i .c ^ awsto it, 1 k« V?WKv? .■? 2 b rlaP 1 * ■ ; ■'.,\a\-:>'V.V'W>*\i ► ♦ ♦ ♦• ►♦♦♦< Josephus Daniels. ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ! t $ »»»»♦♦ again “The wicked borroweth and payeth not —Psalms 37:21. ►♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦ I v< It THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA ENDOWED BY THE DIALECTIC AND PHILANTHROPIC SOCIETIES E312 .S86 10000866430 This book is due at the WALTER R. DAVIS LIBRARY on the last date stamped under “Date Due.” If not on hold it may be renewed by bringing it to the library. DATE DUE RET ' DATE DUE RET ‘ f C**® v-,r. _ a 9f. ^ - APP 11 ?nn? ii im i n < >nrv> .UUl “ — ron 5 2002 Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2018 with funding from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill https://archive.org/details/georgewashington00stod_0 THE STUART PORTRAIT OF WASHINGTON. Engraved by David Nichols , from a photograph taken for the purpose through the courtesy of the Fine Arts Committee of the Boston Athencrum. THE LIVES OF THE PRESIDENTS GEORGE WASHINGTON X D v\\( • f $ BY Av> rrs WILLIAM Q? STODDARD Author of “ The Life of Abraham Lincoln," “ The Life of Ulysses S. Grant," “ Dab Kinzer," “ Esau Harderyetc., etc NEW YORK WHITE, STOKES, & AEEEN 1886 Copyright, 1886, By WHITE, STOKES, & ALLEN CONTENTS. X X X o CHAPTER I. In the Good Old Colony Times when America had a King.—The Boy-life of a Boy who was to Become a Great Man.—School days.—Boy Soldiers.—Judge of the Play-ground Court... i CHAPTER II. The Sea Fever.—Great Friends.—Tales of Ad¬ venture .— The Young Surveyor.—A Love- affair.—Rides for Good Behavior.—Into the Backwoods . io CHAPTER III. Lessons of Frontier Life.—A War Party .— Good Pay.—A Public Appointment. — France, England, and the Ohio Wilderness.—How the King Gave away the Land he did not Own .— A Young Major . 18 CHAPTER IV. Further into the Wilderness.—A Perilous Errand. —Indian Diplomacy. — The Beginning of a Long Struggle. — Through the Woods in Winter.—Selecting a Site for a Fort. — Ice- water Adventures . 27 CHAPTER V. A Daring Deed Appreciated.—Preparing for War.—A Very Young Commander.—A Scar¬ city of Fighting Men .— A Push into the Indian (jsvvdC o-'+rj IV CONTENTS. PAGE Country.—The Surrender of Fort Necessity .— Colonists Considered Inferiors of Englishmen.. 40 CHAPTER VI. A Boy-Colonel.—Snubs for Colonial Militia Officers.—A Visit to Home and Mother .— English and French Diplomacies. — Braddock's Campaign.—A Sudden and Terrible Disaster. 55 CHAPTER VII. Once More a Colonel.—A Trip to Boston .— Visiting in New York.—Another Love-affair. —Indian War Desolating the Virginia Frontier. — War Operations at Other Points. — Mrs. Martha Washington . 66 CHAPTER VIII. Going to the Legislature.—An Attempt at Public Speaking.—Canada Won by England .— Well Settled in Life. — Bright Days at Mount Vernon.—Negro Slavery in its Best Conditions. —Pontiac s War . 78 CHAPTER IX. Pressing the Colonies Together.—Old Colony News.—New England Matters. — Taxation without Representation.—Friends of America in England.—Patrick Henry s Resolutions .— The Stamp Act. — The Tax on Tea.—A Death in the Mount Vernon Family . 87 CHAPTER X. The Boston Tea-Party.—The Boston Port Bill. —A Call for a General Congress .— Washington CONTENTS. v PAGE Sent to Congress .— The Declaration of Rights. —“ We Must Fight r . ioi CHAPTER XI. i A Ministry Gone Crazy.—The Battle of Lexing¬ ton.—How the Country Arose .— Ticonderoga. — The Siege of Boston .— The Federal Union .— Commander- in-Chief. — Bunker Hill . 109 CHAPTER XII. New York Patriotism.—Tories and Indians .— Washington in the Boston Camps. — Organiza¬ tion of the Army.—No Powder to Fight with.. 122 CHAPTER XIII. General Gage and Mr. Washington.—The In¬ vasion of Canada. — Sea-Coast Plundering .— Beginning of a Navy.—Reorganizing the Army . 132 CHAPTER XIV. Supplies from the Sea.—Homesick Soldiers .— Mrs. Washington in Camp.—Quelling a Riot. —Lord Dunmore's Plot.—The Defence of New York. — The New A rmy. — The British Driven out of Boston . 141 CHAPTER XV. The War Transferred to New York.—Forts on the Hudson .— The Hessians Coming.—Retreat from Canada .— The Declaration of Indepen¬ dence.—No Pardons Wanted . 151 VI CONTENTS. CHAPTER XVI. TAGE The Fight in Charleston Harbor.—A Sermon on Swear mg.—Preparing for Bloody Work. — The Battle of Long Island.—The Night Retreat Covered by a Fog.—Good Service to America by a Hessian Sentry . 159 CHAPTER XVII. New Offers of Pardon .— The Retreat from New York.—A Burst of Temper.—Patriotic Hos¬ pitality .— The Camp on Washington Heights .— Providing for Another New Army. — War .— The Battle of White Plains.—Loss of Fort Washington . 168 CHAPTER XVIII. v Directing Chaos .— The Retreat through New Jersey.—The Commander-in- Chief made Dic¬ tator.—Capture of Lee .— Trenton and Prince¬ ton .— Winter Quarters . 182 CHAPTER XIX. A Sudden Change .— The New Jersey Rising .— The Small-pox in Camp.—Fighting Immo¬ rality.—Coming of Lafayette.—Tryon s Raid. —Jealousy and Intrigue . 190 CHAPTER XX. Burgoyne's Army. — Loss of Ticonderoga. — Indians as Recruiting Agents.—Battles of Bennington and Oriskany.—Stillwater and Saratoga, and the Surrender of Burgoync ,... 199 CONTENTS. Vll CHAPTER XXI. page The Campaign to Save Philadelphia .— The Battle of the Brandywine .— The British A rmy Occupy the City .— The Battle of Germantown.—Forts Mercer and Mifflin .— The Conway Cabal .— Winter Quarters at Valley Forge . 209 CPIAPTER XXII. Cold and Hunger .— Washington's Appeal and Defence.—Praying in the Snow.—Articles of Fcdcratioji. — Paper Currency. — Steuben s Work.—Conciliatory Acts of Parliament .— The French Alliance. — The Battle of Monmouth. .. 217 CHAPTER XXIII. Misunderstandings and Disappointments.—Indian Massacres.—Loss of Savannah.—The Political Condition. — French Plans. — Punishing the Iroquois. — Stony Point . 227 CHAPTER XXIV. A Bitter Winter.—Sufferings of the Army.— Fears of a Dictatorship.—Loss of Charleston. —Subduing the South. — The Battle of Sanders Creek. — Arnold's Treason . 237 CHAPTER XXV. A Year Closing Darkly.—Generosity to Gates .— The Great Southern Campaign of General Greene .— The Battle of the Cozvpens .— The Battle of Guilford Court House .— The Battle of Hob kirk's Hill.—Eutaw Springs.— The Mutiny of Wayne's Men.—Preparing for the End ... 246 vm CONTENTS. CHAPTER XXVI. i’AGB Good News.—Keeping up Appearances.—A Sud¬ den March .— Two Days at Mount Vernon .— The Siege of Yorktow?i.—Surrender of Corn- ivallis . 258 CHAPTER XXVII. Closing up the War .— Tempting Washington with a Crown.—Quelling Disturbances .— The Treaty with Great Britain.—A Visit to Old Battle-fields.—Farewells to Soldiers and to Officers . 265- CHAPTER XXVIII. Washington s Resignation as Commander-in-Chief. —Bright Days at Mount Vernon.—Internal Improvement Schemes . — The Constitutional Co?ivention.—Elected President Unanimously . —A Triumphal Procession.—A Grand In¬ augural . 273 CHAPTER XXIX. Washington’s First Presidential Term. — Ques¬ tions of Ceremonial.—A Dangerous Illness .— War with the Western Indians.—Presidential Tours North and South.—Citizen Genet . 282 CHAPTER XXX. War Clouds .— The Whiskey Rebellion .— Wayne’s Defeat of the Indians.—Political Calumnies .— The Farewell Address.—Home again at Mount Verno7i .— The French War Excitement«—The End . 297 Lives of the Presidents of the United States. GEORGE WASHINGTON. FIRST PRESIDENT. By WILLIAM O. STODDARD. CHAPTER I. In the Good Old Colony Times when America had a King. — The Boy-life of a Boy who was to Become a Great Man. — School-days.—Boy Soldiers.—Judge of the Play-ground Court . In the year 1732 (old style) there stood a large and comfortable old farm-house upon the bank of Bridges Creek, near where it empties into the Po¬ tomac River, in what is now the State of Virginia. In that day the boundaries of the Virginia colony were only known distinctly upon the ocean's side, and along the deep bays and rivers. Northerly and southerly they were somewhat in doubt, and wester¬ ly they were lost among the Indians. The farm¬ house was built with a great spread of high roof reaching down to low and projecting eaves. There were four large rooms on the ground floor, and others above, and this gave ample accommodation, for it was customary that slaves and other servants 2 GEORGE WASHINGTON. should live in quarters of their own, apart from the family mansion, but near it. This house was the residence of the very ancient and aristocratic Wash¬ ington family, or rather of a branch of it which had been driven to America by the civil wars of Eng¬ land. The Washingtons were rich in landed pos¬ sessions, and had much land under cultivation ; but neither in their residence nor in their style of living were they, or any other of the great Virginia families, able to provide such things as belong to people in comfortable circumstances at the present day. In this old homestead upon Bridges Creek, on the 22d of February, in the year 1732, was born George Washington. He came into the world as a young Englishman, and his parents and friends had no idea whatever that he would or could, in process of time, become anything else. Nobody then dreamed that a new nation was to be constructed out of the feeble English colonies that lined the Atlantic shore and that dared not push inland much beyond the points where the great rivers ceased to rise and fall with the tides. Forty-four years later there was to be a great deal more good material to make a nation out of. This baby in the Virginia cradle was to grow up with the country, and know all about it ; and was to get the love and confidence of its people as he grew. He was born in precisely the place and under the exact circumstances best adapted for build¬ ing him up into the man that was sure to be needed in the year 1776. The entire structure of society was English, and was intensely aristocratic. The idea of the equality of all men, one with another, GEORGE WASHINGTON. 3 had hardly been heard of. It was commonly be¬ lieved to be perfectly right that one man, white or black, should be the bondsman of another who had been born to rule and to own. There was hardly any opportunity for a poor young man of lowly parentage to rise very high. The exceptions to the rule were few, and not many of them were likely to occur in Virginia until long after all its English¬ men should be set free and made over into Ameri¬ cans. Therefore, as George Washington was born to be a ruler in that day and time, he was born into a family of the highest grade of the ruling caste. One hundred years later another really great ruler of the same country, Abraham Lincoln, was born in a log hut ; but he had the privilege of being an American from the beginning, and to live and grow up among Americans. He owed that benefit, in large part, to the little fellow whose cradle was rocked in the farm-house on Bridges Creek, Vir¬ ginia. Augustine Washington, the father of George, was twice married. By his first wife, whose maiden name was Jane Butler, he had four children, two of whom died in infancy, and two, Lawrence and Augustine, grew to be men. By his second wife, whose maiden name was Mary Ball, he had four sons —George, Samuel, John Augustine and Charles —and two daughters, Elizabeth and Mildred. The latter died in infancy. There was less danger that a boy should be petted or spoiled among a family of seven. There was none at all, when it was presided over by a woman of firm will, clear good sense, and 4 GEORGE WASHINGTON. sound principles, like Mrs. Mary Washington. The ideas of home and family discipline that prevailed in those days were righteously rigid, and were well ‘lived up to in the Washington household. While George was still a baby his father removed to an estate in Stafford County, Virginia, near the town of Fredericksburg. The style of this farm¬ house was much like that of the one on Bridges Creek, and from the door of it the land sloped down to the bank of the Rappahannock River. Both houses have long since disappeared entirely, and all the face of the country at either point has changed. Properly speaking, there were no cities in the colonies, even New York and Philadelphia and Boston being only larger towns ; but it was well for George Washington every way that he should be thoroughly a country boy. Rich planters like Augustine Washington were in the habit of sending their sons to England for the completion of their education, and so Lawrence Washington went, when he was about fifteen years of age. It was not to be so with George. His education began at home, under the care of his father and mother, both of whom were good teachers. He was never to have any great amount of book schooling, and he was never to need any. The life work before him required precisely the kind of training that came to him, year after year. Hardly anything is known of the “ old field school-house” kept by Mr. Hobby, the parish sexton, where George received his earlier lessons in reading, writing, arithmetic, and whatever else the schoolmaster was capable of GEORGE WASHINGTON. 5 teaching. The one thing certain, to this day, is that he made good use of such advantages as he had. He was notably large and strong for his age, overflowing with health, vigor, high spirits, and al¬ ready displayed a keen sense of right and wrong. The Washingtons, as far back as the family could be traced, had shown a liking for military affairs. It was a part of the family inheritance that came to George naturally. It developed all the more easily because those old colonial days were one long record of fighting by land and sea. Every boy’s memory was full of stories he had heard, by his own fireside and elsewhere, of battles with the Indians, the Spaniards, or the French. Not one small Virginian had a doubt but that he should one day be a sol¬ dier and distinguish himself. Every boy of them who grew to manhood was sure of abundant oppor¬ tunity, and so George was preparing for war from the hour in which he was able to shoulder his first broomstick. He was hardly eight years old when his half-brother, Lawrence, returned from England, having grown into an uncommonly promising young man. Lawrence was expected to be the head of the family some day, and to keep up the high Washing¬ ton name. It is not always easy to determine be¬ forehand which of half a dozen growing boys is to be the head of the family, but Lawrence began well. The English nation was at war with France and Spain, and an English force was gathered for a cam¬ paign in the Spanish West Indies. A regiment of four battalions was raised in the colonies to join this expedition, and Lawrence obtained the captaincy of 6 GEORGE WASHINGTON. a company in one of these battalions. He went to the West Indies with the expedition, and at the siege of Carthagena he and his men behaved bravely under fire. The campaign was a failure in many ways, but it did a great service in the effect it had upon the mind of George Washington. It stirred him up so thoroughly that he turned the boys of the parish school into military cadets, and took com¬ mand of them. A boy named William Bustle was the next in command, but was never afterward heard of as a general. Drills, parades, sham fights, were the games played out of school hours, and a num¬ ber of very important lessons were learned in them. Besides all this, however, there was a great deal for an active boy to do in every direction. The fishing and hunting were all that any one could ask for. Horses were abundant, everybody learned to ride in early childhood, and George was a horseman from the day in which he was permitted to mount a pony. All things went on smoothly until George was about eleven years of age. At this time his father died, after a brief illness, and the affairs of the fam¬ ily underwent a swift and great change. The estate was divided among the children by the will left by Mr. Washington, and George was to have the house on the Rappahannock and the lands around it as soon as he should become of age. His half-brother, Lawrence, received the estate on the Potomac River, with other property. He soon married and went to live there, and called it Mount Vernon, in honor of an English admiral whom he had served under in the West India campaign. Augustine, the GEORGE WASHINGTON. 7 next younger son, also married, and went to live in the old farm-house on Bridges Creek. The younger children were left under the care of their mother, and she had entire control of the property they were one day to receive. She was a capital manager, and her husband had left matters in good order for her. Her elder son inherited his hot temper and spirit of command from her as much as from the Washington family ; and from her, as from his father, he was taught to keep both under strict control. Kept in subjection, they were great gifts, considering the life he was to lead and the deeds he was to do. Mrs. Washington, it is related, was in the daily habit of calling her children around her and reading to them aloud, teaching them sound maxims of daily life and deep truths of religion. It was a home school in which her older son, at least, was training well ; but she was aware that he now needed some¬ thing more. There was a school of good reputation in the neighborhood of the homestead on Bridges Creek, and she sent him to get the benefit of it and to make his home with his half-brother, Augustine. Only the ordinary branches of what is now called a “ common school ” education seem to have been taught by Mr. Williams, under whose care George Washington now passed from that of Mr. Hobby. He did not then, or afterward, pay any attention to Latin or Greek, or what are called “the higher branches. “ What he did do was to prepare himself thoroughly as a man of business and as a good plantation manager. He was getting 8 GEORGE WASHINGTON. ready for the business of a national plantation with¬ out a thought of it. Some of his books of manu¬ script exercises have been preserved, and they are models of neatness. He did one very important piece of work beyond his set tasks, moreover. Be¬ fore he was thirteen years of age he had copied into a blank book of his own the regular forms of the papers used by merchants and lawyers, such as bills of exchange, promissory notes, deeds for real estate, bonds of various kinds, and other papers provided for by the law of the Virginia colony. In all his after life the accounts he kept of his private affairs and of his dealings with other men, and of his public financial transactions, bear witness to the patience with which he learned how to do it when he was a boy. Among all the pupils of Mr. Williams, there was not one more healthily boyish boy than George. He was tall and strongly built, and he excelled in all athletic exercises, such as running, leaping, pitching quoits, tossing the bar, and he was a first-class wrest¬ ler. The spot where he one day threw a stone clean across the Rappahannock is still pointed out, near Fredericksburg. He grew more and more fond of horses, and became a skilful and daring rider. No animal was too spirited for him to mount and man¬ age. Full of fun, courage, and love of adventure, he was the very boy to become a leader of boys. It is quite likely that he was self-willed and arbitrary, but he had too keen a sense of justice to be mean or tyrannical. So well did the other boys under¬ stand him in this respect, that they were in the habit GEORGE WASHINGTON. 9 of bringing their disputes to him for settlement, and his decisions were always regarded as final. It was an important part of his education that he made himself a judge, as well as a captain, while he was mastering his geography and grammar CHAPTER II. The Sea-fever.—Great Friends .— Tales of Adventure. — The Young Surveyor.—A Love-affair.—Rules for Good Behavior.—Into the Backwoods . Augustine and Lawrence Washington appear to have been thoroughly manly men. They were Eng¬ lish country gentlemen of high descent, residing in an English colony, and they lived as they deemed becoming for men of their rank and station. They watched over their younger brother, George, with a care that was almost fatherly, and were proud of having so fine a boy in the family. He had, in fact, almost everything that a healthy young heart could wish, or that the time and the country he lived in could afford. His social advantages were such as might easily have spoiled a boy of weaker mind or of unsound principles. Other Virginia boys some¬ what similarly circumstanced were growing up by the dozen to be idle and self-indulgent young men, and to reap a lifelong harvest of worthlessness. The Virginia colonial legislature was called the House of Burgesses, and Lawrence Washington was a member of it. He was also adjutant-general of the district, with the rank of major. Military men and others active in public affairs were fond of com¬ ing to partake of the liberal hospitality of Mount Vernon. George was a frequent visitor there, and GEORGE WASHINGTON. 11 heard the talk of these men. A near neighbor, at a beautiful place called Belvoir, was the Honorable William Fairfax, and he too had been a soldier. He had, among other exploits, helped to drive the pirates from the island of New Providence, in the West Indies, and had been made governor of it for a time. At his house, also, George was made heartily welcome, and here he heard more about old wars and new. There were no newspapers or maga¬ zines for him to read. The time of the railway and telegraph had not arrived, and all news travelled slowly. Perhaps it was just as interesting when it came, because it had to be told orally at the dinner- table, or sitting in the shadowy piazzas almost every house was furnished with. From the very first set¬ tlement of America it had been the custom of the English Government to make large grants of land in the colonies to noblemen and other wealthy gentle¬ men, to encourage them to spend money in making improvements and in promoting immigration. It was a policy that had its good side as well as its bad. Among other English noblemen who had obtained immense colonial possessions was Lord Fairfax, and these were in the care of his cousin, William Fairfax, of Belvoir. Important results were to follow from the strong liking taken by this latter gentleman for his boy visitor. English ships of war continually cruised along the Virginia coast or anchored in its harbors. Every now and then one of them sailed up the Potomac. Everywhere the planters gladly welcomed the officers and crews of these vessels when they came 12 GEORGE WASHINGTON. ashore, and listened eagerly to their stories of the sea. The navy was always the favorite service of the English nation, and spirited English boys were almost sure to have an attack of “ sea-fever” at one time or another. It was an age of great discoveries, of wonderfully romantic voyages in unknown seas, and of numberless sea-fights between the navies of the nations that were contending for the commercial empire of the world. George listened to all the sea- stories, and he caught the sea-fever. He determined to become a sailor, and his brother Lawrence en¬ couraged the idea. He, too, had sailed, though not as a naval officer, under Admiral Vernon, and under¬ stood his brother’s salt-water enthusiasm. The navy was a high-road to fame and honor and rank, and there was no reason why George should not serve his country in that manner. It was not easy to get Mrs. Washington’s consent, but she at last seemed to have yielded to much persuasion. A midship¬ man’s commission was obtained for George in the British navy, and he was fully prepared to take his berth on board a man-of-war that had anchored in the Potomac below Mount Vernon. Some say that his baggage was actually sent on board ; but, how¬ ever that may be, his mother’s heart failed her, and she refused to let him go. He may not have been in any hurtful sense her favorite, but he was her first¬ born, and she could not bear to send him from her so entirely and so finally. But for her decision he would have taken an oath of allegiance to the King of England, and he could not possibly have broken it, even if, in after years, it had compelled him to GEORGE WASHINGTON. J 3 lead British sailors or soldiers in any struggle be¬ tween England and her American colonies. George gave up forever his dream of the sea, and went back to school; for nearly two years more he remained with his books, giving especial atten¬ tion to mathematics, and acquiring a training that was soon to have practical uses. There is no record that he had any instruction in the branches of mathematics applying directly to military affairs, but all he learned was sure to be in good shape for employment when the time should come. He ap¬ plied himself energetically to the acquisition of a thorough knowledge of land-surveying. He made actual surveys in his own neighborhood, keeping regular field-books, precisely as if he had been hired to do so, and these proofs of his fidelity to the pur¬ pose in his mind are still in existence. It was a marvellous thing for a mere boy of fifteen to do, and he gained thereby a vast deal more than a mere facility in measuring land. He must have overcome many a strong inclination to go riding or fishing or shooting, or into the pleasure-loving society that was everywhere open to him. All those fanciful surveys cost him something, and they brought him in rich returns. It appears from some of the manuscripts unearthed by his biographers that George did not by any means escape the romantic side of boy life, and that his sea-fever was not his only enthusiasm. At about this time he formed an attachment for some young lady whose name is unknown, but who seems to have caused him considerable unhappiness. From the 14 GEORGE WASHINGTON. ordinary law of such matters it is quite probable that she was older than himself and wiser, and that she snubbed him for a presumptuous and overgrown school-boy. At all events, he was about to have a capital opportunity for getting cured of his romance and for seeing a side of frontier life that was full of healthy adventure and activity. Mrs. Washington had a large and growing family with her at home, and when, in the autumn of the year 1747, George left school, he was permitted to go and live at Mount Vernon with his brother Law¬ rence. This was just the place in which he could most easily recover from his romance, but it clung to him for a while. It led him to write poetry, and to say in rhyme how very miserable the hard-hearted young lady had made him. The young Virginian was about to see a great deal of what is called “ society,” and for this also he had carefully and methodically prepared himself during his later school-days. The rules of etiquette were ex¬ ceedingly minute, formal, and rigid, and any young man ignorant or careless of them was likely to stum¬ ble into being ridiculed. It is very certain that both Mrs. Washington and her husband had carefully in¬ structed their children in all the requirements of their expected station in life, and it is equally sure that George had not forgotten one rule taught him. As his knowledge of social etiquette increased, he set himself to the compilation of a code which he entitled “ Rules for Behavior in Company and Con¬ versation.” It is yet in existence, in manuscript, and is exceedingly exacting. Its author had a right GEORGE WASHINGTON. *5 to consider himself pretty well prepared to venture among the precise and dignified ladies and gentle¬ men whom he was sure to meet at Mount Vernon and the neighboring manor-houses. By his enthusiasm for horses and hunting, quite as much as by his other good qualities, George had made himself a favorite with William Fairfax, and was a welcome visitor at Belvoir. Here he was now to meet Lord Fairfax, the English nobleman of whose vast colonial estates his cousin William was the agent and manager. His lordship’s history had been decidedly romantic, and a matrimonial disap¬ pointment had disgusted him with English society. He had come to America to see his property, with the avowed intention of remaining upon it. The original grant was made by King Charles II. to Lord Culpeper, and had descended to his daughter Catharine, the mother of Lord Fairfax. Through her he owned, somewhat vaguely, “ all the land be¬ tween the Potomac and Rappahannock Rivers.” He had previously visited America, in the year 1739, and had then discovered that the sources of the Potomac were in the Alleghany Mountains. He at¬ tempted to perfect his title to the entire tract indi¬ cated, accordingly, but was compelled to yield to a compromise which yet left him owner of a large part of the Shenandoah Valley. It was all wild land and unsurveyed, and it was reported to Lord Fairfax that numbers of “ squatters ” were intruding upon it and making themselves entirely at home, without refer¬ ence to his rights from the king. He determined, shortly, to have the entire domain surveyed and i6 GEORGE WASHINGTON. mapped and set in order for legal and regular occu¬ pation. He had found a young surveyor who could, he thought, be trusted with even so important an undertaking. His lordship was a zealous fox-hunter, and he had discovered that his favorite sport required even better and more daring horsemanship in Vir¬ ginia than in England. He had also discovered that young George Washington, although hardly sixteen years of age, could keep the saddle at his side over the roughest kind of country. He knew that George continued, in spite of all the good society at Mount Vernon, to keep up his regular surveying exercises, and he proposed to him to exchange his mere prac¬ tice work for the great enterprise beyond the Blue Ridge. In size, strength, manners, and, above all, in char¬ acter and ability, the boy-surveyor was and looked very much beyond his years. He had made a man of himself with the most determined fidelity, and now that a man’s work was offered him, he accepted it at once. Only a few days were needed to prepare the surveying expedition, and it was decided that George William, the elder son of William Fairfax, of Belvoir, should go with it. Fie was a young man of fine promise, educated in England. He was about twenty-two years of age, and recently married. The two young men set out, on horseback, in the month of March, 1748. Through what is still called Ashley’s Gap they passed the Blue Ridge into the great and fertile valley of Virginia. They had left all the settled and well-known part of the colony be¬ hind them. They were in a wilderness that prom- GEORGE WA SUING TON. 17 ised them all manner of hard work, exposure, ad¬ venture, and more than a little danger. Lord Fairfax had already posted an agent, a sort of land-steward, to assert his claim for him at a point near the Shenandoah River about twelve miles from the present town of Winchester. A house had been built and a beginning of a farm made, with negro slaves to do the work, and here the surveyor and his companion made their first lodging. It was a wild and beautiful spot, and George Washington noted in his diary that fact as carefully and method¬ ically as he wrote out his opinions of the soil and timber. Surveying operations began at once, and were pushed with vigor ; but, even in Virginia, March weather is unfavorable to camping out in the woods, with or without a tent. It was possible to obtain shelter in the cabins of the squatters, here and there, but the accommodations in these were not at all like the faultlessly-kept apartments at Mount Vernon. Here began, therefore, before their own firesides, such studies of the people by their future leader as were to be of life-long use to him. Here he first began to get practical lessons of the rough life of the backwoods. He hardened to it rapidly, preferring to bivouac in the open air whenever the weather permitted, and pushing his surveys with persistent diligence. CHAPTER III. Lessons of Frontier Life.—A War Party.—Good Pay. —A Public Appointment. — France, England, and the Ohio Wilderness.—Flow the King Gave away the Land he did not Own.—A Young Major. George Washington’s great-grandfather, Col¬ onel John Washington, commanded the troops of Maryland and Virginia in a campaign against the marauding Senecas. In his day the settlements on the Potomac River were in constant peril, but now, three generations later, the Virginia frontier had drifted westward as far as the mountains. Such few Indians as were ever seen by the planters and their families were in the settlements on peaceful errands, and George had no knowledge of them beyond the stories he had heard and the few stragglers he may have met. Not long after the surveying work began, the party was detained for several days by bad weather at the house of a Colonel Cresap, near the Potomac River. While they were there a war party of thirty Indians halted at the house. They had been upon an expedition against other Indians, and had one scalp to show, but were at peace with the white men. The promise of ** fire-water ” induced them to ex¬ hibit a war dance for the benefit of Colonel Cresap and his guests. It was a hideous presentation of GEORGE WASHINGTON. 19 savage life, full of whoops and yells and mimic cruelties, and it was a valuable object lesson to the school-boy from Bridges Creek. He was to be a distinguished Indian fighter before a great while, and a war party and a war dance made a study worth having. His diary testifies that he studied faithfully. The surveying expedition was also a hunting party. Deer and wild turkeys were abundant, and each man did his own cooking. The weather con¬ tinued to be somewhat stormy, and the tent they had with them was not a good one. It let in the rain, blew down, and added other incidents of camp- life for young beginners. The squatters in the great valley were by no means indifferent to the plans and purposes of Lord Fair¬ fax. Numbers of them came to see his surveyors, and even followed them from place to place. Among them were German immigrants, with their wives and children, ignorant of English, and offering the rich planter’s son yet another lesson of human life. As the spring days went by and the weather improved, all work became more agreeable. There was little hardship in camp-life thenceforth, but George was able to write to a friend, on his return, that he had passed but three or four nights in bed. Sleeping on the floor of a cabin, before a settler’s fireplace, was not counted as going to bed. He was also able to make such a report to Lord Fairfax as was en¬ tirely satisfactory, and his account-book shows that he received a doubloon a day and sometimes more— or from sixteen to twenty dollars—for all the time during which he was actively engaged in surveying. 20 GEORGE WASHINGTON . So complete was his lordship's approval, that he ob¬ tained for his young friend the appointment of public surveyor. This made his surveys official, and entitled them to record in the county courts ; and to this day their correctness is acknowledged, and implicit credit is given them. There were not many public surveyors, and there was a vast region to be laid out. For three years following this first expedition, young Washington was almost constantly occupied in the wilderness. It was a grand school for any boy who was com¬ petent to learn the lessons taught in it, but it was precisely like all other schools. George Washington learned in it what the other young fellows there never dreamed of learning. At the end of his three years of frontier apprenticeship as a public surveyor,- he was a man in personal appearance. He was well and widely known through all that section of coun¬ try as he hardly could have become in any other manner. He was about to receive another highly important part of his education, and another swift and remarkable advancement. When England and France made peace fora time at Aix-la-Chapelle, they settled their European dis¬ putes and some colonial difficulties, but left one great question untouched. All the central part of the continent of North America below the great lakes had really no owner. The Indian tribes drove each other about in it, but no wild band had a title to an acre upon which it had not destroyed or from which it had not forced away some other band. The French held the Canadas, and claimed all the country WASHINGTON AS A SURVEYOR. From “ Harper's Young People GEORGE WASHINGTON. 21 to the westward. They held the mouth of the Mis¬ sissippi, and therefore claimed the ownership of that river to its source, and of all the land on all its tributary streams to their sources. England denied the justice of this tremendous assumption, and claimed an undefined region west of the Alleghanies by virtue of sundry shadowy Indian treaties. That there would be a war about it in the end was as sure as anything human could be, and in the mean time the two white nations set at work to occupy as much territory as they could, intriguing with the Indians, exploring and obtaining a higher and higher opin¬ ion of the great territorial prize out of which so many rich and populous States have since been formed. All up and down the Ohio River the French nailed to trees, at the mouths of its tribu¬ taries, leaden plates with inscriptions claiming the country around as the property of their king. They also made presents to the Indians, and read to them the inscriptions, and the red men wisely went away and told the English and obtained larger presents from them, and appointed days for future councils at which they might receive yet more. The Virginia colonists and those of Pennsylvania were generally and deeply interested in the future ownership of the country westward of them. They began to form plans for its seizure, occupation, and settlement. Among those who took an active part were the brothers Lawrence and Augustine Washing¬ ton. They joined with John Hanbury, a rich mer¬ chant of London, and others, in obtaining from the British Government a grant of five hundred thousand 22 GEORGE WASHINGTON. acres of land between the Kanawha and Mononga- hela Rivers and the Ohio River, with aright of locat¬ ing part of it north of the Ohio. They formed an association and named it “The Ohio Company.” The first chief manager of the company was Mr. Thomas Lee, President of the Council of the Vir¬ ginia Colony, and at his death, occurring soon after¬ ward, he was succeeded by Lawrence Washington. The active operations of the company included the importation of goods from England for trading with the Indians, but the most valuable of all the results of the enterprise was the knowledge obtained of the new country by the agents they sent out to explore it and to make treaties with the red men. It is well worthy of note that Lawrence Washington zealously advocated the preservation of religious freedom among any settlements that might be made, point¬ ing out to the authorities the pernicious effect of in¬ tolerance upon the growth and prosperity of Vir¬ ginia. It was at least good teaching for his brother ; but the Ohio settlers were to provide for their own religious freedom in due time. There might have been a very profitable career opened to ” The Ohio Company” if it had not been for the French. Their explorers and agents and intriguers, red and white, were as numerous and as capable as were those of the Virginians and Pennsylvanians. Each side was well aware of what the other was doing, and each knew that the time for open hostilities drew nearer from day to day. The French built a large armed vessel to cruise on Lake Ontario, strengthened and increased their trading stations, GEORGE WASHINGTON . 2 3 and established others deeper in the contested region. There was a warlike spirit abroad in all the colo¬ nies, but it was specially aroused in Virginia. A plan was adopted for the organization and equip¬ ment of the militia. The entire colony was divided into military districts, and over each of these was appointed an adjutant-general with the rank of major, and with a salary of one hundred and fifty pounds a year. Lawrence Washington had entire confidence in the capacity of his brother George, and easily obtained for him one of these appoint¬ ments. He was thenceforth Major George Wash¬ ington, until promotion should give him a higher title. The nineteen-years-old major felt that he was somewhat lacking in military knowledge and training, and at once obtained the best teachers within his reach. Two old soldiers, veterans of the French and Spanish wars, had drifted into the neigh¬ borhood. One of these, Adjutant Muse, had been a comrade of Lawrence Washington in the West Indies, and he now undertook the general military instruction of the newly-fledged major. He taught him the manual exercise and all he knew of the movement of troops in the field, but it was probably of greater importance that he was able to lend him treatises on the art of war to study at home. The contents of every such book were sure to be thorough¬ ly mastered and never to be forgotten. The other old soldier, also a former comrade of Lawrence, was by birth a Dutchman. His name was Jacob Van Braam, and he professed to be a master of swords- 24 GEORGE WASHINGTON. manship. From him George received lessons in the use of what was then a much more important weapon than it is nowadays. Yet another change was coming rapidly. Law¬ rence Washington had never been a man of strong constitution, his health requiring constant care. In the midst of these martial studies and exercises, the physicians announced that pulmonary symptoms were developing, and that a voyage to the West Indies for a change of climate was imperatively necessary. The invalid needed the companionship of his brother George, and the two sailed for Bar- badoes on the 28th of September, 1751, landing there on the 3d of November. The health of Law¬ rence seemed to improve during the voyage and for a time after his arrival, but George had been on shore but a fortnight before he was taken down with small-pox. He was sick about three weeks, and on his recovery was but moderately marked by the terrible disease. As soon as he was able he made excursions over the island, studying its soil, produc¬ tions, and fortifications, and noting in his diary the thriftless, reckless way of living of its land-owning classes. The indications of improvement in Lawrence proved deceitful, and he decided that he would try the climate of Bermuda in the following spring. Meantime he wished his brother to return to Vir¬ ginia, in order that if he should send for his wife to meet him in Bermuda, she might do so under George’s care. The latter accordingly sailed for home on the 22d of December, and arrived on the GEORGE WASHINGTON. 2 5 1st of February, after an uncommonly stormy pas¬ sage. Lawrence Washington did indeed go to Ber¬ muda in the spring, but he did not send for his wife to join him there. His malady tormented him with many fluctuations, but at last it was evident that he must come home to die. He lived to reach Mount Vernon, and died on the 26th of July, 1752. He was only thirty-four years old when he passed away, but he had lived an active, patriotic, and useful life. Among other good works, he had been almost as a father to his brother George ; and this country owes him a debt of gratitude on that account. He left his large property to his wife and his infant daugh¬ ter, Isabella, with the provision that in case the latter should die before becoming of age his wife should have but a life interest in the Mount Vernon estate, and that, upon her death, it should pass to George, with some other property named in the will. So it did pass in due season. It is evident from the diary kept by the youthful major during his trip to the West Indies and after¬ ward that his thoughts continued to be given to his military studies. If it were possible to draw him away from them and from his public duties, the temptation to retire to the quiet and exceedingly attractive life of a rich Virginia planter was now set before him. The affairs devolving upon him by the death of his brother made him more than ever at home at Mount Vernon. He would be of age in a few months, and entitled to join his mother in her excellent management of the Rappahannock estate. Society invited him to all the allurements the colony 26 GEORGE WASHINGTON. could offer, and he had no need whatever for the endurance of toil, privation, and danger. Years of rough life in the wilderness seemed to entitle him to repose, but it does not appear that he turned for one moment from the path of duty ; and it promised to be a hard and trying one even then. CHAPTER IV. Further into the Wilderness.—A Perilous Errand .— Indian Diplomacy .— The Beginning of a Long Struggle .— Through the Woods in Winter. — Select¬ ing a Site for a Fort. — Ice-ivater Adventures. One of the first results of Washington’s earlier surveys in the Shenandoah Valley had been the establishment of Lord Fairfax there as a settler upon his own land. He laid out a manor of ten thousand acres, at the point where he had stationed his first land agent, and called it Greenway Court. He built a comfortable house, and surrounded himself with all the conveniences called for by the tastes of a cul¬ tivated and somewhat eccentric sportsman. From that day the tide of immigration set in rapidly, and the growth of the valley settlements aided the Ohio Company in their efforts to push the frontier fur¬ ther westward. Their most active pioneer and ex¬ plorer was a man of rare energy and daring, named Christopher Gist. Under his direction several trad- ing-posts were established and towns laid out, and settlers were induced to take up farms, in spite of the continual rumors of troubles to come. One secret of this temporary success was the fact that the Indian tribes occupying this region—Delawares, Shawnees, Mingoes, and fragmentary bands of other tribes—were jealous of the arrogant pretensions of 28 GEORGE WA SUING TON. the French, and were strongly inclined to be friend¬ ly toward their nearer neighbors, the English colo¬ nists. Their jealousy was increased by the fact that the French commanders were now erecting forts and forcing their way in spite of the earnest protests of the red potentates. At a general council held in the spring of the year 1750, an agreement was made by them with the commissioners from Virginia that no harm should be done to the English settlers south of the Ohio River. All these tribes were in a state of alliance with or subordination to the Six Nations, or Iroquois, and their head chief, Tanacharisson, was called “ the half-king ” in consequence. He was a warrior of good judgment, for he advised the Eng¬ lish to build a fort at the fork of the Monongahela River at once. They made a beginning, but did not follow good counsel with sufficient energy. The French did better, adding cunning and skil¬ ful diplomacy to their other forces in such a manner that they shortly began to alienate the good-will of the red men from their Virginia neighbors. It is also evident that the display of force made by the French was largely in excess of that which the short¬ sighted savages discerned at the trading-stations of the colonists. Month after month went by, and at last it was credibly reported that French troops were moving up the Mississippi. It was also said that it had been determined to connect the French posses¬ sions in Louisiana and Canada by a chain of military posts that would forever shut in the English colonies at the line of the Alleghany Mountains. In the absence of the royally-appointed Governor GEORGE IVA SUING TON. 29 of Virginia, the lieutenant-governor, the Honora¬ ble Robert Dinvviddie, was acting governor, and the Ohio Company laid the matter before him. He was a stockholder in the company, and wished very much to do something, but he had very little power. He had no troops, and so he determined to try diplomacy. He sent Captain William Trent as a commissioner, with presents for the friendly Indians, and with a letter of expostulation to the commander of the French forces on the Ohio. Captain Trent was a man of little courage or capacity, and he made a complete failure. He returned without having delivered his letter, and brought the doleful news that the friendly Miamis had been defeated at their town of Piqua, with severe losses, by the French and their Indian allies. The English traders at that post had been taken prisoners, the French flag had been raised in permanent occupation of the town, and a staggering blow had been given to the pros¬ pects of the Ohio Company. It was nearly certain, moreover, that English influence with the fickle sav¬ ages had been badly shattered. Captain Trent had presented a perfect picture of a man unfit to deal with difficulties, and Governor Dinwiddie was really in need of a hero. When he inquired for one, the men he spoke to pointed out young Major George Washington as the only person known to be fitted for the business in hand. He was twenty-one years of age now, and had been re¬ commissioned as adjutant. There were other men as familiar as he with the western frontier, and it is evident that his strength of character must have im- 3° GEOR GE IVA SUING TON. pressed itself powerfully upon those who knew him. He received his credentials as commissioner on the 30th of October, 1753, and had evidently been ex¬ pecting and preparing for them, for he set off upon his errand that very day. Two weeks later he met Mr. Christopher Gist, the veteran pioneer, at Wilis’ Creek, the present town of Cumberland. He was well provided with horses, tents, and so forth, and had with him his old fencing-master, Jacob Van Braam, as a makeshift for an interpreter in French, and also an Indian interpreter named John David¬ son. Now began a journey such as few men ever accom¬ plished. The rivers were so swollen that the horses had to swim them, and all baggage was sent down the Monongahela, to its confluence with the Alle¬ ghany, in a canoe. At this point the united rivers form the Ohio, and here now stands the city of Pittsburg. Washington reached it before his canoe¬ load of baggage came, and he at once looked around him and agreed with the half-king, Tanacharisson. It was an excellent site for a fort that should com¬ mand the navigation of those rivers. Shortly after¬ ward the French general agreed with them both, and built Fort Duquesne there, to be a thorn in the side of the English. The chief sachem of the Delawares, Shingiss, lived near, and consented to accompany Washing¬ ton to visit the half-king, Tanacharisson, at his head¬ quarters at Logstown. They reached it on the 24th of November, and found the half-king absent ; but runners were at once sent out, and arrangements GEORGE WASHINGTON . 3 1 made for a grand council of chiefs next day. It was duly held, and so were private conferences with Tanacharisson, and the tone of the red men was friendly enough and full of fair promises. From them and from some French deserters who came to the village on their way to Pennsylvania, Washing¬ ton gathered a great deal of important information as to the strength and operations of the enemy. Among other things, he learned that the French had built two new forts, the larger upon the shore of Lake Erie, and the other and smaller at a distance of fifteen miles from it, upon French Creek. In one of these he was to look for the French commander and deliver the letter of Governor Dinwiddie, and the path to that fort was likely to be a hard one to travel. In order to avoid low and swampy grounds, impassable at that season, it would be necessary to make so wide a circuit that the journey was likely to take a week, and every hour would be full of deadly peril. Tanacharisson agreed to furnish an escort composed of Mingoes, Shannoahs, and Dela¬ wares, but the most friendly Indians were evidently troubled in their minds. The French commanders had warned them that there was to be war with the English in the spring, and it was dawning upon the poor savages that they themselves had little to hope for from either of the two great peoples who claimed to own all their hunting-grounds. They had de¬ cided to refuse the French alliance and to return the belts of wampum sent them from Canada, and they seemed ready to keep their treaties with the Eng¬ lish. There were so many talks and excuses and 3 2 GEORGE WA SUING TON. delays, however, that it was the 30th of November before Washington got away from Logstown. With him went, on a diplomatic errand of their own, Tanacharisson, an old Shannoah sachem called Jeshakake, and a chief named White Thunder, whose duty was to return to the French their wam¬ pum belts or “ treaty tokens/’ Four days of hard work in stormy weather carried the whole party seventy miles through the woods to Venango. Until recently it had been an English trading-station, but was now occupied by French troops, under command of a Captain Joncaire. Here the commissioner and his company were detained till the 7th of December, partly by bad weather, but much more by the wily operations of the French captain, who was a veteran fox in frontier diplomacy, and knew well how much could be done with rum and promises in the man¬ agement of savages. Fie even laid a trap to loosen the tongue of the temperate Washington with wine, and fell into it himself. He talked altogether too freely at his dinner-table, and divulged the general purposes of his superiors with what was afterward found to be accuracy. An additional escort of an officer named La Force and three French soldiers added to the security of Governor Dinwiddie’s prudent messenger when he again set out, and four days more of struggling with mud and swamps and snow and rains brought them to the new fort on French Creek. It consisted of four block-houses connected by lines of palisades, and the latter were pierced for both cannon and musketry. The French commanding officer, the Chevalier Legardeur de St. GEORGE WASHINGTON. 33 Pierre, was at the fort, and received Major Washing¬ ton with ceremonious politeness. He had but re¬ cently arrived to succeed a former commander who had been removed by d^ath, and during a brief in¬ terim the fort had been in charge of a Captain Re¬ parti. The latter was now absent at the post on Lake Erie, but was expected to return at once, and Washington was not permitted to offer his creden¬ tials until the new commander could have the benefit of the captain’s presence and counsel. Captain Reparti actually came, and there was no excuse for any further delay. The letter of Govern¬ or Dinwiddie was duly delivered and read, and any person holding French views of the situation had a right to consider it a remarkable document. It began by boldly assuming that all the Ohio River territory was the property of the King of England, and that the intruding Frenchmen knew it to be so, and strongly complained of their manifest unright¬ eousness. It asked by what authority the French Commander-general had sent in the forces now in operation. It plainly requested their prompt with¬ drawal, and intimated that future consequences would depend upon the answer now given. The letter closed with a request for good treatment of Major Washington, and the expression of a hope for lasting peace. The French chevaliers took two days to consider that letter and to find out what they could do with the half-king and the other chiefs. They knew per¬ fectly well that the Governor of Virginia had not the slightest idea that they would withdraw at his polite 34 GEORGE WASHINGTON . request, and that he had only sent this tall young major of militia to find out what forts they were building and what more they meant to do. He was at it diligently all the while, even bidding his associates to count all the canoes on hand at the fort, and learn how many more were to be had or were building for service on the lake the following spring. He was a scout within the enemy’s lines, with very serious doubts of ever getting back to his own. The French commander had really very little to conceal. He told Major Washington that he had orders to capture every Englishman caught trading in the Ohio River country. Two from Pennsylvania already taken had been permitted to go home by way of Canada. The weather was stormy, and Washington was anxious to set out upon his return. He had already sent his jaded horses ahead of him to Venango, in¬ tending to follow them by water. He knew that his hold upon Tanacharisson was weakening hourly, and Was also of opinion that a French force was likely to be in Logstown quite as soon as he could get there, with a view to the capture of English traders and their goods. The Chevalier de St. Pierre delivered to him his written reply to Governor Dinwiddie on the 14th of December, but it required two days of hard work to get the half-king away from French presents and promises and rum, and the start was not accomplished until the 16th. The navigation of French Creek in winter was found to be a difficult undertaking. It was full of floating ice, and the GEORGE WASHINGTON. 