Washington and His Cabinet.
General Thomas Gage was, in the approaching crisis, made military commander at Massachusetts, as the man most experienced and able to enforce the Parliamentary laws. He had led the advance guard at Braddock’s defeat, had married an American girl and had lived long in the colonies. It would seem that he ought to have known well the character of the colonists. But, he had already advised the King that, “The Americans will be lions only as long as the English are lambs.”
The idea still prevails that there is a lamb-coward always in the presence of a lion-hero. General Gage promised that he would enforce all laws if given five regiments.
As suggested by the Virginia Assembly, “a solemn league and covenant” was circulated throughout the provinces, in which the subscribers bound themselves to cease from all intercourse with Great Britain, from the month of August, until Massachusetts should regain its chartered rights. Furthermore, it was an iron-clad use of the boycott and lock-out. It pledged the signers that they would have no dealings with any one who refused to enter into that compact. This meant that home-principle had to have a method against home-profit. Capital was timidly cowering between what seemed to it as “the devil and the deep sea.”
General Gage declared in a proclamation that the document was illegal and the signers traitors. He planted a force of infantry and artillery on the Boston Common and prepared himself to enforce the edict of the British Parliament and his own judgment. Thus, another high step was taken in the climb to war. The great drama was developing scene by scene that was to bring forth Washington as a warrior, president and statesman, the titular “Father of his Country.”
As we proceed on our historic journey, needed to understand the making of Washington, and his meaning for Americans, we are now approaching his first appearance as a leader. This comes to pass after he decides that every resource and means have been used in vain for justice toward the colonies.
On July 18, 1773, a meeting of Fairfax County was held, with Washington as the presiding officer, to discuss their attitude toward the English government and its methods toward the colonies. This general meeting of protest was held immediately after Washington’s return from the session of the House of Burgesses at Williamsburg.
As Chairman of the committee on resolutions, he had probably much, if not all, to do with the language used, and it is significant, that the resolutions ended with a phrase which contained the threat of independence through war. They called on the King to reflect that “from our Sovereign there can be but one appeal.” This shows the idea that was in Washington’s mind for he had already decided, as shown by his letters, that the King could not be changed, and, therefore, that the only appeal was to be made to the higher authority of right through the might of war.
Washington was now entering heart and soul into the great controversy. He was chosen as a delegate from the county to the colony meeting at Williamsburg on the first of August, 1773.
The Virginia delegates assembled at the capital as planned. Washington presented the resolution adopted by his county and made a fervid address in its support. It is said he declared himself ready to raise a thousand men at his own expense, and march at their head to the relief of Boston. It is safe to say that if Washington and Patrick Henry could have lived through to 1861, there would have been no Civil War, or even if the Spirit of Washington and Henry could have lived in the hearts of the people.
The Virginia convention adopted resolutions based on the Fairfax resolution, and Washington with six others, destined to become famous in American history, were appointed delegates to the General Congress, that was to meet in Philadelphia.
The high-handed measures against Boston had ruined that town. The rich became poor and the poor were at the verge of starvation, but there was no outcry. The silent misery and calm determination were a puzzle to the General who could not subdue such opposition with cannon. The people went in crowds to hear their speakers placidly arguing the conditions. There was no excuse to order the people to disperse, so that Gage found it necessary to have a law passed that the people should not assemble to discuss government affairs. But the whole problem had now taken on a larger form. On September 5, 1774, delegates from all the colonies, excepting Georgia, met in Carpenter’s Hall, Philadelphia.
Patrick Henry and Edmund Pendleton came on to Mount Vernon, and from there the three giants of moral rights and human liberty rode on together to the meeting, affecting so deeply the eternal meaning of America.
When the question arose in the meeting concerning the voting of delegates, some colonies having more than others, Patrick Henry, with his fiery zeal, declared any idea of sectional distinctions or local interests to be absurd.
“All America,” he cried, “is thrown into one mass. Where are your landmarks—your boundaries of colonies? They are all thrown down. The distinction between Virginians, Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers, and New Englanders, are no more. I am not a Virginian but an American.”
What a great pity that eighty-six years later, the patriotism of Patrick Henry could not have been felt, and the one great horror of American history would then never have occurred.
The first General Assembly in the history of the New World came together in great solemnity. They felt that it should be opened by some religious service, and yet, they feared to introduce religious antagonism, for it was a period when religious controversies were often more extreme and bitter than any political controversies.
Then Samuel Adams of reverend fame arose and said, “I shall willingly join in prayer with any gentleman of piety and virtue, whatever might be his cloth, provided he is a friend of his country.”
Samuel Adams was a very rigorous Congregationalist, but religion with him had no claims that did not include justice and patriotism. He nominated the Reverend Mr. Duche of Philadelphia, who was an Episcopalian, to open the session with prayer.
The reverend Duche appeared in his canonicals attended by his clerk. He read the morning service of the Episcopal church. The Psalter for that day of the month, the seventh, included the thirty-fifth Psalm. The central idea of the Psalm was that of the Assembly.
“Plead my cause, O Lord, with them that strive with me; fight against them that fight against me. Take hold of shield and buckler, and stand up for my help. Draw out, also, the spear, and stop the way of them that persecute me.”
It is said that when the assembly was organized and ready for the introduction of their momentous business, that a long, deep, death-like silence fell upon them. Every one hesitated to begin. The sense of inaction was becoming oppressive when Patrick Henry arose. Such a great occasion was suitable to his eloquence and when he sat down amidst the murmurs of astonishment and the shouts of applause, he was conceded to be the greatest orator in America.
