THORNTON & SON Booksellers 11 The Broad Oxford Heroes of the Nations A Series of Biographical Studies presenting the lives and work of certain representative histori- cal characters, about whom have gathered the traditions of the nations to which they belong, and who have, in the majority of instances, been accepted as types of the several national ideals. 12, Illustrated, cloth, each, 5/- Half Leather, gilt top, each, 6/- FOR FULL LIST SEE END OF THIS VOLUME GEORGE WASHINGTON. From the portrait by Gilbert Stuart. GEORGE WASHINGTON PATRIOT, SOLDIER, STATESMAN FIRST PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES BY JAMES A. HARRISON \ x PROFESSOR IN THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA ; AUTHOR OF THf STORY OF GREECE," BTC. G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS NEW YORK LONDON a? WEST TWENTY-THIRD STREET 34 BEDFORD STREET, STRAND ${jt $iniihboch flrtss 1906 5V- COPYRIGHT, 1906 BY ' G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS Cbe fcnicfceibocfccr press, flew To L. L. H. AND J. L. H., THE Two WHO HAVE CONTRIBUTED MOST To RENDER THIS WORK POSSIBLE ACKNOWLEDGMENTS IT gives the author great pleasure to acknowledge here the help afforded him in the preparation of this work by Mr. J. P. Kennedy, State Librarian, Rich- mond, Virginia ; Mr. John S. Patton, Librarian of the University of Virginia ; Miss Anna S. Tuttle, Assist- ant Librarian of the University ; and Mr. R. Walton Moore of Fairfax, Virginia ; and, above all, to Mrs. J. A. Harrison for invaluable assistance of every kind always cheerfully rendered. It would be useless to enumerate the countless de- tails of the Washington Bibliography in constructing even a brief narrative like this : suffice it to say that Washington's own Writings in the exhaustive and accurate edition of W. C. Ford form the chief source of the author's statements ; and to these must be added the illuminating works of Fiske, Bancroft, McMaster, Winsor, Woodrow Wilson, Lecky, Trevelyan, P. L. Ford, and Hapgood ; Marshall, Lodge, and G. W. P. Custis. J. A. H. UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA February 22, 1906 CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. "Ax THE FIRESIDE" ..... Emigration to New World Differences between Old and New World Struggles Explorers Vir- ginia in early times Birth of Washington "Wakefield" Marian Harland on Washington's birthplace Washington's youth His mother G. W. P. Custis on Madam Washington Anecdote of Washington Mary Ball's features Death of Augustine Washington The widow Washington's boyhood and early education Surveying and mathematics Hardships "Rules of Civility" At Fredericksburg Mount Vernon Marye's school Willis on Washington as a school -boy. CHAPTER II. GREENWAY COURT Col. Beverley on Virginia Its population and exploration Tobacco Hugh Jones on Virginia "No popery" Character of Virginians Thomas, Lord Fairfax Philip Bruce on Virginia "Green- way Court" Mrs. Pryor's description "Ferry Farm" Mary Washington The Fairfaxes of Belvoir Admiral Vernon and "grog" Marriages in Virginia Washington family The navy selected for George His uncle and mother object Em- ployed as surveyor by Lord Fairfax Character of his mind His name Salary First-love Verses. viii Contents CHAPTER III. A BOY'S JOURNAL ..... 34 M. D. Conway on Washington The "Lowland Beauty" Mary Cary Poetry Washington's char- acter Lord Fairfax Woodrow Wilson on Fair- fax and the pioneer life Washington's Journal Describes his surveyor's expedition and life The American wilderness Indians Adventures. CHAPTER IV. WASHINGTON'S UNIVERSITY ... 46 Early education of Washington Xenophon, Plu- tarch, Fenelon, Goethe Pioneer population Jacques Cartier Indians in Virginia Expansion of colonial life Outdoor life Death of Lawrence Washington George accompanies him to Bar- badoes Small-pox Inherits brother's estates "The Strenuous Life" A "King George's man" The French First American congress The Mon- ongahela and Alleghany The Ohio Fort Erie Washington sent by Dinwiddie to negotiate with the French Character of Dinwiddie Expansion of France Washington's account of his mission The journey A striking story Its educational value Lieutenant-Colonel His address to the Half - - King A pioneer diplomat Indian methods The Scotch-Irish Self-educated soldiers. CHAPTER V. PROLOGUE TO A FOREST TRAGEDY . . 64 Inclination to war Dangers French aggressions Fort Duquesne Dinwiddie' s selection of Wash- ington and Fry Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle Diplomacy of the i8th century The Georgian Age The Ohio Company The Bourbon Alliance Washington's brothers Lawrence and Augustine Contents ix Salary of Washington Coming of Braddock Din- widdie's instructions Col. Fry Trent Washing- ton first in command after Fry's death Hardships Washington's description of them Death of the French commander The Half -King Consequences of the French invasion Dinwiddie's account of the defeat Washington captured at Fort Necessity Letter to his brother The London Magazine Alarm of the colonies Power of France and Eng- land The two fleets sail Braddock sails for Vir- . ginia His presentiment Franklin's advice to him A "milk-maid's dream" Council of governors Franklin's assistance Franklin and Washington contrasted. CHAPTER VI. IN THE TRAGICAL WOOD . ... 86 Washington appointed aide to Braddock Corre- spondence thereon The expedition starts Delays Ignorance of the commanders Hewing the way Strategic mistakes Parkman describes the march Braddock ambuscaded What Washington says of the attack Braddock's numbers Indian sub- tlety Horrors of the defeat Massacre of the Eng- lish Braddock killed Retreat of the English Washington's letters on the Battle of the Mononga- hela. CHAPTER VII. THE WIDOW CUSTIS ..... 103 The fate of Braddock Humiliation of Washington Franklin on the British regulars Washington appointed Colonel His remuneration Distress of the times Washington's style as a writer Frontier- x Contents bred commanders War against France The Shen- andoah Valley Atkin put over Washington Or- ders against profanity and drunkenness Straits of the inhabitants Condition of the frontier "The Destroyer of Cities" Washington becomes the popular toast Lord Loudon The census of Vir- ginia at this time Dinwiddie leaves for England 111 health of Washington Meets the Widow Custis His letter Her character and appearance Her family and first husband Courtship and marriage described by her grandson Old St. Peter's Mrs. Carrington describes Mrs. Washington Two views of Mrs. Washington Theory of John Adams Date of the marriage Life at Mount Vernon and "The White House." CHAPTER VIII. ARCADY . ...... 125 Mount Vernon Burnaby's Travels Washington's honeymoon Washington orders articles from Lon- don Letters and invoices Arcadian life Thanked by House of Burgesses Passion for horses Pop- ularity The Washington coach Scenes on the Potomac Life in Old Virginia Fithian's account. CHAPTER IX. THE GOLDEN MILESTONE .... 146 Address of his fellow-officers to Washington Williamsburg before the Revolution Lord Bote- tourt Society at the Middle Plantation Portrait by Peale Fox-hunting ' ' Jackie ' ' Custis The Dismal Swamp scheme Interest in navigation Lord Dunmore Old Pohick Church Bishop Meade's account Washington a vestryman His belief in Christianity A communicant Death of Miss Custis. ?ij Contents xi CHAPTER X. OLD WlLLIAMSBURG . .'''.' . . 163 Virginia's three capitals Jamestown Williams- burg described by Burnaby Lossing's account William and Mary College The Palace The Gar- dens Bruton Church and the Powder Horn Hugh Jones's description of the town The Ciphers "W." and "M. " The Capitol Social life Jefferson's account of the removal of the capital to Richmond Jefferson's career at William and Mary College Foundation of the latter Sir William Berkeley's opinion Distinguished graduates of the college Influence of Williamsburg A miniature court Indian education The Washingtons go to Williams- burg The Burgesses "Sons of Liberty" Patrick Henry, his early life Contrast between Washington, Jefferson, and Henry The Williamsburg spirit "The Heart of Rebellion" At Richmond Fire at Williamsburg The "Knights of the Golden Horse Shoe" John Esten Cooke's account of Williamsburg Bishop Meade on Williamsburg Old Bruton Church The "Phi Beta Kappa" Society and the students LordDunmore's message to the Burgesses. CHAPTER XI. THE NEW FORCES .., . . . . 191 Washington's letters on the Stamp Act The repeal of the Act An engrossing topic John Adams' opin- ion Unrest in America Colonisation of the country different in different places Virginia and Massachusetts Patrick Henry The Age of Doubt The Faust-poem symbolises the situation Change in the air Impatience of the colonies Spirit of the wilderness Physical and intellectual restlessness Beginnings of literature Pamphlets The year 1763 The Treaty of Paris English and French in America Consequences of the treaty Expenses of government Walpole on France xii Contents Growth of British rule in America The Indians The policy of France Difficulties of the colonial system Revenue Acts, etc. The Navigation Act The billeting of soldiers on the colonists Character- istics of the American commonwealths Growth of freedom Grenville's policy of exclusive trade with England The "Sea Guard" George III sanctions the policy The British navy becomes a police force to prevent contraband trade Stamps introduced Rights of American legislative bodies February, 1765, the Stamp Act passes, providing revenue in America Lord Bute and Charles Townshend de- vise measures to raise revenue Taxation without representation Standing army for America Vari- ous measures suggested by Stamp Act at last resolved upon Grenville's part in it. CHAPTER XII. "THE COCKATRICE'S EGG" . . . 214 Horace Walpole on the Stamp Act Patrick Henry's Virginia Resolutions The "Treason" anec- dote The "Day-Star of the Revolution "The "Member from Louisa" The "Parsons' Case" re- called The vote Henry's own account of the origin of the "Resolves" Madison's doubts Washington's letters on the situation To George Mason "Boycotting" English goods Mason's an- swer: pleads for reciprocity Washington's letter to a London business house To Bryan Fairfax The tea-tax Affairs at Boston under Gage Op- pression of Parliament "The crisis has arrived" Arrival of the tea-ships. CHAPTER XIII. "THE DEADLY TEA CHEST" . . .240 Watchwords of Revolution Tea the symbol Tea-drinking in the iSth century Fiske on tea Contents xiii Ensuing discontent New England at this time: its character Massachusetts and its peculiarities Love of politics and idealism John Harvard and his college Contrast between Harvard and William and Mary College A group of celebrated men Effect of the Virginia Resolutions Troops arrive The Boston "Massacre" Committees of Cor- respondence, circular letters, etc. The Tea-party of December, 1774 Sam Adams: his influence New England character at this time. CHAPTER XIV. THE STRUGGLE BEGINS . . r : .' J 256 The cup runs over Grievances of a decade ' ' Eng- land has long arms" Views of Fox, Burke, and Chatham Jefferson's opinion of the causes of the war The Boston Port Bill Excitement spreads The Fairfax County "Resolves" Gaiety at Wil- liamsburg Day of fasting Lord Dunmore dis- misses Burgesses Delegates appointed to a Congress at Philadelphia The Virginia delegates, Washington among them Grievances rehearsed John Adams' opinion Congress assembles, continues seven weeks in session Adjourns to meet next year Its charac- ter Preparations for war Convention at Rich- mond in 1775 Henry's words, "Give me liberty or give me death!" The clash at Lexington, April 1 9th Paul Revere "Rape of the Gunpowder" at Williamsburg Congress convenes a second time at ?; Philadelphia, May loth Washington elected com- mander-in-chief of American forces His letter to Mrs. Washington Colonial troops assemble near Boston The words of Chatham Inaction of the British Character of colonial troops Anecdote of American marksman Battle of Bunker Hill, June 17, 1775 Lack of discipline Losses in the battle Siege of Boston Washington's headquar- ters at "Craigie House" Declines salary Con- xiv Contents sends arms and officers La Fayette, De Kalb, Kos- ciusko arrive Pulaski, Steuben, De Grasse, D'Es- taing, Rochambeau Events of 1777 Disaster to Burgoyne His Indian allies Burgoyne's character The Adirondacks in summer At Saratoga Gates and Schuyler Battle of Bennington Surrender of Burgoyne, Oct. 17, 1777 Arnold and Schuyler The former's character Baroness Reidesel's account Schuyler's magnanimity At the South, end of 1777 Sir William Howe leaves New York secretly and lands 18,000 troops near the Elk River and captures Philadelphia Brandywine Franklin's opinion British forces divided La Fayette's de- scription of the patriot army Effects of the capture of Burgoyne and of Philadelphia France acknow- ledges the independence of the United States. CHAPTER XVI. ON TO YORKTOWN . . . . .312 Valley Forge: 1778 Despair of the Americans Steuben and La Fayette: their accounts The Tories News of the French treaty Charles Lee A foreigner's description of Washington The "Spur- ious Letters" Intrigues of the Conway Cabal Sir Henry Clinton evacuates Philadelphia in June, 1778 Defeat of the English at Monmouth The traitor Lee La Fayette's account A gleam of light Philadelphia again the capital Thacher describes the General Condition of the currency Washing- ton's letters to Harrison and Nelson Winter- quarters in 1779 at Middlebrook and Elizabethton Letter of Franklin's daughter Defence of the Hudson The French fleet Conduct of the Tories and Hessians and Indians The French minister Luzerne : his opinion of Washington Rochambeau's fleet comes British Southern campaign Charles- ton falls The two Indies: contrast Weakness of Congress Washington thereon The treason of Contents *v temporary accounts of Washington His dispatches to Congress Lack of money and ammunition Washington, Franklin, and Jefferson originally opposed to separation Army divided into three corps Wilkes' petition Arnold, Allen, Schuyler, and Montgomery in Canada Death of Montgomery at Quebec First flag of the Union unfurled, Jan- uary i, 1776: description March 20, 1776, Ameri- cans enter Boston Lord North's "Manifesto" Hessians hired Congress thanks Washington He occupies New York Its importance Arrival of Lord Howe's fleet The Declaration of Inde- pendence, July 4, 1776 Thomas Jefferson writes it Its opening paragraphs. CHAPTER XV. THE HEART OF THE REVOLUTION . . 283 Declaration of Independence read to troops The loyalists : their sufferings Washington's characteris- tics as a commander The "Fabian Policy" Opin- ions of Fiske, Green, and Thackeray Character of George III: Green's opinion Miss Burney's Diary Second year of the Revolution Southern campaign British at New York Weakness of the British commanders: their blunders Autumn of 1776 Tactics of Americans Battle of Brooklyn Heights Washington evacuates New York Fall of Fort Washington Desertions and illness Capture of General Charles Lee Corn- wallis thinks the war over The Jersey campaign Battles of Princeton and Trenton Crossing of the Delaware Howe offers terms of peace The year 1777: Chatham speaks against employing Indians Washington favours standing army Made dictator for six months Plots against him Never smiles Congress flees from Philadelphia to Baltimore Suf- ferings of the soldiers Winter-quarters at Morris- town Inertia of Howe and Cornwallis France xvi Contents Arnold: his career Reprimanded Major Andre and Arnold: their plot Washington's position: his account Capture of Andre and flight of Arnold Andr< hanged Chastellux on Washington Thacher describes Andre's execution Affairs at the South Lincoln captured Gates put in command at the South Tories in the Carolinas Impolicy of the English Lodge's account Errors of Gates Defeat of Americans at Camden Sumter, Corn- wallis, Tarleton Cornwallis trapped: compared with Burgoyne Character of the Revolutionary "Rough Riders" General Greene Battle of Cowpens Guilford Court House Barbarities of Tarleton Moultrie Cornwallis retreats Marion and Sumter Help of France Robert Morris's finan- cial policy French fleet at Newport blockaded De Grasse sails for the Chesapeake Allied ar- mies move from New York Condition of Virginia Tarleton's raid on Charlottesville Cornwallis reaches Yorktown in August Washington conies to take command with 16,000 troops Dissensions among commanders Cornwallis invested October i gth he surrenders The closing scene. CHAPTER XVII. THE EBBING TIDE ..... -345 Horace Walpole again His comments on the sur- render of Cornwallis Tom Paine on the crisis Seven years of war Beaumarchais and Franklin Vergennes, the French premier Franklin's repu- tation abroad John Adams and John Jay, his asso- ciates Their mission Death of John Parke Custis Washington visits his mother Ball at Fredericks- burg Goes to Mount Vernon and Philadelphia British retreat to Charleston Its evacuation The year 1782 Peace desired Sir Guy Carleton sounds the colonies on a settlement Proposition to make Washington King Washington's indigna- Contents xvii tion Rodney defeats De Grasse Privateering on the seas John Paul Jones' achievements Founds the navy Fears of Washington De Broglie's de- scription of the Americans Rochambeau's praise Washington at forty-nine Serious situation at the American camp Armstrong's address Gates treachery Threatened mutiny. CHAPTER XVIII. A "MERRIE CHRISTMAS" . . . . 366 Nov. 30, 1782, Preliminaries of peace signed at Paris American and British commissioners Mu- tinies General Gates concerned in them Washing- ton to Greene on the end of the Southern campaign ; to Congress ; to Hamilton Prays for union Writes to La Fayette on States' rights Dread of disunion Carleton notifies Washington of the ratification of peace Letters of the two commanders thereon First salute of 17 guns fired A retrospect of 175 years The famous "Circular Letter" of Washing- ton: the four fundamentals of American independ- ence Christian tone of the document Trevelyan's account of Washington's churchmanship His habit of prayer and worshipIncident at Morris- town of Washington communing Announces him- self a member of the Church of England Five great English statesmen Society of the Cincinnati founded General Knox the founder Washington its president Opposition to it Nov. 2 , Washington bids farewell to his troops Treaty of Paris between England and America signed at Paris Sept. 3, 1783 Its ten articles Franklin's influence Adams and Jay co-operate Lecky on Franklin Washington surrenders his sword to Congress at Annapolis Mount Vernon memories Thackeray's contrast be- tween the two Georges The General's farewell words The last solemn act Off for Mount Vernon. xviii Contents CHAPTER XIX. BIRTH OF THE CONSTITUTION . 388 Peace only apparent Golden Age expected A Spanish view The great West The Indian wars George Rogers Clark and his conquest of the North- west Territory Lodge's description Patrick Henry apprises the Virginia Legislature of Clark's achieve- ment Perils of the time Washington to La Fay- ette; to General Knox A foreigner's impression Made a Mason Improvements at Mount Vernon His life there A Briton's account Solicitude for his guests Danger of civil war after Yorktown A critical period Me Master's view Assertion of States' rights 111 treatment of Tories Repudiation of debts Shays' Rebellion crushed by General Lincoln A demoralised currency The coins of 1784 The inland navigation scheme suggests the new Federal Union A commercial convention with Maryland succeeded by a general convention at Philadelphia in 1 787 La Fayette's anxiety Mar- shall's description of the origin of the Philadelphia Convention Washington a delegate May 2, 1787, the date of the Philadelphia Convention Madison's letter Federalism of Washington Elected presi- dent of the Convention, which continues in session four and a half months Madison's journal Injunc- tion to secrecy Clause in Madison's will as to his diary "The Federal Pyramid" Franklin's witty paper Only three fail to sign the Constitution The States gradually ratify the Constitution The Virginia Convention of 1 788 : how divided on the Constitution Washington's Diary on the Conven- tion's work; compromise its key-note. CHAPTER XX. FIRST CITIZEN OF THE UNITED STATES . . 422 Washington choice of the people as President His reluctance Death of Mary Washington Custis Contents xix describes it John Adams Vice-President Diary of Washington Congress assembles at New York April 30, 1789: the first inauguration The Cabinet Rules of etiquette, hours, dress, etc. The soldier becomes the statesman Two great measures: neu- trality in foreign troubles and moral alliance with Great Britain The first Thanksgiving Day and the first census Ceremony at visits Philadelphia be- comes seat of government till 1800 Washington City planned and laid out by Washington, Major L' Enfant, and others His illness Makes tours in New England and the South John Hancock visits him Presents from Europe: portraits, statues, busts, etc. Congress and the Supreme Court Fiscal policy of the United States The Whiskey Rebellion in Pennsylvania, 1794 The Golden Age of the Republic Erskine's Eulogy Indian policy St. Clair's disaster in the West Close of the first ad- ministration Washington re-elected Letters of Hamilton, Jefferson, and Randolph urging him to accept Faith in Providence John Adams again elected Vice-President The second administra- tion The French Revolution Tension between France and England War declared Neutrality of the United States proclaimed Excitement Britain refuses to surrender the frontier fortresses Jay negotiates a treaty with England, in 1 795-6 Genet's meddling course Fluctuations in Cabinet Army and Navy Treaty with Spain Severe criticism of the President His bitter resentment The "Spurious Washington Letters" again Retires in 1797 Results of his second administration His Farewell Address Wilson's opinion of it Adams succeeds him Washington appointed commander- in-chief of the army against France. XX Contents CHAPTER XXL "THE GLIMMERING TAPER" ,, . . . 449 "Farmer Washington" His occupations at Mount Vernon The "Parting Guest" Last days Insults of France The expiring century Illness and death. ILLUSTRATIONS GEORGE WASHINGTON . . Frontispiece From the portrait by Gilbert Stuart. THOMAS JEFFERSON .... 14 From the painting by Gilbert Stuart. THE FIRST CABINET ..... 32 From an old print. MOUNT VERNON . ,...,.,. . . . 50 From a photograph. WASHINGTON'S AUTOGRAPHS .... 68 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN IN 1779 .... 84 From an oil-painting in the possession of the His- torical Society of Pennsylvania. GENERAL ISRAEL PUTNAM .... IO2 From the painting by H. I. Thompson, in the State House, Hartford, Conn. BATTLE OF PRINCETON DEATH OF MERCER . 114 From the painting by Col. John Trumbull. INTERVIEW OF HOWE'S MESSENGER WITH WASH- INGTON ..... f-'-r. . 130 After the painting by M. A. Wageman. xxii Illustrations PAGE WASHINGTON MEDAL (1776) . . . . 140 MARTHA WASHINGTON ..... l6o From the portrait by Gilbert Stuart. WASHINGTON CROSSING THE DELAWARE . . 172 After the painting by E. Leutze. GEORGE WASHINGTON ...... 182 From the painting by Rembrandt Peale. Repro- duced by permission of C. Klackner, N. Y. Copyright, 1894. WASHINGTON'S COAT-OF-ARMS .... 196 WASHINGTON AT MONMOUTH .... 208 From a design by F. O. C. Darley. SURVEYOR'S MANUSCRIPT ..... 218 WASHINGTON ENTERING NEW YORK CITY . . 226 From the engraving by A. H. Ritchie after the original painting by F. O. C. Darley. WASHINGTON ARCH, NEW YORK CITY . . . 240 JOHN ADAMS ....... 248 From a steel engraving. CARPENTERS' HALL, PHILADELPHIA . . . 264 Wherein met the first Continental Congress, 1774. MAJOR-GENERAL CHARLES LEE .... 276 From an English engraving published in 1776. MAJOR-GENERAL NATHANAEL GREENE . . 280 From the painting by Col. John Trumbull. WASHINGTON'S HEADQUARTERS AT NEWBURGH- ON-THE-HUDSON ...... 284 THE BRANDYWINE AT CHADD's FORD . . 306 Illustrations xxiii PAGE THE SURRENDER OF YORKTOWN . . . 316 From an old print. WASHINGTON AT TRENTON, JANUARY 2D, 1777 . 328 From the engraving by Daggett after the original painting by Colonel Trumbull. THE MARQUIS DE LAFAYETTE .... 336 From a French print, 1781. JOHN JAY . . . . . . . 35 From a steel engraving. MAJOR-GENERAL BENJAMIN LINCOLN . . . 354 From a steel engraving. MAJOR-GENERAL HENRY KNOX .... 396 From the painting by Gilbert Stuart, in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. FRAUNCES' TAVERN ...... 4OO From an old print. WASHINGTON MONUMENT ..... 428 Looking across the ' ' Flats." GEORGE WASHINGTON CHAPTER I AT THE FIRESIDE HEINE'S fanciful story of the wondrous cactus that slumbered a hundred years, and then sent up a strange and dazzling flower came lit- erally true in the thorny evolution of American history. The flowering of Washington out of the cactus-like environment of American life in the eighteenth century is one of those psychological problems not wholly explicable on the ground of environment alone. Heredity, of course, had a crowning part in it. The strenuous character of the race has evolved in hundreds of years of struggle with men and things. When the brothers, John and Lawrence Washington, first emigrated to Virginia in Cromwell's day, the character of the strain had already been stamped with ineffaceable marks. The Transatlantic Virginian was the Transatlantic Eng- lishman transformed into something more enduring, more tenacious, more granite-like in its hardness by incessant battling with aboriginal conditions; with the Redskin, with the wild wilderness, with the merchant adventurers, the London Companies, the 2 George Washington wrangling burgesses, with governors like Sir Wil- liam Berkeley and soldiers like those prominent in Bacon's Rebellion. The incessant friction of colonial life in its semi-civilized stages sharpened the blunter specimens of English urban and civic life to a keenness and a fighting edge which, transmitted from father to son, became fixed in a type, and ex- panded into a character that was strangely com- posite, that drew into itself many elements, and became at last a moral and intellectual fabric of enduring strength and originality. What differen- tiated the Greek from all others was probably the SEA that shone and shimmered into his life at every angle, and fed the life of his soul with its subtle influences. What differentiated the Transatlantic Englishman from his island brother was the FOR- EST with its vast stretches of mysterious, unex- plored territory filled witl. a subtle foe whose activity was perpetual. The Redskin thus became a prime factor in early American education. The differentiations went on from the time " the Kingdom of Virginia " sprang out of the soft Western seas, and the land of the Powhatans and the Lady Pocahontas tickled the im- agination of the poetic Elizabethans. A grave, seri- ous, solemn, efficacious type was evolved, which waited a hundred, or a hundred and fifty years be- fore its eyes twinkled in the sunny faces of William Byrd or Benjamin Franklin. The first two hundred years were a determined struggle for existence, along a coast-line 1800 miles and more in length, as it stretched in sinuous course from Boston to At the Fireside 3 St. Augustine and New Orleans, the edges of a mighty volume whose inner pages were writ large in labyrinthine wilderness, unexplored mountain, river, and savannah, and the endless vicissitudes of frontier life. Life on a gigantic scale opened before the dazzled eyes of John Smith, La Salle, Hernando de Soto, Marquette, and the Jesuit Fathers, and, unawed by its immensity, the joyous, tireless explorers pushed on up river and down lake, over mountain and through primeval forest, until their eyes fairly blazed with enthusiasm as their tongues told, in Purchas and Hakluyt and in the Jesuit journals, of the wonders of this Western " Orient " which many of them still supposed to be the golden Cathay or shadowy Cipango of Columbus and the poets. It has required four hundred years and more to send a thin wave of population over this colossal region, and it will require four hundred more to peo- ple it as densely as the European homes from which the early navigators and immigrants sprang. The triumphant conquest of the edges of these unimaginable lands occupied one hundred and fifty years, in the course of which, a new and noble type of immigrant manhood and womanhood saw the light. The petulant spirit of the five millions of Elizabethans, " cribb'd, cabin'd and confined " with- in the narrow limits of the British Isles, burst forth with overwhelming gaiety, as if in a huge carnival celebration, and, despite hunger, starvation, death in a thousand cruel forms, martyrdom in strange 4 George Washington unheard-of ways, torture and torment, continued to pour forth in numberless streams until the coast- line of the New World grew into a wonderfully picturesque and powerful duplicate of the European, like, yet marvellously unlike, in its varying features and phenomena. The eyes that look out from the old portraits belonging to this time have a singular depth and intensity, as if their owners beheld visions never before imagined by the commonplace dames and cavaliers across the water. Religion acquires an incandescent glow unknown in the older coun- tries, and enshrines itself in temples and tabernacles erected on the borders of the wilderness, in the tim- bered town, among the plantation oaks, or appears passionately supplicating mercy in the quaint intro- ductory clauses of old yellow wills and ancient vestry books. It was in the beautiful and romantic Virginia of this time, the Virginia of Indian unrest and semi- civilisation, that George Washington was born at the old homestead of Wakefield, in Westmoreland County, February the Twenty-Second (New Style), 1732, about ten in the morning. Wakefield was one of the homes of the Washing- ton family at that time, in Eastern Virginia, and there this little household (increasing year by year) lived until the house burned down, from the care- lessness, it seems, of good Madam Washington who took it into her head to burn brush and stubble raked together in the garden, and, incidentally, burnt her home to the ground. The servants fought the fire At the Fireside 5 heroically, but in vain, saving only a few articles of furniture and the ancient copy of Matthew Hale's Contemplations, Moral and Divine, now said to be at Mount Vernon. This volume had belonged to Augustine Wash- ington's first wife, Jane Butler, and descended to the second, in the easy and natural way of second marriages so prevalent in early Virginia. What manner of house it was, where this Vir- ginia family passed their earlier life, may be con- jectured from the imaginative reconstruction of its details, found in the pages of the charming his- torian, Marion Harland: " The blunted point of the triangle, formed by the creeks that furnished fat low-grounds on two sides of Augustine Washington's plantation of Wakefield, rested upon the Potomac, and was a mile in width. Wakefield comprised a thousand acres of as fine wood and bottom lands as were to be found in a county ' that, by reason of the worth, talents, and patriotism that adorned it, was called the Athens of Virginia/ The house faced the Potomac, the lawn, sloping to the bank between three and four hundred yards distant from the ' porch,' running from corner to corner of the dwelling. There were four rooms of fair size upon the first floor, the largest, in a one-story extension at the back, being ' the chamber.' The hip-roof above the main building was pierced by dormer-windows that lighted a large attic. At each end of the house was a chimney, built upon the outside of the frame dwelling, and of dimensions that made the latter seem dispropor- tionately small. Each cavernous fireplace would hold 6 George Washington a half cord of wood, and the leaping blaze had all seasons for its own in a region where river fogs at evening and morning were vehicles of the dreaded ' ague and fever.' About the fireplace in the parlour, were the blue Dutch tiles much affected in the decora- tive architecture of the time. What a priceless scrap of bric-a-brac to a modern collector, would be one of those same enamelled squares, bedight with a repre- sentation of ' Abraham's Offering,' or ' Moses Break- ing the Tables of the Law,' the tents of Israel, like a row of sharp haystacks, almost touching his knees, although ostensibly dwarfed in perspective until the whole camp was smaller than the tablets he hurled to earth ! the tiles that once reflected rosily the thought- ful face of the young wife, and gave distorted images of the blonde giant, her nominal lord and master, that, by and by, missed the musing face and slighter figure for a time, and then showed a double picture, a visage paler and sweeter than of old, bent over the baby that was, from the beginning, the image of his mother. In the one-storied chamber the Moses of the New World was born, and the mother nursed the goodly child upon her bosom, in gladness and pride of heart, until the birth of the little Betty, in June, 1733. Between the stepmother and the two sturdy sons of Mr. Washington's first marriage, there existed cordial friendliness from the hour of her installation as mis- tress of the modest mansion. An elderly kinswoman had cared for them during their father's protracted absence, but, with the recollection of their own mother, hardly two years dead, in their memories, it spoke well for the little fellows, as for the new mother, that they yielded her respectful duty. Her early life had made At the Fireside 7 every detail of country housekeeping familiar to her. The retinue of servants was perhaps larger than that at Epping Forest had been, and the appointments of the house may have included relics of such grand liv- ing as had befitted Cave Castle, and went well with the stories, told over the logs on winter nights, of court-visits and royal preferments. Apostles of De- mocracy, though the Washingtons called themselves, they were ingrain aristocrats the greatest of them not excepted." x The deepest glance into these earliest years of Madam Washington's wife- and widowhood, and the boyhood and youth of George, has been cast by George Washington Parke Custis, adopted grand- son of the chieftain, to whose Recollections and Pri- vate Memoirs of Washington all later historians, from Irving and Lossing down, are indebted for their intimate details. Custis saw and remembered the great dame but dimly, personally, being a boy only four years old when she died; but he lived at Mount Vernon until he was nineteen, and gathered what he records from the lips of the Wash- ingtons and Lewises themselves. The illustrious lady was just such a woman as one might have imagined to have been most perfectly suited to be the mother of an unannounced hero plain, dignified, sincere, strong in the possession of the homely and home-like virtues, absolutely devoid of vanity or ostentation, without frivolity or femi- nine captiousness, reticent to a degree, and so free 1 The Story of Mary Washington, by Marion Harland. 8 George Washington from self-consciousness that she did not hesitate, without any sense of false shame or humiliation, to receive Lafayette and his distinguished company, rake in hand, arrayed in the unpretentious homespun and sun-bonnet of the time. Her calm placidity of temperament was as if carved out of marble, or moulded into the antique lineaments of Judith or Miriam. No exultant cry ever broke from her lips, no matter how dazzling might have been the distinc- tions heaped, in flattering phrase, on his head, from the time when, by a kind of irrepressible buoyancy, the young son began to rise and to win one colonial dignity after another, as major, lieutenant-colonel, colonel, burgess, commander-in-chief, president : all seemed, to this undemonstrative woman, a matter of course, just as it should be. Though endowed with this apparent equability of temperament, Mary Washington's nature glowed with a suppressed fer- vour which transmitted itself to her son, and in him became power of endurance, passion for command, ambition to do and to dare in the colonial wars, spontaneous assumption of leadership, and the nat- ural and easy command of men. Ardour, thus spir- itualised, coins itself into the noblest ideals, into the tireless feet that explore the sources of the Nile, into the pen that writes the " Cosmos," into the exqui- site harmonies that well up in the soul of Beethoven. Whether it take a martial or a musical, an intel- lectual or a physical turn, the fire that burns inward, the vestal flame on the altar of the soul, must be there, radiant, if still, not noisy and crackling. At the Fireside 9 Everybody who came near either Washington or his mother felt the suppressed glow that was in them. Intense heat sometimes has the effect of cold. Mil- ton's remarkable epithet, " burns frore," aptly de- scribes the burning frost of Washington's nature, the fiery chill that embarrassed his companions even in their most intimate intercourse with him, the latent fire that sometimes, though rarely, leapt to his lips in impassioned phrases. This notable characteristic came from Mary Ball, and shines forth in many of the anecdotes related by Custis and her grandson, Lawrence Washington of Chotank. Says the latter : " I was often [at the Washington home] with George, his playmate, schoolmate, and young man's companion. Of the mother I was ten times more afraid than I ever was of my own parents. She awed me in the midst of her kindness, for she was, indeed, truly kind. I have often been present with her sons, proper, tall fellows too, and we were all as mute as mice ; and even now, when time has whitened my locks, and I am the grand-parent of a second generation, I could not behold that remarkable woman without feel- ings it is impossible to describe. Whoever has seen that awe-inspiring air and manner so characteristic in the Father of his Country, will remember the matron as she appeared, when the presiding genius of her well- ordered household, commanding and being obeyed." Custis, in the odd Johnsonian English of the early nineteenth century, thus describes her personal features : io George Washing-ton " In her person, the matron was of middle size, and well-proportioned ; her features pleasing, yet strongly marked. It is not the happiness of the author to remember her, having only seen her with infant eyes. The sister of the Chief, he perfectly well remem- bers. She was a most majestic- looking woman, and so strikingly like the brother, that it was a matter of frolic to throw a cloak around her and placing a mili- tary hat on her head, such was her amazing resem- blance, that on her appearance, battalions would have presented arms and senates risen to do homage to the Chief." The death of Augustine Washington, in 1743, when George was only eleven years old, broke up the happy Wakefield life and left the lady a widow at the early age of thirty-five, with a family of four sons and one daughter, besides the two sons of her husband's marriage with Jane Butler. Her admi- rable relations with these step-children incidentally throw a pleasing light on Mary Washington's home life, and the affection of Lawrence (one of these sons) for his half-brother George illustrates the cordial feeling among its various members, which was a distinguishing mark of the whole kith and clan of the Washingtons. The idyll of Wakefield must have been almost as simple and unaffected, as devoid of incident and as undramatic, as that of the famous vicar painted by the contemporary Goldsmith. An earnest, seri ous, yet delightsome boyhood seems to have been that of Washington : hunting, riding, shooting, fish- At the Fireside 1 1 ing, all healthy open-air exercises, filled its busy hours of morning and afternoon ; and the few hours dedicated to intellectual work resulted in imparting to the boy, first at his mother's knee, then at the hands of Master Hobby, the sexton, and, later, at an " old-field " academy in or near Fredericksburg, the rudiments of a plain English education. Essen- tially a man of action, Washington never wholly rid himself of the defects and limitations of an early imperfect education. " William and Mary " and Princeton were then flourishing institutions, not impossibly distant from Fredericksburg, yet Wash- ington was not sent to these institutions as Jefferson and Madison were, only a decade later. Latin and French, the not unusual polite accomplishments of the day in the colonies north of Virginia, were prac- tically unknown to the Virginia schoolboy whose business-like turn of mind, influenced perhaps by its knowledge of the family's large possessions in land, fixed itself almost instinctively on mathe- matics, and, among the various branches of that science, chose surveying as the most remunerative. In the same manner, Thomas Jefferson, Rogers Clark, and John Adams not to mention the omnis- cient Franklin directed their early faculties, anc" trained them by the surveyor's instruments of pre- cision to those habits of exact thought which so signally distinguished three, at least, of these early typical Americans, and helped to make them tower above their contemporaries in scientific attainments. Intimacy with the field and forest, with the flow- 12 George Washington ing expanse of river and estuary, with the mighty stretches of virgin wood that travelled in almost lim- itless undulations towards the Great Lakes and the Mississippi, thus entered naturally and indispen- sably into the lives of the young Americans, and evoked in them the self-reliance, fearlessness, per- sonal hardihood, and undaunted courage character- istic of the men of that day. If there is one feature more than another which astonishes the enervated idler of our days, it is the enormous personal sacrifices made by the men and women of the American eighteenth century, the ex- haustless stores of physical strength required by the itineraries described in the memoirs of the period, the patience and prowess absolutely demanded by the smallest journey into the wilderness, and the Spartan toleration of hunger, fatigue, want, and dis- ease, entailed by birth on this primitive society. The softer courtesies of life were, however, not wholly neglected in the young Washington's early education. " Among the manuscript books of George Wash- ington, preserved in the State Archives at Washing- ton City, the earliest bears the date, written in it by himself, 1745. Washington was born February n, 1731, O. S., so that when writing in this book he was either near the close of his fourteenth, or in his fif- teenth year. It is entitled Forms of Writing, and has thirty folio pages; the contents, all in his boyish handwriting, are sufficiently curious. Amid copied forms of exchange, bonds, receipts, sales, and similar At the Fireside 13 exercises, occasionally in ornate penmanship, there are poetic selections, among them lines of a religious tone on ' True Happiness.' But the great interest of the book centres in the pages headed : ' Rules of Civility and Decent Behaviour in Company and Conversation.' The book had been gnawed at the bottom by Mount Vernon mice, before it reached the State Archives, and nine of the no Rules have thus suffered, the sense of several being lost. " The Rules possess so much historic interest that it seems surprising that none of Washington's bio- graphers or editors should have given them to the world. Washington Irving, in his Life of Washing- ton, excites interest in them by a tribute, but does not quote even one. Sparks quotes fifty-seven, but inex- actly, and with his usual literary manipulation." 