35 bark canoes were in constant peril of being broken to pieces. In shallow places there was no resource but to wade in swiftly-running ice-water and drag the canoes, half an hour at a time ; and at one point an ice-pack compelled a quarter of a mile of overland dragging. On reaching Venango the patience of the half-king and his friends gave out, and they de¬ cided to rest there with Captain Joncaire and his treacherous hospitality. On the 25th of December Major Washington and his party set out from Venango, overland, with a long and terrible journey before them. He himself set the example of giving up his horse to relieve the tired pack-horses, and the others followed, except the drivers. He put on an Indian hunting dress, and travelled on foot, and probably suffered less from the cold by so doing, for it was bitter winter weather. It was slow work as well as weary, and Washington was in haste to make his report. At the end of the third day of plodding he could endure it no longer, put the rest of the party under command of Van Braam, and pushed ahead with only Christopher Gist for company. He meant to make a direct course through the woods to the fork of the Ohio, intend¬ ing to cross the Alleghany River on the ice at a place called Shannopins Town, two or three miles above the fork. The two bold travellers slept on the frozen ground the first night by a camp fire, but by two o’clock the next morning they were once more on their way. That day they came to a place called Murdering Town, on Beaver Creek, and here they met a party GE OR GE IVA SUING TON. 3 6 of Indians who were so very friendly as to arouse the suspicions of Mr. Gist, who believed he had. seen one of them at Joncaire’s. They had too many questions to ask of all sorts ; but, in spite of Mr. Gist’s suspicions, one of them was hired as a guide to Shannopins Town. He made the engagement eagerly, and strapped Major Washington’s pack on his back at once, and promised to show the shortest way through the woods. Washington’s feet were sore, and he was much fatigued. He was glad to part with his pack, but at the end of two hours or more of hard pushing he was yet more weary, and proposed to make a camp, light a fire, and sleep. He was in some doubt as to the direction they were taking, and the moment he proposed to halt, the Indian guide began to disclose his real character. He offered to carry Washington’s gun, and when that was objected to, he declared that the woods were full of Ottawas, who would be sure to be at¬ tracted by the fire, and attack them. He insisted strongly that they should push on to his own cabin, where they could rest safely. Washington and Gist felt more suspicious of him than ever, but walked on for some distance. Then he pretended to have heard the report of a gun to the northward, and turned in that direction, saying that it must have been fired near his cabin. The two white men knew that many of the Indians were secret enemies, even of those who were not in open alliance with the French, and there was no tell¬ ing what measures had been taken to prevent a full statement of the situation reaching the people of GEORGE WASHINGTON. 37 V irginia and their governor. There was no doubt but that the scalps of the commissioner and the old explorer would have been well paid for by some¬ body. What they most feared was an ambuscade, and it might be that that they were even now walk¬ ing into one. It was not long before their guide pretended to hear two whoops from the northward, and again spoke of his cabin. It was a mysterious cabin, and they went on for two miles more without coming in sight of it. Then Washington declared that he should camp by the next water they should reach. The guide said nothing, but kept stolidly on, until he led them out of the woods into a sort of natural meadow. There was more light upon the open snow-field than under the trees. There was light enough to shoot by, but not with accuracy. There had been a plot of some sort, and it had failed, and the quick-eyed savage knew very well that he was suspected, and would be called to account for his falsehoods. Fear drove him to rashness, and he suddenly turned, levelled his gun and fired, and ran. Washington and Gist set out in pursuit, find¬ ing that neither was hurt, and caught the Indian be¬ hind a large white oak. He was reloading his gun when they seized him, and Gist was for killing him at once. Washington forbade it, and coolly per¬ mitted the red man to load his gun before he took it away from him. That one act of perfect steadi¬ ness offers a striking index to his entire character. The three men marched on again together, but as soon as they came to a stream of water the treacher¬ ous guide was ordered to build a fire, and a camp 38 GEORGE WASHINGTON. was made as if for the night. It was only for a rest and for a consultation as to how the white men could best get rid of the Indian. Gist was still in favor of killing him, but advised Washington that the only alternative was to make believe cheat both him and themselves, and to send him away politely. The guide was, therefore, told that he was supposed to have lost his way, and to have fired his gun as a sig¬ nal. He was given a cake of bread, and bidden to go and find his cabin, and come back in the morning with some meat. Nobody was really deceived, and the savage was glad to get away alive. As soon as he was gone, Gist following him a little distance to prevent his lurking near to watch them, the two white men pushed on through the woods. At the end of a mile or so they lighted another fire to fix their compass, and set their course by it. They were men of iron, for after all that fatigue and ex¬ posure, they left their fire burning, and travelled all night. Whether pursued or not, they marched on through the whole of the following day, and camped at nightfall upon the bank of the Alleghany River, two miles above Shannopins Town. They needed the rest they obtained that night, but at daybreak they were up and at work again. Their first neces¬ sity was to construct a raft. The river was frozen for some distance out from either bank, but the main channel was open and full of drifting ice. All day they toiled, having but one hatchet to work with ; but it was dark again before they were able to launch their raft. It was an all but desperate un¬ dertaking, and before they were half way over they GEORGE WASHINGTON . 39 were ice-jammed and wrecked. Washington himself narrowly escaped drowning, and he and Gist spent the remainder of the night upon an island in the middle of the river, where the intense cold froze the hands and feet of Gist. In the morning the ice cakes were packed and frozen so that they could reach the shore, and before another night they were sheltered in the house of a Mr. Frazier, an Indian trader. Here they learned that the Ottawas, friendly to the French, had already massacred a whole fam¬ ily of white settlers on the bank of the Great Kanawha River. There was yet some delay in obtaining horses to proceed with, and Washington used the time in getting upon good terms with Indians in that vicinity. By the 1st of January he was ready to move, and on the 16th he delivered to Governor Dinwiddie, at the seat of Government, the letter of the French commander, and made him a full report of the results of his extraordinary scouting expedi¬ tion. CHAPTER V. A Daring Deed Appreciated.—Preparing for War .— A Very Young Commander.—A Scarcity of Fight¬ ing Men.—A Push into the Indian Country .— The Surrender of Fort Necessity.—Colonists Considered Inferiors of Englishmen. Major Washington’s report was at once made public, and from that hour the eyes of his fellow- citizens were upon him as a man from whom great things were to be expected. It was well understood that the qualities of body and mind required for such a performance were rare indeed. The plain facts of the matter, even when given in brief out¬ line, surpassed romance. At the same time, the public service rendered was enormous, with con¬ sequences that were to continue forever. The de¬ signs of the French were unmasked, the fears as well as the patriotism of the colonists were aroused, and the great struggle for the future ownership of the Mississippi Valley was begun. The fame of Major George Washington was sure to^spread into every corner of every colony, and his name would even be mentioned in England itself. A time was surely coming when the fact of this early fame would be of national importance. It would be needful that every soldier, on hearing that he was named Commander-in-chief, should be able to say GEORGE WASHINGTON. 41 to himself, confidently : “ Washington ? Oh, yes ; everybody knows who he is. I’ve heard about him for years and years. He’s the right man.” The letter carried by Washington from the Cheva¬ lier de St. Pierre to Governor Dinwiddie plainly de¬ clared that officer’s purpose to proceed with the oc¬ cupation of the Ohio country, although the chevalier politely assured the governor that he should refer the matter to the Marquis Duquesne, commanding in Canada. Washington’s journal was printed and widely dis¬ tributed, and all men knew that there would be fight¬ ing in the spring. In the mean time, Governor Din¬ widdie ordered Captain Trent to raise a company of one hundred men and go and finish the fort begun by the Ohio Company at the fork of the Ohio. Washington was ordered to raise another company, as well as to forward supplies to Trent. When both companies were full, Washington was to take com¬ mand of them ; and he must have felt that it was a forlorn beginning of an army to capture the Ohio country, knowing as he did with what a force they were to contend. The governor wrote to the governors of the other colonies, urging them to make common cause with Virginia against the common enemy, but he only succeeded in discovering how very loose, disjointed, and dissevered were the several colonies. Some had no money to spend in war ; some desired directions from England before acting ; some doubted if, after all, the French were not in the right about it. Nearly all of them probably felt that Virginia s in- 42 GEORGE WASHINGTON. terest in the Ohio lands was greater than that of anybody else except the French and Indians. Nar¬ row and selfish and short-sighted as it all seems nowadays, it was not so then. The work of weld¬ ing a nation out of the colonies was opposed, from the beginning, by many of the best men in them. Seven years of the Revolutionary War at last left the bond between them so loose that it required several years more to make them consent to become one people. There was to be no immediate help from the other colonies, but Governor Dinwiddie sent agents to stir up the Catawbas and Cherokees against the Ottawas and Chippewas, who were allies of the French. He was now to have another experience that had in it a sort of prophecy of the hot political strife that was soon to come. He called together the Virginia House of Burgesses, or legislature, to take measures “ for the public security,” and that meant to vote sums of money for him to spend in fighting for the possession of the Ohio lands. He might almost as well have called together the gov¬ ernors of the other colonies. Some of the burgesses felt very economical ; others demurred at what sounded very much like a declaration of war against France, and raising money for it. Some aroused the wrath of the governor by roundly doubting if the English king had any rights beyond the Alleghanies, and at last they all angered him still more by doubt¬ ing his own capacity and prudence. They voted him only ten thousand pounds, and then appointed a committee to help him spend it. He had high GEORGE WASHINGTON. 43 ideas of the enormous dignity of representing the royal power as governor, and he could not imagine how useful were the empty scoldings he now gave the free farmers and gentlemen of Virginia. He justly complained that the House of Burgesses was deeply tinctured with a “ republican way of think¬ ing,’’ and wisely expressed his fear that it “ would render them more and more difficult to be brought to order.” It turned out, in a few years, exactly so. Having a little money to pay expenses, it was decided to raise three hundred men instead of two hundred. The command of the battalion was of¬ fered to Washington. He was undeniably, there¬ fore, the foremost military man of Virginia at twenty- two years of age. He deemed himself too young, however, and refused the chief responsibility, con¬ senting to do the actual commanding as lieutenant- colonel under Colonel Joshua Fry. The work of re¬ cruiting the battalion went on somewhat slowly, even after Governor Dinwiddie offered as a bounty to the men and officers of the expedition two hun¬ dred thousand acres of the very land they were to protect upon the banks of the Ohio River. It was not so absurd as it seems, even considering the shadowy nature of the King of England’s right to the land, for the sons of poor men could not easily obtain farms in Virginia. The great estates crowded them out. It was even harder to obtain good officers than good men. It was well known that the service in the woods must be toilsome, perilous, and was quite 44 GEORGE WASHINGTON. likely to end in disaster, and two of the captains ap¬ pointed refused their commissions. The third cap¬ tain had been promoted to other duties, and now, as lieutenant-colonel, found the work of all three upon his hands. He was the very man to do a great deal of work in a short time, and when the next spring opened he and his battalion were ready to move for the frontier. The raising, officering, equipping, and management of that miniature army, under such difficulties as to men, money, supplies, weather, and all the other hindrances that he over¬ came, was wonderfully like the grander work he afterward performed for the Continental Army. He was getting ready all the while, and he now had a number of valuable lessons right before him. On the 2d of April, 1754, Lieutenant-Colonel Washington marched from Alexandria, Virginia, for the fork of the Ohio. He had with him about one hundred and fifty men, and another small detach¬ ment joined him on the way. The remainder of the battalion, under Colonel Fry, was to follow, ascend¬ ing the Potomac in boats as far as possible. The cannon were to come with Colonel Fry, and part of the hard work before Washington’s men was to prepare the rude roads across the mountain country for the passage of artillery. It was not easy to ob¬ tain horses, but Washington pushed on through the mountains with such as he could get. At the trad¬ ing-post on Wills’ Creek he expected to find more horses provided in advance by Captain Trent. That person could safely have been trusted not to provide. On the way they heard that he and his GEORGE WASHINGTON\ 45 men had been captured by the French, but the rumor was false. When they reached Wills’ Creek, the captain was there. He had no horses to offer, and he knew nothing definite about his men. He had left them at the fork of the Ohio at work on the fort, under command of Frazier, the Indian trader. Frazier had consented to be made a lieu¬ tenant of militia on condition that he need not stay at the fort or neglect his other business ; so that Trent’s men were really under command of an ensign. Washington was compelled to halt and wait for more horses to come to carry his supplies. Before he could go forward, Trent’s men came in, headed by their ensign. All the fort they had built at the fork of the Ohio was in the hands of the French already. Without sending on any warning whatever, Captain Contrecceur had swiftly descended the Monongahela with a thousand men and artillery in sixty boats. When he appeared before the unfinished works and demanded their surrender, Frazier was absent at his other business, and that of giving up the post de¬ volved upon the ensign. Fie did it promptly, and was permitted to come away in safety with all his men. With him also came two Indian warriors from the half-king, Tanacharisson, with a message to Washington, and another with a wampum-belt for Governor Dinwiddie. The chief declared his firm faith toward the English, and desired to know how strong a force Washington had with him, and when he intended coming on. This was precisely what it was not desirable to let Captain Contrecoeur know. The Indian with the belt was sent on to see the 4 6 GEORGE WASHINGTON . governor, and the other was sent back to the half- king with a “ speech ” from Washington to Tana- charisson and the sachems of the other tribes. He informed them that the force with him was the ad¬ vance-guard of the army, and that the rest of it was coming with cannon and provisions, and he asked them to come and meet him on his way, to hold a council. The position in which Washington found himself was one of peculiar difficulty. War had plainly been begun by the French in the capture of the fort, and there was no doubt as to their further purposes. They were in vastly superior force, even without their Indian allies, and Washington and his handful of raw recruits were within reach of them. More French were known to be coming up from the lower Ohio, and six hundred Ottawa and Chippewa war¬ riors were on their way to join Captain Contrecoeur. The promptness and good generalship of the French merited the success they had gained, and Washing¬ ton well knew how surely the red men would side with the winning party. Under the circumstances, no blame whatever could attach to them for so doing. Surrounded by many perplexities, one of which was the insubordinate conduct of some of the volun¬ teers under Captain Trent, Washington called a council of war. On due deliberation it was decided to proceed to a storehouse belonging to the Ohio Company, at the mouth of Redstone Creek, con¬ struct defensive works, and wait for re-enforcements. Washington sent on sixty men at once to make a road and begin the fortifications, and wrote to Gov- GEORGE WASHINGTON. 47 ernor Dinwiddie for artillery. He also wrote letters to the governors of Maryland and Pennsylvania, set¬ ting forth the situation, and asking for help. A bill appropriating money for troops to re-enforce him came very near to passing the Pennsylvania Legis¬ lature, but at the last moment there was a squabble as to how and by whom the money should be spent, and the bill died. No troops came from Pennsyl¬ vania, and the young commander was again supplied with a small pattern of some of his greater experi¬ ences to come. He marched soon for Redstone Creek, sending Trent's disorderly volunteers to their homes as useless, and reporting their commander to Governor Dinwiddie as an inefficient coward. The sixty men sent forward to open the road for Colonel Fry’s artillery, should it ever come, found it hard work, and had made small progress before Washington and the main body caught up with them. It was more than enough for all hands when they got at it. Washington left Wills’ Creek on the 29th of April, and on the 9th of May only twenty miles of road had been completed. Bad news came all the while from the forks of the Ohio. The French were building a fort on the very spot origi¬ nally pointed out by Washington himself. All the English traders were retreating to the settlements, and the red men were receiving lavish presents to induce them to abandon their former alliance with the English. The half-king, Tanacharisson, was yet faithful, and sent word that he was on his way to meet Washington with fifty warriors. The military road was pushed on across the 4 3 GEORGE WASHINGTON . swamps and through the forests and over the moun¬ tain-sides until it reached the Youghiogheny River. Here a bridge had to be constructed, and while the work was going on Washington corresponded with Governor Dinwiddie. One of the governor’s diffi¬ culties from the beginning had been lack of money, and it was not his fault that officers of the colonial’ troops were allowed less pay than those of corre¬ sponding rank in the regular English army. For himself, Washington was indifferent to the money question, and said so to the governor in writing. He was quite ready to serve freely for no pay at all. He was severely nettled, however, by the plainly- implied personal inferiority, and he strongly argued the injustice and impolicy of such an implication. At the same time he said that he had no idea of re¬ signing for such a cause, and meant to be the last man to retreat from the Ohio River. He turned from the discussion of a question of military etiquette and pay to make personal explorations of the wilder¬ ness beyond him, accompanied by rapacious and un¬ trustworthy Indian guides. He discovered by these investigations how tremendous were the engineering difficulties yet to be overcome in making that road to Redstone Creek. The half-king continued faithful, and from time to time sent word of the condition and understood designs of the French forces. He and his braves did very excellent service as scouts and spies, but he did not then or afterward conceal his contempt for the white man’s methods of warfare. On the 25th of May Washington and his men were en- GE OR GE IVA SUING 7'ON. 49 camped at a place called Great Meadows, and word was brought in by Gist that a noted French scout, named La Force, was prowling in the neighborhood. Washington went to look for him with about forty men and some Indian warriors under Tanacharisson. The French were nominally commanded by a young officer named Jumonville, and opened fire as soon as the English came in sight. A sharp skirmish fol¬ lowed, in which Jumonville and many of his men were killed or wounded, twenty-one were captured, and only one, it was said, escaped. Washington lost but one man killed and three wounded, but he was himself in the hottest of the fight, and escaped narrowly. La Force, who was captured, claimed that the expedition under Jumonville had not in¬ tended hostilities, and that the English began the skirmish. The higher French army authorities de¬ clared that Jumonville and his men had been mur¬ dered. Washington knew better, and sent his pris¬ oners to Virginia, after having with difficulty saved them from the knives and tomahawks of Tanachar¬ isson and his warriors. That chieftain roundly de¬ clared that his white brothers were soft-hearted fools in sparing the lives of so many enemies. He had never been guilty of such an error in all his war ex¬ perience. Washington began to fortify himself at Great Meadows, for he could have no doubt but that the French would come to avenge the results of that skirmish. He urged Colonel Fry, who had now reached the post at Wills’ Creek, to send him re-en¬ forcements, and somewhat too emphatically wrote 50 GEORGE WASHINGTON. and spoke of his own undaunted determination. In a letter to one of his brothers, for instance, after telling the story of the skirmish, he said : “I heard the bullets whistle, and, believe me, there is some¬ thing charming in the sound.'' Horace Walpole relates that this quotation wan¬ dered as far as England, and was repeated to King George II. His Majesty quietly remarked : “ He would not say so if he had been used®to hear many. ** Years afterward Washington was asked if he ever really wrote it, and responded : “ If I said so, it was when I was young. ” He and the king were quite agreed, therefore, as to experience, but there was no bragging what¬ ever in the remark. He had a superabundance of the hot courage that could boil over in a fight, as well as of the hard, steady determination which had carried him unflinchingly through the wintry wilder¬ ness with Governor Dinwiddie's letter. Things grew darker at the camp in the Great Meadows. There was gross mismanagement in the commissariat, and supplies of provisions needed failed to come. There was so plain a prospect of famine that when the rude fortification—a trench around a square of palisades—was completed, Wash¬ ington named it Fort Necessity. He was by no means lacking in a sense of grim humor, as that sarcasm testifies. Colonel Fry fell sick shortly after reach¬ ing Wills' Creek, and now his death left Washington in nominal as well as in actual command of all the meagre forces. Indian allies, with their families, were coming in by the dozen, to help eat up the re- GEORGE WASHINGTON. 5i main mg provisions. It was known that the French force was increasing, and all the re-enforcements promised to the young commander dwindled to a single independent company of one hundred men from South Carolina under a Captain Mackay. This gentleman held a commission directly from the King, and therefore considered himself an officer of the regular army. For that reason he could not lower his dignity by receiving orders from a person like George Washington, who only held a merely “ colonial ” appointment. He and his dignity added materially to the perplexities of the situation. Some small cannon and munitions of war came at last, and moderate supplies, with letters and gifts, medals and wampum-belts, from Governor Dinwiddie for the allied chiefs. It was possible, therefore, to hold a grand council with them, and make the pres¬ ents in proper style. Washington duly presided at the council, for he was by this time very much at home in Indian diplomacy. He had evidently made a lasting personal impression upon his red acquaint¬ ances. One duty which he might otherwise have neglected was urged upon him in a letter from his friend, William Fairfax, and he determined to have public religious services in his camp. There was no chaplain or other minister at Fort Necessity, but its commander was equal to the occasion. He con¬ ducted the religious services himself, with his sol¬ diers, the Indian warriors and squaws, the hunters, traders, and backwoodsmen for his congregation. In this, as in all the other duties that he was so brave¬ ly doing, the clearly-cut, unmistakable outlines of 5 2 GEORGE WASHINGTON. his genuinely heroic nature were beginning to stand out, so that other men were compelled to see them. He led his men in prayer precisely as he led them in action, with the same simple devotion to duty which made him take an axe and chop with them, toiling as a private soldier at road and bridge building, to set them an example. French deserters came in now and then, and from them it was learned that the new fort at the fork of the Ohio had been nearly completed and named Fort Duquesne, after the French commanding-gen¬ eral. On the nth of June another attempt was made to march to Redstone Creek, but on the way the news arrived that the French were at last ad¬ vancing in force. A council of war was held, and it was decided to return to Fort Necessity rather than to be destroyed where they were. The retreat was made as rapidly as possible, Captain Mackay and his independent South Carolinians refusing all hard work. They so added to the disgust of the over¬ wearied Virginia troops that, when Fort Necessity was reached, these refused to carry baggage and haul cannon any farther. Washington was therefore compelled to halt and send for supplies and re-en¬ forcements, but the men had better have marched right on to Wills’ Creek, as he desired. The French force consisted of five hundred men, under Cap¬ tain de Villiers, a brother-in-law of Jumonville, killed in the recent skirmish, and several hundred Indians. De Villiers reached the vicinity of Fort Necessity at dawn of the day following Washing¬ ton’s arrival, and a deserter told him all he needed GEORGE WASHINGTON. 53 to know of its forlorn condition. It was every way forlorn enough, Mackay and his men sitting haugh¬ tily still while Washingon hewed logs with his own hands and toiled with his men at the construction of breastworks. Early in the morning of the 3d of July the French and their Indians began to skirmish their way through the woods toward the fort, and it was easy to see that they were numerous and were well handled. Washington’s Indians had already left him, headed by Tanacharisson, that clear-headed chieftain plainly foreseeing and foretelling disaster, and declaring again his disgust over white men’s ways in time of war. Washington at first drew up his men outside of the fort, but retreated within it as the skirmish¬ ing went on. The rain fell in torrents, to add to the general misery, and wet the cartridges. There was much firing, but both sides were well under cover. The garrison consisted of three hundred and five men, all told, and of these twelve were killed and forty-three wounded. The loss of the French and Indians was unknown, but one sixth of Wash¬ ington’s small force was gone, and the odds against him, famine included, were surely increasing. At eight o’clock in the evening the French commander asked for a parley, and after a bungling discussion, with old Jacob Van Braam for interpreter, terms of surrender were agreed upon. Washington should have understood French, for he was afterward sorely annoyed by precise translations of the terms he signed. He never would have declared the death of Jumonville an “assassination,” for instance; 54 GEORGE WASHINGTON. and other passages bore equal testimony to the fact that Van Braam’s knowledge of French was defec¬ tive. The worn-out and dispirited Virginians and South Carolinians marched for Wills’ Creek the next day, and reached it at last in safety ; but Washing¬ ton’s first campaign had ended in disaster. It was no fault of his, and in like manner and for similar reasons were some of his later campaigns to end in seeming ruin. The best thing possible for his mili¬ tary education had come to him. FT is hot temper and military ardor had been severely trained in the school of adversity, and all other men well under¬ stood that he had done all that was possible under the circumstances. He came home from his defeat with added fame and an increase of public confi¬ dence. CHAPTER VI. A Boy-Colonel.—Snubs for Colonial Militia Officers. —A Visit to Home and Mother.—English and French Diplomacies. — Braddock's Campaign. —A Sudden and Terrible Disaster. Washington took a brief rest and rejoined his regiment at Alexandria, in August, with the rank of colonel, and with instructions from Governor Din- widdie to recruit it to its full number of three hun¬ dred men. He was then to join Colonel Innes, who was now at Wills’ Creek with Captain Mackay’s South Carolina men and two companies from New York. That post was now fortified, and was called Fort Cumberland, after the British Duke of Cum¬ berland. A little later a rash plan was devised for an attempt to surprise Fort Duquesne, but by Washington’s advice it was abandoned. There was to be no more war that year, in spite of the excited condition of the public mind. The Virginia House of Burgesses spent the time until October in a steady resistance of the governor’s efforts to bring them into a state of passive obedience. They then granted him twenty thousand pounds for military purposes. With this sum and ten thousand pounds more sent out, with a supply of arms, from Eng¬ land, he proposed to accomplish great things. He planned a force of ten companies, but provided that GEORGE WASHINGTON. 56 no officer among them should hold a rank above that of captain. Any higher officers were to be pro¬ vided from the British army, and the dangerous uppishness of the “provincials” was to be kept down. This remarkable edict called for the resignation of “ Colonel ” George Washington, and he sent it in at once. He had, he said, received a legislative vote of thanks as colonel, and he refused to serve as captain. Even when Governor Sharpe, of Maryland, appointed by King George II. to the command of all the troops raised for existing hostilities, tried to induce him to continue in the service, upon some sort of compromise that should enable him to retain his title without the actual rank, he refused. It would have been a fraud, in the first place, and a surrender of colonial rights to British arrogance, in the second. He was in a rapid process of education as a rebel against royal authority, and was probably not at all aware of it. Washington had other causes of disagreement with Governor Dinwiddie, and his letters show that he was able to present his side of all the questions involved with a great deal of force, and even with some eloquence. He surely did so with unstinted freedom. On resigning his commis¬ sion, Washington proceeded at once to the home¬ stead on the bank of the Rappahannock to visit his mother, sister, and brothers. They had seen little enough of him for several years, but he had been all the while his mother’s adviser in the management of the estate. He was the head of the family, and every member of it, servants and all, was justly proud GEORGE WASHINGTON. 57 to have such a claim upon the most famous young man in the American colonies. He finished his visit and went to Mount Vernon, proposing to occupy himself in the development of that estate. He was fond of agriculture, and continued to be so to the end of his days ; but he was not to be given up to such pursuits at the present time. His own work, ending at Fort Necessity, had aroused the British Government concerning French designs in America. A mutual exchange of diplomatic insincerities went on between the two powers, while the French king sent on additional shiploads of men and munitions of war to strengthen his hold upon the heart of North America. He was striving for a vast empire, and he acted with a liberality and promptness that should have shamed his adversary. The British acted at last. They did not declare war, and pretended not to make any. They actually made it under the sham covering of what they called “ defensive meas¬ ures. ” One of these was to drive some French in¬ truders from Nova Scotia by force of arms. The next was a plan to capture the fort that the French had built at Crown Point, on Lake Champlain. Another defensive measure devised was to be the capture of the French fort at Niagara, between Lakes Erie and Ontario. The most important and least peaceful measure of all was to be the ejection of the French from the Ohio River country. The British commander-in-chief, the Duke of Cumberland, selected Major-General Edward Brad- dock as the commanding-general of all the forces to be sent to the colonies or collected there. For all 5S GEORGE WASHINGTON. that was known in England, the selection was a good one. Braddock was a brave and experienced veteran, a thorough disciplinarian. If a war could have been planned for him, to be fought upon a checker-board, he was doubtless a good enough gen¬ eral. If, however, the Alleghany Mountains, sev¬ eral rivers, and a trackless forest were to be substi¬ tuted for the checker-board, the Duke of Cumberland had sent the wrong man. General Braddock determined to give his imme¬ diate personal attention to the Ohio River cam¬ paign. He landed at Hampton, Virginia, on the 20th of February, 1755. He brought with him a train of artillery and two regular regiments of five hundred men each, and these were to be raised to quotas of seven hundred by enlistments in the colony. The ships with the troops on board sailed up the Potomac to disembark them at Alexandria. All the provincial levies were ordered to report at the same place. Much work had already been done, in many ways, to prepare beforehand for a rapid and successful campaign. Horses, wagons, supplies, had been provided for, and efforts had been made to obtain the assistance of the Cherokees and Cataw- bas ; but the warriors promised by those tribes did not come. Mount Vernon is but a few miles from Alexandria, and it was not easy for Washington to go on with his farming so near a camp. The military spirit was as hot in him as ever, and led him to mount his horse now and then and ride in for a look at Brad- dock’s army. It was a new study of war to him. GEORGE WASHINGTON. 59 If he had had the half of such an equipment instead of his half-starved, half-mutinous recruits, he would not have been compelled to surrender Fort Neces¬ sity ; and he did not dream that it was one day to become his business to face and beat just such brill¬ iantly-equipped regulars with very much such half- starved, half-mutinous recruits as he had marched out of the stockade on the Great Meadows. He had no command, and had no hope of any after his very plain letters to Governor Dinwiddie ; but it was reported to General Braddock that Colonel Wash¬ ington had expressed a willingness to serve upon his staff as a volunteer, without pay. The general had been well informed of Washington’s merits, capacity, and experience in frontier warfare, and had quite good sense enough to see that he needed such a man. A letter was therefore written, by General Braddock’s order, by Captain Robert Orme, one of his aides-de-camp, inviting the Virginia colonel to ac¬ cept a staff-appointment. The letter was couched in warmly flattering terms, and the offer was promptly accepted by Washington, in spite of his mother’s earnest opposition. She saw no reason why he should again expose himself to French and Indian marks¬ men ; but his soldier blood was up, and her motherly objections were for once of no avail. For him it was a matter of duty, and to this was doubtless added a feeling of soreness over his defeat and sur¬ render. He had really gained fame in that defeat, and now he was about to win yet higher fame in an even more complete and every way more dis¬ graceful disaster. 6o GEORGE WASHINGTON. General Braddock and his aides-de-camp received the new member of the staff cordially, and there was a side of Washington's character which could appre¬ ciate the stateliness, punctilio, and even the self- willed obstinacy of the veteran British general. They got on together capitally well to the very end, for Braddock was personally a courteous and gener¬ ous gentleman. He was, at the same time, per¬ fectly educated to lead an army to disaster among the woods. A grand council of war was held on the 14th of April, at which the general's commission and in¬ structions were read. With this and with subse¬ quent squabbles with colonial governors and assem¬ blies about supplies and men and money, Washing¬ ton had nothing to do. He was learning all that there was to be learned in Braddock’s command as to the received routine methods of the British regular army. He was at school again, and in after years he proved that he had learned well and rapid¬ ly. All fresh levies of colonial troops were at once placed under severe drill and discipline, much to their disgust; but the British officers expected very little of them. It was also a common opinion among these gentlemen, from the general down to the en¬ signs, that but little was to be feared from red sav¬ ages pitted against such troops as had now been im¬ ported from England. All that could be said by Washington, then or afterward, failed to dispel this arrogant illusion. It broke terribly enough, at last. General Braddock set out from Alexandria on the 20th of April, and Washington followed a few days GEORGE WASHINGTON. 61 later. The amount of baggage, of wagons, of artil¬ lery, of all manner of paraphernalia required by British routine for a fight in the woods, was tremen¬ dous. Trouble about supplies and further disputes with the several colonial legislatures began at once. One of these, with the Pennsylvania Assembly, ob¬ tained for General Braddock the honor of a visit from Benjamin Franklin, the postmaster-general of the colonies. Franklin was no soldier, but his keen common-sense suggested to him doubts as to the fitness of that army for Indian warfare. He was politely snubbed when he made suggestive remarks to Braddock, but he duly recorded his forebodings of failure. Delay followed delay, and it was the 19th of May before the forces reached Fort Cumber¬ land. Continual drill went on among the troops, and the apparent shortcomings of the colonial re¬ cruits, together with the repeated failures of the colonial army contractors, kept the temper of Gen¬ eral Braddock in bad condition. He roundly abused everything colonial, and brought on sharp disputes between himself and his patriotic and spirited aide- de-camp. Perhaps this may have had something to do with the small regard paid then or afterward to Washington’s suggestions as to the management of the campaign. On the 10th of June the general moved from camp with the advance, and was six days in reach¬ ing Little Meadows. On the way he had learned something of the difficulty of moving so much bag¬ gage over such rugged roads, and actually asked Washington’s opinion as to what he had better do GEORGE IVA SUING TON. 62 next. He even followed the good advice given, to leave his encumbrances behind him, with a part of his force, and push forward with twelve hundred picked men for a sudden and crushing blow at Fort Duquesne. He did well, so far, but rejected all propositions for keeping a strong force of scouts, backwoodsmen, and Indians ahead of his column to feel the way c More of the story can better be told from the French side of the field of operations. Fort Du¬ quesne was still under the command of Captain de Contrecceur, but that brave and capable officer had not received the re-enforcements needed to enable him to hold the post against such an army as that of General Braddock. On the morning of the 9th of July his scouts brought him word that the British were within six leagues of him, three thou¬ sand strong, with artillery. It was a serious ques¬ tion in his mind whether it were best for him to leave the fort at once and retreat with all he could carry away, or to wait and surrender in due form. He had under him, however, a fiery officer, named Captain de Beaujeu, who entreated of him permis¬ sion to go out with a small force and do what mis¬ chief he could by laying a trap for the enemy’s ad¬ vance. De Beaujeu took with him 72 French regu¬ lars, 146 Canadians, and 637 Indians—855 in all ; and all but 72 of them of the kind of men despised by General Braddock. They laid their ambuscade well, and the British commander sent his helpless troops right into it, to be shot down by hidden marksmen. De Beaujeu himself was killed, but the entire loss GEORGE IVA SHINGTON . 63 incurred in routing the British army did not exceed seventy killed and wounded—French, Canadians, and red men. The advance of the splendidly equipped and dis¬ ciplined English troops was made according to the most rigid system of that day, but with the purely wooden stupidity of refusing to find out what was before them. The trap laid by De Beaujeu was be¬ fore them, very much as Washington had feared. He is said to have been somewhat sharply rebuffed for the persistency with which he uttered his pro¬ phetic warnings. He had been ill of fever for sev¬ eral days, and was present only because of his over¬ powering sense of duty and his dread of what might come. The glittering advance moved on through the forest until all at once the bushes and rocks and trees around them seemed to become alive with unseen marksmen. The air rang with the sharp cracking of rifles and the horrid yells of savage warriors, fol¬ lowed by shrieks and groans as the stately ranks of the British regulars melted away. The main body behind them, with General Braddock in person, charged bravely on to their support, but went to its destruction. No troops in Europe could long with¬ stand that new and appalling method of warfare, and the British regiments broke and fled. The Virginia “ rangers,” under Washington's direction, covered the disorderly retreat with desperate cour- age, fighting from tree to tree in Indian fashion. It was in vain, even now, for Washington to urge Braddock to order his men to follow that example. 6 4 GEORGE WASHINGTON. He insisted on forming them in platoons, to be shot down. He and his officers behaved with dauntless courage, but at last he was shot down, mortally hurt, and the battle was given up as lost. Both of his other aides were wounded, and the entire respon¬ sibility of rescuing the relics of the force devolved upon the young Virginia colonel of militia. He had distinguished himself by his coolness, courage, and good judgment, and it was a wonder that he escaped unhurt. Two horses were shot under him, and four bullets passed through his clothing. He freely ex¬ posed himself everywhere, and was an attractive mark. He did not for a moment seem confused in all the dire and murderous carnage and disorder. He had shown himself the possessor of the rare kind of generalship needed by defeated armies. The Virginia riflemen who stood by him, even after severe losses, proved that they were just the men to follow such a leader. The British loss of officers and men, killed and wounded, was nearly eight hun¬ dred out of little more than two thousand engaged. General Braddock warmly expressed his admiration of the behavior of the colonial troops and his in¬ debtedness to the man who had rallied and directed them. He could have had no idea of the fact, af¬ terward expressed by Benjamin Franklin, that the events of that very battle served wonderfully well to inspire the soldiers of the colonies with a confi¬ dence in themselves which they had lacked, as com¬ pared with disciplined English veterans. General Braddock died a few days afterward, at the Great Meadows, and as the army chaplain was among the GEORGE WASHINGTON. 65 wounded, Washington himself conducted the funeral services. Utterly defeated and dispirited, the entire force gathered for that campaign gave it up, and soon retreated into Virginia. The one man who came out of it covered with honor and having a stronger hold than ever upon the esteem and confi¬ dence of all men, in all the colonies, was the young Virginia colonel, George Washington. CHAPTER VII. Once More a Colonel. —A Trip to Boston .— Visiting in New York.—Another Love-affair.—Indian War Desolating the Virginia Fro?itier. — War Operations at Other Points. — Mrs. Martha Washington. Washington arrived at Mount Vernon on the 29th of July, worn-out with sickness and by the fatigues and disappointments of Braddock’s cam¬ paign. The whole colony was in a fever of cause¬ less panic, dreading an immediate invasion by the French and Indians. Measures were taken to pro¬ vide for the public defence a regiment of one thou¬ sand men, and Governor Dinwiddie was compelled to obey the unanimous public sentiment which de¬ manded that he should appoint Washington to the command of it. The terms on which he accepted his commission gave him the right to name his own field-officers, and made him commander-in-chief of the forces of the colony. It was a striking tribute to the reputation he had won through the recent disasters, and it plunged him into a sea of diffi¬ culties concerning the collection, equipment, and management of that proposed regiment. He was brought to face and endured precisely the kind of tribulation that was afterward to vex his soul, year after year, upon a wider field, and the training was invaluable. Before he consented to take the com- GEORGE WASHINGTON. 67 mand and its responsibilities, he received letter after letter from his mother urging him not to do so. She doubtless wrote with vivid pictures in her moth¬ erly mind of the perils he had recently escaped. He answered her lovingly, but with a firm declara¬ tion that he must obey the call of public duty. Looking back upon an unbroken record of toil, ex¬ posure, discomfort, disaster, and forward to a sur¬ render of all the comforts of life, he refused to flinch, and Mrs. Washington was forced to give the matter up. The autumn and the early winter passed in a con¬ stant succession of rumors and alarms. Some of the latter reached a height that had an almost ludicrous side to them, but for the known horrors of Indian warfare. Late in the winter a dispute arose as to the occupation of Fort Cumberland by Virginia or Maryland troops, the latter colony claiming the ground it stood upon. It was decided that Colonel Washington should go to Boston and lay the matter before Major-General Shirley, who had succeeded Braddock as commander-in-chief of the British troops in North America. He set out on the 4th of February, 1756, leaving Colonel Adam Stephen in command of his regiment, and taking with him two young Virginia officers, Captain Mercer and Captain Stewart. Travellers were scarce in those days in the colonies, and the arrival of such an em¬ bassy at any village or town was considered a social event. Washington's name and fame had gone be¬ fore him, and he was everywhere well received. In default of railways, and even of stage-coaches, he 68 GEORGE WASHINGTON. and his friends journeyed on horseback, accompanied by their colored servants in livery and by pack- horses, making quite a brilliant cavalcade. Five hundred miles of riding in midwinter was an under¬ taking every way noteworthy. General Shirley de¬ cided in favor of Washington’s claim to command Fort Cumberland, but there was yet an important failure in one object of the journey. The rising colonial colonel had dreamed of obtaining regular 44 king’s commissions” for himself and his fellow- officers of the Virginia regiment. It was out of the question. He was not providentially permitted to bind himself by any oath to serve the King of Eng¬ land or to escape future annoyances and insults of “regular” officers serving with him and despising him as an American—that is, regarding him as a kind of human being half way between an English¬ man in uniform and a red Indian without any kind of uniform but some paint. Washington remained ten days in Boston, receiving much social attention, and was constantly present at the legislative sessions, where matters of military importance were then under discussion. He was acquiring an acquaint¬ ance with a people with whom and a region with which he was to have further relations, then un¬ dreamed of. From Boston he returned to New York, and here also he entered with zest into the en¬ joyment of the liberal hospitalities tendered him. He was but twenty-four years of age, and it was in¬ evitable that his name should be permanently asso¬ ciated with that of the reigning belle. He openly avowed his admiration of a Miss Phillipse, heiress GEORGE WASHINGTON. 69 of a fine estate on the Hudson River ; but there is no evidence that his suit ever went so far as a pro¬ posal and refusal. He had hardly time for such a campaign as might have been required, for duty called him to Virginia. Before the end of March he was there again, urging the legislature of that colony to adopt measures for the capture of Fort Duquesne. The alarms of savage inroads upon the frontiers of the colonies were no longer imaginary. The for¬ mer Indian allies of the English were now very gen¬ erally turned against them. They were pressing the outlying Virginian settlements so persistently that even the forest manor-house of Lord Fairfax, at Greenway Court, was no longer a safe residence. The eccentric old nobleman was a man of obstinate courage, and he refused to retreat, though every day brought its terrible tale of butchery and horror. Washington hastened to Winchester, but found the preparations for defence altogether inadequate. The terrified settlers were gathering there as if it were a place of safety, but all his attempts to summon the Virginia militia to his aid were in vain. At last it was reported, on seemingly good authority, that the enemy were advancing to the attack of Winchester itself. A scouting party of Washing¬ ton’s men was attacked and nearly destroyed at Warm Spring Mountain, only twenty miles away. The helpless people looked up to the young com¬ mander as their only hope, but there was little that he could do. In one of his letters to the governor, setting forth his situation, he said : “ The supplicat- 70 GEORGE WASHINGTON. ing tears of the women and moving petitions of the men move me to 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 peo¬ ple’s ease. M The hero shone to better advantage in such a scene, decidedly, than in the most brilliant society of New York or Boston. A force was ordered to his assistance, and measures for the protection of the frontier were tardily voted by the legislature ; but the newspapers threw discredit upon both the troops and their commander. They managed to sting Washington so deeply that he openly declared that only the public danger prevented him from re¬ signing. The , written expression of his feelings brought him abundant responses, assuring him of the public confidence and affection. Virginia had no other man just then to take his place. For some unknown cause the French and Indians gave up their intended attack upon Winchester and returned to Fort Duquesne, but Washington’s work went on. His letters on military affairs at this juncture evince a maturity and soundness of judgment that present with wonderful clearness the results of his long years of hard and thoughtful schooling. He urged an entire remodelling of the militia system of the colony, and the adoption of a new line of frontier fortification and defence. His ideas were adopted in part, and wherever they were widely deviated from, the result proved the correctness of his ad¬ vice. A chain of posts was planned, at short inter- GEORGE WASHINGTON. 7 1 vals from one another, along the exposed line ; but Fort Cumberland, beyond it, was uselessly main¬ tained, in spite of Washington’s protests. The Earl of Loudoun was now in command of the British forces in the colonies, as well as royal governor of Virginia, and Dinwiddie was still acting under him as lieutenant-governor. It was pretty sure that the two would agree upon any disputed point as against a mere Virginian. Between them they were doing a good work, and educating the colonists thoroughly as to the absurdity of such a country as America being permanently governed by gentlemen from so great a distance. It was also clearly evident before long that a clique in the colony, jealous of Wash¬ ington, were doing what they could to worry his hot temper to the point at which he would resign his commission. They might have succeeded but for his patriotism. The French-Indian war went on all the while in other parts of the colonies. The several northern parts of Braddock’s plan had long since crumbled with his own defeat, but not so disastrously. Early in July of the current year, while Lord Loudoun was in New York, hesitating whether or not to send re-enforcements to the two British forts at the mouth of the Oswego River, Field-Marshal the Marquis de Montcalm, in command of the French troops in the Canadas, attacked and captured both of them. He also strengthened the French posts at Crown Point and Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain, and when at last winter put an end to army operations, the aspect of affairs was very bad for the English 7 2 GEORGE WASHINGTON. colonies. If matters had continued to go on in such a manner, the United States of America could never have come into existence. The winter passed without the occurrence of any¬ thing which brought Washington into special promi¬ nence, but he had reason to believe that Lord Lou¬ doun had been given a poor opinion of him. There was to be a grand conference at Philadelphia in March between his lordship and the southern colonial governors, and Washington determined to go there and do what he could to set matters in a true light. He wrote to Lord Loudoun a long letter, present¬ ing the condition of military affairs in Virginia, to prepare the way. Pie also asked of Lieutenant-Gov¬ ernor Dinwiddie official permission to go, and it was grudgingly given him. When Washington arrived in Philadelphia, he found that his letter and other information received by the commander-in-chief had removed any preju¬ dices against him. He was respectfully consulted throughout the conference, and obtained his wishes upon several points ; but once more he failed to se¬ cure a commission in the British regular army. He was compelled to remain entirely and forever a Vir¬ ginian and an American. The Philadelphia conference, with Lord Loudoun at its head, laid a grand plan for the operations of the year 1757. They managed to prepare for a re¬ markable series of disasters and failures. They gave up the idea of at once assailing the French posts on Lake Champlain, and determined to take the im¬ portant French post of Louisburg, on the island of GEORGE WASHINGTON. 