This history-making convention had fifty-one delegates and it remained in session fifty-one days. The meetings were held in secret, and it is now unknown the part that Washington took in it, but, when Patrick Henry returned home, he was asked who was the most powerful councillor in the convention, and he unhesitatingly said, “Washington.”
That Washington foresaw the course of events may be readily gathered from a letter he wrote at this time to a very close friend, Captain Robert Mackenzie, who had severely criticised the colonies from the British point of view. Like too many who are now charged with the destiny of the great American republic by their votes, Mackenzie could reason only on the visible results, and could not give any attention to the causes of the events. He had no spiritual valuation. He could reason only from material interests. Washington closed a very emphatic and radical letter to him with the warning and prophecy, “and give me leave to add, as my opinion, that more blood will be spilled on this occasion, if the ministry are determined to push matters to extremity, than history has ever yet furnished instances of in the annals of North America.”
England had been what might be termed good to the Southern colonies. As for harsh measures, the worst from a political point of view was in dissolving the Virginia legislatures. The Southern Colonies were under the business management of descendants from the royalist cavaliers who had been driven from England by the forefathers of the descendants making up the colonies of New England. There was thus an inherited tradition of antagonism, which many well-meaning patriots assume as their basis of justice and judgment. Political welfare must be estimated from present conditions. Avengers of the ancient wrong want to punish history rather than make history. They assume that it is better to begin with what was than with what is. But in the common need, all such differences were forgotten. The differences were remembered only by the great grand-children of the revolutionary heroes.
The Northern Colonies and the Southern Colonies were, true enough, antagonistic in their origin, entirely opposite in the social differences between the severe Puritan and the aristocratic Cavalier, and worse than all, they were antagonistic in their religion, the North being many kinds of dissenters, and the South, in its governing classes, being Episcopalian. Their social, religious and material interests never had been the same, and they had little in common even in the French and Indian wars. This outline contrast is given to show how the question, especially for the South, was not material profit or of opposition to oppression from force, but was the expression of an American Ideal uniting all minds, as a meaning for the equal rights of all in our humanity. It shows that there is an ideal of human rights that has the allegiance of human hearts above all considerations of flattery, or coertion, or for any of the thousands of considerations that may cause an individual judgment or fix the will. There may be amazing differences in personal and party interests, but there can be none, even in the varieties of intelligence or conditions, when it comes to the rights to freedom in the views of genuine Americans. Only partisans attack the motives of persons who are trying to advance human liberty and peace according to the duties and rights of civilization. By such signs shall ye know them and beware. They are not Americans and their moral deformity is the peril of America. The real idealist lives the vision of moral order, not only for his group, but for all the world. The moral law for each and all is our idealism of the universe.
England could not manage its American colonial interests because the government had no ideal of the colonies beyond that of a commercial business, and the colonies could not handle the interests of England in America because each colony was a separate organization having political interests together in common only in the British Parliament. On that account they never felt together, except as their mutual interest in Parliament was injured. Notice this fundamental origin of social union, and see how it had to be wrangled over from the close of the Revolutionary War in 1781, to the adoption of the Constitution, and the election of a president under it in 1789. And even then, a fundamental origin for social interests, and, therefore, of patriotism, was not achieved until a frightful civil war closed the struggle for separate units of interest, as independent sovereignities, in 1865.
Mr. Curtis, an English philosopher-historian, writing about one hundred and fifty years after the beginning of these world-making origins of the American ideal, quotes Doyle’s history referring to the revolt of the colonies, in which it is said, “If the Southern Colonies were to take their full share of interest in the struggle, it was clear that it must not be left to a New England army under a New England general. But we may be sure that the choice, desirable in itself, of a Southern general, was made much easier by the presence of a Southern candidate so specially fitted for the post as Washington. Not indeed that his fitness was or could be as yet fully revealed. Intelligence and public spirit, untiring energy and industry, a fair share of technical skill, and courage almost dangerous in its recklessness,—all these were no doubt perceived by those who appointed Washington. What they could not have foreseen was the patience with which a man of clear vision, heroic bravery, and intense directness, bore with fools and laggards, and intrigues; and the disinterested self-devotion which called out all that was noblest in the national character, which shamed selfish men into a semblance of union. Still less could it have been foreseen that, in choosing a military chief, Congress was training up for the country that civil leader, without whose aid an effective constitution would scarcely have been attained.”
In order to appreciate the difficulties which Washington had to overcome, and therefore to make any just estimate of his character, his patriotism and his services in the cause of political liberty, the conditions in which he worked must be understood. It must not be assumed that he had a united country, a solid backing, and that there was unanimous patriotism sustaining him. To do so would not only be untrue, but it would belittle the almost superhuman task which gave birth to American government, and made possible the final organization through Abraham Lincoln of a land of the free, able to sustain its freedom against all the struggling masteries of the world. To suppose that Washington did his revolutionary work in the midst of reliable patriotism is as erroneous as to suppose that Lincoln did his nation-saving task in the midst of a unanimous North.
There was no such thing as patriotism at the time of Washington, according to the usual definition of patriotism, because there was no geographical territory holding a united people, for whom or for which to feel a national patriotism.
