis conference, 254; struggle in, over Constitution, 260/ New York City, cosmopolitan character of colonial, 19 ; a cen- tre for pirates, 21 ; delegates of colonies assemble in, 134; Wash- ington's plans for defence of, 186; British arrive before, 188; withdrawal of Washington from, 190 ; Clinton retreats'" to, 203 ; D'Estaing's fleet appears off. 203 ; Washington's welcome in, as President, 268 ; Washing- ton takes oath of office in, 269. Niagara, a French post at, 61 ; Governor Shirley to lead attack upon, 84; failure of Shirley's expedition against, 90. Nicholas, Robert Carter, member of House of Burgesses, referred to in connection with debate of Stamp Act, 131 ; opposes Henry in convention, 170. Nicola, Colonel Lewis, proposal of, to make Washington king, 219-220. Norfolk, Virgiuia, burned by Dun- more. 187. North, Lord, Prime-Minister, re- peals taxes, 144. 326 INDEX North Carolina, establishment of, 18 ; characterization of, by Colo- nel By id, 34, 38 ; sends militia- men to assist Washington against the French, 76 ; prevented by governor from sending dele- gates to "congress" in New York, 134; riots iu, 145; delegates of, authorized to join in declara- tion of independence, 187 ; up- rising of, 208; refusal of, to yield western land claims. 246 ; fails to send delegates to Annapolis con- ference, 254. "Northern Neck" of Virginia, settlement of, 15-16 ; division of, into counties, 16 ; a natural seat of commerce, 16; immigra- tion of the Washingtons into, 16; intimate intercourse of, with England, 30 ; of a piece with the rest of Virginia, 39 ; property of Augustine'Washington in, 45 ; estates of Lord Fairfax in, 49. Ohio, determination of Duquesne to occupy upper waters of, 60- 61 ; first movement, of the French towards the, 62; Dinwiddie de- termines to send militia to the, 69; Washington's journal to the, printed, 70 ; fort begun at the forks of the, by the English, 71; the fort seized by the French, 71; French build Fort Duquesne on the, 73. Ohio Company, formation of, 61 ; establishment of posts by, in the west, 62; Governor Dinwiddie member of, 62, 64 ; Thomas Lee, president of the, 64 ; Lawrence Washington president of the, 64 ; interested in Virginia route to Duquesne, 85 ; plans of, for opening the upper Potomac, 246. Orme, Captain, invites Washing- ton to Braddoek's staff, 83. Oswego, English military post at, 61 ; westward expedition of the French observed from, 62; taken by the French, 90. Otis, James, Advocate-General in Court of Admiralty, warns min- isters against enforcing search- warrauts, 123 ; criticised for boldness, 163. Paine, Robert Treat, represents Massachusetts in Congress at Philadelphia, 154. Pail lament renounces right to tax colonies, 201. Pendleton, Edmund, member of House of Burgesses, referred to iu connection with debate of Stamp Act, 131; character of, 131 ; referred to, 135 ; chosen delegate to Congress at Phila- delphia, 148-149 ; vote received by, as delegate to Congress, 161; opposes Henry in convention, 170 ; referred to, 172 ; president of Committee of Safety, 187 ; becomes judge, 234. Penn, Thomas, comment of, on Washington's resignation from militia, 80. Pennsylvania, establishment of colony of, 17 ; mixed population of, 18 ; immigration of Scots- Irish into, 19 ; westward move- ment of settlers from, 60-61 ; Assembly of, refuses to act against the French, 63 ; Assem- bly of, doubts English claim to the Ohio, 70 ; votes money to be used against the French, 76; advantages of route through, to Duquesne, 85 ; majority in, op- posed to revolution, 163 ; dele- gation from, led by Joseph Galloway, 164; delegates from, to Annapolis conference, 254 ; Whiskey Rebellion in, 303. Philadelphia, creation of, 17; cos- mopolitan character of colonial, 19 ; Congress at, 149. 