afford to spare the inspiration that comes from Washington. It promotes
patriotism and gives vigor to national life. Washington's views on
slavery were characterized by a high sense of justice and an exalted
conscience. He was the owner of slaves by inheritance, all his interests
were affected by slavery, yet he was opposed to it, and in his will he
provided for the liberation of his slaves. He set the example for
emancipation. He hoped for, prayed for, and was willing to vote for what
Lincoln afterward accomplished.
VIII
THE WHOLE MAN
GEORGE WASHINGTON
BY JOHN HALL INGHAM
This was the man God gave us when the hour
Proclaimed the dawn of Liberty begun;
Who dared a deed, and died when it was done,
Patient in triumph, temperate in power,--
Not striving like the Corsican to tower
To heaven, nor like great Philip's greater son
To win the world and weep for worlds unwon,
Or lose the star to revel in the flower.
The lives that serve the eternal verities
Alone do mold mankind. Pleasure and pride
Sparkle awhile and perish, as the spray
Smoking across the crests of cavernous seas
Is impotent to hasten or delay
The everlasting surges of the tide.
* * * * *
HISTORICAL MEMORABILIA OF WASHINGTON
COMPILED BY H.B. CARRINGTON
1732. February 22 (February 11, O.S.), born.
1748. Surveyor of lands at sixteen years of age.
1751. Military inspector and major at nineteen years of age.
1752. Adjutant-general of Virginia.
1753. Commissioner to the French.
1754. Colonel, and commanding the Virginia militia.
1755. Aide-de-camp to Braddock in his campaign.
1755. Again commands the Virginia troops.
1758. Resigns his commission.
1759. January 6. Married.
1759. Elected member of Virginia House of Burgesses.
1765. Commissioner to settle military accounts.
1774. In First Continental Congress.
1775. In Second Continental Congress.
1775. June 15. Elected commander-in-chief.
1775. July 2. In command at Cambridge.
1776. March 17. Expels the British from Boston.
1776. August 27. Battle of Long Island.
1776. August 29. Masterly retreat to New York.
1776. September 15. Gallant, at Kipp's Bay.
1776. October 27. Battle of Harlem Heights.
1776. October 29. Battle near White Plains.
1776. November 15. Enters New Jersey.
1776. December 5. Occupies right bank of the Delaware.
1776. December 12. Clothed with "full power."
1776. December 14. Plans an offensive campaign.
1776. December 26. Battle of Trenton.
1777. January 3. Battle of Princeton.
1777. July. British driven from New Jersey, during.
1777. July 13. Marches for Philadelphia.
1777. September 11. Battle of Brandywine.
1777. September 15. Offers battle at West Chester.
1777. October 4. Battle of Germantown.
1778. Winters at Valley Forge.
1778. June 28. Battle of Monmouth.
1778. British again retire from New Jersey.
1778. Again at White Plains.
1779. At Middlebrook, New Jersey, and New Windsor.
1780. Winters at Morristown, New Jersey.
1781. Confers with Rochambeau as to plans.
1781. Threatens New York in June and July.
1781. Joins Lafayette before Yorktown.
1781. October 19. Surrender of Cornwallis.
1783. November 2. Farewell to the army.
1733. November 25. Occupies New York.
1783. December 4. Parts with his officers.
1783. December 23. Resigns his commission.
1787. Presides at Constitutional Convention.
1789. March 4. Elected President of the United States.
1789. April 30. Inaugurated at New York.
1793. March 4. Re-elected for four years.
1796. September 17. Farewell to the people.
1797. March 4. Retires to private life.
1798. July 3. Appointed commander-in-chief.
1799. December 14. Died at Mount Vernon.
* * * * *
A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF WASHINGTON[20]
BY HENRY MITCHELL MACCRACKEN
George Washington was a son of Augustine Washington and his second wife,
Mary Ball, and a descendant of John Washington, who emigrated from
England about 1657, during the protectorate of Cromwell. He was born in
the English colony of Virginia, in Westmoreland County, on February 22,
1732. His education was simple and practical. To the common English
instruction of his time and home, young Washington added bookkeeping and
surveying. The three summers preceding his twentieth year he spent in
surveying the estate of Lord Fairfax on the northwest boundary of the
colony, an occupation which strengthened his splendid physical
constitution to a high point of efficiency, and gave him practice in
topography,--valuable aids in the military campaigning which speedily
followed.
In 1751, at nineteen, he was made Adjutant in the militia, with the rank
of Major. In the following year he inherited the estate of Mount Vernon.
In the winter of 1753-54, at twenty-one, he was sent by the Governor of
Virginia on a mission to the French posts beyond the Alleghanies. Soon
after his return he led a regiment to the headwaters of the Ohio, but
was compelled to retreat to the colony on account of the overwhelming
numbers of the French at Fort Duquesne. In Braddock's defeat, July 9,
1755, Washington was one of the latter's aides, and narrowly escaped
death, having had two horses shot under him. During the remaining part
of the French and Indian War, he was in command of the Virginia
frontier, with the rank of Colonel, and occupied Fort Duquesne in 1758.
On January 17, 1759, he married a wealthy widow, Mrs. Martha Custis, and
removed to Mount Vernon. The administration of his plantations involved
a large measure of commerce with England, and he himself with his own
hand kept his books with mercantile exactness.