American patriotism, therefore, began in the patriotism for human rights, not thus making “a man without a country,” as patriotism for humanity has been sometimes defined alike by extreme pacifists and extreme militarists, but in the fact that American democracy and humanity are synonymous terms, in all they can mean for the rights of man.
There was then no political country to be patriotic for. There were only colonies. Patrick Henry’s cry, so pathetic in its divine need, and so little true for his fellows as shown in 1861, “I am not a Virginian, I am an American,” rang through the congress at Philadelphia with the thrill of a new vision of human faith, but it was almost a century, through an age of desperate reconstruction, before it could be even approximately called true; before American democracy and humanity could face the warring world, the King-made world, with one meaning, one service and one moral law.
John Adams, of indisputable authority, tells us that more than a third of the property owners and men of affairs, were opposed to the revolution throughout the war.
Lecky, in his history of England, declares that an examination of the correspondence of the revolution at any period shows that, “in the middle colonies at least, those who really desired to throw off the English rule were a small and not very respectable minority. The great mass were indifferent, half-hearted, engrossed with their private interests or occupations, prepared to risk nothing till they could clearly foresee the issue of the contest. In almost every part of the States—even in New England itself—there were large bodies of devoted royalists.”
After the war more than a hundred thousand, it is estimated, of irreconciliable royalists were expelled from the colonies.
When General Gage evacuated Boston, more than a thousand royalists from that immediate territory went with him to Halifax, Nova Scotia, so that our American grandmothers, even a hundred years later, when exasperated, would exclaim against their tormentor, with much of the ancient vehemence, “You go to Halifax!”
If we want to appreciate Washington and to understand his wonderful service for mankind, we must understand the difficulties and obstacles he had to overcome. The “Spirit of ’76” belonged at first to only a few inspired souls, who had a wonderful vision of human rights for a new world. Right was might with them and their might-right won the great cause as the immortal “Spirit of ’76.”
General Washington’s description of the conditions are vividly portrayed in a letter to Joseph Reed, from Cambridge, dated November 28, 1775:
“Such a dearth of public spirit, and such a want of virtue, such stock jobbing and such fertility in all the low arts to obtain advantages of one kind or another in this great change of military arrangement I never saw before, and pray God’s mercy that I may never be witness to again. What will be the end of these manœuvers is beyond my scan. I tremble at the prospect. We have been till this time enlisting about three thousand five hundred men. To engage these I have been obliged to allow furloughs as far as fifty men to a regiment, and the officers, I am persuaded, indulge as many more. The Connecticut troops will not be prevailed upon to stay longer than their term, saving those who have enlisted for the next campaign and are mostly on a furlough; and such a mercenary spirit pervades the whole that I should not be at all surprised at any disaster that may happen. In short after the last of this month our lines will be so weakened that the Minute Men and Militia must be called in for their defense; and these being under no kind of government themselves, will destroy the little subordination I have been laboring to establish, and run me into one evil whilst I am endeavoring to avoid another; but the less must be chosen. Could I have foreseen what I have experienced, and am likely to experience, no consideration upon earth would have induced me to accept the command.”
At the meeting of the colonies in congress at Philadelphia in 1774, George the Third saw that it was a conquest of wills and he exclaimed, “The die is cast, the colonies must either submit or triumph.” But even when the British government was sending Hessian mercenaries over against the colonies, a thing regarded as a supreme outrage by those opposed to England, it was almost impossible to get together enough American patriotism to adopt a declaration of independence.
John Adams says that a large section of Congress regarded such a declaration with both terror and disgust. To those who have believed that a unanimous patriotism made only a little severe fighting necessary, backed by some clever generalship, there can be no proper appreciation of the great American achievement.
Then, as now, the prosperous did not want their prosperity disturbed by any change. They didn’t want to lose their business, not to speak of their lives, by going into an army. But there had been a generation of people pouring into the colonies from the poverty-devastations of English misgovernment in Scotland and Ireland. They had never had any chance to protest against their wrongs in the old country, but fortune, or fate, or Providence, had banished them across the ocean directly into an opportunity to express their sentiments with guns, and they took the opportunity. They flocked to the recruiting stations of Washington’s army.
But so unsafe were business transactions with the party fighting Great Britain that the revolution was coming to the gates of despair because of the impossibility of getting military supplies and army equipments. There was fast growing a vision of collapse unless there was received the encouraging help of a foreign power. France in almost unceasing war with England was the only hope, and France could have no interest unless the colonies were fighting for separation from England, instead of against a tax on tea, as it bore the appearance, at the beginning, from a foreign point of view. France wanted to know what the colonies were fighting for. France wanted a bill of particulars. This brought American interests to a crisis. France had no interest in a mere family fuss. The French government could have no interest unless it was for something that lessened the power of England.
Under the early troubles, a peace party among the business interests was fast coming into power. Against this the commoners were aflame with the patriotic pamphlets of Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, the eloquence of Patrick Henry, the statesmanship of John Adams, and the work of the powerful-minded few who saw the sublime vision of American freedom. At last they were enabled to pass the Declaration of Independence, and France began, at first secretly and then openly, to give encouragement through money-loans, supplies, and volunteers. Burgoyne’s surrender in October, 1777, showed that America could be successful with France’s help, and early in the next year France recognized the independence of the colonies. They soon made the cause of America their own, and sent over not only necessary supplies but soldiers and ships. Known budgets of expenses, used in aid of the Colonies, exceed $500,000,000, not a cent of which was ever returned or asked for. Though there was the political interest to humble England, yet France was at heart a profound lover of human freedom and political liberty. Despite the implacable enemies of republican government in Europe, France has successfully kept the dead-lines across which “they shall not pass.” The moral debt which human liberty owes to France can never be paid except as it is paid to humanity, and, to that social justice, is dedicated the meaning of America.