73 Cape Breton. Lord Loudoun took command of the expedition organized for that object, and by mid¬ summer following set sail for Halifax, with all the troops he could collect. He had about six thousand men with him, and was there to be joined by a strong fleet and six thousand more. When all the united force sailed from Halifax to take Louisburg, they discovered that the French commanders had pre¬ pared a yet more powerful fleet to receive them. All that his lordship could do was to save his ships and men by sailing back again, and that part of the great plan ended in disgrace and ridicule. Mean¬ time the ever-active Montcalm had captured Fort William Henry, on Lake George, after a stubborn defence, which was followed by a barbarous mas¬ sacre of part of the surrendered garrison by the un¬ controllable Indian allies of the French. On the Virginia frontier the year wore away the very life of Washington in harassing and fatiguing services that were marked by no especial feature of disaster or success. He continued to suffer from malarial disorders, and began to fear that his consti¬ tution was permanently impaired. He also suffered much from the irritating course pursued by Gov¬ ernor Dinwiddie, who was probably the person who had misrepresented him to Lord Loudoun. Part of the Virginia troops had been detached, under the great plan, for service in South Carolina. So small was the force at Washington’s disposal, that he was compelled to use it with great caution. The enemy were at all times pressing him, and he was com¬ pelled to submit to the sad course of events. The 74 GEORGE WASHINGTON. very valley of the Shenandoah, in which he had done his first adventurous surveying, was once more a wilderness, deserted by its inhabitants. Toward the close of the year he yielded to the advice of his physician, and retired to Mount Vernon. Early in the winter he had the satisfaction of hearing that Dinwiddie had resigned and sailed for England, to torment him no more. He also could not help knowing that his services were understood fairly well by the people ; but,his heart was unselfishly heavy over the state of public affairs, and his bodily dis¬ orders made him despondent. It seems to have been a change in the aspect of public affairs that helped the weary young patriot to get well. His health improved with the first indication that vigor and decision were to take the place of such bodily shapes of delay and disaster as Dinwiddie and Lord Loudoun. William Pitt was now in charge of the English Government, and he was only another name for energy. The new lieutenant-governor of Vir¬ ginia, Mr. Francis Fauquier, had not arrived. Washington’s personal friend, John Blair, president of the council of the colony, was acting in his place, ready to follow good advice ; and in April of the year 1758 the restored sick man was once more with his men at Fort Loudoun on the frontier. The tide of events turned rapidly. Another ex¬ pedition against Louisburg succeeded completely. General Abercrombie was defeated in an attack upon Fort Ticonderoga, but Fort Frontenac, on Lake Ontario, was captured instead. Great preparations were made for a campaign for the taking of Fort GEORGE WASHINGTON. 75 Duquesne, and Washington entered into it with his whole heart. The British authorities had now recog¬ nized his military position, placing him and other provincial colonels on an equality with regular army officers of the same rank. He was not subjected, therefore, to so many petty annoyances, but had to submit to a great one. It was decided, against his will, to march against Fort Duquesne by way of Pennsylvania instead of by Braddock’s, or rather Washington's old road, and a long, disheartening delay was the consequence. There were also minor disasters to small bodies of men pushed forward too far, and the public took notice of the worst of these and that Washington's advice had been once more disregarded. He was still the commander-in-chief of the Virginia troops, and he now had two full regi¬ ments under him, not to speak of militia and occa¬ sional Indians. His troops were so greatly in need of uniforms that he caused a large part of them to adopt the Indian hunting-dress, and put it on him¬ self to set them an example. It is, on the whole, a very picturesque uniform. The need was so great of many other things, that at last he gave up writ¬ ing letters about it, and set off on horseback to lay the condition of the army before the Virginia legis¬ lature, then in session at Williamsburg. This was one of the most important journeys of Washington’s life. He was crossing the Pamunkey River when he fell in with a Mr. Chamberlayne, a planter living near, and was invited to dine with him. The soldier was in a great hurry, but it was necessary to eat, and he yielded. At the dinner- 7 6 GEORGE WASHINGTON. table he met a young and attractive widow lady, a Mrs. Martha Custis. Her husband, John Parke Custis, had been dead about three years, leaving her with two small children and a large property. She was not tall, but had a pleasant face and captivating manners. She entirely captured George Washing¬ ton, and after dinner he was in no hurry to go on to Williamsburg. He did not go until the next day, and when he went he was conscious that his errand had widened very much, for Mrs. Custis lived near that town, and was going home. She had other ad¬ mirers, and Washington’s duties before the legis¬ lature kept him very busily employed ; but he again proved his good generalship. Before he returned to the frontier, Mrs. Custis had promised him that she would marry him at the end of the campaign. From that hour onward he was doubly anxious for the sur¬ render of Fort Duquesne. When at last the French garrison left in that important post found that the British army was in sight of them, they quietly burned up everything that would burn and marched away, just as they would have done before for Gen¬ eral Braddock if he had not thrown away his army. They had no great military need of Fort Duquesne, while the English colonists needed it, or its absence, very much. It was rebuilt, strengthened, and re¬ named Fort Pitt, in honor of the British prime-min¬ ister, and the city of Pittsburg takes its name from it to this day. The fall of Fort Duquesne had been a heart’s desire of Washington for years, and now that it had come, he was quite contented to resign his com- GEORGE WASHINGTON. 77 mission. He did so, therefore, and soon after his return he was married, on the 6th of January, 1759, to Mrs. Martha Custis, at her residence near Will¬ iamsburg, known as the White House. The wed¬ ding was made a grand affair, and Washington’s mother probably felt that at last she could have some hope of keeping him out of range of French and Indian rifles. He had had quite enough of rough, hard life, and was well entitled to all the comforts of a home. CHAPTER VIII. Going to the Legislature.—An Attempt at Public Speaking.—Canada Won by England .— Well Set¬ tled in Life.—Bright Days at Mount Vernon .— Negro Slavery in its Best Conditions.—Pontiac s War . While Washington was yet with his men upon the frontier, he had determined to become a candi¬ date for the House of Burgesses as the representa¬ tive of Frederick County. There were three other candidates, and the canvass promised to be a warm one ; but Washington refused a leave of absence to go home and take an active part in it. If he had been an old and cunning politician, he could not have decided more prudently. It was not easy to get the sturdy farmers to vote against a man who was at that moment risking his life and scalp on their account, and they elected him, in his absence, by a large majority. For three months after his marriage he and his wife resided at her old home near Williamsburg, and it was during that time that he first took his seat in the House of Burgesses. When it was known that he was about to do so, his fellow-members decided, by a vote of the House, to make the occasion one of especial ceremony, as a mark of respect and public gratitude. When he took his seat, therefore, the Speaker of the House, GEORGE WASHINGTON. 79 Mr. Robinson, arose, and in an eloquent address ten¬ dered him the thanks of the colony for the distin¬ guished military services he had given to his coun¬ try. Washington arose to reply, but he was no orator. Words failed him ; he blushed, he stam¬ mered, and he sat down as completely defeated as he had been at Fort Necessity. “ Sit down, Mr. Washington,” said the speaker. “Your modesty equals your valor, and that sur¬ passes the power of any language I possess.” He entered at once upon the discharge of his legislative duties, attending to all with characteris¬ tic industry. He was without special faculty as a debater, but there was a long list of questions relat¬ ing to the affairs of the colony concerning which his known opinion was sure to carry a majority with it. War matters still held the foremost place in the public mind, but the military events of that year worked a complete and final change in the owner¬ ship of North America. The French were to retain Louisiana for a time, but the Canadas and the Ohio country were wrested from them by good general¬ ship and hard fighting at Quebec and elsewhere. One French statesman declared that the British Government had gained Canada, but had thereby lost all its American colonies. These would no more, he said, be in need of British protection, and would surely in time demand their independence. He could not foresee that British statesmen would deliberately set themselves at work, year after year, to goad and drive and torment the colonies into being independent, whether they would or not. 8 o GEORGE WASHINGTON. It is not easy to imagine any man in more com¬ fortable circumstances than those which now sur¬ rounded George Washington. He had made him¬ self the foremost man in Virginia, winning a fame which extended to all the other colonies, and even crossed the Atlantic Ocean. He was in good health, with a devoted wife, a home precisely suited to his tastes, and with it what, for those days, was very large wealth. He was trustee of the property of his wife and her children, a boy and girl, and to these he was as their own father. He had once had a dream of travelling in Europe, but it was all gone now. He was more than ever an enthusiastic agri¬ culturist, and took hold of farming as the one occu¬ pation in which he could be entirely happy. Mount Vernon is beautifully situated. In Wash¬ ington's day the ample grounds around it were well laid out, and were kept in good order. The broad lands belonging to him in the vicinity were divided into separate farms, with each its own routine of crops, its overseer, and its laborers. He himself exercised a careful and methodical supervision of them all. The Potomac River bounded the estate on the north, and was full of fish. Game was abun¬ dant, within easy hunting reach. Ships wkh cargoes from England or from other colonial ports came up to Alexandria, only a few miles away. The neigh¬ boring planters were personal friends or connections of the Washington family. The very slaves on the estate, and particularly the household servants, were proud to belong to Colonel Washington. It was an almost perfect picture of human prosperity, well GEORGE WASHINGTON . 81 deserved, righteously enjoyed, and it should be studied thoughtfully. Because it was so complete and because its owner loved it so dearly and was so happy there, it offers his countrymen something by which they can measure imperfectly the unselfish patriotism which afterward forced him to give it all up and devote the best years of his life to their service. Farming was profitable in those days, and par¬ ticularly so upon the rich tide-water lands of Vir¬ ginia. Under so good a manager as Washington they returned abundant crops of wheat, Indian corn, tobacco, hay, and so forth, and shipments were made directly to England by the planters. There were hardly any manufactures in the colonies. The so-called “ mother-country” was disposed to dis¬ courage American industries which might some day make her own less profitable. A prosperous trade with the West Indies was continually carried on, but under restrictions so burdensome as to lead to systematic smuggling. The Mount Vernon mansion house was maintained in stately style from the pro¬ ceeds of Washington’s successful farming. His stables were filled with fine horses, of which he was fond even to extravagance. The hospitality ex¬ tended to all who were entitled to it a liberal wel¬ come, and when Mrs. Martha Washington chose to take a drive, her chariot was drawn by four thorough¬ breds and accompanied by mounted colored servants in livery. It was all intensely aristocratic and in imitation of European ways, but it was strictly in accord with the notions of that time. A leader and 82 GEORGE WASHINGTON. ruler for the American colonies could hardly have been taken from any other rank in life. It required a stately and patriotic aristocrat to pilot a very mixed and cloudy-minded people into genuine re¬ publicanism and freedom. There were many white farmers in Virginia, as in the other colonies, who tilled their own fields ; but upon the great plantations all manual labor was per¬ formed by negro slaves. Too many of the planters left even the care and management of these to over¬ seers, and both the colored people and their masters suffered the consequences. It was not so at Mount Vernon. The slaves owned by Washington himself were necessarily many, and to these were added those of the Custis family. Among them were not only field hands and house servants, but mechanics of various kinds, such as carpenters, shoemakers, blacksmiths, and such tailors as plantation clothing called for. All articles of luxury and many of the ordinary farming tools were imported from England. At one time Washington devised an improved plough, and spent two days with Peter, his black¬ smith, manufacturing one. Then, because he had no other horses handy, he harnessed two of his carriage horses to that plough, and began to break sod-ground with it. He treated his servants kind¬ ly, giving them particular care when sick, but re¬ quired of them all exact performance of their al¬ lotted tasks. He exercised extreme vigilance in the preparation of his flour and tobacco for market, both as to quantity and quality. It is related that this became so well understood that barrels of flour GEORGE WASHINGTON . 83 bearing his brand were permitted to enter the West India markets without inspection. He was an early riser, and in winter was often up before daybreak. His breakfast hour was seven in summer and eight in winter, and his breakfast was of the simplest kind. He was in the habit of mounting his horse at once after breakfast and riding away to inspect whatever work might be going on. Bad weather hours in the house were occupied by his large cor¬ respondence and by his account-books and journal. These latter were kept with great regularity, and show that his schoolboy efforts to make himself a man of business had succeeded completely. Dinner was served at two o’clock, and was eaten with hearty appetite ; but Washington was some¬ what careless about matters of cookery. He had cooked his own dinner by a camp-fire many a time, and had often been without any dinner at all. He was fond of tea, used cider and home-made small beer, but was free from the then all but universal habit of hard drinking. At dinner two wine-glasses of Madeira were his limit. In the hunting season he went out enthusiastically with his neighbors or without them, but he is said to have been more suc¬ cessful as a daring rider than as a taker of foxes. He was fond of duck-shooting, and vigorously drove away intruders who came to spoil the sport for him along the borders of his own land. Both he and his wife were fond of society at their own home and elsewhere, and they had an abundance of it ; and he is said to have been a good dancer. With all this rural duty and pleasure at Mount 8 4 GEORGE WASHINGTON. Vernon, Washington did not for a moment lose sight of the course of public events. He was a judge of the County Court, as well as a member of the House of Burgesses, and his mind was full of ideas con¬ cerning the development of the resources of the colony. He conceived a plan for the improvement of the Dismal Swamp region, explored it himself, and was the originator of the methods afterward tardily adopted for its improvement. It was while he was thus engaged that the struggle with the Indian tribes, known as “ Pontiac’s War.” broke out. Peace between France and England had been formally declared in the spring of 1763, but it was a mistake to suppose that the savages considered themselves to be bound by it. The Six Nations were restrained from open hostilities by the influ¬ ence of Sir William Johnson, but the tribes of the south and centre formed a league so powerful as to threaten the whole frontier south of New York. They made their preparations secretly, and in the month of May they rose so suddenly as to take the whites entirely by surprise. Several of the smaller frontier forts were captured and their garrisons mas¬ sacred ; and even Fort Pitt and Detroit narrowly escaped. The trading-stations, the border settle¬ ments, the scattered farm-houses of western Vir¬ ginia, Pennsylvania, and Maryland were mercilessly swept away. There was hard fighting before the terrible work was checked, but for once Washington was not in the field. He had done his share of Indian-fighting, and others might take their turn. He had other work upon his hands, and he was GEORGE WASHINGTON. 85 watching the growth of a movement which neither he nor anybody else as yet understood. It was the increasingly severe operation of the policy of the party in power in England, the aim of which was the practical enslavement of the colonies. The best and wisest statesmen of England loudly but vainly protested against that policy, and it is not easy, at this day, to comprehend the state of mind of the arrogant men who insisted upon carrying it out to the bitter end. By a long succession of acts of Par¬ liament, Great Britain had bound American trade as with so many iron fetters. An American was not permitted to manufacture specified goods for himself —he must buy them in England and bring them home in an English ship, after paying duties on them to England. Whatever his land produced that was suitable for exportation he must ship only to ports in the possession of the British Crown. America was to be, forever, a mere feeder to Great Britain, and its inhabitants were to have no voice in the matter whatever. There could be but one last result of such in¬ sanity, but the colonists were intensely loyal, espe¬ cially those of Virginia, and they bore the galling yoke with a sort of helpless patience for a long while. During their earlier history they had been, in fact, entirely helpless ; but the times were changing now. The colonies were growing rapidly. They were full of men familiar with public affairs, and who had served in camps and battle-fields. The increasing commerce of their seaports clamored for free mar¬ kets and. free ships. A generation had arisen which 86 GEORGE WASHINGTON. had vaguely learned to consider itself “ American” rather than “ English,” and one of its most ac¬ tive young men, from childhood, had been George Washington, now a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses. In all the other colonies, as well as in his own, there were other men more or less like him, chafing and getting restless, day by day, as the tone of foreign despotism became more insolent and menacing. From all observations of this kind, how¬ ever, it is necessary to omit the recently conquered French provinces north of the St. Lawrence River. There were no Americans there to do any thinking. Their population consisted of Frenchmen, Indians, a few immigrants who had come in since the con¬ quest, and over these the domination of British au¬ thority, civil or military, was absolute and unques¬ tioned. CHAPTER IX. Pressing the Colonies Together.—Old Colony News .— New E?igland Matters. — Taxatio?i without Repre¬ sentation.—Friends of America in England .— Patrick Henry's Resolutions. — The Stamp Act .— The Tax o?i Tea. —A Death in the Mount Vernon Family. There were no telegraphic cables between America and England, nor were there newspapers, as we now have them ; but all decrees of the British ministry and all acts of Parliament relating to colonial affairs were speedily printed and circulated and known in the colonies. There was a great deal of commercial correspondence, which of necessity had in it much concerning “ duties” imposed ; and public men on this side of the water were pretty sure to exchange frequent letters with public men on that side who were in sympathy with them. Communication between the several colonies was slow and imperfect, but nothing of importance could happen in one of them which did not rapidly be¬ come public news in all the others. Then, as after¬ ward, there was much local feeling and much sec¬ tional jealousy. Just the sort of pressure England was now using was needed to bring the scattered little commonwealths nearer together in feeling. The general character of the French and Indian wars 88 GEORGE WASHINGTON. had done much, for the entire frontier had been scourged. Now the whole stretch of the seacoast, at every port, was to be made to understand that it belonged to one people, having interests in com¬ mon. The pockets of all men everywhere were to be searched, and even their houses were to be en¬ tered, that in due season they might all become full of wrath for the same causes, at the same hour, and as one family. News of every sort came steadily to Mount Ver¬ non. It is not necessary to relate all, but it is well to look at a few of the matters that were brought to Washington from time to time. He was forced to study them as they arrived, and in all that study he was preparing himself for the great storm soon to come. In the year 1760, in Boston, the customs officers applied to the courts for writs that would authorize them to break open ships, stores and dwellings, in search of smuggled goods. James Otis argued against granting the writs with such power and force that his hearers were ready to take up arms at once. Among them was John Adams, and he declared, afterward, “ Then and there American independence was born/’ He was hardly correct about that, for it had quite a number of supposable birthplaces, and was a vigorous sort of child long before any name was given to it. The next blow was at the independence of the judiciary. The British ministry instructed the colonial governors to issue commissions to judges to serve not “ during good behavior,” but “ during the king’s pleasure.” That meant, “as long as they GEORGE IVA SUING TON. 89 shall decide all questions in a manner to suit the British Tory Administration. ” New York took the lead in opposing this piece of tyranny. Shortly after the close of the French and Indian War, all vessels of the British navy cruising in American waters or anchored in American harbors were ordered to take up the business of catching smugglers. The Ameri¬ cans were driving a profitable trade with other na¬ tions than England, and it must be broken up. It was an act of war upon the budding commerce of America, and all men could see that there was a great wrong in it. All the colonies took fire at this act, and retaliated by refusing to buy British manufactures. People dressed in homespun and denied themselves many luxuries, and the smugglers were more popular than ever. In 1764 the British Parliament debated the ques¬ tion whether or not they had a legal right to tax America. It was formally decided that they were in need of money, and that therefore they had a right to get as much as possible out of the colonies. Such laws as already existed for that purpose were thenceforth to be enforced more vigorously. Others were to be invented, passed, and put into operation, and the great American pocket was to be assailed in every way that could be thought of, but without giving America any voice in the matter. Now again the people of New England were first to be heard in opposition. They claimed their right as freemen to be taxed by nobody but themselves, or through their representatives chosen by them- 9 ° GEORGE WASHINGTON. selves. New York and Virginia followed New Eng¬ land, and closely behind them followed Pennsylvania and South Carolina. Agents were sent to England to co-operate with Benjamin Franklin in opposing the continuance of a course of action so full of mis¬ chief. There were wise men enough in England, in and out of Parliament, who understood the temper of the colonies, and who, with voice and pen, argued powerfully against the disastrous policy of the minis¬ try, but in vain. It was determined that American opposition must be put down, and that the burden laid upon them should be made yet more heavy and galling. In March, 1765, Parliament passed the act that is famous in American history as the “ Stamp Act.” By the terms of this remarkable law, all legal instru¬ ments in writing, in order that they might be legal, were to be executed upon stamped paper, to be pur¬ chased from the agents of the British Government. Knowing beforehand the probable verdicts to be obtained against an American political offender from any twelve of his patriotic American neighbors, the ministry wiped out “ the right of trial by jury ” in this class of cases. The Stamp Act provided that all offences against it could be tried in any royal, marine, or admiralty court throughout the colonies, however distant from the place where the offence was committed. A man failing to obey the British ministry upon the Georgia frontier could be tried and punished in Nova Scotia. It was now the turn of Virginia to speak first, and she had rightly been considered the most zealously GEORGE WASHINGTON, 91 loyal of the colonies. The discussion of the Stamp Act by the Virginia House of Burgesses began on the 29th of May. Washington was in his seat, and all his letters written in those days show what his opin¬ ions were ; but he was no orator, and his time for something more than oratory had not come. The honor of denouncing the tyranny of the British min¬ istry fell upon a young lawyer named Patrick Henry. He was then a member of the House for the first time, but had already won a reputation for uncom¬ mon eloquence. He arose, and offered resolutions declaring that the General Assembly of Virginia had the exclusive right and power to lay taxes and impo¬ sitions upon the inhabitants, and that whoever main¬ tained the contrary should be deemed an enemy of the colony. It was a new and daring utterance, that declared a royal ministry and a majority of the British Par¬ liament enemies of Virginia. The Speaker, Mr. Robinson, objected to the resolutions as inflam¬ matory, but he only stirred up Patrick Henry to a yet more fiery vindication of his resolutions. It was in the course of his speech on this occasion that he uttered the memorable warning : “ Caesar had his Brutus, Charles his Cromwell, and George the Third *'—cries of “ Treason ! Treason !” came from near the Speaker’s chair, and Henry added, with a low bow in that direction—“ may profit by their example. Sir, if this be treason, make the most of it. ” The result of the debate was that the resolutions were somewhat toned down, to meet the views of 9 2 GEORGE WASHINGTON. moderate men like Speaker Robinson ; but they were left so strong that they alarmed the lieutenant- governor, Fauquier, so that he at once dissolved the Assembly. He issued writs for a new election, as if there were a hope that the people of Virginia would choose men who were in favor of the Stamp Act. All the colonies were on fire, and it was as if all men, everywhere, at once adopted Patrick Henry’s resolutions. The popular will added to them a re¬ fusal to buy or use stamped paper, and a determina¬ tion to burn all of it that could be seized upon. Stamp agents were hung in effigy, or had their offices sacked and their windows broken. Courts adjourned rather than issue stamped papers. Busi¬ ness almost ceased, except such as could be done for cash or on verbal contract. At the suggestion of the Assembly of Massachusetts, called the General Court, a Congress was held in New York, in October. Delegates were present from Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Penn¬ sylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and South Carolina. George Washington was not a member of this first brief Congress. He was at home at Mount Vernon, managing his estate as usual, and at the same time industriously urging forward an association of all Americans to agree not to buy or use British goods. His letters were all moderate and guarded in their expression, but his clear understanding of the situa¬ tion can be found in one dated a few months later. The storm of opposition to the Stamp Act became so black and threatening that the British Govern- GEORGE WASHINGTON . 93 ment finally gave it up, and in March, 1766, it was repealed. It was then that Washington wrote to a friend : “ Had the Parliament of Great Britain re¬ solved upon enforcing it, the consequences, I con- * ceive, would have been more direful than is gener¬ ally apprehended, both to the mother country and her colonies. ” There was a great deal expressed in the word “direful ” used by such a man as Washington. It meant more than did even the fevered eloquence of Patrick Henry. When Benjamin Franklin was summoned before the House of Commons to answer questions put to him concerning American public opinion, he was asked : “ Do you think the people of America would sub¬ mit to pay the stamp duty if it was moderated ?” and he replied : “ No, never, unless compelled by force of arms.” It was not a question of a small tax or a large one, but of a right and a wrong. Nevertheless, in spite of all that they had learned, the British Parlia¬ ment embodied the bone of contention in the repeal of the Stamp Act. They inserted a clause declaring that the King of Great Britain, with the consent of Parliament, had power to make laws and statutes of sufficient force and validity to “ bind the colonies and people of America in all cases whatsoever.” They held out the chain, handcuffs and all, and said to the freemen of the colonies : “ When¬ ever we please to put them on, you must wear them. ” 94 GEORGE WASHINGTON. Precisely how and when they should so please be¬ came of less and less importance after that, but they exhibited a positive diligence in keeping the hated fetters in sight. Act followed act, imposing duties collectable in the ports of the colonies, upon article after article. Naval officers were ordered to enforce rigidly the laws restricting American trade and navi¬ gation. What was called the ** Mutiny Act” of England was made to cover America, with a special provision that the colonial legislatures must provide all British troops sent to America with quarters, fire, beds, candles, and other necessaries. So long as this should be restricted to troops on the march—as, for instance, in a movement against French or Indians —the colonies did not object. It was well under¬ stood now, however, that troops ” in garrison,” if even for the purpose of overawing the colonies, were also meant. The governor and Assembly of New York acted at once, and refused to comply. Parlia¬ ment retaliated by passing an act which suspended the powers of both governor and Assembly until they should give up their opposition. The General Court of Massachusetts petitioned the King of England concerning all of the obnoxious laws, and then drew up and sent out a circular to all the other colonial legislatures, urging them to join in efforts to obtain redress. For this offence, persisted in, Sir Francis Bernard, the royal governor, at once dissolved the General Court. The governors of all the other colonies demanded of the several colonial legislatures assurances that they would take no action called for by the Massachusetts circular, GEORGE WASHINGTON. 95 and when such assurances were refused, they too were dissolved. The members were sent home to tell the people that henceforth a colonial legislature was expected to exist as a mere tool of the British ministry. To all these oppressions, and step by step as time went on, was added the plain assurance that the as¬ serted authority of King and Parliament would be sustained, if necessary, by armed force. There had been riotous collisions between the people and the officers of the hated laws in several places already. Boston was particularly unruly, and at last a fleet of seven armed vessels sailed into the harbor, having on board two full regiments of British troops to act as a permanent garrison of that town. A town meeting was at once held, at which it was decided that the King of England had no right to garrison the city of Boston, and the selectmen accordingly refused to furnish the troops with quarters. By the governor’s orders, therefore, such of the troops as were provided with tents encamped on Boston Common. Others occupied the State House, and others turned Faneuil Hall into a sort of bar¬ racks. No attempt is necessary, in a life of Washing¬ ton, to present all the interesting historical events of these stirring times minutely or in relation to the acts of other men. He kept himself well informed of all, and the spirit with which he did so may be gathered from a letter he wrote to his friend, George Mason, of Virginia, dated April 5th, 1769. “ At a time,” he wrote, “ when our lordly masters in Great 9 6 GEORGE WASHINGTON. Britain will be satisfied with nothing less than the deprivation of American freedom, it seems highly necessary that something should be done to avert the stroke and maintain the liberty which we have derived from our ancestors/’ He believed that some effect could be produced by starving British trade with the colonies ; but he must have seen that a complete change in British policy must needs come, or that there would soon be hard work for the troops camped on Boston Common. Changes from time to time in the British ministry were of small importance, so long as man after man adhered to the general outline of the course already adopted as to the colonies. Early in the year 1770, however, Lord North became prime-minister, and it was as if all the vicious ideas of British supremacy had been given power for mischief in the person of one man. King George the Third was really that man, and Lord North was a mere automaton to move as the King willed. He began his administra¬ tion by an act, shaped into an act of Parliament, which concentrated the entire question of colonial taxation. It was an act repealing the several laws passed in the year 1767 imposing duties, with the single exception of the duty on tea. When urged to repeal this also, he responded that it was retained “ to maintain the Parliamentary right of taxation/' Again he said, “ A total repeal cannot be thought of till America is prostrate at our feet.” That was likely to be a very long while. The dis¬ turbances in the colonies were getting worse and GEORGE WASHINGTON. 97 worse every hour, and men and women alike were preparing to get along without tea. Washington had been out into the Ohio country on a peculiarly adventurous expedition, but had re¬ turned in safety. He was one of the Virginia Board of Commissioners to settle the war claims held against the colony by officers and soldiers of the French and Indian war. Two hundred thousand acres of land belonged to these men, and to Wash¬ ington among them. The Six Nations had ceded to Virginia their lands south of the Ohio, and squatters and speculators were already claiming and pre¬ empting them. For his comrades and himself, there¬ fore, Washington made a tour of the region in¬ dicated, that he might select and mark off the lands required to satisfy the war claims, and then apply to the Government for a regular grant and money. He had an experience that carried him back to his old campaigning days, for he had to pass through the scenes of his hardest frontier warfare. He was able to go farther into the wilderness now, but not without some peril from the Indians. He met some of these whom he knew, as well as old acquaint¬ ances among the traders and backwoodsmen. He accomplished the objects of his expedition with his customary persistency, for others as well as for him¬ self, but there was now before him a more important field of action than all the land south of the Ohio could then have offered him. Lord Dunmore, at one time Governor of New York, was now Governor of Virginia. There was a strong personal friendship between him and Wash- 9 8 GEORGE WASHINGTON. ington, but he had managed to give offence to the Virginians generally. He found the House of Bur¬ gesses a dangerous body when in session, and so prorogued and sent them home as often as they came together. The affairs of the colony absolute¬ ly required legislation in the spring of the year 1773, and so his lordship convened the House of Burgesses, and permitted it to go to work. Washington came with the rest, and joined them in a step that was sure to carry the American cause forward. This was the appointment of a standing committee of eleven persons, to correspond with the patriots of the other colonies, and to watch and keep the people advised of all acts or proposed acts of the British Government with reference to American affairs. Massachusetts responded at once by the appoint¬ ment of a similar committee, and the other colonies rapidly followed. It was a concerted movement toward co-operation and eventual union. Lord Dunmore planned a tour of the western frontier during that coming summer, and invited Washington to accompany him. He wished to have the advantage of experienced advice, and for public as well as personal reasons, Washington readily as¬ sented. His going with Lord Dunmore was pre¬ vented by a sad event in his own household. Strong and firm as was the rule of Washington in his own family, it had not been possible for him to exercise absolute fatherly authority over his step¬ children. The elder, John Parke Custis, had been a source of much anxiety. Of a mercurial and im¬ pulsive disposition, possessed of a fortune in his own GEORGE WASHINGTON. 99 right, he was surrounded by many temptations to self-indulgence. He was more fond of out-door sports than of his books, but his education had gone on fairly well under a tutor. When he was sixteen years of age it required decided action on the part of his step-father to break up a plan for an extended tour in Europe, in company with his tutor. He was too young and knew too little, and foreign travel was postponed. A year or so later the young man was not only in love, but under promise of mar¬ riage to a very estimable young lady. Once more the hard-hearted step-father was compelled to inter¬ fere and send the boy to college instead of into matrimony. There were reasons why the affection of Mrs. Washington should centre upon her only son and render her an over-indulgent mother. She was only too sure that he would be also her only child before long. Her daughter, always fragile, was manifestly in a slow decline. Early in the summer of 1773 her symptoms visibly changed for the worse, and when Washington returned from his legislative duties, he found her in the last stages of consumption. He had been strongly attached to her, and there is a touching record of the sorrowing earnestness with which he kneeled by her bedside and prayed for her recovery. Her death took place on the 19th of June, in the seventeenth year of her age. Mrs. Washington was now in need of her hus¬ band’s society and care, and he remained at home, sending such hints and travelling advice as he could to Lord Dunmore. IOO GEORGE WASHINGTON. About eight months later John Parke Custis in¬ sisted upon leaving college and getting married. Mrs. Washington, more than ever indulgent, gave her consent, and her husband deemed it wise not to make any further opposition, although the young man was not yet twenty-one years of age. CHAPTER X. The Boston Tea-Party.—The Boston Port Bill.—A Call for a General Congress. — Washington Sent to Congress.—The Declaration of Rights .—“ We Must Fight r The year 1773 was full of great events, and Wash¬ ington’s head and heart had other loads upon them than such as he found at Mount Vernon. Since the Americans gave up the use of tea, great quantities of it had accumulated in the hands of the British East India Company. What was worse, the refusal of the Americans to buy and drink was a sort of rebellion against the British ministry. In the words of Lord North, they must be “ laid prostrate at our feet.” All America must take tea as a bever¬ age or suffer the penalty. Export duties in Eng¬ land were taken off, so that the tea could be sold very cheap, and that was to be a bribe to money- loving colonists. More ships and more soldiers were sent over, and that was a salutary warning. At about the same time, cargoes of tea were sent over to all the leading American ports. From New York and Philadelphia they were sent back without unloading, because nobody would receive the car¬ goes. At Charleston the tea was sent ashore, only to be stored away in cellars, where it soon spoiled. The people of Boston made their answer to Lord 102 GEORGE IVA SUING TON. North in a spirit of grim, sober-minded fun. The tea ships anchored in the harbor, and their captains quickly discovered that it was not well to put any large amount of that tea ashore. A few small pack¬ ages were tried as a test, but the Bostonians forbade the sale of them, and the captains would gladly have sailed back to England. Here came in the authority of the British Government, and the ships were officially prevented from leaving the harbor. The people helped the captains out of their difficulty. A number of them, disguised as Indians, boarded the ships in the night, broke open all the chests of tea, and emptied them into the harbor. It was done very quietly and methodically, and then the Puri¬ tanical Mohawks went home, speaking of their har¬ bor as the “ Boston teapot. ” They had certainly prepared for themselves a great deal of what is called “ hot water.” Lord North's administration at once determined to make a terrible example of Massachusetts and of Boston, as a wholesome warning to the other colo¬ nies. Three successive acts of Parliament expressed the wrath of the ministry at the stubbornness of America upon the subject of tea. The first, called the Boston Port Bill, closed the harbor of Boston and transferred all commercial business, customs officers, and, so it was intended, all prosperity and the life of the rebellious town, to Salem. The second law changed the charter of the colony, and provided that all its counsellors, judges, and mag¬ istrates should thenceforth be appointed by the crown, and hold office only during the royal pleas- GEORGE WASHINGTON. 103 ure. The third provided for the riots that were ex¬ pected, and for the probable killing of some colo¬ nists. It provided that if any person should be in¬ dicted for murder or other capital offence, for any¬ thing he might do while aiding the royal magistrates, the governor might send him to be tried and ac¬ quitted in some other colony, or in England, instead of leaving him to be convicted and hanged in Massa¬ chusetts. Before even the first of these laws could go into effect, they had accomplished marvellous results. The Boston Port Bill was to strike its revengeful blow upon the first day of June, and when the Vir¬ ginia House of Burgesses assembled in May, its members had not yet received news of the passage of the act. The colonial aristocracy had become reconciled to Lord Dunmore, and had planned a series of entertainments in honor of him and his family. Washington dined with his lordship on ar¬ riving, and there was to be a grand ball given to Lady Dunmore upon the 27th. All things looked uncommonly well, and loyalty was warming itself after a long chill. Right into this May-day state of feeling came a letter, received through the revolutionary Com¬ mittee of Correspondence, and read upon the floor of the House of Burgesses,.announcing the passage by Parliament of the act shutting up the port of Bos¬ ton. Every Virginian that heard it felt that he was somehow or other a Bostonian by virtue of that act of Parliament, and did not hesitate one moment in the expression of his feelings. A protest against 104 GEORGE WASHINGTON. this and other British tyrannies was adopted and en¬ tered upon the journal of the House, and a resolu¬ tion was passed naming the 1st of June as a day of fasting and prayer on behalf of the liberties of America. The other colonies generally named the 4th of June, as that was the day set for shutting up Boston. There could be but one course for a royal gov¬ ernor to pursue, and Lord Dunmore promptly dis¬ solved the assembly. Their personal liking for him remained, and they did not give up Lady Dun- more’s ball, in its order. They now adjourned, however, to what was known as “ the long room of the old Raleigh tavern,” and spoke and voted to suit themselves. They passed a number of resolu¬ tions full of fiery patriotism, among which was one declaring the expediency of summoning a General Congress of deputies from all the colonies to hold annual sessions at such place as might be chosen. Massachusetts adopted a like resolution at the same time ; the other colonies followed, and November 5th was fixed as the day upon which the first Con¬ gress should meet in the city of Philadelphia. It is not necessary to follow minutely the course of political events, but when, in August, the Vir¬ ginia Convention met at Williamsburg to choose delegates to Congress, and for other patriotic busi¬ ness, Washington was there. In presenting a series of energetic resolutions, he is said to have displayed notable eloquence. Perhaps the most telling point of his address was his declaration that he was ready to raise a thousand men at his own expense, and GEORGE WASHINGTON. 105 march at their head to the relief of Boston. He did not have a great while to wait before being called upon to go to Boston. It was a matter of course that Virginia should send George Washington as one of her delegates to Congress, and with him she sent six other of her best men. The other colonies were also admirably represented, and when the reports of their wise, dig¬ nified, and patriotic proceedings were published in Europe, statesmen declared that they had no equal on earth as a legislative body. Congress met, as appointed, on the 5th of Novem¬ ber, in Carpenter’s Hall, Philadelphia. The key¬ note of their action was sounded by Patrick Henry while they were organizing. Said he : “ The dis¬ tinctions between Virginians, Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers, and New Englanders are no more. I am not a Virginian, but an American.” In the morning of the day when the first regular session of Congress was to be held, a rumor came that Boston had been cannonaded by the British, and it gave an additional depth of earnest feeling and solemnity to the occasion. When the hour ar¬ rived, and a clergyman, the Rev. Mr. Duche, opened the session with prayer, it was noted that while the other delegates stood or sat as pleased them, George Washington alone kneeled upon the floor. There were other gentlemen present whose religious views and customs were precisely the same as his own, but his feeling was too deep to be expressed in any other way. 106 GEORGE IVA SHINGTON. The sessions of Congress were held with closed doors, and no record was kept of the proceedings. Every delegate was in peril of being tried and hanged for high treason against the British crown, and no evidence was preserved for the use of any prosecuting attorney. It is said, however, that after Mr. Duche’s prayer there was a long silence, as if the importance of the occasion weighed upon each man's tongue. It was death-like, painful, and at last Patrick Henry arose. He faltered at first a little, but the long story of colonial wrongs and British tyrannies was warming up within him, and he soon burst forth into a tide of eloquent recital that aroused his hearers even to astonishment. Others followed, and then the men of business and not of eloquence took hold of their work, and did it wonderfully well. When all was over, and Congress had adjourned, somebody asked Patrick Henry whom he considered the greatest man in it. He replied : ‘‘If you speak of eloquence, Mr. Rut¬ ledge, of South Carolina, is by far the greatest orator ; but if you speak of solid information and sound judgment, Colonel Washington is unques¬ tionably the greatest man upon that floor." Congress remained in session fifty-one days. Their first act was a resolution declaring the deter¬ mination of the colonies to combine in resisting any attempt to enforce the acts of Parliament violating the rights of the people of Massachusetts. They adopted a “ Declaration of Colonial Rights," in which they fully set forth all the questions at issue GE OR GE WA SHING TON. I o 7 between America and the mother country, and again declared the impossibility of submission. They announced, however, the following peaceable measures : 1st. To enter into a non-importation, non-con¬ sumption, and non-exportation agreement or asso¬ ciation. 2d. To prepare an address to the people of Great Britain, and a memorial to the inhabitants of British America. 3d. To prepare a loyal address to His Majesty. It was all very moderate and loyal in appearance and expression, but letters written by Washington after his return to Mount Vernon show that he and all his fellow-members expected bloodshed. His brother, John Augustine, was raising and drilling an independent company, and another was forming in Richmond. To both he made the same offer—- that he would take command of them if occasion should call them out. He wrote to his brother : “ It is my full intention, if needful, to devote my life and fortune to the cause.” In the month of March following, when the sec¬ ond Virginia Convention met at Richmond, Patrick Henry delivered his well-known speech, in which he summed up the entire situation thus : ” It is useless to address further petitions to Government, or to await the effect of those already addressed to the throne. The time for supplication is past ; the time for action is at hand. We must fight, Mr. Speaker ! I repeat it, sir, we must fight! An ap- io8 GEORGE WASHINGTON. peal to arms and to the God of Hosts is all that is left us. ” There could be no question as to the soundness of his declaration, for the “ Government ” was Lord North, and ** the throne ” was King George the Third. CHAPTER XI. A Ministry Gone Crazy.—The Battle of Lexmgt on .— How the Comitry A rose. — Ticonderoga.—The Siege of Boston. — The Federal Union .— Commander-in- Chief.—Bmiker Hill . The King of England, his ministers, the Parlia¬ ment, and all the people of Great Britain were kept well informed of the state of public feeling in America. Lord Chatham, Edmund Burke, and other statesmen, with a strong political following, strove in vain to obtain justice for the colonies, while the men in power madly laughed aside all prophecies of trouble to come. It was openly as¬ serted in the House of Commons, by a member named Colonel Grant, who had served in Braddock’s campaign without any credit to himself, that with five regiments of regular troops he could march through all America. British arrogance accepted the idea and scoffed at the possibility of effective armed resistance to their invincible armies by levies of inferior beings born on the other side of the At¬ lantic. Their boasts and taunts and insulting bravado were duly sent over to circulate from fireside to fire¬ side, and stir the blood of men who had fought elbow to elbow with British regulars, and knew that I IO GE O R GE IVA SUING TON. an American rifleman was worth just as much, against either Frenchmen or Indians. Washington was of that number. He had seen enough to justify him in believing that he could face the best troops of England with such men as he had rallied to save the broken fragments of General Braddock’s beaten army. It was believed by the British ministry that Gen¬ eral Gage, with four thousand men, was amply able to garrison Boston and overawe Massachusetts. He was supported by a strong fleet in the harbor, and the colony had no efficient military system of its own, nor arms, nor ammunition. There were mod¬ erate deposits of military stores here and there, and it was in an effort to obtain possession of these, at last, that General Gage brought matters to a crisis. The second Congress was to meet at Philadelphia in May, and it almost looked as if General Gage had undertaken to cut out their work for them before¬ hand. He determined to seize the colonial maga¬ zine of military stores at Concord, twenty miles from Boston, and fixed upon the night of the 18th of April, 1775, to do it in. All preparations were made with great secrecy, and on the evening of the 18th guards were stationed upon all roads leading out of Boston to prevent any one from leaving the town with news of military movements. No guard was stationed in the old North Church steeple, how¬ ever, and a pair of lanterns hung there by order of General Joseph Warren gave notice to Paul Revere, beyond the British lines, that the expedition had set out. It consisted of between eight and nine hun- GEORGE WASHINGTON. hi dred men—grenadiers, light infantry, and marines— under command of Lieutenant-Colonel Smith ; and their gathering, with that of the boats in which they were to cross the bay, had been keenly watched and noted. It required a re-enforcement of a thousand men, under Lord Percy, with two field-pieces, to bring the remnants of them back again. Paul Revere had ridden well that night, and the alarm he had given had gone far and wide by other messengers. As Colonel Smith and his men marched on along the shadowy roads they heard, in all direc¬ tions, the clang of village church bells and the roar of alarm guns, telling that the Massachusetts men were rising. He sent back at once for help, but pushed on, hurrying Major Pitcairn ahead, with six companies, to secure the bridges at Concord. The news of their coming rode fast ahead of them, and on the village green at Lexington fourscore of “ minute-men” had met, equipped for duty, when the glittering column of regulars came down the road. They were a mere handful of the kind of men who were expected to run away at sight of a British uniform. Major Pitcairn halted his men, and ordered them to load and prime. They then advanced at a “ double-quick,” the major riding ahead and shout¬ ing : “ Disperse, ye villains .! Lay down your arms, ye rebels, and disperse !” There is a useless question raised as to who fired first after that order was given and disobeyed, but firing began ; the outnumbered militia lost eight men killed and ten wounded, and were scattered. I 12 GEORGE WASHINGTON . The British had lost nothing, and they cheered and fired a salute, as if they had won a victory ; but the war of the American Revolution had begun. The dead and wounded patriots lying in front of the church at Lexington had sealed with their blood a Declaration of Independence that was from that hour sure to be written. The remainder of the story of the battle of Lex¬ ington is a familiar one. Every American knows it by heart—how the British column pushed on to Concord only to find that the military stores had been, for the greater part, removed, and how the angry farmers closed around them and drove them back to Boston ; how the British soldiery, exas¬ perated by defeat, plundered and burned houses, and murdered quiet people along the way. It was a running fight rather than a battle, but the British loss was 73 killed, among whom were 18 officers, 174 wounded, and 26 missing. The militia had lost 49 killed, 39 wounded, and 5 missing. General Gage had acted under instructions from the British ministry, having in view a compulsory disarmament of the colonies. Precisely similar in¬ structions had been sent to other royal governors, and Lord Dunmore, of Virginia, undertook to obey them only a few days later. He seized the colonial munitions of war, but it was only to let go of them. He had no four thousand men to support him, as Gage had, and the Old Dominion took fire as quickly as did Massachusetts. General Hugh Mercer alone gathered seven hundred riflemen at Fredericksburg, and was about to march upon Williamsburg when his GEORGE WASHINGTON. 