1 It was in 1739 that Captain Augustine Wash- ington moved to Fredericksburg, a little town on the Rappahannock, founded in 1727, by Colonel Willis, husband of Washington's aunt and god- mother. The family before this had resided, di- rectly after George's birth, at Hunting Creek (after- wards Mount Vernon), having left Wakefield for that purpose. Mr. Conway establishes the fact that Washington's earliest recollections were with the beautiful estate belonging to his half-brother Law- rence, and named by him " Mount Vernon," in honour of the gallant English admiral under whom he had served at Carthagena and Porto Bello. " Among the shiploads of convicts probably im- 1 M. D. Conway's George Washington's Rules of Civility, 1890, pp. 7-8. 14 George Washington ported for labour purposes by Captain Augustine Washington, was one who had scholarly attainments, possibly a political exile, to whom, after his mother, Washington owed his earliest teaching. Some among these convicts were learned Scotchmen, men of rank and distinction, exiles for conscience' sake after Crom- well's insurrection and the return of the Stuarts ; they were not necessarily criminals. Indentured servants and ' Redemptioners ' (men who purchased their free- dom, in exchange for their passage money over the Atlantic) were often persons of some literary accom- plishment, who taught the children of their employers and thus ingratiated themselves as schoolmasters, clerks, bookkeepers, and the like with the high-born Virginia families. The classical scholar need not be reminded of Epictetus, ^Esop, and Horace for exam- ples of slaves and freedmen who have become the world's most celebrated and most admired teachers. " Probably the school founded by James Marye [continues Mr. Conway] was the first in the New World in which good manners were seriously taught. Nay, where is there any such school to-day? Just this one colonial school, by the good fortune of having for its master or superintendent, an ex-Jesuit French scholar, we may suppose instructed in civility ; and out of that school, it was little more than a village, came an exceptionally large number of eminent men. In that school, three American Presidents received their early education Washington, Madison, and Monroe. " In the manuscript of Colonel Byrd Willis, already referred to (loaned me by his granddaughter, Mrs. Tayloe, of Fredericksburg) , he says : ' My father, THOMAS JEFFERSON. From the painting by Gilbert Stuart. At the Fireside 15 Lewis Willis, was a schoolmate of General Washing- ton, his cousin, who was two years his senior. He spoke of the General's industry and assiduity at school as very remarkable. Whilst his brother and other boys at play-time were at bandy and other games, he was behind the door, ciphering. But one youthful ebullition is handed down while at that school, and that was romping with one of the largest girls. This was so unusual that it excited no little comment among the other lads.' It is also handed down that, in boy- hood, this great soldier, though never a prig, had no fights, and was often summoned to the playground as a peacemaker, his arbitration in dispute being al- ways accepted." The admirable wisdom of the no " Rules of Ci- vility " must have sunk deeply into the heart and soul of this young scholar in a time when books were few and scarce, and maxims such as these had time to germinate, flower, and fruit in the life and conduct of the susceptible pupil. The last of these useful maxims became the guiding-star of Washington's whole career : " Labour to keep alive in your Breast that little Spark of Celestial fire called Conscience." This noble saying, due to the wisdom of the Jesuit Fathers among whom the Rev. James Marye had been educated, and of whose organisation he was once a member, became incarnate in the life of the illustrious American whose boyish hand transcribed it in quaint copy-book style and orthography. " The Rules of Civility " is, in its way, a volume on Moral 1 6 George Washington Philosophy whose assimilation and digestion are ac- centuated at every point of Washington's public and private life. The Hebrew nation, in its Books of Wisdom, had condensed the marvellous essence of a worldly phi- losophy which has signally influenced its entire des- tiny and, through it, the fates and fortunes of every code of modern jurisprudence. French urbanity, on the other hand, concentrates itself in these golden maxims and, by a happy antici- pation, forehadows the profound influence of France on American affairs. It is a prophecy of Lafayette. CHAPTER II GREEN WAY COURT I AN IDYLL OF THE SUMMER ISLES OVER the spacious plantations of Virginia was scattered, in Washington's youth, a popula- tion of some 80,000 or 90,000 men, women, and children who had come thither in miscellaneous ways, some by birth, some from over seas, as Bohe- mians and wanderers on the face of the earth, some urged by love of money, traffic, or adventure, others fired by the imaginative pictures of the poet-travel- lers, Marco Polo, Sir John Mandeville, or Columbus. One hundred and twenty-five years had sped swiftly by since the first ship cast anchor off Jamestown, and the first load of anxious immigrants began gathering up their old-world belongings and drag- ging them laboriously and cautiously ashore. The clock of the Stuarts, which ticked so loudly in 1607, had subsided into the even-paced timepieces of the Georges, two of whom had already occupied the throne of the mother-country, three thousand miles away. The two or three little fissures, made in the mountain-wall of the unexplored New World at Hampton Roads, at Plymouth, at Manhattan, at Philadelphia, had widened into sluice-gates through which poured ever-broadening streams of European life and trade and population, that up every creek 1 8 George Washington and river and valley veined the land, like a human face, with the arteries of Eastern civilisation, and everywhere sowed sinuous lines of settlements from the ocean edge to the great inland oceans of fresh water that stretched far to the north-west. Of this expanding " England in Virginia," Colo- nel Robert Beverley, its picturesque colonial histo- rian, wrote in 1705 1 : " The Country being thus taken into the King's Hands, his Majesty was pleased to establish the Con- stitution to be by a Governour, Council and Assembly. . . . This was a Constitution according to their Hearts' Desire, and Things seem'd now to go on in a happy Course for Encouragement of the Colony. People flock'd over thither apace ; and, not minding any thing but to be Masters of great Tracts of Land, they planted themselves separately on their several Plantations." It is no wonder that the land-loving " American " of that day distinguished himself by taking up these enormous tracts of land when we read on in Bever- ley : " Here they enjoy all the benefits of a warm Sun, and by their shady Groves, are protected from its In- convenience. Here all their Senses are entertain'd with an endless Succession of Native Pleasures. Their Eyes are ravished with the Beauties of naked Nature. Their Ears are Serenaded with the perpetual murmur of Brooks, and the thorow-base which the Wind plays, when it wantons through the Trees; the merry Birds, too, join their pleasing Notes to this rural Comfort; 1 Robert Beverley's Virginia, p. 47. Greenway Court 19 especially the Mock-birds, who love Society so well, that whenever they see Mankind, they will perch upon a Twigg very near them, and sing the sweetest wild Airs in the World: But what is most remarkable in these Melodious Animals, they will frequently fly at small distances before a Traveller warbling out their Notes several Miles, an end, and by their Musick, make a Man forget the Fatigues of his Journey. Their Taste is regaled with the most delicious Fruits, which without Art, they have in great Variety and Perfec- tion. And then their smell is refreshed with an eter- nal fragrancy of Flowers and Sweets, with which Nature perfumes and adorns the Woods almost the whole year round. Have you pleasure in a Garden? All things thrive in it, most surprisingly; you Can't walk by a Bed of Flowers, but besides the entertain- ment of their Beauty, your Eyes will be saluted with the charming colours of the Humming Bird, which revels among the Flowers, and licks off the Dew and Honey from their tender Leaves, on which it only feeds. It's size is not half so large as an English Wren, and its colour is a glorious shining mixture of Scarlet, Green, and Gold. Colonel Byrd, in his Garden, which is the finest in that Country, has a Summer- House set round with the Indian Honey-Suckle, which all the Summer is continually full of sweet Flowers, in which these Birds delight exceedingly. Upon these Flowers, I have seen ten or a dozen of these Beautiful Creatures together, which sported about me so fa- miliarly, that with their little Wings they often fann'd my Face." * This delightful Virginia of bird and beast and 1 Robert Beverley's Virginia, p. 61. 2O George Washington flower emerges from fragrant clouds of tobacco- smoke, in the early historians, and lends itself to anecdote and idyllic description, of which the fol- lowing extract gives characteristic specimens : "Among other Indian Commodities, they brought over Some of that bewitching Vegetable, Tobacco. And this being the first that ever came to England, Sir Walter thought he could do no less than make a pres- ent of Some of the brightest of it to His Roial Mis- tress, for her own Smoaking. " The Queen graciously accepted of it, but finding her Stomach sicken after two or three Whiffs, it was presently whispered by the earl of Leicester's Faction, that Sir Walter had certainly Poison'd Her. But Her Majesty soon recovering her Disorder, obliged the Countess of Nottingham and all her Maids to Smoak a whole Pipe out amongst them. " As it happen'd some Ages before to be the fashion to Saunter to the Holy Land, and go upon other Quixot Adventures, so it was now grown the Humour to take a Trip to America." 1 This " bewitching vegetable " thus cast its spell over the whole lifetime of Colonial Virginia, as, later, after 1776, the characteristic fragrance ema- nated from tea. On the moral and intellectual side a glimpse of this enchanted Virginia may be got through the con- temporary eyes of the Rev. Hugh Jones, one of the Fellows of William and Mary College, and its chap- lain, who wrote : 1 The History of the Dividing Line, p. 5. Greenway Court 21 " Virginia equals, if not exceeds, all others in Good- ness of Climate, Soil, Health, Rivers, Plenty, and all Necessaries, and Conveniences of Life: Besides she has, among others, these particular Advantages of her younger Sister Maryland, viz. Freedom from Popery, and the direction of Proprietors ; not but that Part of Virginia, which is between the Rivers Potomack and Rappahannock belongs to Proprietors, as to the Quit- Rent; yet the Government of these Countries (called the Northern Neck} is under the same Regulation with the other Parts of the Country. " If New England be called a Receptacle of Dissent- ers, and an Amsterdam of Religion, Pennsylvania the Nursery of Quakers, Maryland the Retirement of Roman Catholicks, North Carolina the Refuge of Run- aways, and South Carolina the Delight of Buccaneers and Pyrates, Virginia may be justly esteemed the hap- py Retreat, of true Britons and true Churchmen for the most Part ; neither soaring too high nor drooping too low* consequently should merit the greater Esteem and Encouragement. " The common Planters leading easy Lives don't much admire Labour, or any manly Exercise, except Horse-Racing, nor Diversion, except Cock-Fighting, in which some greatly delight. This easy Way of Living, and the Heat of the Summer makes some very lazy, who are then said to be Climate-struck." 1 Again, the following extract illustrates quaintly the ultra loyalty and churchmanship of the Old Vir- ginia parson, burning with enthusiasm for King and Church and drinking confusion to all Papists and dissenters : 1 The State of Virginia, Hugh Jones, p. 48. 22 George Washington "And as in Words and Actions they (ministers) should be neither too reserved nor too extravagant; so in Principles should they be neither too high nor too low: The Virginians being neither Favourers of Popery nor the Pretender on the one Side, nor of Presbytery nor Anarchy on the other ; but are firm Adherents to the Present Constitution in State, the Hanover Succession and the Episcopal Church of England as by Law established; consequently then if these are the Inclinations of the people, their Minis- ters ought to be of the same Sentiments, equally averse to papistical and schismatical Doctrines, and equally free from Jacobitish and Oliverian Tenets. These I confess are my principles, and such as the Virginians best relish, and what every good Clergy- man and true Englishman (I hope) will favour; for such will never refuse to say with me : God bless the Church, and GEORGE its Defender, Convert the Fanaticks, and baulk the Pretender. " For our Sovereign is undoubtedly the Defender and Head of our national Church of England, in which Respect we may pray for the King and Church; but Christ is the Head of the Universal or Catholick Church, in which Respect we wish Prosperity to the Church and King." 1 These " climate-struck " Virginians were fast de- veloping into a manly and valiant race, who built for themselves log palaces on the margin of the illimitable waste, erected forts and palisades that soon transformed themselves in the oceanlike ver- dure around, into Miranda's Enchanted Isle deep in 1 The State of Virginia, Hugh Jones, p. 96. Greenway Court 23 the summer woodlands, and lacking only the " glis- tening spangles," that Captain John Smith saw in their sylvan streams, to bud forth into true Golcon- das and Islands of the Blest, albeit anchored fast not in the waters of the New Atlantis, but to the sturdy trunks of the ancient aboriginal forests. On one of these Summer Isles of plantation life, deep in the primeval woods, far out on the outposts of that lovely valley, where the sparkling Shenan- doah danced between beautiful mountains on its crystal pilgrimage to the Potomac, had settled Thomas, Lord Fairfax, scion of the illustrious race that had served under Cromwell, the accomplished contributor to Addison's Spectator, on lands, mil- lions of acres of which he had taken up by patent or purchase at the time of which we speak. The emotions of the merchant adventurers, as they sighted these lands of the Hesperides and the charms of the environing scenery, are vividly por- trayed for us by an accomplished antiquary and annalist of these virgin times : " It requires no extraordinary imagination to ap- preciate the emotions which stirred the breasts of the voyagers as they entered the Chesapeake, and sailed up the wide stretches of the Powhatan in the spring of 1607. Those were hours that offered the amplest compensation for all the hardships which they had endured. They had just finished a tedious and dan- gerous passage on the bosom of unknown seas. In the bleakest period of winter, under leaden skies and with sombre landscapes, the country which they had 24 George Washington reached would have been delightful to them; but, clothed in the verdure of the Virginian May, when the greenness of the foliage and the tints of the wild flowers have their deepest and softest coloring, it was quite natural that visions of an earthly Paradise should have arisen before their eyes, accustomed for so long a time to the heaving plains of the Atlantic. The lofty trees on the banks, representing many familiar and many new varieties, the noble breadth of the river, the balmy air laden with the odors of expanding leaf and blossom, the clearness of the atmosphere which produced such striking vividness of coloring, the bright sunshine, the strange birds, adorned with so many brilliant hues, flying hither and thither over the surface of the stream, or moving about in the branches of the trees that grew near its brink, the schools of fish that were constantly breaking the sur- face of the river into patches of flashing silver, the painted savages staring at the little fleet as it passed slowly along, all united to create a novel scene touch- ing the sensibilities of the dullest and most prosaic of the adventurers. Nor was it the less inspiring when they recalled that they were the first persons of their race to look upon that beautiful expanse of river and forest, which, for a length of time almost incalculable, had existed just as they saw it then. " The charming impressions as to the physical as- pect of the country were confirmed by subsequent ob j servations. Sir Thomas Dale, writing in 1613, only a few years after the first colony was established on Jamestown Island, declared that his admiration of Virginia increased as his opportunities for informing himself about its resources enlarged, and that he be- Greenway Court 25 lieved that it would be equivalent to all the best parts of Europe taken together, if it were only brought under cultivation and divided among industrious people. Percy was equally emphatic in asserting that if the promoters of the Virginian enterprise would only extend the adventurers a hearty support, the new country would be as profitable to England, in time, as the Indies had long been to the King of Spain. Whitaker describes it as a place beautified by God with all the ornaments of nature, and enriched with his earthly treasures. ' Heaven and Earth,' exclaimed Captain Smith, ' never agreed better to frame a place for man's habitation.' Williams apostrophized it as Virginia the fortunate, the incomparable, the garden of the world ! which, although covered with a natural grove, yet was of an aspect so delightful and attract- ive, that the most melancholy eye could not look upon it ' without contentment, nor be contented without ad- miration.' ' For exactness of temperature, goodness of soil, variety of staples, and capability of receiving whatever else is produced in any part of the world, Virginia,' he remarks, ' gives the right hand of pre-em- inence to no province under heaven/ ' Where nature is so amiable in its naked kind/ asks the author of Nova Britannia, ' what may we not expect from it in Virginia when it is assisted by human industry, and when both art and nature shall join to give the best content to men and all other creatures ? ' 'I have travailed/ said a leading member of the London Com- pany, ' by land over eighteen several kingdoms and yet all of them, in my minde, come farr short to Vir- ginia/ " Such in part was the testimony as to the general 26 George Washing-ton beauty and fertility of Virginia in its original con- dition." 1 Greenway Court, the home of the Fairfaxes (twelve miles S. W. of Winchester), was the spot in this picturesque Virginia whither the youthful Washington, at sixteen, now wended his way, eager to begin the work of surveying, for which he had specially prepared himself under Master Williams and the Rev. James Marye. Uncertain as the times are, we yet catch direct and searching glimpses of young Washington, as he flits to and fro in the fluc- tuating anecdote biographies of a later time eager to glean every ray of light radiating from this obscure period, and to concentrate it upon the figure of the growing man. From wills and letters and genealo- gies, from clerks' records and dusty church-wardens' books, from bundles of yellow MSS. tied up and stored away in antique secretaries, from private stores and public record-offices, pours this light and floods many a dark corner of Virginia history, Mrs. Pryor has vividly illuminated the twilight period of Washington's life as follows : " Augustine Washington selected a fine site on the banks of the Rappahannock, opposite Fredericksburg, and near ' Sting Ray Island/ where the very fishes of the stream had resented the coming of Captain John Smith. The name of this home was Pine Grove. The situation was commanding, and the garden and orchard in better cultivation than those they had left. 1 Bruce, Economic History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century, vol. i, pp. 73-75. Green way Court 27 The house was like that at Wakefield, broad and low, with the same number of rooms upon the ground floor, one of them in the shed-like extension at the back ; and the spacious attic was over the main building. It had its name from a noble body of trees near it, but was also known by the old neighbors as ' Ferry Farm/ There was no bridge over the Rappahannock, and communication was had with the town by the neigh- bouring ferry. ' Those who wished to associate Wash- ington,' says another writer, ' with the grandeurs of stately living in his youth, would find all their theories dispelled by a glimpse of the modest dwelling where he spent his boyhood years. But nature was bountiful in its beauties in the lovely landscape that stretched before it. In Overwharton parish, where it was sit- uated, the family had many excellent neighbors., and there came forth from this little home a race of men whose fame could gather no splendor, had the roofs which sheltered their childhood been fretted with gold and blazoned with diamonds. The heroic principle in our people does not depend for perpetuity on family trees and ancestral dignities, still less on baronial man- sions.' "Augustine Washington died in 1743, at the age of forty-nine, at Pine Grove, leaving two sons of his first wife, and four sons and one daughter our Mary had borne to him, little Mildred having died in in- fancy. We know then the history of those thirteen years, the birth of six children, the death of one, fin- ally the widowhood and desolation of the mother. " At the time of his father's death, George Wash- ington was only eleven years of age. He had been heard to say that he knew little of his father except 28 George Washington the remembrance of his person and of his parental fondness. To his mother's forming care he himself ascribed the origin of his fortune and his fame. " Mary Washington was not yet thirty-six, the age at which American women are supposed to attain their highest physical perfection. Her husband had left a large estate under her management, to be surrendered in portions as each child reached majority. Their land lay in different parts of the country, Fairfax, Stafford, King George, and Westmoreland. She found herself a member of a large and influencial society, which had grown rapidly in wealth, import- ance, and elegance of living since her girlhood and early married life in Westmoreland. Her stepson, Lawrence, married a few months after his father's death, and she was thus allied to the Fairfaxes of Bel- voir allied the more closely because of the devo- tion of Lawrence to her own son George. Lawrence, with his pretty Anne Fairfax, had gone to live on his inherited estate of ' Hunting Creek,' which he made haste to rechristen in honor of an English admiral, famous for having recently reduced the town and for- tification at Porto Bello ; famous for having reduced the English sailors' rum by mixing it with water. He was wont to pace his decks wrapped in a grogram cloak. The irate sailors called him and the liquor he had spoiled, ' Old Grog.' The irreverent, fun-loving Virginians at once caught up the word, and hence- forth all unsweetened drinks of brandy or rum and water were ' grog,' and all unstable partakers thereof, ' groggy.'" * 1 Mrs. Pryor, The Mother of Washington and Her Times, p. 90. Greenway Court 29 The fertility of the New World soil was at least paralleled by that of the immigrant families, the abundance of the land being often more than matched by the superabundance of the children. The numerous and prolific marriages had rapidly peopled the Old Dominion with a steady growing stock of sturdy planters and settlers, for whom pro- vision had to be made by anxious fathers and moth- ers, whether among the lands already possessed by patent, purchase, or marriage, or in the new coun- tries and directions everywhere opening westward and southward toward the central rivers and valleys of the American Continent. There were six sons of Augustine Washington (two by the first and four by the second marriage) to be provided for, thought of, settled in life, liber- ally allowanced, as became Virginia gentlemen. Lawrence (the eldest) was a graceful and polished cavalier who had entered the British Navy, married a Fairfax of Belvoir, begun the erection of the stately chateau of Mount Vernon in 1743-45, and had been amply remembered by his father. There were still John and George, Charles, Samuel, and Augustine (called August) to be considered. The fascination which the sea had exercised over Lawrence Washington, and the possession of influ- ential friends in that quarter, probably impelled him to select the navy as a promising possibility for George to whom he was specially devoted. Accordingly, when George was fourteen, a mid- shipman's warrant was obtained for him, every prep- 3o George Washington aration was made for his departure, the very ship on which he was to take up his new life lay at anchor in the Potomac, when the anguish and timidity of Madam Washington, and an emphatic letter of dis- approval from her brother Joseph Ball, who was living at Stratford-by-Bowe, near London, broke up the arrangement and George's career as a future Nelson or De Ruyter was for ever closed. Mr. Joseph Ball's letter, as Bishop Meade quotes it in Old Families of Virginia, is as follows. 1 " Stratford-by-Bow, ipth of May, 1747. " I understand that you are advised and have some thoughts of putting your son George to sea. I think he had better be put apprentice to a tinker, for a com- mon sailor before the mast has by no means the com- mon liberty of the subject; for they will press him from a ship where he has fifty shillings a month and make him take twenty-three, and cut and slash and use him like a negro, or rather like a dog. And, as to any considerable preferment in the navy, it is not to be expected, as there are always so many gaping for it here who have interest, and he has none. And if he should get to be master of a Virginia ship (which it is very difficult to do), a planter that has three or four hundred acres of land and three or four slaves, if he be industrious, may live more comfortably, and leave his family in better bread, than such a master of a ship can. . . . He must not be too hasty to be rich, but go on gently and with patience, as things will naturally go. This method, without aiming at 1 Old Churches, etc., vol. ii, p. 128. Greenway Court 31 being a fine gentleman before his time, will carry a man more comfortably and surely through the world than going to sea, unless it be a great chance indeed. " I pray God keep you and yours. " Your loving brother, " JOSEPH BALL." It would form an interesting subject of specula- tion to conjecture what would have been Washing- ton's future in that wonderful playground of am- bition, intellect, personal gallantry, and world-wide opportunity the British Navy; to what heights his noble, disinterested soul might have risen, what effect such a career would have had in determining his patriotism, and the yet unknown future of American independence. Even before he was out of his teens, Washington was already exhibiting qualities so remarkable, at the very threshold of his life, that there is small doubt of his winning su- preme distinction in any position where high sense of duty, firm practical intelligence, passionate loy- alty to principle, and untiring devotion to the good of his beloved Virginia were involved. The intimacy with the Fairfaxes of Belvoir had doubtless early brought the boy under the notice of Thomas, Lord Fairfax, whose lordly domain, almost unexplored, a virgin terra incognita, stretched away westward over the Blue Ridge, in unsurveyed opu- lence. Surveying was then one of the lucrative professions for a young man of practical ability. An enormous acreage of public and private land lay practically unknown, outside the reach of the asses- 32 George Washington sor. There was doubtless, too, a charm in the track- less wilderness which exercised its magic over many a young Virginian's imagination, and sent him into the woods on missions of which surveying was only one, possibly only an excuse. With Washington, however, it was never an ex- cuse but a sober, serious profession which he pur- sued to the end of his days, with which fact, any student of his journals and note-books, from 1748 to 1799, may easily familiarise himself. His exact, detail-loving, mathematical mind took delight in the clank of the surveyor's chain, which suggested to him not the groan of the slave so much as the boundless freedom of the limitless, forest- crowned horizon. In 1748, a month before he had actually reached his sixteenth year, Madam Washington's eldest son (who had received his name from George Eskridge, her trusted friend, says Mrs. Pryor) was in the employ of Lord Fairfax as salaried surveyor, at seven pistoles a day. And out of the almost mythic recesses of this period, comes a delicate murmur and reverberation, reminding us that this extraordi- nary boy was human, quelling our mythopoetic ten- dencies, and humanising him in a half ludicrous, half pathetic way: the " Idyll of the Summer Isles " was writing its prologue. Was it the " romping girl " of Fredericksburg, or some one of those five early sweethearts who evoked the genius of doggerel in the Father of his Country, and made his tongue spell out the difficult acrostic? At all events, there is THE FIRST CABINET. From an old print. Greenway Court 33 something delightfully human in the way he ad- dresses this unknown " Frances," as there was, in after years, in the affectionate " Patsy " by which he addressed the dark-eyed widow of Daniel Parke Custis. CHAPTER III A BOY'S JOURNAL 1T should be mentioned, however," says Mr. M. 1 D. Conway, " that young Washington's head was not in the least turned by intimacy with the aris- tocracy. He wrote letters to his former playmates in which no snobbish line is discoverable. He writes to his ' Dear friend Robin ' : ' My place of residence is at present at his lordship's where I might, was my heart disengaged, pass my time very pleasantly, as there's a very agreeable young lady lives in the same house (Colonel George Fairfax's wife's sister). But as that's only adding fuel to fire it makes me the more uneasy, for by often and unavoidably being in company with her revives my former passion for your Lowland beau- ty ; whereas, was I to live more retired from young women, I might elevate in some measure my sorrows by burying that chaste and troublesome passion in the grave of oblivion or etearnall forgetfulness, for, as I am very well assured, that's the only antidote or rem- edy that I ever shall be relieved by or only recess that can administer any cure or help to me, as I am well convinced, was I ever to attempt anything, I should only get a denial which would be only adding grief to uneasiness.' '' The young lady at Greenway Court was Mary Cary, and the Lowland beauty was Betsy Fauntleroy, \vhose hand Washington twice sought, but who be- 34 A Boy's Journal 35 came the wife of the Hon. Thomas Adams. While travelling on his surveys, often among the Red Men, the youth sometimes gives vent to his feelings in verse. ' Oh Ye Gods, why should my Poor resistless Heart Stand to oppose thy might and Power At last surrender to Cupid's feather'd Dart And now lays bleeding every Hour For her that's Pityless of my grief and Woes, And will not on me Pity take. I'll sleep among my most inveterate Foes And with gladness never wish to wake, In deluding sleepings let my Eyelids close That in an enraptured dream I may In a rapt lulling sleep and gentle repose Possess those joys denied by Day.' " And it must also be recorded that if he had learned how to conduct himself in the presence of persons su- perior to himself in position, age, and culture, and it will be remembered that Lord Fairfax was an able contributor to the Spectator (which Washington was careful to study while at Greenway), this youth no less followed the instruction of his io8th rule : ' Hon- our your natural parents though they be poor.' His widowed mother was poor, and she was ignorant, but he was devoted to her ; being reverential and gracious to her even when, with advancing age, she became somewhat morose and exacting, while he was loaded with public cares. " I am no worshipper of Washington. But in the hand of that man of strong brain and powerful pas- sions once lay the destiny of the New World, in a sense, human destiny. But for his possession of the humility and self-discipline underlying his Rules of Civility, the ambitious politicians of the United States 36 George Washington might, to-day, be popularly held to a much lower standard. The tone of his character was so entirely that of modesty, he was so fundamentally ' patriotic, that even his faults are transformed to virtues, and the very failures of his declining years are popularly accounted successes. He alone was conscious of his mental decline, and gave this as a reason for not ac- cepting a third nomination for the Presidency. This humility has established an unwritten law of limita- tion on vaulting presidential ambitions. Indeed, in- trigue and corruption in America must ever struggle with the idealised phantom of this grand personality." 1 " His lordship " was no other than Thomas, Lord Fairfax, " who," says a well-known historian, " himself came to Virginia in 1746 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. 'T was said, too, that he had suf- fered a cruel misadventure in love at the hands of a fair jilt in London, and so had become the austere, ec- centric bachelor he showed himself to be in the free and quiet colony. A man of taste and culture, he had written with Addison and Steele for the Spectator; a man of the world, he had acquired, for all his reserve, that easy touch and intimate mastery in dealing with men, which come with the long practice of such men of fashion as are also men of sense. He brought with him to Virginia, though past fifty, the fresh vigor of a young man eager for the free pioneer life of such a 1 M. D. Conway, Rules of Civility, p. 43. A Boy's Journal 37 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, shad- owed by spreading piazzas, and fitted with such simple appointments as sufficed for comfort, in the depths of the forest, close upon seventy miles away, within the valley of the Shenandoah, where a hardy frontier people had but begun to gather. The great manor- house he had meant to build was never begun. The plain comforts of ' Greenway Court ' satisfied him more and more easily as the years passed, and the habits of a simple life grew increasingly pleasant and familiar, till thirty years and more had slipped away and he was dead, at ninety-one, broken-hearted, men said, because the King's government had fallen upon final defeat and was done with in America. " It was in the company of these men, and of those who naturally gathered about them in that hospitable country, that George Washington was bred. ' A stranger had no more to do/ says Beverley, ' but to en- quire upon the road where any gentleman or good housekeeper lived, and there he might depend upon being received with hospitality,' and 't was certain many besides strangers would seek out the young major at Mount Vernon, whom his neighbors had hastened to make their representative in the House of Burgesses, and the old soldier of the soldierly house of Fairfax, who was President of the King's Council, and so next to the Governor himself. A boy who was much at Mount Vernon and at Mr. Fairfax's seat, Belvoir, might expect to see not a little that was worth seeing of the life of the colony." * 1 Woodrow Wilson, George Washington, pp. 49-51. 