The English parliament, becoming suddenly aware of the growing power in the American subjects, now conceded every right asked for by the colonists, and enacted those rights into law. But it was too late. The middle-class mass of property owners and business men began to see the vision of an American republic and the tide swelled toward success. As the cutting off of supplies from the colonies had been the chief cause of American weakness, England tried to prevent supplies being sent to America, with the result that Denmark, Sweden, Russia and Holland declared an armed neutrality to enforce their right to sell military supplies to America. The dispute led to a war with Holland in 1780, so that by the close of that year Great Britain had not a friend on earth and was confronted by the united armies and navies of France, Spain, Holland and America. At the same time there was rebellion in India against the English rule, insurrections in Ireland, and so deep the discontent in England itself that a London mob was able for several days to make itself master of the city. The English lost control of the sea before the close of 1780, and on October 19, 1781, Cornwallis surrendered his army to Washington, from which historic hour a world-champion of the rights of man over the divine rights of kings was born in the Western world.
The difficulties which Washington had encountered and overcome in Virginia previous to the French and Indian war were in full exercise throughout New England at the opening of the Revolutionary War. They could act together in small, free groups for a particular object of their will, but to obey superior officers and to sacrifice their own private judgment to higher authority, which was so necessary in war and such a war as this, was utterly repugnant to their dispositions. That subserviency to authority was the very reason they were opposing the idea of taxation without representation, and why should they be required to do the very thing they were fighting against! That quandary and query has been the puzzle of every mind unable to see the vision of means necessary to future results. It is the blindness always of the fanatical pacifist who would sacrifice nothing for peace, and of the non-resistant doctrine that right and moral law have no need for material might in a material world.
The colonists had never known of anything but local patriotism. They seemed to be unable to distinguish between English king-made authority and American people-made authority, notwithstanding how much had been discussed the relations of representation and taxation. That difficulty has always existed concerning American militarism. It almost defeated Lincoln during the Civil War. It almost delivered the Union to Secession. If democratic militarism cannot be different from dynastic militarism, then American freedom and human liberty will be lost in the next American or world war.
The colonist would fight with the heroism he displayed in Indian warfare, but when the enemy was driven away from his neighborhood, it was the duty of the next neighborhood to take care of itself. Besides, the New Englander with a home had the same idea as the Virginian soldier twenty years before, and this was that, when he wanted to go home, why shouldn’t he! He was not a deserter, and in no sense a coward, but the discipline of army service was mere enslavement and any compulsion was despotism. To understand the making up of an efficient army under such circumstances is the only measure to estimate the greatness of Washington and the debt to him of the liberty-loving world.
Curtis, in his history of American Commonwealth, says, “Washington overcame these difficulties by dint of a patience and a selflessness almost without parallel in history, which gradually communicated itself to his fellow countrymen. In seven years he created a continental army which ended the war at Yorktown.”
Washington had to write many letters, endeavoring to spur up the really patriotic leaders to consistent work for the cause. In his letter to Joseph Reed he was almost in despair over the indifference of people from whom he expected the most patriotic service.
“It grieves me,” he wrote, “to see so little of that patriotic spirit which I was taught to believe characteristic of this people.” But this did not mean that the so-called “spirit of ’76” was not strong among them. Washington needed so much of the patriotic spirit that a little would not be any, and, to half-heal the wounds of a friend, was not very friendly to the cause, nor a sufficient friendship toward the needs of Washington’s work for America.
Ten years later, when Washington had matured, through the mind-making experiences of revolutionary times, he wrote to John Jay, saying, “Experience has taught us that men will not adopt and carry into execution measures the best calculated for their own good without the intervention of coercive power.” This meant that human society requires law, and the right of law is devoid of appreciation or application unless it is clothed with the might to keep its forms and values true.
Lecky says, “The common saying that you cannot make people virtuous by law is a dangerous half-truth. The virtue innate in a people may be utterly destroyed by bad institutions, for ‘the virtue,’ as Jay wrote to Washington, ‘like the other resources of a country, can only be drawn to a point by strong circumstances ably managed, or strong governments ably administered.’”
When it came to a question of who should be commander-in-chief of all the armies, the disruptions and jealousies of the sections seemed dangerously near wrecking any united action, which obviously must be fatal to any independence more than they then had from Great Britain. The Southern leaders were unanimous for Washington, and, with the efficiency of shrewd politicians, supported measures largely according to the pressure they brought to bear in the cause of having Washington for the commander-in-chief. But this support did not bring together any antagonism, because it was not made by any faction of admirers or supporters. Washington himself, though present, refused to lend any aid to the presentation of his own name.
Mount Vernon—Washington’s Residence, Virginia.
It was John Adams, the whole-souled patriot from Massachusetts who was the leader in advocating the selection of Washington. In his diary, during these consequential times, Adams wrote, “I had no hesitation to declare that I had but one gentleman in my mind for that important command, and that was a gentleman from Virginia, who was among us, and very well known to us; a gentleman whose skilled experience as an officer, whose independent fortune, great talents, and excellent universal character would command the approbation of all America, and unite the cordial exertions of all the colonies better than any other person in the Union.”