171 ; en- tered by Howe, 197 ; British leave, 202. Phillipse, Mary, interests Wash- ington, 93, 101, 174. Pinckney, Thomas, treaty of, with Spain, 306. Piracy in the colonies, 21-22 ; sup- pression of, 22. INDEX 327 Pitt, William, becomes Prime- Minister and ends the French war, 93 ff. Planters, in colonial Virginia, mode of life of, 6, 28-29; pro- portion of, in colonial Virginia, 7 ; social position of, 8-9. Poles volunteer for service in America, 200. Potomac, Washington surveying ou the, 55; importance of, to commerce, 246 ; Washington's plans concerning, 246; confer- ence of commissioners concern- ing, at Mount Vernon, 252. Potomac Company, Washington chosen president of, 251. Presque Isle, French establish themselves at, 62. Princeton, Washington retreats to, 191 ; battle of, 193. Principio Iron Company, interest of Augustine Washington in, 45 ; Colonel Byrd on the man- agement of, 45. Privateering in the colonies, 21. Puritan Commonwealth in Eng- land the government of a mi- nority, 10. Puritans, unlike other English- men, 9 ; of the minority in Eng- land, 10; ascendency of, in New England, 10. Quakers of Pennsylvania op- pose war with French, 63. Quebec, Wolfe takes command of expedition against, 93 ; taken, 95 ; attempt of Arnold to capt- ure, 183. Rahl, Colonel, mortally wound- ed, 192. Randolph, Edmund, becomes prominent, 235 ; appointed dele- gate to conference at Philadel- phia, 257 ; part of, in the con- ference, 259 : appointed Attor- ney-General, 278 ; Washington's reasons for choice of, 280 ; op- position of, to National Bank, 293. Randolph, Peyton, member of House of Burgesses, referred to in connection with debate of Stamp Act, 131 ; previous life of, 132; referred to, 135; chosen dele- gate to Congress at Philadelphia, 148-149 ; chosen president of Congress at Philadelphia, 159 ;• votes received by, as delegate to Congress, 160 ; referred to, 172 ; death of, 234. Rangers, Virginian, added to Brad- dock's forces, 82 ; behavior of, in Braddock's defeat, 87, 88, 89; Braddock praises, 89. "Red Sea trade," the, 21-22. Redstone Creek, Ohio Company establishes post on. 62. Reed, Joseph, comment of, on Virginia delegates, 172. Restoration, effect of, upon colonial settlement, 17. Revolution, first battle of, 170; goes against British, 203 ; goes against Americans, 205 ; favors Americans in the South, 208 ; close of, 209 ; effect of, on Wash- ington, 216. Rhode Island, Puritan though various, 11 ; fails to send dele- gates to Annapolis conference, 254 ; in sympathy with Shays, 256. Richmond, Virginia convention meets in, 169. Robin, Abbe. 215, 221. Robinson, Beverly, entertains Washington in New York, 93. Robinson, Speaker of House and Treasurer of Virginia, thanks Washington for services, 103 ; death of, referred to, 113. Rochambe;iu, Count, lands men at Newport, 206 ; assists Wash- ington's plans, 208, 228. Rockingham, Lord, referred to, 135; "declaratory act" under ministry of, 138. Rutledge, Edward, supports prop- osition of Galloway in Con- gress, 164; Washington's appeal to, 272. Rutledge, John, appointed to Su- preme Court, 281. 32! INDEX St. Clair, Sir John, Washington at Williamsburg by order of, 100. St. Lawrence, power of the French on the, 23. St. Leger, General, plans of, 194 ; failure of, 195. Sau Lazaro, Fort, storming of, 48. Saratoga, battle of, 195. Savannah taken by British, 204 Schuyler, General, driven from Tieonderoga, 195 ; mentioned, 198. Scots- Irish, in Virginia and the middle colonies, 19; settlement of, in Shenandoah Valley, 61; harassed by Indians on Virgini- an frontier, 91. Search- warrants issued by Board of Trade, 122. Servants, hired, in colonial Vir- ginia, 7. Settlers harassed by Indians on Virginian frontier, 91-92. Sharpe, Horatio, Governor of Ma- ryland, consults with Braddock at Alexandria, 83. Shays leads rebellion in Massa- chusetts, 256. Shenandoah, Washington survey- ing on the, 55 ; first movement of settlers into valley of, 61. Shippen, Dr., interview of, with Massachusetts delegates, 161- 162. Shirley, William, Governor of Massachusetts, consults with Braddock at Alexandria, 83; to lead attack on Niagara, 84 ; fails in attack, 90; Washington's visit to, in 1756, 92, 93, 174. Slaves, proportion of, in colonial Virginia, 7. Smuggling, in the colonies, 21 ; common practice of, 121. Society