38 George Washington Thus it was that this great heart, in the immediate presence of a scion of the Old World, began to feel those human dreams and pangs to which every one has been subject since the world began. At sixteen, the precocious, self-educated boy wrote the following Journal, which, full as it is of boyish inaccuracies, is interesting not only as the first piece of authentic connected composition from his hand, but still more so, psychologically, as revealing his early grasp of detail when almost a child. Already one sees in it that developing force which led Gov- ernor Dinwiddie, six years later, to send him as a kind of Ambassador to the French, in the Ohio Valley, and publish, at the expense of the State, his graphically written Journal of the expedition. " JOURNAL OF A BOY SURVEYOR "Friday, March nth, 1747-8. Began my Jour- ney in company with George Fairfax, Esqr. ; we trav- ell'd this day 40 miles to Mr. George Neavels in Prince William County. " Saturday, March I2th. This Morning Mr. James Genn, ye surveyor, came to us; we travell'd over ye Blue Ridge to Capt. Ashbys on Shannandoah River. Nothing remarkable happen'd. " Sunday, March i3th. Rode to his Lordship's Quarter about 4 miles higher up ye river. We went through most beautiful Groves of Sugar Trees, and spent ye last part of ye Day in admiring ye Trees and richness of ye Land. " Monday i4th. We sent our baggage to Capt. Hites (near Frederick Town), went ourselves down A Boy's Journal 39 ye River about 16 miles to Capt. Isaac Pennington's (the Land exceeding rich and fertile all ye way pro- duces abundance of Grain, Hemp, Tobacco, &c.) in order to lay of[f] some Land on Gates Marsh and Long Marsh. " Tuesday I5th. We set out early with intent to run round ye sd. Land, but being taken in a rain, and it increasing very fast obliged us to return. It clear- ing about one o'clock and our time being too Precious to loose, we a second time ventured out and worked hard till night, then returned to Penningtons. We got our suppers and [I] was Lighted into a Room and I not being so good a woodsman as ye rest of my com- pany, striped myself very orderly and went into ye Bed, as they calld it, when to my surprise, I found it to be nothing but a little straw matted together without sheets or any thing else, but only one thread bear blanket with double its weight of vermin, such as Lice, Fleas, &c. I was glad to get up (as soon as ye Light was carried from us). I put on my cloths and lay as my companions. Had we not been very tired, I am sure we should not have slep'd much that night. I made a Promise not to sleep so from that time for- ward, chusing rather to sleep in ye open air before a fire, as will appear hereafter. " Wednesday i6th. We set out early and finish'd about one o'clock and then Travelled up to Frederick Town, where our Baggage came to us. We cleaned ourselves (to get Rid of ye Game we had catched ye night before). I took a Review of ye Town and then return'd to our Lodgings where we had a good Din- ner prepared for us. Wine and Rum Punch in plenty, 4O George Washington and a good Feather Bed with clean sheets, which was a very agreeable regale. " Thursday I7th. Rain'd till ten o'clock and then clearing we reached as far as Major Campbells, one of their Burgesses about 25 miles from Town. Noth- ing remarkable this day nor night, but that we had a Tolerable good Bed [to] lay on. " Friday i8th. We Travell'd up about 35 miles to Thomas Barnwickes, on Potowmack, where we found ye River so excessively high by reason of ye great Rains that had fallen up about ye Allegany Mountains, as they told us, which was then bringing down ye melted snow and that it would not be fordable for several Days. It was then about six foot higher than usual and was rising. We agreed to stay till Monday. We this day calld to see ye Fam'd Warm Springs. We camped out in ye field this night. Nothing re- markable happened till Sunday ye 2Oth. " Sunday 2oth. Finding ye river not much abated we in the evening swam our horses over and carried them to Charles Polks in Maryland, for pasturage till ye next Morning. " Monday 2ist. We went over in a Canoe and Travelled up Maryland side all ye Day in a contin- ued Rain to Col. Cresaps, right against ye mouth of ye South Branch, about 40 miles from Polks, I believe ye worst road than ever was trod by Man or Beast. " Tuesday 22d. Continued Rain and ye Freshes kept us at Cresaps. " Wednesday, 23d. Raind till about two o'clock and cleard, when we were agreeably surprised at ye sight of thirty odd Indians coming from war with only one scalp. We had some Liquor with Us of which we A Boy's Journal 41 gave them Part, it elevating there spirits, put them in ye humor of Dauncing, of whom we had a War Daunce. There manner of Dauncing is as follows, viz. : They clear a Large Circle and make a great Fire in ye middle. Men seat themselves around it. Ye speaker makes a grand speech, telling them in what manner they are to daunce. After he has finishd ye best Dauncer jumps up as one awaked out of a sleep, and Runs and Jumps about ye Ring in a most cornicle manner. He is followed by ye Rest. Then begins there musicians to Play. Ye musick is a Pot half full of water, with a Deerskin streched over it as tight as it can, and a goard with some shott in it to rattle and a Piece of an horse's tail tied to it to make it look fine. Ye one keeps rattling and ye others drumming all ye while ye others is Dauncing. " Fryday, 25th, 1748. Nothing remarkable on thursday, but only being with ye Indians all day. So shall slip it. This day left Cresaps and went up to ye mouth of Paterson's Creek, and there swum our horses over, got over ourselves in a canoe and trav- elled up ye following part of ye Day to Abram Johnstones, 15 miles from ye mouth, where we camped. " Saterday, 26. Travell'd up ye creek to Solomon Hedges, Esq., one of his Majesty's Justices of ye Peace for ye County of Frederick, where we camped. When we came to supper there was neither a Cloth upon ye Table nor a knife to eat with ; but as good luck would have it, we had knives of our own. " Sunday, 2/th. Travell'd over to ye South Branch, attended with ye Esqr. to Henry Van Metriss, in order to go about Intended work of Lots. " Monday, 28th. Travell'd up ye Branch about 30 42 George Washington miles to Mr. James Rutlidges Horse Jockey, and about 70 miles from ye mouth. " Tuesday, 29th. This Morning went out and sur- veyd five hundred acres of Land, and went down to one Michael Stumpe on ye So. Fork of ye Branch. On our way shot two wild Turkies. " Wednesday, 3Oth. This Morning began our In- tended business of Laying of[f] Lots. We began at ye Boundary Line of ye Northern 10 miles above Stumps, and run of[f] two Lots, and return'd to Stumps. " Thursday, 3ist. Early this Morning one of our men went out with ye gun, and soon returned with two wild Turkies. We then went to our business run of[f] three lots, and returned to our camping place at Stumps. " Thursday Fry day, April ye ist, 1748. This Morn- ing shot twice at wild Turkies but killd none. Run of[f] three Lots and returnd to camp. " Saterday, April 2d. Last night was a blowing rainy night. Our straw catch'd a Fire, yt. we were laying upon. I was luckily preservd by one of our Men's awaking when it was in a f 1 ]. We run of[f] four lots this day which reached below Stumps. " Sunday, 3d. Last Night was a much more bluster- ing night than ye former. We had our tent carried quite of[f] with ye wind, and was obliged to Lie ye latter part of ye night without covering. There came several Persons to see us this day. One of our men shot a wild Turkic. " Monday, 4th. This Morning Mr. Fairfax left us with intent to go down by ye mouth of ye Branch. 1 Word erased. A Boy's Journal 43 We did two Lots and was attended by a great Com- pany of People, men Women, and children, that at- tended us through ye woods as we went, shewing there antick tricks. I really think they seem to be as igno- rant a set of people as the Indians. They would never speak English but when spoken to, they speak all Dutch. This day our tent was blown down by ye vio- lentness of ye wind. " Tuesday, 5th. We went out and did 4 Lots. We were attended by ye same Company of People, yt. we had ye day before. " Wednesday, 6th. Last night was so Intolerably smoky that we were obliged all hands to leave ye Tent to ye Mercy of ye wind and Fire. This day was attended by our afored, Company, up till about 12 o'clock. When we finished, we Travell'd down ye Branch to Henry Van Metriss. On our journey was catchd in a very heavy rain. We got under a straw House until ye worst of it was over, and then con- tinued our Journey. " Thursday, 7th. Raind successively all last night. This morning one of our men killd a wild Turkic that weight 20 Pounds. We went and surveyd 15 Hun- dred acres of Land and returnd to Van Metriss about i o'clock. About two I heard that Mr. Fairfax was come up and at i Peter Cassey's about 2 miles of[f] in ye same old field. I then took my horse and went up to see him. We eat our Dinners and walked down to Van Metris's. We stayed about two hours and walked back again, and slept in Cassey's House which was ye first night I had slept in a House since I came up to ye Branch. " Fryday, 8th. We breakfasted at Cassey's and rode 44 George Washington down to Van Metris's to get all our Company together, which when we had accomplished, we rode down below ye Trough in order to lay of[f] Lots there. We laid of[f] one this day. The Trough is couple of Ledges of Mountains, impassable, running side and side together for above 7 or 8 miles and ye River down between, them. You must ride round ye back of ye Mountain for to get below them. We camped this Night in ye woods near a wild Meadow, where was a large stack of Hay. After we had pitched our Tent and made a very large Fire, we pulled out our Knap- sack, in order to Recruit ourselves. Every one was his own cook. Our Spits was forked Sticks, our Plates was a large Chip ; as for Dishes, we had none. " Saterday, gth. Set ye Surveyors to work, whilst Mr. Fairfax and myself stayed at ye Tent. Our Pro- vision being all exhausted and ye Person that was to bring us a Recruit disappointing us, we were obliged to go without untill we could get some from ye neigh- bors, which was not untill 4 or 5 o'clock in ye Evening. We then took leaves of ye Rest of our Company, road down to John Colins in order to set of[f] ye next Day homewards. " Sunday, loth. We took our farewell of ye Branch and travelld over Hills and Mountains to Coddys, on Great Cacapehon, about 40 miles. "Monday, nth. We travelld from Coddys down to Frederick Town, where we reached about 12 o'clock. We dined in Town and then went to Capt. Kites and lodged. "Tuesday, 1 2th. We set of[f] from Capt. Kites in order to go over Wms. Gap's about 20 miles, and after riding about 20 miles we had 20 to go, for we A Boy's Journal 45 had lost ourselves and got up as high as Ashby's Bent. We did get over Wms. Gap that night, and as low as Wm. West in Fairfax County, 18 miles from ye Top of ye Ridge. This day see a Rattled snake, ye first we had seen in all our journey. " Wednesday, ye I3th of April, 1748. Mr. Fairfax got safe home and I myself safe to my Brothers, which concludes my Journal." * 1 W. C. Ford, The Writings of George Washington, vol. i. CHAPTER IV WASHINGTON'S UNIVERSITY THE world has always seemed curious to know how its great men received their learning and training, how and where they were educated, who were their teachers and trainers, and what moulding influences gathered about their childhood and youth and fashioned them for their fate to be. Perhaps the most interesting of all the works of Xenophon is the limpid narrative in which he describes the birth, training, and schooling of the great Cyrus ; even the fictitious " Frenchy " biography of Telemaque pos- sesses a charm, quite apart from its grace of style, in the attractive way in which it represents, under antique forms and transparent pseudonyms, the up- bringing of a luxurious prince surrounded by the dissipations of a gorgeous court. Literary syba- rites linger with delight over the educational pages of Montaigne, of Massillon, and of Wilhelm Mei- ster, and in every biography and autobiography that appears, perhaps those pages are most keenly rel- ished which deal with the school life and home in- fluences of the world's noted men and women. The mother's knee antedates the school desk or the church-pulpit. The fascinating skill of Xenophon draws aside the curtain, and lets our eye rest upon 46 Washington s University 47 a mighty Oriental potentate as he is taught the elemental truths of life, to ride, to swim, to hurl the javelin, and to tell the truth, the simplest duties of everyday existence, the power of self-government and of self-control, the duties to ourselves and others : one gazes at the picture and finds the Persian system in many ways admirable. Then we turn to Plutarch and find in his marvellous biographies the Spartan and Roman, the Athenian and Oriental chapters of educational experience graphically con- trasted, and full of instruction for the modern reader interested in the pedagogical problems of the ancients. The subtle moralisings of Goethe and Montaigne afford deep glimpses into the education of their authors, and invest each with a kind of halo which sharply distinguishes the French and German systems from each other. Washington was the finest product of the planter commonwealth; his Oxford and Cambridge were the floods and fields, the ups and downs of the Old Virginia life, the experiences of the rough, prac- tical surroundings in which he found his boyhood entangled, the beguiling ways and free-and-easy hospitalities of that stately old freeman's common- wealth, which had founded itself along the Chesa- peake and the James in the golden days of Stuart and Guelph. The coming of the cavaliers had filled this New Atlantis, risen out of the Western seas, with a free and noble population, largely made up of gentle folk whose gentility had become impatient at home, and sought new avenues of relief abroad. 48 George Washington A year before Jacques Cartier, creeping out of St. Malo in his tiny craft of thirty tons' burthen, had crossed the seas and sailed up the St. Lawrence to the sites of Quebec and Montreal, Virginia had pre- sented itself to the English navigators of James- town as a mighty stairway, up whose five-fold stair of Tidewater, Middle, Piedmont, Shenandoah, and Appalachian Virginia, crept an ever-increasing, often-defeated, never-discouraged, indefatigable tide of human beings as patient and implacable as the sea itself, having a choice eye for choice localities, full of the healthy human selfishness that takes the best it can get where all is free with the least possible effort, settling the rich river-valleys and game-haunted mountain gorges, and making them- selves generally comfortable wherever they went, despite Pamunkies, Chickahominies, Shawnees, Mingos, or Cherokees with which every covert at the time abounded. The few hundred immigrants at Old Point and Hampton Roads had expanded by this time up and down, all things considered, into a solid million of alert, keen-eyed, intelligent fron- tiersmen, whose " frontier," in five generations, had pushed back from the blue Atlantic to the Blue Ridge, the Alleghanies, and the Ohio. The novelty of this life and of these conditions in Virginia in the eighteenth century had not yet worn off ; the blue smoke curling heavenward from a thousand wigwams showed still, in Washington's youth and early manhood, the power and plenitude of that slowly receding Indian barbarism which Washington's University 49 filled the sunset line with thrilling adventure, and sharpened men's eyes and ears and muscles to the presence of a numerous and dangerous foe. Less than a hundred miles from his native Westmoreland, in and about which his father's five thousand patri- monial acres were situated, Washington received much of his training, particularly at Greenway Court, on the outskirts of a remote wilder- ness which lost itself westward in immeasurable distances of territory, untrodden save by the feet of deer and bear and Red Man. The daring missionary, the lonely Jesuit voyageur, impelled by conscience and by zeal for the French king, alone had stolen through its measureless soli- tudes, and down its mighty rivers, and over its ocean-like lakes from Ontario and the St. Law- rence to St. Louis, Natchez, and New Orleans, far down into tropical Louisiana. The hunter, the trap- per, the seekers after gold and pearls, the romantic dreamer in search of the Fountain of Youth, tra- versed these appalling wastes, built their huts on river-bank and mountain height, staked out their claims, here and there in regions vast as the sea itself, and lived and died as pioneers often as martyrs of the civilisation to come. This earnest, active life of intense physical unrest and energy was the school in which Washington be- came an apt and ready scholar, a student of men and of things, a man of affairs, alive in every nerve and muscle, cautious, resourceful, strong as a young Hercules to endure sickness and privation, crafty 50 George Washington as Odysseus himself in the exercise of a quick intel- ligence, ripe for action, and wise in counsel far beyond his years, in many things a veritable sage of twenty; having "small Latin and less Greek" (like his brother Shakspere), but possessing a pro- found, almost a marvellous, knowledge of the world around him, rising to nigh supreme command in the West almost in his 'teens, and revealing in his Jour- nal to the Ohio (published by command of the Governor, in 1754), such insight, discretion, and powers of command as prophesied for him a brilliant future. When his " loving brother " Lawrence fell ill, in 1752, George gave up the forest seclusion of the lovely Shenandoah Valley, with all its happy text- books of hill and dale and teeming trout-stream, and hurried back to Mount Vernon to accompany Law- rence to Barbadoes and the Bahamas, whither deli- cate lungs called him. But the radiant Caribbean proved only a Calypso's Isle whose gorgeous air had no healing in it. Washington himself was attacked by small-pox after accepting a " conscience " invita- tion to dinner at a house where the scourge (about to be greatly alleviated by Jenner's famous dis- covery) was prevalent. Soon after this, Lawrence died, leaving his estates first to his little daughter and then to his brother George, should the daughter die without issue. She died almost immediately after her father, and thus to George, the youngest executor and special favourite of Lawrence, fell the noble acres of Mount Washing-ton's University 51 Vernon (called also Epsewasson or Hunting Lodge). And now begins that intense and strenuous " cur- riculum " of Washington's education, which started with his forest matriculation as surveyor to Lord Fairfax in 1747-8, and continued through the storm and stress of the French and Indian Wars until his marriage in 1759, at the age of twenty-seven, to Martha Custis. The graphic metaphor of the mediaevalist likened such an education to the course of the chariot, as it wound its way to the goal over the mazy spaces of the Greek stadium or the Roman amphitheatre, where racers and athletes fixed their burning eyes on contending charioteers, and where the winners of the goal the diploma of " graduation " in this gradus ad Parnassum received universal acclaim from the bystanders. The bystanders in Washington's case were his neighbours, the planters of the stalwart young com- monwealth, the House of Burgesses, and the Colony of Virginia itself, all of whom, it seems, had eagerly watched the remarkable career of Mary Ball's eldest son, and felt that within it lay notable developments. The long-legged, lank, hollow-chested, awkward Wakefield boy had grown into a superb specimen of young Virginian manhood, " straight as an Indian arrow," wrote his adopted grandson, dignified, com- manding-looking, every inch a man and a gentle- man, powerful in physique, gracious though slightly cold in manner, reticent rather than rushing in 52 George Washing-ton speech, infinitely cumulative of details, almost a martinet in matters of decorum, pedantically microscopic in his attention to minutiae, yet with an eye as keen as an Indian's for distant possibilities and opportunities to benefit King, crown, and colony. George Washington was at this time a " King George's man," devotedly loyal, supremely subser- vient to the wishes of his royal master as reflected in the orders of Council and the direction of the Governor, a British subject who had never yet dreamt of severance from his sovereign, a Virginian Englishman, in whose loyal arteries swept a tide of English blood as hot for King and Parliament as ever coursed in the bodies of Pitt and Fox, Chatham and Burke, soon to be his face-to-face " contem- poraries " in debate at least on the banks of the Thames. And it is a singular fact that the implacable foes of this " undergraduate " time were not the English who lay, as it were, still submerged beneath the Eastern horizon, but the French, in a few short years to become his friends, admirers, almost wor- shippers. Says John Fiske : " Hitherto the struggle with the House of Bourbon had been confined to Canada, at one end of the line, and Carolina at the other, while the centre had not been directly implicated. In the first American Con- gress, convened by Jacob Leisler at New York, in 1690, for the purpose of concerting measures of de- fence against the common enemy, Virginia (as we Washington's University 53 have seen) took no part. The seat of war was then remote, and her strength, exerted at such a distance, would have been of little avail. But in the sixty years since 1690, the white population of Virginia had in- creased fourfold; and her wealth had increased still more. Looking down the Monongahela River to the point where its union with the Alleghany makes the Ohio, she beheld there the gateway to the Great West, and felt a yearning to possess it; for the westward movement was giving rise to speculations in land, and a company was forming for the exploration and settle- ment of all that Ohio country. But French eyes were not blind to the situation, and it was their king's pawn, not the English, that opened the game on the mighty chessboard. French troops from Canada crossed Lake Erie, and built their first fort where the city of Erie now stands. Then they pushed forward down the wooded valley of the Alleghany, and built a second fortress and a third. Another stride would bring them to the gateway. Something must be done at once. " At such a crisis, Governor Dinwiddie had need of the ablest man Virginia could afford to undertake a journey of unwonted difficulty through the wilderness, to negotiate with Indian tribes, and to warn the ad- vancing Frenchmen to trespass no further upon Eng- lish territory. As the best person to entrust with this arduous enterprise, the shrewd old Scotchman selected a lad of one-and-twenty, Lord Fairfax's surveyor, George Washington. History does not record a more extraordinary choice, nor one more completely jus- tified." * Virginia needed, indeed, the presence of this ex- 1 Fiske, Old Virginia and Her Neighbours, vol. ii, p. 378. 54 George Washington traordinary young man just at the time and place at which the shrewd " merchant governor " of the Colony, Dinwiddie, a canny and observant Scot, summoned him. He was one of those " climate- struck " Virginians who, though foreign-born, fell under the benign influence of the region and re- mained in the country as a " merchant adventurer," long after he had ceased to represent his Majesty as chief magistrate of the commonwealth. His keen Scotch eyes had watched the rise and progress of this young Virginia cavalier, whom in a letter to Hamilton, Governor of Pennsylvania, he described as " a person of distinction," and had found in him such premonitions of strength and efficiency as to compel him, in a way, to choose Washington rather than another from the crowd of distinguished gentle- men, old as well as young, who might have served the King at this crisis. One catches glimpses of the looming form of the nascent diplomat and general, even then, when he had hardly entered upon the enjoyment of his Mount Vernon estates, and the de- lightful social life of the period, and when the charms of home life, the beauty of his plantations, the spell of horse and hound and angler's rod and the coquetry of winsome women would to most youths of one-and-twenty have proved most irre- sistible. The education of the forest, of the chain and theodolite, of the spacious geometries of heaven and earth in which his youth had been passed, the self-made, self-taught qualities of his manly and self-dependent nature, kindling with the unquenched Washington's University 55 ambition to serve his colony and people, urged him to throw aside the enticing appeals of self-indulgent ease, and to present himself to the Governor as a willing instrument in endeavouring to make the dif- ficulties of the colony less insurmountable and less intolerable. He was, of all the Virginians of his day, the one best fitted for Dinwiddie's delicate and dangerous mission, the one best combining a pro- found knowledge of Indian craft and cunning with surest reliance upon himself, prudence, foresight, Stoic powers of endurance, and a boundless pride and conscientiousness that would drive him to the uttermost, and make him bate no jot or tittle of irksome detail to make the embassy a complete suc- cess. He set out on his task with an energy that bordered on fury, in a kind of Berserker rage, pos- sessed with an impelling desire to push into the wil- derness, carry through his negotiations, and return to quaint old Williamsburg, on the Middle Planta- tion, with full information of the machinations of the French in the far Ohio Valley. For here it was that the whole trouble hinged. The French had come flowing down from the North in a mighty tide of mission-work and con- quest, which threatened to swallow up the English frontier, unsettle boundaries, quicken and deepen Indian hostility, and make the border-lands, west- ward of New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and the Carolinas, unhabitable by men of Anglo-Saxon breed, and to kindle the flames of a perpetual feud. Washington's intimate knowledge of Indian ways 56 George Washington and wiles, his skill in woodcraft, his known courage and dauntless spirit, pointed him out as the one man born to plunge into the waste and bring thence to his people definite intelligence of the purpose of the French, and definite suggestions of what was now best to be done to foil them. No Laodicean was he, with lukewarm heart and limping intelligence, quak- ing in his shoes over imaginary difficulties, or quibbling over details of administration or rank; but straightforward, direct, absolutely devoid of self- ishness or vanity from the very start, a whole-souled Virginia gentleman and soldier, intent on duty per- fectly performed, and nothing else, neither expecting nor caring for any one's commendation except Din- widdie's and that of his own conscience. Hear his own account of the mission : " ADVERTISEMENT "As it was thought advisable by his Honour the Governor to have the following Account of my Pro- ceedings to and from the FRENCH on OHIO, com- mitted to Print I think I can do no less than apologise, in some Measure, for the numberless Imperfections of it. " There intervened but one Day between my Arrival in Williamsburg, and the Time for the Council's Meet- ing, for me to prepare and transcribe, from the rough Minutes I had taken in my Travels, this Journal ; the writing of which only was sufficient to employ me closely the whole Time, consequently admitted of no leisure to consult of a new and proper Form of the old: Neither was I apprised, nor did in the least con- Washington's University 57 ceive, when I wrote this for his Honour's Perusal, that it ever would be published, or even have more than a cursory Reading; till I was informed, at the Meeting of the present General Assembly, that it was already in the Press. " There is nothing can recommend it to the Public, but this. Those Things which came under the Notice of my own Observation, I have been explicit and just in a Recital of: Those which I have gathered from Report, I have been particularly cautious not to aug- ment, but collected the Opinions of the several Intel- ligencers, and selected from the whole, the most prob- able and consistent Account. " G. WASHINGTON." "Wednesday, October 31, 1753. " I was commissioned and appointed by the Hon- ourable Robert Dinwiddie, Esq., Governor, etc., of Virginia, to visit and deliver a letter to the Command- ant of the French forces on the Ohio, and set out on the intended Journey the same day : The next, I arrived at Fredericksburg, and engaged Mr. Jacob Vanbraam, to be my French interpreter ; and proceeded with him to Alexandria, where we provided Necessaries. From thence we went to Winchester, and got Baggage, Horses, etc. ; and from thence we pursued the new Road to Wills-Creek, where we arrived the I4th of November. " Here I engaged Mr. Gist to pilot us out, and also hired four others as Servitors, Barnaby Currin and John Mac-Quire, Indian Traders, Henry Steward, and William Jenkins; and in company with those per- sons, left the Inhabitants the Day following. 58 George Washington " The excessive Rains and vast Quantity of Snow which had fallen, prevented our reaching Mr. Frasier's an Indian Trader, at the Mouth of Turtle Creek, on Monongahela [River], till Thursday, the 22d. We were informed here, that Expresses had been sent a few Days before to the Traders down the River, to acquaint them with the French General's death, and the Return of the major Part of the French Army into Winter Quarters. " The Waters were quite impassable, without swim- ming our Horses ; which obliged us to get the Loan of a Canoe from Frazier, and to send Barnaby Currin and Henry Steward down the Monongahela, with our Baggage, to meet us at the Forks of Ohio, about 10 miles, there to cross the Aligany." He winds up this remarkable document, which fills some twenty-five octavo pages, with the follow- ing expressions : " I hope what has been said will be sufficient to make your Honour satisfied with my Conduct; for that was my Aim in undertaking the Journey, and chief Study throughout the prosecution of it." * This Journal, filled as it is with homely yet minute and important facts, might well be called Washington's " graduation essay," a bit " of orig- inal search and research " in the wilderness, of the highest significance to the interest of the common- wealth, based on the severest personal investigation. This study of aboriginal conditions and of French diplomacy lasted two months and a half, and con- 1 Ford, Writings of George Washington, vol. i, p. 39. Washington's University 59 stitutes a striking story of Darkest America in the time just before the Revolution, when all the forces and energies on the continent were about to gather for the supreme struggle between Guelph and Bour- bon, between George II and Louis XV, between fleur-de-lis and rose, as they seemed to spring spon- taneously from the virgin soil of the West, lying be- fore them in immemorial calm. The successive grades of Washington's prelimi- nary education were thus being rapidly surmounted in the great University of the Wilderness, whose countless unknown creatures yielded up their knowl- edge to him, and spoke to, and taught him in tongues infinitely more efficient than those of the mere scholastic kind. Washington was always, in later years, regretting his ignorance of French, of the cultured training which his elder brothers Lawrence and Augustine had received at Appleby School in England, of the thousand and one polite accomplish- ments which the Virginians who matriculated in the Old World possessed in ample degree; but he need not have been ashamed of the real knowledge which he really and truly possessed, not the knowl- edge which Master Hobby, the sexton convict, and Master Williams, the Wakefield schoolmaster, and the ex- Jesuit Marye (turned Huguenot), had im- parted : the knowledge possessed by the young major and lieutenant-colonel now to be, was of a far finer character : he who knows not men is igno- rant of the first principles of knowledge. It was possession of this masterful knowledge that made 60 George Washington the Virginia officer, from the first, master of the Convention, master of Congress, master of the com- bined armies of the United Republic, and master at last, and for as long as he would, of the supreme governmental forces of the nation. Washington's own explanation of his mission to the Indians and their " Half King " may be gath- ered from his address to them : " Brothers, I have called you together in Council by order of your Brother, the Governor of Virginia, to acquaint you, that I am sent, with all possible Dispatch, to visit, and deliver a Letter to the French Command- ant, of very great Importance to your Brothers, the English; and I dare say, to you, their Friends and allies. " I was desired, Brothers, by your Brother the Gov- ernor, to call upon you, the Sachems of the Nations, to inform you of it, and to ask your Advice and As- sistance to proceed the nearest and best Road to the French. You see, Brothers, I have gotten thus far on my Journey. " His Honour likewise desired me to apply to you for some of your young Men, to conduct and provide Provisions for us on our Way ; and be a safeguard against those French Indians who have taken up the hatchet against us. I have spoken this particularly to you Brothers, because his Honour our Governor treats you as good Friends and Allies; and holds you in great Esteem. To confirm what I have said, I give you this String of Wampum." 1 All through the Journal and its matter-of-fact en- 1 Ford's Writings of George Washington, vol. i, p. 19. Washington's University 61 tries, the reader catches vivid foreshadowings of the coming man, who was swiftly developing out of the dutiful son and the sturdy youth into a character tenacious of purpose, rugged in its relations with antagonistic forces, fond of battling with difficulties that seemed to others surpassing their strength, and Lacedemonian in its firmness and inflexibility. Over the frozen wilderness sped these young feet, unconscious of suffering, unwearied in the pursuit of their hopeful mission, through miry swamps, over unbeaten tracks and trackless mountains, " shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace " indeed, but ready at a moment's notice to carry their owner into the thick of some savage fight, or into the dreaded shades where at any moment the flash of the tomahawk, the whizz of the deadly bone-arrow, or the crack of the clumsy flint-lock would startle the everlasting silence and make it articulate with hid- eous noises. For scores and scores of leagues the young traveller and his interpreters fought their way through bush and bramble, through wire-grass and rope-like vines, through harsh autumnal woods, crisp and sere in the clutch of frost, through copses where the dogwood glimmered milkwhite in May, now desolate and forlorn, and where the redbud and Indian pink burned like flame in springtime now frozen to a crisp in the icy air of November; only stopping for meat and drink and rest; up with the birds, off with the startled deer, ceaselessly journey- ing till they reached the vicinity of the French Fort Duquesne, where now the great city of Pittsburg 62 George Washington stands, " interviewed " the French commandant and brought from him a specious message informing Dinwiddie of the French claims and aspirations. On this expedition, Washington reveals himself as the pioneer diplomat of his time, conducting thorny negotiations in languages which he did not understand, and yet managing to explain himself to, and to understand, the forest Talleyrands and Met- ternichs by whom he was beset. The guile of the Indian nature was as intelligible to him as its dis- trust and superstition. Since 1656, the Washington clan had been studying Indian methods, Indian war- fare, Indian customs and habits on the Northern Neck, and back in the picturesque Shenandoah wil- derness where now and in neighbouring Pennsyl- vania nearly five hundred thousand Scotch-Irish had arrived, fresh from Irish Ulster ; and this study, hereditary and personal, had not been lost on the impressionable soldier. It was in just such a school that the generals of the Civil War graduated Lee and Grant and Jackson, Custer and Fitzhugh Lee, and, earlier, the soldier Presidents, Jackson and Taylor. American military history abounds in self- educated soldiers who, like Washington, got their training on the plains, in the backwoods, at the forks of rushing rivers where rude forts were built, and in the flying wigwam where the fugitive democracy of the woods held perennial council. The heroic annals of New England history are no less full of these striking figures than the annals Washington's University 63 of those softer climes which developed the Johns- ton, Marion, and Sumter. The painstaking youth, who had bent painfully over his legal forms and documents, bills of sale, forms for wills, surveyor's diagrams and mathemat- ical calculations, copying laboriously every mis- spelt word or misplaced capital, had not gone through that trial of patience, unaffected or inat- tentive. The patience, skill, practical knowledge, and useful information thus acquired in boyhood, now widened out into that deeper and finer knowl- edge which was to prove invaluable to his country- men. Hurrying back to Williamsburg, where the burgesses were in session, he hastily wrote out his journal in twenty-four hours, and informed the Gov- ernor of the plans and projects of the French at Fort Le Boeuf. CHAPTER V PROLOGUE TO A FOREST TRAGEDY (f \l\ Y mc l mations >" wrote the young Washing- JVl ton to Colonel William Fitzhugh, "are strongly bent to arms " ; and, in a letter to Dinwid- die, of about the same date, remarks : " I have a con- stitution hardy enough to encounter and undergo the most severe trials, and I flatter myself, resolution to face what any man durst, as shall be proved when it comes to the test." The test was close at hand. The publication of Washington's Journal, now an exceedingly rare book, of almost priceless value, and its perusal by the governors of the neighbouring provinces, roused these sleepy commonwealths to the danger of a situation which threatened every mo- ment to becomfe more critical. The aggressions of the French, their advance down into the Ohio Val- ley La Belle Riviere as they called it had to be stopped. How could Virginia do it? Washington had described an admirable site for a fort, at the forks where the Monongahela and the Alleghany rush together to form the Ohio, in western Pennsyl- vania. A fort built here, he recommended, would constitute the very gateway of the West, the key to the situation, commanding and unlocking the vast 64 regions that no foot had yet trodden, except maybe that of the Jesuit, fur-trader, or Indian of the Miami or the Scioto. The French already held the other gateways to this Promised Land, at Fort Niagara, in western New York, and at Detroit and Green Bay; it was their evident intention to make the chain of exclusion complete, by establishing themselves at Fort Le Boeuf, or some stronghold not inferior in strength, that would shut the English out of this favoured territory, and confine them for ever to the ocean side of the continent, east of the Alleghanies. Governor Dinwiddie was quick to grasp the wis- dom of Washington's plan, and commissioned the immediate raising and equipment of two companies, of one hundred men each, one of which he was charged to command, while the other was entrusted to his lieutenant, William Trent (Benjamin Frank- lin's trading partner in west Pennsylvania). Trent was ordered to occupy and fortify the forks of the two rivers where Pittsburg now stands, and make the place impregnable against the roving bands of French, Canadians, and Indians, who had begun to infest the region, burying, wherever they went, leaden plates inscribed with the name and claims of his Most Christian Majesty, Louis XV, King of France. War had not yet openly broken out between the two great powers, for the ink of the signatories to the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle was scarcely dry on the vellums; but a feeling of intense suspicion and irritability began to show itself, and, in the absence 66 George Washington of explicit information in these distant parts, no man knew at any given time what had happened across the ocean, or how lion and lily stood to each other. A universal covetousness possessed men's minds ; greed of