There were many men who were able leaders, and who had already made great sacrifices in the cause of liberty, who believed with their friends that they were entitled to be selected for the head of the Army. Nevertheless, when the nomination was made, the election by ballot was unanimous for Washington.
The salary of Commander-in-Chief had been set at five hundred dollars a month, but Washington in his address of acceptance, while declaring that no salary could have been made large enough to tempt him from the comforts and business interests of his home, said he would accept no salary, but would keep an exact account of his expenses, which they would no doubt refund to him.
“There is something charming to me,” said John Adams, who became the second president of the United States, when writing at the time to a friend, “in the conduct of Washington, a gentleman of one of the first fortunes upon the continent, leaving his delicious retirement, his family and friends, sacrificing his ease, and hazarding all in the cause of his country. His views are noble and disinterested.”
Washington now wrote to his half-brother, Augustine Washington, a characteristic letter.
“I am now to bid adieu to you, and to every kind of domestic ease for a while. I am embarked on a wide ocean, boundless in its prospect, and in which, perhaps, no safe harbor is to be found. I have been called upon by the unanimous voice of the Colonies to take command of the Continental army; an honor I neither sought after nor desired, as I am thoroughly convinced it requires great abilities, and much more experience than I am master of.”
But he added his belief that the Divine Providence, which had called him into such a dangerous duty, was wisely ordering the affairs of men, and would enable him in due course of time to perform all his tasks justly and with success.
What that task was through the revolutionary war can be appreciated only in the details of events that require volumes of description in telling. One cannot read it through with its ignoble intrigues, unpatriotic dissentions, and dangerous rivalries without feeling that Washington combined great manhood, great leadership, great statesmanship and great generalship, and that no other man of less character and genius than that could ever have welded together such discordant and diversified elements into a means sufficient to achieve the independence and liberty of America.
There are events enough during the progress of the revolutionary war to give a complete analysis of Washington’s mind and character, enough, indeed, to make a large volume in itself. But these incidents are easily available to any student of the revolutionary war. Of all his wonderful career, as a child born to the wealth and luxury of his times, as a landed proprietor of one of the greatest fortunes in America, as soldier, statesman and first President of the United States, there is nowhere on record a single ignoble, immoral or dishonorable word or deed in any way relating to the principles or interests fundamental for his character, mind and life. It is supremely gratifying to American ideals that Washington was in everything morally worthy of being known as “first in peace, first in war and first in the hearts of his countrymen,” standing forth a great figure of American nobility, crowned with high title in being known as the “Father of his Country.”
The army was anxious to see their chief and the people were eager for a look at the man who inspired them all with so much confidence. Washington’s appearance could not disappoint them. No more born-commander of men, at least in appearance, ever sat in military uniform upon a horse. The emotions of the people in those troubulous times all went out to him, as they cheered him wherever he went. To know Washington is to know that his feelings responded heartily to their interests, and no doubt were strengthened by their trust for the wonder-working task before him.
One of the most intellectual and charming of the cultured women of New England was the wife of John Adams. After meeting Washington she wrote to her husband, “Dignity, ease and complacency, the gentleman and the soldier, look agreeably blended in him. Modesty marks every feature of his face. Those lines of Dryden instantly occurred to me:
As an incident of the multitudinous varieties of problems that Washington had to solve may be mentioned the treatment of the American prisoners taken by the British. The Americans were regarded as rebels, having no more standing in law than traitors. If the student looks carefully at the dates of progress in the freedom of the colonies and their formation into a nation, he will see that many years of wrangle and debate took place. Nothing went by leaps. Opinions grew and they grew very slowly and uncertainly. Therefore, when a crisis came, Washington had to make momentous decisions that were not only of far reaching consequences, but that he could execute and that his people would sanction. He was not a silent man. He wrote and spoke much, thus clearing the way for action, and unifying the mind of the people on the needs and rights of the times.
An extract from a letter to the British General Gage, in the beginning of the war, shows on what grounds Washington demanded the right treatment of American prisoners, who had so far been grossly mistreated.
“They suppose,” he wrote, concerning American prisoners, “that they act from the noblest of all principles, a love of freedom and their country. But political principles, I conceive, are foreign to this point. The obligations arising from the rights of humanity, and claims of rank, are universally binding and extensive, except in cases of retaliation.
“My duty now makes it necessary to apprise you that, for the future, I shall regulate all my conduct towards those gentlemen who are or may be in our possession exactly by the rule you shall observe toward those of ours now in your custody.”
Though General Gage’s reply was full of the words “criminals,” “rebels,” and “hanging,” the harsh treatment became generally modified as he realized that Washington meant what he said.
Public sentiment when not aroused by immediate danger gets into action very slowly, and especially if it is divided into numerous rival sections as was the case in the colonies. The army at first consisted of two extremes, the real patriots and the many army adventurers. It was an age of travelling soldiers. Especially was there an overwhelming offer from foreign officers to go into service. To refuse them looked like ingratitude. It brought up the old saying of “looking a gift horse in the mouth.” But the wisdom and firmness of Washington was never put to better use than here. He believed that Americans should win the war. In the darkest period he said, “Put none but Americans on guard tonight.”
In one of his letters he speaks of the “hungry adventurers,” whose endless applications for commands were one of his worst annoyances. And, still more, many of these soldiers of fortune came from Europe with great recommendations and they secured powerful influences in Congress to force themselves upon Washington.