113 lordship yielded. Just as the Virginians were get¬ ting back their own powder, news came of the blood¬ shed at Lexington, and all the hot blood in the colony arose to the boiling point. Washington was at Mount Vernon, preparing to set out for Philadel¬ phia as a delegate to the second Congress, when the tidings reached him. With him were his friend and neighbor, Bryan Fairfax, and Major Horatio Gates, for whom also he had a high esteem. It is well to record that Washington was deeply depressed, fore¬ seeing the terrible days to come. In a letter to George William Fairfax, then in England, he put the entire blame of “this deplorable affair” upon the British ministry, but plainly declared his own inevitable course of action. The news of Lexington went fast and far, and at the North it gathered an army to besiege the British troops in Boston. John Stark heard it among the New Hampshire hills, and within ten minutes he was in the saddle, spurring away to arouse the hardy backwoodsmen of the border. Israel Putnam was in the field with his son when a man came by on horseback, beating a drum and shouting the story of Lexington. A horse was taken from the plough, the boy was sent to the house to tell of his father’s departure, and the old Indian-fighter galloped away at full speed to join the gathering freemen in the camps around Boston. By the time he got there he was in command of a regiment, for other men were as prompt and zealous as himself. It was deemed necessary to raise thirty thousand men at once, and Massachusetts alone offered thirteen thou- GEORGE WASHINGTON. 114 sand six hundred ; and those of New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Connecticut came pouring in to help them. The forces besieging Boston were under the com¬ mand of General Artemus Ward, of Massachusetts. He was a veteran of the French and Indian wars, but was not supposed to possess high qualities as a leader of men. He could do little more than blockade the town at first for lack of cannon and ammunition, but there was no danger that Gage would march out against him after the Lexington lesson. Another lesson upon American daring was ready for the British ministry. The gateway between New York and Canada, through Lake Champlain, had been too often fought for to be overlooked. It was attended to at once by Benedict Arnold, from Con¬ necticut, and Ethan Allen, from the New Hamp¬ shire Grants. Allen was in command. On the 9th of May they surprised and captured Fort Ticon- deroga, and on the 12th, Crown Point. A hundred serviceable cannon and a large supply of munitions of war were won by this daring expedition. The second General Congress assembled at Phila¬ delphia upon the 10th of May, and Peyton Ran¬ dolph, of Virginia, was re-elected as its president. He was compelled, however, to return to Virginia to act as Speaker of the Assembly ; and John Han¬ cock, of Massachusetts, was chosen to succeed him. There was yet a strange feeling of hesitation in the minds of some of even the most patriotic men. The idea of cutting entirely loose from Great Britain, GEORGE WASHINGTON. "5 and ceasing to be Englishmen, made them shiver a little. To accommodate the views of all who needed more battles to bring them up to the right level, Congress adopted, in spite of strong opposition from its hotter spirits, a “ humble and dutiful petition ” to King George the Third. As soon as that mockery was disposed of, they went right along to provide for the destruction of the King’s armies, the capture of his forts, the entire abolition of his authority on this side of the Atlantic ; and they did their work well. A federal union was at once formed, preserving to the several colonies the management of their inter¬ nal affairs, but vesting in the General Congress the declaration of peace or war, the control of com¬ merce, the making of treaties with foreign powers, and the general direction of public affairs. The executive power was placed in the hands of a council of twelve, to be chosen by Congress from among its own members, and to hold office for a limited time. When all this was done, it would have required care¬ ful seeking to discover what remnant of authority was left to the King and Parliament of Great Britain. Congress at once provided for an army of twenty thousand men, and for the construction of forts in several places. They also ordered the issue of three millions of dollars of paper money, for the redemp¬ tion of which they pledged the faith of the new federation. The petition to the King sounds almost like a piece of hypocrisy when read together with the next act of Congress. After prohibiting, already, all supplies of provisions to the British Canadian n6 GEORGE WASHINGTON. fisheries, lest otherwise they should provision British men-of-war, they declared the colony of Massachu- setts absolved from its compact with the British crown, and advised it to set up for itself. George Washington was chairman of all the com¬ mittees appointed upon military affairs. Most of the measures for public defence and for the organization of the army are said to have been devised by him. He was conceded to be the foremost soldier of the country, and his undisputed position helped Con¬ gress out of a great legislative difficulty. The problem before them was this : the army besieging Boston had not been raised by Congress, and was not under their control unless it should elect so to be. It must be provided with provisions and ammu¬ nition, or it would surely soon disperse. The British army in Boston would then sally out into the coun¬ try, and there was no telling what mischief they might do. The men would also surely be discon¬ tented with any other commander than one whose name should meet with their thorough approval. There were members of Congress who had candi¬ dates of their own for the post of commander-in¬ chief of the colonial armies. There were colonial prides and jealousies to be considered and overcome. Even so sincere a patriot as John Hancock had a strong ambition for it, and was bitterly disappointed when he was not chosen. He had deserved well of his country, but the men in the camps knew nothing of him as a soldier, and his name would not give confidence to those who were yet to be called out. The question was first brought before Congress by GEORGE IVA SHING TON. 117 John Adams, of Massachusetts ; but when, in stat¬ ing the difficulties of the case, he mentioned the name of George Washington, of Virginia, that gen¬ tleman at once retired from the chamber. After some debate, the decision of the matter was post¬ poned for several days; but on the 15th of June, after adopting an entire plan for the army, a ballot was taken for commander-in-chief. Every man’s mind had become settled, and Washington was chosen unanimously. Rising in his place, he ac¬ cepted the appointment in a brief speech, full of de¬ votion to the cause, but declined the pay of five hundred dollars a month. He preferred to serve at his own cost, except as to purely military expenses. He did not actually receive his commission until the 20th of June, and during those few days of waiting, the queer army he was to command had done some grand fighting on its own account, and without any commander-in-chief. It was nominally under Gen¬ eral Artemus Ward, commander of the Massachu¬ setts men, and actually followed his instructions reasonably well. The Connecticut men, however, were under no legal obligation to take orders from anybody but old Israel Putnam ; the New Hamp¬ shire men were responsible only to John Stark, and the Rhode Island men obeyed Nathaniel Greene. Such supplies as they had came to all of them from home, and uniforms had not yet come, nor disci¬ pline. They were now about fifteen thousand in number, but when General Burgoyne arrived in Bos¬ ton with re-enforcements, he was entirely justified in expressing his astonishment that such a mob of 118 . GEORGE WASHINGTON. “ peasants ” should be permitted to pen up several thousand regular troops. Gage had learned the rea¬ son all along the Lexington road. The newly-ar¬ rived British generals and soldiers were to learn it on the bloody slope of Breed’s Hill. The British fleet, wfth transports, entered Boston Harbor on the 25th of May, bringing Generals Howe, Burgoyne, and Henry Clinton, and several fresh regi¬ ments. The British force now amounted to between ten and twelve thousand men, and should have been able to sweep the colonial forces from the face of the earth, according to the opinions prevailing in Eng¬ land. No such opinion prevailed in the American camp, where all the “ peasants ” were eager for a brush with the “ red coats.” It was almost neces¬ sary to give them something to do. The city of Boston stands upon a peninsula that was connected in those days with the mainland only by Boston Neck. Except at that point, strongly held by the British, the salt water protected the city, for the ships of war swept every square foot of it with their guns. Opposite Boston, on the north, was a similar peninsula, and upon it stood the large village of Charlestown. In the middle of this peninsula rises Breed’s Hill, within cannon-shot of the city, and be¬ hind it, at a greater distance, is the higher emi¬ nence of Bunker Hill. The council of war which decided to fortify Bunker Hill and hold it wisely refused to go on as far as Breed’s. It was deter¬ mined to seize and fortify Dorchester Heights, south of Boston, at the same time, mainly because it was reported that Gage himself was about to do it. GE OR GE WA SHING TON. 119 Massachusetts and Connecticut troops, less than fifteen hundred in all, were drafted for the first ser¬ vice, and Colonel William Prescott, of Peppered, in command of them, received written orders to fortify Bunker Hill and hold it until he should be relieved. By what mistake he pushed on to Breed’s is not now known ; but all men in that day were going further than they intended on setting out. At dawn of day the sailors on board of the British war-ships saw a redoubt and a breastwork on the crest of Breed’s Hill, and busy men with shovels hard at work extending the line of the entrench¬ ments. A heavy cannonade was opened at once, but it did little harm, and the work went on. The British generals in Boston looked at this exhibition of colonial daring with astonishment. If cannon should actually be planted upon Breed’s Hill, they said, we could not hold Boston. The better judg¬ ment among them was in favor of an attack in the rear by way of Charlestown Neck, but once more ar¬ rogance took the lead. Colonial militia would never face a storming column of regular troops. Such a column was, therefore, sent, under Major-General Howe, to take the works in front. It was a splen¬ did body of men, well led, as were also the re-enforce¬ ments sent to it, increasing it to three thousand men. Every ship of war that could bring a gun to bear upon Breed’s Hill or the Neck was soon hard at work. A thorough and searching test was provided of a question still troubling the mind of Washington, as to the qualities of raw troops under a heavy fire. He was answered by the blood-stirring record of 120 GEORGE WASHINGTON . what is known to this day as the battle of Bunker Hill. The British regulars, twice repulsed, at last carried the works, for the sole reason that the Americans had used up their ammunition and had no bayonets to fight with. Each side lost in killed and wounded about a third of the men it took into action—1054 for the British and 450 for the Ameri¬ cans. It was a nominal defeat, which left the colo¬ nial forces all the real effect of a great victory. The loss of even so honored a patriot as General Joseph Warren did but stir more deeply the hearts of all his countrymen. General Washington received his commission on the 20th of June, and he was ready to depart at once. He wrote affectionate letters to his wife and brother, full of the purest and most unselfish patriot¬ ism. He rode out to review several militia com¬ panies of horse and foot, and the people everywhere thronged to cheer the new commander-in-chief of the American armies. He was forty-three years of age, stately, vigorous, the beau ideal of a leader, and all men knew his romantic, eventful history. He was the one man in all the colonies whose ap¬ pointment was sure to be accepted by every soldier. Local jealousies and colonial lines could have noth¬ ing to do with the readiness of men to serve under George Washington. On the next day he set out for Boston accompanied by Major Generals Schuy¬ ler and Lee, and a mounted “ gentleman troop ” of Philadelphians, under Captain Markoe. Hardly had this unusually brilliant cavalcade ridden twenty miles from Philadelphia when they were met by a courier, GEORGE WASHINGTON. I 2 I spurring along the road with dispatches from the army for Congress. He bore the tremendous tid¬ ings of the battle of Bunker Hill. General Washington questioned the courier care¬ fully as to all the features of the fight, and particu¬ larly as to the conduct of the militia under fire. When its cool firmness and steady determination were set forth to him, it seemed as if his greatest burden were lifted, and he exclaimed aloud : “ The liberties of the country are safe.” CHAPTER XII. New York Patriotism. — Tories and Indians .— Wash¬ ington in the Boston Camps.—Organization of the Army.—No Powder to Fight with. Of the two major-generals who accompanied Washington on his journey to Boston, General Lee was the better known. He was a soldier of fortune, experienced in many wars, having served both in Europe and America. His good qualities and those which were not so good were only too well balanced. General Schuyler was a higher and better character, nobly representing the most sterling patriotism of the important colony of New York. There was a great deal of sincere patriotism among the New Yorkers. The old Dutch colony element was peculiarly ready to join a movement against the British .crown. At the same time, the great aris¬ tocratic families of English origin were intensely and all but fanatically “ loyalist/’ and remained so to the end. The Six Nations still held the interior and northern part of the colonial territory, unbroken in numbers and power. The Schuyler family had some influence among them, but it was overshadowed by that of the Johnson family. Old Sir William John¬ son, who had been all but king of the Iroquois, died in 1774 of an attack of apoplexy said to have been caused by political excitement. His son, Sir John GEORGE WASHINGTON. 123 Johnson, inherited much of his influence over the Indians, and it was also shared by his sons-in-law, Colonel Guy Johnson and Colonel Claus. All three were bitter and unscrupulous supporters of British rule in America. They were to be a thorn in the side of the struggling colonies, and were even now gathering their savage retainers, with some white ones hardly less savage. They were arming and fortifying their strongly-built residences, and had done much to overawe expressions of patriotism throughout the Mohawk River country and upper Hudson. Governor Tryon, of New York, was an extreme royalist, having been to England to report the condition of affairs and obtain instructions. The provincial Congress of New York was in session in the city itself, and was thrown into a fever of per¬ plexity by the approach of General Washington and his body-guard. Matters were made worse for them by the presence of British armed vessels in the har¬ bor, and by the fact that Governor Tryon’s return was expected at any day or hour. The New York Congress had acted with a fair degree of patriotism, and was to do better in future. At present it behaved somewhat undecidedly. It ordered out a regiment of militia, and instructed its colonel to receive with military honors whichever of the two great men should arrive first. At the same time it sent a committee to meet Washington at Newark, and conduct him to the city. By the time the committee reached Newark the ship bringing Tryon was in the harbor, and he was expected to be on shore soon. The general met the committee and 124 GEORGE WASHINGTON. came on with them, reaching the city several hours before the governor did. He received the military honors, and with them a congratulatory address by Peter Van Burgh Livingston, President of the New York Congress. This address closed in a manner that plainly declared how imperfectly many excel¬ lent men understood the meaning of the fighting on the slope of Breed’s Hill. He said : “ Confiding in you, sir, and in the worthy generals immediately under your command, we have the most flattering hopes of success in the glorious struggle for Ameri¬ can liberty, and the fullest assurance that whenever this important contest shall be decided by that fondest wish of each American soul—an accommo¬ dation with our mother country—you will cheerfully resign the important deposit committed into your hands, and reassume the character of our worthiest citizen. ” That was exactly what Washington did some years later, for he was an “ American soul,” and he fought until he had obtained a perfect “ accommodation with the mother country.” Just now he replied, on behalf of himself and his generals : “ As to the fatal but necessary operations of war, when we assumed the soldier we did not lay aside the citizen ; and we shall most sincerely rejoice with you in that happy hour when the establishment of American liberty, on the most firm and solid foun¬ dations, shall enable us to return to our private sta¬ tions in the bosom of a free, peaceful, and happy country.” No man knew better than did Washington that GEORGE WASHINGTON. 125 not among those “ firm and solid foundations” could be a renewal of the old relations to the British King and Parliament. Governor Tryon came ashore at eight o’clock that evening, and the same militia regiment presented arms. The mayor and Common Council and a number of ultra-royalist citizens also did him honor, but his position as governor of that colony was likely to be a trying one. Nobody knew what his instruc¬ tions might be from the British ministry, while every one was aware that he and the Johnsons and the Tories, conspiring and working together, had at that moment the power to plunge the colony into all the horrors of an Indian war, if not to wrest it alto¬ gether from the cause of American liberty. General Schuyler was left in command at New York by Washington, with vague instructions and undetermined powers. He was to report both to the commander-in-chief and to the Continental Con¬ gress as to the condition of his troops and supplies. He was to closely watch the Johnsons and the Indians. Washington added : “If forcible meas¬ ures are judged necessary respecting the person of the governor, I should have no difficulty in order¬ ing them, if the Continental Congress were not sit¬ ting ; but as that is the case, and the seizing of a governor quite a new thing, I must refer you to that body for direction.” There is a touch of dry humor in this that should not be overlooked. It is said that Washington never joked in his life, but if that be true, he came remarkably near it quite fre¬ quently. At all events, Philip Schuyler was just 126 GEORGE WASHINGTON. the man to forget whether or not Congress were in session, if the course of human events should, in his view, make it necessary for him to lock up Tryon to prevent a raid of the Mohawks or Senecas. At New York Washington received full particu¬ lars of the battle of Bunker Hill, and the state of things represented to him made him eager to join the army. He left New York on the 26th of the month, and pushed rapidly forward. He was re¬ ceived at every place with demonstrations of respect, and on the 2d of July he arrived at Cambridge, and he took command of the army the next day. The moment he had done so it passed under the control of the Continental Congress. America was still* in the minds of the great majority of men, “Continental England,” and the British soldiery were Englishmen who came from the “ island ” on the other side of the Atlantic. The idea of a distinct nationality was dawning cloudily, and in just one year from that time it was to take permanent form. The new commander-in-chief inspected the scat¬ tered camps and the ill-disciplined but eager and enthusiastic troops. He knew that they would surely expect of him more than human capacity could do. No other man understood so well as he did the tremendous nature of the duty placed upon him, but he remarked of it that “he trusted that Divine Providence, which wisely orders the affairs of men, would enable him to discharge it with fidel¬ ity and success. ” The army besieging Boston lay around it in a GEORGE WASHINGTON. 127 roughly drawn semicircle about nine miles long. They had constructed rude works at such points as seemed to them available, but with small military science. So many of the men were without suitable arms that Washington had only about fourteen thousand men fit for field duty. The British army in Boston was now eleven thousand strong, well sup¬ plied with artillery and munitions of war. Should the British generals succeed in bringing about a gen¬ eral engagement between two such armies on an open battle-field, there could be no question as to the result. That was the one thing which the watchful colonial leaders had prevented them from doing. Very unscientifically, but very completely, the soldiers of King George the Third had been shut up where they could not get out to make their drill and strategy effective. It is recorded that when Washington inspected the camps, he was struck by the exceptionally good appearance and soldierly de¬ portment of the Rhode Island men, under General Nathaniel Greene. It was the beginning of a per¬ sonal friendship between the two patriots that lasted to the end of life. The first duty on hand was the organization of the military household of the commander-in-chief, and it was made severely simple. The Massachu¬ setts Congress at once provided for him a steward, a housekeeper, and two or three women cooks. These were needed, for he had several officers to dine with him every day, as the best means of get¬ ting acquainted with them. It was only by personal influence, added to carefully acquired knowledge, 128 GEORGE WASHINGTON. that he could hope to accomplish the next important work before him. That was the adjustment of dis¬ putes and the allaying of jealousies as to rank and precedence. Colonel Mifflin, of Pennsylvania, was Washing¬ ton’s first aide-de-camp, assisted by John Trumbull, son of the patriotic Governor of Connecticut. Joseph Reed, also of Pennsylvania, acted as military secretary. The latter gentleman replied to some friends who expostulated with him for taking so hazardous a position : “I have no inclination to be hanged for half-treason.” He described exactly his own liability and that of his chief. Some time be¬ fore this, when General Gage published a proclama¬ tion offering amnesty and pardon to the Massachu¬ setts rebels if they would repent and submit to Lord North and King George, he excepted John Hancock and Samuel Adams, whose offences had been such as could not be forgiven. Nothing done by those gentlemen to insure their conviction for treason, at that time, would compare with the present conduct of Washington and his generals and other officers. The entire Continental Congress behind them was debating and voting, as they were fighting, with a fair prospect of confiscation of property, imprison¬ ment, and death by hanging, in case of defeat. The private soldiers were risking less, but their com¬ mander knew that even if he should manage to escape with his life, the sure vengeance of British law would leave him nothing else. Major Horatio Gates was one of Washington’s old personal friends, and had received at his suggestion the rank of ad- GEORGE WASHINGTON. 129 jutant-general of the army. He now arrived, and entered upon the efficient discharge of his duty, but for some reason became steadily estranged from the man to whom he owed his appointment. The length and weakness of the army lines was a trouble to a man who saw how easily they could be broken. It was decided at a council of war that to recede from them would dispirit the troops, and Washington set himself at work to strengthen them. The men labored with hearty good-will, and the re¬ sults were astonishing, for they were thoroughly well drilled in the use of axes and spades. General Put¬ nam, in particular, so distinguished himself in throw¬ ing up intrenchments as to receive the praise of the commander-in-chief. It was determined to increase the army to twenty thousand effective men, and as soon as this should be done, and their drill and organization raised to a fair degree of perfection, Washington was very willing that the enemy should be enticed out of Boston for a trial of strength, but not until then. He did not intend to leave them anything better than a trap of field works to march into, but the nature of his own troops and the continual deficiency of his supplies made him doubt whether he could hold his forces together for a long siege. Among the re-enforcements he was now receiving were about fourteen hundred men of a sort well known to the hero of Fort Necessity. They were riflemen from the backwoods of Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsyl¬ vania, company after company. The captain of one company was Daniel Morgan, who had been a i3° GEORGE WASHINGTON . wagoner in Braddock’s campaign, and was soon to be heard of very frequently. The troops were getting into good shape, but there were no more of them than were needed for the siege of Boston, and Washington was compelled to refuse all requests for detachments. British fleets were cruising along the coast and threatening harm at various points. They even did some at New Lon¬ don and elsewhere, but it was needful to tell the people at once that such was the way of war, and that the commander-in-chief had no means for the protection of so vast a country at every point. He was daily discovering how scanty and untrustworthy his resources were. At the very moment when he was pressing the British at every point and hoping for the hour when he might dare to draw them out, he discovered that he had not enough powder to fight with. All he had on hand was not enough to furnish the army with nine rounds for each musket. Washington had called for a report of the ammuni¬ tion as soon as he had taken the command. The Massachusetts colony had originally collected three hundred barrels, and that amount was gravely re¬ ported, without any mention of the quantities fired away. Only thirty-two barrels were actually on hand, and Washington’s eagerness for a battle was all gone in an instant when the condition of his stock of cartridges was truthfully explained to him. He at once sent off swift messengers in all direc¬ tions, calling earnestly for powder. No small amount of the precious black dust was to be de¬ spised, and he even suggested to Governor Cooke, GEORGE WASHINGTON. 131 of Rhode Island, that an armed vessel might be sent to seize a magazine of powder upon one of the Ber¬ muda Islands. If the British generals had known that all the ammunition in the American camp was in the cartridge-boxes of the soldiers, they would surely have marched out at once. Even after a tardy supply arrived from New Jersey, there was hardly enough for one day's hard fighting, and the utmost economy in its use was rigidly enforced. It was precisely this kind of deficiency against which Washington was to contend through all the years of the war, and this first sharp lesson did not come any too soon to put him upon his guard against evil con¬ sequences. CHAPTER XIII. General Gage and Mr. Washington. — The Invasion of Canada. — Sea-Coast Plundering.—Beginning of a Navy.—Reorganizing the Army. General Washington had not been many days in command of the Continental Army before he was brought face to face with the stern fact that if he was an Englishman he was also a rebel. General Gage had served side by side with Wash¬ ington in the old French war, but now he and all other officers of the British army were openly deter¬ mined to regard their opponents as outlaws and malefactors. They particularly refused to acknowl¬ edge the military rank of American officers. The commander-in-chief of the colonial army was to them only “ Mr. Washington,” a traitor sure to be hanged when caught. Some American officers were taken prisoners by the British already, and were put into jail as felons. Even some of them who were wounded were re¬ ported to have received cruel treatment. Washing¬ ton’s blood was up, and he wrote to General Gage a spirited remonstrance. He plainly told the British commander that all British officers in his hands, or who might afterward be captured, would be treated exactly as were American prisoners in the hands of their enemies. — Engraved by Charles Splegle , after Marshall's large steel plate GEORGE WASHINGTON. T 33 General Gage, in reply, denied having treated his prisoners with inhumanity, but admitted that he had made no discrimination between officers and men, not recognizing any man as holding a commis¬ sion other than from the King. He spoke of them as “ rebels ” and as “ prisoners whose lives, by the law of the land, are destined to the cord/’ He also quoted some false reports of the treatment given British prisoners in the hands of the Americans. The reply of Washington was dignified but firm, and several British officers hitherto permitted their freedom on parole were at once gathered and locked up in jail. They were afterward let out again, as soon as their imprisonment had emphasized suffi¬ ciently the assurance given to General Gage. The number of Americans whose “ lives, by the law of the land, were destined to the cord ” was daily increasing, but so, it seemed, was the obstinate arrogance of the tyranny which had goaded and driven them to take up arms. Advices from New York presented a somewhat perplexing state of things. There was no doubt but that the Johnsons were stirring up the Indians, but no clear idea could be obtained as to what use was to be made of them. Ticonderoga and Crown Point remained in the hands of their captors, but there had been a bitter dispute as to who was entitled to command them. This was finally settled by the fact that they were within the territory of New York. The Green Mountain boys went home triumphantly. Their commanders, Ethan Allen and Seth Warner, visited the Continental Congress to 134 GEORGE WASHINGTON. receive honors and money. Benedict Arnold re¬ mained, planning expeditions into Canada, until Colonel Hinman, with a Connecticut regiment, came, at the invitation of New York, to relieve him. He furiously refused to serve under Hinman, but quickly a committee of the Massachusetts Congress arrived to inspect his accounts and inquire into his conduct, as complaints had been made of his vio¬ lence and assumption. After a stormy quarrel he found himself helpless, and set off for Cambridge to answer such questions as might be put to him. The Continental Congress had at first thought it best to let the Canadas alone, and had refused to listen to plans for their occupation. The temptation to do something in that direction, however, was strengthened by the known weakness of the British forces there, and the certainty that more were com¬ ing. Washington ordered General Schuyler to pro¬ ceed to Ticonderoga and take command of such troops as were there already or could be gathered for a northern campaign. Schuyler sent him a dole¬ ful account of the unsoldierly and unpromising ap¬ pearance of his command, and received in return a consolatory account of the worse aspect of the troops in the camps around Boston. He soon learned, how¬ ever, that the British in Canada were even weaker than had been supposed, and went on with his preparations. In the midst of them he was com¬ pelled to leave General Montgomery in command and return to Albany to meet the chiefs of the Caughnawaugas and Iroquois in a grand council. There was, it will be seen, a vast amount of impor- GEORGE WASHINGTON . 135 tant work to be done, and very few capable and ex¬ perienced men to do it. From every corner of the country puzzled or disheartened or over-zealous patriots were sending to Washington for help or counsel or encouragement, or to be kept from doing some kind of hasty mischief. The idea of invading Canada grew and grew, until it ended in the daring but ill-fated expedition under Arnold and Montgomery. It finally perished in the failure to capture Quebec, and all that is now British North America continued to be subject to the British crown. It did so simply because the Canadas had no distinctly American population, and did not belong to the new nationality. There was to be quite enough of that to provide for without assuming one pound of the great Canadian respon¬ sibility. It was well for the cause of independence that Arnold and Montgomery failed to take Quebec ; but the attempt went on. The army before Boston was divided by Washing¬ ton into three parts. The right wing, under General Ward, held the Roxbury Heights. The left wing, under General Lee, held Winter and Prospect Hills. The centre, under Generals Putnam and Pleath, had its headquarters at Cambridge. The British army lay behind their intrenchments and their barriers of cannon-guarded salt water as if waiting for Washington’s raw levies to get tired of the siege and go home. It was weary work to lie still and watch them, and there was good reason to fear that their policy was a wise one. To keep so large an army together during the coming winter promised 13 6 GEORGE WASHINGTON. to be costly and difficult. Washington held a coun¬ cil of war, and corresponded with Congress with reference to a more active pressing of the siege ; but he was still hampered by the considerations of can¬ non and powder. Nearly all that he could do was to persist in turning his militia as rapidly as possible into soldiers. The subsequent operations of the war felt the effects of the lessons given to officers and men by their commander during those tedious months before Boston. There was plenty of news to keep the minds of men busy. Incident after incident broke the monotony of camp life. Dr. Benjamin Church, Sur¬ geon-general of Massachusetts, was detected in sending cipher dispatches full of information to a British officer ; but it was not yet time to treat such offences with utter severity. The doctor escaped the halter, and went to jail instead. One of his in¬ nocent go-betweens was a fat woman living in Cam¬ bridge, and she is said to have been arrested by General Putnam. There was nothing formal or stately about him. Washington saw, from his cham¬ ber window at headquarters, the burly general rid¬ ing up on horseback, with his female prize mounted behind him. It was an excellent thing for the over¬ worked commander-in-chief, since it made him laugh heartily. One of the earliest bits of news from the Canadian expedition was an account of the manner in which Ethan Allen got himself taken prisoner in a mad attempt to capture Montreal. The hot¬ headed colonel was put in irons and sent to Eng¬ land, and that was serious enough for him ; but there GEORGE WASHINGTON . 137 was much that was genuinely comic in the grandilo¬ quent, bombastic letters he had written, setting forth the wonders he was about to do. Here and there the scattered colonial communi¬ ties had begun to show signs of cooling from the first fervor which had followed Lexington and Bunker Hill, but there was no need of any fear on that account. The British ministry and their gen¬ erals came promptly to the assistance of the Conti¬ nental Congress and of Washington, and stirred up the general wrath to red heat again. The ships of the British navy were sent cruising along the coast to obtain supplies for the troops shut up in Boston. Wherever they landed they took what they wanted with small ceremony, and all resistance or even reluctance was overcome by violence. People at places liable to these visita¬ tions sent their flocks and herds and other provisions inland. Preparations were also made for reprisals upon the British transports. Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut made a beginning of the American navy by each fitting out two armed ves¬ sels and sending them to cruise for all craft bring¬ ing supplies to the British army. These were swift vessels, well manned, and went out with strong hope of capturing some gunpowder for General Washing¬ ton. Among the ports whose people were most active in this operation was Falmouth, now Port¬ land, Me., and a little before the middle of October a British squadron went and destroyed the town. Three hundred and sixty-seven buildings are said to have been burned to the ground, and the homeless ! 3 8 GEORGE WASHINGTON. inhabitants were informed that a like fate was pre¬ paring for every other rebel seaport on the Atlantic coast that should refuse to be disarmed and to give hostages for future good behavior. The Massachusetts Congress at once passed an act for the fitting out of more cruisers, and to grant let¬ ters of marque and reprisal. The crews of all such vessels were likely to be regarded as pirates by the British navy, but they put to sea, all the same. The news of all this sea-coast barbarism went in¬ land fast and far, to settle the convictions of all un¬ decided men, and to rouse lukewarm people to an undying resistance. At about this time General Gage was called home to explain why the affairs of his army had drifted along so badly, and Major- General Howe became commander-in-chief of the British forces in America. A committee of the Con¬ tinental Congress, headed by Benjamin Franklin and accompanied by other distinguished men, came to confer with Washington as to a reorganization of the army. It was decided to gather one of 22,276 men and officers, and, for some reason not now plain, to enlist men for one year only, so that the army would dissolve at the end of twelve months. The members of Congress told Washington that there was a general eagerness for an attack upon Boston, but a council of his officers agreed with him that it could not be safely made. Washington was also aware that before a great while all the water be¬ tween the Boston shore and the mainland would be frozen over. It was quite likely that he had before him a campaign upon the ice. The British ships of GEORGE WASHINGTON. *39 war would be unable to manoeuvre then, or change the bearings of their guns to any extent. It would be possible for either side to attack the intrench- ments of the other without the help of boats, and he was by no means sure that all the advantages so given would belong to the Americans. At all events, he instructed Mr. Henry Knox, afterward general, to take an account of all the cannon and ammunition in the camps, and then to go to the captured forts on Lake Champlain and elsewhere for as much more as he could obtain. The probability of a great fight with the British had a terribly dark side to it, in view of the condi¬ tion of the army. The men were slow to re-enlist under the new order of things, and when they did so, insisted upon going into regiments and under officers belonging to their own respective colonies. That was bad enough, but the rivalries, jealousies, and petty ambitions of the officers were tenfold harder to deal with. In New York they so tor¬ mented General Schuyler that Washington with difficulty kept him from resigning. In the Boston camp they forced Washington to say, in a letter : “ I tremble at the prospect.” At the end of the letter he declared : “ Could I have foreseen what I have experienced and am likely to experience, no consideration upon earth should have induced me to accept this command.” It is hardly possible that the country contained another man capable of carrying the burden of that time of trial, and of compelling all of the contending factions to come to order. Men who were bustling 140 GEORGE WASHINGTON. around in search of more pay were compelled to look into the face of a man who was serving without any pay whatever, and was using his own money for everything he purchased except for military uses. General Greene was a great help to Washington at this time, and helped him to understand the people of New England. Their ways were not those of Virginia planters or of backwoodsmen or red Indians, and they needed to be studied a little to be appre¬ ciated. They, on their part, had studied Washing¬ ton well and appreciated him thoroughly, free as were the tongues with which they criticised him and such of his ways as differed from their own. CHAPTER XIV. Supplies from the Sea.—Homesick Soldiers. — Mrs. Washington in Camp.—Quelling a Riot.—-Lord Dunmore's Plot. — The Defence of New York.—-The New Army. — The British Driven out of Boston. The early part of the campaign in Canada seemed full of promise. Montreal and several other impor¬ tant points were actually taken and occupied. If the American troops had been thoroughly organized and equipped, Quebec must also have fallen, and the burden of its permanent defence would have been added to the other burdens of the colonies. These were getting pretty heavy. The soldiers in camp were becoming so homesick and weary of privations that there were many desertions. A number of men from Putnam’s regiment, whose time was to be out on the ioth of December, decided to march away a week earlier. It is said that the peo¬ ple along the road would hardly give them anything to eat, and that the Connecticut women received them so sharply when they reached home that they were glad to enlist again. Washington was yet in doubt as to how many more would follow the bad example set by Putnam’s men. The situation had hardly anything cheerful in it. Early the next day, however, there came into camp a long train of heavily loaded country 142 GEORGE WASHINGTON. wagons. The young navy had been at work, and the schooner Lee, Captain Manly, had captured off Cape Ann a British brigantine with a war cargo. There were cannon of various kinds, and among them a huge brass mortar that was mounted at once, and ceremoniously named the “ Congress.” There were two thousand muskets, a hundred thousand flints, thirty thousand round shot, and thirty-two tons of musket balls. The army felt as if it had won a victory almost, and the cheers given when “ Old Put” christened the “ Congress” were heard in Boston. Some other Yankee cruisers did not do as well. They retaliated for Falmouth and other British outrages by maraud¬ ing upon quiet people on the island of St. Johns, compelling Washington to send back with apologies the prisoners they brought him. At about the same time he selected the British Brigadier-General Pres¬ cott as a proper person to be put in irons in retalia¬ tion for the fettering of Colonel Ethan Allen. He remonstrated first with General Howe, and was very stiffly answered by that officer. The entire British army felt sure that before a great while it would have the colonies at its feet, and that, in the mean time, it could treat the rebels and their leader pretty much as it pleased. Washington had not yet de¬ termined to bombard Boston, and the Continental Congress had not yet given him permission to do so. His hands were fettered as to all sorts of military operations, but he instructed Putnam to throw up suitable works upon Cobble Hill and Lechmere Point within cannon shot of the town. The British ships GEORGE WASHINGTON. M3 and their heavy guns on the mainland tried to put a stop to the engineering, but Putnam worked steadily away until the “ Congress” mortar was in position, and he could fret and fume for powder and for orders to throw shells among the British quar¬ ters. As soon as the new batteries were finished, it was evident to the British that if any attempt should ever be made to use them, the guns must be silenced or captured, or Boston evacuated. Mrs. Washington came to the camp to keep her husband company, and gave a brilliant entertain¬ ment on the evening of the anniversary of her wed¬ ding-day. There were other social gayeties among those who were able to provide them, but Wash¬ ington thoughtfully insisted upon quiet and sim¬ plicity in the style of his housekeeping. He did not easily give his consent to even the wedding-day party. Lord Dunmore had long since placed Virginia under martial law, and was continually doing things that kept up the patriotic spirit of the Old Dominion. There and elsewhere an entire generation of boys and young men were rapidly forgetting the fact that they had been born subjects of King George. All the girls and young women had forgotten it. The older people were losing sight of the British crown a little more slowly, and the royal governors and generals were helping them with all their might to do so. Mount Vernon had not been molested by red-coats or Tories, and Washington had given orders that the hospitalities of the house should be kept up liberally. His own words were : “ Let no one go 144 GEORGE WASHINGTON. hungry away. ” He also gave directions as to chari¬ ties in money as well as in provisions. The kind of dignity absolutely necessary to a commanding-general sat naturally upon Washington, and did not hurt his popularity as it might have done that of another man. At times, however, he could endear himself to the soldiers by feats that put them in mind of his experience in the back- woods. Putnam himself could not have dealt more roughly with a riot than he did upon one occasion. A lot of Massachusetts men, sailors and fishermen from the Marblehead region, whose “ uniform” was such as they commonly wore when catching mackerel, made fun of the hunting-shirts and half-Indian look of the Virginia riflemen. Snowballs took the place of jokes, shortly, and then hard knuckles took the place of snowballs, and about a thousand men were pommelling each other when Washington rode up. He was unattended save by one of his own colored servants, and to him he threw the bridle of his horse as he sprang to the ground. In an instant more he had a big rifleman by the throat with each hand, shaking them and lecturing them vigorously. The riot died out suddenly, and the riotous hunters and fishermen hurried away in all directions. Nobody was punished, but around every camp-fire that day the soldiers felt more as if their stately general was one of themselves. All the operations of the forces in Canada were watched and waited for as well as the slow arrivals of dispatches permitted, but there was now little more that Washington could do in that direction. GEORGE WASHINGTON. 145 He had two other anxieties upon his hands beside the siege of Boston. The first related to the Southern colonies. A ship was captured laden with supplies sent by Governor Dunmore, of Virginia, to the British army in Boston. On board was found a letter from his lordship to General Howe, brimful of evil. It invited Howe to transfer the war to Virginia, and suggested a plan for freeing and arming all indentured servants and all negro slaves of rebels. It was a shade more in¬ famous than the summoning of hostile Indians, for these Virginians had received Lord Dunmore with hearty hospitality, and he would have had their houses sacked by the servants who had waited upon him at their dinners. Said Washington, on reading the letter : “If this man is not crushed before spring, he will become the most formidable enemy America has. ” General Lee urged the immediate arrest of every British governor or other official or known Tory, and the confiscation of all Tory prop¬ erty ; but the time was not yet ripe for the severe measures which were sure to come. Washington sent him to Newport first, to give some unpatriotic people a severe lesson. Immediately afterward he chose him as the very man to provide for his other great anxiety. This was the military control of the harbor of New York and of the Hudson River. Should these be lost, the colonies would be cut in two, and it was well known that the British generals understood their importance. Washington himself believed that to drive Howe out of Boston would be to send him to New York, and so General Lee went 146 GEORGE WASHINGTON. to make things ready for him. General Schuyler might have been entrusted with this duty, but he had his hands full in the north, and it was not until the middle of January that news came of the heroic but vain struggle for the capture of Quebec, the sad loss of General Montgomery, and the forced retreat of Arnold, after all his daring and energy. He had exhibited high qualities, and had earned a fame that made his subsequent fall only the more pitiable. General Lee took hold of matters in New York with all the more energy because information had been received that the enemy were also about to begin active operations for the control of the Hud¬ son. They were, it was said, to have the aid of the entire Six Nations. There were so many Tories in New York that Captain Parker, of the British man- of-war Asia, then in the harbor, gave as a reason for not shelling out Lee that the destruction of so “ loyal ” a town would give the rebels too much pleasure. Once more Washington saw the comic side of the matter, and laughed heartily. On the very day of Lee’s arrival, General Clinton, with a squadron of ships whose sailing from Boston had caused much anxiety to Washington, came in and paid, as the general said, “ a visit to Governor Tryon. ’ ’ The people were greatly terrified, for Lord Dunmore had already burned Norfolk, Virginia, as mercilessly as Falmouth had been burned. No harm was done, as the British had other uses for New York, and knew that a strong fleet could sail into the harbor at any time, whatever it might be able to accomplish afterward. Clinton soon sailed GEORGE WASHINGTON. 147 away, nobody knew whither, saying that he was bound for North Carolina. The squadron under Clinton had sailed from Bos¬ ton early in January, and not a man on board the ships could have guessed the gloomy state of affairs in the American camp. Washington now had with him less than ten thousand weary and homesick men, and his supplies were running low. More of both were coming, but his position was perilous and disheartening. He regretted much that he had not acted according to his own ideas instead of those of his generals, and pushed the siege to a hard-fought conclusion before his troops melted away. The terms of enlistment of a large part of them expired at sunset of the 31st of December. They had en¬ dured much, and it was not easy to blame them for going home to rest a little and get something to eat. There were many murmurs in all parts of the country at what was called the “ inaction of the army,” and to have explained matters to patriotic people at home would also have told the dangerous truth to General Howe. Washington was forced to endure criticisms in silence, but he resolved to strike quickly and hard the moment he should have the means for doing so. His opportunity came slowly, but it came. Regiment after regiment of new troops came marching into camp, until his wreck of an army swelled to twenty thousand men. Colonel Knox returned from his long and toilsome errand after guns and powder with triumphant success. He had done wonders, and he brought to his rejoicing commander a long train of sledges, drawn by oxen, I4'S GEORGE WASHINGTON. bearing more than fifty cannon, including mortars and howitzers, beside other material needed for active operations. His coming took away the timidity of the other generals, and Washington’s next council of war agreed with him. The besieging works had already been strength¬ ened from time to time, but now preparations were made for a great and sudden increase. The ground was pretty deeply frozen on the 4th of March for pick and spade work, but that was the date set for the occupation of Dorchester Heights. Fascines of wood and gabions and bundles of pressed hay were made ready for the construction of breastworks. The British knew nothing of what was going on, and the theatricals and balls with which they had amused themselves were hardly interrupted. Wash¬ ington, on the other hand, made it a time of almost religious sobriety and solemnity in his own army, and kept his existing batteries at work. The enemy replied with spirit, and the cannonading was almost incessant. When the hour for action came, this firing diverted the attention of the British, and the Americans worked hard throughout one moonlit night almost in safety. When the morning dawned, at last, the heights were crowned with works which had risen as if by magic, and that commanded the city. Howe declared that the rebels had done more work in one night than his whole army would have done in a month ; but he saw that he must take those redoubts and lines or leave Boston. At once from all his ships and batteries he opened a tremen¬ dous cannonade that made little or no impression. GEORGE WASHINGTON. 149 The Americans expected all day a storming party like that which was sent to drive them from Breed’s Hill, but it did not come. Washington was on the ground, cheering his men, and feeling very sure of the result if the enemy should come. They had taken all day to prepare, intending to make the as¬ sault at night, with a wise thoughtfulness concern¬ ing American sharpshooters. The darkness which was to cover their movements did not come alone. With it set in a driving easterly storm, and a violent surf was soon plunging upon the icy beach at which they were to land. Ships could not be handled in that gale, and boats would be helpless in such a sea and surf, and so the British columns went back to their quarters. All the next day the storm raged on, with torrents of rain ; but in it all the sturdy patriots toiled at their works, until they had made them impregnable. A few shells were thrown into Boston to show what could be done if needful, and the British admiral commanding the fleet told General Howe that his ships must leave the harbor. It was a dreadful humiliation to the British army, but it had to go. Rather than have Boston burned to the ground, Washington consented to let it go in safety ; but there was no formal communication be¬ tween him and Howe. They were no longer upon speaking terms. The frightened Tories of Boston went away with the King’s troops, and the Con¬ tinental Army marched in. Washington at first feared that the enemy’s fleet had sailed for New York, but they had gone to Halifax instead, and he GEORGE WASHINGTON. 1 5 ° was to have a brief respite in which to reap the fruits of his victory. The town was a sad scene of devastation, and there was mourning as well as rejoicing ; but hardly any danger remained that it would ever again see any other than the American flag floating over it. Washington received the thanks of Congress and a gold medal, and the whole country settled itself more deeply in its conviction that it had found the right man to command the army. CHAPTER XV. The War Transferred to New York.—Forts on the Hudson .— The Hessians Coming.—Retreat from Canada.—The Declaration of Independence.