land, greed of gold, greed of every- thing within sight, held men's souls in its grip of steel; the boundless " desire of the eyes " and " pride of life " cast its spell over the eighteenth century and bewitched its wits. Treaties crumbled at a touch, friable as inciner- ated paper; obligations were flung overboard like old shoes, worn-out and worthless; the smile of the diplomat supplanted the oath of the sovereign; and the cabinets of kings became subterranean labora- tories of intrigue, where the sunlight never pene-. trated. The Watteau-ised civilisation of France, snickering and sneering behind its fans, had lost all vitality, and assumed the thousand affectations that smile at us out of the powder and paint and gal- lantries of the Pompadours, the sentimentalities of Rousseau, and a little later, the Sorrows of Werther. England was in the throes of that tedious Georgian age which almost drove men mad with its dulness, and ultimately provoked the cynic smile of Walpole and Hogarth. Pope had ceased to lash the dunces with his poetic scourge, while in Gray's soul were just beginning to gather symbolically enough the exquisite strains of his " Elegy " the tired, blase, worn-out, senile courts of Europe, disgusted with themselves and their Thirty Years' War over mat- ters no moie important than " The Rape of a Lock," Prologue to a Forest Tragedy 67 seemed to look wistfully over the Atlantic for relief, for a new " sensation," for something to shake them out of their stupor; and here, in this fresh, wild, unconventional, undiplomatic country, they found it, in a little while, in full measure. The formation of the Ohio Company, for the opening and exploitation of the regions between the Lakes and the Mississippi, was a pivotal point in the diplomacy of the West. A London charter granted the company five hundred thousand acres of land and immense immunities and privileges of various sorts, on condition that it would, within a certain period, settle one hundred immigrant fam- ilies within the region indicated, and thus fix the relations of the territory to Great Britain. This was, indeed, the incipiency of the " North- West Territory " claim, and was fraught with mighty consequences. If the French got there first and af- fixed their leaden plates, so to speak, to the face of this territory, warning others away as diplomatic or aggressive trespassers, this vast and opulent region would, treaty or no treaty, fall into the hands of the powerful family whose alliance covered all France, Spain, Southern Italy, Mexico, and South America. Though separated three thousand miles by the sinu- ous zigzag of river, lake, and mountain, Canada and Louisiana, the head and the heel of Latin posses- sions in America, would soon be joined, and the thin and scattered chain of settlements, which connected them, would rivet themselves together in links that could not be broken, and a Chinese Wall of exclu- 68 George Washington sion be built up to dyke the inundation of English immigration, irresistibly flowing down the Alle- ghany slopes. Lawrence and Augustine Washing- ton, brothers of George, were deeply interested in the Ohio Company; and here perhaps we catch a selfish motive family interest behind the glow of mere military ardour, actuating this young officer in his almost exuberant ambition to do and to dare, at this critical moment, for his native State. He makes curious entries in his day-book as he succes- sively climbs the grades of captain, major, lieu- tenant-colonel, and colonel, indirectly showing that it could not have been the pay that attracted him to this service : as captain in 1 754, 8 shillings per day ; as major till March 20, 1754, 10 shillings per day; as lieutenant-colonel to June i, 1754, 12 shillings, 6 pence; as colonel to September i, 1754, 15 shil- lings per day; and, in 1755, as colonel of the Virginia regiment, 30 shillings a day. These rapid promotions show incidentally, too, the worth and value of his services. In a year, he ad- vanced through the entire gamut of subaltern posi- tions, and when Braddock arrived in February, I 755> he would have been second only to the com- manding general, had not his self-respect and natural pride caused him to resign his position, on an intimation from the Governor that a new Vir- ginia regiment of 10 companies, with 100 men each, was to be formed, no one captain of which should out-rank another. FACSIMILES OF WASHINGTON'S AUTOGRAPHS. Prologue to a Forest Tragedy 69 Washington's instructions from Dinwiddie read as follows : " Having all things in readiness, you are to use all expedition in proceeding to the Fork of the Ohio with the men under command, and there you are to finish and complete in the best manner and as soon as you possibly can, the Fort which I expect is there already begun by the Ohio Company. You are to act on the defensive, but in case any attempts are made to ob- struct the works or interrupt our settlements by any persons whatsoever, you are to restrain all such of- fenders and in case of resistance to make prisoners of, or kill and destroy them." Washington, however, was not put in supreme command of even this little band of 200 or 300 Spartans, whose Leonidas was Colonel Joshua Fry, an Oxford graduate described by Dinwiddie as " a man of good sense and one of our best mathe- maticians," a man who had been associated with Peter Jefferson, father of the President, in the preparation of an esteemed map of Virginia, and who became, in 1754, colonel of the Virginia regi- ment. Washington was second in command. The expedition failed ; Colonel Fry died at Win- chester in May, 1754; Trent's command was sur- rounded and captured by Contrecceur, the French commander, at the Forks (then called Duquesne, in honour of the Marquis Duquesne, Governor-General of Canada). The supreme command devolved upon the young Virginian, now twenty-two years old. The frightful difficulties of the situation wan- yo George Washington dering around the woods almost without food and ammunition, through pathless forests, over track- less mountains, across rivers difficult to ford, hew- ing roads through the living trees, thick as an em- battled host on every side, the air filled with vague rumours of swarms of French and Indians, the ab- sence of authentic news of any kind in the dense, dumb, endless woods, about which both forces floundered as about some Hyrcanian Bog or Slough of Despond : these difficulties may be best gathered from Washington's and Dinwiddie's own words: " I set out with forty men before ten," reports Wash- ington, " and [it] was from that time till near sunrise before we reached the Indians' camp, having marched in [a] small path, through a heavy rain, and night as dark as it is possible to conceive. We were frequently tumbling one over another, and often so lost, that fifteen or twenty minutes' search would not find the path again. "When we came to the Half-King, I counselled with him, and got his assent to go hand-in-hand and strike the French. Accordingly, himself, Monacatoo- cha, and a few other Indians set out with us ; and when we came to the place where the tracks were, the Half- King sent two Indians to follow their tracks, and dis- cover their lodgement, which they did about half a mile from the road, in a very obscure place surrounded with rocks. I, thereupon, in conjunction with the Half- King and Monacatoocha, formed a disposition to at- tack them on all sides, which we accordingly did, and, after an engagement of about fifteen minutes, we killed ten, wounded one, and took twenty-one prisoners. Prologue to a Forest Tragedy 71 Among those that were killed was Monsieur Jumon- ville, the commander ; principal officers taken is Mon- sieur Drouillon and Mons'r La Force, who your Hon- our has often heard me speak of as a bold enterprising man, and a person of great subtlety and cunning. With these are two cadets. These officers pretend they were coming on an embassy; but the absurdity of this pretext is too glaring, as your Honour will see by the Instructions and Summons enclosed. These instructions were to reconnoitre the country, roads, creeks, etc., to Potomack, which they were about to do. These enterprising men were purposely choose out to get intelligence, which they were to send back by some brisk despatches, with mention of the day that they were to serve the summons ; which could be through no other view, than to get a sufficient reinforcement to fall upon us immediately after. This, with several other reasons, induced all the officers to believe firmly, that they were sent as spies, rather than any thing else, and has occasioned my sending them as prisoners, tho they expected or at least had some faint hope, of being continued as ambassadors. They, finding where we were encamped, instead of coming up in a publick manner, sought out one of the most secret retirements, fitter for a deserter than an ambassador to encamp in, stayed there two or 3 days, sent spies to reconnoitre our camp, as we are told, tho they deny it. Their whole body moved back near 2 miles, sent off two runners to acquaint Contrecoeur with our strength, and where we were encamped, etc. Now 36 men would almost have been a retinue for a princely ambassador, instead of a petit. Why did they, if their designs were open, stay so long within 5 miles of us, without delivering 72 George Washington his ambassy, or acquainting me with it? His waiting could be with no other design, than to get [a] detach- ment to enforce the summons, as soon as it was given. They had no occasion to send out spies, for the name of ambassador is sacred among all nations ; but it was by the track of these spies, that they were discovered, and we got intelligence of them. They would not have retired two miles back without delivering the sum- mons, and sought a skulking-place (which, to do them justice, was done with great judgment), but for some special reason. Besides, the summons is so insolent, and savours so much of gascoigny, that if two men only had come openly to deliver it, it was too great indul- gence to have sent them back. " The sense of the Half-King on this subject is, that they have bad hearts, and that this is a mere pretence ; they never designed to have come to us but in a hostile manner, and if we were so foolish as let them go again, he never would assist us in taking another of them. Besides, loosing La Force, I really think, would lead more to our disservice, than 50 other men, as he is a person whose active spirit leads him into all parleys, and brought him acquainted with all parts, add to this a perfect use of the Indian tongue, and ye influence with the Indians. " He ingenuously enough confessed, that, as soon as he saw the commission and instructions, that he be- lieved, and then said he expected some such tendency, tho he pretends to say he does not believe the com- mander had any other but a good design. In this en- gagement we had only one man killed and two or three wounded, among which was Lieutenant Waggener slightly, a most miraculous escape, as our right wing Prologue to a Forest Tragedy 73 was much exposed to their fire and received it all. The Half-King received your Honour's speech very kind, but desired me to inform you, that he could not leave his people at this time, thinking them in great danger. He is now gone to the Crossing for their families, to bring to our camp; and desired I would send some men and horses to assist them up, which I have accordingly done ; sent 30 men and upwards of twenty horses. He says, if your Honour has any thing to say, you may communicate by me, etc., and that, if you have a present for them, it may be kept to another occasion, after sending up some things for their immediate use. He has declared to [me he would] send these Frenchmen's scalps, with a hatchet, to all the nations of Indians in union with them, and did that very day give a hatchet, and a large belt of wampum, to a Delaware man to carry to Shingiss. He promised me to send down the river for all the Mingoes and Shawanese to our camp, where I expect him to-morrow with thirty or forty men, with their wives and children. To confirm what he has said here, he has sent your Honor a string of wampum. " As these runners went off to the fort on Sunday last, I shall expect every hour to be attacked, and by unequal numbers, which I must withstand if there are five to one ; or else I fear the consequence will be, that we shall lose the Indians, if we suffer ourselves to be drove back. I despatched an express immediately to Colonel Fry with this intelligence, desiring him to send reinforcements with all imaginable despatch. " Your Honor may depend I will not be surprised, let them come at what hour they will ; and this is as much as I can promise. But my best endeavours shall 74 George Washington not be wanting to deserve more. I doubt not, but if you hear I am beaten, but you will, at the same [time,] hear that we have done our duty, in fighting as long fas] there was a possibility of hope. "I have sent Lieutenant West, accompanied with Mr. Splitdorph and a guard of 20 men, to conduct the prisoners in, and I believe the officers have acquainted him what answer to return your Honour. Monsieur La Force and Monsieur Drouillon beg to be recom- mended to your Honor's notice, and I have prom- ised they will meet with all the favour due to impris- oned officers. I have show'd all the respect I could to them here, and have given some necessary cloathing, by which I have disfurnished myself ; for, having brought no more than two or three shirts from Will's Creek, that we might be light, I was ill provided to furnish them. I am, etc. " P. S. I have neither seen nor heard any particu- lar account of the Twigtwees since I came on these waters. We have already begun a palisadoed fort, and hope to have it up to-morrow. I must beg leave to acquaint your Honour, that Captain Vanbraam and Ensign Peyrouny has behaved extremely well since they came out, and I hope will meet with your Hon- or's favor." 1 This little skirmish was really the " cannon ball " whose discharge, as Voltaire said, " set Europe on fire," and was heard all over the world. The death of Jumonville led to Braddock, and Braddock led to Montcalm and Wolfe and the downfall of France in America in 1763, after seventy years of struggle. 'Ford, Writings of George Washington, vol. i, p. 82. Prologue to a Forest Tragedy 75 Says Ford : " Meantime the garrison at Duquesne had received additions, and Coulon de Villiers, a brother of Jumonville, had arrived from Montreal with a large force of Indians." It was at once de- termined to " avenge the murder of Jumonville " and to attack the English whether found on soil claimed by the French or on territory that was English beyond any doubt. The party, under the command of Villiers, reached Red Stone Creek on June 3Oth, and, on July 2d, the camp at Gist's so recently abandoned by Washington. From the In- dian scouts the position of the ^English was soon determined, and on the next day the two forces met. Washington had made a small trench for pro- tection, but it proved of little service, as his men were exposed to a cross-fire from the French and In- dians. What followed is best told in the language of Governor Dinwiddie: " Immediately they [the French] appeared in sight of our camp, and fired at our people at a great dis- tance, which did no harm. Our small forces were drawn up in good order to receive them before their entrenchments, but did not return their first fire, re- serving it till they came nigher. The enemy advanced irregularly within 60 yards of our forces, and then made a second discharge, and observing they did not intend to attack them in open field, they retired within their trenches, and reserved their fire, thinking from their numbers they would force their trenches, but finding they made no attempt of this kind, the Colonel gave orders to our people to fire on the enemy, which 76 George Washington they did with great briskness, and the officers declare this engagement continued from n o'clock till 8 o'clock at night, they being without shelter, rainy weather, and their trenches to the knee in water, where- as the French were sheltered all round our camp by trees ; from thence they galled our people all the time as above. About 8 o'clock at night the French called out to parley; our people mistrusting their sincerity, from their numbers and other advantages, refused. At last they desired [us] to send an officer that could speak French, and they gave their parole for his safe return to them, on which the Commander sent two offi- cers to whom they gave their proposals. . . . From our few numbers and our bad situation, they were glad to accept them ; otherways were determined to lose their lives rather than be taken prisoners. The next morning a party from the French came and took pos- session of our encampment, and our people marched off with colors flying and beat of drum ; but there ap- peared a fresh party of 100 Indians to join the French, who galled our people much, and with difficulty were restrained from attacking them; however, they pil- fered our people's baggage, and at the beginning of the engagement the French killed all the horses, cattle and live creatures they saw, so that our forces were obliged to carry off the wounded men on their backs to some distance from the place of the engagement, where they left them with a guard; the scarcity of provisions made them make quick marches to get among the inhabitants which was about 60 miles of bad road." l 'Ford, Writings of George Washington, vol. i, p. 119. Prologue to a Forest Tragedy 77 The capture of Colonel Washington and his little band by superior French forces at Fort Necessity, in midsummer of 1754, almost exactly a year before Braddock's defeat near the same place the following summer, so far from rousing the resentment of the burgesses, as one might have expected, drew from them the heartiest appreciation of Colonel Wash- ington's heroism in holding out so long, and a vote of thanks for his gallant conduct. In a famous postscript to a letter to his brother, describing Jumonville's death a few months before, Washington wrote: " P. S. I fortunately escaped without any wound, for the right wing, where I stood, was exposed to and received all the enemy's fire, and it was the part where the man was killed, and the rest wounded. I heard the bullets whistle, and, believe me, there is something charming in the sound." From the London Magazine, August, 1754. " In the express, which Major Washington de- spatched on his preceding little victory (the skirmish with Jumonville), he concluded with these words, '/ heard the bullets whistle, and, believe me, there is something charming in the sound.' On hearing of this the King said sensibly, 'He would not say so, if he had been used to hear many/ However, this brave braggart learned to blush for his rhodomontade, and, desiring to serve General Braddock as aid-de- camp, acquitted himself nobly." It was seldom, indeed, that the reticent Virginian broke into such rare hyperbole as this over the 78 George Washington charm of the whizzing bullet, whose music was to be henceforth the chief companion of his military and administrative life. The absurd charge brought by the French, that Washington had " assassi- nated " Jumonville in the skirmish preliminary to the surrender, was vigorously resented and abso- lutely refuted, by the Virginian in a detailed com- munication to the Governor. One good purpose this first humiliation of Wash- ington served: it rang through the colonies like an alarm-bell and aroused Pennsylvania, Maryland, New York, and Massachusetts to the need of im- mediate co-operation, combination, concentration of ways and means, and united resistance to the now overshadowing peril of the Western frontier. Boundary disputes were forgotten; lagging legisla- tures awoke to the extremity of the danger; con- tentions over rank and pay ceased for a moment; abundant means were voted by the people's repre- sentatives at Williamsburg, Philadelphia, Albany, and Boston, and aroused public sentiment flamed forth, like a sudden conflagration, in favour of quick and concentrated effort in the West. France, at this time, had the reputation of being as irresistible on land as England was resistless at sea ; the navy of the one, with its two hundred war- ships, might prance over the seas, but not over the measureless forests of America, while the 180,000 veterans of France, lineal descendants of the heroes who had served under Turenne and Vendome, Prince Eugene and Marshal Saxe, might well in- Prologue to a Forest Tragedy 79 spire a dread that had no bounds, should any con- siderable number of them board the hundred war- ships of the French navy, the " ocean greyhounds " of the day and leap over bounding waves from Brest and Rochefort to Quebec and Montreal. And this was precisely what happened. Eighteen French warships with three thousand regulars started out of these harbours and made for the mouth of the St. Lawrence as fast as wind and waves could carry them. Almost simultaneously, an English fleet under Vice-Admiral Boscawen set sail in pur- suit, to head off this formidable armada and destroy it off the coast of Newfoundland. Three French ships alone were captured, the rest escaping triumphantly out of the fog into the broad and hospitable jaws of the mighty river, which bore them easily up into the very heart of the continent. Even in those days of slow-travelling Rumour, it was not long before the bad news from Virginia reached the Downing Street of the day, and created consternation there. An officer who flits fitfully across the pages of Franklin's Autobiography and Horace Walpole's correspondence General Ed- ward Braddock attracted the attention of the Foreign Office, and was put in command of the 44th and 48th regiments, with orders to sail from Cork to Hampton Roads, without further loss of time. The regiments, accustomed to the ways of civilised European warfare with civilised foes, were loth enough to traverse the stormy seas in mid-winter, and march into the spectral forests of 8o George Washington the Alleghanies, to face the hideous Red Skins in their very dens. General Braddock himself left England with a heavy heart, weighed down with a strange presentiment. Braddock was a Perthshire Scotchman, a sin- gular mixture of rough honesty, insolence, igno- rance, personal valour, and brutality, a Miles Gloriosus, of the type graphically portrayed by the Roman comedian, yet touched with traits that served to enhance the profound pathos and paradox of his career. He smiled derisively when Franklin, " the sub- lime of common sense," told him of the dangers of Indian warfare, the possibilities of ambuscades, and the wiliness of this aboriginal foe who, more like a bird of the air or a beast of the fields, flitted, wraithlike, among his forests as one of its beloved children, and appeared and disappeared with the swiftness of a dream. The choleric Scotchman, unimaginative as he was, and unskilled in any form of warfare except that in which he had figured at Gibraltar, in the gilded manoeuvres of the Coldstream Guards whom he joined as a lad of 15, in 1710, or in dancing at- tendance on the mistress whom Walpole describes, pooh-poohed the statements of the wise American, then Postmaster-General of Pennsylvania, and set him down, doubtless, as a Quaker poltroon. He disclosed to Franklin a veritable milkmaid's dream, in the words of the sagacious autobiographer : Prologue to a Forest Tragedy 81 " In conversation with him one day, he was giving me some account of his intended progress. ' After taking Fort Duquesne,' said he, ' I am to proceed to Niagara; and, having taken that, to Frontenac, if the season will allow time, and I suppose it will; for Du- quesne can hardly detain me above three or four days ; and then I see nothing that can obstruct my march to Niagara.' " Having before revolved in my mind," continues Franklin, " the long line his army must make in their march by a very narrow road, to be cut for them through the woods and bushes, and also what I had read of a former defeat of fifteen hundred French, who invaded the Illinois country, I had conceived some doubts and some fears for the event of the campaign. But I ventured only to say, To be sure, Sir, if you arrive well before Duquesne, with these fine troops, so well-provided with artillery, the fort, though com- pletely fortified, and assisted with a very strong gar- rison, can probably make but a short resistance. The only danger I apprehend of obstruction to your march, is from the ambuscades of the Indians, who, by con- stant practice, are dexterous in laying and executing them ; and the slender line, near four miles long, which your army must make, may expose it to be attacked by surprise in its flanks, and to be cut like a thread into several pieces, which, from their distance, cannot come up in time to support each other. " He smiled at my ignorance, and replied, ' These savages may indeed be a formidable enemy to your raw American militia; but upon the King's regular and disciplined troops, Sir, it is impossible they should make any impression.' I was conscious of an impro- 82 George Washington priety in my disputing with a military man in matters of his profession, and said no more. " This General was, I think, a brave man, and might probably have made a figure as a good officer in some European war. But he had too much self-confidence, too high an opinion of the validity of regular troops, and too mean a one of both Americans and Indians. George Croghan, our Indian interpreter, joined him on his march with one hundred of those people, who might have been of great use to his army as guides and scouts, if he had treated them kindly; but he slighted and neglected them, and they gradually left him." * By February, 1755, " the cruel, crawling waves " had wafted the five hundred gallant Britishers from the soft, green pastures and shining Shannon of Ireland, to the beautiful silver expanse of Hamp- ton Roads and the Potomac, where their doom awaited them. All the elements of pity and terror, maintained by Aristotle to be the foundation of Tragedy, were here in abundance reckless courage, personal gallantry, unquestioning confidence, high and in- vincible purpose to quell for ever the Gallic preten- sions, and pluck the Bourbon lily up by the roots from places immemorially sacred to the Saxon rose. Dinwiddie was charmed with the General, his fellow-countryman, and with his show of force- fulness and resource. A council of five governors Sharpe of Maryland, Shirley of Massachusetts, 1 Sparks, Life of Franklin, vol. i, p. 189. Prologue to a Forest Tragedy 83 Delancy of New York, Morris of Pennsylvania, and Dinwiddie of Virginia, met at Alexandria to con- cert measures in harmony with the commander- in-chief, to crush the enemy in Acadia, at Crown Point, at Fort Niagara, and at Fort Duquesne. The wildest and least winsome of these opera- tions, those against Duquesne, fell naturally to the lot of Braddock, who now that they were about to begin, fell into a frame of furious petulance and impatience that- no proper preparations had been made for them by the colonial governments; no horses or waggons were to be had, food for the sol- diers was, so to speak, still growing in the green maize-fields around, or running wild in four-legged independence in the Virginia woods, while their six hundred pack-horses fed on the leaves of the trees. He abused all Americans, except the men of Massachusetts and of Virginia, and among the serenely stupid Friends, in their imperturbable ob- stinacy, found only Franklin to praise. And, but for Franklin's assistance in procuring a hundred and fifty waggons and their accoutrements from the stubborn and penurious Germans and Quakers of his province, he could not have moved a step. Here as elsewhere in this remarkable Revolution, Franklin and Washington emerge together, stand- ing in a blaze of light, even at this early period, as the right and left arm, the battle-axe and the cleaver of the Revolutionary movement. 84 George Washington There was twenty-six years difference in their ages; Franklin was the kind of man that always seems born old, between whom and common sense there was a pre-established harmony, who infallibly takes the right view of things from the start, and once taken, never deserts it for more plausible or more fallacious views. Beneath his smile of benig- nity lurked a world of shrewdness that had at its beck and call an epigrammatic felicity of phrase, an aptitude for coining itself into axioms that became proverbs, and proverbs that wrote themselves, almost automatically, into the head-lines of copy- books, to be endlessly repeated in the myriad school- boy handwritings of the time. He was his own Poor Richard's Almanac, incarnate. Massachusetts, quick, keen, humorous, full of dry wit and intel- lectual virility Hosea Biglow in nascendo tin- gled in every vein, shed humorous philosophy over every discussion, illuminated every conversation with point and epigram. Brilliantly original in scientific research, endlessly inventive in the appli- cation of his knowledge to the common conveniences of life, Franklin opened his wise old child's eye on things around him as naively at eighty as he did at twenty-six, while the wit and sense of the genera- tions before him seemed to concentrate themselves, and run down into a mould which was the incarna- tion of this new American man. How different was Washington, in whom Vir- ginia, with all its faults and nobilities, its high BENJAMIN FRANKLIN IN 1779. From an oil-painting in the possession of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Prologue to a Forest Tragedy 85 seriousness and lofty sense of duty, its martial ardour and generous, chivalrous ways, was as truly typified, as was the clever New England spirit clarified and concentrated in the printer-electrician, diplomat, and philosopher. CHAPTER VI IN THE TRAGICAL WOOD BRADDOCK had heard of the fame of this fine, young colonel, not only at Williamsburg, but more probably in London drawing-rooms, where his gallantry had often been the subject of conversa- tion. He was the one figure in all Virginia then, that the Scotch Commander could not afford to overlook, though he was surrounded by an imposing retinue of captains, of high officials like Sir John Sinclair and Sir Peter Halket, and functionaries, half military, half civilian, who hoped to share in the glories of this new invincible Armada. He was immediately and most courteously in- vited to serve on General Braddock's staff, and to form one of his military family. The letters that passed between them are equally creditable to both sides : " Williamsburg, 2 March, 1755. " SIR, '' The General having been informed that you ex- pressed some desire to make the campaign, but that you declined it upon some disagreeableness that you thought might arise from the regulation of command, has ordered me to acquaint you, that he will be very glad of your company in his family, by which all in- conveniences of that kind will be obviated. 86 In the Tragical Wood 87 " I shall think myself very happy to form an ac- quaintance with a person so universally esteemed, and shall use every opportunity of assuring you how much I am, Sir, your most obedient servant, " ROBERT ORME, Aid-de-camp." " To ROBERT ORME " Mount Vernon, 15 March, 1755. " SIR, " I was not favored with your polite letter, of the 2d inst, until yesterday; acquainting me with the no- tice his Excellency, General Braddock, is pleased to honor me with, by kindly inviting me to become one of his family the ensuing campaign. It is true, Sir, that I have, ever since I declined my late command, expressed an inclination to serve the ensuing cam- paign as a volunteer; and this inclination is not a little increased, since it is likely to be conducted by a gentleman of the General's experience. " But, besides this, and the laudable desire I may have to serve, with my best abilities, my King and country, I must be ingenuous enough to confess, that I am not a little biassed by selfish considerations. To explain, Sir, I wish earnestly to attain some knowl- edge in the military profession, and believing a more favorable opportunity cannot offer, than to serve under a gentleman of General Braddock's abilities and experience, it does, as you may reasonably sup- pose, not a little contribute to influence my choice. But, Sir, as I have taken the liberty to express my sentiments so freely, I shall beg your indulgence while I add, that the only bar, which can check me in the pursuit of this object, is the inconveniences that must 88 George Washington necessarily result from some proceedings which hap- pened a little before the General's arrival, and which, in some measure, had abated the ardor of my desires, and determined me to lead a life of retirement, into which I was just entering, at no small expense, when your favour was presented to me. " But, as I shall do myself the honor of waiting upon his Excellency, as soon as I hear of his arrival at Alexandria, (and would sooner, were I certain where to find him,) I shall decline saying any thing further on this head till then; begging you will be pleased to assure him, that I shall always retain a grateful sense of the favour with which he is pleased to hon- or me, and that I should have embraced this oppor- tunity of writing to him, had I not recently addressed a congratulatory letter to him on his safe arrival in this country. I flatter myself you will favour me in making a communication of these sentiments. " You do me a singular favour, in proposing an ac- quaintance. It cannot but be attended with the most flattering prospects of intimacy on my part, as you may already perceive, by the familiarity and freedom with which I now enter upon this correspondence; a freedom, which, even if it is disagreeable, you must ex- cuse, as I may lay the blame of it at your door, for encouraging me to throw off that restraint, which otherwise might have been more obvious in my de- portment on such an occasion. " The hope of shortly seeing you will be an excuse for my not adding more, than that I shall endeavour to approve myself worthy of your friendship, and that I beg to be esteemed your most obedient servant." x 'Ford, Writings of George Washington, vol. i, p. 141. In the Tragical Wood 89 And so events moved on. Merrily had the leap- ing transport-ships sped over the crisping waves, in the keen January blasts, out of the picturesque river that flowed from the heart of Ireland, full of proud, gallant men, never dreaming of defeat, while nat- urally dreading an insidious foe. Merrily had they come to anchor in the spacious stretches of Hampton Water, which receives, as in a mighty bowl, the ample flood of the historic James, the very cor cordium of the ancient commonwealth; and many a famous talk had the two Scotchmen Dinwiddie and Braddock together, over the sunny Madeira and fuming Virginia posset-bowl, confidentially, concerning the details of the approaching. campaign. March passed, however, April May ; the lovely Virginia spring came and went, mantled in bloom, filled with the exquisite scents and perfumes of a climate most perfectly mixed of heat and cold; the vivid vegetation of early summer had ripened into the matronly luxuriance of June, and still the army had not started from its place of assembly at Fort Cumberland, one hundred and forty miles from Fort Duquesne. In the primitive war-tactics of the day, no one, wrote Washington in a letter to Warner Lewis, knew anything of the strength of the French on the Ohio " On the Ohio " being an expression as void of definitiness then, as " on the Amazon," or " on the Congo " would be to us now. The country swept away to the West and South in one illimitable ocean of leaves and limbs, so dense that the stars almost ceased to twinkle through them go George Washington at night, and the bewildered wanderer might try in vain, with rude astrolabe or magnetic needle, to fix his bearings. Fifty-two miles beyond Fort Cumberland lay Fort Necessity, fatally familiar to Washington, as the scene of his capitulation to the French only a few months before. No news, only the vast and appalling noises of the forest, crossed the forty leagues of distance that lay between the Monongahela and Will's Creek, where Braddock, infuriated at the delays and chafing like a chained lion, lay snorting with impatience; behind him, fair Virginia, wreathed in the peaceful smoke of endless calumet-pipes encircling the generous dinner-tables, full of fruits and fragrance and one hundred and fifty years of civilisation; before him, the savage wood that stretched apparently to infinity, peopled with dark forms and glittering eyes that watched every movement with the cunning and intensity of the hawk, the wolf, and the bear from which, half bird, half beast, they traced their fantastic descent. About June the gth they started, cleaving their way into the forest with three hundred axes, which hacked furiously at the tough stems of oak and chestnut, pine, spruce, and maple, levelling a road twelve feet wide, through and over underbrush for the passage of parks of artillery, heavy waggons, pack-horses, stores, ammunition, accoutrements, and hospital provisions, vindictively attacking tree- trunks, and disrupting the beautiful architecture of the forest as they hewed into its living aisles, and cleared a sinuous course through its echoing arches. In the Tragical Wood 91 Travellers through this lovely region of the Union, to-day, still admire the magnificent remnants of wood and forest that join Pittsburg to Cumberland, and that still exist, like the pages of some splendid vellum from which vandals have ruthlessly torn the finest illustrations. Bitterly did Washington, a few months later, complain of the slowness of this march. " In four days," he remarks, " we moved only twelve miles;" in ten days they had hewn their way to Little Meadows, thirty miles from the starting point and only one fourth of the toilsome way to Duquesne. Parching midsummer was at hand when the snows of January (the month of their departure from Cork) had melted into a mere reminiscence. A little before, the mountains of this Alleghany region had been white with the wondrous, wild rho- dodendron which cleaves the crevices of every rock, and covers their nakedness with a mantle of floral loveliness, vying with the blush-pink masses of the mountain-laurel, to make every cool covert of these woods, not carved into altars of emerald by moss and fern, beautiful as the Vale of Tempe. Strategically, the critics now see that all this hew- ing and ploughing through the cruel wilderness was a monstrous blunder: Braddock, as Franklin ad- vised, should have landed at Philadelphia, advanced westward on Duquesne through the thickly-peopled, fertile country of Pennsylvania, where the roads were good and provisions abundant, and finished his campaign triumphantly in six easy weeks. 