of the Cincinnati, Wash- ington declines to meet, 257. "Sons of Liberty," 175. South Carolina, establishment of, 18 ; Independent Company from, at Great Meadows, 73 ; provincials from, under Innes at Will's Creek, 78 ; majority in, opposed to revolution, 163; in power of British, 205 ; fails to send delegates to Annapolis conference, 254. Spain, alliance o., with France and America, 204; invasion of Eng- land attempted by. 204 ; closes Mississippi River to commerce, 245, 247, 249; treaty with, ob- tained by Pinckney, 306. Spectator, the, Lord Fairfax a con- tributor to, 49-50; Washington's acquaintance with, 56. Spotswood, Alexander, character of, and career in Virginia, 37- 38 ; judgment of Virginians by, 38 ; on the education of Bur- gesses, 38 ; referred to, 119. Stamp Act, proposed by Grenville, 123 ; passage of, 124 ; protest against, by House of Burgesses, 124 ; Henry's leadership in de- bate of, 128-129 ; repeal of, 135. Steuben, Baron von, joins Wash- ington at Valley Forge, 200 ; harasses Cornwallis in North Carolina, 208. Stith, Rev. William, character and writings of, 35-36. Sullivan, General, 192. Swedes on the Delaware, 18. Taxation, Virginian Burgesses regard Dinwiddie's land fee as, 69 ; of colonies, best imposed by Parliament, 118 ; imposed on wines and sugars, 1764, 119 ; di- rect, of colonies, favored by George Grenville, 119; disregard of, by officials and traders, 120 : ministry willing to remit. 167. Thomson, Charles, clerk of Con- gress, notifies Washington of his election, 265. Tieonderoga, Allen takes posses- sion of, 171; captured by Bur- goyne, 195. Tow'nshend, Charles, referred to, 139. Trade, Ohio Company and the western, 61-62 ; Acts of, 121. Trenton captured by Washington, 192. INDEX 329 Trumbull, Governor, referred to, 189. Trumbull, Jonathan, Jr., Wash- ington's letter to, 244. Truro, parish of. represented by Augustine Washington, 46. Trvon, Governor of North Caro- lina, 145. Valiant, Washington's horse, mentioned, 110. Valley Forge, Washington Avin- ters at, 197, 199; Mrs. Washing- ton's visit to, 199. Vanbraam, Jacob, fencing-master at Mount Vernon, goes with Washington to warn the French, 64. Veroennes, intercession of, in be- half of Captain Asgill, 225. Vermont, rebellion in, 256. Vernon, Admiral, at Cartagena, 47-48. Villiers, Coulon de, attacks Wash- ington at Great Meadows, 74-75. Virginia, general English charac- ter of colonial, 5; fixed nature of society in, 5-6 ; lack of towns in, 6 ; independent plantation life in, 6-7, 28-29; classes of population in, 7; proportion of slaves in, 7 ; democratic spirit in, 8; position of Church in, 8 ; position of Established Church in, 8; contrasted with New Eng- land, 9; temper of, at establish- ment of the Commonwealth, 13; change in population of, during Commonwealth, 13-14; emigra- tion of John and Lawrence Washington to, 14 ; French Hu- guenots and Germans in, 18 : meets the French in western fur trade, 24; character and habits of society in, 28 ff . ; individu- ality of men in, 28-29 ; educa- tion and study in, 29-30; char- acter of literary work in, 30-31; travel in, 38; culture mixed with rough life in, 39; obliged to »ot alone against the French, 63 ; English regiments for French war arrive in, 81; route through, to Duquesne chosen by Brad- dock, 85 ; forces of, witli Brad- dock, 85; resents direct taxation, 119; loyalty of colonists to, 130; prevented by governor from sending delegates to "congiess" in New York. 134; passes I ill of rights, 134; leadership of dele- gates from, in Congress at Phil- adelphia, 158-159 ; colonists of, armed, 168 ; convention of, meets at Richmond, 169 ; changes in, during the war, 234; yields west- ern laud claims, 246; commis- sioners from, meet at Mount Vernon concerning the Potomac, 252; calls general conference at Annapolis, 254; delegates from, to Annapolis conference, 254; final adoption of national Con- stitution by, 260-261. Walpole, Horace, calls Washing- ton a " brave braggart," 78, 80, 206. Walpole, Sir Robert, answer of, to Keith, 118. Washington, Augustine, father of George, 40 ; character and occu- pations of, 45-46 ; a represent- ative in the House of Burgesses, 46; death and will of, 46; court- ship and marriage of, 47. Washington, Augustine (half- brother of George), estate and education of, 46 ; George with, at Bridges' Creek, 51; member of Ohio C mipany, 61. Washington, Georire, breeding of, epitomized. 