—No Pardons Wa?ited. There was little danger that the British military- authorities across the water would soon again at¬ tempt extended operations upon the coast of New England. It had cost them a large amount of money to defend and lose Boston. Their next campaign was likely to be among the middle or southern colo¬ nies. Congress therefore divided these into two grand departments. One of these was made up of Virginia, the two Carolinas, and Georgia. The other comprised New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland. General Lee was sent to command in the South. Washington intended to manage the other department in person as soon as he had put the defences of Boston in shape to de¬ fend it from an attack by sea instead of an attack by land. Meantime he sent General Putnam to suc¬ ceed Lee in New York, with orders to fortify at available points. Only about ten thousand men could be given the old veteran, but he went to work with a will. There were no troops to send to the beaten army in Canada. It had suffered further reverses, and l S 2 GEORGE WASHINGTON. there was danger of losing Montreal. General Schuyler, during the winter, had put a stop to Sir John Johnson’s operations by surprising him in his own house. He and his men were permitted to go free on giving their parole of honor not to do any¬ thing more against the cause of American freedom. Colonel Guy Johnson was still at large, and the Indians were a source of continual anxiety. Washington arrived in New York on the 13th of April, and Mrs. Washington came with him. He was more deeply than ever impressed with the im¬ portance of its defence. Governor Tryon was now on board a ship of the British fleet that lay at anchor in the lower bay, out of reach of cannon-shot from the forts begun by General Lee, and which Putnam had made yet more effective. The governor was still in active correspondence with the Tories on shore, but had no immediate power for harm. He had even done some good by issuing proclamations full of threats and promises. Mrs. Washington’s presence at once gave a new tone to the social life of New York, but she could do nothing to lessen the deep anxiety of her hus¬ band. He was painfully aware that his forces were insufficient to hold the city against even such troops as he well knew the enemy were already able to send against him. He did not at all know what tremen¬ dous exertions the British ministry was making for his overthrow. There were men enough in England, but the American war was not popular there. Recruits for the army came in slowly from among people who GEORGE WASHINGTON . I 53 had strong notions of their own about English liberty ; so the British crown sent over to the Ger¬ man States and obtained, for money, 4300 Bruns- wickers and 13,000 Hessians. It was a notable piece of recruiting, and it compelled Washington to meet such numbers as he could not otherwise have counted upon. General Schuyler had been so bitterly slandered as to impair his usefulness, but Washington stood firmly by him, perhaps foreseeing that his own day was to come for sharper criticisms than had annoyed him during the slow siege of Boston. He had al¬ ready sent Horatio Gates, now a major-general, to Philadelphia, to explain to Congress the condition of the army ; but that body was not satisfied. They preferred to take counsel with the commander-in¬ chief in person, and sent for him. He left General Putnam in charge of New York, with full instruc¬ tions, and took Mrs. Washington with him. He found Congress well prepared to take advice, and he told them unreservedly that they might as well pre¬ pare for a long war, since no hope remained of a set¬ tlement with Great Britain on any terms which the colonies could submit to. That was George Wash¬ ington’s public declaration of independence, uttered early in June. Congress was to put it into another form one month later. By his advice Congress provided a War Office, for enlisting men for three years, for largely increas¬ ing the organized militia, and for adding floating batteries of several sorts to the harbor defences of New York. The War Office was a permanent com- *54 GEORGE WASHINGTON. mittee of five, to be called the Board of War and Ordnance. Washington returned to New York, writing to his brother, John Augustine : “ We expect a bloody summer in New York and Canada." Well he might, for among the other bad news from the latter region was the fact that the British General Carleton in command had secured the active services of large numbers of red men. The Iroquois were astir, and Sir John Johnson was reported to have broken his parole. General Schuyler was doing his best to gather forces at Albany to protect the valley of the Mohawk, but it was in daily danger of savage in¬ roads. It is very plain that Washington doubted his ability to hold New York, and he fortified different places along the Hudson, so that the loss of the city might not include the loss of the river. Works were planned and begun above the Dunderberg; near West Point ; on the heights near Kings Bridge, and else¬ where ; and more was done for the works already existing upon Long Island and on the island of Man¬ hattan, at the lower end of which stood all that there then was of the city of New York. With the arrival of the first fleet of transports, bringing Hessians and other re-enforcements to the British troops in Canada, all hope of success in that direction ended at last ; and General Sullivan, in command of the remnant of the American army, retreated down Lake Champlain to Crown Point. The British plan for the capture of New York was nearly ripe. It included a plot for a sudden rising GEORGE WASHINGTON. *55 of all the Tories, and this was in the hands of Gov¬ ernor Tryon. He managed so well, from his hiding- place on board a man-of-war in the lower bay, that, before the plot was discovered, he had actually cor¬ rupted some of Washington’s own body-guard. One of these men, named Thomas Hickey, was hanged for his part in the plot in a field near the Bowery Lane. A crowd of twenty thousand persons wit¬ nessed the hanging, and learned a lesson as to the bitter earnestness of the war. The very next day there was something yet more terrible to think of. On the 29th of June the look¬ out on Staten Island sent word that “ forty sail were in sight. ” Six of these ships were transports full of regular troops, Highlanders, from England, and the rest contained ten thousand men of the old Boston gar¬ rison, eager to get even with Washington’s army. General Howe was in command, and the Greyhound frigate that carried him was one of the first to come through the Narrows. His account of his confer¬ ence with Governor Tryon shows that they had great hope of help from the American Tories, whom he described as “ a most loyal people, long-suffering on that account from the oppression of the rebels.” They were to suffer yet more oppression at the hands of such rebels and tyrants as George Washington, Israel Putnam, John Adams, Philip Schuyler, and a long list of wrong-headed men who believed that God had made them to be freemen, and that neither they nor the Tories had any right to become any other kind of men. H 6 GEORGE WASHINGTON. The British troops began at once to go ashore upon Staten Island. Washington reported to Con¬ gress, calling for all the troops that could be sent to him, and issued a general order to his army, bid¬ ding them to prepare for a most momentous con¬ flict. Washington's general order was dated July 2d. On that same day the Continental Congress adopted a resolution declaring that “ These united colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and in¬ dependent States." The resolution was agreed to unanimously, and two days later Congress had before them a formal Declaration of Independence. They discussed it with closed doors, but the people knew what tremendous business they were doing, and gathered in throngs to await the result. There was an iron tongue ready to tell them. On the bell in the steeple of the State House was this text from Script¬ ure : " Proclaim liberty throughout the land unto all the inhabitants thereof." The bell had its errand from the hour of its cast¬ ing, and the time of the bell had come. Solemnly, prayerfully, with a full and deep con¬ sciousness of the vastness of the deed they were doing, the Continental Congress adopted the Decla¬ ration, and then the Liberty Bell rang out the news to the shouting, enthusiastic multitude. The tidings went by swift messengers to New York, and Washington heard it gladly. To his mind it was, however, only a public and definite ex¬ pression of the great truth testified toby the British fleet in New York harbor and by his forts on the GEORGE WASHINGTON. 1 57 land. The sword had already cut asunder every tie between America and Great Britain. The people of New York found many ways of expressing their patriotic satisfaction. Among others, they took the 'great leaden statue of King George the Third that stood on the Bowling Green, and made bullets of it to shoot his soldiers with. Two ships from the British fleet sailed past the American batteries, cannonading as they went, and went on up the Hudson to anchor in Haverstraw Bay. Their errand was to keep up communication with the Tories on either shore, and to annoy patriots. They also received some annoyance in return, and the forts in the Hudson Highlands were at once strongly garrisoned and hurried on toward comple¬ tion. Admiral Lord Howe, in command of the British fleet, had now arrived. He was a brother of the general, and was really desirous of doing something toward peace. He and his brother had received from the British Government what they described as “ great powers ” for that purpose. The admiral shortly made an attempt to open communications with “ Mr. Washington,” and particularly to induce him to take and read an important letter addressed to “ George Washington, Esquire/' As Colonel Reed, of Washington’s staff, informed a British naval officer who held that letter in his hand, “ there was no such person known in America.” It was a hard nut to crack, for if Admiral Howe admitted that Washington was a “general,” he confessed the power of the Continental Congress to make him 158 GEORGE WASHINGTON. one. So said Washington himself, and so said Con¬ gress afterward, in thanking him for maintaining the public dignity. He also remarked to the British Adjutant-General Patterson, sent to confer with him, that the “ great powers ” possessed by the British commanders seemed to relate especially to the granting of pardons, and the Americans were not in need of any. It was too late now to waste time upon proclamations and the gracious conde¬ scension of King George and his ministers. The Declaration of Independence had been adopted, and General George Washington was commander-in-chief of the patriot armies gathered to maintain it. CHAPTER XVI. The Fight in Charleston Harbor.—A Sermon on Szvearing.—Preparing for Bloody Work. —The Bat¬ tle of Long Island.—The Night Retreat Covered by a Fog.—Good Service to America by a Hessia?i Sentry. It was now too late for compromise. The British cannon had been heard all along the coast, from Falmouth in Maine to Charleston in South Carolina. When Clinton finished his brief “ visit ” with Gov¬ ernor Tryon in New York Bay, he sailed southward. He looked in at the spacious harbor of Norfolk, Virginia, but found the people of the Old Domin¬ ion so ready to meet him that he sailed away again. His real destination from the first may have been Charleston. The South Carolinians had been for¬ tifying their seaport for nearly twelve months, and General Lee had now arrived to give them the benefit of his energy and abilities. Among the other defences which had been con¬ structed was a strong fort on Sullivan’s Island, about six miles below the city, mounting twenty-six guns. Three miles nearer, on Johnson’s Island, was an¬ other fort, well garrisoned ; but when the British fleet arrived, early in June, Sir Henry Clinton de¬ cided that the fort on Sullivan’s Island must be captured. General Lee’s own opinion was that a i6o GEORGE WASHINGTON. better course would have been to sail past it and take Charleston ; but he added to that a strong ex¬ pression of his gratitude to the British commander. The fort was commanded by Colonel William Moul¬ trie, and when Clinton landed troops on Long Island, just below and only separated from Sullivan’s Island by a narrow creek, he threw up more works to meet them. Here a force of American regulars and militia, under Colonel Thompson, kept the British land forces at bay during the action that followed. General Lee was on the mainland, ready to support either point as might be needful, but in serious doubt whether or not to order the guns to be spiked and all the works abandoned. The courage and spirit of Colonel Moultrie and his men rendered that un¬ necessary, and they made one of the grandest fights on record. They stuck to their post firmly, under a most furious fire from the British fleet, serving their cannon with cool deliberation and deadly aim. The fort was mainly construced of sea-sand and palmetto logs, that threw out no splinters when struck by shot or shell ; and but thirty-five Americans were killed or wounded. The British commander had a sadder report to make. The cannonade between the ships and the port continued for twelve full hours without inter¬ mission, except for a brief space when Moultrie was out of powder. Sir Peter Parker, in command of the fleet, was wounded ; Lord Campbell, formerly a royal governor of South Carolina, was killed ; the man-of-war Actaeon was destroyed, and several other ships badly damaged. One hundred and seventy- GEORGE WASHINGTON. 161 five killed and as many more wounded completed the list of losses. Washington made all the use he could of the vic¬ tory in South Carolina to encourage his troops, but they were not to have any opportunity for artillery practice upon ships of war for targets. Even an at¬ tempt to construct fire-ships and send them out to kindle the British fleet broke down for lack of time and means. General Putnam devised a method of obstructing the Hudson below the Tappan Sea with sunken vessels and chevanx-de-frise, but the two men-of-war above that point repulsed with loss an attempt to capture them by a force in six large “ row-galleys/’ Washington’s re-enforcements came to him slowly, while those of the enemy were arriving in alarming numbers. It looked as if the army and all its mili¬ tary stores might some day be caught upon Man¬ hattan Island as in a trap. Still, it was a hard thing to give up a place so important without a struggle. The British forces were thirty thousand strong, well led, well provided, well disciplined. The Ameri¬ cans, all told, were twenty thousand, a large part raw militia ; and nearly a fourth of them were on the sick list. Even the bilious fever that prevailed among them gave Washington less trouble than did the sectional jealousies among the men and the quarrels concerning rank and authority among the officers. His “ general order ” upon the miserable divisions of feeling which threatened to cripple the army was full of earnest patriotism. He had broken down for himself all sectional narrowness, and had 162 GEORGE WASHINGTON. become an American. All that was needed by his soldiers was to follow his example in this and in other important matters. He took pains to give them all possible opportunity for rest on Sundays, and for attending places of worship. He gave them, in a general order, one of the best short sermons ever preached against profane swearing. He was preparing them and himself for what he considered a time of deep solemnity, and when it came it was every way as dark as he had feared. He sent Mrs. Washington home to Mount Vernon, and other officers, whose wives had been with them, did the same. He issued a proclamation advising the peo¬ ple of New York City to remove out of harm’s way, commanding officers and soldiers to aid them in so doing. It might even become necessary for him to burn the town, and it was quite likely that bloody fighting might take place in its streets. It was a time of fear and frequent panic for the citizens, whether Tories or patriots. The two ships in the Tappan Sea made their escape about this time through a hole that Putnam had not yet closed in his barrier ; but he at once shut that gate behind them. It was a great per¬ plexity to Washington that the British would be able to land at any point they might select. It was by no means impossible for them to pen him in, and he could do little more than guess in what direction to expect them. All doubt vanished on the 22d of August, 1776, when Generals Grant, Heister, and Clinton, with nine thousand men and forty cannon, landed upon the GEORGE WASHINGTON. 163 southerly shore of Long Island. They were after¬ ward heavily re-enforced, far outnumbering all the force that could be opposed to their advance. Wash¬ ington had been informed that such a movement was intended, but the roar of the enemy’s cannon gave him his first assurance that the fight for New York had begun. He knew that the British aim would be the capture of the Brooklyn Heights, from which their guns would have the city at their mercy. General Greene had been in command of the Ameri¬ can troops on Long Island, but he was now sick of a fever. General Sullivan had taken his place, but was not yet sufficiently familiar with the country beyond his lines to guard against a great disaster. The rich people had long since left the city, but the sick and the poor and the infirm could not get away, and these were in great terror now. There was a report that Washington meant to retreat and burn everything behind him. Even after he publicly denied it, his headquarters were beset by crowds of frightened people begging for protection. When he went out to his military duties, the women and the children came around him, pleading for help, and he gave them all the kindness and comfort in his power. The British advance found the Americans well posted and ready for them, and for two days there was little more than sharp skirmishing. Washing¬ ton went over and inspected the lines in person on the second day, but he had no means of knowing that a road by which the British could turn his left flank had been entirely neglected, so that defeat was sure to come. When he returned to the city he 164 GEORGE WASHINGTON. found old General Putnam feeling miserably at being kept so far away from actual fighting, and he sent him over to take command of the works ; but Sulli¬ van was still in charge of the troops beyond them. These were little more than five thousand in number, but they held the British army in check, along a line of wooded hills, until the 27th of August. The night before, General Clinton, with the British right wing, had found and seized the unguarded pass and road, and at dawn of day he was pushing forward to turn the American left. At the same time the British in front of Sullivan attacked sharply, to draw him as far as possible into what was now a trap. It was a very well-managed operation. The booming of cannon at sunrise told Washington that a general engagement was going on. There was so strong a wind blowing down the harbor that he knew no ships could come up to attack at another point, and so he went over to Brooklyn. He arrived just in time to witness the destruction of the forces under Sullivan. Outflanked, outnumbered, the brave fellows fought nobly, all in vain. It was impossible to escape, and numbers of them were captured or killed within sight of the Brooklyn forts. Washington could send them no help. He could only wring his hands and cry aloud : “ Good God ! what brave fellows I must this day lose !” The enemy’s loss in the battle of Long Island was stated by themselves at 380 killed and wounded. The American loss was not accurately known at the time, owing to the confusion which followed, but GEORGE WASHINGTON . 165 the British reported it at 3300 killed, wounded, and prisoners. Among the latter was General Sullivan himself. The effect of this defeat was all that the British generals could have asked for. It was not necessary for them to waste men in an assault upon the Brooklyn forts, and they did not do so. It was no longer possible for Washington to hold New York. The only question left for him to answer was that of how he should escape without the loss of his entire army. Early on the morning after the battle re-enforce¬ ments arrived, so that Washington had under him nine thousand men on Long Island ; but it could be seen that the troops were dispirited. The British were now twenty thousand strong, and their artillery was already busy. It would have been more so but for a drenching rain-storm. It was necessary to get away before the British fleet should have a tide and wind sufficiently favorable to warrant the sailing of it into the East River, between New York and Brooklyn, and compelling an immediate surrender. Word came to Washington that already there were signs of a naval movement. He called a council of war, and it was decided to retreat at once. The col¬ lection of vessels and boats, of all sorts and sizes, to ferry the army over, began at noon. Every craft on the entire water front of Manhattan Island was impressed. All was ready by eight o'clock that evening, but the guards and sentries were posted as usual, and the British had no warning that their ex¬ pected prize was getting away from them. The American soldiers were no wiser, for their orders i66 GEORGE IVA SUING TON. told them only of an expected attack by the enemy. Weary and wet, they silently armed and formed, and marched away to be ferried over the East River instead of fighting a night battle. Washington superintended the ferrying in person, but, in spite of all his care, mistakes occurred. One cannon went off precisely at midnight, nobody ever knew how or why. The sentries and guards were also called away too soon, and if the British had but known their opportunity, nothing could have saved the rear of the American army. It was very much as in Boston harbor, when the east wind came to protect the fort-builders on Dorchester Heights. This time it was a dense fog that settled over Wash¬ ington’s retreat and hid it from the enemy. It cov¬ ered the Brooklyn shore, the forts, the British lines ; but on the New York side the air was clear, and the ferried troops could form without confusion. The water was smooth, and the boating was safe and easy. By the dawn of day the retreat had been suc¬ cessfully accomplished, and nothing was left behind but a few cannon that were too heavy for such rapid operations. Horses and cattle, wagons, provisions, artillery, ammunition, sick men and well alike—all were saved ; and the last boat that left the Brooklyn shore contained General George Washington. It was just then that the British received informa¬ tion of the retreat, and began cautiously to enter and explore the abandoned works. Some of them got as far as the water’s edge before the last Ameri¬ can boats had reached the opposite shore, but they could do no harm. They captured a wherry and GEORGE WA SUING TON. 16 7 three thieves, but the Continental troops had es¬ caped. It was a wonderfully well-managed retreat, and gained for Washington almost as much additional reputation as if it had been a victory. He deserved all, but he had not provided the smooth water, the dense fog ; and, among other helps that came to him, he had not planned the Hessian sentinels on duty that night. A Tory lady living within the American lines sent one of her black servants to warn the British that the Americans were escaping. The Hessian sentinel he spoke to could not under¬ stand him ; neither could the Hessian officer, who at once put him in the guard-house. It was nearly morning before a British officer came to hear the poor fellow’s errand, and even then it was not be¬ lieved until after much cautious reconnoitring. All things had worked together to enable Wash¬ ington’s outnumbered troops to get away. Had it been otherwise, no human skill or vigilance or energy would have sufficed for such an undertaking. CHAPTER XVII. New Offers of Pardon. — The Retreat from New York . •—A Burst of Temper.—Patriotic Hospitality.— The Camp on Washington Heights.—Providing for Another New Army .— War.—The Battle of White Plains.—Loss of Fort Washington . The British troops now held the whole of Long Island, and Admiral Howe’s fleet sailed in from the lower bay and anchored near Governor’s Island. Three days after the battle of Long Island Wash¬ ington wrote to the President of Congress : “ Our situation is truly distressing.” He added a detailed statement of such difficulties as would have driven a weaker man to despair. He had less than twenty thousand men fit for duty, and these were deserting him and returning to their homes by squads and companies. It was this fact which compelled their general to abandon all hope of holding New York, for the enemy were 35,000 strong. It was certain that they would soon make another advance, and it was not by any means certain that the disheart¬ ened Americans would fight well. Terrible stories were told of the butcheries perpetrated upon Sulli¬ van’s beaten troops by the Hessians. The sick-list was discouragingly large. The men were well aware of the great strength of the force that was to move against them. There was so much to palliate the GEORGE WASHINGTON. 169 conduct of those who marched away, that Washing¬ ton made little effort to detain them, and punished nobody. He wrote and spoke of them considerately and kindly, but at the same time he urged upon Congress the bad policy of short enlistments. The soldiers who were to save the country must be en¬ listed “ for the war.” There was a reason why the British army did not at once bring on another engagement, and why Washington was given a brief interval of time in which to take counsel and to put his remaining forces in order. Admiral Lord Howe was sincerely desirous of preventing further bloodshed, and thought it likely that just after so severe a disaster “ the rebels ” would be in better humor to listen to him. He paroled General Sullivan and sent him into the American lines to open for him a negotiation with Congress. He informed that body, through the general, that he was empowered to compromise the disputes between Great Britain and the colonies. He was ready to offer the most favorable terms. He could not, of course, recognize Congress as a lawful assembly, with any sort of legislative powers, but he desired a conference with some of its mem¬ bers—that is, if Congress would appoint a com¬ mittee he would condescend to confer with that committee without admitting that it was one. After much discussion, Congress decided that it could not exactly comply with his lordship’s dignified request, but that John Adams, Edward Rutledge, and Ben¬ jamin Franklin might go and talk with him, find out what treaty-making powers he really possessed, and 17o GEORGE WA SHINGTON. what proposals he was prepared to offer. This was wise, since a flat rejection of what professed to be a peaceful overture would have been disapproved of by the people generally. The committee held a long conference with Lord Howe, on the nth of September, at a house on Staten Island. It ended precisely as had been ex¬ pected by all men of common-sense. Lord Howe declared, plainly, that he had no power to offer any terms except upon condition that the colonies should return to their allegiance to King George the Third. The committee, in reply, after reminding Lord Howe of the fact that the King’s armies were now waging war against the colonies, and of the Declaration of Independence and of other important historical matters, told him that Congress had no power to bind the colonies or to agree for them that they would return to their allegiance. That settled the matter. The committee returned to Philadel¬ phia, and Lord Howe gave up all hope of bringing back the colonies save by force of arms. While this negative diplomacy was going on, Washington and his generals were discussing the important question of holding or abandoning the city of New York. He had no longer any doubt in his own mind, but sev¬ eral of his best officers were eager to make a stand. Congress had already forbidden the destruction of the town, and now they passed another resolution that sensibly left Washington free to do as he should see fit. He at once began the removal of stores and baggage ; but on the 14th of September the British changed his deliberation to sudden haste. GEORGE WA SUING TON. 171 There had been some firing by the ships'of war the day before, and a cannon shot had passed within six feet of Washington as he rode along. Just at the close of the 14th word came to Washington that the enemy were landing in strong force upon the islands at the mouth of Harlem River. He was at once in the saddle, for his intention had been to remove his headquarters to Kings Bridge that night, and this looked as if the British meant to seize the Westchester mainland at once. They did no more until morning, when the ships began to cannonade the forts heavily wherever they could bring the guns to bear. Toward noon one division of British troops and one of Hessians crossed the East River from Long Island. Covered by the fire from the ships, they landed in safety at a point between Kip’s Bay and Turtle Bay. There were breastworks there strong enough to have checked their advance, but these were manned by disheartened militia, who ran at the first approach of the enemy. Two brigades of Connecticut troops sent to support them caught the cowardly infection and stampeded in all direc¬ tions just as General Washington himself came gal¬ loping down to ascertain the meaning of the can¬ nonading. Well had he decided that he could not trust those men ; but he dashed in among them now, in a des¬ perate attempt to rally them. Homesickness, dis¬ aster, uncertainties of all sorts, had done their work, and the troops had lost their courage. As fast as their general could induce a squad of them to form, they broke and ran before the advancing lines of 172 GEORGE WASHINGTON. the enemy. Washington’s hot temper got the better of him. He lost all self-control in a tempest of wrath which had in it something of despair of the whole cause of liberty. He drew his pistols, and threatened to shoot the wavering. He menaced the breaking ranks with his drawn sword. He dashed his hat upon the ground, shouting : “ Are these the men with whom I am to defend America !” Of his personal safety he was so reckless that he might have been killed or captured, for the enemy were within eighty yards of him, had not an aide-de- camp seized the bridle of his horse and forced him to ride away. The picture of the angry patriot, led away bare¬ headed from among his routed men, is one that should be preserved side by side with the more familiar pictures of his ordinary self-control and dig¬ nity. Both are necessary in order to get acquainted with him. Washington was soon himself again, giving further orders calmly ; and for some unknown reason the British pushed their advantage slowly. The troops under Putnam, who still remained in the city, es¬ caped by a forced march, leaving quantities of stores and heavy guns behind them. Many women and children were with the troops ; the day was sultry ; the line of march was exposed to the fire of the Brit¬ ish ships in the Hudson ; it was a time of panic, terror. There were many brave men and officers who nobly seconded the efforts and carried out the orders of their chief, and conspicuous among these was Putnam. To his energy and fidelity the escape GEORGE WASHINGTON. 173 of that part of the army was mainly due. The Brit¬ ish generals in charge of the advance are also said to have lost precious time at a luncheon given them at the house of a patriotic Quaker named Murray, on “ Murray Hill. It was a common saying on the American side that Mrs. Murray saved Putnam’s division. Looking at the map of Manhattan Island, it will be seen that on the western side it reaches up to the Spuyten Duyvil Creek in a long, narrow neck of high¬ lands. On the west of this is the Hudson, and on the east the Harlem River, and here Washington gathered the main body of his army. The remainder were above, at Kings Bridge, and northward, upon the Westchester mainland. Fort Washington was on a crest of the heights, and there were fortified lines a mile and a half south of it. The position was already strong, and it was while putting up works to strengthen it that Washington became ac¬ quainted with Alexander Hamilton. The British were now in full possession of New York, and in high spirits. They waited but a day or so before they began to press the Americans again, but their first attack was gallantly received and sharply repulsed. It was so well fought an action that it did much toward restoring the courage and confidence of the men. The Connecticut troops, in particular, fought hard to wipe out the disgrace of the Kip’s Bay stampede. On the 20th of September a large part of New York City was destroyed by fire, and the British called it the work of rebel incendiaries. They even 174 GEORGE WASHINGTON. caught and shot some of the men whom they ac¬ cused ; but the charge was false so far as Washington . or the Continental Congress were concerned. The commander-in-chief was now struggling with the perpetual problem of how he was to keep any army to command. The terms of enlistment of his best men were fast expiring. He wrote to Congress so earnestly and convincingly that the laws he asked for were enacted. The several colonies, according to population, were called upon to make up eighty- eight battalions of men. A system of bounties and of better pay was adopted, and it looked as if there was at last to be an army which would not fall to pieces at the wrong time. No part of these eighty- eight battalions, however, were now coming into the fortified camp on Washington Heights, and the bat¬ talions already there were fast crumbling away. As might have been expected, the same disasters which had discouraged all patriots had encouraged all Tories, and considerable numbers of these were now enlisting and arming as re-enforcements to the British and Hessians. Beyond a doubt, these men were honest in their view of the matter ; but they were regarded with intensely bitter resentment by the friends of American liberty. Under such circumstances the British generals could afford to wait a little, and they did so. Never¬ theless, their inactivity was so great as to arouse Washington’s suspicions that they were preparing some great and sudden movement in secret. The forts guarding the Hudson were now pretty strong, and Putnam was again busy with his plan of ob- GEORGE WASHINGTON, *75 structions. These latter, however, were like many other ingenious inventions—they needed too many improvements ; and before these could be added, three British men-of-war came up the river before a good wind and sailed right though them, chevaux- de-frise and all. Washington gave orders to com¬ plete the obstructions behind them, so that they should not easily get down again ; but they did much damage immediately, sinking or capturing American armed galleys and river craft, plundering along the shores, and giving all sorts of aid and com¬ fort to the Tories. It was carrying the war into the interior of the colony, and caused an immense amount of excitement. A little later the enemy landed a force at Throg’s Neck, in Westchester, on Long Island Sound. They were prevented from marching inland, but it was now plain that General Howe considered Washington’s present camp as good a trap to catch him in as Brooklyn Heights had been. General Lee had now arrived from the South, flushed with successes which had not required a tenth part of the generalship exhibited by Washing¬ ton in his disasters. The people generally could not be aware of that, and many excellent men drew un¬ just contrasts, and wished that Lee were commander- in-chief. Whatever may have been his own ambi¬ tion at that time, he gave capital advice to Congress. He urged them to raise a strong force with which to face any movement of the enemy southward from New York, as Washington’s army could do nothing in such a case. He also intimated sharply that 176 GEORGE WASHINGTON. Congress was hampering Washington's action too much all the while, and should leave him free and untrammelled in the management of his campaign. When he reached camp and was summoned to attend a council of war, he again gave wise advice that there was no good military reason for holding that neck of rocky ground on Manhattan Island, with a fair prospect of being penned in and captured there. Besides his sound advice, Lee brought into camp a fund of high spirits which was catching and did a world of good ; but harm was done by making an idol of him at the expense of the only man who could deal with just the forces under Washington's command. Even the name of Fort Constitution, on the New Jersey shore, opposite Fort Washing¬ ton, and now in command of General Greene, was changed to Fort Lee. Washington had no personal jealousy in him, and gave Lee the command of one of the four divisions into which he distributed the army before marching northward. A strong garri¬ son was left in Fort Washington, and the retreat of the main body was conducted with due deliberation. In a few days’ time a new line of camps, defended here and there by breastworks or redoubts, extended along the western bank of the Bronx River below the village of White Plains. The men in these camps were poorly fed, and their ragged clothing was not enough to protect them from the increasing cold. The well-provided troops opposed to them freely ridiculed the “ ragged rebels," and confidently expected easy victories over such scarecrow regi¬ ments. GEORGE WASHINGTON. 177 General Howe had recently been made a knight, and was now Sir William Howe. He had also re¬ ceived important re-enforcements of British and Hessians. He had already thrown away the oppor¬ tunity he seemed to have of trapping the Americans south of Harlem River, and his landing place at Throg’s Point was now so well guarded against him that he had to find another. He did so ; but from the hour when his advance began, his troops found their way impeded by stubborn skirmishing parties of those same ragged rebels. As he pushed forward, Washington withdrew his outposts to the camp he was fortifying at White Plains ; and he well knew that a general engagement could not be long put off. On the 27th of October there was a brisk can¬ nonade at Fort Washington with two ships of war, in which the latter suffered badly ; and on the same day the division under Lee marched to White Plains. It arrived in the morning, after a night march, and Lee and Washington were conversing as to the posi¬ tions occupied by the camps, when they were told that the enemy were attacking in full force along the front. The pickets had been driven in, but every commander already had his orders, in such a case, and the army fell into order of battle capitally well. Having done so, it fought well, although forced to fall back by superior numbers. Between three and four hundred men killed, wounded, or prisoners summed up the American losses, and those of the enemy were about the same. The battle of White Plains was not a great battle, and, after it was over, General Howe contented himself with 173 GEORGE V/A SUING TON. efforts, for several days, to outflank his antagonist. It was a test of generalship, and he failed, for he was met at every point ; and on the last day of the month Washington suddenly retreated to a yet stronger position five miles farther northward. Two days later Howe decided that he could gain nothing more in that direction, and marched away to capture a prize unwisely left within his reach upon Manhattan Island. This was Fort Washington, with all its stores, guns, and its brave garrison. It was not to be taken without a struggle ; but if Washington had followed his own judgment, General Howe would have found only some empty works to occupy. He decamped from the front of the American army in the three days beginning with the night of the 4th of November. The rumbling of their wagons and artillery wheels reached the American camp and aroused it to watchfulness ; but when the day dawned it was discovered that the British and Hessians were retreating instead of advancing. It was not possible to be sure of their intentions, but Washington made haste to care for the defences of the Hudson, and sent word to General Greene to watch all indications as to the fort and other works on Harlem Heights. General Greene was obstinately determined to hold these, and sent over re-enforce¬ ments when the enemy began to threaten them. The fort would hold but a thousand men, and now there were two thousand more helplessly penned in the works outside of it. Washington left Lee in command of the troops in the fortified camp from before which Howe had GEORGE WASHINGTON. 179 moved away. On the 10th of November he hurried to the forts in the Hudson Highlands, and while there selected West Point as the proper place for future defensive works commanding the river. In¬ formation in his hands led him to believe that the British meditated a movement into New Jersey. He also knew that they were pressing down from the north, for Arnold, in command of the American flotilla upon Lake Champlain, had been defeated by a superior force and driven to take refuge in Fort Ticonderoga. He had made a desperate resistance, winning a better name than ever as a brave and capable commander. Crown Point was now in the hands of the King’s troops, but there was no danger of their coming any farther with a Northern winter closing in upon them. They must wait until an¬ other year for any advance from that direction, and the commander-in-chief was free to push troops for¬ ward into New Jersey. The movement of an army through the passes of the Catskills, after crossing the Hudson, was necessarily slow ; and Washington went ahead of them, to the shore opposite the fort that had been named after him. Here, at Fort Lee, he met General Greene, and learned, to his great sorrow, that more troops had been risked upon Harlem Heights, and that the enemy were investing them. Pie afterward deeply regretted that he did not order the immediate withdrawal of every man ; but he yielded to the earnestness of his generals. On the 15th of November General Howe sum¬ moned the fort to surrender, threatening severe measures in case of resistance ; but Colonel Magaw, iSo GEORGE WASHINGTON. in command, sent back a courageous refusal. Wash¬ ington was not at Fort Lee when this news came over the river. It was near night when he rode in from a tour of other duties, but he immediately hurried into a boat and went over to the Heights. Greene and Putnam were already there, and reported the garrison in good spirits, ready to make a success¬ ful defence. So strong was his doubt of the result, so deep were his forebodings, that he became exces¬ sively excited) and it required all their efforts to get him out of the works and induce him to return to the New Jersey shore. The next day, at noon, the attack began from four different directions at the same moment. It was an assault well planned, well led, well sustained, and the brave men who resisted it were steadily over¬ come by superior force at every point. When it was too late, word came from Washington ordering Magaw to withdraw his men ; but there was already a flag of truce in the fort with a second summons to surrender, and further resistance was impossible. The general had watched the fight through a tele¬ scope from the opposite shore. He had seen posi¬ tion after position carried by the enemy, and he had seen his brave fellows bayoneted pitilessly by Hes¬ sian mercenaries after surrender, and while asking quarter. He had wept like a child, and all the more bitterly because he had laid himself open to the just reproach of General Lee, who afterward wrote to him : “ O general, why would you be over-persuaded by men of inferior judgment to your own !” GEORGE WASHINGTON. 181 The loss in killed and wounded men was severe, but is not recorded accurately. General Howe re¬ ported his prisoners at 2818, and his own loss of nearly a thousand men shows how well the works were defended. The loss in guns and other war material was a ter¬ rible blow to the American cause, but the worst hurt of all was the effect of the disaster upon the army and the people. The new troops called for by Congress had not yet been enlisted, and this would make men more slow to come forward. The old regiments were disappearing rapidly, and Washing¬ ton wrote to his brother that he should shortly have but two thousand men on the New Jersey side of the river. He began at once to prepare for aban¬ doning Fort Lee, as no longer of any use, but be¬ fore he could remove his heavy materials, the Brit¬ ish troops under Lord Cornwallis suddenly crossed the Hudson River above him, and he was compelled to march away in a hurry. He left behind him his baggage and military stores, and retreated across the Hackensack just in time to avoid being captured, with all his remaining troops, west of the Hudson and south of the Highlands. It was a sad ending of the campaign for the pres¬ ervation of the city and harbor of New York, and all the wise men who had argued against any such attempt laid the blame of both the defence and the failure upon the shoulders of the commander-in¬ chief. CHAPTER XVIII. Directing Chaos .— The Retreat through New Jersey. — The Commander-in-Chief made Dictator .— Capt¬ ure of Lee. — Trenton and Princeton. — Winter Quarters. The bitterest hours of Washington’s life were now upon him and before him. Even such trusted mem¬ bers of his military household as Colonel Reed were wavering in their confidence, and General Lee openly criticised his generalship as undecided and inefficient. Hampered as he had been by the authority of Con¬ gress, by the separately independent action of colonial legislatures, and by the newness and ques¬ tionable character of every power he was exercising, he could not yet do the things which became as a matter of course at a later day. He was directing a sort of chaos, and not a system of well-organized political and military machinery. A large part of the army with which he had begun the campaign was in the fortified camp in Westchester County, near White Plains. Another was guarding the Hudson River posts in the Highlands. He ordered Lee to join him with his troops, but that general now obeyed orders very slowly. He was dreaming of succeeding Washington in the supreme command ; but no such disaster as that was in store for America. There were no indications that the British generals GEORGE WASHINGTON. 183 proposed a wintry march into New England, or far¬ ther up into New York. They were too wise for any such blunder. The one American army that it was necessary for them to destroy was right here be¬ fore them, in New Jersey, between them and the Continental Congress. If this mob of ragged rebels, with its dangerous commander, could be done away with, they felt sure of being soon able to get all the colonies once more under the absolute control of the King and his ministers. It was very difficult to catch George Washington, as General Howe had already discovered. Not for nothing had he been given his early military lessons among red Indians. Lord Cornwallis pushed for¬ ward rapidly, and his advance was often within shot of the American rear-guard ; but no opportunity was given for striking a hard blow. The Passaic and the Raritan were left behind the retreating patriots, and nearly all New Jersey was in the hands of the King’s troops. The British and Hessians treated the in¬ habitants with a brutality that turned them all into red-hot rebels, and such a discipline was very need¬ ful at that time, for many of them had been luke¬ warm. When a man’s barn is burning and his cattle are being driven away, his opinions become very warm. Tidings of all outrages went far and wide through the colonies, but with them went a dis¬ heartening rumor that Washington was not the man to cope with the King’s generals. Some said that Lee had shown himself vastly the better leader, and there was no doubt as to Lee’s own opinion. Gen¬ eral Gates had ambitious views of his own, and he 184 GEORGE WASHINGTON. almost disobeyed orders in hurrying on to Philadel¬ phia to urge his ideas upon Congress. That body of capable men replied to the criticisms upon Washington decidedly. They removed to Baltimore, as Philadelphia was no longer a safe place to legislate in, and they passed a law giving the com¬ mander-in-chief power “ To order and direct all things relating to the department and to the opera¬ tions of war.” They had learned sharp lessons from the results of their previous legislation upon army movements and strategy, and, like sensible men, they acknowl¬ edged their error, made Washington almost a mili¬ tary dictator, and adjourned. He used his powers with energy, but he could not compel Lee to obey orders and join him. The Delaware had been crossed on the 8th of December, in bitter cold, through cakes of floating ice, and was now a barrier behind which the British and Hessians could be watched, for a time, with better security. Lee's troops were greatly needed, however, for any ag¬ gressive movement, and they were soon to come. That able but self-willed commander made his head¬ quarters in an unprotected farm-house, and was taken prisoner by a squad of British cavalry. They treated him with needless indignities ; but General Sullivan was left in command, and he pushed for¬ ward at once to the support of Washington. It was a dark time for the cause of American liberty. So sure were the enemy that the power of the rebellion was broken that, on the 30th of Novem¬ ber, Lord Howe and his brother, the general, had GEORGE WASHINGTON. 1S5 issued a proclamation as if all were ended. They commanded all persons in arms against the Govern¬ ment of His Majesty King George the Third to dis¬ band and go home. They ordered all congresses to cease from doing treasonable acts. They offered free pardon to all who should obey within fifty days. There were those within the British lines, especially rich people, who formally took advantage of the pardon offered, and were sorry for it afterward. The Continental Congress went on with its treason¬ able acts, and General Washington was busily pre¬ paring his own reply. Before Lee was taken pris¬ oner, so that Sullivan could bring the re-enforce¬ ments, Washington asked his friend, General Mercer, of Pennsylvania : “ What think you ? If we should retreat to the back parts of Pennsylvania, would the Pennsylvanians support us ?” “ If the lower counties gave up the back counties would do the same/’ said General Mercer, sadly. " We must, then, retire to Augusta County, in Virginia/’said Washington. “ Numbers will repair to us for safety, and we will try a predatory war. If overpowered, we must cross the Alleghan^s/’ No thought of accepting pardon and returning to the luxurious repose of Mount Vernon. The man the country was trusting was preparing to retreat into western Virginia, and from there into the Ohio wilderness, rather than surrender the liberties he was defending. With the arrival of Sullivan he had at his disposal nearly seven thousand men. They were ill-fed, ill- clad, suffering. Their marches through the snow GEORGE WASHINGTON. 186 could be tracked by the blood from frost-cracked and shoeless feet. Every now and then some of them lay down and died of cold and fatigue and hunger. They were only the mere wrecks of an army ; but the fact that they were there at all testi¬ fied to the other fact that they were the very men to strike a midwinter blow with. The advanced detachments of British and Hessian troops stationed along the Delaware had imbibed an undue contempt for the remnant of an army which they had chased all the way from the Hudson. They expected soon to chase it farther, and many people in the city of Philadelphia were expecting their arrival. There was an over-confident careless¬ ness in their guard-keeping at all times, but Wash¬ ington calculated that they would be particularly careless about Christmas-time. He therefore chose the night of the 25th of December for a secret and sudden attack. He divided his troops to cross the Delaware at three points, but the divisions under Generals Ewing and Cadwallader were prevented by the extreme cold and the ice. Only the main body of twenty-four hundred men, under Washington, suc¬ ceeded in reaching the other shore and carrying out their part of the plan of operations. They advanced upon the Hessians holding Trenton by different roads, and closed in, with a complete surprise, at about eight o’clock the next morning. The Ples- sians made a stand at first, but found themselves surrounded they could hardly tell by whom. Their commander, Colonel Rahl, fell, mortally wounded ; WASHINGTON CROSSING THE DELAWARE. GEORGE WASHINGTON. 187 about six hundred had been so stationed that they escaped, and about one thousand were made pris¬ oners. Large bodies of the enemy were too near for Washington to think of remaining to be caught, and he recrossed the Delaware with his prisoners and booty that same day. It was a marvellously inspiriting victory. No less than fourteen hundred of Washington’s barefooted heroes, whose terms of enlistment were expiring, de¬ cided to remain with him six weeks longer, so that he might strike the enemy again. New recruits came pouring in from the nearer communities, but their general had determined not to wait for more before fighting again. Lord Cornwallis had felt so secure as to the com¬ pleteness of the colonial disasters, that he was at this time in New York, on the point of sailing for Europe. Howe was awaiting the effect of his pardon procla¬ mation, and had not dreamed of a sharp winter cam¬ paign. It was a startling thing to hear of a sudden dis¬ aster like this. Lord Cornwallis hurried back to New Jersey in time to learn that the American gen¬ eral had once more crossed the river. On the 28th of December Washington had the second time en¬ tered Trenton, and by the 1st of January had five thousand men there ; but they were still inferior to the British forces now advancing to attack him under Cornwallis. They were in full sight, on the west of the creek running through the town, and all 188 GEORGE WASHINGTON. day of the 2d of January there were skirmishing at¬ tempts by them to get across. There was a brisk cannonading, and it was pretty plain that the enemy could not long be held in check at that point. If a battle were to be fought there, with the Delaware behind to prevent a retreat in case of disaster, Washington and his whole army might be captured. It is probable that Cornwallis expected nothing less, for the trap seemed a very perfect one. Away back in the Ohio woods, long ago, Washington had left his camp fire burning one frosty night and pushed on. He and his army did the same thing now, and when Cornwallis awoke in the morning his prize had departed. He followed promptly, but could not make up for lost time. Washington had marched for Princeton, to surprise a British force there about equal to his own ; but it was already in motion to join Cornwallis, and the surprise was incomplete. He found the enemy not in camp, but under arms, and the contest was a severe one. The victory for the Americans was complete, the British losing about four hundred men in killed and wounded and retreating. The patriot loss was smaller in numbers, but it included Washington’s true and valued friend, General Mercer. The vigorous movements of the British generals, aroused in this terrible way from their false dream of security, made further offensive operations impos¬ sible until re-enforcements should gather. The American army was not in condition to risk a gen¬ eral engagement with the forces now gathered under GEORGE WASHINGTON. 189 Cornwallis, and moved rapidly away to a strong position near Morristown, New Jersey, to rest and gather strength. It was a rough and mountainous region, easily held, and the selection of it exhibited a military genius up to that time denied to the leader of the patriot army. CHAPTER XIX. A Sudden Change.—The New Jersey Rising.—The Small-pox in Camp.—Fighting Immorality. — Com¬ ing of Lafayette .— Try on s Raid.—Jealousy and Intrigue. Even the friends of America in England had at this time given up their cause as lost, and the Tory ministry were congratulating themselves upon their swift successes. They supposed the Atlantic coast to be under their control, for a naval force had oc¬ cupied the island of Rhode Island, and the harbor of New York was a perfect centre for all operations by sea. They had driven the Americans out of Canada and down Lake Champlain. They believed that in the spring they could easily press on to the Mohawk Valley, and from thence push through the Hudson River country, cutting off New England to be conquered at leisure. The rebellious colonists were now, as they supposed, dissatisfied with their leader, and almost without an army. Suddenly, and in midwinter, the'whole situation had undergone a change. The army under Corn¬ wallis could no more say that it controlled New Jersey, and Philadelphia was once more a safe town for Congress to meet in. Washington promptly made use of all the men he had who were fit for active service, and Lord Cornwallis was forced to GEORGE IVA SHINGTON. 