92 George Washington Four whole months and half of another actually elapsed, however, before this dramatic game of hide-and-seek in the forest came to an end. An eminent historian describes the scene as fol- lows: "Thus, foot by foot, they advanced into the waste of lonely mountains that divided the streams flowing to the Atlantic from those flowing to the Gulf of Mexico, a realm of forests ancient as the world. The road was but twelve feet wide, and the line of march often extended four miles. It was like a thin, long, party-coloured snake, red, blue, and brown, trailing slowly through the depth of leaves, creeping round inaccessible heights, crawling over ridges, mov- ing always in dampness and shadow, by rivulets and waterfalls, crags and chasms, gorges and shaggy steeps. In glimpses only, through jagged boughs and flickering leaves, did this wild primeval world reveal itself, with its dark green mountains, flecked with the morning mist, and its distant summits pencilled in dreamy blue. The army passed the main Alleghany, Meadow Mountain, and Great Savage Mountain, and traversed the funereal pine-forest, afterwards called the Shades of Death. No attempt was made to inter- rupt their march, though the commandant of Fort Duquesne had sent out parties for that purpose." x In spite of the statement of this eminent writer, that Braddock did not rush headlong into an ambus- cade, we are forced to take Washington's own words, in his official report to Dinwiddie, that he did. Says Parkman: 1 Parkman, Montcalm and Wolfe, vol. i, p. 205. In the Tragical Wood 93 " Braddock has been charged with marching blindly into an ambuscade; but it was not so. There was no ambuscade; and had there been one, he would have found it. It is true that he did not reconnoitre the woods very far in advance of the head of the column ; yet, with this exception, he made elaborate dispositions to prevent surprise. Several guides, with six Vir- ginian light horsemen, led the way. Then, a musket- shot behind, came the vanguard ; then three hundred soldiers under Gage ; then a large body of axe-men, under Sir John Sinclair, to open the road ; then two cannon with tumbrils and tool-waggons ; and lastly the rear-guard, closing the line, while flanking-par- ties ranged the woods on both sides. This was the advance-column. The main body followed with little or no interval. The artillery and waggons moved along the road, and the troops filed through the woods close on either hand. Numerous flanking-parties were thrown out a hundred yards and more to right and left; while, in the space between them and the march- ing column, the pack horses and cattle, with their drivers, made their way painfully among the trees and thickets ; since, had they been allowed to follow the road, the line of march would have been too long for mutual support. A body of regulars and provin- cials brought up the rear." * Washington had the best means of knowing what actually happened, being very near to Braddock, and he says explicitly to the Governor : "When we came to the place [Frazier's, 7 miles 1 Parkman, Montcalm and Wolfe, vol. i, p. 214. Q4 George Washington from Duquesne], we were attacked (very unexpected- ly) by about 300 French and Indians." In the number alone he was mistaken. There were 900 French, Canadians, Indians, and half-breeds Braddock had started with 2200 men, among whom were nine companies of Virginians, of fifty or more men each, whose blue uniforms and provincial ways excited the derision of the scarlet-coated regulars, fresh from their European laurels. The number had somehow dwindled to 1300 (according to Wash- ington), and these, plunging ignorantly into the all-swallowing wilderness, blundered recklessly on without ever dreaming of sending out scouts or skir- mishers. The Virginians were fully aware of the dangers of the movement, for one hundred and fifty years of Indian warfare had accustomed them to the subtlety of this almost immaterial foe, who appeared and disappeared as by the wand of an en- chanter, taught from immemorial ages in the ways of the woods, finding in every spreading tree a for- tress, every tree-trunk a half-human, ever sympa- thising friend, using the prodigious fertility of the forest as their commissariat, sharpened in every sense to an almost superhuman acuteness of sight and hearing. The Redmen were near enough to the animal kingdom to partake of its finest qualities of sense, qualities acquired by thousands of years of friction and contact with the all-comprehending Mother Nature around, while their inclusion in the kingdom of men had, through the same thousands In the Tragical Wood 95 of years, wrought out a wondrous brightness of intellect, and intelligence of a kind so self -developed and original as to resemble that of elves and goblins, swarming out of the bowels of the earth, with un- natural knowledge. Braddock's mistreatment of these apparently sim- ple people, the Iroquois, the most highly gifted of all American Indians, " he treated us like dogs," as explained one of their number, wrought his ruin. The reverie of the undying forest was now broken by a deathless scene. " I cannot describe the horrors of that scene," wrote Lieutenant Leslie of the 44th, three weeks later, " no pen could do it. The yell of the Indians is fresh on my ear, and the terrific sound will haunt me to the hour of my dissolution." This yell came from 900 throats, multiplied to 9000 or perhaps 90,000, by the sinister reverbera- tion of the midsummer wildwood, whose gruesome recesses acted as sounding-boards, and shot forth a hundred variations of the harsh and thunderous nymph Echo, whose silent realm had been invaded. It seemed, indeed, as if the wrath of the great god Pan himself had been roused to fury, and all the powers of the raging underworld of myth and fairy had suddenly been let loose, to swarm upward in invisible wrath and might in defence of their forest children. The trees turned to pillars of flame; the depths of the sombre Alleghanies became livid with smoke. A thousand gallant Englishmen and Virginians 96 George Washington lay like stricken deer, pierced with bullets, toma- hawked, scalped, in every attitude that writhing agony could take, blanched, bloody, lifeless, strewn for miles in scarlet horror along the road which had been the magnet of their destruction, a road which for them had led straight into the jaws of death. Only twenty-three out of eighty-six officers escaped a scene which, in the energy of its mad despair, might beggar the powers of Edgar Allan Poe to describe in another " Masque of the Red Death." Platoon shot down platoon in the blind frenzy of panic, and the woods sang with the whirl- wind of flying bullets that murdered, indiscrimi- nately, friend and foe. Braddock, like Stonewall Jackson, was thought by some to have been shot by one of his own men. A wild rush backward through the fatal woods was made by the three hundred or four hundred survivors, while Washington, ill and weakened by disease, almost heart-broken in mind, lingered long enough to bury the misguided Brad- dock in the road, where fugitive feet and flying waggons obliterated every trace of the burial-place from the sight of the vindictive savages. But the craven cowards were pursued by phantom fears. No Indian followed. Impelled by resistless terror, the remnant fled on and on, the wretched Dunbar at their head, and hardly stopped till they had reached Philadelphia; while Franklin relates, in a most touching passage, how the dying Brad- dock praised the brave Virginians almost with his In the Tragical Wood 97 last breath, and expired murmuring : " The next time we shall know how to meet them." Ages before, at the very beginning of the Chris- tian era, this same most memorable tragedy had been enacted on German soil, with Roman soldiers and imperial eagles and the grandiose might of the City of the Seven Hills behind it, and all the antique imperial world as spectators. A grey-haired Caesar, whose exquisite lineaments have come down in the chiselled beauty of the Young Augustus, stood in his Roman palace and, gazing wistfully towards Germany, wrung his hands and cried : " O Varus, Varus, give me back my legions ! " For the legionaries of Rome, advancing incau- tiously into the awful solitudes of the Teutoburger Forest, in the wildwoods of prehistoric Germany, were surrounded and annihilated by Arminius, the champion of the wild, young, fresh " Germany " that had grown up, like the valiant Iroquois, almost unnoticed in the dense forests of Westphalia, and burst down on the Romans with the fury of a whirl- wind. " O Varus, Varus, give me back my legions ! " " The sea washes away all human ills," sang Euripides, pathetically, ages ago, as he remembered what it had obliterated for Hellas. The Forest is also a Sea beneath which, not the navies but the armies of the world have sunk, en- tombed obliterated forgotten. Out of the agony of that time, four letters of 98 George Washington Washington have reached us, like leaves of that fateful wood blown to us by the feeble breath of the dying. They give us the most authentic, first- hand story of the " Battle of the Monongahela " as he calls it, and deserve quoting in their fulness : To GOVERNOR DINWIDDIE "Fort Cumberland, 18 July, 1755. " HONBL. SIR, "As I am favored with an opportunity, I should think myself inexcusable was I to omit giving you some account of our late Engagement with the French on the Monongahela, the Qth instant. " We continued our march from Fort Cumberland to Frazier's (which is within 7 miles of Duquesne) without meeting any extraordinary event, having only a straggler or two picked up by the French Indians. When we came to this place, we were attacked (very unexpectedly) by about three hundred French and Indians. Our numbers consisted of about Thirteen hundred well armed men, chiefly Regulars, who were immediately struck with such an inconceivable panick, that nothing but confusion and disobedience of orders prevailed among them. The officers, in general, be- haved with incomparable bravery, for which they greatly suffered, there being near 60 killed and wounded a large proportion, out of the number we had! " The Virginia companies behaved like men and died like soldiers ; for I believe out of three companies that were on the ground that day scarce thirty were left alive. Capt. Peyroney and all his officers, down to a corporal, were killed; Captn. Poison had almost In the Tragical Wood 99 as hard a fate, for only one of his escaped. In short, the dastardly behaviour of the Regular troops (so- called) exposed those who were inclined to do their duty to almost certain death ; and, at length, in despite of every effort to the contrary, broke and ran as sheep before hounds, leaving the artillery, ammunition, pro- visions, baggage, and, in short, everything a prey to the enemy. And when we endeavoured to rally them, in hopes of regaining the ground and what we had left upon it, it was with as little success as if we had attempted to have stopped the wild bears of the moun- tains, or rivulets with our feet; for they would break by, in despite of every effort that could be made to prevent it. ' The General was wounded in the shoulder and breast, of which he died three days after; his two aids-de-camp were both wounded, but are in a fair way of recovery ; Colo. Burton and Sir John St. Clair are also wounded, and I hope will get over it; Sir Peter Halket, with many other brave officers, were killed in the field. It is supposed, that we had three hundred or more killed ; about that number we brought off wounded, and it is conjectured (I believe with much truth) that two thirds of both received their shot from our own cowardly Regulars, who gathered themselves into a body, contrary to orders, ten or twelve deep, would then level, fire and shoot down the men before them. " I tremble at the consequences that this defeat may have upon our back settlers, who, I suppose, will all leave their habitations unless there are proper meas- ures taken for their security. " Colo. Dunbar, who commands at present, intends, ioo George Washington as soon as his men are recruited at this place, to con- tinue his march to Philadelphia for winter quarters: consequently there will be no men left here, unless it is the shattered remains of the Virginia troops, who are totally inadequate to the protection of the fron- tiers." 1 "To JOHN A. WASHINGTON " Fort Cumberland, 18 July, 1755. " DEAR BROTHER, "As I have heard, since my arrival at this place, a circumstantial account of my death and dying speech, I take this early opportunity of contradicting the first, and of assuring you, that I have not as yet composed the latter. But, by the all-powerful dispensations of Providence, I have been protected beyond all human probability and expectation ; for I had four bullets through my coat, and two horses shot under me, yet escaped unhurt, altho' death was levelling my com- panions on every side of me! " We have been most scandalously beaten by a trifling body of men, but fatigue and want of time will prevent me from giving you any of the details, until I have the happiness of seeing you at Mount Vernon, which I now most ardently wish for, since we are drove in thus far. A weak and feeble state of health obliges me to halt here for two or three days, to recover a little strength, that I may thereby be enabled to proceed homewards with more ease. You may expect to see me there on Saturday or Sun- day se'-night, which is as soon as I can well be down, as I shall take my Bullskin Plantations in my way. - ''Ford, Writings of George Washington, vol. i, p. 173 In the Tragical Wood 101 Pray give my compliments to all my friends. I am, dear Jack, your most affectionate brother." " To ROBERT JACKSON " Mount Vernon, 2 August, 1755. " DEAR SIR, " I must acknowledge you had great reason to be terrified with the first accounts, that were given of our unhappy defeat; and, I must own, I was not a little surprised to find, that Governor Innes was the means of alarming the country with a report so ex- traordinary, without having better confirmation of the truth, than the story of an affrighted wagoner! "It is true, we have been beaten, shamefully beaten, by a handful of men, who only intended to molest and disturb our march. Victory was their smallest expec- tation. But see the wondrous works of Providence, the uncertainty of human things! We, but a few mo- ments before, believed our numbers almost equal to the Canadian force; they, only expected to annoy us. Yet, contrary to all expectation and human probabil- ity, and even to the common course of things, we were totally defeated, sustained the loss of every thing, which they have got, are enriched by it, and accommo- dated by them. This, as you observe, must be an affecting story to the colony, and will, no doubt, license the tongues of people to censure those, whom they think most blamable; which, by the by, often falls very wrongfully. I join very heartily with you in believing, that when this story comes to be related in future annals, it will meet with unbelief and indigna- tion, for had I not been witness to the fact on that fatal day, I should scarce have given credit to it even now. IO2 George Washing-ton " Whenever it suits you to come into Fairfax, I hope you will make your home at Mount Vernon. Please to give my compliments to all inquiring friends. I assure you, nothing could have added more to the satisfaction of my safe return, than hearing of the friendly concern that has been expressed on my sup- posed death. I am, etc." GENERAL ISRAEL PUTNAM. From the painting by H. I. Thompson, in the State House, Hartford, Conn. CHAPTER VII THE WIDOW CUSTIS " She loved me for the dangers I had pass'd ; And I loved her, that she did pity them. This only is the witchcraft I have used ; Here comes the lady, let her witness it." OTHELLO. NEVER had History indeed rung down the cur- tain on a more dismal tragedy, yet no histo- rian has failed to plant a requiem willow over the grave of the unfortunate Braddock. For a moment he appears jauntily on the edge of the Eastern horizon, in January, 1755, leaps lightly over the peccant Atlantic, as if scorning to touch it with loitering feet, gathers a brief and brilliant haze of glory about himself in garrulous Virginia, as he boastfully plans his campaign, stalks up and down the narrow colonial stage like a scarlet flamingo, then starts into the inexorable woods, never to return. Oblivion, the tireless swallower of mush- room reputations, has tried in vain to swallow his; it sticks in the throat of Time, a gigantic morsel of folly that cannot be swallowed. In this prelude to his life's work, Washington suffered a second shock of humiliation, which was to clothe his nerves in steel against all possible disaster, and invest him, as the " spirit-protected 103 104 George Washington man," in a breastplate which no after-misfortune could penetrate. Franklin sagaciously remarked, that Braddock's defeat dealt a deadly blow at the reputations of the British regulars for invincible prowess, and opened the eyes of the Americans to the weakness of the contention that they were invincible. The spot where Siegfried was vulnerable had been discovered! Meanwhile, Washington had strong and appre- ciative friends among the burgesses, who soon un- derstood the situation, and secured for him the ap- pointment of colonel of the sixteen new companies to be raised, together with a grant of 40,000 for their maintenance, and a purse of remuneration for each officer and private in the late unfortunate ex- pedition. He himself received 300. Recruiting offices were opened at Fredericksburg, Alexandria, and Winchester, and the momentary stupor and amazement of the colony began to clear away. It would be a matter of almost infinite, yet triv- ial and distressing, detail, to follow Washington in his voluminous correspondence with Governor Dinwiddie, Speaker Robinson, and Lord Loudon during the next two or three years. The endless small vexations of frontier life drunkenness of officers, desertions of troops, insufficiency of pay and of ammunition, passionate appeals to the Gov- ernor and burgesses for help, for redress of griev- ances, for even bread and meat and powder fill these letters, which are written with a sustained The Widow Custis 105 clearness, cogency, and vigour, that reflect high credit on Washington as a master of direct and simple English. At this time, he had no secretary: all these letters are presumably autographic, and all show a circumstantial mastery of every detail of the service. He was, truly, fast becoming profi- cient in that forest - and - frontier university, in which other great Americans were to rival or to follow him General Israel Putnam, Sir William Johnson, General Sam Houston, Lewis, Clark, Daniel Morgan, and a hundred frontier-bred heroes of the border " in the brave old days of '76." These letters read with a fluency and power, in which the heart-throbs of the young commander now twenty- four are still distinguishable. In May, 1756, war was formally declared against France, whose people Washington, in one of these letters for once casting off his habitual reserve denounces as " barbarians." Their barbarous scalping-parties turned the beautiful Vale of the Shenandoah, the upper reaches of the Potomac, the luxuriant mountains of western Pennsylvania, and the fern- and laurel-clad gorges of the Alleghanies into a pandemonium of blood, starvation, and murder. One. decisive blow struck at Fort Du- quesne, now nearly deserted, in consequence of the withdrawal of its garrison for the defence of Fort Niagara and Crown Point, would have brought the frightful turmoil to an end. But a civilian agent of the Crown one Atkin had been put over Washington's head. Lord Loudon preferred 106 George Washington to direct operations against the Indians from Phil- adelphia and New York, and things in Virginia were left abundantly to themselves. The paper on which Washington writes fairly burns with his supplications, prayers, entreaties, almost tears, to Dinwiddie for help, for substantial recognition of the services of the colonial militia, for the " tools " to erect the chain of forts, now contemplated, along a frontier three hundred and fifty miles in length, almost daily punctuated with funeral pyres, murdering parties, conflagrations, pillaging, cruelties and tortures of every description. Even at this early period, Washington's abhor- rence of the common military vices of profanity and gambling crops out in letters like the following : " This extract from his Orderly Book, issued in general orders by the Commander two days after he reached Fort Cumberland, will show that he enforced rigid rules of discipline : " Col. Washington has observed, that the men of his regiment are very profane and reprobate. He takes this opportunity of informing them of his great displeasure at such practices, and assures them, if they do not leave them off, they shall be severely pun- ished. The officers are desired, if they hear any man swear, or make use of an oath or execration, to order the offender twenty-five lashes immediately, without a court-martial. For the second offence, they will be more severely punished." * 1 Ford, Writings of George Washington, vol. i, p. 296, note. The Widow Custis 107 " To THE SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE OF BURGESSES " December, 1756. " DEAR SIR, " It gave me infinite concern to hear by several let- ters, that the Assembly are incensed against the Vir- ginia Regiment; and think they have cause to accuse the officers of all inordinate vices ; but more espe- cially of drunkenness and profanity ! How far any one individual may have subjected himself to such re- flections, I will not pretend to determine, but this I am certain of ; and can with the highest safety call my conscience, my God! and (what I suppose will still be a more demonstrable proof, at least in the eye of the World) the Orders and Instructions which I have given, to evince the purity of my own intentions and to show on the one hand, that my incessant endeav- ours have been directed to discountenance Gaming, drinking, swearing, and other vices, with which all camps too much abound: while on the other, I have used every expedient to inspire a laudable emulation in the officers, and an unerring exercise of Duty in the Soldiers. How far I may have mistaken the means to attain so salutary an end behooves not me to determine : But this I presume to say, that a man's intentions should be allowed in some respects to plead for his actions. I have been more explicit Sir, on this head than I otherwise shou'd, because I find that my own character must of necessity be involved in the general censure, for which reason I can not help observing, that if the country think they have cause to condemn my conduct, and have a person in view that will act; that he may do. But who will endeav- our to act more for her Interests than I have done? io8 George Washington It will give me the greatest pleasure to resign a com- mand which I solemnly declare I accepted against my will." x Out of the passion and terror of this broken time the following letter glows with a sullen fire : " To GOVERNOR DINWIDDIE "Winchester, 22 April, 1756. " HONBLE. SIR, "This encloses several letters, and the minutes of a council of war, which was held upon the receipt of them. Your Honour may see to what unhappy straits the distressed inhabitants as well as I, am reduced. I am too little acquainted, Sir, with pathetic language, to attempt a description of the people's distresses, though I have a generous soul, sensible of wrongs, and swelling for redress. But what can I do? If bleeding, dying! would glut their insatiate revenge, I would be a willing offering to savage fury, and die by inches to save a people ! I see their situation, know their danger, and participate their sufferings, without having it in my power to give them further relief, than uncertain promises. In short, I see inevitable destruction in so clear a light, that, unless vigorous measures are taken by the Assembly, and speedy as- sistance sent from below, the poor inhabitants that are now in forts, must unavoidably fall, while the remainder of the country are flying before the barba- rous foe. In fine, the melancholy situation of the people, the little prospect of assistance, the gross and scandalous abuses cast upon the officers in general, J Ford, Writings of George Washington, vol. i, pp. 406-407. The Widow Custis 109 which is reflecting upon me in particular, for suffer- ing misconducts of such extraordinary kinds, and the distant prospects, if any, that I can see, of gaining honor and reputation in the service, are motives which cause me to lament the hour, that gave me a com- mission, and would induce me, at any other time than this of imminent danger, to resign without one hesi- tating moment, a command, which I never expect to reap either honor or benefit from; but, on the con- trary, have almost an absolute certainty of incurring displeasure below, while the murder of poor innocent babes and helpless families may be laid to my account here! " The supplicating tears of the women, and moving petitions from the men, melt me into such deadly sorrow, that I solemnly declare, if I know my own mind, I could offer myself a willing sacrifice to the butchering enemy, provided that would contribute to the people's ease." * " The melancholy condition of our distressed frontier," is the burden of these mid-century letters, when Virginia on the west was girdled with fire, " the woods alive with Indians " writes the Colonel, " prowling like wolves " ; " Indians alone are a match for Indians " ; 500 of them enlisted by the Americans would be equal to 5000 regulars. The devilish atrocities of the hour forced the Virginia Assembly to offer from fifteen to thirty pounds for each tawny scalp sent in to a frontier camp. Human foxes, squirrels, panthers, these wood- land creatures, to parallel whom, one is thrown upon 1 Ford, Writings of George Washington, vol. i, p. 248. iio George Washington the antique myth- world of Greece, had been sharp- ened by immemorial familiarity with the woods into almost superhuman intelligence, endowed with the profoundest knowledge of woodcraft, dusky Mer- curys of the forest with winged feet, web-footed when it came to crossing water, protectively coloured among the indistinguishable shades of glade and gorge, the crowning presence in a vast sylvan re- gion, boundless as the continent itself, in which they seemed to occupy the apex of a fantastic animal and vegetable world, and to rule over it supremely, by reason both of first possession and instinctive cunning. Fanciful as Undine, in the way in which they appeared and disappeared in the ocean of leaves, their combinations and dissolutions, alliances and disintegrations, dependent upon a changeful world of symbolisms, in which belts of wampum and calumets of peace, scalps and hatchets played a strange and solemn part, were hardly more binding than alliances of wasps, or clouds of birds, as they appear to us in the comedies of Aristophanes; and yet, so formidable were they even in their momen- tary harmonies, that the literature of early America is fairly resonant with their presence, and the white man was forced to confess that, here in the new world, he had come upon a new species, self-devel- oped, self -poised, owing little to the white man, bor- rowing less from him except his vices, armies of " brownies " who rose from their subterranean re- cesses without warning, inflicted a deadly blow, and The Widow Custis 1 1 1 then melted like the mist into the dark and danger- ous mountains. Washington clearly understood the nature of these antagonists, and his letters are full of refer- ences to their wily and treacherous ways. The Indians on their side faithfully appreciated his insight, by dubbing him in their tongue, " Cono- tocarius," a " Destroyer of Cities," a name which had been given in earlier times to his ancestor, Colonel John Washington of the Northern Neck. " Washington," writes Colonel Fairfax at this time, " is the toast of every table " ; and Dinwiddie, corresponding with General Abercrombie in Eng- land, went into particulars : " As we are told the Earl of Loudon is to raise three regiments on this continent, on the British es- tablishment, I dearn't venture to trouble him imme- diately on his arrival with any recommendations; but, good Sir, give me leave to pray your interest with his Lordship in favor of Colonel George Washington, who, I will venture to say, is a very deserving gentle- man, and has from the beginning commanded the forces of this dominion. General Braddock had so high an esteem for his merit, that he made him one of his aid-de-camps, and, if he had survived, I believe he would have provided handsomely for him in the regulars. He is a person much beloved here, and he has gone through many hardships in the service, and I really think he has great merit, and believe he can raise more men here, than any one present that I know. If his Lordship will be so kind as to promote 1 1 2 George Washington him in the British establishment, I think he will answer my recommendation." 1 About the same time, Dinwiddie sent an interest- ing census of Virginia to the London Board of Trade, in which he stated that the population was about 300,000, including 120,000 blacks. Of this number, 35,000 were subject to militia duty, or a payment of ten pounds exemption tax; and yet so great was the dearth of men, or the antagonism to frontier service, that the one cry of Washington's letters now, piercing through his other cries for meat, money, bread, powder, is " men," " men," " men." In January, 1758, to the relief of all apparently, Dinwiddie departed for London, pursued by the fol- lowing benediction of Speaker Robinson in a private letter to Washington : " We have not yet heard who is to succeed him [Din- widdie]. God grant it may be somebody better ac- quainted with the unhappy business we have in hand, and who, by his conduct and counsel, may dispel the cloud now hanging over this distressed country. Till that event, I beg, my dear friend, that you will bear, so far as a man of honor ought, the discouragements and slights you have too often met with, and continue to serve your country, as I am convinced you have always hitherto done, in the best manner you can with the small assistance afforded you." 2 1 Ford, Writings of George Washington, vol. i, p. 284, note. 3 Ibid., p. 510, note. The Widow Custis 113 Two years and a half had now passed since that mournful midsummer of 1755, when Braddock, with his 1300 noble fellows, had started for that " hole of barbarians," Fort Duquesne, as Washing- ton called it, and, in the funereal wood, still lay, doubtless, relics of the 1000 carcases barbarously left there, after Washington had personally read the majestic burial service of the Book of Common Prayer over his dead chief; and still things wagged on in that endless, beguiling, inconsequent, colonial way, which never seemed to bring anything to an end, never ended in real peace or real war, a skir- mishing, scared, witless, toothless time, without teeth or talons to clutch any policy, hot or cold, absolutely inane in its linked listlessness and futility long drawn out. Washington, endowed originally with a splendid constitution, inured to hardships by innumerable fatigues and privations, nerve-proof against criti- cism, insinuation, even the scribbling fluency of Dinwiddie, at last unnerved, Washington fell dan- gerously ill of dysentery and camp-fever, the seeds of which had sullenly lurked in his system since he had been borne in a litter, just before Braddock's defeat. For four months he hung between life and death at Mount Vernon, whither he had gone for con- valescence; and here, or not far from here, in a little while, he was to experience one of those great changes in fortune which come to men of his class and character only once in a lifetime. ii4 George Washington All of a sudden out of the gloom and anguish of these perturbed times, without previous warning, falls the following note, as delicately thrilling in its way as one of those musical notes that flow spon- taneously from the throat of Spring : "To MRS. MARTHA CUSTIS " July 20, 1758. " We have begun our march for the Ohio. A courier is starting for Williamsburg, and I embrace the opportunity to send a few words to one whose life is now inseparable from mine. Since that happy hour when we made our pledges to each other, my thoughts have been continually going to you as another Self. That an all-powerful Providence may keep us both in safety is the prayer of your ever faith- ful and affectionate friend." * The strong, controlled passion of a soul which strove in vain to spend itself on men and affairs, now, at twenty-six, turned its ardour towards a lovely woman who was, like the gallant colonel him- self, a " consummate flower " of the Virginia planter commonwealth. One cannot imagine this stately young warrior selecting for himself, out of that wealth of jewelled women around him, one ra- diantly beautiful, or markedly intellectual, or pun- gent, airy, witty a Ninon, a Lady Mary, or a De Stael but simply a lovely, Virginia woman of the eighteenth century, rich in the possession of all the homelike and housewifely charms, rich in the heart 'Ford, Writings of George Washington, vol. ii, p. 53. The Widow Custis 115 and soul, rather than in the intellect and understand- ing, an ideal of the gentler womanhood that pre- ceded the era of the Amazon, and consecrated itself altogether to the sacred offices of friendship. Of such was Martha Dandridge. She was a perfect (or, if you will, an imperfect) type of that matronly Virginian woman, of whom suggestive images hung in every ripening fruit- orchard of the commonwealth ; there was no savour of the nymph or the milkmaid, of the Lady Godiva, or of the impassioned Chimene species about her. She had grown up in that old Virginia, gracious, charming, high-spirited, without the " grand air " of the Evelyn Byrds, or the ladies that cast ineffable glances from the canvases of Lely or Sir Godfrey, yet mistress of far more than merely this: faithful to the daily task, tenacious as De Sevigne to a friendship once formed, it is perhaps fortunate that she, of all the scribbling women then living, scrib- bled least of what lay on her breast, and has floated on down to us a benign presence, a perfume, a per- fect memory, rather than an impassioned Heloise, over whom generations have wept. Just the wife for Washington, one cannot help thinking, for the strenuous young man of action, the hero absorbed by a thousand struggles, the dreamer of a thousand dreams for King and commonwealth, the incarna- tion of an energy that soon realised itself on a hun- dred fields, yet needed nothing so much as a beloved companion of his heart to share his glories and his ii6 George Washington dangers, his secret thoughts and his most sacred confidences. The union of George and Martha Washington was, indeed, like that marriage of perfect words to noble music, so melodiously sung by the laureate of a later generation. She was a sweet, sane, whole-souled, wholesome Virginia lady, skilled in the gracious household accomplishments of the time, fond of all the inno- cent gaieties and amusements fashionable in the eighteenth century, yet a slave to none, wise in the counsels of the household, conscious of her lofty position, yet never presuming upon it, an early riser, an indefatigable tricoteuse when the needs of the Revolutionary soldiers became known, no saint or St. Cecilia of the harpsichord, but a simple, loving, high-bred, faithful woman, who in her span of seventy-one years lived to be twice a widow. She was from May to February older than Washington, while Colonel Daniel Parke Custis, her first hus- band, was twenty years older than herself. Four children Martha, Daniel, John Parke, and a girl dying in infancy were the fruit of the Custis union, while, in an oft quoted epigram, " Providence denied Washington children that he might be the father of the whole country." This distant corner of the English dominions then suffered a dearth of teachers for women, yet Virginia was at this very time full of the women who became mothers of the famous statesmen, publicists, judges, generals, and governors of the The Widow Custis 117 commonwealth during the Revolution, women whose potential genius was as great as that of the women of Greece, in the age that preceded the golden cycle of Pericles. Ten years lay between Martha Dandridge's two marriages : at seventeen she had become the bride of Daniel Parke Custis, who was thirty-seven; at twenty-six when she had been but a few months a widow, George Washington claimed her as his bride. Her grandson, two generations later, wrote the following pretty story of the courtship: "It was in 1758, that an officer, attired in a mili- tary undress, and attended by a body-servant, tall and militaire as his chief, crossed the ferry called Wil- liams's, over the Pamunkey, a branch of the York River. On the boat touching the southern or New Kent side, the soldier's progress was arrested by one of those personages, who give the beau ideal of the Virginia gentleman of the old regime, the very soul of kindness and hospitality. It was in vain the sol- dier urged his business at Williamsburg, important communications to the Governor, etc. Mr. Chamber- lay ne, on whose domain the militaire had just landed, would hear of no excuse. Colonel Washington (for the soldier was he) was a name and character so dear to all the Virginians, that his passing by one of the old castles of the commonwealth, without calling and partaking of the hospitalities of the host, was en- tirely out of the question. The colonel, however, did not surrender at discretion, but stoutly maintained his ground, till Chamberlayne bringing up his reserve, u8 George Washington in the intimation that he would introduce his friend to a young and charming widow, then beneath his roof, the soldier capitulated, on condition that he should dine, ' only dine/ and then, by pressing his charger and borrowing of the night, he would reach Williamsburg before his excellency could shake off his morning slumbers. Orders were accordingly is- sued to Bishop, the Colonel's body-servant and faith- ful follower, who, together with the fine English charger, had been bequeathed by the dying Braddock to Major Washington, on the famed and fatal field of the Monongahela. Bishop, bred in the school of European discipline, raised his hand to his cap, as much as to say, ' Your honour's orders shall be obeyed.' " The Colonel now proceeded to the mansion, and was introduced to various guests (for when was a Virginian domicile of the olden time without guests?), and above all, to the charming widow. Tradition re- lates that they were mutually pleased on this their first interview, nor is it remarkable; they were of an age when impressions are strongest. The lady was fair to behold, of fascinating manners, and splendidly en- dowed with wordly benefits. The hero, fresh from his early fields, redolent of fame, and with a form on which ' every god did seem to set his seal, to give the world assurance of a man.' " The morning passed pleasantly away. Evening came, with Bishop, true to his orders and firm at his post, holding his favorite charger with one hand, while the other was waiting to offer the ready stirrup. The sun sank in the horizon, and yet the Colonel appeared not. And then the old soldier marvelled at his chief's The Widow Custis 119 delay. ' 'Twas strange, 'twas passing strange ' surely he was not wont to be a single moment behind his appointments, for he was the most punctual of all men. Meantime, the host enjoyed the scene of the veteran on duty at the gate, while the Colonel was so agreeably employed in the parlor; and proclaiming that no guest ever left his house after sunset, his mili- tary visitor was, without much difficulty, persuaded to order Bishop to put up the horses for the night. The sun rode high in the heavens the ensuing day, when the enamored soldier pressed with his spur his charger's side, and speeded on his way to the seat of government, where, having despatched his public business, he retraced his steps, and, at the White House, the engagement took place, with preparations for the marriage. " And much hath the biographer heard of that mar- riage, from gray-haired domestics, who waited at the board where love made the feast and Washington was the guest. And rare and high was the revelry, at that palmy period of Virginia's festal age; for many were gathered to that marriage, of the good, the great, the gifted, and the gay, while Virginia, with joyous ac- clamation hailed in her youthful hero a prosperous and happy bridegroom. " ' And so you remember when Colonel Washing- ton came a-courting of your mistress ? ' said the biog- rapher to old Cully, in his hundreth year. 