The mind of the times stood in great awe of British power, therefore it is additional credit to the mind of Washington that he had no such fear or awe toward British might. Besides, the country was always asking impossible things. Congress urged Washington to surround the enemy and cut off their supplies. They had no vision of Washington’s inadequate means. Therefore enemies arose asserting they could do what Washington was not doing, and the American army had not only the confusion of interests in its own ranks to contend with, but was between a contentious congress and a hardly more contentious British army. Washington’s methods now look so reasonable and practical that we wonder how the people could be so ignorant, blind and obstructive, but a century later than our time may show us to be stoning our prophets and killing our saviors, just as they have done through all the periods of history. It is the disastrous tribute that democracy pays to partisanship, and that humanity has always paid partisan leadership.
The malignant intrigues that tried to take advantage of the slow progress of the war, and have hungry rivals put into Washington’s place, are matters of special history. But Washington met those ill-begotten schemes with the cold indifference and calm dignity which were the unfailing measures of his life and character. Though he was sensitive, and high-spirited, he would not let that trait in his nature work to the advantage of his enemies. They worked up slights and insults all around him, but he never replied unless he dealt a stinging blow, or showed up the treacherous character of their work. Much of the rivalry developed against Washington was of sectional prejudices, but the real intelligence and patriotism of the colonies would have nothing to do with it. In all those schemes to injure Washington we see the same method in politics used on up to the present time. Newspapers and speakers distort the achievements of political opponents into the most fanatical accusations, and bewilder the voter with charges and countercharges till he feels as if he were between the firing lines of two fighting armies, for one or the other of which he must cast his votes. But “belonging to a party” is happily not the honor it once was. The good of the country is found to be, not so much in the political platform of parties but in the character of men, harmonizing with the rights of man. It is thus that the congressional resolutions and the party wrangling of Washington’s time, as in that of Lincoln, are wholly discredited in estimating the lives of those great leaders of the American mind. In its full view, the American ideal is seen to be that the man or woman who presides decently and righteously over the humanity of self or family or group is president of the human world.
The ignorant criticism of the time is well illustrated from the dark winter days of Valley Forge. There, so little had Congress done for the army, the soldiers were literally starving. Most of them were barefoot, and so poorly provided that they had to sit up all night close to their camp-fire in order to keep from freezing. And yet the legislature of Pennsylvania issued a stern remonstrance against their going into winter quarters. Washington must keep to the open field and be in continual operation against the well-fed, thoroughly trained and highly equipped British troops.
Washington closed a letter to Congress, saying, in referring to those who thus condemned him, “They seem to have little feeling for the naked and distressed soldiers. I feel superabundantly for them, and from my soul I pity those miseries which it is neither in my power to relieve nor prevent.”
As in our own times, big business found opportunity to fatten itself on the needs of the people. The greatness of Washington is in startling evidence when it is seen how he not only had to conduct a war and guide an unprovided army split up into rival sections, but he had to be statesman and diplomat enough to manage a menagerie of ideas ranging through the congressional sessions like animals broken loose in a circus. Each one was trying to perform something that was in effect worse than nothing. The representatives of the people gathered in the American capital have often since that time repeated the original show.
The union that is strength is always slow in the making. Minds get together slowly wherever there is freedom in thinking for thought-out individual responsibility.
In writing to Benjamin Harrison, Washington pointed out how detrimental it was for each colony to be centering itself on its own prosperity. To Colonel Joseph Reed, December, 1778, he wrote more freely of the “monopolizers, forestallers, and engrossers” who were “murderers of our cause.”
“It is much to be lamented,” he said, “that each state, long ere this, has not hunted them down as pests to society and the greatest enemies we have to the happiness of America. I would to God that some one of the most atrocious in each state was hung in gibbets upon a gallows five times as high as the one prepared by Haman. No punishment, in my opinion, is too great for the man who can build his greatness upon his country’s ruin.”
This shows how Washington loathed meanness and treachery and how he minced no words in saying so. Only such men are leaders of men. No man who believes anything and is afraid to say it has a place in the political meaning of America.
Benjamin Harrison, full of the same righteous resentment, writes at the time, “If I were to be called upon to draw a picture of the times and of men, from what I have seen, heard, and in part know, I should in one word say that idleness, dissipation, and extravagance seem to have laid fast hold of most of them; that speculation, peculation, and an insatiable thirst for riches seem to have got the better of every other consideration, and almost every order of men; that party disputes and personal quarrels are the great business of the day.”
And so, to one patriot and then to another, Washington appealed for help to save the wasting fortunes of his country.
To George Mason he wrote that we are “fast verging to destruction.” The widespread demoralization of both army and people, the scramble for profit, and the unpatriotic plunder of vital interests at last became so evident under Washington’s ringing denunciations that the real patriots of the country awoke to the peril. Lafayette and the two Morrises took the lead in their respective fields of work. Writers and speakers took up the task of arousing the people and their officers in Congress, and at last the tide turned. The strong minds at last prevailed in uniting the people into a reliable force for the great need, and the American republic became an acknowledged part of the humanity of the earth.