3; birth of, 40; birth- place of, 41; age of, at his fa- ther's death, 46 ; interest of, iu his father's estate, 46; under bis mother's care, 47 ; as a boy at Mount Vernon and Belvoir, 50- 51, 52-53, 56; comradeships of, as a boy, at Belvoir and Mount Vernon, 50-53, 56 ; keptatschool till sixteen. 51 ; at Bridges' Creek with his brother Augustine, 51; kept from going to sea, 51; l)oy- ish relish of, for practical effi- ciency, 51-52; quits school, 52; 330 INDEX intimacy of, with Lord Fairfax, 53-56; surveyor for Lord Fair- fax. 53-56; letter of, on sur- veying experiences, 55 ; boy- ish reading of, 56 ; official ap- pointment of, as surveyor, 56; studies tactics and the broad- sword at Mount Vernon, 56; be- comes known throughout the Northern Neck, 57; goes to the Bahamas with Lawrence, 57; made Lawrence's executor, 57- 58 ; contracts the small-pox in the Bahamas, 58 ; takes Law- rence's place in the militia, 58; put in charge of a military dis- trict, 58; contingent interest in Mount Vernon, 58; sent by Din- widdie to warn the Fivnch from the Ohio, 64-66; difficulties of the journe}', 65-66 ; endeavors to attach Indians to the English, 66; appointed by Dinwiddie to command militia sent to the Ohio. 69; journal of, to the Ohio printed, 70; recruiting at Alex- andria, 71 ; commissioned lieu- tenant-colonel under Joshua Fry, 72 ; sent forward to cut a road to the Ohio, 72; establishes camp at Great Meadows, 73; trouble of, with Independent Company at Great Meadows, 73 ; succeeds Colonel Fry in com- mand, 73; spills first blood of the French war, 73-74; attacked by Villiers at Great Meadows, 74-75; capitulates and retreats, 76; thanked by the House of Burgesses, 77; letters of, on man- agement of expedition to Ohio, 77 ; likes the sound of bullets, 77 ; laughed at by Horace Wal- pole, 78 ; rejoins regiment at Alexandria, 78 ; resigns com- mand, 79 ; Thomas Penn's com- ment upon resignation of, 80 ; visits Braddock's regiment at Alexandria, 82; accepts place on Braddock's staff, 83 ; disputes of, with Braddock during ad- vance on Duquesne, 86; advises division of Braddock's force, 86; in Braddock's defeat, 87-89 ; ill just before the battle, 88; di- rects retreat alone, 89; distressof, at sufferings of frontier settlers. 91 ; thanked by the Burgesses for his services under Braddock, 91; keeps the frontier against the Indians, 91 - 92; cheered by Colonel Fairfax, 92 ; behavior of, towards his comrades, 92 ; hangs insubordinates, 92 ; visits Governor Shirley on matter of rank, 92-93; becomes interested in Mary Phillipse in New York, 93 ; goes with Forbes against Fort Duquesne, 94; in ill-health, 94; George Mason to, on need of preserving himself for the coun- try, 94-95; meets Martha Cus- tis, 99; becomes engaged to Mrs. Custis, 101; early love affairs of, 101 ; marriage of, 102 ; stay of, at the White House, 102; takes wife to Williamsburg, 102; chosen member of House of Bur- gesses, 103 ; embarrassed on en- tering House of Burgesses, 103; publicly thanked for services, 103; management of estates by, 104; home life of, 104-112, 251; business ability of, 105-106; at- titude of, towards drinking, 10S— 109 ; election expenses of, 109; fondness of, for hunting, 109- 110 ; getting estates into condi- tion, 110; pleasure outings of, 111; taste of, in clothes, 111 ; de- sire of, to go to England, 112; comparison of, with Henry, 127; attitude of, towards debate on Stamp Act, 133; views of, on enforcement of Stamp Act, 134 ; confers with Mason on state of colonies, 135; relations of, with Fauquier, 136; letter of, to Ma- son on actions of Parliament, 140 ; presents Mason's resolution to House of Burgesses, 140-141; encourages