191 content himself with holding the two posts of Bruns¬ wick and Amboy. Now came the consequences of the hideously brutal treatment of the New Jersey farmers by the Hessian mercenaries. A spirit of revenge rose to aid the spirit of patriotism. The angry militia fought savagely on their own account, cutting oif stragglers, destroying foraging parties, and success¬ fully assailing even considerable detachments. Such was their bitter hatred of the German hirelings of King George that Lord Cornwallis was compelled to submit to what must have been to him a severe humiliation. He had to write a letter to General Washington requesting safe conduct for a convoy of the recently captured prisoners who were exchanged and were returning. He also asked if money and supplies could be sent to the Hessian prisoners taken at Trenton, and a surgeon and medicines to the wounded British and others in the hands of the Americans. Washington replied that no harm would be done to the convoy by any regular troops under his con¬ trol ; but he added that “ he could not answer for the militia, who were resorting to arms in most parts of the State, and were excessively exasperated at the treatment they had met with from both Hessian and British troops.” In strong contrast to the wretched policy against which he protested, the American leader issued orders for the protection of peaceable Tories and for the punishment of all outrages upon them or their property. He also issued a proclamation to balance 192 GEORGE WASHINGTON. that of Lord Howe, inviting all misguided persons who had in any way declared their allegiance to the British crown to repair, within thirty days, to the nearest headquarters of any general officer of the American army or of the militia, and there to take an oath of allegiance to the cause of liberty, giving up any protective passport or other paper previously obtained from the enemy. The proclamation warned all who should neglect to comply with it that they would thenceforth be treated as common enemies ; and that meant a great deal in the existing temper of the people. There was one trouble in the patriot camp which could not be reached by a proclamation. The small¬ pox had broken out as an epidemic, and a thorough inoculation was at once ordered. The general was proof against the disease, from his early experience in the West Indies ; but he earned a new title to the affection of his men by his personal attention to the sick. He gave himself up entirely to the care of his soldiers, and there was something stronger than pay or discipline given to induce them to follow wher¬ ever he should lead. He fought hard against every appearance of vice or immorality, forbidding all games of chance, urging the regimental chaplains to do their duty, and calling upon all general officers to encourage the men in a regular attendance upon public worship. The winter campaign had ended in putting the colonial cause in fine shape for the longer and harder one that was to come ; but no large operations could be undertaken until what was almost a new army should be gathered. GEORGE WASHINGTON. J 93 Congress was again in session at Philadelphia, and was devising ways and means for the prosecution of the war. It was also endeavoring, through Ben¬ jamin Franklin, to induce the King of France to seize upon so good an opportunity for getting even with Great Britain for the loss of the Canadas and the Ohio country. The first success in France did not include the King and his army or navy, but it sent over some brave volunteers, headed by the Marquis de Lafayette. This young nobleman, early in the spring, fitted out a ship at his own expense, and came over to offer his services, without pay, in the cause of freedom, and to make his name forever dear to a great nation. Toward the last of April Tryon, the old royal Governor of New York, landed on the shore of Connecticut with two thousand British troops and Tories. He pushed inland far enough to wantonly burn the town of Danbury, with the military stores collected there, and his men committed savage atrocities upon the defenceless inhabitants. He should have remembered Lexing¬ ton, for the militia rose around him, under Generals Arnold, Silliman, and Wooster, and he with difficulty regained his ships, leaving three hundred killed, wounded, and prisoners behind him. He aided greatly in keeping the spirit of the New England militia up to the war point, and they manifested their unflinching determination in daring enterprises in several different directions. Yet another burden lay heavily on the hearts of Congress, the people, and their patient general : from the jails within the British lines, from the 194 GEORGE WASHINGTON. prison-ships in New York harbor, from brave, hot¬ headed Ethan Allen, shut up as a felon, and from General Lee, in peril of trial as a deserter, came ap¬ peals for sympathy and for rescue. Congress passed acts providing for retaliation, some of them so severe that Washington protested against them. Irrespon¬ sible partisans and bands of militia retaliated piti¬ lessly upon Tories and upon Hessian prisoners. Washington wrote to General Howe, temperately but decidedly, urging upon him the claims of humanity. In reply, Sir William denied the impu¬ tation of cruelty, probably not taking the trouble to thoroughly inform himself, and there was but little change for the better. It is greatly to Washing¬ ton's credit that he made repeated and especial ef¬ forts on behalf of General Lee, although he was now better aware than before of the erratic course pur¬ sued by his old subordinate. An exchange of pris¬ oners was effected to a certain extent, but the bal¬ ance, in numbers and rank, was sadly against the Americans ; and the time for the release of Allen and Lee had not yet come. It was a curious fact that the British overestimated his importance very much, as he himself had done. They began to care less about keeping him, as they now discov¬ ered that the rebel army could fight very well with¬ out him. The military genius of America had not been captured with him, as the winter campaign testified. During nearly the entire spring the main busi¬ ness of the commander-in-chief related to enlist¬ ments, and he sent off every officer he could spare GEORGE WASHINGTON. J 95 upon recruiting duty. He commanded them to give especial attention to “old soldiers,” for he wanted as many as possible who had already faced the King’s troops. He was forced to deal once more with the jealousies and local needs of the sev¬ eral colonies, and to contend with rivalries among ambitious generals. Nowhere did this latter diffi¬ culty threaten greater danger than in New York, where General Schuyler was still annoyed by the old questions relating to the extent of his authority. There was reason to expect that the enemy would make a movement by way of Lake Champlain, and one of their first signs of life was a naval expedition up the Hudson to destroy some boats and stores. It accomplished nothing, but was regarded as a token of greater efforts to follow. As for Washington’s own immediate command, in New Jersey, he expressed his belief that he was unassailed mainly because the British generals did not know how really weak he was. The course of events had made General Schuyler a delegate in Congress, and while he was on his way to take his seat and to ask for an investigation of his military conduct, General Horatio Gates suc¬ ceeded at last in obtaining from Congress, and not from Washington, the command of the troops in New York. It is worth noting, as so different from the present way of doing, that Schuyler, in Philadelphia, as a Member of Congress, was still the major-general next in rank to Washington, and took command of all troops in the city. At this day no man can hold two such positions at the same time ; but General 196 GEORGE WASHINGTON. Schuyler rendered excellent service as a military ad¬ viser of Congress. There were many reasons why all Europe should take an interest in the struggle for American inde¬ pendence. It involved consequences which resulted, shortly, in an entire change of European affairs. Other genuine patriots were coming to help the cause of liberty beside Lafayette. Among them, from time to time, were Kosciuszko, Steuben, Pulaski, De Kalb, and others as sincere ; but with these came a lot of mere military adventurers, sol¬ diers of fortune, with high pretensions and little merit, and it was not always easy to decide what to do or not to do with them. Some received appoint¬ ments which had better have been given to better men. At all events, the army was reorganizing upon a better basis, and there was now no danger but what it would be ready to give the King’s troops abundant employment during the summer campaign. Among the new regiments was one that imitated the English fashion, and called itself “ The Congress’ Own,” until Congress passed a resolution forbidding it. Another named itself “ General Washington’s Life Guard,” and this was also covered by the same resolution ; but both had already been corrected by the general himself. His experience in New York, when one of his own body-guard proved a traitor and was hanged for it, led him now to order a careful selection of a company for special duty at his head¬ quarters, under Colonel Alexander Spotswood. There were restrictions as to the size of the men, but none as to their nationality ; and no more than GEORGE WASHINGTON. 197 four were to be taken from one regiment, so that all the colonies should be properly represented. The question of army rank was at this time taken up by Congress in a way that perplexed the com¬ mander-in-chief and brought about serious conse¬ quences. They made a new list of major-generals, and left out the name of Benedict Arnold. Wash¬ ington made at once a strong appeal to have the matter corrected, for Arnold had fairly earned his promotion ; but it was too late. Arnold’s pride was severely stung, and although he wrote to his com¬ mander patriotically, subsequent events showed that he had been hurt too deeply to forget or forgive. It was after this that he distinguished himself by his courage and good conduct in repelling Tryon’s ex¬ pedition into Connecticut. He behaved brilliantly well, and now Congress made him a major-general ; but again, in spite of Washington’s protest, he was put at the bottom of the list. They voted him a horse in place of one that was killed under him in the fight, but they left him with a bitter feeling that he had been treated with rank injustice. It gave him no excuse for wrong-doing, but it is not every man who has the deep moral worth to endure like Washington or Schuyler. The Congressional inquiry into the conduct of the latter patriot resulted in placing his reputation higher than it ever before had been ; but the question be¬ tween him and General Gates of rank and command was left as badly off as ever. The personal ambition of Gates was fast getting the better of his judgment. Like Lee, at an earlier day, he imagined himself the 198 GEORGE WASHINGTON. right man to take the place now occupied by Wash¬ ington. He saw before him an independent com¬ mand and fame as general of “ the Army of the North. ” His letters to the commander-in-chief grew even disrespectful, and his friends in and near Con¬ gress set on foot a series of intrigues which after¬ ward came very near to bringing on irreparable dis¬ asters. Believing himself to be more influential with that body than he really was, as soon as General Schuyler reached Albany, with orders which showed that he was still the ranking officer of that depart¬ ment, General Gates hurried away to Philadelphia to lay his grievances before the national legislature. He displayed both heat of temper and arrogance, but he succeeded in enabling us to understand that Congress itself contained many good men who dis¬ trusted the military capacity of the commander-in¬ chief, and who were jealous of the vast power now in his hands. Events now before them were likely to deepen this feeling rather than to lessen it. CHAPTER XX. Burgoyne s Army.—Loss of Ticonderoga.—Indians as Recruiting Agents.—Battles of Bennington and Oriskany. —Stillwater and Saratoga , and the Sur¬ render of Burgoyne. Much attention was given to the strengthening of the fortifications guarding the passage of the Hudson, but some bad mistakes were made. The command of the troops stationed there was offered to Arnold, but he preferred one that he had already received, of forces at and near Philadelphia. Put¬ nam was therefore placed in charge of all the forts, and at once, under Washington's direction, began to plan a dash through the enemy's lines for the re¬ capture of Fort Independence, at Spuyten Duyvil Creek ; but the immediate movements of the enemy compelled him to give it up. It was high time for the British to do something. They had been strongly re-enforced by German mer¬ cenaries and other troops, and were vastly superior to their opponents in all equipments for the battle¬ field. On the 31st of May Washington learned that a fleet of one hundred ships had sailed away from New York. He could only guess at what point on the Atlantic coast they meant to land troops. He made 200 GEORGE WASHINGTON. every preparation in his power to meet an attempt upon Philadelphia, but General Howe added to his perplexities a few days later. He marched from his lines, at Brunswick, New Jersey, on the 13th of June, and no man could tell whether he was on his way to Philadelphia or was trying to draw the “ rebels" out from their strong positions. The armies watched each other for four days, as if each were waiting for the other to make a blunder. Both refused to do so, and there was no battle fought. The British general moved away toward New York in the hope that he would be rashly followed, and burned houses as he went to disturb the hot temper of the man who was watching him. He was fol¬ lowed, but not rashly, and he gained nothing but three cannon captured in a skirmish with Stirling's brigade. Having utterly failed to bring on a gen¬ eral action, he gave the matter up, moved his army to Staten Island, and left New Jersey in the undis¬ puted possession of the American army. It was all a puzzle until word came from the north that General Burgoyne was coming down Lake Champlain with the entire British army in Canada, and was already nearing Fort Ticonderoga. It was hardly an exaggeration, although troops enough had been left to hold the Canadas. Burgoyne had with him 3724 British regulars, 3016 Germans, 250 Cana¬ dians and 400 Indians, and 473 artillerymen. With the latter came the finest train of brass field-pieces ever yet given, it was said, to an army of that size. There was also an amount of baggage that had not GEORGE WASHINGTON. 201 been exceeded by any British army in America since Braddock’s campaign. Burgoyne’s plan included a side expedition for the capture of Oswego, the rousing of Indians and Tories, and the ravaging of the Mohawk Valley. When the news of his advance reached Washington, General Schuyler was already at Ticonderoga. He exerted himself, there and elsewhere, to get all things in readiness for a stand ; but there was not yet quite enough to get ready with. Neither was he quite certain whether Burgoyne did not intend to leave Ticonderoga on his right, and move away eastward to reconquer New England ; and so he wrote to Washington. He had great doubt as to his ability to hold Ticonderoga, but General St. Clair, in com¬ mand of it, had none whatever. The works were strong, the garrison in good spirits ; Burgoyne’s ap¬ proaches, after he passed Crown Point, were so slow that there was time for much to be done. The proclamation of threats and pardon issued by the British general as he drew near was a matter of course, and hurt no one. So were his speeches to the Indian chiefs who came to see him and hold grand councils, for he advised them not to scalp men or be cruel in war. All appeared to be going well ; and yet, one fine morning, General Washington re¬ ceived tidings that St. Clair and his forces had evacuated Ticonderoga. It was a greater puzzle than the retreat of Howe until the explanation came. There was a rugged eminence called Sugar Hill which had been neglected, partly because it was be¬ lieved to be out of cannon range and partly because 202 GEORGE WASHINGTON. it seemed to be inaccessible. It was neither. The British engineers cut a road through the woods and rocks, and hauled cannon up the steep side of Sugar Hill, and there was no longer any use for Ticon- deroga. Shot and shell could be poured down into it all day long. It was a triumph of war-engineer¬ ing, and it was an excellent thing for the cause of American liberty. It drew Burgoyne on into the woods to turn over his elegant brass cannon to the Continentals. The retreat of the Americans from Ticonderoga was a night affair, and was well planned, but was discovered by the British before all were in safety. A sharp pursuit resulted in further damage and loss, to add to the discouragement of the seeming disaster caused by the guns on Sugar Hill. The worst part of the loss was in guns, ammuni¬ tion, military stores, and so forth accumulated at Ticonderoga, and all now in the hands of Burgoyne. Other posts in the vicinity were abandoned, the peo¬ ple of Albany began even to pack up furniture to re¬ move it, while the country people looked forward to the desolation to come from the merciless Hessians. Consternation was in all the homes of the State of New York, now so known for the first time, while the British army, elated by their easy success, be¬ lieved that little more than a triumphant march was before them. There was much more, as they were soon to learn, for Washington was sending Schuyler all the help and encouragement in his power, at the same time that he was trying to solve another British mystery. The fleet under Lord Howe, the move- GEORGE WASHINGTON. 203 ments of which, in and out of harbor, had been watched so long, was again reported at sea. An effort was made to cheat Washington into the belief that it had gone to Boston, but it only sent him and his army toward Philadelphia. Pie had already sent Arnold to Schuyler, and General Gates was in com¬ mand at that city. The perplexity of the situation was increased by the fact that even after Lord Howe’s fleet appeared off the capes of the Delaware and was counted from the shore, two hundred and twenty-eight sail, it tacked away again. The friends of General Gates in Congress had urged Washington to put him in command in New York, after the loss of Ticonderoga, but he had de¬ clined interfering with General Schuyler. Then Congress took the matter out of his hands, and Gates obtained the object of his ambition. It was almost, in his eyes, as if he had been made independent of the commander-in-chief, with a fair prospect of soon succeeding him. Congress also undertook to remodel the Commissary Department of the army, and threw it into utter confusion for the whole year. What they might do next was often as great a problem as were the movements of Lord Howe. Still further strengthening the Hudson forts, Washington now sent to the northern army the regi¬ ment of picked sharpshooters under Colonel Morgan. If there were to be Indians to fight in the New York campaign, these were the men to do it. The sturdy patriots of the New Hampshire Grants (now Ver¬ mont) had also been aroused, under Lincoln and Stark, to threaten Burgoyne’s left flank. Whatever 204 GEORGE WASHINGTON. Washington’s opinion may have been of General Gates, he did not fail to stand by him. The Marquis de Lafayette now held an honorary commission as major-general in the American army. He had not yet been assigned to any command, but was a member of Washington’s household, and be¬ tween them was growing fast the friendship that was afterward so genuinely beautiful. Lafayette now rode by the side of the general at the head of the army in a grand parade march through the city of Philadelphia. There had been many signs of dis¬ affection there. The Tory element was strong, and the intrigues in and about Congress directed against the commander-in-chief had made matters worse. The parade had a distinct object, therefore, and the troops were ordered to make their best appearance. It was soldierly enough in everything but uniforms, and every man wore a sprig of green in such a hat as he might have to make up for the defects of his regimentals. The unpatriotic part of the population of Philadelphia were thoroughly awed before the long columns all went by and the sound of the drums died away, as Washington and his men marched on to seek the enemy. Early in July the British army under Burgoyne had advanced as far as what is now Whitehall, New York. It was then Skenesborough, named from its landed proprietor, Major Skene, a Tory whom Bur¬ goyne at once took into his councils. The Tories generally of New York were in a high state of exul¬ tation, and flocked in as a considerable re-enforce¬ ment. Burgoyne’s forces were increasing instead of GEORGE WASHINGTON. 205 diminishing, but the road before him to the Hudson was one that opened slowly, in spite of a large amount of hard work. His vast baggage and his artillery worked in favor of Gates and Schuyler and Arnold, while Washington expressed his own opinion that the invading army was pushing on to sure ruin. The attempt to employ the Indians and at the same time restrain them resulted as might have been ex¬ pected. Their first atrocities, notably the cruel mur¬ der of a beautiful young girl named McCrea, were reported from fireside to fireside to stir the blood of all men. It was as if the war-whoop had been heard by the settlers, and they poured into the American camp, rifle in hand. Burgoyne’s Indians were the best recruiting officers in the world, and brought angry men from the very coasts of New England to the camps in Vermont and New York. Schuyler fell back to Stillwater, about thirty miles from Albany, as Burgoyne advanced. It is to the credit of the British general that when he found what his red allies would surely do, he refused to employ them any longer. They had already done him all the harm they could, and he sent them away. The force sent out as a part of Burgoyne’s plan to come down the valley of the Mohawk had been hav¬ ing a hard time. It had vainly besieged Fort Stan- wix, now called Fort Schuyler, and it had fought the savage fight known as the battle of Oriskany, where the patriot General Herkimer and about two hundred militia were killed, and an equal number of British regulars and Indians. Colonel St. Leger, in command of the expedition, found his red men un- 206 GEORGE WASHINGTON. manageable, and when General Arnold approached, with a force sent by Schuyler, to relieve the fort, they deserted him so fast that he was compelled to retreat, with the loss of all he had in camp. Arnold obtained well-earned praise for his good manage¬ ment, but Burgoyne's hopes had already received even a severer blow on his left. He had sent off a force of five hundred Germans, under Colonel Baum, with another detachment following, under Colonel Breyman, as a re-enforcement, to seize a depot of stores and provisions at Bennington. Baum was defeated by General Stark and his Green Mountain Boys, and the re-enforcements fell into the hands of Seth Warner. The loss to Burgoyne in killed, wounded, and prisoners was about seven hundred men, and he was more than ever at a loss to know how he should obtain provisions for his army. Schuyler was behaving nobly, disobeying a resolu¬ tion of Congress in order that he might remain be¬ fore the enemy ; he held all things in readiness for Gates to reap a harvest of fame which did not fully belong to him. Gates came and took hold of the forces made ready for him with energy. Early in September Burgoyne advanced and crossed the Hud¬ son to Saratoga, and on the 18th he was within two miles of the American camp at Stillwater. The next day began with skirmishing that ended in a hard- fought, drawn battle. The losses were in favor of the Americans, and Burgoyne could do no better than to entrench himself and wait for a result that was sure to come. Every hour thenceforth must make him weaker and his opponent stronger, for his GEORGE WASHINGTON . 207 advance had been checked, and his momentum was lost. Retreat was impossible. It was in vain to send letters to General Clinton, in New York, urging him to make a diversion up the Hudson that would force Gates to divide his army. It was in vain to hope for help from Canada, for a detachment of Yankees, under Colonel Brown, had retaken old Fort Ticonderoga, setting free a hundred Americans and capturing three hundred prisoners, an armed sloop, some gun-boats and bateaux. The British still held their new works, and the attacking party retreated in triumph. Clinton did indeed make his promised movement up the Hudson, and he cap¬ tured Forts Clinton and Montgomery after a hard fight ; but he was too late. He should have been there thirty days earlier. News came to him from the north that sent him back to New York. Burgoyne discovered at last that he must cut his way through or starve. His Canadians, Indians, and Tories were drifting away from a camp in which the rations were cutting down. On the 7th of October, therefore, he brought upon himself a second general engagement, known as the battle of Saratoga, and was severely defeated. He fell back to a strong position, while the victorious Americans occupied his camp. He found all paths of escape blocked against him, and gave it up as a ruined expedition, and surrendered on the 17th of the month. His force was reduced to 5752 men, and with these he turned over his fine train of brass artillery, seven thou¬ sand stand of arms, and all the baggage and military stores which had so dreadfully encumbered his army. 208 GEORGE WASHINGTON . It was a magnificent victory for the cause of American freedom, but no great part of it was due to General Gates, who took to himself the lion's share of the glory. Much belonged to Arnold, with whom Gates quarrelled from the day of taking command. More was fairly the meed of General Schuyler, without whose patriotic efforts there would have been no victory whatever. The rest had been done by Burgoyne and his Indians in arousing the people to such a heat that on the day of the sur¬ render Gates had under him more than ten thousand men actually fit for duty. CHAPTER XXL The Campaign to Save Philadelphia.—The Battle of the Brandyzvine .— The British Army Occupy the City.—The Battle of Germantozvn.—Forts Mercer and Mifflin.—The Conzvay Cabal .— Winter Quar¬ ters at Valley Forge . During all the time in which Burgoyne was push¬ ing forward to the place where he was to surrender, General Howe had pushed with much greater vigor that part of the British plan of operations which he had kept in his own hands. Washington had read the plan rightly, for its aim was Philadelphia. Gen¬ eral Howe began to land his troops on the 25th of August, 1777, at a place about six miles below Head of Elk, on Chesapeake Bay. He was about seventy miles from Philadelphia, but had no such wilderness to march through as that which was ruining Bur¬ goyne. Washington was at once informed of the landing, and pushed forces forward so promptly as to save some army stores that had been left at Head of Elk. While riding swiftly hither and thither, to learn better the nature of the country he was to fight in, he gave an exposition of the terrible excite¬ ment he was under, and of how utterly he had for¬ gotten himself in his devotion to his country. Lafayette and General Greene were with him, and 210 GEORGE IVA SUING TON. they had ridden within two miles of the enemy’s lines when a storm drove them into a farm-house for shelter. Night was near, and it was still storming. His companions urged him to ride away, lest some scouting party of the enemy should take him, as General Lee had been taken. He stubbornly re¬ fused to go, thinking only of the reconnoitring he had done, and more that he meant to do next day. It was not until daylight that they could get him to confess his great imprudence, and gallop away to a place of safety. Howe was again wiser than Burgoyne, for when he learned that all the inhabitants were in a state of alarm, moving away their goods and cattle, in dread of such terrors of war as they knew had been, he at once issued a proclamation assuring them of protec¬ tion and of the strictest good conduct on the part of his army. It had also a promise of pardon in it, and it sent no swarms of angry volunteers into the American camp. There were many reasons why it was absolutely necessary for Washington to make a stand against Howe’s advance, although the British forces were known to be superior to his own. The country called for a battle, and Congress itself said that Philadelphia should not be given up without one. It was a vast responsibility to put upon the head of any man, but the commander-in-chief assumed it. It cannot be said that he did so calmly, for he was by no means a man of stone. Pie felt the trial in every nerve and vein, and he called upon his men to do their uttermost. GEORGE WASHINGTON. 21 I The American army fell back before the British advance to a good position behind the Brandywine Creek. Here, on the Iith of September, a force of Hessians under General Knyphausen so sharply as¬ sailed Washington’s front as to keep him engaged, while the main body of Howe’s army, commanded by him in person, crossed the creek some miles above, and turned the American flank. It was completely done ; and although the Americans fought well, the battle of the Brandywine was a lost battle. Only by great exertions did Washington save his army from utter destruction. He lost a thousand men killed, wounded, and prisoners, the British losing five hundred killed and wounded. Lafayette dis¬ tinguished himself, receiving a bullet through his leg. The conduct of Washington before and during and after the battle was such that he did not lose the confidence of his men or of Congress. During the following night he made a successful retreat to Chester, and rallied his forces, with a determination to fight again. He was not to have an opportunity for doing so, for bad weather set in to discourage and disable his troops. They were further dispirited by a minor engagement, in which a division under Wayne lost three hundred men. There was march¬ ing and counter-marching for a few days, but Howe’s superior numbers gave him too great an ad¬ vantage in manoeuvres, and on the 23d of Septem¬ ber the British troops entered Philadelphia without opposition. Congress had already adjourned to Lancaster, and had also passed an act conferring 212 GEORGE WASHINGTON. extraordinary powers upon the commander-in-chief, with a curious provision that these powers were to exist within a distance of seventy miles from his headquarters. The British main body lay at Germantown, a few miles out of Philadelphia. It was well posted, but a strong detachment marched from it down the Dela¬ ware, and there were reasons for believing that it might be sufficiently diminished for an equal fight. With this idea, Washington made an attack on the 4th of October, and first won and then lost the bat¬ tle of Germantown, with twelve hundred men killed, wounded, and prisoners. The enemy lost only about half as many, but the attack had been a bold one, and there was no good reason for remaining where they were. They soon removed to the city itself, all the Tories of which had received them with open arms. The recent disasters to the Ameri¬ can cause had done much more toward converting half-way Tories than had all the Howe proclama¬ tions, and only the sincerely patriotic Philadelphians regretted the absence of the Continental Congress. One gleam of sunshine came in upon the gloom with which the campaign was closing. The troops whose march from Germantown induced Washing¬ ton to fight that battle were sent to reduce Forts Mercer and Mifflin, some miles below Philadelphia. These forts commanded the Delaware, and kept the British fleet from coming up. They were both at¬ tacked on the 22d of October. The garrison of P'ort Mercer, five hundred men, repulsed an assault by Count Donop and two thousand Hessians, the latter GEORGE WASHINGTON. 21 3 losing their leader and four hundred men killed and wounded. The first attack on Fort Mifflin was also unsuccessful, with a loss of two British ships of war ; but the siege was pressed, and, after a most heroic defence, the garrison escaped to Fort Mercer. There was at last no military need of holding either, and this fort also was left by the Americans in the enemy’s hands. The Delaware was thenceforth open to the King’s ships. It was now too late for either side to undertake extensive operations before winter. Each had lost heavily, but the British plan had failed. They had not crushed the American army, North or South, and so they had been ruinously defeated. It was not easy to make ordinary people understand this, or to see that Washington deserved credit for anything but the battles he had fought and lost. He had shown tenfold more ability at the Brandywine than Gates had shown at Saratoga, but it was easy to charge him with incapacity and bad generalship, while permitting Gates to take the praise that be¬ longed to Schuyler and Arnold and Stark and the Indians and the wilderness. There was a strong and growing murmur against Washington, and it spread rapidly. A sort of plot was formed for his removal from power and for putting Gates into his place. It included a number of dissatisfied Ameri¬ can officers, notably General Mifflin ; but its most active spirit was a French-Irish soldier of fortune named Conway. Washington had prevented Con¬ gress from making him a major-general, and in re¬ venge he now made against Washington what was 214 GEORGE WASHINGTON . known as “ Conway’s Cabal.” It was supposed by its members to be a secret affair, but letters from Conway to Gates were reported to the commander- in-chief, to add to the bitterness of his position. He was indifferent to the course of action of such men as Conway, but he could not entirely overlook the disrespectful conduct of Gates. That general was eighteen days in sending to Congress an official re¬ port of his victories, a neglect which was justly re¬ sented. He sent no report at all to Washington, but received from him a letter of congratulation, which contained this stinging rebuke : “I cannot but regret that a matter of such magnitude and so interesting to our general operations should have reached me by report only, or through the channel of letters not bearing that authenticity which the importance of it required, and which it would have received by a line under your signature stating the simple fact.” It had been General Gates’s way of telling Wash¬ ington that he considered himself independent, and meant to remain so. This was Washington’s way of saying : “I am still Commander-in-Chief of the American Army, and am your superior officer.” General Conway sent in his resignation on learn¬ ing that his letters to Gates were known to Wash¬ ington, but he gave other and seemingly insufficient reasons for doing so, and it was not accepted. As for General Gates, he seemed more reluctant than ever to send to the army in New Jersey the re¬ enforcements it so much needed, and which he had no good reason for keeping away. He sent as few GEORGE WASHINGTON . 215 as he dared when finally Colonel Alexander Hamil¬ ton, now a trusted member of Washington’s staff, came to insist upon it. A wild plan of General Put¬ nam’s for a descent upon New York City was at the same time nipped in the bud before any disaster could come, and matters at the North seemed to be fairly well settled for the winter. Washington wrote to Patrick Henry, now Govern¬ or of Virginia, a noble defence of the army, but not of himself. He carefully studied the lines held by the troops under Howe, and, after fully counselling with his generals, decided that he could not safely attack them. He prepared to go into winter quar¬ ters at Valley Forge, while his enemies of the cabal had arranged their forces for a campaign against him. On the 27th of November Congress reorgan¬ ized the Board of War, with five members instead of three. General Gates was made President of the Board, and with him were General Mifflin, Colonel Pickering, Richard Peters, and Joseph Trumbull. The making of such a board to oversee him was a warning to Washington that Congress believed him in need of supervision. Conway himself was shortly appointed one of the two inspector-generals whose duty it was to find fault with the army and its man¬ agement. Early in December General Howe moved out tow¬ ard the American lines, and strove to entice his cau¬ tious adversary into a battle at a disadvantage. When his plan failed, the very refusal of Washing¬ ton to be trapped and defeated was used against him as a proof of lack of enterprise. 2 16 GEORGE WASHINGTON. The winter was growing more and more severe, and it was time to be in settled quarters. Valley Forge, the place selected, was about twenty miles from Philadelphia, on the western side of the Schuyl¬ kill River. The enemy could be watched from it, and it was a good enough place to build huts in and to starve and freeze among them for the sake of liberty and of generations of men and women yet unborn. It was reached by the army on the 17th of December. CHAPTER XXII. Cold and Hunger.—Washington s Appeal and Defence. •—Praying in the Snow.—Articles of Federation .— Paper Currency.—Steuben s Work.—Conciliatory Acts of Parliament. — The French Alliance. — The Battle of Monmouth. The picture of the patriot camp at Valley Forge is one that must live forever. The rude huts were such as the soldiers could build for themselves v/ith such timber as they could cut or find. Order of ar¬ rangement was duly preserved, but there was no order of supply. Within two days after arrival, two whole brigades reported that for those days they had been without food. It was a text upon which Wash¬ ington wrote an earnest appeal to Congress. On the same day he heard that the Pennsylvania Legis¬ lature had sent Congress a remonstrance against his going into winter quarters at all. He should keep the field, voted the patriots who were not in the field. This fairly stung him into making public the manner in which all his generalship had been crip¬ pled, and he again addressed the President of Con¬ gress. It was a long letter, and there were men who should have felt it as a whip. He spoke of military movements rendered impossible for lack of pro¬ visions ; of men unable to do duty as soldiers for 2 l8 GEORGE WASHINGTON . lack of clothing, and men in hospital with frozen feet ; “of no less than twenty-eight hundred and eighty-eight men, now in camp, unfit for duty be¬ cause they are barefoot and otherwise naked of numbers of men sitting up all night by fires to keep from freezing, because of lack of blankets. Fie de¬ scribed the Legislature of Pennsylvania as protesting against his inactivity, “as if they thought the sol¬ diers were stocks or stones, and equally insensible to frost or snow. ” He set forth the absurdity of such an army, so crippled, being expected to cope with one of greatly superior numbers, perfectly supplied. He said : “I can assure these gentlemen that it is a much easier and less distressing thing to draw remon¬ strances in a comfortable room, by a good fireside, than to occupy a cold, bleak hill, and sleep under frost and snow, without clothes or blankets. ” It was an eloquent defence, and it had its effect then and afterward ; but it was necessary to forage upon the surrounding country to keep the troops from perishing before help should come. Under strict orders from their commander, the soldiers helped themselves from the farms as considerately as might be. In this and in all other things he strove to keep up their moral tone to a high stand¬ ard, and from hut to hut went around among them the tale told by the soldier who had seen Washing¬ ton kneeling in the snow among the bushes and praying Gcd to help them. More and more, through long trial, defeat, disaster, heat and cold, fatigue, distress, and starvation, the men he led had learned liow wholly his heart was with them, and theirs were GEORGE WASHINGTON. 219 all with him. They knew that whatever else might freeze, there was nothing cold about their dignified and stately but somewhat excitable general. Their strong affection for him, and their readiness to ex¬ press in any manner the confidence they reposed in him, was the real reason why all intrigues against him broke down. Every assailing force was shat¬ tered like earthenware as soon as it came into col¬ lision with his solid worth, as that was known by the brave men who had served and suffered with him. The talking and writing men might admire Gates and Lee and Conway as much as they chose, but the riflemen who shivered in the huts of Valley Forge, after all the heats of the campaign which lost Philadelphia, never wavered one moment from their devotion to George Washington. They did not really waver, even when neglect brought starvation and starvation drove them to the verge of mutiny. Supplies did come, and the appeals of the sorely- tried commander, published from State to State, were not without their effect upon his personal standing with all men. Nevertheless, the intrigues against him went on. General Gates had many ex¬ cellent qualities of head and heart, and his treat¬ ment of Burgoyne and his men after surrender was admirable. So was that of General Schuyler and the whole army ; but the glory of that entire affair centred upon Gates for the time being. There was a vast amount of correspondence, in some of which, when all was over, Gates did not appear to good ad¬ vantage. There were bitter discussions in Con¬ gress, but that body always sat with closed doors, 220 GEORGE WASHINGTON, and the outside world knew nothing of its debates. Not until long years afterward did his fellow-citizens know, as Washington well knew at the time, what a strong opposition had been stirred up against him by jealousy, calumny, disappointed ambition, and a mis¬ use of’everyidefect in his conduct as a general or a man. There were many suggestions for active opera¬ tions during the winter, including even a wild plan for another raid into Canada, and one for kidnap¬ ping the British General Clinton, now in command at New York ; but all died quietly. Spring came at last, and found Washington still hard at work at the reorganization of the whole army, with reference to an active season’s work. For several months Congress had been seeking the accomplishment of a better plan for the federation of the colonies, and now, on the 1st day of March, 1781, ” the articles of confederation” were adopted by Maryland, and the list of States was complete, and they were called colonies no more. This was a grand step forward toward a new nationality, but it was only one step. In spite of it, the central Gov¬ ernment was weak, and the paper money it was issuing was already so depreciated that army officers could not support themselves upon their pay. The troops at Valley Forge had never been out of the gripe of famine for more than a few days at a time all winter. The British army in Philadelphia received their supplies continually by sea. The peaceable inhabitants suffered numberless privations, insults, and outrages, but the troops quartered among them passed the cold season in luxury. General GEORGE WASHINGTON. 221 Howe's inaction brought upon him severe censure from British critics, who contrasted his condition with that of his antagonist. While he had lain idle, one advantage previously held by the troops of the King had been permanently diminished. The Americans had been sadly deficient in discipline, drill, knowledge of manoeuvres, and so had been more easily thrown into confusion, in spite of their courage, on several important occasions. The hardest work at Valley Forge in March and April was the incessant drilling that went forward under the supervision of Baron Steuben, now inspector- general. He was an accomplished and veteran sol¬ dier, and his work was of vast importance. It was one of peculiar difficulty to him, however, until he found an American officer who could speak French and interpret his orders to the men. There was now also some hope for a better and more systematic arrival of supplies, for General Greene was appointed quartermaster-general, and was busily reorganizing that department. The next sign of hope was a notable change in the temper of Congress. The deep lesson of Valley Forge had not been lost upon them. General Con¬ way’s resignation was finally accepted, and General Gates was returned to the command of the Army of the North, with a plainly-declared subordination to Washington. The labors of the Conway cabal had been utterly wasted. There were two more and very important signs of the times to encourage the American people in their struggle for independence. 222 GEORGE WASHINGTON . The British Parliament passed two “ conciliatory bills,” offering all sorts of concessions to what were still described therein as ” the colonies.” Com¬ missioners were now on their way to lay these acts before Congress, but Governor Try on, of New York, could not wait for their arrival. He had the acts printed, and sent copies to Washington, with the impudent request that they should be made known to the army. In spite of all he had undergone, there was fun in Washington yet. He wrote to Governor Tryon that Congress had printed the acts, and was doing its best to circulate them. The officers and men of the army were to be fully advised of the matter. It was truly grotesque. The now independent States were to be told of the proposed bounty of a man who still claimed to be their gracious sovereign. The same kindly hearts and hands wdiich had hired and shipped over the Hessians and turned loose the red Indians were now ready to remit the tax upon tea. Men read the ” acts,” and remarked to one another : ” The British ministers have heard of Bur- goyne’s surrender.” Congress resolved to have nothing to do with any commissioners of Great Britain until that power should withdraw its fleets and armies and acknowl¬ edge the independence of the United States. It also passed resolutions inviting Tories to return to their allegiance ; and Washington, in grimly humor¬ ous retaliation, did not fail to send a copy of these, which promised “ pardon ” also, to Governor Tryon. It gave him until the 16th of June for full repent¬ ance of his Toryism. GEORGE WASHINGTON. 223 The other good news was the completion of the tl treaty of amity and commerce ” and the ** treaty of defensive alliance ” with France. First of all nations had she recognized American independence, after sending us Lafayette and Steuben. Washing¬ ton ordered a grand feast-day in the camp at Valley Forge on the 6th of May in honor of an event which was as good as the defeat of a British army. There was a grand parade, an uncommonly good dinner in every tent and hut, and all were helped to feel the encouraging change in the aspect of affairs. It had been a good while since Washington’s army had had a holiday and a feast. Shortly after this there was a grand council of war, in which it was resolved substantially that so long as the British armies were lying still they were rotting away, and that the Americans could afford to have them do so. The latter must, therefore, continue merely defensive operations, unless some change in the British front gave an opportunity to strike a blow. The British army authorities took the same view of the matter, and called General Howe home for his idleness. They put General Sir Henry Clinton in his place at Philadelphia. Washington had now at last succeeded in getting General Lee exchanged, and had as good an opinion as ever of his military capacity. He had given him a command at once in his own army. There was a French fleet coming under Count D’Estaing, and Admiral Lord Howe had no notion of being blockaded in the Delaware. He sailed for 224 GEORGE WASHINGTON . New York, with all his ships, and that made it neces¬ sary for Clinton to leave Philadelphia. The movement began upon the 18th of June. Clinton had with him eleven thousand men and an enormous amount of baggage, that compelled him to travel slowly. While he and his army were packing up to leave Philadelphia, the commissioners arrived, with power to treat with Congress under the “ con¬ ciliatory acts. ’ ’ Their answer was right before them. They afterward tried even bribery rather than go home without accomplishing anything whatever, but all in vain. There was really nobody who had the cause of liberty to sell. As General Reed, now Secretary of Congress, told them when they offered him ten thousand pounds and a fat office : “I am not worth purchasing ; but, such as I am, the King of Great Britain is not rich enough to do it." Washington had been watching the movements of Clinton carefully, and had only been restrained from attacking by the objections of some of his generals. Lee especially opposed any general action. He had said so much as to prepare Washington’s mind for what now followed. When the British in their re¬ treat had nearly reached the heights of Middletown, beyond which their rear-guard would be safe, an attack was determined upon ; and Lee, as second in command, insisted upon replacing Lafayette in charge of the advance. By bad management, amounting to a positive disobedience of orders, he turned the forward movement into a disorderly re¬ treat. Washington, with the main body, came up to meet detachment after detachment of angry soldiers. GEORGE WASHINGTON. 225 ignorant of any reason for running away. He met Lee, and the interview was fiercely stormy. It is not to be denied that Washington lost his temper. He would have been the most remarkable of men to have kept it, as was afterward shown before the court-martial that tried Lee. The troops faced about, with an orderly perfec¬ tion that spoke well for the work of Baron Steuben. Lee worked hard to retrieve his blunders, some¬ what too late for himself, but not too late for good results to the army. The skirmishing prior to Lee’s retreat was of no importance, but now the still ad¬ vancing enemy were repulsed with terrible energy by the men from Valley Forge. The battle of Mon¬ mouth was the first field engagement unmistak¬ ably won by Washington. The American loss was sixty-nine killed and one hundred and sixty wound¬ ed. The British carried away many of their wound¬ ed, but lost a hundred prisoners and nearly three hundred killed. Both sides suffered intensely from the sultry heat of the weather. There was no further opportunity given to attack the British army, but when Sir Henry Clinton reached New York he found that, between the hot weather, hard fighting, and desertion, he had about two thousand fewer men than he led out of Philadelphia. Hardly was the battle of Monmouth over before General Lee began a correspondence with Washing¬ ton as to its management. It was impossible for Lee to control either his tongue or his pen, and he made his case worse all the while, although he was 226 GEORGE WASHINGTON. able to make a fair defence of his military conduct. His trial by court-martial was of his own seeking, and was a long one. At the end of it he was tem¬ porarily suspended from command, and never again took any part in the war. The French fleet came at last, too late to aid Washington in shutting up Clinton in Philadelphia, and too late to attack Lord Howe’s fleet on its way to New York. The French commander was at once in communication with Washington, and the British troops were back upon their old camping-grounds on Staten Island and Manhattan Island. CHAPTER XXIII. Misunderstandings and Disappointments. — Indian Massacres.—Loss of Savannah .— The Political Con¬ dition.—French Plans.—Punishing the Iroquois .— Stony Point. The Count D’Estaing, when he and his fleet reached the capes of the Delaware early in July, sent a letter to Washington in which he assured him that all Europe already regarded him as the “ De¬ liverer of America/’ This may have been so, but not a great deal more was to be done for American deliverance during the remainder of that year. The first idea entertained by both commanders was a co-operative attack upon New York. The French fleet was superior to the British, but found that its heaviest ships could not safely attempt to pass the bar at Sandy Hook, and Washington waited at White Plains in vain for the time to come for his part in the undertaking. That plan being given up, another was formed for the capture of the British troops, six thousand in num¬ ber, on the island of Rhode Island, with the ships in Newport Harbor. The French fleet was to act in combination with ten thousand Americans under Sullivan, Greene, and Lafayette. Washington ex¬ pected success, but the fleet and army failed to act in concert. Lord Howe arrived with his fleet, 22 $ GEORGE WASHINGTON. strengthened by new arrivals, and destroyed the first part of the intended plan. Then a great tem¬ pest scattered both fleets, and interfered with land operations. After that there were misunderstand¬ ings between the American generals and the French admiral, and the latter sailed away to Boston Harbor to refit his weather-shattered vessels and to receive polite letters from Washington, soothing his wounded pride, and assuring him of undiminished confidence. Some fighting followed on the land side, and sev¬ eral hundreds of men were killed and wounded ; but it was known that the British would be re-enforced, and the Americans gave up the undertaking. This retreat was skilfully conducted, and no disaster befell them ; but the failure as a whole was a bitter disap¬ pointment to Washington and to the entire country. From this time onward at the north and centre both armies contented themselves with watching each other, while the feeling of bitter hostility grew deeper daily. There was continual skirmishing along the lines, but the fiercest animosities were caused by marauding expeditions, and by the deeds of the Indians and Tories. „ Among the more noteworthy operations were those of General Grey, who ravaged the southern coast of Massachusetts, destroying shipping, wharves, storehouses, mills, and private dwellings. He also inflicted a severe blow upon Martha’s Vineyard. Already, in the early summer, about sixteen hun¬ dred Tories and Indians, under Colonel Butler, had laid waste the beautiful Wyoming Valley. Over four hundred men were killed, besides women and GEORGE WASHINGTON . 229 children and scattered families unrecorded, and five thousand people were rendered homeless. All Eu¬ rope heard of the deed with horror ; the British ministry was denounced for it on the floor of Parlia¬ ment ; and the war of American independence was turned into a strife which could have but one result. Cherry Valley, in New York, was visited in like manner in November, and there were many murders, but not so complete a work of destruction. There seemed danger, at one time, that the cry of “ No quarter under any circumstances'' was not far away. Up to the close of the year 1779 there had been a vast amount of miscellaneous fighting and skirmish¬ ing at the South, but no definite results had been obtained by either side. Late in December, how¬ ever, Savannah, Georgia, fell into the hands of a British force under Colonel Campbell, and the King's troops were able to close the year with a success of some importance. To all appearance the British had at least lost the year, but the men at the head of affairs on both sides knew that the American federation had strained its limited resources terribly to maintain its armies. King and ministry alike determined upon another tremendous effort for the subjugation of the rebels. The British naval force in American waters was in¬ creased to enable it to cope with D'Estaing’s fleet, but both were to be kept for a time in the West Indies, fighting for the ownership of the islands, and not meddling with strictly Continental matters. The beginning made at Savannah was to be fol- 230 GEORGE WASHINGTON. lowed up, with a view to the reduction of Georgia and the Carolinas, and General Clinton was re-en¬ forced so as to be able to do something more than f watch Washington's army. It did not seem as if it would require increased forces to push back the Con¬ tinental Army, for it was in bad condition. The country was without commerce or manufactures, and its agricultural operations were sadly disturbed. Some of its best-developed regions had suffered from the war, and were sinking into poverty. Washington spent the winter in Philadelphia. He laid plans for all the army work ahead of him, but the records show that he was acting more as a statesman than as a mere general. Congress was in bad condition, containing a num¬ ber of second-rate men who were weak enough to believe that the war was nearly over. They refused to see sufficient danger ahead to force them to pull together. The framework of the federation was yet very weak, and threatened to fall to pieces. If the war had really ceased at this time, there seems to have been good reason for believing that there could have been no “ Union." In contradiction to the false ideas of these men, Washington wrote to Colonel Harrison, Speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates : " Our affairs are in a more distressed, ruinous, and deplorable condition than they have been since the commencement of the war." He knew thoroughly well what he was writing about, and he went on, as he expressed it, " to draw a picture of the times and of men." It was dark enough when he had made it, and it included “ a GEORGE WASHINGTON. 