The Revolutionary war had extended over a period of eight years, through almost unparalleled discouragements and intolerable trials of faith and purpose, when the British troops were finally withdrawn from American soil. The differences in the appearances of the British and American troops are described by an American lady living in New York, while the British held possession there. She wrote, “We had been accustomed for a long time to the military display in all the finish and finery of garrison life; the troops just leaving us were as if equipped for show, and with their scarlet uniforms and burnished arms made a brilliant display. The troops that marched in, on the contrary, were ill-clad and weatherbeaten, and made a forlorn appearance; but then they were our troops, and, as I looked at them and thought of all they had done and suffered for us, my heart and my eyes were full, and I admired and gloried in them the more, because they were weatherbeaten and forlorn.”
In a letter to Baron Steuben, written on the 23rd of December, 1783, Washington concludes as follows, “This is the last letter I shall write while I continue in the service of my country. The hour of my resignation is fixed at twelve today, after which I shall become a private citizen on the banks of the Potomac.”
At noon on that memorable day the Hall of Congress was filled with a notable assemblage of prominent people. The members of Congress remained seated with their hats on, as was the custom of the times, but the spectators were standing with uncovered heads when Washington, conducted by the secretary of Congress, entered and was given a seat appointed for him.
The President of Congress arose, and, after stating the purpose of the meeting at that hour, said to Washington, “The United States in Congress assembled are now prepared to receive your communication.”
Washington arose and delivered a short address, at the close of which he said, “I consider it an indispensable duty to close this last solemn act of my official life by commending the interests of our dearest country to the protection of Almighty God; and those who have the superintendence of them to His holy keeping. Having now finished the work assigned to me, I retire from the great theatre of action; and, bidding an affectionate farewell to this august body, under whose orders I have long acted, I here offer my commission, and take my leave of all the employments of public life.”
A writer who was present, speaking of this scene, says, “Few tragedies ever drew so many tears from so many beautiful eyes as the moving manner in which his Excellency took his final leave of Congress.”
The President of Congress replied to his address, and, after reciting the wisdom and valor with which Washington had accomplished the great task assigned him, said, “You retire from the theatre of action with the blessings of your fellow citizens; but the glory of your virtues will not terminate with your military command; it will continue to animate remote ages.”
Washington arrived at Mount Vernon on Christmas eve, where the home-coming was duly celebrated as could be done only in the colonial plantation days.
“The scene is at last closed,” he wrote to his friend, Governor Clinton of New York. “I feel myself eased of a load of public care. I hope to spend the remainder of my days in cultivating the affections of good men, and in the practice of domestic virtues.”
How little Washington or his friends knew of the future! A task and a responsibility of no less importance than the conduct of the Revolutionary war was yet to devolve upon him. The repose of a soldier had to give way to the mind-work of a great statesman.
In a letter to that great friend of America, without whose aid there could hardly have been a free America, General Lafayette, Washington wrote, “Free from the bustle of a camp and the busy scenes of public life I am solacing myself with those tranquil enjoyments which the soldier, who is ever in pursuit of fame; the statesman, whose watchful days and sleepless nights are spent in devising schemes to promote the welfare of his own, perhaps the ruin of other countries,—as if this globe were insufficient for us all; and the courtier, who is always watching the countenance of his prince in hopes of catching a gracious smile, can have very little conception.”
Later, in writing to the Marchioness de Lafayette, inviting her to visit America, where her husband had earned such glory and where everybody loved and admired him, he gave a charming picture of the simplicity of his life.
“I am now enjoying domestic ease under the shadow of my own vine and fig tree, in a small villa, with the implements of husbandry and lambkins about me. Come, then, let me entreat you, and call my cottage your own; for your own doors do not open to you with more readiness than mine would. You will see the plain manner in which we live, and meet the rustic civility; and you shall taste the simplicity of rural life. It will diversify the scene, and may give you a higher relish for the gayeties of the court when you return to Versailles.”
Knowing that Washington would be at continual expense to entertain distinguished guests who would come to see him, Congress tried to grant him a reward for his distinguished services, but he had served his country without pay and he refused. In the meanwhile, the hospitality of Washington was taxed to the utmost, and his time was much taken up in important conferences over political affairs. The country was being governed by Congress under the Articles of Confederation which then bound the states, but probably with less efficiency than thirteen horses in a single rein and rope harness to draw a rattling, curtain-flapping carriage. The old state patriotisms were revived and with them the rivalries and jealousies of political sections. Whatever one state wanted seemed to be the signal for its neighbor to want something else. The United States were indeed plural with a vengeance! “E Pluribus Unum” that had so laboriously and valiantly come true, as meaning one out of many, in war, had changed about to its first condition and was again many out of one.
In 1786, in a letter to General Knox, Washington wrote, “I feel, my dear General Knox, infinitely more than I can express to you for the disorders which have arisen in these states. Good God! who, besides a Tory, could have foreseen, or a Briton predicted them? I do assure you that, even at this moment, when I reflect upon the present prospect of affairs, it seems to me to be like the vision of a dream. After what I have seen, or rather what I have heard, I shall be surprised at nothing; for, if three years since, any person had told me that there would have been such a formidable rebellion as exists at this day against the laws and constitution of our own making, I should have thought him a bedlamite, a fit subject for a mad-house.”
He wrote to James Madison, saying, “How melancholy is the reflection that in so short a time we should have made such large strides toward fulfilling the predictions of our transatlantic foes, who said, ‘Leave them to themselves and their government will soon dissolve’? Will not the wise and good strive hard to avert this evil?”
The only remedy which “the wise and good” could use to avert the calamity of having thirteen feeble little nations at war with one another was to supplant the “Articles of Confederation” with a Federal Constitution, and, at last, this was accomplished, with so many compromises and concessions to so-called “state rights” that it required a frightful four years’ civil war to establish the meaning of the Federal Constitution, so that the United States grammarians and politicians could agree to say the United States “is” instead of saying that the United States “are.”