observance of impor- tation resolution, 142; buys new " chariot," 142; pre-empts lands in the west. 142; employments of, 142-143; gives ball at Alex- INDEX 331 andria, 143; attends horse-races in Philadelphia, 143 ; secures western land for comrades in French war, 143 - 144 ; places "Jackie" Custis in King's Col- lege, New York, 147; letter to Colonel Bassett, 147 ; chosen delegate to Congress at Phila- delphia, 148-149; not a leader in Congress at Philadelphia, 159-160'; criticism of, of Gage's conduct, 160; reported saying of, 160; votes received by, as delegate to Congress, 161; in- terview of. with Massachusetts delegates, 161-162; foresees out- come of Congress's actions, 165- 166; business affairs of, 166-167, assumes command of Virginia companies, 169; attends second Continental Congress, 171 ; ac- cepts command of army at Bos- ton, 174, 214; reverence of peo- ple for, 174; reaches Cambridge, 180; assumes command of army, 180 ; correspondence of, from headquarters, 181 ; privateers equipped by orders of, 182; oc- cupies Dorchester Heights, 184; enters Boston, 185 ; transfers de- fence to New York, 186 ; favors motion for declaration of inde- pendence, 188; evacuates Brook- lyn Heights, 190 ; withdrawal of, from New York City, 190; re- treat of, through New Jerse} 7 , 191; crosses the Delaware, 191; forces recruited by, 192 ; capt- ures Trenton, 192; defeats Brit- ish at Princeton, 193 ; with- draws to Morristown, 193; proc- lamation of, 193 ; fortune of, pledged for payment of troops, 194; causes Howe to retreat to New York, 196; defeat of, at the Brandy wine, 196; attacks Howe at Germantown, 197; winters at Valley Forge, 197; plots against, 198 ; trials of, at Valley Forge, 199 ; joined by Steuben, 200 ; attacks Clinton at Monmouth Court House, 202 ; wrath of, at Lee's cowardice, 202 ; grief of, at Arnold's treason, 207 ; takes Cornwallis at Yorktown, 209 ; courage of, 215 ; effect of the war on, 216; reserve of, in dis- charge of duty, 218 ; advises with Congress, 219; rejoins army at Newburgh, 219; indignation of, at Colonel Nicola's proposal, 220 ; efforts of, in behalf of the army, 221; loses popularity with the army, 222 ; treatment of mu- tinous officers by, 222-223; long- ing of, for home, 223; sternness of, 224; reply of, to Vergennes concerning Captain Asgill, 225; gratification of, at release of Captain Asgill, 225; farewell of, to officers, 226 ; speech of, on re- signing commission at Annap- olis, 226-227; prayer of, before battle, 227 ; returns to Mount Vernon, 228 ; simplicity of, 228 ; attends ball with his mother, 228 ; deference of, to his mother, 229 ; rebukes his nephew, 233 ; welcome of, on return to Vir- ginia, 235; privacy of, at Mount Vernon, 237; letter of, to La- fayette, 237; interruptions of, at Mount Vernon, 238 ; as a host, 238 ; affection of, for adopted children, 239; agreement of, with gardener, 240; strictness of, in business dealings, 241 ; eagerness of people to see, 241 ; makes journey to western lands, 242 ; cares of, as statesman, 243 ; anx- iety of, for success of govern- ment, 243-244; ' ' political creed " of, 244 ; forebodings of, for fut- ure of the West, 245; efforts of, to open the Potomac, 246; urges increase of Congress's power, 248 ; portraits of, 250 ; makes tour of inspection as president of Potomac Company, 251 ; in- vites commissioners on opening of the Potomac to Mount Ver- non, 252 ; letter of, to Henry Lee, 254 ; criticises weakness of Con- gress, 256; appointed delegate to Philadelphia conference, 257; reluctance of, to attend confer- 332 INDEX ence at Philadelphia, 257 ; op- poses com promise in conference at Philadelphia, 258 ; chosen president of conference, 258; re- turns lo Mount Vernon, 259; in- tense interest of, in discussions of Constitution, 259; congratu- lations of, to Chastellux on mar- riage, 260 ; reluctance of, to ac- cept presidency, 261 ; accepts presidency, 262; bids farewell t»» his mother, 265; leaves Mount Vernon, 265; feelings of, on leav- ing home, 266; financial troubles of, 267; journey