231 great and accumulating debt, ruined finances, de¬ preciated money, and want of credit." That was a bad showing for a people at war with the richest nation in the world. There is another great instance of Washington’s far-seeing statesmanship, which ought not to be for¬ gotten. France had yet a hope of regainingher old Canadian possessions, and not unreasonably laid plans to that end. Lafayette was now gone home to France on leave of absence, full of a grand scheme for a French-American invasion of Canada during the summer of 1779. The majority of Congress ap¬ proved of it, but, before taking final action, they consulted the commander-in-chief. He spoke and wrote against it, and said, among other forcible things, “ Let us realize for a moment the striking advantage France would derive from the possession of Canada : an extensive territory, abounding in sup¬ plies for the use of her islands ; a vast source of the most beneficial commerce with the Indian nations, which she might then monopolize ; ports of her own on this continent, independent of the precarious good-will of an ally ; the whole trade of Newfound¬ land whenever she pleased to engross it ; the finest nursery for seamen in the world ; and, finally, the facility of awing and controlling these States, the natural and most formidable rival of every maritime power in Europe. He was speaking for the future of a very young country. We did not then hold Florida, or the Mississippi Valley, or the Pacific slope of the Rocky Mountains. He had fought the French in the Ohio 232 GEORGE WASHINGTON. Valley, and he knew what questions of boundaries lay beyond that of a French conquest of Canada. As to the Indian nations, he was about to make the future trade of some of them of less value to anybody. Something had already been done, in the previous autumn, to avenge Wyoming and Cherry Valley, but not nearly enough. During the warm weather of 1779 General Sullivan was sent through the country of the Six Nations with five thousand men. The towns of the Onondagas had been destroyed by an expedition from Fort Schuyler in April, and now the work of punishment was made thorough. The red men and Tories, less than two thousand strong, under Brant, Colonel Johnson, and Butler, who rallied to meet Sullivan, were scattered in a battle at Newtown on the 29th of August. The army pushed on into the Genesee Valley, and left nothing behind them. Houses, orchards, corn¬ fields, and a hundred and fifty thousand bushels of gathered corn were destroyed. The Iroquois were likely to think twice before they came again. So were the Senecas, Mingoes, Munceys, and other sav¬ ages of the Ohio country, who received a similar lesson from a force under Colonel Brodhead. While Sullivan was preparing to march for the Susquehanna, Washington had an opportunity for showing how much genuine forbearance there was behind his hot temper, and his requirement of exact obedience. When the troops were ordered to march, one regi¬ ment of New Jersey troops did not obey. Its officers had been paid in paper money, now nearly worthless. GEORGE WASHINGTON . 2 33 They could buy nothing with it ; their families were starving ; they had vainly appealed to their State legislature ; they were willing to serve only until their resignations could be accepted and their places filled by other men. It was a test case, for the whole army was in a somewhat similar condition. Wash¬ ington was equal to the occasion. He did not even exhibit irritation while he argued with the brave fel¬ lows who refused to suffer any longer, and he pleaded their case for them with the New Jersey Legislature. He gained on both sides. Supplies were furnished and came, and the troops marched without the pun¬ ishment of their officers for disobedience of orders. They had, however, been somewhat eloquently lect¬ ured by their beloved general. Sir Henry Clinton had under his command in New York nearly seventeen thousand men, beside such irregular help as Governor Tryon’s Tories gave him. He also had a fleet at his disposal, and it was a puzzle to the whole American army that so little was done with them all. Every now and then a marauding expedition went out, to keep the country as bitter in heart as ever. One went by sea to Vir¬ ginia, under Sir George Collier, and destroyed all that could be found at Norfolk, Suffolk, Gosport, Kemp’s Landing, and other places. The damage done was enormous, and all Virginia received its needed stirring up. Another expedition, under Governor Tryon, went by sea to New Haven, Con¬ necticut, captured a feeble fort there, and destroyed shipping and public stores and some dwellings. Going on to Fairfield, they burned two hundred 234 GEORGE WASHINGTON. and nineteen buildings, including the court-house, churches, school-houses, and jail. At Norwalk they destroyed two hundred and sixty-two buildings of all sorts and sizes, and so all Connecticut and New England was kept “ high strung/' in desperate de¬ termination to be free and to fight the war to the . end. Before summer came Washington was in the Hudson Highlands, planning new works and strengthening the old ones. Among others, he began a fort at Stony Point and another at Ver- planck’s Point. These were to be the lower gate of the Hudson, as West Point and the works near it were to be the upper gate. Before either of the new forts were in shape to withstand an attack, Clin¬ ton sent up a strong force and captured them both. Fort Lafayette was also compelled again to surren¬ der. There had been but thirty men at Stony Point, and they all escaped. The British at once set at work to complete it, and they made it, as they thought, impregnable. It was regarded as a sort of Gibraltar, and its midnight recapture by General Wayne was one of the most brilliant affairs on record. Washington laid the plan, and selected “ Mad An¬ thony,” as the soldiers called him, as the man of all men to carry it out. The first thing done was to send by stealth and kill every dog in the neighbor¬ hood of the fort. Then a colored man who sold provisions to the garrison was secured as a guide. When all was ready, Wayne and his men stormed the fort in the dark, at the point of the bayonet. They knew each other by the white cockade each GEORGE WA SUING TON. 235 man had put on, and did not kill one another in the confusion. The suddenly-roused garrison fought hard for a few minutes, and then surrendered at dis¬ cretion. Not a man of them was harmed after the surrender, but sixty-three were killed before ; and the wounded and prisoners were five hundred and fifty-three. The Americans lost fifteen killed and eighty-three wounded. Fort Lafayette was not retaken, and Washington decided that Stony Point alone was not worth hold¬ ing. Everything in it was therefore carried away, and the enemy were permitted shortly to occupy it again. At about this time an expedition of Massachusetts troops, on their own account, against a British post in Penobscot Bay, resulted in a bad failure, while ** Light-Horse Harry Lee,” one of Washington’s especial favorites, surprised the British fort at Paulus Hook, and brought away one hundred and fifty-nine prisoners. The fighting at the South during the year 1779 could hardly be said to be under the supervision of General Washington. It was too far away, and news came and went too slowly. He was shut up in the New York mountains, and General Lincoln, whom he sent down before spring opened, had almost an independent command. All the gallant deeds done in Georgia, South Carolina, and the coast fighting in Virginia do not, for this reason, belong to the life of Washington. The record of them must be sought for in the histories of the Revolutionary War. The result seemed to be in favor of the British, for they 2 3*5 GEORGE WASHINGTON. victoriously held Savannah, and defeated Lincoln's troops elsewhere severely. Washington saw no reason for wasting his slender resources of men and material in assailing an enemy who was willing to be really besieged in New York by an inferior force. He remained in the Highlands for awhile, keeping house there with rigid economy and simplicity, while Mrs. Washington maintained the customary hospitalities of Mount Vernon Drawn by Howard Pyle. Engraved by Putnam. From “ Harper's Magazine. CHAPTER XXIV. A Bitter Winter.—Sufferings of the Army.—Fears of a Dictatorship.—Loss of Charleston.—Subduing the South.—The Battle of Sanders Creek.- — Ar¬ nold's Treason. Forty dollars in Continental paper currency were now barely equal to one in silver, and the army in Westchester and in the Hudson River fortresses suffered almost as badly during the winter of 1779- 1780 as at Valley Forge the year before. Money would not buy provisions, and so Washington gave up calling upon the commissary-generals, and appealed directly to the people, by counties. Most responded nobly, but some had to be aided by mili¬ tary authority in making up their requisitions. The winter was the coldest that had been known since the country was settled, and New York Bay was frozen over. The British war-ships were fixed in the ice. If Washington’s army had been in good shape, he could have fought a battle in the harbor; but he had enough to do in keeping what men re¬ mained to him from starving or freezing. One ex¬ pedition was actually undertaken, under Lord Stir¬ ling, against some British troops on Staten Island, but it accomplished very little. The enemy, in re¬ turn, made raids into the country at several points, and did much mischief; but the weather was against 238 GEORGE WA SUING TON. them also. All that part of New York and New Jersey which lay between the lines of the contend¬ ing armies was laid nearly waste before spring. One of the most important events of the winter was the trial of Benedict Arnold by court-martial for misconduct while in command of the troops at Phila¬ delphia in 1778. While there he had lived extrava¬ gantly, and had supported his ostentation by improp¬ er uses of his official advantages for speculation. He was even said to have used the public funds for private purposes, but it did not appear that he had been actually dishonest. All that was really proved against him led the court-martial to sentence him to be reprimanded by the commander-in-chief. There were many reasons why Arnold felt that he had been unjustly treated, according to the ideas then govern¬ ing such matters. All the generous care taken by Washington to make the reprimand almost compli¬ mentary failed to take away the sting, and the trouble he had afterward in getting a settlement of his accounts rendered him still more soured and dis¬ contented. He now tried to obtain a command for an enterprise at sea, and failed, and then he asked and received leave of absence on account of his health, and went away into the country to brood over his wrongs, real and imaginary. He afterward obtained from Washington the command of the troops at and around West Point, but both his heart and his head had gone astray, and power was now only sought as a means of seeking revenge. Spring found the condition of the army so bad that before long there was a serious mutiny among GEORGE WASHINGTON . 239 some of the best troops. Washington suppressed it with difficulty, and declared that it had given him deeper concern than any other thing which yet had occurred. His letters to the President of Congress, urging all sorts of reformations and reliefs, gave rise to hot debates. Measures for co-operating with him in reforms suggested were opposed on the ground that he had too much power already—“ That his influence was already too great ; that even his virtues afforded motives for alarm ; that the enthusiasm of the army, joined to the kind of dictatorship already confided to him, put Congress and the United States at his mercy ; that it was not expedient to expose a man of the highest virtues to such temptations.” When a man’s opponents talk about him in that way, there is little need for asking what must have been the opinion of his friends. A committee of three was at last sent by Con¬ gress, and General Schuyler was at the head of it. Of their investigations it need only be said that they found many officers who had been living on bread and cheese rather than rob the privates of their scanty rations. This was the army Washington was so proud of, and that loved him so that politicians were afraid that it would some day make him dic¬ tator. On the 27th of April a letter came from Lafayette, just arrived in Boston, so warm and friendly that Washington cried when he read it. There was a French fleet also coming, with six thousand men on board ; but there was to be little use for them or for the Army of the North that year. The British 240 GEORGE WASHINGTON. commanders had turned their attention to the Southern States. Just at the close of 1789 Sir Henry Clinton left General Knyphausen in command at New York, and sailed northward. His destination was Charleston, South Carolina, and before the middle of May he had it in his possession. He sent out vigorous ex¬ peditions to subdue the ‘‘ rebel ” part of the popu¬ lation, and this was altogether unprepared to cope with him. The hastily-gathered forces of the patriots met with disaster after disaster, and the entire State soon seemed to be once more under British control. The Tory element came out strongly, and Clinton was so well satisfied with his work that he considered it safe to leave Lord Corn¬ wallis in command and return to New York to watch Washington and lay plots for kidnapping him. Before that, however, General Knyphausen had marched into New Jersey with five thousand men, and his troops had done the people, and therefore the British name and cause, a vast amount of dam¬ age. He retreated hastily on finding himself unex¬ pectedly confronted by the regular troops of the Continental Army under Washington. Had it been strengthened as it should have been, the Hessian general would hardly have regained his old lines in safety. When Clinton arrived, he again pushed out to burn villages and pillage farms, and again the militia arose around him, and the Continentals under General Greene stood in his way. He was harassed back clean out of New Jersey, with the last British army that was to set foot in that State. GEORGE WASHINGTON. 241 After the departure of General Clinton, Lord Cornwallis continued the operation of subduing the Southern States, and men like Sumter and Marion fought his detachments from swamp to swamp, and from river to river. Washington had intended send¬ ing down his trusted friend, General Greene, but Congress once more meddled with war, and appointed General Gates to the command of an army to fight Cornwallis. Gates was delighted with an opportu¬ nity of winning Southern fame, but General Lee cautioned him against throwing away all he had won at the North. Lee's judgment was really good in military matters. Gates pushed forward too rapid¬ ly, with an idea of striking a sudden blow, and so used up his men. He still had over three thousand fit for duty when he reached Sanders Creek, in South Carolina, but most of them were militia. At the same hour of the night of August 15th, Corn¬ wallis reached the same place, with somewhat over two thousand men, of whom fifteen hundred were veterans. The generals and the armies were both taken by surprise, and the American militia broke at once. The battle of Sanders Creek was an utter defeat for Gates, and an end of his military reputa¬ tion. He lost a thousand men, with all his artillery and ammunition, and the brave Baron De Kalb fell mortally wounded while leading the Maryland and Delaware “ Continentals,” who fought stubbornly until overpowered. There was no attempt made to send a patriot army southward during the remainder of the year, but the partisan leaders and the people kept up a brave 242 GEORGE WASHINGTON. resistance, often dealing hard blows upon their British and Tory enemies. All that part of the country wore a dark look for the cause of independence from the beginning of the campaign to the end, and there was little at the North to counterbalance the Southern disasters. The French fleet, with the six thousand men promised, arrived at Newport on the ioth of July, under the Count de Rochambeau, and more were said to be coming. While Washington was concert¬ ing with the French commander a combined attack upon New York, to be made when both had received re-enforcements, a trap was preparing for his utter destruction. Benedict Arnold’s debts and his revengeful heart had driven him to evil before obtaining command of West Point. Failing to sell himself to the French ambassador for money enough to appease his creditors, he had determined to try the British market for traitors. He had opened already a secret correspondence with Sir Henry Clinton, and now kept it up at West Point. It was carried on through Major Andr6, aide-de-camp to Sir Henry, who signed his letters “ John Anderson.” Those of Arnold were signed “ Gustavus. ” A bargain was reached at last, and Benedict Arnold sold himself for ten thousand pounds sterling in money and a commission of brigadier-general in the British army. With himself he agreed to deliver West Point, and to do it at such a time as would make its loss most disastrous. That was to be when Washington and his army should join the French on the eastern bank GEORGE VVA SUING TON. 243 of the river, so that British control of the Hudson would cut the country in two. It was a sad thing for Major Andre that he sailed up the Hudson in a sloop-of-war to complete the purchase of Arnold. The negotiation was managed perfectly upon both sides, but the course of events compelled Andre to return by land through the desolated “ neutral ground ” of Westchester County. His stockings contained, besides his feet, full plans of the works at West Point, and other papers that filled his journey with peril. He rode on safely toward New York until, some miles below Pine’s Bridge, he was stopped by a young man with a musket. His name was John Paulding, and he had but recently escaped from a British military prison in New York. With him were two more like him¬ self, named Isaac Van Wart and David Williams. Andre’s first replies to their questions so aroused their suspicions that his pass from General Arnold did not prevent their searching him. The hidden papers were found, and after that all offers of money were useless. He was a spy, and his sturdy captors marched him off to the nearest American post, ten miles distant. It is a mournful story from first to last. Wash¬ ington fully appreciated the personal character of Major Andre, but youth, abilities, personal accom¬ plishments, all the threats and entreaties of Sir Henry Clinton, could not change the fact that he was a spy. He was tried, he was convicted, and he was hanged, while Benedict Arnold escaped to the British lines. He did not deliver West Point, but 244 GEORGE WASHINGTON . his purchasers paid him very much as if he had done so. The discovery of Arnold’s treason created a pro¬ found sensation throughout the country. It was worse than the loss of a battle, for it seemed a national dishonor. The one redeeming feature of the whole matter was the patriotic integrity of the three Westchester County farmers. To Washington himself, who reached West Point on the very day of Arnold’s flight, and would therefore have been captured with it, the discovery was full of perplexi¬ ties. A vast amount of military information had gone to Sir Henry Clinton in Arnold’s own head, in spite of the capture of Andr6 and the papers, and all plans and movements required sudden changes. The northern campaign was paralyzed, and the com¬ mander-in-chief knew hardly whom to trust. He had just returned from his meeting with the French officers at Hartford, Connecticut, and these, as they rode with him from town to town afterward, had been astonished at the reverent enthusiasm with which men and women thronged around him. He had felt securely confident in American patriotism and American honor, and here one of its brightest examples had rotted away from his trust. He could not swerve a hair’s-breadth from the painful path of duty, but he could treat Mrs. Arnold, in her frantic grief, with delicate kindness, and he could give Major Andr6 the fairest of court-martials. For the gay young officer caught in so terrible a snare all men felt a deep commiseration that survives to this very day. GEORGE WASHINGTON. 245 Benedict Arnold not only wrote to Washington a letter threatening retaliation upon American pris¬ oners should Andre be hanged, but he had the im¬ pudence to issue an address to the people, defending himself, and a proclamation to the officers and sol¬ diers of the army, inviting them to follow in his foot¬ steps. His course added to the evidence before the court-martial in assuring Washington that there were no more like him, and that he had plotted alone. The “ people ” to whom Arnold's address was issued exhausted their mother tongue in vainly trying to express their opinion of his infamy. CHAPTER XXV. A Year Closing Darkly.—Generosity to Gates.—The Great Southern Campaign of General Greene.—The Battle of the Cowpens. — The Battle of Guilford Court House .— The Battle of Hob kirk's Hill .— Eutaw Springs .— The Mutiny of Wayne's Men .— Preparing for the End. There were cunning plans laid for the capture of Arnold, but none succeeded. Larger plans were formed for assailing New York, but they were wisely abandoned. Washington spent the remainder of the year 1780 in earnest efforts to prevent the disappear¬ ance of his army as terms of enlistment expired. He also won the sincere respect and admiration of the French officers and men. With the former, in¬ deed, he had an enthusiastic advocate in his devoted friend, Lafayette, who had by this time created for himself a fine military reputation. There were some sharp fights with the Indians, who were once more ravaging the Mohawk, and they were driven back into the wilderness ; and there was continual partisan warfare at the South. The aspect of affairs, as Washington declared in his letters, was by no means desperate, for Spain and Holland had been added to the enemies of Great Britain. All hope of keeping an army to¬ gether, however, must shortly vanish unless Con- GEORGE WASHINGTON .. 247 gress could raise more money to pay and to feed more men, and to provide them with arms and am¬ munition. The year 1780 closed in gloom to the whole coun¬ try, but the man whose heart was most heavily bur¬ dened did not fail of doing one peculiarly noble tiring before winter. General Gates had lost the battle of Sanders Creek, not all by his own fault, and all things had gone badly since then, and the country had lost its confidence in him. Congress ordered an inquiry into his conduct, and directed his removal from the Southern command. Washington desig¬ nated General Greene to succeed him. News of all came to Gates in one day, and the same mail brought tidings of the death of his only son. It was an hour of utter darkness, had it not been for a letter from General Washington accompanying the dispatches. It was full of sympathy with both the public and private sorrows of the crushed rival who had been the idol of the “ Conway Cabal." It assured Gates of confidence and friendship and of the command of the left wing of Washington’s own army, so soon as he should join it. It is no doubt true, as told, that General Gates kissed that letter, and raved eloquent¬ ly about the heart of its writer. It was one of the victories Washington was winning all the while. General Greene also treated Gates well, and so did the Legislature of Virginia ; and he went home to wait there for a long-delayed court of inquiry. Greene took command of the Southern army on the 3d of December, and at once went vigorously to work to promote its efficiency. From the day of 24B GEORGE WASHINGTON . his arrival the course of the war south of the Vir¬ ginia line needs only to be sketched in outline. All its events led on to make an opening for Washing¬ ton’s last and greatest stroke of generalship. Greene took command of little more than two thou¬ sand effective men, but Colonel Tarleton, the most active cavalry officer under Cornwallis, was then raiding western South Carolina, and General Morgan was sent against him. The British and Tories were found to be in superior force, and Morgan at first retreated. Finding a good position at a place called “ the Cowpens, ” he faced about, and after a short, sharp battle the enemy were routed. They lost three hundred men killed and wounded and five hundred prisoners, with other spoils of war. Corn¬ wallis at once marched to strike Morgan, and Greene marched to join him, reaching him just after he had been saved from Cornwallis by a sudden Hood in the Catawba River. The combined American force was insufficient to cope with the British army, and a most remarkable retreat began. From river to river, from the Catawba to the Yadkin, from the Yadkin to the Dan, Greene managed to cross in time to escape Cornwallis, while as regularly rain came down and swelled each river, to keep the British in check, while the Americans gained a fresh start. The pursuit was kept up vigorously until Greene escaped across the Virginia line. Cornwallis again moved southward. Re-enforcements came to Greene, in¬ creasing his army to forty-four hundred men, and he re-entered North Carolina. His first success was the destruction of a body of about three hundred GEORGE WASHINGTON. 249 and fifty Tories. His next was the battle of Guil¬ ford Court House, with the army under Cornwallis. He was driven from the field with a loss of four hun¬ dred killed and wounded, and hundreds of his militia at once went home ; but Cornwallis had lost five hundred of his best troops, and fell back to Wilming¬ ton. From that place he shortly marched into Vir¬ ginia, to take his part in the closing scenes of the war. Lord Rawdon was now in command in South Carolina, and Greene, relieved of Cornwallis, marched on into that State. Lord Rawdon’s camp was at Camden, and Greene took a position on Hobkirk’s Hill, about a mile from him. Here, on the 27th of April, a battle was fought, with nearly equal loss on both sides ; but the Americans became confused, broke, and lost the field. Rawdon soon fell back toward Charleston, for the rebel partisan bands were rising fast in all directions, capturing his posts and scattering his detachments. He soon after sailed for England, leaving Colonel Stewart in command of a region which was daily becoming more and more unsafe for a British army. Early in Septem¬ ber Greene again advanced, and fought the drawn battle of Eutaw Springs with the forces under Stewart. These retreated in the night, after the battle, and in a few weeks from that time all that remained to King George of his three Southern colonies were the seaports of Savannah, Georgia, and Charleston, South Carolina. Lord Cornwallis had entered Virginia with the avowed purpose of conquering the State, and it seemed to be almost at his mercy. He could hardly 25 ° GEORGE WASHINGTON. have expected that his former province would pass under General Greene’s command while he was tak¬ ing Virginia, and still less could he have had any reasonable fear of the far-away army of ragged and starving Continentals under General Washington. The commander-in-chief was in a most painful position at the beginning of the year 1781. He could neither send to Greene the help so much needed in the South, nor increase the small force under Lafayette in Virginia, after he had sent it ; nor could he move in any direction at the North. His operations were paralyzed, and his only hope seemed to be in a loan of money from France. Even ships and men he accounted as of less importance than hard cash, and said so urgently to Congress and to Colonel Laurens, who was about to sail for France as a special envoy. The patience of the steadiest and most patriotic Continentals had long been wearing out. On New Year’s day there came a terrible notification that it had at last broken down under extreme suffer¬ ing. A part of the Pennsylvania line, under Gen¬ eral Wayne, encamped at Morristown, New Jersey, had an additional grievance. Their term of en¬ listment, “ for three years, or the war,” was inter¬ preted by them to mean “ three years, or sooner, if the war ended,” and by the authorities to read ” three years and until the war is ended.” So they were not released from duty, nor were they fed or clothed or paid ; and they mutinied in despair, de¬ claring that they would march to Philadelphia and demand redress of Congress. Wayne strove in vain GEORGE WASHINGTON. 251 to quell the mutiny, but the soldiers told him plain¬ ly, as he cocked his pistol : “We love, we respect you, but you are a dead'man if you fire. Do not mistake us ; we are not going to the enemy ; were they now to come out, you would see us fight under your orders with as much resolution and alacrity as ever. ” Their bayonets were at his breast, and he gave it up. There were other attempts at “quelling,” in which many men were wounded and one captain killed ; but the mutiny spread, and thirteen hundred men marched away toward Philadelphia, taking with them six field-pieces. Their patriotism was un¬ touched, for when Sir Henry Clinton, in New York, heard of the mutiny and sent agents to tamper with the mutineers, the men did but arrest his agents and hold them for trial as spies. As they keenly expressed it, not a soldier among them had any idea of “ turning Arnold.” Wayne wrote to Wash¬ ington, but rode on with his men, who, commanded by their sergeants, preserved excellent order. They were the most respectable mutineers the world ever saw, and they were treated accordingly. They were negotiated with through President Reed, of Penn¬ sylvania, their own “ governor,” as we should now call him. Their grievances were adjusted as to all things, including their terms of enlistment. Men entitled to discharge were set free, and all the rest were given a furlough of forty days. General Clin¬ ton’s two agents were tried and hanged. Well as the men had behaved under command of their sergeants, and patriotically as they had talked, 252 GEORGE WASHINGTON. the settlement obtained by them was strongly dis¬ approved by Washington. Unless all others could as completely be delivered from suffering, the civil power had gone too far, and had set a premium upon mutiny. The New Jersey troops at Pompton certified to the soundness of their general’s judgment on the 20th of January. They arose in arms, demanding the premiums, and it seemed likely that the entire army would follow the example of the Pennsylvania regiments to secure the same advantages. It happened, however, that these New Jersey troops were not of the very cream of the army, and could wisely be dealt with severely. A detachment of the Massachusetts line was marched into their camp just at daybreak, to secure their arms. They were compelled to surrender unconditionally, and two of their most noisy ringleaders were shot. There was no more mutiny, but it looked as if there was much to be done before there would be a trustworthy army of sufficient strength to cope with the enemy in the field. The final ratification of Articles of Confederation between the States had given promise of a more efficient central Government, and a new system of taxation now assured better provision for the army. Supplies of all sorts were arriving from France. It was time to study how and when and where a blow could be struck which would shatter the British army. There were many reasons why New York was a post easily held against a force acting from the land side, unless that force should be overwhelmingly GEORGE WASHINGTON. 2 53 strong. So, since Washington could not capture New York, Sir Henry Clinton and Lord Cornwallis prepared and stationed an army precisely where he could take it. They began on the 20th of Decem¬ ber, 1780, by sending Benedict Arnold to Virginia, by sea, with about seventeen hundred troops, Brit¬ ish, Germans, and Tories. Arnold went with a heart more bitter than ever, for the British officers were cold and distrustful; he knew that his name was already a by-word of in¬ famous reproach, and his very wife had declared that she would not live with him again. His expedition was one of piratical devastation rather than war. He anchored his large vessels in the Chesapeake, and went up James River with smaller craft. He ravaged the country in all directions, doing an im¬ mense amount of damage. Baron Steuben, then in command in Virginia, had sent all his best troops to Greene in the South, and such militia as he could gather could not cope with Arnold’s force. They harassed him sufficiently, however, to make it wise for him to fortify himself at Portsmouth, and there Steuben managed to hem him in. The central Government of the United States was fast taking on its new form, and Congress was thenceforward to meddle less and not so directly with details of army administration. Secretaries of foreign affairs, of war and of marine, and a super¬ intendent of finance were provided for. It was precisely what Washington had long been urging, and was a bright sign of relief to him from many heavy burdens. 254 GEORGE WASHINGTON. On the 22d of January a storm scattered the Brit¬ ish fleet blockading the French fleet in Newport Har¬ bor, and Washington could ask for some ships to go down and look after Arnold. His request was seconded by Congress and by Governor Jefferson of Virginia. Three ships were sent and some troops, but they only sailed in and out of the Chesapeake, without finding anything to do. At sea they took a British man-of-war and two privateers. On the 22d of February Washington sent Lafayette with twelve hundred men to co-operate with Steu¬ ben. On the 6th of March he went himself to Newport, and was everywhere greeted by the people with even extravagant expressions of affection. Two days later he was able to send word to Lafayette that the whole French fleet had sailed for the Chesa¬ peake. Two days later still a powerful British fleet sailed in pursuit, and a naval battle between the two squadrons was fought on the 16th off the capes of Virginia. Both sides suffered much, and both claimed the victory, but the French came back to Newport and the British remained in possession of the Chesapeake and the Virginian harbors. Lafayette had not yet reached his destination, and Washington wrote to him to push forward at once. The young Frenchman had just returned to his camp, at Head of Elk, from a hasty visit to Mrs. Washington, at Mount Vernon, and obeyed with double enthusiasm. So did his men, when he told them that a specially dangerous enterprise was be¬ fore them, and gave them to understand that it in¬ cluded Benedict Arnold. It was about this time GEORGE WASHINGTON. 255 that an American prisoner was asked by the traitor what would become of him if captured. The an¬ swer was very plain : “ They would cut off the leg wounded in the service of your country and bury it with the honors of war. The rest of you they would hang. Sir Henry Clinton now sent General Phillips to command in Virginia, and with him two thousand men to increase the army that was to be surrendered in due season. This re-enforcement reached Ports¬ mouth on the 26th of March. Baron Steuben was now compelled to fall back, and both Phillips and Arnold resumed their work of devastation, but not without much hard skirmishing with the Virginia militia, who were gathering fast. Two thousand of them were ready, with a splendid dragoon troop of sixty men, to join Lafayette on his arrival. His own force had swelled to two thou¬ sand on the way, and he was able to check at once the operations of General Phillips. One of the British buccaneering expeditions up the Potomac had threatened Mount Vernon, and had been bought off with provisions and other sup¬ plies by Lund Washington, the general’s manager. Lafayette wrote at once to his friend, knowing well how he would feel about such a disgrace, for it looked badly beside the record of neighboring plant¬ ers, whose houses had been burned for their patriotic refusals. Before receiving that letter, however, Washington had written stormily to Lund, telling him, among other things, that it would have been less painful to have heard that the enemy “ had GEORGE IVA SUING TON. ? 5 6 burnt my house and laid my plantation in ruins.” About the middle of May General Phillips died at Petersburg, but Benedict Arnold was in command again only until the 20th, when Lord Cornwallis ar¬ rived from the South with the remainder of the army which had worn itself out in chasing Greene. More re-enforcements came from New York, and a returning ship lightened his lordship of Benedict Arnold’s unpleasant company. Cornwallis now undertook an active campaign against Lafayette. His cavalry were well mounted upon Virginia horses, and he came near capturing Governor Thomas Jefferson and the legislature, seven members of which failed to escape when Tarleton’s riders dashed into Charlottesville, the capital. More French ships and troops arrived at the North, with news that a yet stronger fleet and force were coming, and Washington was in continual con¬ sultation with the Count de Rochambeau and other French officers as to the best way of attacking New York. He was also writing letters to the governors of States concerning the failure of the recruiting ser¬ vice. Instead of the thirty-seven thousand men provided for him by act of Congress, he had but seven thousand, and greatly needed the other thirty, if he was expected to crush the British army. The French fleet in Newport Harbor was block¬ aded there by a stronger British squadron, and it was decided that all the French land forces at that point should join the army before New York. There was continual skirmishing along the lines, and Sir Henry Clinton was so satisfied that he was soon to GEORGE WASHINGTON. 257 be assailed, that he wrote to Lord Cornwallis for re¬ enforcements. He received three thousand Hessian troops from England, and felt safer ; but his request weakened the plans of Cornwallis at a time when Lafayette was pressing him hard, and all the men he had were needed for the conquest of Virginia. Every movement Cornwallis made was closely fol¬ lowed, until he at last settled at Portsmouth, and began to fortify himself. For various reasons, he soon decided not to do so, and shortly removed to Yorktown, on York River. From that place he wrote to Sir Henry that he could spare him a thou¬ sand men or so if they were really needed ; but they were not needed, and were not to be sent. Washington and De Rochambeau were at New York, discussing dispatches from Lafayette, when the French frigate Concorde arrived at Newport. She brought dispatches from Admiral de Grasse, saying that on the 3d of August, with twenty-five to thirty French ships of the line, having on board a land force, he should sail for Chesapeake Bay. Instantly the whole face of things underwent a change. The means of striking the great blow were to be at the place of striking, ready to be used. Washington’s very soul took fire, for he saw that the end had come. De Rochambeau and his officers agreed entirely with him, and left him the unhin¬ dered control of his master-stroke. The army to be captured was that of Cornwallis, and not that of Sir Henry Clinton. CHAPTER XXVI. Good News.—Keeping up Appearances.—A Sudden March .— Two Days at Mount Ver?ion.—The Siege of Yorktown.—Surrender of Cornwallis. The first thing to be done was to make a great show of menacing New York City by the disposition of troops here and there, and by laying out a great camp on the New Jersey shore. Ovens were built there and fuel gathered, as if much baking were to be done, and Sir Henry Clinton’s spies reported all they found. What nobody, not even his own officers, knew, was the plan of the commander-in¬ chief. He wrote to Lafayette that he was coming, and sent a letter that was to meet the Count de Grasse upon his expected arrival in the Chesapeake. Washington proposed to take with him little more than two thousand of his own veterans, leaving the rest to garrison the forts in the Highlands, and to maintain as long as might be the delusion of Gen¬ eral Clinton. The combined American and French army, on the 25th of August, marched away southward, not a sol¬ dier of it knowing why or how far, and they reached the Delaware River before the British in New York were aware that they had gone. It was then too late for Clinton to strike at Washington’s army or to help Cornwallis. All he could think of as a sort GEORGE WASHINGTON. 2 59 of counter-blow was to send Benedict Arnold, with a mixed force of British, Tories, and Hessians, to de¬ stroy New London, massacre the garrison of Fort Griswold, and add a last stain to the blackness which had settled upon his name. Washington was welcomed at Philadelphia on the 30th of August by enthusiastic crowds, and three days later his army marched through. His first care on arriving had been to make arrangements for their pay out of money which had arrived from France the week before. The French troops made their parade-passage on the 3d of September, and pre¬ sented a different appearance from that of the ragged Continentals. Letters from Lafayette in¬ formed Washington that Cornwallis had settled him ¬ self at Yorktown, but there was no one to tell Corn¬ wallis for what great purpose he had so stationed his army. Washington left Philadelphia on the 5th of Sep¬ tember, but before he had gone far an express rider met him with word from Admiral Count de Grasse that he had reached the Chesapeake with twenty- eight ships of the line. The general rode back to rejoice with De Rochambeau, and the next messen¬ ger announced that Marquis St. Simon had already landed, with three thousand men, and was in com¬ munication with Lafayette. All possible preparations were hurried forward for the combination of the land and naval forces, and Washington pressed on. He went to Mount Ver¬ non, with the Count de Rochambeau and others as his guests, but it was only for two days of rest. Six 260 GEORGE WASHINGTON. years had elapsed since he had slept under his own roof—six years of toil, trouble, hardship, expo¬ sure, peril ; but it was not time for repose yet, and he and his guests rode on to join Lafayette. Cornwallis knew that he was in danger as soon as the French fleet appeared, and troops began to come ashore from them. He did not know that Wash¬ ington was coming, but he would have retreated southward if the way had not been already blocked. He wrote at once to Sir Henry Clinton for help, and went on vigorously with his fortifications. It was not until the 25th of September that his reply came, promising that Admiral Digby, with twenty-three ships of the line and five thousand troops, would sail to join him on the 5th of October. Admiral Graves, commanding the British fleet already on the coast, had acted immediately on hearing that De Grasse was in the Chesapeake. He came to meet him with twenty ships of the line, and an action of some importance between the two fleets, on the 9th of September, left the French admiral free to co¬ operate with the land forces gathering around York- town. Lafayette wisely refused all rash counsels for fighting before his commander arrived, and the siege was planned and organized without a blunder. The combined French and American forces were twelve thousand strong, besides a varying force of militia, with artillery in abundance ; but Cornwallis wrote to Clinton expressing entire confidence as to holding out till help should come. He found him¬ self fully invested, by land and sea, on the 1st of Oc¬ tober, and on the 6th the first “ parallel ” of the be- GEORGE WASHINGTON. 261 sieging approaches was begun by General Lincoln. It was finished and some of its batteries were ready for use in three days, for the men toiled hard by day and night. On the afternoon of the 9th the first gun was fired by General Washington’s own hand. A grand bombardment followed, and went on incessantly. The British works suffered severely, and some of their shipping in the river were set on fire by shot from the French guns. On the night of the nth Baron Steuben opened the second parallel, within three hundred yards of the British works. There were two strong redoubts flanking this new parallel, and it was necessary to storm them. This was splendidly done on the night of the 14th. One was taken by Americans com¬ manded by Lafayette, and the other by Frenchmen commanded by the Baron de Viomenil. From that hour, as Cornwallis wrote to Clinton, the fate of Yorktown was sealed, and it was hardly worth while to waste ships and men in trying to re-enforce it. He even thought of abandoning his sick and wounded and baggage, and breaking through the besieging lines to try a forced march northward. It was an insane idea, and a faint attempt to put it into execu¬ tion was marred by a storm of wind and rain. He gave it up, and surrendered his fortifications and men to Washington, and his ships to the Count de Grasse. He had lost five hundred and fifty-two men during the siege, and the prisoners were seven thousand and seventy-three in number. The capitulation was made an occasion of impos¬ ing military ceremonial, but the captured army was 26 2 GEORGE WASHINGTON. treated with courtesy, and the terms of surrender had been by no means severe, Washington at once issued an address of congratu¬ lation to the allied army, and ordered divine worship in the several brigades and divisions. Congress also added a day of thanksgiving and prayer to its enthusiastic expressions of joy. They voted two of the captured flags to Washington and pieces of field ordnance to De Rochambeau and Count de Grasse, and decreed a marble column to be erected at Yorktown. When Lord North, Prime-Minister of England, heard the news of the surrender of Cornwallis and is army, he threw up his arms, exclaiming: “O God ! It is all over !'* CHAPTER XXVII. Closing up the War. — Tempting Washington with a Crown. — Quelling Disturbances.—The Treaty with Great Britain.—A Visit to Old Battle-fields .— Fare¬ wells to Soldiers and to Officers. There was no need for any more war after the surrender of Cornwallis, and all men understood it. Five days later Sir Plenry Clinton arrived at the mouth of the Chesapeake with a fleet that had seven thousand men on board, but he learned that all was over, and went back to New York. Re-enforcements were at once sent to Greene at the South, but the rest of Washington's army returned to their old quarters at the North. The French, under Count de Rochambeau, camped in Virginia for the winter, and Count de Grasse took his fleet to the West Indies. The commander-in-chief had now before him a vast and difficult undertaking. The patn to peace lay among all sorts of perils, and no other man held both the power and the knowledge necessary to keep the country from disaster and anarchy. A large part of the people felt so sure that peace had already come, that they were ready to drop the army alto¬ gether as an affair no longer needed. On the other hand, a large part of the army was so disgusted with the people and what seemed ingratitude, that it was 264 GEORGE WASHINGTON . quite ready to put them aside and set up a ” strong Government,” with George Washington as Dictator. Before taking up his new and heavy burden, the general set out for a few days’ rest at Mount Ver¬ non. He was greatly needed there, for his first visit must be to Eltham, where John Parke Custis lay dying. He had been strongly attached to his step¬ son, who was now twenty-eight years of age, and had shown the marked results of the wise counsels under which he had grown to manhood. Death came shortly after Washington reached Eltham, and Mrs. Washington was childless. Mr. Custis left a widow with four children, and of these the two younger were at once adopted by the general. After a few days at Eltham, Washington went on to Mount Vernon, which at once became a sort of political and military headquarters. Here, day after day, the statesman-general sat and wrote letters of counsel to his fellow-patriots, in and out of Con¬ gress, and of direction and advice to his widely scat¬ tered military subordinates. Late in November he went to Philadelphia to urge upon Congress the necessity for maintaining a show of military strength during all negotiation or drifting toward peace. So long as British troops should hold New York, Savannah, and Charleston, and British fleets were cruising along the coast, and so long as King George should claim a right to keep them there, it was war. Congress had received Washington with lavish ex¬ pressions of respect upon his arrival, and they list¬ ened to his sound advice so far as legislation went. GEORGE WASHINGTON. 265 They could not, however, compel the several States to furnish the men and the money so freely voted and so greatly needed. All winter long Washington remained in Philadelphia, toiling over the manifold perplexities of the situation, and all winter long the British Parliament debated the great question as to what England had better do with America, now it had lost it forever. On the 20th of March, 1782, the Lord North administration went out of power, and the advocates of peace with America went in. At about the same time Washington left Philadel¬ phia to join his army, but not with any idea of an active campaign. It was quickly known in America that a bill had been reported in Parliament authorizing the King to conclude a peace or truce with the revolted colonies of North America. Early in May, 1782, Sir Guy Carleton arrived in New York to supersede Sir Henry Clinton, and to announce to Washington that he and Admiral Digby had been joined in a shadowy “ commission ” with reference to peace. There was nothing said about the independence of the United States as yet, nor was any reason given for ceasing to watch the British army and navy. The causes for discontent in the army continued, and the longing for a strong Government was not unnatural among men who had been born under a king. The camp-fire talk took form in a letter ad¬ dressed to Washington by a veteran officer, Colonel Lewis Nicola, in which it was plainly intimated that a movement for a monarchy was quite possible if the commander-in-chief would consent to lead it and 266 GEORGE WASHINGTON . wear the crown of the new nation. Washington was a patriot and a republican to the bottom of his heart. In his prompt and indignant reply he said : “ I am much at a loss to conceive what part of my conduct could have given encouragement to an address which to me seems big with the greatest mischiefs that can befall my country. ” He said all that any friend of freedom could have asked him to say, and the visionary crown was thrown into the camp-fires. Sir Guy Carleton and Admiral Digby waited for more authority, and on the 2d of August wrote that the treaty of peace was under consideration at Paris, and that the independence of the United States was to be at once conceded by Great Britain. French and American interests had not been separated yet, however, nor British troops withdrawn ; and Wash¬ ington invited Count de Rochambeau to move his forces from the Delaware to the Hudson, and wait the result of the Paris conference. It was long in coming, for while preliminary articles of peace were signed on the 30th of Novem¬ ber, 1782, the final and definite treaty, binding all the interested powers, was not signed until the 3d of September, 1783. A formal cessation of hostili¬ ties was announced to the army on the 19th of April, 1783, but the troops were not disbanded until the 3d of November following. During all those long and weary months of wait¬ ing, the commander-in-chief toiled to obtain for his officers and men their rights and a just reward of their service. On the other hand, he was continu¬ ally harassed by their murmurs of angry discontent GEORGE WASHINGTON. 267 with their present treatment, and with the dark pros¬ pect before them. In December, 1782, a committee of three officers carried to Congress a memorial on behalf of the whole army, setting forth their grievances, and long debates resulted. Nothing practical was done, how¬ ever, and spring came to unpaid and angry soldiers. On the 10th of March, 1783, a circular went around among them, asking them to send their officers and others as delegates to a meeting next day, to con¬ sider a letter received from their Committee to Con¬ gress. With the circular went an eloquent, anony¬ mous " address/’ stirring them to the adoption of extreme measures. This paper called upon them to ‘‘draw up your last remonstrance calling it no more “ a memorial .'* Washington saw the danger, and acted promptly and wisely, acting with his men and not against them. He called a meeting of officers, to assemble on the 15th, to hear the “ report," not a mere let¬ ter, from their committee. The first meeting subsided at once, but another “ address " went the rounds, congratulating all that they had the official sanction of their chief. Gen¬ eral Gates presided at the meeting, and Washington was the first speaker. He had carefully written out his speech, lest it should be garbled or misquoted. It was an address full of wise counsel and close sym¬ pathy, urging them yet to endure, and to give the world a last proof of their unselfishness. He closed in these words : "You will give one more distin¬ guished proof of unexampled patriotism and patient 268 GEORGE WASHINGTON . virtue rising superior to the most complicated suffer¬ ings, and you will, by the dignity of your conduct, afford occasion to posterity to say, when speaking of the glorious example you have exhibited to man¬ kind : ‘ Had this day been wanting, the world had never seen the last stage of perfection to which human nature is capable of attaining.’ ” It sounds extravagant and overstrained, and as if the orator had become excited. It did not sound so to Washington, for he had seen those men rise, half- naked, starving, from beds of snow, to follow him with bleeding feet, that as many of them as were to die should die for the very country to whose sense of justice they were now vainly appealing. There was one touch of eloquence that was not written down. Just after the first paragraph Washington was forced to pause, take out his spectacles, and put them on. As he did so he observed to his men that they must wait a moment, for he had grown gray in their service, and now he was growing blind. The sore and bitter and stormy hearts grew warm, and beat quietly once more. There have been many great speeches delivered by great orators, but it would not be easy to select one greater than this of Washington to his army. They yielded to him like children to a father, and the tide was turned. Gen¬ eral Knox spoke next, and old-Israel Putnam ; and resolutions were offered and adopted expressing love for and confidence in their commander, and all the patriotic patience he had asked for. The crisis was past, and, as time went on, Congress mastered the GEORGE WASHINGTON. 