With the adoption of the Federal Constitution, it was provided that electors should be chosen whose duty it was to select a president for the United States.
There could be but one man seriously considered. The landed gentleman who had become a soldier and won liberty for the Western world was soon seen to be destined, by the nation he had made, to be its first president, and henceforth by nature, if not by the providence of God, to be statesman, and the “First Citizen of America.” Accordingly, George Washington was chosen first president of the Western republic, to begin a term of four years from the fourth of March, 1789.
Through the desperate eight years of war, in which the devastations of the British could hardly be called worse than the wrangling differences of opinion and sordid interests among the colonies, Washington had conserved and guided the struggle for American liberty, so that, at the close of the war, with the disembarkation for Halifax of troops, royalists and tories, there was a unanimous voice of harmony for a new America.
Then came the divisions under the rivalry of the colonies as a loose confederation of separate republics. After that Washington was again at the head of American interests and for another eight years. It was a period of reconstruction. The opportunity to have a new nation, that human beings might have a place of freedom in the sun, was supplied by the eight years of revolutionary struggle, but the foundations for that nation were not laid firmly until there were eight years’ labor upon the Constitutional form of government under Washington.
Probably no man, with the exception of Lincoln, has been so loved and so hated, or ever will be in America, as Washington. It is the most pathetic thing in all the weakness of intelligence, or rather the strength of prejudice, that the world always hates, and sometimes kills, its benefactors, its friends and saviors.
But somehow, with all the storm and stress of things, notwithstanding the hate and revenge of disappointed greed, the rights of life are carried on, and the values of humanity prevail.
The time for the third election of a president was drawing near. All the malignant virulence possible to destroy the name and services of Washington were coming into use. He was accused of every public evil and private unfitness under the sun. And yet there is hardly any doubt worth consideration that he could have been elected for the third term if he had desired it. But he had done his share of the work of the world. He saw that his example would be used as a precedent for the ambitions of future politicians. There must be a reasonable time limit even to the restricted governing powers of a president. He declined to serve more than two terms. Only once since then has there been an organized attempt to break that precedent. The politicians tried their utmost means to give General Grant a third term, but the hostility of the nation against the danger of such prolonged power at last prevailed and the attempt was defeated, probably never to be successful.
Washington’s farewell address on retiring from the presidency has ever remained a beacon-light for the guidance of American views of American government, especially in its relation with foreign nations.
The reply of the House of Representatives gave strong praise for the wisdom, firmness, moderation and magnanimity with which he had guided the affairs of his country. But the kicker was there and his voice was heard. A prominent representative from Virginia was disgusted with any praise of Washington’s wisdom and firmness. He raised his voice in the halls of Congress and put himself on historical record as especially opposed to giving Washington any praise for the administration of foreign affairs. He declared that “the weakness and feeble judgment of Washington in our foreign relations” has brought us under “the contempt of foreign nations,” and had conducted our country to “the verge of a greater calamity than had ever been threatened before in our history.” That patriotic scare sounds strangely like the calamity prophecies of politicians against every president in every national crisis. In such cases it is well to remember that political partisans are not thus qualified to be American patriots. They are special pleaders for their own particular party greed.
Twelve other members believed as this one from Virginia. They would much rather have censured Washington for weakness than to have praised him for strength. Among these thirteen partisans was a young man from Tennessee named Andrew Jackson, who afterward became one of the famous Presidents.
These violent differences of opinion and the vicious personal attacks on motives, attributed each to each, has been one of the pitiable signs of injustice and incompetency in American politics. Time after time, as the presidential campaigns arrive, the fist-like will of each side is thrust into the other’s faces, as those “belonging” to a party fight to get votes for the party candidate, not for a patriotic cause. In times of great national peril, whether in times of war at home or abroad, the president who preserves, as Washington did, the rights of his country in conformity to the rights of man, which is the only possible rights of either, is hated by the extremists on both sides. They both call him weak, and, therefore, though hating each other, unite to defeat the man who would not lead his country into taking up with their special interests. But, fortunately, we sometimes have presidents with mind, patriotism and character greater than any party. Most hopefully, there are increasingly greater numbers who belong to their country instead of to a party, and who elect human principles to rule and to reign over us rather than the ring-managers of prejudice and partisanship known as “parties.” Presently there will be enough independent thinking for any one to consider it as unpatriotic to belong to a “party” as to belong to any other political fragment, clique, or social group, presuming to dictate what is weakness and what is strength for the individual mind as its only choice in patriotism and Americanism. America, composed of every element of humanity from every part of the earth, is the strongest nation of all time, and capable of being the clearest and most just for the freedom of the world. Here we strive for the peace of freedom in law. We war only against war. American intelligence and mercy are rapidly devising ways to eliminate the various forms of enslavement, dissentions and divisions that weaken American civilization, so that democracy may be safe in itself. In the great European war, President Wilson announced the purpose of the United States to be for the right that is greater than peace, in which the world must be made safe for democracy. And so, humanity gains “a place in the sun” and the kingdom of heaven is among us. For the sake of peace on earth, America must be strong in the might of right, and be willing and ready to save to the uttermost. America is president of the peace-nations of the earth because it alone is federated upon the principles of human justice, eternal and universal.