of, to New York, 267; present journey contrasted with former ones, 267: welcome of, in New York, 268; takes oath of office, 269; emotion of, during inaugural address, 270-271; in- experience of, in administration, 272-273; fitness of, for office, 273 ; dignity of, in office, 274- 276 ; illness of, 277; familiarity of, with affairs of government, 278; choice of cabinet by, 278; care of, in federal appointments, 281 ; makes tour of eastern states, 281 - 282 ; sympathy of, with Hamilton's policy, 284; attitude of, towards French Revolution, 290-291, 292, 296; object in na- tional policy of, 291 ; sanctions National Bank, 294 ; frontier policy of, 295 ; neutrality of, be- tween Fiance and England, 297; frustrates plans of Genet, 298 ; demands recall of Genet, 300 ; elected to second term, 301; sends John Jay to England, 302; puts down Whiskey Rebellion, 303 ; favors Jay's treaty with Eng- land. 305; abuse of, by the peo- ple, 305; behavior of, under abuse, 306; wisdom of, recognized, 306; attempts reconciliation of Ham- ilton and Jefferson, 307; declines third term. 308; farewell address of, 308; emotion of. on retire- ment from office, 309; retires to Mount Vernon, 309-310; connec- tions of, with public life, 310; treatment of old comrade by, 311 ; gentleness of, with chil dren, 312; attends marriage of Nellie Custis, 312; sickness and death of, 313-314 Washington, Colonel Henry, holds Worcester for the king, 14, 48- 49. Washington, John, emigration of, to Virginia, 14-15; ancestry of, 14-15 ; settlement. of, in "North- ern Neck" of Virginia, 16-17 ; life of, in Virginia, 40; fortunes of descendants of, 40. Washington, Rev. Lawrence, rec- tor of Purleigh, 15, 41. Washington, Lawrence, emigrant to Virginia, 14-15 ; ancestry of, 14-15; settlement of, in " North- ern Neek " of Virginia, 16-17. Washington, Lawrence (half-broth- er of George), estate and educa- tion of, 46 ; service of, at Carta- gena, 47 ; in the storming of Fort San Lazaro, 48 ; head of the family and adjutant - gen- eral of the colonial militia, 48 ; marriage of, 48-49 ; member of the House of Burgesses, 50; in- fluence of, upon George, 50-53, 57; illness and death of, 57; makes George his executor and residuary legatee, 57-58 ; mem- ber of Ohio Company. 61; presi- dent of Ohio Company, 64 ; cor- respondence of, with Dinwiddie, 64. Washington, Lund, 181 ; manage- ment of Mount Vernon by, 233. Washington. Martha, outings of, with Washington, 111 ; at Wash- ington's headquarters at Cam- bridge, 184; at Valley Forge, 190. Washington, Mary, courtship and marriage of, 47 ; keeps George from going to sea, 51 ; attends ball with Washington, 228; Washington's deference to, 229 ; Washington bids farewell to, 265. W.ishingtons, the, fortunes of, in the Northern Neck, 39-40. Went worth, commander of land forces at Cartagena, 47. INDEX 333 West Point, Arnold tries to be- tray, 207. Whiskey Rebellion in Pennsyl- vania and Virginia, 303. Whitehall Ferry, Washington at, 226. White House, Washington's stay at, 102. White Plains, skirmish at. 190. William and Mary, College of, 30; chiefly founded by James Blair, 36. Williamsburg, Virginia's chief town, 6 ; Washington belated at, by courting, 100; Washing- ton and wife at, 102 ; Dunmore lands troops at. 171. Will's Creek, Ohio Company's post at, 62; Captain Innes builds Fort Cumberland at, 78. Wilson, James, appointed to Su- preme Court, 281. Winchester, Washington on busi- ness concerning General Forbes at, 100. Wolfe, General, takes command against Quebec, 93; takes Que- bec, 95. Worcester, Colonel Henry Wash- ington at, 14, 48-49. Wythe, George, referred to, in connection with debate of Stamp Act, 130 ; referred to, 135 ; ap- pointed delegate to Philadelphia conference, 257. Yorktown, Virginia, Cornwallis arrives at, 208; Cornwallis's sur- render at, 209. Young, Arthur, correspondence of, with Washington, 260. THE END H AS 89* > o " • 4 . *\ ^-^ • • • ,.■>«.. \S> W* ^ ;. * « ***«* BINDERY INC. |S| ^r.^ ^JUN 89 p/ **V -.||jf; <^ V ■MgXk m MANCHESTER, P . °* s ^^^ INDIANA 46962