269 difficulties it was under, and did fair justice to both officers and soldiers. The final cessation of hostilities was announced to the army in general orders dated the 19th of April. It was the eighth anniversary of the battle of Lex¬ ington. The commander-in-chief had still upon his hands the closing duties of the war. These included con¬ ferences with Sir Guy Carleton as to posts and places and property to be surrendered under the provisions of the treaty of peace, and other matters connected with the great fact that the British fleet and army were to go away. Innumerable details of public and personal anxieties came up from day to day, as the American army prepared to break up and go home. Its officers organized themselves into the “ Society of the Cincinnati/’ with the man whom they called the “American Cincinnatus ” at its head. It was true that Washington was a farmer, but he was not exactly to return to his plough. The only mutinous conduct of troops while dis¬ banding was on the part of some new recruits in Philadelphia, and the veterans put them down. On the 8th of June Washington addressed a letter to the governors of the several States. Its nominal subject was the dissolution of the army, the claims of the soldiers to the gratitude of their own States, and his own retirement from the all but dictatorial power conferred upon him. It was really a letter of sound and statesmanlike advice to the whole coun¬ try. It was so full of patriotism and wisdom that it 270 GEORGE WASHINGTON . is not easy to quote from it ; but he spoke of four things as pillars of the new nationality of which liberty was to be the basis : “ First, an indissoluble union of the States, under one federal head, etc. ; second, a sacred regard to public justice in discharg¬ ing debts, etc. ; third, a proper peace establishment of the militia ; fourth, an abandonment by the peo¬ ple of local prejudices and policies.” No one will now deny that the country would have saved much blood and money by observing carefully these four conditions of prosperity. This duty done, and a host of others, great and small, it became apparent that all men who wished something especial done for them were crowding to headquar¬ ters. It was wisdom to refuse impossibilities that possible duties should not suffer. Besides, it was time to rest a little, and the memories of the long years of the war came trooping into Washington’s mind with a strong invitation. They asked him to go and take a look at some of the places made memorable by other events of the struggle for liberty than those which he had shared in. He invited General Clinton, of the old Continentals, who came out first and had never left him, and who was now Governor of New York, to go with him. They went up the Hudson, past the fortifications which had held it so long, to Albany ; thence to the scenes of Burgoyne’s battles and surrender near Saratoga ; thence through Lake George to Ticonderoga and Crown Point. Coming back to Albany, they went up the Mohawk to Fort Schuyler, and out across country to the headwaters of the Susquehanna and GEORGE WASHINGTON . 271 Otsego Lake. Washington studied all with the eyes of a statesman as well as general, and wrote about “ our system of inland navigation ” as if he had al¬ ready thought of the Erie Canal. Soon after his return it was necessary, November 2d, 1783, for him to issue his farewell address to his disbanding army ; and most of them had little else to carry home with them except their arms and accoutrements. It was a solemn time, for there was no private sol¬ dier who did not have ties to sever and friends to part with. Pay in full had not yet come, nor re¬ wards of any sort, and there were hardships in store. Sadly they grounded their arms in a last review, and sadly they responded to the farewell of their be¬ loved commander. The British army evacuated New York City on the 25th of November, and as their last detachment entered its boats, a body of American troops took possession. Washington came with them over the very roads along which he had so stormily retreated years before. As he intended to set out, on the 4th of December, for Annapolis, Maryland, where Con¬ gress was to meet, the officers of the army assem¬ bled on that day in a large room of Fraunce’s tavern to bid him good-by. When they had gathered and he had entered the room, he filled a glass with wine, and said to them : “ With a heart full of love and gratitude I now take leave of you, most devoutly wishing that your latter days may be as prosperous and happy as your former ones have been glorious and honorable.” He drank the wine, but he could talk no more. 272 GEORGE WASHINGTON. He exclaimed : “ I cannot come to each of you to take my leave, but shall be obliged if each of you will come and take me by the hand.” Knox was nearest, and stepped forward ; but the commander-in-chief, with hot tears on his face, did more than shake hands—he put his arms around him. So he did as the others came, and neither he nor they could utter a word. All in silence they fol¬ lowed him out to the water’s edge, and when he had entered the barge and raised his hat in a last salute, they returned it silently, and he was rowed away. CHAPTER XXVIII. Washington s Resignation as Commander-in-Chief .— Bright Days at Mount Vernon. —hiternal Improve¬ ment Schemes.—The Constitutional Convention .— Elected President Unanimously.—A Triumphal Pro¬ cession.—A Grand Inaugural. The adjustment of Washington's accounts with the national treasury included no claim for pay, and he never received a dollar for his eight years of ser¬ vice. He was repaid only his actual outlays, of which he had kept an accurate account of all but a few small sums. The amount paid him was four¬ teen thousand five hundred pounds. On the 20th of December, 1783, he wrote to the President of Congress asking in what manner he should surrender his commission. There were many reasons why it was best that he should do so public¬ ly, and noon of the 23d was named as the time for the ceremonial. It is noteworthy that the Members of Congress sat with their hats on, in token that they represented the sovereignty of the nation, while all the public officers, generals, and others pres¬ ent were bareheaded. The galleries of the hall were thronged with ladies, and they filled all vacant spaces on the floor. As soon as Washington was seated, the presiding officer, General Mifflin, arose and said to him that “ the United States, in Congress assem- 274 GEORGE V/A SITING TON. bled, were prepared to receive his communications. ” It might almost have been added that so also was Europe, for there were numbers of people on the other side of the Atlantic who did not yet believe that he would so quietly surrender his authority. His address in resigning his commission was brief, dignified, and earnest, and General Mifflin, in reply, spoke eloquently and enthusiastically of the manner in which the duties of that great commission had been discharged. Washington left Annapolis the next morning, and reached Mount Vernon on Christmas Eve. It was a winter of such uncommon severity that he was at once snow-bound. He could not even go to visit his mother, and there was all the more chance for repose because people could not so easily come to see him. His letters show that it was some time before he could put away army habits of anxious thought and broken sleep, and realize that he was once more a Virginia farmer. His plantation needed his care, for it had been running down somewhat in his ab¬ sence. The Pennsylvania Legislature proposed that Congress should make some provision for an increase of his income, but he promptly refused to give up the cherished honor of having served without pay. He also refused all requests for the use of his papers for historical or biographical purposes, rightly decid¬ ing that the time had not yet come. He determined to live plainly, and, when the snow melted and the spring brought visitors, they found Mount Vernon conducted in a style of thoroughly republican sim¬ plicity. Mrs. Washington combined dignity with GEORGE WASHINGTON. 2 75 simplicity as perfectly as did her husband. When, however, it was remarked that she had an inveterate habit of knitting, the explanation came that she had acquired it during the long days and evenings of the war, when she was sitting alone and thinking of him in camp—winter evenings, for instance, when his men were starving around him at Valley Forge or among the Hudson Highlands. One of the early experiences of Washington’s re¬ tirement was the frequent arrival of tidings that one or another of his old comrades had passed away. The list began sadly with his trusted friend General Greene, and it rapidly grew longer. While in the army he had directed the manage¬ ment of his estate by means of maps, field by field, as if he were ordering the movements of troops at a distance. He found that crops under the care of in¬ capable overseers were very much like detachments under incompetent officers: both were all the more successfully handled when the master-hand was nearer. There was much correspondence to be attended to upon both private and public affairs, for the nation refused to permit its first citizen to retire al¬ together and at once into obscurity. The Marquis de Lafayette came to spend the latter half of the next August at Mount Vernon, and he was but one of the most welcome in a long catalogue of distin¬ guished visitors. When autumn came a fit of cam¬ paigning fever drew the old soldier into the woods again. Washington and his old friend, Dr. Craik, who had been with him in Braddock’s and several 276 GEORGE WASHINGTON . other campaigns, mounted their horses and once more rode out over Braddock’s Road. The In¬ dians in the Ohio country were too much dis¬ turbed to let them venture farther than the Monon- gahela in that direction. They therefore went on up that river and came back through the Shenandoah Valley, having ridden six hundred miles. All the way, coming and going, Washington made observa¬ tions and took notes of the nature of the country, and especially of the capacity of its water-courses, for improvement with reference to internal naviga¬ tion. He studied and wrote and talked concerning the future of the Mississippi Valley and the commer¬ cial uses of the great lakes, as if foreseeing the vast things which his fellow-citizens would yet accom¬ plish. He wrote such a letter on the subject to Governor Harrison, of Virginia, that it was laid be¬ fore the legislature, and measures were at once pro¬ posed with reference to the share of that State in the proposed improvements. Then he went to Rich¬ mond, which had become the capital. He was re¬ ceived with every token of respect, and the ideas he advanced were such as could never be put aside. Lafayette joined him at Richmond, and returned to Mount Vernon with him for another visit. When it was over, and the marquis set out to return to France, Washington accompanied him all the way to Annapolis, affectionately expressing his extreme aversion to a parting which would probably be for¬ ever. In a letter afterward written he spoke even gloomily of the probable shortness of his life and of the days of youth that had gone by, not to come GEORGE WASHINGTON. 277 again. He afterward wrote and worked with such energy in the cause of internal improvement that when the State of Virginia took the matter up and organized companies for practical operations, the legislature unanimously voted him about forty thou¬ sand dollars' worth of shares of the stock of those companies. These he refused to receive except as trustee for certain public charities to which he de¬ voted them, still in peace as in war preferring to serve without pay. His diary and his letters during the following years show how heartily he farmed and how rooted was his love of horses, cattle, sheep, all domestic animals, and of every seed and shrub and tree. He made the grounds of Mount Vernon beautiful. His love of field sports still clung to him, and he rode after hounds vigorously, but perhaps not quite as reck¬ lessly as when, a mere boy, he had won the good¬ will of Lord Fairfax by his perfect horsemanship. The steadily increasing pile of his correspondence compelled him to keep a private secretary, for it seemed as if all men wrote to him. Artists came to paint his portrait in such numbers as to be an annoy¬ ance, and so is some of their work to this day. The State of Virginia employed the artist Houdon to make a statue of him that now stands in the State House at Richmond. The two children of John Parke Custis looked upon Washington as “ grandfather,” and made his home brighter for him ; and it was now found that he could laugh as heartily as ever. In his younger days he had been very fond of dancing, and now he 278 GEORGE WASHINGTON . could put aside his war-worn dignity and actually go in with young people for a frolic—if they would let him. The trouble was that young and old looked up to him with such excessive reverence that his presence sometimes acted as a suppression of the very fun he desired to join in. These years were a sort of formation time for the new country, and the people were slow in making up their minds as to what sort of a nation they de¬ sired to be. It grew more and more plain that the old federation was a mere makeshift which could not last, and there was great danger that it would fall to pieces before a better one could be devised and put into operation. Washington's anxiety upon this subject led him into a wide correspondence with leading men all over the country, and he had a vast influence in producing the result. It was decided to hold, in Philadelphia, a convention of delegates from all the States, to make a new and stronger Government. As a matter of course, Washington was chosen to head the Virginia delegation. Equally as a matter of course he was unanimously chosen President of the Convention when it came together. This was on the 25th of May, 1787, and for four months they toiled daily, until they had agreed upon the Constitution. They delivered the finished work to Congress, and Congress sent it out to the several States for ratification. Washington returned to Mount Vernon when his work was finished, and the people took it up in a long and heated discus¬ sion. It provided for a close Union and a strong Government, and many of the most ardent patriots GEORGE WASHINGTON. 279 joined with those whose motives were merely “ sec¬ tional ” in opposing it. Its friends were called Federalists and its enemies Anti-Federalists, and the process of ratification went on doubtfully and slowly. At last a sufficient number of States formally approved the Constitution, and then, on the 13th of September, 1788, Congress appointed the first Wednesday of January, 1789, as the day on which the people should choose their first Presidential elect¬ ors. These were to meet and choose a President and Vice-President on the first Wednesday in Feb¬ ruary, and the new Government was to take con¬ trol of the nation on the first Wednesday of March and in the city of New York. A voice came up from every corner of the land naming George Washington as the people’s choice for President. When the electors finally acted, and their vote for him was unanimous, they did but ex¬ press the universal will and the expectation of other nations. He knew that he must take up the burden put upon him, but he dreaded it exceedingly. No other man knew so well what anxieties and responsibili¬ ties were included in the high honor offered him. He was formally notified of his election by General Mifflin, President of Congress, on the 14th of April, and he at once set out for New York. Now began a triumphal progress which was of less importance, as a recognition of past services than as an assurance of popular support in the great work beginning. From the hour when his neighbors gathered in Alexandria to bid their great friend fare- 2?o GEORGE WASHINGTON . well to the hour when he reached New York, his journey was one long ovation. He had bidden his aged mother a last farewell. He had sacrificed his peaceful pursuits and happy home at Mount Vernon, and the men and women and children arose to bless him for all he had given up for them. They felt that the clouds upon their own hopes were drifting away if this man, whom they trusted, would take and keep control of national affairs. All along the road the crowds gathered, the bells rang madly, and the cannon pealed salutes of honor ; houses were illumi¬ nated, and bonfires blazed at night ; arches spanned the way, and young girls strewed flowers in his path, and decorated barges waited for him. It was a tes¬ timonial unequalled in history, and the world read the account of it with wonder. The ovation culmi¬ nated in the thundering salutes of the shipping in New York Harbor, and from that day onward the stern realities of the first Presidency settled upon the shoulders of the one man who could bear them. Congress had wisely decided that the new chief magistrate should have no such title as “ His Excel¬ lency/’ but should be simply the President of the United States. They had provided, however, that the inauguration ceremonies should be as stately as possible. The oath of office was administered in a balcony in front of the Senate Chamber, by the Chancellor of the State of New York, before a vast multitude. Washington was very plainly dressed. His suit was of American cloth, dark brown through¬ out, and his dress sword had a plain steel hilt. He wore white silk stockings and silver shoe-buckles. GEORGE WASHINGTON. 281 He took the oath reverently, stooping down to kiss the open Bible before him, and the chancellor stepped forward, waving his hand and shouting : “ Long live George Washington, President of the United States !” A flag went up on the cupola of the building as a signal, and, as the people shouted their response, the bells of the city joined them, and all the cannon thundered an 44 amen.” Washington bowed to the throng before him and retired from the balcony to the Senate Chamber, where he delivered his in¬ augural address to both Houses of Congress. CHAPTER XXIX. Washington s First Presidential Term.—Questions of Ceremonial.—A Dangerous Illness .— War with the Western Indians.—Presidential Tours North and South.—Citizen Genet. The new Government was in secure operation from the moment that George Washington had taken the oath of office. He had as yet no Cabinet, and all the machinery of administration was to be created or readjusted. Two States — Rhode Island and North Carolina—were yet to assent to the Constitu¬ tion. There were disputes with Great Britain as to the northern boundary and the posts she still re¬ tained upon the lakes. There were troublesome people—French and Spaniards and Americans— intriguing in the Mississippi Valley. There were vexed questions of territorial rights between the States themselves in several places. There was to be a vast amount of legislative activity demanded of Congress, and the President was to exercise a powerful influence upon that body. His views upon any subject were sure to have great weight, even when a majority might be found against him. All this and more is true ; but in following the course of events during the Presidential terms of Washington, no new light whatever is thrown upon his personal character. Of him, as of few other men, it could be GE OR GE IVA SUING TON. 283 truly said that at this hour he v/as a ripe and finished character, known and read by all men. He was so well understood, in fact, that all the virulence of political slander assailed him in vain. It did assail him with all manner of vile and stupid vitupera¬ tion ; but the mud thrown did not stick. It is hardly of interest to anybody at this day to know that this man or that man abused General Washington. What is noteworthy is that it was equally unimpor¬ tant then, and that, after four years of troubled and vexatious administration, a second College of Elect¬ ors unanimously chose him a second time. The events of Washington’s first term of office, of a strictly political nature, require a thorough study of the times and of the structure of the Gov¬ ernment for their comprehension. The arguments and struggles of the Federalists and Anti-Federalists do not belong here. Neither does the manner in which the public credit was built up, nor do the measures taken to protect and develop commerce with foreign nations. The President called around him a staff of men of wonderful ability, and to them as much as to him is due the marvellous mass of ad¬ ministrative work so well and so rapidly performed. Congress also was full of men of patriotic sincerity and high intellectual endowment, as the course of its legislation testifies. Throughout the country there was a strong and growing jealousy of any feature of dress or equipage or ceremonial, public or private, which seemed in conflict with the idea of the absolute equality of all men. It was a time of the breaking down of social 284 GEORGE WASHINGTON. distinctions, and the question of the etiquette belong¬ ing to the dignity of President was of political as well as of personal importance. It was quickly discov¬ ered that rules of some kind there must be, if the President was to get time to eat and sleep and read his letters and dispatches. John Adams and John Jay and Alexander Hamilton were all taken into counsel, and with their help the problem was solved and the business and social affairs of the Executive Mansion were regulated after a style which is but little changed to the present day. A great deal of practical help was obtained from Mrs. Washington herself, who arrived in New York on the 17th of May, with two of her grandchildren, after a journey brilliantly lined with public testimonials of affection and respect. She did not propose to stay at home and do any more lonely knitting, and she was ad- ' mirably qualified to sustain her part of the new dig¬ nity. It was simply impossible to give entire satisfaction to all. Some there were who did not receive invita¬ tions to Presidential dinners and receptions, and deemed themselves injured by a too aristocratic ex¬ clusiveness. Some there were whose tastes were formed by associations with European courts or by ideas of foreign grandeur, and were not gratified by so quiet a style of living for the ruler of a great people. Very large was the number who objected to the elegance of Lady Washington’s carriages and horses and the number and livery of her servants. All this, however, was but little in comparison to the jealousy with which fanatical democracy and ex- GEORGE WASHINGTON. 285 treme republicanism watched for every sign of auto¬ cratic exercise of the President’s power, for it was soon well understood that his authority was a great deal more than nominal. The limits and barriers of that authority were by no means well understood. The new Government was truly an experiment with¬ out any precedent in history, and men did well and wisely to watch its every working with zealous care. As time went on it became evident that there had been much wisdom given to the men who framed the complicated machinery and to the man who was directing them now in bringing it all into working order. There was an unexpected break in the first toils of the President, and it was of enormous value to him and to the country. He was toiling over a mass of papers which he had caused to be collected that he might better know the exact condition of all public affairs when he was suddenly prostrated by a violent attack of anthrax. There were no tele¬ graphs, but every man and woman in the United States was speedily in anxious waiting to learn if George Washington were yet alive. They were compelled also to study their own minds as to the probable loss to themselves if he were then to be taken away. The nearly unanimous verdict was that if he would but live he might generally have his own way. The Senate rejected one of his nomina¬ tions somewhat carelessly while he was convalescing, but was very prompt in confirming his next nominee. His sufferings while sick were very great, and he was at one time threatened with mortification and speedy 286 GEORGE WASHINGTON . death. His physician, Dr. Bard, was one day alone in the room with him. Steadily looking the doc¬ tor in the face, Washington asked him his opinion. “ Do not flatter me with vain hopes/’ he said ; “I am not afraid to die, and therefore can bear the worst.” Dr. Bard told him his fears, but expressed a hope of recovery. ” Whether to-night or twenty years hence makes no difference,” said the sufferer; “I know that I am in the hands of a good Providence.” He regained health slowly. For six weeks he was compelled to lie upon his right side. Even after he could ride out, he had to do so at full length, in a carriage contrived for the purpose. He was yet in a feeble state when he received intelligence of the death of his mother, at Fredericksburg, Virginia. She was eighty-two years of age, and he had not expected to see her again, yet he could not but feel deeply the snapping of such a tie. She had been a mother worthy of all the love and veneration he had given her, and his preparation for his great useful¬ ness had been begun by her. Day by day the new Government took form. The judiciary was organized, with John Jay as Chief- Justice. The Treasury Department promised finan¬ cial strength with Alexander Hamilton as Secretary. General Knox was already in charge of military affairs, and was made Secretary of War. Edmund Randolph became Attorney-General. In due sea¬ son Thomas Jefferson accepted the post of Secre¬ tary of State, in spite of the extreme republican views which he brought home with him from France. GEORGE WASHINGTON . That country, where Jefferson had for some time officially represented the United States, was now passing through the long agony of its own bloody Revolution, and Europe believed that America was responsible. The ages of tyranny under which the French people had been ground to the earth had more to do with it, but the example of America had encouraged them to rise, and they had no Washing¬ ton, nor any men to make a Congress of, nor any “ old Continentals so they did what they did, and the new time that came was incomparably bet¬ ter than the old. In October of that autumn old war memories, as well as a desire to know more of the present condi¬ tion of the people, led the President to make a tour of the Eastern States. He was absent from New York nearly a month', and all the way to Boston and the sea coast of Massachusetts and back through the middle country, travelling in his own carriage with four horses, the people made it one long celebration. It was sound statesmanship so to go among them, for they were strongly “ sectional,” and sometimes thought of even him as ” a Virginian.” It is now customary for the President to send his messages to Congress in writing, but when Congress again came together, on the 4th of January, 1790, Washington opened the session in person, reading his address to them in the Senate Chamber. It was somewhat as if he had been an English king address¬ ing Parliament. His recommendations took a wide range, and called for an amount of legislation likely to give them an active session. 288 GEORGE WASHINGTON . It was especially urged that the national Govern¬ ment should not only provide for its own war debt, but should assume those of the several States ; and this, after much demur, was finally done. As a matter of course, there were two parties forming throughout the country and in Congress, and the extreme “social equality” men had no better representative than Thomas Jefferson, while the “ strong government” men had none better than Alexander Hamilton. Both of these leaders were members of Washington’s Cabinet, and were watching each other jealously. All men at that day were also watching the course of the French Revo¬ lution, while Lafayette, in the very heat of it, sat down to write letters to Washington lamenting that he could not have the daily counsel of his old leader. The ever-present “ Indian question ” was brought up, in the fall of 1790, by the Indian tribes of the Wabash and Miami rivers, who now found them¬ selves on the edge of the advancing tide of civiliza¬ tion. They made it necessary for the President to send a force of nearly fifteen hundred regulars and militia against them, under General Harmer. The red men had good reason to feel that they had defeated this expedition, although it did some hard fighting. The next autumn a still stronger force, under General St. Clair, fared even worse, and it became evident that the young nation had one war upon its hands which could not cease until all the lands to the westward should be fenced in and occupied. Having inspected the Northern States in one year, GEORGE lFA SHINGTON\ 289 it was equally a matter of duty to inspect the Southern the next ; but it could not be done so rapidly. Washington set out from Philadelphia in March, 1791. Congress had decided that the seat of Government should for ten years be in that city, and that during that time public buildings should be erected upon some site along the Potomac. The States of Maryland and Virginia had joined in ceding the tract afterward called the “ District of Colum¬ bia,” but the present city of Washington was as yet open fields. The tour of the President lasted nearly three months, ending at Savannah, Georgia, going and coming by different roads. It was a journey of eighteen hundred and eighty-seven miles, with good weather all the way, no accidents, nothing that was disagreeable ; and all the people came out to do honor to the man they loved. Philadelphia was nearer to Mount Vernon than New York had been, and a few weeks of that autumn could be spent at home, looking after the affairs of the estate ; but Congress met again in October, and the President was there to deliver the opening speech. Only a few weeks later there came to him a blow that roused him terribly. He had trusted General St. Clair, as a veteran officer of tried ability ; but his last words to him on sending him into the Indian country had been : “ Beware of a surprise.” St. Clair had forgotten or had failed, and six hun¬ dred of his men had been butchered by the savages in an ambuscade. The first news came to the Presi¬ dent in person by a messenger who dismounted in 290 GEORGE WASHINGTON. front of the house while all were at dinner. He re¬ fused to deliver his errand, written or spoken, to the private secretary who came out to see him, but said that he had dispatches for the President in person from the army in the West. The President arose from the table and went out and received the mes¬ senger, and returned and finished his dinner, and no one supposed that anything great had occurred, so perfect was his self-control. There was a ‘ ‘ drawing¬ room ” that evening, and Mrs. Washington led her guests away from the table, and her husband with them, to spend the evening sociably. By ten o’clock the company had gone, and she went to her room, leaving only Mr. Lear, the private secretary, with the President. The two took seats on a sofa by the fire, but self-control was worn out, and the wrath and grief of Washington broke forth vehemently. He exclaimed, still sitting : “ It’s all over ! St. Clair’s defeated ! Routed ! The officers nearly all killed—the men by wholesale. The rout complete—too shocking to think of—and a surprise into the bargain !” He arose and walked up and down the room, the storm within him raging yet more fiercely, till he paused near the door : “ Yes ! Here ! On this very spot I took leave of him ! I wished him suc¬ cess and honor. ‘ You have your instructions from the Secretary of War,’ said 1 . ‘I had a strict eye to them, and will but add one word—Beware of a sur¬ prise ! You know how the Indians fight us. I re¬ peat it, Beware of a surprise ! ’ He went off with that, my last warning, thrown into his ears. And GEORGE WASHING TON. 291 yet to suffer that army to be cut to pieces, hacked, butchered, tomahawked, by a surprise — the very thing I guarded him against ! 0 God ! O God ! He's worse than a murderer ! How can he answer it to his country ! The blood of the slain is upon him—the curse of widows and orphans—the curse of Heaven 1 ” He gesticulated earnestly, and his voice was shaken by his terrible agitation ; but he slowly recovered the mastery of his feelings, and sat down. After awhile he calmly enjoined upon Mr. Lear to keep silence as to the passionate outbreak, and added that he would hear St. Clair's own account of the matter without prejudice, and see that justice should be done him. There was always fire enough under the Presi¬ dent's calm and dignified exterior, and his heart was as warm as when he had wept and prayed over his own military errors. There was also even greater reason now for the most thorough self-repression, and he practised it continually. He kept his word, and did perfect justice to St. Clair, who had not been altogether in fault ; but he sent “ Mad Anthony Wayne " in command of the next expedition against the red men. The first exercise of the veto power sent back for amendment, as being unconstitutional, the first bill for the apportionment of Members of the House of Representatives ; and, on reflection, Congress agreed with the President Washington’s next visit to Mount Vernon occurred in May, when all the country he loved was in its most attractive condition to the eye of a genuine 292 GEORGE WASHINGTON . farmer. He had been wearied and perplexed by bitter dissensions in his Cabinet, by the bad-tem¬ pered debates in Congress, by the virulence of party newspapers, and he had already expressed his ear¬ nest desire for rest. It needed now only a look at the green fields around Mount Vernon to make him sit down and write a letter to Mr. Madison, asking friendly advice. He wished to settle wisely and well the form and method of announcing to the country his purpose of retiring from public service at the end of his present term of office. He even asked Mr. Madison to write a valedictory address for him. The reply did credit to Madison’s good sense. He did not oppose directly, but he urged the need of Washington at the head of the national councils, and expressed his hope that he would remain. Thomas Jefferson, with whom he had spoken upon the same subject, wrote to him a long and eloquent remonstrance, which did not reach him till after re¬ turning to Philadelphia. He plainly told Washing¬ ton that if he were to leave office at that time the country would go to pieces. “ N orth a nd South,” he said, “ will hang together if they have you to hang^on. " ” Alexander Hamilton, head of the oppo¬ site faction in politics, took precisely the same view of the matter, and wrote as earnestly as did Jeffer¬ son. Edmund Randolph wrote him concerning “ the jeopardy of the Union,” and its only hope in Washington’s re-election. The voices of other able and patriotic men joined entreatingly, warningly, with these, and the voice of Mount Vernon had to be turned away from. Sadly, wearily, reluctantly, GEORGE WASHINGTON. 293 Washington consented to toil for four years more. There was no opposition at the polls, no adverse ballot in the Electoral College, and John Adams was once more chosen Vice-President. This time the oath of office was not administered in the open air, but in the Senate Chamber, before such members of both houses as were then in the city, and a brilliant gathering of foreign ministers and of civil and military officials and ladies. The news from France was now growing darker, and Washington’s mind was not so constituted that he could regard lawless and cruel massacres with al¬ lowance. He sent to Lafayette, now in exile, a sum of money equal to about a thousand dollars, deli¬ cately insisting that he was somehow indebted to him for at least that sum. He did well to regard with dread and aversion the reckless insanity of the wild spirits now at the head of French affairs. They had driven from them such men as Lafayette, the friend of America and of Washington, but deemed themselves entitled to call upon “ their sister re¬ public ” to join them in their crusade against all monarchies. Early in April, 1793, news came that war had been declared by France against Great Britain and Holland, and there was great excitement every¬ where. It was not so much that Americans were sentimentally in love with France, as is sometimes supposed ; it was rather that the country swarmed with men who had faced British and Hessians m the field, and with women who had fled from homes that were but ashes when King George’s troops had 294 GEORGE WASHINGTON . passed by. The sea-going part of America’s popu¬ lation had been more bitterly and actively anti- British than any other from the beginning, and its first thought now was of privateering. Washington promptly issued a proclamation of neutrality, but the French republic sent over, as Minister to the United States, a hot-headed zealot named Edmund Charles Genet, or “ Citizen Genet,” as he preferred to be called. He was determined to embroil America in war with England, and brought with him no less than three hundred blank commis¬ sions for American privateers. From that time onward there was increasing trouble and commotion. The zeal and impudence of Genet was unbounded, and he had no knowledge of nor reverence for the laws and Constitution of the United States. So large a number of American citizens were almost equally ignorant, and so strong was the feverish excitement against England and in favor of France, that Genet had almost a temporary political party of his own. Washington was fiercely abused for preventing privateering and ior protect¬ ing British neutral rights. One of the vile carica¬ tures printed represented him upon a guillotine, and was labelled “ The Funeral of Washington.” The President was at this time suffering from at¬ tacks of intermittent-fever, not severe, but sufficient to make him more than ordinarily irritable, and these scurrilities affected him unduly. He even lost his temper once or twice, and strongly expressed his wish to be out of office, declaring that he would rather be in his grave than in his present situation. GEORGE WA SHINGTON. 2 95 The arrogance of Genet increased as time went on, until even Jefferson, who had been his friend in the Cabinet, saw that it would be necessary to ask France to recall him. Others preferred to send him away unceremoniously, but the President decided upon moderation. About this time a sea-fight oc¬ curred between the French frigate Ambuscade and the British frigate Boston, in which the latter was worsted. She sailed to Halifax to refit, and the Ambuscade sailed into New York Harbor in triumph, followed by a fleet of fifteen French ships of the line just arrived from the Chesapeake. All the French sympathizers in New York were aroused to a high pitch of excitement, and, in the midst of it, news arrived that Genet also was coming to the city. Bells were rung, cannon were fired, as if for an event of national importance. Crowds gathered, and men and women put on the tri-colored cockade of France, frantically declaring against neutrality. Genet’s head was turned completely, and when, in the midst of his glory, he was informed that France had been asked to recall him, he wrote so crazy a letter to the Secretary of State that it upset his en¬ tire position before the people as soon as its purport was made public. Genet had placed himself in open antagonism with George Washington, and the popu¬ lar heart responded instantaneously. Meetings in support of the Administration were at once held all over the country, and the excitement rapidly cooled away. It would have gone entirely but for the course pursued by Great Britain with reference to holding the fortified posts south of the great lakes 296 GEORGE WASHINGTON . that belonged to the United States, under the terms of the treaty of peace. To this she added a severe blockade of the ports of France against American provision ships, and a frequent impressment of American seamen. In spite of all this, when Con¬ gress came together, on the 2d of December, 1793, although it contained a nominal majority often against the Administration on other points, both houses formally approved of the President’s course in sustaining neutrality. A message from him placed Genet’s conduct fully before them ; but that gentleman had not yet been recalled, and was as mischievously active as ever. Thomas Jefferson re¬ tired from office at this time, having remained a whole year against his will at Washington’s urgency. His last official act was a polite rebuke of Genet, and Edmund Randolph took his place. CHAPTER XXX. War Clouds.—The Whiskey Rebellion. — Wayne's De¬ feat of the Indians.—Political Calumnies.—The Farewell Address.—Home again at Mount Vernon. — The French War Excitement. — The End. JUST as Genet’s intrigues reached a point at which the President had determined to suspend diplomatic relations with him and put him under arrest, his recall by his own Government put an end to the annoyance endured from him. The difficul¬ ties with England continued to grow worse, and the war-spirit was kindled fast among the people as her cruisers grew more insolent and tyrannical. These had now fresh instructions to seize all vessels bound for France or any of her colonies, or carrying their productions from them, and they had captured American vessels enough to stir the blood of the whole nation. Congress declared an embargo pro¬ hibiting all trade from the United States to any other nation for thirty days. That meant England, for she had nearly all of it. Severer measures were under discussion when news came that the British Admiralty had revoked its offensive instructions. The excitement lost something of its intensity, and Washington did all in his power to allay it and to avert so serious a disaster as a foreign war entan¬ gling the United States in European affairs. He 298 GEORGE WASHINGTON. sent John Jay to England as a special envoy con¬ cerning the matters in dispute, and so obtained still further time for the nation to think the matter over. All foreign affairs went on more smoothly thence¬ forward, although they still required careful watch¬ ing. Washington’s determination in favor of peace abroad was steadily successful to the last, but he had a small cloud of war at home. It grew out of the first law providing for an internal revenue by an excise tax upon distilled liquors. The Anti-Federal¬ ists had bitterly opposed the passage of the act, and now, in western Pennsylvania, they arose in arms against its enforcement. They were at first so suc¬ cessful in defeating the slender forces of the excise officers, and felt so strong and so sure of other help, that they paid little attention to two successive proclamations by the President commanding them to keep the peace. There was but one wise course for him to pursue. He had no wish to shoot American citizens, and so he at once marched rapid¬ ly upon them with an army of fifteen thousand men. As the approaching columns concentrated, with Washington in person known to be directing them, the courage of “ the whiskey rebellion” died away, and it was not needful to hurt a single man of them all. With" that uprising also died away the kind of organized lawlessness from which it sprang, and which Washington strongly crfOcTsect rnTnessagesTo _Congress7~which brought upon hlm uhmeasured de¬ nunciation. To the same Congress he was able to report some¬ thing better than St. Clair’s defeat. General Wayne GEORGE WASHINGTON . 299 had built a fort, in 1793, on the very ground where that had occurred, and had named it Fort Recovery. The next summer he pushed on into the Indian country and built another, Fort Defiance. The Indians had gathered about two thousand warriors to contest his further advance, and he attacked them, on the 20th of August, at the Maumee Rapids, within thirty miles of the British post of Fort Miami. Wayne had with him nearly three thousand men, and won the battle at once by a bayonet charge, pursuing the red men, with great slaughter, to within gunshot of the British fort. That done, he laid waste their country thoroughly, and reported to his old commander that he had hopes of their consent¬ ing to keep the peace. With the close of the year 1794 Washington lost from his Cabinet his old friends Knox and Hamil¬ ton, and his letters accepting their resignations show plainly that he felt how all the past was slip¬ ping away from him. There was also in the assaults now making upon him by political enemies an ex¬ treme of bitterness which almost exceeds belief. Newspaper critics pulled in pieces his military record, his fidelity to the Constitution, his good common-sense, and even his personal character. One wild calumniator actually accused him of draw¬ ing from the Treasury more than his salary as Presi¬ dent. An unfortunate expression in a letter written by the French minister, captured by the British and sent to the Secretary of State, led to a troublesome conflict with Mr. Randolph. That gentleman after¬ ward deeply regretted hasty words and actions, but 3 °° GEORGE WASHINGTON. they nevertheless added to the soreness of heart with which the President longed for the end of his term of endurance. It became generally well known that Washington had decided not to serve a third term, but in spite of this he was anxiously urged to do so. He put an end to all doubt or question at last. Carefully consulting with Plamilton, as before with Madison, he wrote out his “ farewell address,” and had it published in the Philadelphia Daily Advertiser in September, 1796, while all parties were getting ready for a heated canvass. The torrent of abuse which had poured upon him subsided in a manner which sufficiently explained its real nature. Several State legislatures ordered the address to be entered in full upon their journals, and when Congress came together it was evident that it contained but a small drop of personal bitterness against the retiring states¬ man. Washington addressed the assembled Houses in a speech which contained several important recom¬ mendations. The existing difficulties with France, which were now assuming perilous proportions, were dwelt upon regretfully ; but his allusion to the fact that his own public career was closing took the form of a prayerful congratulation upon the success which had thus far attended ** t he experiment” of representative government by the people. The reply of the Senate, couched~Tn the warmest terms, was adopted by that body unanimously. That of the House was equally expressive of grati¬ tude and appreciation of the President’s character GEORGE WASHINGTON. 3 oz and services, but certain sentences which approved the wisdom of his administration and expressed re¬ gret at his retirement met with opposition. Twelve members voted to expunge them, while professing their entire accord with the remainder of the reply. In the language of Mr. Giles, of Virginia, they “ hoped the President would be happy in his retire¬ ment, and hoped he would retire/’ Among those who voted to expunge was Andrew Jackson, of Ten¬ nessee, and it was a political marvel that they were but twelve, all told. During the few weeks that remained of his presi¬ dential term, Washington strove to arrange the diffi¬ culties with France, but failed entirely. He also attended to some of the current calumnies in a way which confessed how deeply they had annoyed him ; but he had little need to trouble himself. There was no more partisan use for them, and they died. When the Electoral votes were counted, it was ascer¬ tained that he was to be succeeded by John Adams, of Massachusetts. Thomas Jefferson, of Virginia, had the next highest number of votes, and therefore, as was then the law, was elected Vice-President. During this time Washington wrote many letters to his old friends, and they are all filled with expres¬ sions of weariness. He felt that he had toiled long enough, and was hungry for Mount Vernon and for rest. When the time came for the inauguration of the new President and Vice-President the hall of the House of Representatives was thronged, and a mul¬ titude waited outside of the building. It seemed, 3° 2 GEORGE IVA SUING TON. however, as if all had come to say good-by to the out-going man rather than to honor his successors in power. When all was over, the crowds nearly trampled upon each other, and followed him to the door of his own residence. He made them no spoken address, but he turned around, weeping, and waved them a silent farewell with his hands. A grand banquet was given him that evening, March 4th, and as soon as might be, afterward, he set out with his family for Mount Vernon. With him also went George Washington Lafayette and his tutors, for the young son of the marquis had for some time been pursuing his studies in America, under the especial direction of his father’s old friend. The condition of the estate called loudly for the eye and directing hand of its owner, and both were busy at once. Washington’s letters written at this time show how sincerely and lovingly he returned to the duties and pleasures of farm life, and how pleas¬ ant were all his domestic arrangements. There is a great deal of beauty about those last days at Mount Vernon, but they were not to be many. Neither could he altogether shut out public affairs, for these would come in and disturb the peace of the old patriot, and ask him for his wise counsel. He could not cease to be a power in national affairs. A tide of pilgrimage set in toward Mount Vernon. Foreigners visiting America did not wish to go home without having seen its greatest man. Americans who had seen him desired to see him again, and those who had not were anxious to have and keep a memory of his face. There was genuine hospitality GEORGE IVA SUING TON. ready for all who came, and yet they brought a bur¬ den with them. The star of the household, Miss Nellie Custis, was also almost an anxiety to Mrs. Washington, and the interest taken by the general in her courtships and finally in her marriage was dignifiedly and grand- fatherly romantic. Always fond of young people, he was especially anxious that his somewhat senti¬ mental favorite should be assured of a happy home, and he would not have her too much trammelled or interfered with. It appears that her grandmother was hardly so indulgent. News came of the liberation of Lafayette from Olmutz, and his son went home to join him, bear¬ ing letters of warm friendship and congratulation ; but no news came of peace and good-will between the two republics. The French Directory grew more overbearing, peremptory, and at last unendur- ably insulting. French cruisers captured American vessels on the high seas, and an American ambassador was ordered to leave French territory. A session of Congress was called to consider the matter, and three envoys extraordinary were sent over only to receive the most extraordinary treatment, and come home. It was evident that war was probable, for the entire country was roused to indignation. Presi¬ dent Adams was authorized by Congress to raise a provisional army of ten thousand men. He at once took counsel of Washington, as did other leading men, and then nominated him to the Senate as com¬ mander-in-chief of all forces raised or to be raised. The confirmation was unanimous, and was made the 304 GEORGE WASHINGTON. same day ; and, early in November (1798), Mount Vernon was once more given up. Its owner was in Philadelphia, struggling with a host of difficult ques¬ tions relating to the making of a new army. Not the least of his trials arose from the fact that even the oldest of the revolutionary generals expected to be re-employed with their old relative rank, while Washington knew very well that in case of actual war he must meet the French with young men led by young men. He was too good a general to organize a defeat instead of a victory. So soon as he had sufficiently developed his plans for the new army, if there should be one, he returned to Mount Vernon, and conducted his part of the remaining work by mail. A stream of office-seekers, good and bad, followed him and ate up, as he complained, not only the forage and other supplies of his house¬ keeping, but also his time and strength. There was not to be any actual war with France, for the atti¬ tude assumed by America simplified all diplomatic work, and a peaceful solution of the problem was in due season arrived at. Meantime the pressure upon the time and strength of Washington continued. Mount Vernon was thronged continually, and he was overtaxed. There was a great deal of sunshine there, for an atmosphere of love and reverence for the warm-hearted, faithful old soldier and statesman filled the house. Nellie Custis was by this time engaged to be married to Washington's nephew and especial favorite, Law¬ rence Lewis, and a grand wedding had been arranged for to take place on the 22d of February. GEORGE WASHINGTON. 3°5 Something yet more grand and solemn was to come before that birthday wedding. The com¬ mander-in-chief of the armies of the United States seemed to be in full vigor of health and spirits. He daily attended to the affairs of his estate, “ visiting the outposts " of it, as he said, with watchful care. He received and answered correspondence, and wel¬ comed and dismissed his visitors as usual. Neither he nor any of those around him thought but that long years of earthly usefulness, happiness, and honor were before him. He had even provided that when Nellie should become Mrs. Lewis she and her husband should be his nearest neighbors. On the 12th of December out-door duties were attended to by Washington in snow and rain, as if he had been a young man. The next day he had a sore throat, but he again went out. After his re¬ turn his hoarseness increased, but he refused to take medicine “ for a cold." In the night a chill assailed him, but he would not permit Mrs. Wash¬ ington to disturb anybody. By morning he could hardly speak, and one physician first, and then an¬ other and another, was sent for, but they had no skill to deal with this matter. In the afternoon of that day he asked Mrs. Wash¬ ington to bring him two wills which he had drawn, and he burned one of them. Soon after this was done he said to his private secretary, Mr. Lear : “ I find I am going. My breath cannot last long. I believed from the first that the disorder would prove fatal." He added directions as to various affairs, and from that time forward he did but brave- 306 GEORGE WASHINGTON . ly and calmly await the end, with a constant solici¬ tude for the anxiety and fatigue he was causing those who were attending him. Between ten and eleven o’clock that night he suc¬ ceeded in saying a few words to Mr. Lear, who stood by him, and added, “ Do you understand me ?” “ Yes,” said Mr. Lear. ’Tis well,” whispered the dying man, and in a few minutes more the change came. Mrs. Washington was with him to the last, and sustained the blow with steady fortitude, saying, “ I shall soon follow him. I have no more trials to pass through.” The funeral took place on the 18th of December, with only such ceremonials as the immediate neigh¬ borhood provided. The body was placed in the family vault on the Mount Vernon estate. Military companies, horse, foot and artillery, came from Alexandria. Freemasons, the clergy, all people who could come, made up the sorrowing procession, and minute-guns were fired as it wound away from the house ; but there was a marked simplicity which accorded well with the great life so spent and ended. When the will was opened, it was found to con¬ tain yet further evidence that the strength of George Washington’s character was in the soundness of his heart. All his slaves were to be emancipated upon the death of Mrs. Washington, with full provision for the aged and infirm among them. His kith and kin had been remembered, but he had not forgotten the lowliest of his household. It was a “farewell GE OR GE WA SUING TON. 3° 7 address ” full of wise teaching, but its meaning was sadly forgotten. The nation expressed in many ways its sorrow for its sudden loss. British ships of war lowered their flags to half-mast. The standards of France were draped with crape by order of Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul. From many corners of the earth rose voices of regret. It was not, however, a time for mourning of any real bitterness. The full, rich harvest of an unselfish life had been gathered in its ripeness. An example had been left to the young men of America for all time, for this man gave up all he had, systematically, for his country, loving not himself first, but the commonwealth, under God. \