'Ay, master, that 7 do,' replied this ancient family servant, who had lived to see five generations ; ' great times, sir, great times ! Shall never see the like again ! ' ' And Washington looked something like a man, a proper man ; hey, Cully ? ' ' Never see'd the like, sir ; I2O George Washington never the likes of him, tho' I have seen many in my day; so tall, so straight! and then he sat a horse and rode with such an air! Ah, sir; he was like no one else! Many of the grandest gentlemen, in their gold lace, were at the wedding, but none looked like the man himself ! ' Strong, indeed, must have been the impressions which the person and manner of Wash- ington made upon the rude, ' untutored mind ' of this poor negro, since the lapse of three quarters of a century had not sufficed to efface them." 1 This poetic ceremony took place, in all probability, at old St. Peter's Church, near the " White House," residence of Mrs. Custis possibly at the fine old colonial house itself '(accounts vary). A little more than a century later, another noble Federal soldier, commander of a mighty host then slowly enveloping Richmond, knelt at the altar of this venerable old forest church, and prayed most fervently that he, like Washington a hundred years before, might become the saviour of his distracted country ! 2 It was a curious coincidence that the surrender of Fort Duquesne and of the fair and charming widow took place almost simultaneously. Of her personal characteristics her grandson writes : "In person, Mrs. Washington was well-formed, and somewhat below the middle size. To judge from *G. W. P. Custis, Recollections and Private Memoirs of Washington, p. 501. * Gen. G. B. McClellan, Diary. The Widow Custis 121 her portrait at Arlington House, painted by Wool- aston, in 1757, when she was in the bloom of life, she must at that period have been eminently handsome. In her dress, though plain, she was so scrupulously neat, that ladies have often wondered how Mrs. Wash- ington could wear a gown for a week, go through her kitchen and laundries, and all the varieties of places in the routine of domestic management, and yet the gown retained its snow-like whiteness, unsullied by even a single speck." 1 " Mrs. Washington was an uncommon early riser, leaving her pillow at day-dawn at all seasons of the year, and becoming at once actively engaged in her household duties. After breakfast she retired for an hour to her chamber, which hour was spent in prayer and reading the Holy Scriptures, a practice that she never omitted during half a century of her varied life." 2 " Mrs. Carrington, wife of Colonel Edward Car- rington, who, with her husband, visited the family at Mount Vernon a little while before General Wash- ington's death, wrote to her sister as follows, concern- ing Mrs. Washington: ' Let us repair to the old lady's room, which is pre- cisely in the style of our good old aunt's that is to say, nicely fixed for all sorts of work. On one side sits the chambermaid, with her knitting; on the other, a little colored pet, learning to sew. An old decent woman is there, with her table and shears, cutting out the negroes' winter clothes, while the good old 1 G. W. P. Custis, Recollections and Private Memoirs of Washington, p. 514. 122 George Washington lady directs them all, incessantly knitting herself. She points out to me several pair of nice colored stockings and gloves she had just finished, and presents me with a pair half done, which she begs I will finish and wear for her sake.' " Such is the picture of the wealthy and honored wife of Washington, in the privacy of her home. What an example of industry and economy for the wives and daughters of America! Mrs. Washington always spoke of the days of her public life at New York and Philadelphia, as her ' lost days.' " 1 We may well wind up this chapter with the views, in brief, of her two most recent biographers : "Very little is really known of his wife, beyond the facts that she was petite, over-fond, hot-tempered, obstinate, and a poor speller. In 1778, she was de- scribed as ' a sociable, pretty kind of woman/ and she seems to have been but little more. One who knew her well described her as ' not possessing much sense, though a perfect lady and remarkably well calculated for her position/ and confirmatory of this is the opinion of an English traveller that ' there was noth- ing remarkable in the person of the lady of the Pres- ident; she was matronly and kind, with perfect good breeding.' None the less she satisfied Washington ; even after the proverbial six months were over he re- fused to wander from Mount Vernon, writing that ' I am now, I believe, fixed at this seat with an agreeable Consort for life/ and in 1783 he spoke of her as the ' partner of all my Domestic enjoyments.' 1 Bishop Meade's Old Churches and Families of Virginia, vol. i, p. 08. The Widow Custis 123 "John Adams, in one of his recurrent moods of bitterness and jealousy towards Washington, de- manded, ' Would Washington have ever been com- mander of the revolutionary army or president of the United States if he had not married the rich widow of Mr. Custis ? ' To ask such a question is to over- look the fact that Washington's colonial military fame was entirely achieved before his marriage." 1 " To the charm of youth and beauty were added that touch of quiet sweetness and that winning grace of self-possession which come to a woman wived in her girlhood, and widowed before age or care has checked the first full tide of life. At seventeen she had married Daniel Parke Custis, a man more than twenty years her senior; but eight years of quiet love and duty as wife and mother had only made her youth the more gracious in that rural land of leisure and good neighbourhood ; and a year's widowhood had been but a" suitable preparation for perceiving the charm of this stately young soldier who now came riding her way upon the public business. His age was her own; all the land knew him and loved him for gallantry and brave capacity; he carried himself like a prince and he forgot his errand to linger in her company." 2 " But when at last he was free again, there was no reason why Washington should wait longer to be happy, and he was married to Martha Custis on the 6th of January, 1759. The sun shone very bright that day, and there was the fine glitter of gold, the 1 Paul Leicester Ford, The True George Washington, p. 93. 2 Woodrow Wilson, George Washington, p. 99. 124 George Washington brave show of resplendent uniforms, in the little church where the marriage was solemnized. Officers of His Majesty's service crowded there, in their gold lace and scarlet coats, to see their comrade wedded; the new Governor, Francis Fauquier, himself came, clad as befitted his rank; and the bridegroom took the sun not less gallantly than the rest, as he rode, in blue and silver and scarlet, beside the coach and six that bore his bride homeward amidst the thronging friends of the countryside. The young soldier's love of a gallant array and a becoming ceremony was satis- fied to the full, and he must have rejoiced to be so brave a horseman on such a day. For three months of deep content he lived with his bride at her own residence, the White House, by York Riverside, where their troth had been plighted, forgetting the fatigues of the frontier, and learning gratefully the new life of quiet love and homely duty. " These peaceful, healing months gone by, he turned once more to public business. Six months before his marriage he had been chosen a member of the House of Burgesses for Frederick County the county which had been his scene of adventure in the old days of surveying in the wilderness, and in which ever since Braddock's fatal rout he had maintained his headquarters striving to keep the border against the savages." J Of the passages here quoted, let the reader select for himself the one best suited to his conception of Lady Washington, as she comes down to us on the white wings of unsullied tradition. ^Voodrow Wilson, George Washington, p. 102. CHAPTER VIII ARCADY IN 1756-60, an English archdeacon was travelling through Virginia on horseback, and in the course of his travels he comes to Mount Vernon, which he thus describes: " From Colchester we went about twelve miles far- ther to Mount Vernon. This place is the property of Colonel Washington, and truly deserving of its owner. The house is most beautifully situated upon a high hill on the banks of the Potomac; and commands a noble prospect of water, of cliffs, of woods, and planta- tion. The river is nearly two miles broad, though two hundred from the mouth; and divides the dominions of Virginia from Maryland. We rested here one day, and proceeded up the river about twenty-six miles, to take a view of the Great Falls." * It was to this " beautifully situated " place that the young colonel took his bride, in the spring of 1759, after a happy honeymoon of three months spent at the " White House," part of the ancestral acres of the Dandridges. Of these acres, 15,000 belonged to the Custis estate, and came, with the fair widow's 45,000 in stocks, bonds, and money, under the care and charge of her energetic husband. 1 A. Burnaby, Travels Through North America, p. 67. 125 126 George Washing-ton How energetic this young man was, and how lynx- eyed in his circumstantial consideration of all " the ins and outs, ups and downs " of the connubial state, may be gathered from his first letter to his London agents, Robert Gary & Co., Merchants, London, and from the significant invoice that follows : " To ROBERT GARY AND COMPANY, MERCHANTS, LONDON " Williamsburg, i May, 1759. " GENTLN., " The inclosed is the minister's certificate of my marriage with Mrs. Martha Custis, properly, as I am told, authenticated. You will, therefore, for the future please to address all your letters, which relate to the affairs of the late Daniel Parke Custis, Esqr., to me, as by marriage I am entitled to a third part of that estate, and invested likewise with the care of the other two thirds by a decree of our General Court, which I obtained in order to strengthen the power I before had in consequence of my wife's administration. " I have many letters of yours in my possession unanswered; but at present this serves only to advise you of the above change, and at the same time to ac- quaint you, that I shall continue to make you the same consignments of tobacco as usual, and will endeavor to increase it in proportion as I find myself and the estate benefited thereby. " The scarcity of the last year's crop, and the high prices of tobacco, consequent thereupon, would, in any other case, have induced me to sell the estate's crop (which indeed is only 16 hhd.) in the country; but, Arcady 127 for a present, and I hope small advantage only, I did not care to break the chain of correspondence, that has so long subsisted, and therefore have, according to your desire, given Captn. Talman, an offer of the whole. " On the other side is an invoice of some goods, which I beg of you to send me by the first ship, bound either to Potomack or Rappahannock, as I am in im- mediate want of them. Let them be insured, and, in case of accident re-shipped without delay. Direct for me at Mount Vernon, Potomack River, Virginia; the former is the name of my seat, the other of the river on which 'tis situated. I am, etc. "May, 1759. " Invoice of Sundry Goods to be Ship'd by Robt. Gary, Esq., and Company for the use of George Wash- ington viz : " i Tester Bedstead 7^/2 feet pitch with fashionable bleu or blue and white curtains to suit a Room laid w yl Ireld. paper. " Window curtains of the same for two windows ; with either Papier Mache Cornish to them, or Cornish covered with the Cloth. " i fine Bed Coverlid to match the Curtains. 4 Chair bottoms of the same; that is, as much covering suited to the above furniture as will go over the seats of 4 Chairs (which I have by me) in order to make the whole furniture of this Room uniformly handsome and genteel. " i. Fashionable Sett of Desert Glasses and Stands for Sweetmeats Jellys etc. together with Wash Glasses and a proper Stand for these also. " 2 Setts of Chamber, or Bed Carpets Wilton. 128 George Washington " 4. Fashionable China Branches & Stands for Candles. " 2 Neat fire Screens " 50 Ibs. Spirma Citi Candles " 6 Carving Knives and Forks handles of Stained Ivory and bound with Silver. " A pretty large Assortment of Grass Seeds among which let there be a good deal of Lucerne and St. Foi, especially the former, also a good deal of English bleu Grass Clover Seed I have " i Large neat and Easy Couch for a Passage. " 50 yards of best Floor Matting. " 2 pair of fashionable mixd. or Marble Cold. Silk Hose. " 6 pr. of finest cotton Ditto. " 6 pr. of finest thread Ditto. " 6 pr. of midling Do. to cost abt 5/ " 6 pr worsted Do of yl best Sorted 2 pr of wch to be white. " N. B. All the above Stockings to be long, and tolerably large. " I piece of finest and most fashionable Stock Tape. " i Suit of Cloaths of the finest Cloth & fashionable colour made by the Inclos'd measure. " The newest and most approvd Treatise of Agri- culture besides this, send me a Small piece in Octavo called a New System of Agriculture, or a Speedy Way to grow Rich. " Longley's Book of Gardening. " Gibson, upon Horses, the lattest Edition in Quarto " Half a dozn pair of Men's neatest shoes, and Pumps, to be made by one Didsbury on Colo. Baylor's Arcady 1 29 Last but a little larger than his & to have high heels " 6 pr Mens riding Gloves rather large than the middle size. " One neat Pocket Book, capable of receiving Mem- orandoms & Small Cash accts. to be made of Ivory, or any thing else that will admit of cleaning. " Fine Soft Calf Skin for a pair of Boots " Ben leathr. for Soles. " Six Bottles of Greenhows Tincture. " Order from the best House in Madeira a Pipe of the best Old Wine, and let it be securd from Pil- ferers." l Having married a fashionable woman a sen- sible " nut-brown maid," so brunette of complexion and brilliant of eye that tradijtion called her " the dark ladye " Washington felt it necessary to be fashionable too, in all his dress and appointments; shoes, saddles, gloves, glass, table-ware, beds, dra- peries, silken hose, and daily habiliments must all be of fashionable type, cut, or kind ; the ancient hos- pitalities of the place must be kept up with a pipe of the best Madeira; ivory-handled knives, inlaid with silver, must grace the festal board, while papier- mache mouldings set off the windows whose flow- ing draperies must come from London. The Arcadian life, which was to last nearly fif- teen years, had begun. Agriculture, gardening, horses, tobacco: these are to fill the gallant Colo- nel's life for the next half-generation, and to occupy 1 Ford, Writings of George Washington, vol. ii, pp. 126-129. 130 George Washington time and attention once wholly given to Indian warfare, expeditions into the wilderness, the settle- ment of the Ohio Company's affairs in the region of " The Beautiful River," to active and earnest correspondence with Dinwiddie about frontier dif- ficulties, building of forts, enrolment or desertion of troops, the thousand what-nots of responsible official life under Lord Albemarle, or the Earl of Loudon. The ten years of intense activity, between 1749 and 1759, were to be succeeded by fifteen years of halcyon calm halcyon as compared with the unhal- lowed activities of the frontier during which he was to pass through another and most honourable phase of his education for greater things, his fifteen years' service in the Virginia House of Burgesses. A premonition of this service crops out in the fol- lowing anecdote, preserved for us by William Wirt, to whom it was related by Edmund Randolph, an eye-witness of the scene: "Colonel Washington resided with his wife at the White House, for three months after marriage, for his duties as a member of the house of burgesses re- quired his presence at Williamsburg a considerable portion of that time. Soon after the meeting of that body, in January, it was resolved to return their thanks to Washington, in a public manner, for the distin- guished services which he had rendered to his country. His tried friend, Mr. Robinson, was yet the speaker, and upon him devolved the duty." The scene on the occasion, as related by Mr. Wirt, Arcady 131 on the authority of an eye-witness, was a memorable one. " As soon as Colonel Washington took his seat," says Wirt, " Mr. Robinson, in obedience to this order, and following the impulse of his own generous and grateful heart, discharged the duty with great dignity, but with such warmth of coloring, and strength of expression, as entirely to confound the young hero. He rose to express his acknowledgments for the honor; but such was his trepidation and confusion, that he could not give distinct utterance to a single syllable. He blushed, stammered, and trembled for a second ; when the speaker relieved him, by a stroke of address that would have done honor to Louis the Fourteenth in his proudest and happiest moment. ' Sit down, Mr. Washington/ said he, with a conciliatory smile, ' your modesty is equal to your valor, and that surpasses the power of any language that I possess.' " * We see the young officer poring over Longley's Book of Gardening, " the newest and most impor- tant Treatise of Agriculture," " a small piece in Octavo called A New System of Agriculture," and Gibson upon Horses, " the latest Edition in Quarto," intent upon renewing -his lands and gar- dens and grounds, delightful reminiscences of which still remain in the surroundings of Mount Vernon. His passion for fine breeds of horses is evidenced by his early order for Gibson's book on the subject, and many are the references, in the correspondence, 1 Lossing, Washington and the American Republic, vol. i, p. 288. 132 George Washington to the noble succession of blooded steeds that fol- lowed each other in his stables Ajax, and Blue- skin, and Silver Eye, and Shakspere, Magnolia, and Prescott, and Jackson, and Nelson, the charger ridden at Cornwallis's surrender in 1781, but never again, thereafter, mounted. The young master of Mount Vernon was one of those buoyant and irrepressible personalities, who by the mere force of their buoyancy and irrepres- sibility must always rise to the top whether in peace or war. For a hundred miles around he was the envy and admiration of the colonial gentry, a stand- ing candidate when an election for burgesses was to be held, as constantly re-elected, a toast at planta- tion tables where he was Othello to many a Desdemona, a godfather in demand by the baby Vir- ginians, who took the opportunity of the mid-cen- tury to appear upon the scene, a welcome friend and adviser to those who claimed his scientific or prac- tical knowledge. The Rev. Andrew Burnaby alludes, in an ex- tended footnote, to the universal esteem in which Washington was ever thus held after his gallantry in the Braddock 'expedition, and, describing the political character of the Virginians of the time, remarks : ' The public or political character of the Virginians corresponds with their private one: they are haughty and jealous of their liberties, impatient of restraint, and can scarcely bear the thought of being controuled by any superior power. Many of them consider the Arcady 133 colonies as independent states, not connected with Great Britain, otherwise than by having the same com- mon king, and being bound to her by natural affection. There are but few of them that have a turn for busi- ness, and even those are by no means expert at it. I have known them, upon a very urgent occasion, vote the relief of a garrison, without once considering whether the thing was practicable, when it was most evidently and demonstrably otherwise. In matters of commerce they are ignorant of the necessary principles that must prevail between a colony and the mother country ; they think it a hardship not to have an un- limited trade to every part of the world. They consider the duties upon their staple as injurious only to them- selves ; and it is utterly impossible to persuade them that they affect the consumer also. However, to do them justice, the same spirit of generosity prevails here which does in their private character; they never re- fuse any necessary supplies for the support of gov- ernment when called upon, and are a generous and loyal people. " The women are, generally speaking, handsome, though not to be compared with our fair country- women in England. They have but few advantages, and consequently are seldom accomplished ; this makes them reserved, and unequal to any interesting or re- fined conversation. They are immoderately fond of dancing, and indeed it is almost the only amusement they partake of: but even in this they discover want of taste and elegance, and seldom appear with that gracefulness and ease, which these movements are calculated to display." 1 1 A. Burnaby, Travels Through North America, pp. 55-56. 134 George Washington Virginia, indeed, was about to enter into that " imminent deadly breach," which even now was widening fearfully between mother and daughter, and could only be bridged over by thousands of slain and millions of money. The venerable arch- deacon, fresh from his Greenwich vicarage, and full of his old-world sensitiveness to impressions, felt this growing independence of Virginia, and breathed it vigorously into the ear of his countrymen as soon as he returned to England. Washington's Journal of this period is filled with minute and interesting particulars of his life and occupations a year after his marriage. " Mrs. Wash- ington is taken down with Meazles," and ladies and gentlemen come and go in their " chariots," which lumber from plantation to plantation in the slow manner of the time. Bishop Meade, in his Old Churches, gives a quaint account of the fates and fortunes of one of the Washington chariots which fell into his possession: " There was, however, one object of interest belong- ing to General Washington, concerning which I have a special right to speak, viz.: his old English coach, in which himself and Mrs. Washington not only rode in Fairfax county, but travelled through the length and breadth of our land. So faithfully was it executed that, at the conclusion of this long journey, its builder, who came over with it and settled in Alexandria, was proud to be told by the General that not a nail or screw had failed. It so happened, in a way I need not state, that this coach came into my hands about fifteen years Arcady 1 35 after the death of General Washington. In the course of time, from disuse, it being too heavy for these lat- ter days, it began to decay and give way. Becoming an object of desire to those who delight in relics, I caused it to be taken to pieces and distributed among the admiring friends of Washington who visited my house, and also among a number of female associations for benevolent and religious objects, which associa- tions, at their fairs and on other occasions, made a large profit by converting the fragments into walking- sticks, picture-frames, and snuff-boxes. About two- thirds of one of the wheels thus produced one hundred and forty dollars. There can be no doubt but that at its dissolution it yielded more to the cause of charity than it did to its builder at its first erection. Besides other mementos of it, I have in my study, in the form of a sofa, the hind-seat, on which the General and his lady were wont to sit." * " I have always considered marriage," wrote Washington, " as the most interesting event of one's life " ; " you too," he wrote to Chastellux, " have caught that terrible contagion domestic felicity which same, like the smallpox 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 these matters in France) for his whole lifetime." Washington had indeed " caught the contagion " of which he writes, once for all. Always a favourite with women, who wrote to him off and on during 1 Bishop Meade, Old Churches and Families of Virginia, vol. ii, p. 237. 136 George Washington his entire life, and eagerly courted his notice both during the dark and the bright days of the Revolu- tion, he has left many charming references to them in his letters to Nellie Custis, Mrs. Fairfax, " Jackie " Custis's widow, and others, and he ex- celled in all the polite accomplishments which the women of the eighteenth century were supposed most to desire. He rode well, was an accomplished dancer (keeping up the Terpsichorean grace till he was sixty-six), played loo, whist, and other games, though never with the feverish passion of Charles James Fox, and his other great contemporaries across the water; was a tried pedestrian, thinking nothing (as Burnaby says) of walking four hun- dred miles to the Ohio and back, on his mission to St. Pierre; and was an adept in swordmanship, learned from his old teacher, Van Braam. No apothecary's or mercer's clerk could be more minute than he, when he was ordering medicines for Mount Vernon or dress-goods for Mrs. Wash- ington; and Master John and Miss Patsy came in for their London orders on Gary & Co., for all sorts of haberdashery, trinkets, toys, dolls (" fash- ionable " at 10 shillings), children's books, pastes, powders, perfumes, " trifles light as air," yet heavy enough to load a good ship, travelling Virginia- ward in the changeable frost-laden weather of 1760. Even a pair of stays is ordered for the tiny miss of four, and pumps and breast-knots, ribbons for the hair, and buckles for the shoes, ivory combs and " minikin " and corking pins, packs of playing cards, Arcady 137 bell-glasses, scarlet broadcloth, " Easter Hats at about 5 Shillings," and et ceteras innumerable, pic- turesquely interspersed with orders for green tea, cheese, plantation utensils, jalap, and hogsheads of porter. Tobacco was at that time (Burnaby) selling at fifty shillings a hundredweight; and Washington is very solicitous about the great staple, 16,000 pounds of which was lawful salary for a " parson," of whom there were then between sixty and seventy, mostly praiseworthy persons, says the archdeacon, in the province. The broad Potomac stretched in shining silver at the door, and there on many a summer's day, or springtime morning, when the marvellous shoals of shad and herring began their run up the river, might be witnessed the tragedy chronicled in the archdeacon's pages: " A very curious sight is frequently exhibited upon this and the other great rivers in Virginia, which for its novelty is exceedingly diverting to strangers. Dur- ing the spring and summer months the fishing-hawk is often seen hovering over the rivers, or resting on the wing without the least visible change of place for some minutes, then suddenly darting down and plung- ing into the water, from whence it seldom rises again without a rock fish, or some other considerable fish, in its talons. It immediately shakes off the water like a mist, and makes the best of its way towards the woods. The bald eagle, which is generally upon the watch, instantly pursues, and if it can overtake, en- 138 George Washington deavours to soar above it. The hawk growing soli- citous for its own safety drops the fish, and the bald eagle immediately stoops, and seldom fails to catch it in its pounces before it reaches the water." 1 Many a time did Washington, doubtless, become a spectator of the airy battle, as he strode up and down the pillared portico of his residence, and looked out over the river to the soft, blue hills of the Dominion of Maryland, where ninety thousand loyal subjects of King George III. (but just proclaimed King) then dwelt in peace and plenty; times so peaceful and plenteous that diamond-back terrapin were fed to negroes, and wild-duck teal, mallard, red-head, or what not to him that fancied it. Visits to this delectable land varied with trips to Williamsburg, and trots to Alexandria, in chaise, chariot, or aback of one of the fine saddle-horses. Hardly a day passed without the round of the plan- tations being traversed over ten or fifteen miles of delightful woodland, or through fields where the bannered tobacco lifted its pale-green, mullein-like stalks, and flung to the breeze those wonderfully delicate leaves which, from the cradle to the grave, from burgeon to blossom and ripening sweetness, needed tireless vigilance against worm and blight and pest of every description, until they turned into the golden leaves that, literally, became leaves of gold in the warehouses of Robert Gary & Co., of the London market. 1 A. Burnaby, Travels Through North America, p. 68. Arcady 139 The vast leisure of Arcadian life lent Washington time for those huge invoices all in his own auto- graph which he from time to time despatched to London, invoices which give faithful glimpses of the luxury of the years antedating '76, as well as of the details of a well-ordered gentleman's household. As Washington re-wrote his " dear Patsy's " let- ters for her when occasion required, so, doubtless, the pair consulted together over these marvellous lists to be forwarded to London, including every- thing from " white and brown sugar Candy " to " tester Bedsteads," emetics, purges, brimstone, " spermi Ceti " candles, and exact measurements for " shoes like Colonel Baylor's." Intense must have been the excitement and amuse- ment in the Mount Vernon household, when some agile little " picaninny " came flying up to the " Great House," and announced that a white-sailed brig or bark had dropped anchor at the wharf below, while the browned and whiskered master, tawny with sea-salt and sunburn, asked for Colonel Wash- ington. And the unpacking of such an invoice as the four or five double-columned one, on page 134 of Ford's Writings of George Washington, must have been the opening of the realm of King Santa Claus him- self, when it reached Mount Vernon. Interesting accounts exist of the celebration of Christmas at this very time, in the Old Dominion, in the Journal kept by a Princeton divinity student, then tutor at Nomini Hall, seat of the Carters, not 140 George Washington far from Mount Vernon, and within convenient riding distance of Bushfield, where John Augustine Washington lived, and of Mount Airy, the lovely and lordly seat of the Tayloes (still in existence). This worthy gentleman went down to Virginia, what the slang of the day called a " blue " Pres- byterian ; but after a year's residence at " Nomini Hall" became almost a "perverted" Episcopalian in point of reverence for dancing, horse-racing, cock- fighting, " stepping the minuet," toasting the ladies, and other genial amusements then prevalent in the " Northern Neck." The negroes (of whom there were six hundred on the sixty thousand Carter acres) expected liberal remembrances in the way of " bits " and half-bits (parts of a divided pisterine, used as currency, and equivalent to a few pence, English), rum-and-water, " pisimmon " extract (as Master Fithian writes it), and other potential spirit- uous agencies; the gentry rode from plantation to plantation forming house-parties or giving balls, ladies in the gorgeous quilted skirts, bodices, and brocades of the period, with creped hair, fantastic- ally wreathed with artificial flowers and strings of pearls, " tripped the light fantastic toe " through the mazes of the dance until dawn glistened over the rosy Potomac, and marches, jigs, reels, and " coun- try dances " (cotillions) succeeded each other in swift profusion. Councillor Carter was a born musician, and his house resounded with the tinkling guitar, the silvery harmonicum (just invented by the all-accomplished Benjamin Franklin), the violin, WASHINGTON MEDAL (1776). Arcady 141 flute, harpsichord, and organ; each of the seven children played on something or other, and even the Presbyterian tutor beguiles one of the Carter boys to play the flute for him twenty minutes every night after he had retired to bed. Nellie Custis's harpsi- chord on which " she played and cried and cried and played " when her inexorable grandmamma, Mrs. Washington, made her practice six hours a day and Washington's flute were not yet part of the paraphernalia of Mount Vernon; but there can be no doubt of the Colonel's fondness for music, dancing, the whist-table (note the two dozen packs of playing cards ordered in one of his invoices), the back of a fine horse, and the soft swing and swoop of a luxurious chariot. It is on record that he danced three hours hand-running, without once sit- ting down, when Mrs. Nathaniel Greene, wife of the General, was his partner at a historic ball ; while his ever-conscientious expense-book records, in 1756 or '57, " 8 Shillings at Cards " and sundry sums for " treats " to the Philadelphia ladies, at the time when the fair eyes of Mary Philipse rested benev- olently for a moment on him. His fondness for theatres and theatricals was always a marked char- acteristic, and numerous are the allusions to them in his social correspondence and the gazettes of the time. Even Arcady, however, had to surrender to punc- tilio and punctuality : the timepieces of Mount Vernon gilt French, or " grandfather " chronom- eters as they might be marked off the hours with 142 George Washing-ton a systematic regularity and even rigour, which startled more than one easy-going guest. The Arcadian couple rose at dawn, when the lady betook herself to her Bible and her housekeeping, and the lord (after building his own fire, shaving himself neatly, and tying his own cue) went forth to inspect stables and kennels, then back to his favourite breakfast of tea and corn-cakes. After breakfast, donning his drab riding-suit, high boots, and gauntlets, he rode one of his excel- lent horses over the plantation, visited the wheat and tobacco-fields, interviewed the overseer, in- spected the mills, fisheries, negro quarters, listened sympathetically to the complaints of the sick and aged, had them humanely attended to, and returned to the mansion to " post his accounts " (a favourite occupation), study his gardening or horse-breeding manuals, look over the Williamsburg Gazette, with its already perceptible mutterings of discontent and revolution, or converse with the guests, who were already beginning to make of Mount Vernon what he, later, described it to his mother as, " a tavern." Dr. Burnaby was one of the countless host who en- joyed this unbroken hospitality, a hospitality dupli- cated in a slight degree, a hundred years later, at Craigie House, when every distinguished foreigner that visited America bore a letter to Longfellow. At three o'clock, dinner was served, Washington never allowing more than five minutes' difference in watches to delay the meal, and humorously throw- ing the blame for the inopportune punctuality on the Arcady 143 cook, " who could not wait." In about an hour the meal was over, and then, towards five or six, after the habitual nuts, raisins, and toasts " to the fair," to the " Sons of Liberty," to " American trade and commerce" (as time wagged on towards 1776), came the ever-delightful tea and its deshabille talk. Washington took no supper. At nine o'clock, taking up a candle in its bright brass candlestick, the host mounted the staircase and lighted his more distinguished guests, person- ally, to bed. Of course, the routine varied when balls or entertainments or evening parties were formally given, and the neighbours at Gunston Hall, Belvoir, Nomini Hall, or Mount Airy assembled to do honour to the mistress of Mount Vernon in a set entertainment. Then, indeed, the musical chimes in the old clocks jingled out the midnight hour many a time and oft, and the flying hours (as in the ex- quisite fresco of Guido) saw the high-heeled dames, and powdered and ruffled cavaliers still entangled in the meshes of the latest dance from Versailles or St. James's. The worthy Fithian was rudely tempted by these gracious pleasantries, and often expressed his bitter regrets that he could not conscientiously enter into the innocent and harmless gaieties of the Virginians. One thing, however, he could not help doing: he would toast the absent " Laura," when it fell his turn as it did to old Caedmon a thousand years before " to play at the harp and sing a song," i.e., 144 George Washington to drink a toast; and Fithian gladly did so with the gallants of Nomini Hall. Indeed, his Diary (dated 1773-74) contains various and sundry en- tries of strong drinks and potations for a sick body, somewhat inconsistent with the contempt showered, occasionally, on the junketting Virginians, whose " rings of beaux " stand outside the churches on Sundays, until the parson sends the clerk to hale them in to proper service, and dame and cavalier go around giving invitations to dinner after a fifteen minutes' sermon. Seeing that Councillor Carter successively went through the phases of the Estab- lished, the Baptist, and the Swedenborgian churches, and wound up by becoming a Papist, the young Presbyterian divine had ample opportunity at least to exercise his theological acumen. But he never swerved from the Westminster Catechism, and died a gallant soldier, sick of camp fever, at Fort Wash- ington in 1776, Virginia, to the last, abiding a pleas- ant memory in his soul. The old baronial style of living, between the par- allels of the original grant, was in this decade in its full glory: the Byrds of Westover, the Harrisons and Carters of Brandon and Shirley, the Lewises of Kenmore, the Fairfaxes of Greenway Court and Belvoir, the Masons of Gunston Hall, the Calverts over the Potomac, as it swept grandly from its cata- ract to the Chesapeake, the Pages and Nelsons of Rosewell, the Lees of Stratford and Chantilly all kept up an easy-going, semi-feudal state, into which the Washingtons as easily fell by right of lineage, Arcady 145 as well as of wealth and influential position in colo- nial circles. The Parkes had distinguished them- selves in many a hard-fought campaign under Maryborough, and Queen Anne, herself, had be- stowed her jewelled likeness and a brace of silver candlesticks (still owned by the Lee family) on the ancestor of the line, who first brought to her tidings of the great victory of Blenheim ; and kindred over- sea were speedily to contend for the honour of even a remote connection with the stars, mullets, bars, and heraldic raven of the Washingtons. And thus the golden days the Saturnia regna sung in enchanting measures by the Mantuan poet went by, and Washington might well repeat to the Marquis de Chastellux that " the married state was the most interesting in the world." He had reached the Golden Milestone. CHAPTER IX THE GOLDEN MILESTONE WASHINGTON was now eight-and-twenty, an age at which the younger Pitt was already prime minister of Great Britain, Burke had already written " On the Sublime and Beautiful," the ora- tory of Charles James Fox had begun to assume a ripened effulgence, and a whole band of young im- mortals Goethe, Burns, Lucan, Hugo, Byron were already basking in the golden light which legend wreathed poetically about the summit of " twin-peaked Parnassus " ; yet nothing fantastic- ally precocious 'as yet appeared in the steadfast young American, settled at Mount Vernon as a model farmer, and pursuing the bucolic pleasures of agriculture as tranquilly as if he had just stepped out of the Georgics of Virgil. The restful years that followed the volcanic decade of 1750-1760 were years of quiet preparation, unconscious maturing of the intellectual powers, unnoticed growth in political sagacity, and gathering of virile strength for use in the approaching struggle with the mother-country. The Rev. Samuel Davies, in a sermon preached in Pennsylvania, shortly after Braddock's defeat, had prophetically foreshadowed Washington's life when he said : 146 The Golden Milestone 147 " As a remarkable instance of this, I may point out to the public that heroic youth, Colonel Washington, whom I cannot but hope Providence has hitherto pre- served in so signal a manner for some important ser- vice to his country." x This " heroic lad " had steadily grown into the formidable and accomplished leader who, on resign- ing his colonelcy in 1/59, after his arduous duties were consummated, was affectionately addressed by his associate officers in the following terms : ' Judge, then, how sensibly we must be affected with the loss of such an excellent commander, such a sincere friend, and so affable a companion. How rare is it to find these amiable qualities blended in one man ! How great the loss of such a man ! ... It gives us additional sorrow/ they continued, ' when we reflect, to find our unhappy country will receive a loss no less irreparable than our own. Where will it meet a man, so experienced in military affairs one so renowned for patriotism, conduct, and courage? Who has so great a knowledge of the enemy we have to deal with? who so well acquainted with their sit- uation and strength? who so much respected by the soldiery? who, in short, so able to support the military character of Virginia ? ' " 2 Then requesting him to name a fit successor, they added in conclusion : 1 Ford, Writings of George Washington, vol. i, p. 176, note. 2 Lossing, Washington and the American Republic, vol. i, p. 286. 148 George Washington " ' Frankness, sincerity, and certain openness of soul, are the true characteristics of an officer, and we flat- ter ourselves that you do not think us capable of say- ing anything contrary to the purest dictates of our minds. Fully persuaded of this, we beg leave to as- sure you that, as you have hitherto been the actuating soul of our whole corps, we shall at all times pay the most invariable regard to your will and pleasure, and will always be happy to demonstrate by our actions how much we respect and esteem you.' " ' This opinion,' says Marshall, ' was not confined to the officers 'of his regiment. It was common to Vir- ginia, and had been adopted by the British officers with whom he served. The duties he performed, though not splendid, were arduous ; and were executed with zeal and with judgment. The exact discipline he established in his regiment, when the temper of Virginia was extremely hostile to discipline, does credit to his military character; and the gallantry his troops displayed, whenever called into action, mani- fests the spirit infused into them by their com- mander.' " 1 After the strenuous military experience of 1753- 1758, it was most fitting that the next stage in this remarkable career should be pastoral, almost bucolic, the life of a quiet country gentleman who, having married a woman of wealth and refinement, settles down to a domestic felicity, which he playfully de- scribes to the Marquis de Chastellux as " a con- tagion " that has at length caught the misanthrope 'Lossing, Washington and the American Republic, vol. i, p. 286. The Golden Milestone 149 himself. Washington could not read French, and perhaps had never even heard of Moliere, and yet, in his humorous raillery of the marquis, he uncon- sciously reproduces the denoument of Le Misan- thrope. A little over a hundred miles from Mount Vernon lay Williamsburg, the old colonial capital where a hundred and odd gentlemen, calling themselves bur- gesses, met as the people's representatives, discussed public questions affecting the commonwealth, voted supplies for the maintenance of the colonial gov- ernment, and constituted one of those marvellous playgrounds of politics and statesmanship, thirteen of which were soon to write in federal union, and produce the document which Gladstone called the most wonderful that ever emanated from the brain of man the American Constitution. Some of these plain country gentlemen had been educated in England, at Oxford, or Lincoln's Inn, or had been classically trained in philosophy and the humanities under the six professors of William and Mary College, the Alma Mater of Jefferson, Mon- roe, Tyler, and Chief Justice Marshall, the college of which Washington became chancellor in 1777. This quaint old sprawling village truly a " city of magnificent distances " as it stretched east and west into the primeval forest, and gathered into its skirts ample spaces of the Middle Plantation was part of this time under the social sovereignty of Lord Botetourt, a man whose grace of manner and firmness of touch led Horace Walpole to charac- 150 George Washington terise him as " a bit of enamelled iron." The charm of his ostentatious courtesy and high spirits led Virginia to remember him with pleasure, and name one of her most beautiful counties after him, as she cherished the name and fame of Berkeley, Spots- wood, Fairfax, Loudon, Fauquier, and Dinwiddie. Many of the wealthier planter burgesses had homes at Williamsburg, where they kept open house in the fashion of Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrimage, and where, at the ever-spread table, it fairly " snew " with abundance of good things for the delectation of the nomad legislator. Hither the Washingtons came during the fifteen years the Colonel was a member of the House; and it may readily be inferred, that the representative of Fairfax County stood easily among the first, in that company of a hundred gentlemen and schol- ars whom Virginia had assembled, at the Raleigh Tavern or in the palace of Lord Botetourt, to dis- cuss and decide subjects vital to her interests. It is a strange fact, that Washington's corre- spondence is almost bare of references to his legis- lative life at Williamsburg, the numerous letters and diaries that remain being absorbed almost wholly with domestic matters, the management of his estates, orders on London for household use, occasional sharp reproofs to his London agents for extortionate charges and mean quality of goods, and detailed communications to the Governor, Council, and others, relative to land surveys and the taking up of reservations on the Ohio and Great The Golden Milestone 151 Kanawha. Washington was what would now be called " land-hungry," and possessed a keen eye for the choice and appropriation of the rich black bot- tom lands along the rivers of the western country. His experience as a land-surveyor a position to which he had in his youth been licensed by William and Mary College had educated both eye and judgment in the discovery of soils and locations adapted to agriculture, while the generous scale on which the life at Mount Vernon was laid out com- pelled him to husband and enlarge his resources in every legitimate way possible. It is curious to read his responses to would-be borrowers who, presum- ing on the lavish hospitality that prevailed at Mount Vernon, wrote to ask sums ranging from twenty to five hundred pounds. Mrs. Washington's two hun- dred or three hundred negroes were hardly suffi- cient to run the various plantations, and there are occasional references to the purchase of skilled labourers, masons, blacksmiths, carpenters, and the like whose " likeliness " can be turned to the profit of the estate. Washington did not touch tobacco in any shape or form, but his farmer's instinct was much con- centrated on the cultivation of the weed, which, besides the fragrant leaf, turned out the crop of " barons of the Potomac " who made this lordly river celebrated. As there were few towns in Virginia then worth speaking of, Washington's letters to his agents abound in directions to sail for the Potomac River, 152 George Washington " which flows past my seat," and not to the York or Rappahannock, where Mrs. Washington's relatives reside; the anchorage at Mount Vernon being par- ticularly good, free from wind, and sheltered from weather vicissitudes. The goods that came from London frequently arrived at the wrong landing, variously damaged or mutilated, in bad condition owing to hurried disem- barkation or careless packing. During this con- templative stage of his existence, the Colonel found time to order, from a London art dealer, plaster busts of Alexander, Julius Caesar, Prince Eugene, the Duke of Marlborough, and the King of Prussia ; adding to this formidable list of military heroes, gentler concessions to the fair sex in the shape of groups of Bacchus and Flora, " Lyons " rampant or otherwise for the chimneypiece, and a long list of literary celebrities, such as Chaucer, Spenser, Shak- spere, and certain Greek and Roman poets. Among these details a green silk " Saque " of Mrs. Wash- ington's finds lodgment, which is to be re-dyed and made over or " turned into a genteel night-gown." The sylvan chronicle moves quaintly on, and em- braces among much else the following : " Went a fox huntg. with Lord Fairfax and Colo. Fairfax, and my Br. Catchd. 2 Foxes. Began to gather corn at the Mill. "23. Went a huntg. again with Lord Fairfax and his Brother, and Col. Fairfax. Catchd. nothing that we knew of. A fox was started. The Golden Milestone 153 " 24. Mr. Robt. Alexander here ; Went into the Neck. " 25. Mr. Bryan Fairfax, as also Messrs. Grayson and Phil. Alexander, came here by sunrise. Hunted and catchd. a fox with these and my Lord his Bro. and Colo. Fairfax, all of whom with Mrs. Fx. and Mr. Wetson ( ?) of Engd dined here. " 26. Hunted again in the above Compa. but catchd nothing. " 27. Went to Church. " 28. Went to the Vestry at Pohick Church. "29. Went a Huntg. with Lord Fairfax etc. Catchd a Fox. " 30. At home all day. Colo. Mason and Mr. Cock- burne came in the evening. " DECEMBER " i. Went to the Election of Burgesses for this County and was there, with Colo. West chosen. Stayd all Night to a Ball wch. I had given. " 2. Returnd home after dinner, accompanied by Colo. Mason, Mr. Cockburn and Messrs. Henderson Ross and Lawson. " 3. Went a fox huntg. in Company with Lord and Colo. Fairfax, Captn. McCarty and Messrs. Hender- son and Ross. Started nothing. My Br. came in ye afternoon." x In 1772, a famous portrait-painter comes along, and Charles Wilson Peale paints for us the well- known portrait of Washington as Colonel of the 22nd Virginia regiment, in blue coat faced with 1 Ford, Writings of George Washington, vol. ii, p. 255. 154 George Washington scarlet, " Wolfe " hat, sash, and gorget a picture now hanging in the chapel of Washington and Lee University at Lexington, Virginia. Peale also painted charming portraits of Mrs. Washington and her daughter and son, still owned by descendants of the family. Washington writes humorously of the sittings : "To DR. BOUCHER " Mount Vernon, 2ist May, 1772. " Inclination having yielded to Importunity, I am now contrary to all expectation under the hands of Mr. Peale; but in so grave so sullen a mood and now and then under the influence of Morpheus, when some critical strokes are making, that I fancy the skill of this Gentleman's Pencil, will be put to it, in describing to the World what manner of man I am." * Thus in easy round of work, exercise, and enter- tainment, life on the Potomac in the sixties wagged along, filled with the busy nothings of rural exist- ence on a great plantation ; the clatter of horse and hounds rang over the clear frosty hills, as the fox- hunting cavalcade, headed by Washington on " Blueskin," and Billy Lee on " Chickling," thun- dered over hill and dale after the grey foxes that " Vulcan," " Music," or " Sweet Lips " had started from their woodland lairs. Frosty Januarys faded into flowering Mays, and the bright Virginian sum- mers ripened into those exquisite Octobers that sage meteorologists, like Burnaby, Fithian, Robert Bever- 1 Ford, Writings of George Washington, vol. ii, p. 349. The Golden Milestone 155 ley, and Thomas Jefferson, set down in the weather tables or their diaries as the fairest in the world " the season of sweet savours." Twice a year, the great ships from London dropped anchor in the river opposite the mansion, and unloaded the bales and boxes consigned to its owner. The rippling smoothness of the chronicle is occa- sionally interrupted by an entry of illness, a record of a fortnight's absence at the Warm Springs in Berkeley County, in search of health, an exchange of courtesies with Governor Eden, Lord Dunmore (who arrived from New York in 1772, an ominous forerunner of Revolution), or the Calverts, or deep solicitude about " Jackie " Custis, the " son-in-law " as Washington quaintly calls him, who is wholly given to " horses, dogs, and guns," and has pre- maturely taken it into his head to fall in love with pretty Miss Calvert, lineal descendant of the Lords Baltimore. Washington hastily rides to New York and enters the young scapegrace at King's College, in the hope of counteracting the fair Marylander's charms ; but all to no avail. He explains to the young lady's father that Custis has an ample for- tune of 8,000 " upon bond," fifteen thousand acres at or near Williamsburg, and two or three hundred negroes, besides his ultimate interest in his mother' f dower; but to Dr. Boucher, that the boy at seven- teen is almost totally ignorant of arithmetic, knows no Latin or Greek, and should know French " which is now deemed one of the indispensable polite accomplishments of the day." 156 George Washington It was during this period that he became deeply interested in a project to drain the Dismal Swamp, rode down thither on an exploring expedition, and examined the great morass almost as fully as Colonel Byrd of Westover had done in 1728, when establishing the dividing line between Virginia and North Carolina. Later on in his life, he became profoundly interested in improving the navigation of the Potomac, and in the James River and Kana- wha Canal project, designed to connect the interior water-system of the continent with the ocean. Lord Dunmore sought his advice and companion- ship, in a proposed journey of inspection and ex- ploitation to the Ohio Valley where, in the vicinity of Louisville and Cincinnati, titles from his land- patents still exist. There is no evidence in Washington's letters, how he viewed the Mephistophelean character of this last royal Governor of Virginia; nor whether he credited the accounts of his arrogance and ava- rice. The letters from the Colonel to the Earl are couched in punctilious forms that seem to have bean learned from some old-world manual, almost obse- quious in their long-drawn-out circumlocutions of respect. When Sunday came, a great stillness and rev- erence fell over Mount Vernon. Washington never received visitors on Sunday at this time. Over in the noble old woods skirting his estates, six or seven miles distant, lay Pohick Church, where the Rev. Charles Green had officiated, as Rector of Truro The Golden Milestone 157 Parish, from 1738 to 1765. Of this fine old colo- nial church, Bishop Meade gives an interesting account : " The Old Pohick Church was a frame building, and occupied a site on the south side of Pohick Run, and about two miles from the present, which is on the north side of the run. When it was no longer fit for use, it is said the parishioners were called together to determine on the locality of the new church, when George Mason, the compatriot of Washington, and senior vestryman, advocated the old site, pleading that it was the house in which their fathers wor- shipped, and that the graves of many were around it, while Washington and others advocated a more cen- tral and convenient one. The question was left unset- tled and another meeting for its decision appointed. Meanwhile Washington surveyed the neighbourhood, and marked the houses and distances on a well drawn map, and, when the day of decision arrived, met all the arguments of his opponent by presenting this paper, and thus carried his point. In place of any descrip- tion of this house in its past or present condition, I offer the following report of a visit made to it in 1837 : " My next visit was to Pohick Church, in the vicinity of Mount Vernon, the seat of General Washington. I designed to perform service there on Saturday as well as Sunday, but through some mistake no notice was given for the former day. The weather indeed was such as to prevent the assembling of any but those who prize such occasions so much as to be deterred only by very strong considerations. It was still rain- ing when I approached the house, and found no one there. The wide-open doors invited me to enter, 158 George Washington as they do invite, day and night, through the year, not only the passing traveller, but every beast of the field and fowl of the air. These latter, however, seem to have reverenced the house of God, since few marks of their pollution are to be seen throughout it. The interior of the house, having been well built, is still good. The chancel, Communion-table, and tables of the law, etc., are still there and in good order. The roof only is decaying ; and at the time I was there the rain was dropping on these sacred places and on other parts of the house. On the doors of the pews, in gilt letters, are still to be seen the names of the principal families which once occupied them. How could I, while for at least an hour traversing those long aisles, entering the sacred chancel, ascending the lofty pulpit, forbear to ask, And is this the house of God which was built by the Washingtons, the Masons, the Mc- Cartys, the Grahams, the Lewises, the Fairfaxes ? the house in which they used to worship the God of our fathers according to the venerable forms of the Epis- copal Church, and some of whose names are yet to be seen on the doors of those now deserted pews? Is this also destined to moulder piecemeal away, or, when some signal is given, to become the prey of spoilers, and to be carried hither and thither and applied to every purpose under heaven? " Surely patriotism, or reverence for the greatest of patriots, if not religion, might be effectually ap- pealed to in behalf of this one temple of God. The particular location of it is to be ascribed to Washing- ton, who, being an active member of the vestry when it was under consideration and in dispute where it should be placed, carefully surveyed the whole parish, The Golden Milestone 159 and, drawing an accurate and handsome map of it with his own hand, showed clearly where the claims of justice and the interests of religion required its erection. " It was to this church that Washington for some years regularly repaired, at a distance of six or seven miles, never permitting any company to prevent the regular observance of the Lord's day." 1 After the Revolution, from 1785, the family became regular attendants of Christ's Church, Alex- andria, where their pew is still shown. There can be no reasonable doubt that Washing- ton was, from the beginning, a devout believer in Christianity; his letters abound in evidences of this belief and are full of invocations to Divine Provi- dence. His public orders and commands to his soldiers, during the war, constantly reminded them of their dependence on God, the necessity of suppli- cating His mercy and help in the great struggle, and the duty of observing Sunday. For a long time he was a communicant of the Episcopal Church, a vestryman of Truro Parish, and diligent in the read- ing of sermons and good books at home when the weather was too inclement for church. He was, indeed, markedly punctilious in the observance of all his religious duties. He fasted when a day of public humiliation, prayer, and fasting was ordered by the burgesses on the eve of the Revolution : his entry in his diary is : " Fasted all day." 1 Bishop Meade, Old Churches and Families of Virginia, vol. ii, p. 227. 160 George Washington Mrs. Washington lived and died a devout com- municant of the Church; and, while her husband did not take the learned interest in its theology and dogma that Jefferson took, there is every reason to believe that his life was continually ordered by its precepts, from the time he imbibed them from the teachings of his excellent mother. " The fierce light that beats against a throne " has shone with implacable inquisitiveness into every nook and cranny of Washington's soul, but has searched in vain to find him anything but a plain, high-minded, reverential Christian gentleman. Jef- ferson may veil himself in verbal evasions, ingenu- ities, and ambiguities, due to over-much erudition and a morbid aversion to the methods of the Inqui- sition; but the first President of the United States never juggled with words, never quibbled with his conscience, and everywhere and on all occasions showed himself a simple, plain-spoken, unostenta- tious believer in the Christian religion. During these idyllic days of plantation life, how- ever, chequered with their manifold vicissitudes of light and shade, fell one great shadow across the threshold of Mount Vernon : Patsy Custis, beloved namesake and daughter of Martha Washington, was seized with an attack of constitutional malady of the heart, and suddenly expired in the bloom of her fair young life. The grief caused by this be- reavement shows pathetically in a letter of Wash- ington, addressed to a friend: MARTHA WASHINGTON. From the portrait by Gilbert Stuart. The Golden Milestone 161 " To COLONEL BASSETT " Mount Vernon, 2Oth June, 1773. " DEAR SIR, "It is an easier matter to conceive, than to describe the distress of this Family ; especially that of the un- happy Parent of our Dear Patsy Custis, when I in- form you that yesterday removed the Sweet Innocent Girl Entered [sic] into a more happy and peaceful abode than any she has met with in the afflicted Path she hitherto has trod. 1 " She arose from Dinner about four o'clock in better health and spirits than she appeared to have been in for some time; soon after which she was seized with one of her usual Fits, and expired in it, in less than two minutes without uttering a word, a groan, or scarce a sigh. This sudden, and unexpected blow, I scarce need add has almost reduced my poor Wife to the lowest ebb of Misery; which is encreas'd by the absence of her son, (whom I have just fixed at the College in New York from whence I returned the 8th Inst) and want of the balmy consolation of her Rela- tions ; which leads me more than ever to wish she could see them, and that I was Master of Arguments pow- erful enough to prevail upon Mrs. Dandridge [her mother] to make this place her entire and absolute home. I should think as she lives a lonesome life (Betsey being married) it might suit her well, and be agreeable, both to herself and my Wife, to me most assuredly it would. " I do not purpose to add more at present, the end " 19. About five o'clock poor Patsy Custis died suddenly." From an interleaved Almanac. 1 62 George Washington of my writing being only to inform you of this un- happy change." x In the course of these halcyon years, Washington had several times written that " the grim King of Terrors " had come very near to him, but never be- fore had he actually entered the Mount Vernon household, much less snatched away its fairest blossom. Mrs. Washington was to survive both her hus- band and all her children. 1 Ford, Writings of George Washington, vol. ii, pp. 384-385. CHAPTER X OLD WILLIAMSBURG * ( r I^HE most ancient and loyal colony of Vir- 1 ginia " has had, in its day (of three hundred years), three different capitals, corresponding to its three periods of infancy, youth, and maturity. Of the first historic Jamestown only an ivied church tower and a garland of immortal memories remain to tell the noble tale of Virginia colonisation, historic tatters, tasselled with innumerable threads of incident that cling to Virginia's earliest history. The eager seas, that brought the merchant adven- turers to the New World, ate perpetually at the shores of the island city, and threatened to engulf it in absolute obliteration, when pious hands, in our day, rescued it from this ignoble end. For more than ninety years it was the heart and soul of Vir- ginia affairs, ravaged by fire and flood, encom- passed with bloody hostilities on all sides, from the beginning, the centre of a long and tangled history, the apparently indestructible old town crumbled and rose again, rose and crumbled though breathing in great breaths of air from the ocean that stretched almost to its feet, and refusing stubbornly to give up its semi-royal existence until, in 1698, the re- morseless Nicholson tore it up by the roots and 163 1 64 George Washington transplanted the ancient shoot to Williamsburg, a few miles inland. The Virginia of John Smith, of Sir Francis Wyatt, of the fiery Berkeley, the tragic Virginia of Powhatan, the Lady Pocahontas, and Nathaniel Ba- con, began and ended about the spacious bays and rivers amid which Jamestown sat enthroned, look- ing wistfully over its blue waters, seemingly per- plexed at its own turbulent existence. Then, as the advancing tide of settlement and immigration marched upward and inward, toward the rippling hills that outlined the western horizon in blue, a change was made, and a new capital, the capital to be for eighty years to come, sprang up among the splendid live-oaks and lindens (planted by Dunmore) between the York and the James, in the Middle Plantation. " Williamsburg," says Burnaby, " is the capital of Virginia: it is situated between two creeks, one falling into James, the other into York river ; and is built nearly due east and west. The distance of each landing-place is something more than a mile from the town ; which, with the disadvantage of not being able to bring up large vessels, is the reason of its not having increased so fast as might have been expected. It consists of about two hundred houses, does not contain more than one thousand souls, whites and negroes; and is far from being a place of any consequence. It is regularly laid out in parallel streets, intersected by others at right angles; has a handsome square in the centre, Old Williamsburg 165 through which runs the principal street, one of the most spacious in North America, three quarters of a mile in length, and above a hundred feet wide. At the opposite ends of this street are two public build- ings, the college and the capitol : and although the houses are of wood, covered with shingles, and but indifferently built, the whole makes a handsome appearance. There are few public edifices that de- serve to be taken notice of; those, which I have mentioned, are the principal ; and they are far from being magnificent. The governor's palace is toler- ably good, one of the best upon the continent; but the church, the prison, and the other buildings, are all of them extremely indifferent. The streets are not paved, and are consequently very dusty, the soil hereabout consisting chiefly of sand : however, the situation of Williamsburg has one advantage which few or no places in these lower parts have, that of being free from mosquitoes. Upon the whole, it is an agreeable residence; there are ten or twelve gentlemen's families constantly residing in it, besides merchants and tradesmen : and at the times of the assemblies, and general courts, it is crowded with the gentry of the country : on those occasions there are balls and other amusements ; but as soon as the business is finished, they return to their plantations; and the town is in a manner deserted." l " I arrived at Williamsburg at noon," says 1 A. Burnaby, Travels Through North America, p. 33. 1 66 George Washington Lossing, " and proceeded immediately to search out the interesting localities of that ancient and earliest incorporated town in Virginia. They are chiefly upon the main street, a broad avenue pleasantly shaded, and almost as quiet as a rural lane. I first took a hasty stroll upon the spacious green in front of William and Mary College, the oldest literary institution in America except Harvard University. The entrance to the green is flanked by stately live- oaks, cheering the visitor in winter with their ever- green foliage. In the centre of the green stands the mutilated statue of Lord Botetourt, the best beloved of the colonial governors. This statue was erected in the old capitol in 1774, and in 1797 it was re- moved to its present position. I did not make a sketch of it, because a student at the college prom- ised to hand me one made by his own pencil before I left the place. He neglected to do so, and there- fore I can give nothing pictorially of ' the good Governor Botetourt/ the predecessor of Dunmore. " I next visited the remains of the palace of Lord Dunmore, the last royal governor of Virginia. It is situated at the head of a broad and beautiful court, ex- tending northward from the main street, in front of the City Hotel. The palace was constructed of brick. The centre building was accidentally destroyed by fire, while occupied by the French troops immediately after the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown. It was seventy-four feet long and sixty-eight feet wide, and occupied the site of the old palace of Governor Spots- wood, at the beginning of the eighteenth century. At- Old Williamsburg 167 tached to the palace were three hundred and sixty acres of land, beautifully laid out in gardens, parks, carriage- ways, and a bowling-green. Dunmore imported some fine linden-trees from Scotland, one of which, still in existence, is one of the finest specimens of that tree I have ever seen. In vice-regal pomp and pageantry Dunmore attempted to reign among the plain repub- licans of Virginia ; but his day of grandeur and power soon passed away, and the sun of his official glory set amid darkest clouds. All that remains of this spacious edifice are the two wings ; the one on the right was the office, the one on the left was the guard-house." " A little eastward of Palace Street or Court, is the public square, on which area are two relics of the olden time, Bruton Church, a cruciform structure with a stee- ple, and the old Magazine, an octagon building, erected during the administration of Governor Spotswood. The sides of the latter are each twelve feet in horizon- tal extent. Surrounding it, also in octagon form, is a massive brick wall, which was constructed when the building was erected. This wall is somewhat dilapi- dated. The building was occupied as a Baptist meeting- house when I visited Williamsburg, and I trust it may never fall before the hand of improvement, for it has an historical value in the minds of all Americans. The events which hallow it will be noticed presently. " On the square fronting the magazine is the court- house. It stands upon the site of the old capitol, in which occurred many interesting events connected with the history of our War for Independence. The present structure was erected over the ashes of the old one, which was burned in 1832. Around it are a few of the 1 68 George Washington old bricks, half buried in the green sward, and these compose the only remains of the Old Capitol." 1 Hugh Jones says : " The first Metropolis, James Town, was built in the most convenient Place for Trade and Security against the Indians, but often received much Damage, being twice burnt down; after which it never recovered its Perfection, consisting at present of nothing but Abun- dance of Brick Rubbish, and three or four good in- habited Houses, tho' the Parish is of pretty large Ex- tent, but less than others. When the State House and Prison were burnt down, Governor Nicholson removed the Residence of the Governor, with the Meeting of General Courts and General Assemblies to Middle Plantation, seven Miles from James Town, in a health- ier and more convenient Place, and freer from the An- noyance of Muskettoes. " Here he laid out the City of Williamsburgh (in the Form of a Cypher, made of W. and M.) on a Ridge at the Head Springs of two great Creeks, one running into James, and the other into York River, which are each navigable for sloops, within a Mile of the Town ; at the Head of which Creeks are good Landings, and Lots laid out, and Dwelling Houses and Ware Houses built ; so that this Town is most conveniently situated, in the Middle of the lower Part of Virginia, command- ing two noble Rivers, not above four Miles from either, and is much more commodious and healthful, than if built upon a River. " Publick Buildings here of Note, are the College, the Capitol, Governor's House, and the Church. The 'Lossing, Field Book of the Revolution, vol. ii, p. 262. Old Williamsburg- 169 Latitude of the College at Williamsburgh, to the best of my Observation, is 37. 21'. North. " The Front which looks due East is double, and is 136 Foot long. It is a lofty Pile of Brick Building adorn'd with a Cupola. At the North End runs back a large Wing, which is a handsome Hall, answerable to which the Chapel is to be built ; and there is a spa- cious Piazza on the West side, from one Wing to the other. It is approached by a good Walk, and a grand Entrance by Steps, with good Courts and Gardens about it, with a good House and Apartments for the Indian Master^ and his Scholars, and Out-Houses ; and a large Pasture enclosed like a Park with about 150 Acres of Land adjoining, for occasional Uses. " The Building is beautiful and commodious, being first modelled by Sir Christopher Wren, adapted to the Nature of the Country by the Gentlemen there; and since it was burnt down, it has been rebuilt, and nicely contrived, altered and adorned by the ingenious Direc- tion of Governor Spottswood; and is not altogether unlike Chelsea Hospital. " Fronting the College at near its whole Breadth, is extended a noble Street mathematically streight (for the first Design of the Town's Form is changed to a much better) just three Quarters of a Mile in Length; At the other End of which stands the Capitol, a noble, beautiful, and commodious Pile as any of its Kind, built at the Cost of the late Queen, and by the Direction of the Governor. " The Building is in the Form of an H nearly ; the Secretary's Office, and the General Court taking up one Side below Stairs ; the Middle being an handsom Portico leading to the Clerk of the Assembly's Office, 170 George Washington and the House of Burgesses on the other Side ; which last is not unlike the House of Commons. " In each Wing is a good Stair Case, one leading to the Council Chamber, where the Governor and Council sit in very great State, in Imitation of the King and Council, or the Lord Chancellor and House of Lords. " The whole is surrounded with a neat Area, encom- passed with a good Wall, and near it is a strong sweet Prison for Criminals; " The Cause of my being so particular in describing the Capitol is, because it is the best and most commo- dious Pile of its Kind that I have seen or heard of. " Because the State House, James Town, and the College have been burnt down, therefore is prohibited in the Capitol the Use of Fire, Candles, and Tobacco. " At the Capitol, at publick Times, may be seen a great Number of handsome, well-dress'd, compleat Gentlemen. And at the Governor's House upon Birth- Nights, and at Balls and Assemblies, I have seen as fine an Appearance, as good Diversion, and as splendid Entertainments in Governor Spot-wood's Time, as I have seen any where else. " Here dwell several very good Families, and more reside here in their own Houses at publick Times. ' They live in the same neat Manner, dress after the same Modes, and behave themselves exactly as the Gentry in London; most Families of any Note having a Coach, Chariot, Berlin, or Chaise. " Thus they dwell comfortably, genteely, pleasantly, and plentifully in this delightful, healthful, and (I hope) thriving City of Williamsburgh." 1 'The seat of our government had been originally 1 Hugh Jones, The Present State of Virginia, p. 25. Old Williamsburgf 171 fixed in the peninsula of Jamestown, the first settle- ment of the colonists; and had been afterwards re- moved a few miles inland to Williamsburg. But this was at a time when our settlements had not extended beyond the tide water. Now they had crossed the Alleghany; and the centre of population was very far removed from what it had been. Yet Williamsburg was still the depository of our archives, the habitual residence of the Governor and many other of the public functionaries, the established place for the sessions of the legislature, and the magazine of our military stores : and it's situation was so exposed that it might be taken at any time in war, and, at this time particularly, an enemy might in the night run up either of the rivers between which it lies, land a force above, and take possession of the place, without the possibility of saving either persons or things. I had proposed it's removal so early as Octob. '76. but it did not prevail until the session of May. '79." 1 This was the year 1760, the year in which Patrick Henry aged twenty-four went to Wil- liamsburg to be examined in the law, and narrowly escaped being " plucked " by the board of examiners, who happened to be a famous group Peyton and John Randolph (attorney-general), George Wythe, and Robert Carter Nicholas. Jefferson had only lately become a matriculate. His first letter in Ford's edition of his voluminous correspondence probably the first of the twenty-five or thirty thousand letters still surviving was devoted to this subject. 1 P. L. Ford, Writings of Thomas Jefferson, vol. i, p. 55. 172 George Washington " To JOHN HARVEY " Shadwell, Jan. 14, 1760. " SIR, I was at Colo. Peter Randolph's about a Fortnight ago, and my Schooling falling into Dis- course, he said he thought it would be to my Advantage to go to the College, and was desirous I should go, as indeed I am myself for several Reasons. In the first place as long as I stay at the Mountains The Loss of one fourth of my Time is inevitable, by Company's coming here and detaining me from School. And like- wise my Absence will in a great Measure put a Stop to so much Company, and by that Means lessen the Expences of the Estate in House-Keeping. And on the other Hand by going to the College, I shall get a more universal Acquaintance, which may hereafter be serviceable to me ; and I suppose I can pursue my Studies in the Greek and Latin as well there as here, and likewise learn something of the Mathematics. I shall be glad of your opinion." 1 From the very beginning, Old Williamsburg had been wrapped in a literary and legal flavour " Devilsburg," Jefferson playfully calls it in his letters to John Page, in allusion to the ennui he suffered there, or to the tricksy pranks of the stu- dents, wishing " Coke, the dull old scoundrel, at the devil " when the image of the fair " Belinda " (Rebecca Burwell) dances teasingly before his imagination. The Orange and the Stuart were amicably wound together in the architectural cypher of W and M, in the shape of which the elder town 1 P- L- Ford, Writings of Thomas Jefferson, vol. i, p. 340. Old Williamsburg- 173 had been originally laid out; its ancient library was full of books and MSS., presented by kings, arch- bishops, bishops, and scholars; the name of the famous Robert Boyle was inseparably connected with its Indian school, and generous donations were made to it by Government, in consideration of two copies of Latin verses annually prepared and pre- sented to it by the President and Fellows. Far back in the grey years of the seventeenth cen- tury in 1693, when Voltaire was still unborn, and Racine was not far from his death-bed the College cf William and Mary had been founded by a royal grant of twenty thousand acres of good Virginia land and 1985 in money, while an ample tax on to- bacco (the crowned weed, blazoned on the earliest colonial seal of Virginia), and abundant fees from the land-surveyor's office were added, in perpetuity, to maintain the president and six professors. The gifts and remembrances of the charitable, interested in Indian and colonial education, flowed into the cof- fers of the college, which, in 1776, had risen to be the richest in North America. Younger than Har- vard by a few months only, it soon grew to be a living and audacious refutation of the view of that choleric old " Know Nothing," Sir William Berke- ley, who not long before its foundation had writ- ten home to London : " The same course is taken here, for instructing the people, as there is in England : Out of towns every man instructs his own children according to his own 174 George Washington ability. We have forty-eight parishes, and our minis- ters are well paid, and by my consent should be better, if they would pray oftener, and preach less. But as of all commodities, so of this, the worst are sent to us, and we have few that we can boast of, since the persecution in Cromwell's tyranny drove divers worthy men thither. Yet, I thank God, there are no free schools nor print- ing ; and I hope we shall not have these hundred years. For learning has brought disobedience, and heresy, and sects, into the world, and printing has divulged them and libels against the best governments; God keep us from both ! " WILLIAM BERKELEY. " VIRGINIA, 20 June, 1671." Gutenberg and Faust might turn in their graves for all the old Governor cared, if only " Virginia, earth's only Paradise," as Drayton sang in his fa- mous ode, remained free from their " pesky" inven- tion. The pink-blossomed tobacco, that waved like an emerald sea in and around the Virginia planta- tions; the hogshead of generous liquors, imported from vine-clad tropic islands; the skins and furs that clothed in velvet the thousands of shy sylvan creatures that roamed the Virginian woods, were to coin themselves into golden pence and pounds, and still more golden brains of men to become for ever celebrated in the annals of the New World. Old William and Mary arose, a daring incarna- tion of the resentment felt at the bluster of this vice- regal tyrant who ruled Virginia with a rod of iron, and wrote testy communications to the officials at Old Williamsburg 175 St. James's on the "state" of the colony. Out of its portals, streamed in the course of time, no less than four hundred alumni who distinguished themselves in all the walks of life three presidents of the United States, four signers of the Declaration, five Judges of the Supreme Court, sixteen United States senators, four speakers of the House of Representa- tives. The brilliant and speaking likenesses that graced the chapel and library walls, executed by the brushes of famous artists, were hardly more remark- able than the groups of illustrious men who, in silken hose and powdered hair, in cap and gown and velvet doublet, gathered in picture-like twos and threes about the shady promenades of the palace grounds, in the H-shaped precincts of the ancient House of Burgesses, or at the memorable fire- side conversazioni in the Apollo Room of the old Raleigh Tavern. From generation to generation old Virginia pre- sented herself at the Chancellor's office of William and Mary College, and became duly matriculated as the intellectual guest of " the Nestor of Ameri- can Colleges." Hither, George Washington came as a mere lad to get his land-surveyor's license, to be followed in a few years by Thomas Jefferson and Zachary Taylor (grandfather of the Presi- dent) on the same errand. Here, the intellect of John Marshall was refined to that wondrous judg- ment, which impelled an eminent historian 1 to 1 John Fiske. 176 George Washington include him with those other Virginians Wash- ington, Jefferson, Madison among the five men (Hamilton being the fifth) who were the soul of the Revolution. Peyton Randolph, president of the first Continental Congress in 1774, had, doubtless, presided over many a boyish debate in the college where Lord Botetourt had established gold medals for Latin oratory, and prizes for attendance on chapel, before he assumed the august role of pre- siding officer of this celebrated assembly. Many a venerable oak on the college green, or in the vicinity of the quaint " Powder Horn," or at the corners of what was afterwards called Lord Dunmore's Palace (built in the year Washington was born) must have rustled sympathetically in Dodona fashion, as the young gallants walked to and fro beneath them after the gorgeous balls at the governor's and talked " treason " of the Patrick Henry type, discussed the " Writs of Assistance " and the impending Stamp Act, composed epigrams in the style of Colonel William Byrd, or trans- lated bits of Ovid in the fluent fashion of George Sandys. The unpaved streets of the venerable burgh would become a veritable Campo Santo of colonial legend, if their dust could become articulate, and whisper the secrets buried in the yellow sand of the Middle Plantation the secrets of the " Virginia Comedians " who presented there, in the primitive playhouse, the latest " thing " from Vauxhall the secrets that now piled themselves mountain-high during the administrations of Nicholson, and Spots- Old Williamsburg 1 177 wood, " Knight of the Golden Horse Shoe," Gooch and Dinwiddie, and smiling Botetourt and bitter- tongued Dunmore, who burnt himself into Vir- ginia's memory deeper than any other governor, through his devastation of Norfolk. This noble old Williamsburg, of high descent and lofty lineage, formed the jewelled clasp between the old and the new Virginia, between blood-stained Jamestown, the first capital, and civic Richmond, whither the capital was removed in 1779. Never, perhaps, in its palmiest days possessing a population of more than twenty-five hundred, the city of Wil- liam and Mary enjoys a political distinction unparal- leled in the history of the United States. For eighty years, moreover, its beaux and belles made of it the social " cynosure of all eyes," " the glass of fashion and the mould of form," a small woodland Ver- sailles, where a miniature court flitted hither and thither on its vice-regal nothings, a busybody world of gay triviality and harmless gossip where, between- whiles, Shawnees and Mingoes and Delawares are to be educated on Boyle's foundation (immediately to relapse into barbarism as soon as they returned to their native forests, remarks " that merry old Vir- ginian," Colonel Byrd). Colonel and Mrs. Wash- ington and their charming children left the stately mansion of Mount Vernon many a time, between 1760 and 1774, to take part in the pomp and pag- eantry of the vice-regal court, " step the minuet " in company with Fauquier, courteous Botetourt, or the Earl and Countess of Dunmore, or prance on 1 78 George Washing-ton thoroughbred horses about the Williamsburg lanes and roads, fragrant, in season, with golden mantle of yellow jessamine, loops and ropes of flowering grape, or sheets of goldenrod flinging its yellow dust to the wind. The Colonel, doubtless, kept a watchful eye on the fashions of the Middle Plantation gentry, ap- peared in his " genteel suit of superfine broadcloth," made the sagacious observation to his London cor- respondent that, " whatever might be the reason, his clothes had never fitted him," no doubt made mental comparisons between himself and the ele- gantly fitted preux chevaliers of the court, and then proceeded to order those curious and dainty things for the two " Patsys," in which his circumstantial invoices abound. All this aristocracy and education of the planters' commonwealth were thus held, socially and politi- cally, together by the " jewelled clasp," for here assembled the hundred or so fresh-cheeked, high- coloured representatives of the 150,000 white Vir- ginians, who had then spread themselves over the rural infinitude called " Virginia " ; here, a never- ending succession of burgesses and their wives and daughters gathered in the seasons of assembly, and contributed a brilliant society of which one catches piquant glimpses in Fithian's Diary; incipient " Sons of Liberty " began to sound their alarum- bells of resistance and revolution as the decades moved swiftly along; and hither, one d'ay, trotted on his forest-bred nag a young man from Hanover Old Williamsburgr 179 County who, after one month's study of Coke on Littleton, and the Virginia Statutes, had the im- pudence to present himself for examination in the law. This was the kinsman of Lord Brougham, and Robertson the historian, Patrick Henry, an ill-clad, gawky, wild-eyed but genial son of the woods, of very definite kindred (as it seemed, afterward) but undefined ambition, by no means the " Jamestown diamond " even his friends, at first, took him to be, yet unpromising in the extreme to look at. Four years younger than Washington, seven years younger than Jefferson, Henry was fre- quently in the latter s company, as Jefferson pur- sued his two years' course at the college, and, doubtless, often enough met Washington, when the Boanerges of Hanover County entered the House of Burgesses in 1765. A more illustrious triumvirate. America has never had to show the Arm, the Pen, the Voice of the Revolution. The genius of a Plutarch would be required to characterise these three men in such lines of fire as they deserve. As they calmly walked the three quarters of a mile that covered the Duke of Glouces- ter Street, from the " beautiful and commodious " capitol (as old Hugh Jones described it) to the spacious green in front of the college, discussing the Parson's case or Charles Townshend's Revenue Acts, or the constantly up-flaming Stamp Act, or the 20,000,000 of dollars the French and Indian i8o George Washington wars had already cost the colonies, no one could have predicted, that the tallest of the three young men would become the first man of his age, the second would write the document that was to be- come the creed and classic of all modern republics, and the third would incarnate the very voice of Revolution itself, and send it like a trail of fire from one end of the land to the other, never to be extin- guished. A vast potentiality lay latent in the three, for two of those unpretending burgesses were to sit in the presidential chair, two were to become gov- ernors of the commonwealth, and one was to be the first American Governor of Virginia elected by the suffrages of his fellow-citizens. The three summed up in themselves the essence of the whole " Ameri- can question," then germinating in subterranean ways all over the country: Jefferson the student, wondrously learned, wise, discriminating, abso- lutely without the " gift of gab " which his friend Henry possessed in such opulence, faltering and confused when he got up on his legs, yet even then in possession of that eloquence of diction, which made John Adams insist on his writing the Declara- tion of Independence; Washington, the man of action, strenuous, stern, falteringly modest in speech when he stood in legislature or congress, yet thrill- ing with vital force when he stood on the field of battle, and " swearing like an angel from Heaven " when things went wrong (so his friend General Charles Scott reported) patient, silent, reserved, except when the inner volcanic flame burst through Old Williamsburg- 181 his flashing eyes in some stupendous conflict; Henry, the " forest-born Demosthenes," whose im- passioned nature had gathered up into itself all the sweet, wild strength of the woods and winds and wilderness, to break forth some day in marvellously musical words, and the play of a " wonder-working fancy." And when one considers, that these were but three of the wonderful men who then frequented the goodly foundation of William and Mary, speci- mens of the splendid men whose souls Seymour, Attorney-general of Great Britain, had consigned to perdition, when worthy Master Blair had applied to him for a charter : meekly affirming that they too the Virginians had souls to save: " Souls? souls? D their souls ! let them make tobacco ! " when we consider that the old brick palace of Dunmore and the Raleigh Tavern rooms, the coun- cil-chamber and the college lecture-rooms, the very sanctuaries of old Bruton Church (built in 1700) and the " miniature Westminster Abbey " of the chapel, had resounded with the voices and presence of scores of such men, it is well to pause a moment, and remember that it was the Williamsburg spirit that largely ruled the Revolutionary conventions, that wrote the declaration of rights, that defied the fleets and armies of Great Britain, and that brought the mighty struggle to a glorious end. Yorktown and Williamsburg were never more than a few miles apart, yet in their spirit they were absolutely joined. It is no wonder, then, that the capitol at Williams- 1 82 George Washington burg where the burgesses met was stigmatised as " the heart of rebellion," and that the foe thought to tear out this heart in Tarleton's time when American, English, and French troops successively occupied the beautifully laid-out grounds of the palace. Then the migrant capital moved to Richmond, in 1779, when Jefferson was governor, and housed itself in the picturesque city near the falls of the James, which Colonel Byrd of Westover had founded more than forty years before. The James, bursting over the foaming rocks above the lovely site of the present Hollywood, fitly symbolised the agitation of the times, while its expansion below into a broad and noble river, where giant battleships were to shoot down the launchways at busy Hamp- ton Roads, prophetically suggested the broadening currents of Virginia history, and its expansion into a world-influence. Call it a chrism, call it a curse, fire was the element that stuck closer than a brother to Williamsburg, ! from the first fire of speech, fire of eloquence; fiery tongues actually seemed to hover, incandescent,' over the hundred burgesses, and sting and quicken them into imprudent speech; and actual flames, crude, destructive, terrible, scourged the place from the year 1705 to the year 1861, when Federal troops burnt the venerable college buildings, and relic-hunters tore away the metal inscription from the pedestal of beloved Lord Botetourt's statue. It was conceived and born out of the great intellectual GEORGE WASHINGTON. From the painting by Rembrandt Peale. Reproduced by permission of C. Klackner, N. Y. Copyright, 1894. Old Williamsburg 183 conflagration of 1688, and it continued to burn in one way or another, actually or metaphorically, all through its history, its very ashes possessing an in- candescent character that flamed up anew, as soon as some accident (like that of the French occupation in 1781) or incendiary torch had laid this or that one of its monumental buildings in the dust. It stood for the Truth, which cannot be burned, for Liberty, which is indestructible, for Culture, which can never die; for here, in 1776, originated the Phi Beta Kappa Society in its parent chapter, and straight from Williamsburg went Thomas Jefferson, full of his idea of founding a great State University, realised in 1825, by the opening of the University of Virginia while he was yet alive. Generation after generation of scholars in their caps and gowns, since the first commencement in 1700, have for two hundred years streamed out of the portals of William and Mary College, illustrating every walk of life science, law, history, literature, divinity, the arts; their lofty, independent spirit animated the debates of Congress, when a congress came to be; the law-books in the rich old library, where precious volumes shone resplendent with the coats-of-arms of royal governors and generous donors, especially the volumes on English consti- tutional law, became vitally incarnate, and were born to vivid resurrection in the form of Peyton and Edmund and John Randolph, George Wythe and Edmund Pendleton, Richard Bland, Robert 184 George Washington Carter Nicholas, Jefferson, Henry, and scores of others. In these men, the types of the Revolution reached their most finished mould, and stand forth, a bril- liant gallery of faces, unexampled for strength, originality, genius, and energy, only paralleled by the group of gladiators who, almost at this mo- ment, stood on the other side of the sea, like some marble group of monumental sculpture, and de- fended the same constitutional principles for which the Americans fought Burke, Chatham, and Fox. A mighty spirit of freedom was welling up from the very earth in North America, and finding lips and voices in Massachusetts, in New York, in Pennsylvania, and, above all, in Virginia, whose warm blood had always bubbled and battled for freedom, and at last poured itself out freely on a hundred battle-fields, in defence of constitutional rights. " I have never had a will of my own," wrote Washington to Colonel Bouquet, " where a duty was demanded of me " ; and this sublime sense of duty actuated Washington's contemporaries almost to a man. The ancient charters and privileges of the colonies breathed the same spirit of broad hu- manitarianism and brotherhood, and the obligation to help savage and civilised alike, as far as it was possible to help them; and the very foundation of William and Mary College, and the wealth that flowed to it, rooted themselves in the same lofty philanthropies, the same recognition of the primal Old Williamsburg 185 rights of man. The Indian queen, holding forth her twig of tobacco leaf and blossom, blazoned on the early colonial seal, typified not only a mighty gift of alleviation to mankind, but the right of a noble, uncivilised race to advance to the foot of the throne, and claim succour from an enlightened sovereign. When the gay cavalcade of the " Knights of the Golden Horse Shoe " trotted out of Old Williams- burg, under the gallant Spotswood, and climbed the Alleghanies, they peered over and out from their " peak of Darien," into the illimitable region where Washington later saw thousands and tens of thou- sands of buffalo, soon to be replaced by the millions of human beings, who had drawn their blood and culture from such institutions as this venerable college, and were soon to spread, like a sea, over the region which one of the famous trio before men- tioned was to gain for the United States, in 1804, forty years from the period under consideration; and over all this the benign sun of mutual recogni- tion, sovereign personal right, and individual con- science was to shine. Graphically has John Esten Cooke pictured the force and influence of this one institution, when he says: " Almost every Virginian of any eminence in the eighteenth century had been trained for his work in the world within its walls. It gave twenty-seven of its students to the army in the Revolution ; two Attorney- Generals to the United States ; it sent out nearly twenty 1 86 George Washing-ton members of Congress, fifteen United States Senators, seventeen Governors, thirty-seven Judges, a Lieutenant- General and other high officers to the army, two Com- modores to the navy, twelve Professors, four signers of the Declaration of Independence, seven Cabinet of- ficers, the chief draughtsman and author of the Con- stitution, Edmund Randolph, the most eminent of the Chief Justices, John Marshall, and three Presidents of the United States. And this list, honorable as it is, by no means exhausts the number of really eminent and in- fluential men who owed the formation and development of their intellects and characters to ' William and Mary.' In the long list of students, preserved from the year 1720 to the present time, will be found a great array of names holding a very high rank in the common- wealth of Virginia and the States of the South and West in the pulpit, at the bar, and in the local legisla- tures. These, without attaining the eminence of those first mentioned, were the most prominent citizens of the communities in which they lived, and were chiefly in- strumental in giving character and direction to social and political affairs. One and all, they received from their education at the old ante-revolutionary college the stamp and mould of character which made them able and valuable citizens leaders, indeed, in opinion and action, whenever intellect and virtue were needed for important public affairs." 1 Of the vanished life of the place, Bishop Meade wrote : " Williamsburg was once the miniature copy of the Court of St. James, somewhat aping the manners of 1 Scribner's Monthly, November, 1875, P- i- Old Williamsburg 187 that royal place, while the old church grave-yard and the college chapel were si licet cum magnis componere parva the Westminster Abbey and the St. Paul's of London, where the great ones were interred. The first person who came to sleep beneath the pavement of this American Westminster Abbey was Sir John Randolph, who had espoused the English side during the Revolu- tion and gone into exile ; and he was followed by his two sons, John Randolph, formerly the King's Attorney- General, and Peyton Randolph, President of the first Congress, and by Bishop Madison, first Bishop of Vir- ginia ; Chancellor Nelson, and it is believed Lord Bote- tourt, the royal governor, whose statue was in 1797 placed upon the college green. Botetourt had been a warm friend of the Virginians and the Virginia college ; and, as he had expressed a desire to be buried in the colony, his friend, the Duke of Beaufort, wrote, after his death, requesting that ' the president, etc., of the college will permit me to erect a monument near the place where he was buried.' This phrase is supposed to indicate that the old chapel of William and Mary con- tained the last remains of the most popular and beloved of the royal governors." * The associations of the old capitol grow more piquant and complicated as one advances into its story, tangled as the original cypher-monogram of the plan on which it was originally laid out. Says Cooke : " Old Bruton Church was for a long time the resort of the students on days of public worship. At the Old Capitol they witnessed the determined stand made by 1 Scribner's Monthly, November, 1875, p. 7. 1 88 George Washington the Burgesses against the encroachments of the Crown. At the Old Palace they appeared annually on the 5th of November to present their copies of Latin verses to the Governor, as the representative of the King of Eng- land, the head of the institution. At the old Raleigh Tavern they met to found the Phi Beta Kappa Society, or to join in the festivities of the fine assemblies held in the historic ' Apollo Room ' in the building. When the revolutionary outburst came, the great drama was played before them, and they mingled in their ' aca- demical dresses ' with the crowds which cheered the worthy Lord Botetourt as he rode in his fine chariot, drawn by six white horses, to the Capitol, or hooted the unpopular Lord Dunmore as he fled to his man-of-war in the river after rifling the Old Magazine of its powder. " Bruton Church, which is still standing, is one of the oldest of these historic buildings, and took its name from the parish the college having been built, it will be remembered, on land ' lying and being in the parish of Bruton.' It was erected in 1678, and became a promi- nent feature of the colonial capital a sort of miniature St. Paul's. The Royal Governor had his fine pew there under its canopy, and around him on Sunday were grouped the most distinguished citizens of the place, the Councilors, Judges, and Burgesses. The old Bruton Church Communion Service is still in existence. The cup and paten are of gold, and were presented to the church by Sir John Page. The flagon, chalice, and plate are of silver, and were presented by King George III., whose coat-of-arms is carved upon them." * The second capitol became famous after the de- 1 Scribner's Monthly, November, 1875, P- I0 - Old Williamsburg 189 struction, by fire, of the first. Several of the scenes it witnessed are described by Cooke : " The second building soon took its place, and wit- nessed the tumultuous scenes of 1774 and the succeed- ing years. It had already echoed with the thunders of the great debate on the Stamp Act in 1765, when Pat- rick Henry, a raw countryman, startled the Burgesses with his grand outburst, ' Caesar had his Brutus,' etc., with which all are familiar. In the lobby, listening, was a young student of William and Mary College, named Thomas Jefferson, who afterward characterised the debate as most ' bloody,' and described the sudden appearance of Edmund Randolph, as he came out of the Chamber, declaring, with a violent oath, that he would have given five hundred guineas for a single vote, which it seems would have defeated the famous resolu- tions of Henry. The Old Capitol was the scene of all the grand official pageants of that time. The royal governors, always fond of imitating regal proceedings, had the habit of riding from the ' Palace ' to the Capitol in their coaches drawn by four or even six horses, aim- ing thus to dazzle the eyes of the ' provincials ' ; and, once enthroned in their Council Chamber, they seem to have felt that for the moment they were the real Kings of Virginia. The old chronicles leave no doubt of the lordly deportment of the royal governors on these oc- casions. ' Yesterday, between three and four o'clock P.M./ says the Virginia Gazette for May 27, 1774, ' the Right Honourable the Earl of Dunmore sent a message to the Honourable the House of Burgesses, by the Clerk of the Council, requiring their immediate attendance in the Council Chamber, when his Excellency spoke to them as follows.' His address was that of Charles I. to i go George Washington his parliament, demanding the five members. The Burgesses had ' reflected ' on the King and Parliament, and were sternly declared to be ' dissolved.' And the men who were thus imperiously addressed, who were dismissed by his Lordship with marks of his cold dis- pleasure, as a schoolmaster dismisses his schoolboys, were Jefferson, Henry, Mason, and Pendleton the greatest names, in a word, of the time." 1 Thus was old Williamsburg intertwined, like its own monogram, with every fibre of the ancient commonwealth's life, the focus and fountain of that life which now began to play in a dazzling stream of new forces, kindling, creative, illuminative, a measureless energy which, when turned into light, became a Niagara whose splendour and revelry were seen and heard to the ends of the earth. The era of the New Forces had dawned. 1 Scribner's Monthly, November, 1875, p. n. CHAPTER XI THE NEW FORCES ON the 2Oth of September, 1765, Washington wrote to Francis Dandridge, his wife's uncle, in London : " At present few things are under notice of my ob- servation that can afford you any amusement in the recital. The Stamp Act, imposed on the colonies by the Parliament of Great Britain, engrosses the con- versation of the speculative part of the colonists, who look upon this unconstitutional method of taxation, as a direful attack upon their liberties, and loudly exclaim against the violation. What may be the result of this, and of some other (I think I may add) ill-judged measures, I will not undertake to determine ; but this I may venture to affirm, that the advantage accruing to the mother country will fall greatly short of the ex- pectations of the ministry ; for certain it is, that our whole substance does already in a manner flow to Great Britain and that whatsoever contributes to lessen our importations must be hurtful to their manufacturers. And the eyes of our people, already beginning to open, will perceive, that many luxuries, which we lavish our substance in Great Britain for, can well be dispensed with, whilst the necessaries of life are (mostly) to be had within ourselves. This, consequently, will intro- duce frugality, and be a necessary stimulation to in- dustry. If Great Britain, therefore, loads her manu- i 9 r 1 92 George Washington facturies with heavy taxes, will it not facilitate these measures? They will not compel us, I think, to give our money for their exports, whether we will or not; and certain I am, none of their traders will part from them without a valuable consideration. Where, then, is the utility of these restrictions ? " As to the Stamp Act, taken in a single view, one and the first bad consequence attending it, I take to be this, our courts of judicature must inevitably be shut up; for it is impossible (or next of kin to it), under our present circumstances, that the act of Parliament can be complied \vith, were we ever so willing to en- force the execution ; for, not to say, which alone would be sufficient, that we have not money to pay the stamps, there are many other cogent reasons, to prevent it ; and if a stop be put to our judicial proceedings, I fancy the merchants of Great Britain, trading to the colonies, will not be among the last to wish for a repeal of it." * Two years later, in 1767, he wrote to Capel & Os- good Hanbury: " Unseasonable as it may be, to take any notice of the repeal of the Stamp Act at this time, yet I cannot help observing, that a contrary measure would have in- troduced very unhappy consequences. Those, there- fore, who wisely foresaw such an event, and were instrumental in procuring the repeal of the act, are, in my opinion, deservedly entitled to the thanks of the well-wishers to Britain and her colonies, and must re- flect with pleasure, that, through their means, many scenes of confusion and distress have been prevented. Mine they accordingly have, and always shall have, for 1 Ford, Writings of George Washington, vol. ii, pp. 209-210. The New Forces 193 their opposition to any act of oppression ; and that act could be looked upon in no other light by every person, who would view it in its proper colors. " I could wish it was in my power to congratulate you on the success in having the commercial system of these colonies put upon a more enlarged and extensive footing, than it is; because I am well satisfied, that it would ultimately redound to the advantage of the mother country, so long as the colonies pursue trade and agriculture, and would be an effectual let to manu- facturing among them. The money, therefore which they raise, would centre in Great Britain, as certainly as the needle will settle to the pole." * Washington to Robert Gary, 21 July, 1767: " The repeal of the Stamp Act, to whatsoever cause owing, ought much to be rejoiced at, for had the Par- liament of Great Britain resolved upon enforcing it, the consequences, I conceive, would have been more direful than is generally apprehended, both to the mother country and her colonies. All, therefore, who were instrumental in procuring the repeal, are entitled to the thanks of every British subject, and have mine cordially." 2 Governor Fauquier to Earl of Halifax, June 14, 1765: " Government is set at defiance, not having strength enough in her hands to enforce obedience to the laws of the community. The private distress which every 1 Ford, Writings of George Washington, vol. ii, p. 210, note. 2 Ibid., p. 211, note. 194 George Washington man feels, increases the general dissatisfaction at the duties laid by the stamp act, which breaks out, and shews itself upon every trifling occasion." 1 " This engrossing topic of conversation " had, indeed, " engaged all the speculative minds in the colonies " with a preoccupation that was never again to leave it. " This is the way," wrote John Hughes, in Ban- croft, 1 " that the fire began." " Virginia rang the alarm-bell for the continent," cried Bernard to Hali- fax. " Virginians fired the hearts of patriots with an eloquence which defied royal prerogatives and patronage, and set the seal of lasting pre-eminence on William and Mary, the venerable Nestor of American colleges, in which they had imbibed the highest principles of liberty, both of thought and of actions." " Virginia has the glory," said John Adams, " with posterity of beginning with the resolutions against the stamp act, and ending, with the acts of the convention of May, 1786, the great American Revolution." The Stamp Act, indeed, was but the topmost crest of that ocean of unrest that was now sweeping over the colonies. These infant commonwealths had grown from shiploads to plantations or settlement- groups, crowned and accentuated by a church spire; from these to " hundreds," counties, parishes, pre- a Ford, Writings of George Washington, vol. ii, p. 210, note. * Bancroft, History of the United States, vol. v, p. 278. The New Forces 195 cincts over which vestries or selectmen ruled in ancient English wise by free elective franchise; and there ensued the swift growth and amalgamation of disunited and ever warring units, heterogeneous be- yond compare, into united and harmonious wholes, whose integrity was every day becoming more dense and indivisible. Whatever differences of creed, of culture, of race, or of religion might have existed when the Pilgrim pioneers first set foot on American soil, fast obliterated themselves in the new condi- tions, and became as indistinguishable in the new life as the track of tossing and floating gulls on the water. Left by their careless mother sternly to themselves, these luckless children struck out for themselves, and like strong swimmers reached what- ever land lay next before them, in their own indi- vidual way. Even so the beehives of ancient Greece had sent out their swarms of bees over the busy Mediterra- nean, and built up thriving commonwealths, con- nected by the thin thread of the " metropolis " city, among the beautiful isles or palm-fringed shores of Ionia, Sicily, Corcyra, or Iberia. The thousands that slipped from English ports into the unknown seas seemed at first to have slipped into an under-world, unimaginably great, and dark, whence never again would they rise to the yearning eyes of the mother on the English shore. Here again the charming story of Alpheus and Arethusa was repeated; what disappeared under sea as sluggish Alpheus, in far-off Peloponnesus, 196 George Washington reappeared in sunny Sicily as Arethusa, the spark- ling fountain of crystal water that suggested the Fountain of Perpetual Youth. The outcast children, self-exiled, or independent rovers as they might be, came to themselves on the other side of the Atlantic in a new and original light, and developed a type of which one, singling out a group of them, said: " They are men, and they are noble spirits, those Virginians ! " Equally " noble " w r ere the men of Massachusetts, one of whom had uttered this honourable phrase, when he heard of the part played by Patrick Henry before the burgesses in 1765. This part, indeed, was merely the part now being played by the whole American people, by the three millions of American freemen who found their mouthpiece in the eloquent Virginian ; and the true key-note of the situation rang out in clear tones, when this incarnation of spontaneous civil and in- tellectual freedom exclaimed, a few years later, on the floor of Congress : " I am not a Virginian I am an American ! " an utterance as striking in its way as the celebrated humanitarian Homo sum of Terence. And the finest commentary on this sentiment is found in the almost contemporary saying of Fred- erick the Great : " Kings are nothing but men, and all men are equal," a saying which constituted one drop and that the most vital of the com- plex ink out of which flowed Jefferson's master- piece. WASHINGTON'S COAT-OF-ARMS. The New Forces 197 The Age of Doubt, of scepticism in Church and State, of tolerance of intolerance was at hand, and it was strange that its gigantic forces should begin first to play on the sensitive organisations of the children of the West, those youth of the world, at play and at work in the huge wilderness of Canada and the Ohio, where the ring of the axe, not of the epigram, was most to be heard, and when men were, supposedly, busy rather in sheltering their heads than saving their souls. And yet what is more conducive to contemplative reverie, to the inflowing " crafts and assaults " of the spirit of Mephistopheles, to the universal " spirit that says No ! " than the limitless stretches of the woods, the silence and solitude of the primeval sa- vannah, the noiseless march of majestic rivers that never give an articulate answer to any question, but flow on for ever in monstrous fatalism, dumb, im- placable, silent! And this spirit of Mephistopheles, quickly recog- nised, and indelibly sculptured by Goethe into the massive structure of his matchless poem, was the actuating spirit of the century in which the United States were born. The mocking, scoffing, question- ing interrogation that trickled from the pen of Vol- taire, D'Alembert, Diderot, and the Encyclopedists was delicately etherealised by wit and humour and sarcasm now reflected in every face, as in the thou- sand bits of a shivered mirror, spread over Europe like a subtle atmosphere, crossed the ocean, and pen- etrated to the very citadel of Protestantism and the 198 George Washing-ton Roman faith alike, in Canada and the Saxon colo- nies. The woodman, as his axe flashed through the heart of the falling oak; the voyageur, as he shot down the lonely river and sang the pathetic chan- sons of France ; the selectman, hurrying to meeting- house or primitive council-hall ; the piazza politician, sipping his toddy, spreading his legs, and discussing constitutional questions on the spacious verandahs of open-air Virginia; even the stubborn peasant of Pennsylvania and the Quaker, intrenched in his stronghold of impregnable peace, felt the stress of the time and thrilled unequivocally with the sensa- tion of foreshadowing change. " Vincit qui patitur" reads the motto of one of the most illustrious of the old James River families, 1 core and centre of the English civilisation in Vir- ginia : " He conquers who is patient " : a motto al- most ironical in its application to America at this date. Impatience had been from the very start the key- note of life in the colonies impatience of restraint, impatience of royal governors and administrative councils, impatience of this or that impost-tax whether native or foreign, impatience of the slow and intolerable delays of leisurely legislatures, pro- longing or postponing salutary measures of pressing importance, impatience generated by the endless nuisances of the slowly-dragging Indian wars. Al- ready a noticeable feature of American life had be- come its quicker heart-beat, the swift and powerful "William Henry Harrison and Benjamin Harrison, presi- dents of the United States. The New Forces 199 flow of its blood in lungs and arteries, oxygenated by the new and pungent air of a new hemisphere. Up to the time of incipient Revolution the period we have now reached this impatience had taken a physical turn : the " Colossus of the West " was exercising its babyhood in muscular activities, in huge sprawling through the wood, in uncouth cries and antics of pure physical exhilaration, in battling defiantly against the giant forces of nature with which it had to contend: in marrying wives and getting children, " Go home and get children ! " wrote Franklin from London a little later, build- ing homes, and clearing settlements. The joy of possession had become the supreme joy : every man was, so to speak, a King's tenant, paying a quit-rent for his land to the Crown, and ruling his log-cabin, his palisadoed enclosure, his farm, or his plantation as proudly as the barons of England ruled their cas- tles, or the Lords of the Loire their battlemented chateaux. The very abundance of the liberties they enjoyed had swollen the spirit of independence in these people of the wood to an imperious pride, pre- sumptuous in its attitude of fearless criticism, ready at a moment's notice to take offence at innovation or injustice, unequal in the extreme to the main- tenance of a mental equilibrium, in which older or more philosophic nations had long since settled down. The whole country, it might be asserted, had been born in a time of high temper and religious im- patience; and this birthmark, once stamped upon 2OO George Washington the intellectual features of the land, became its motto, crest, and coat-of-arms. The moment had now come when this physical restlessness was, by some subtle alchemy, to trans- mute itself into an intellectual inquisitiveness, petu- lance, almost intolerance, which incarnated itself in committees of correspondence, political clubs, legis- lative bodies, and revolutionary assemblies. Little connected discourse had, so to speak, written itself down in America up to this time. The beginnings of a promising literature had, indeed, begun to sparkle casually in the writings of Franklin, Colonel Wil- liam Byrd, Governor Hutchinson, and Jonathan Ed- wards. But, on the whole, the inner spiritual forces at work, in the fashion of undertow drifting hither and thither, had not yet sufficiently saturated the subtle intelligence of the West to impel them irre- sistibly to speak. In pamphlets alone, in broad- sides, sheets of flame, and leaflets buoyant as thistle- down floating here and there, intangible yet incan- descent, in newspaper paragraphs or cutting couplets did the anger, the discontent, or the buffoonery of the hour, find a fitful vent . The year 1763 became the crucial year, the year of concentration, for all the flotsam and jetsam of new forces that had risen to the top, between the parallels of 31 and 45 degrees north. In this mem- orable year, the Treaty of Paris between England and France between the third George and the fif- teenth Louis had thrown open the gates of almost th