Soon after the outbreak of hostilities, Washington was appointed by the
Continental Congress, at forty-three years of age, Commander-in-Chief of
the Armies of the Revolution, and assumed their control at Cambridge on
July 3, 1775. In 1776 he occupied Boston, lost New York, then
brilliantly restored the drooping spirit of the land at Trenton and
Princeton. In the year following he lost Philadelphia, and retreated to
Valley Forge. Threatened by the jealousy of his own subordinates, he put
to shame the cabal formed in the interests of Gates, who had this year
captured Burgoyne. For three years, 1778-80, he maintained himself
against heavy odds in the Jerseys, fighting at Monmouth the first year,
reaching out to capture Stony Point the next year, and the third year
combating the treason of Arnold. In 1781, he planned the cooping up of
Cornwallis on the peninsula of Yorktown, with the aid of the French
allies, and received his surrender on October 19th.
Resigning his commission at Annapolis, December 23, 1783, he returned to
his estate at Mount Vernon, but vastly aided the incipient work of
framing the Constitution by correspondence. In May, 1787, he took his
seat as President of the Constitutional Convention at Philadelphia. He
was inaugurated the first President of the United States in April, 1789,
after a unanimous election. He was similarly reflected in 1793, but
refused a third term in 1796. In the face of unmeasured vituperation he
firmly kept the nascent nation from embroiling herself in the wars of
France and England. Retiring again to Mount Vernon in the spring of
1797, he nevertheless accepted, at sixty-six years of age, the post of
Commander-in-Chief of the provisional army raised in 1798 to meet the
insolence of the French Directorate. In December, 1799, while riding
about his estates during a snowstorm, he contracted a disease of the
throat, from which he died on December 14, 1799. He provided by his will
for the manumission of his slaves, to take effect on the decease of his
widow. No lineal descendants can claim as an ancestor this extraordinary
man. He belongs to his country. His tomb is at Mount Vernon, and is in
keeping of the women of America.
FOOTNOTES:
[20] From "The Hall of Fame." Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons, New York,
1901.
* * * * *
THE CHARACTER OF WASHINGTON
BY DANIEL WEBSTER
_A Speech Delivered at a Public Dinner, Washington, February 22, 1832_
_The Power of the Name of Washington_
We are met to testify our regard for him whose name is intimately
blended with whatever belongs most essentially to the prosperity, the
liberty, the free institutions, and the renown of our country;. That
name was of power to rally a nation, in the hour of thick-thronging
public disasters and calamities; that name shone, amid the storm of war,
a beacon light, to cheer and guide the country's friends; it flamed,
too, like a meteor, to repel her foes. That name, in the days of peace,
was a lodestone, attracting to itself a whole people's confidence, a
whole people's love, and the whole world's respect. That name,
descending with all time, spreading over the whole earth, and uttered in
all the languages belonging to the tribes and races of men, will forever
be pronounced with affectionate gratitude by everyone in whose breast
there shall arise an aspiration for human rights and human liberty.
We perform this grateful duty, Gentlemen, at the expiration of a hundred
years from his birth, near the place so cherished and beloved by him,
where his dust now reposes, and in the capital which bears his own
immortal name.
All experience evinces that human sentiments are strongly influenced by
association. The recurrence of anniversaries, or of longer periods of
time, naturally freshens the recollection, and deepens the impression,
of events with which they are historically connected. Renowned places,
also, have a power to awaken feeling, which all acknowledge. No American
can pass by the fields of Bunker Hill, Monmouth, and Camden, as if they
were ordinary spots on the earth's surface. Whoever visits them feels
the sentiment of love of country kindling anew, as if the spirit that
belonged to the transactions which have rendered these places
distinguished still hovered round, with power to move and excite all who
in future time may approach them.
_Washington's Great Moral Example to the Youth of America_
But neither of these sources of emotion equals the power with which
great moral examples affect the mind. When sublime virtues cease to be
abstractions, when they become embodied in human character, and
exemplified in human conduct, we should be false to our own nature if we
did not indulge in the spontaneous effusions of our gratitude and our
admiration. A true lover of the virtue of patriotism delights to
contemplate its purest models; and that love of country may be well
suspected which affects to soar so high into the regions of sentiment as
to be lost and absorbed in the abstract feeling, and becomes too
elevated or too refined to glow with fervor in the commendation or the
love of individual benefactors. All this is unnatural. It is as if one
should be so enthusiastic a lover of poetry as to care nothing for Homer
or Milton; so passionately attached to eloquence as to be indifferent to
Tully[21] and Chatham; or such a devotee to the art, in such an ecstasy
with the elements of beauty, proportion, and expression, as to regard
the masterpieces of Raphael and Michel Angelo with coldness or contempt.
We may be assured, Gentlemen, that he who really loves the thing itself,
loves its finest exhibitions. A true friend of his country loves her
friends and benefactors, and thinks it no degradation to commend and
commemorate them. The voluntary outpouring of the public feeling, made
to-day, from the north to the south, and from the east to the west,
proves this sentiment to be both just and natural. In the cities and in
the villages, in the public temples and in the family circles, among all
ages and sexes, gladdened voices to-day bespeak grateful hearts and a
freshened recollection of the virtues of the Father of his Country. And
it will be so, in all time to come, so long as public virtue is itself
an object of regard. The ingenuous youth of America will hold up to
themselves the bright model of Washington's example, and study to be
what they behold; they will contemplate his character till all its
virtues spread out and display themselves to their delighted vision; as
the earliest astronomers, the shepherds on the plains of Babylon, gazed
at the stars till they saw them form into clusters and constellations,
overpowering at length the eyes of the beholders with the united blaze
of a thousand lights.
_A Wonderful Age and Country_
Gentlemen, we are at a point of a century from the birth of Washington;
and what a century it has been! During its course, the human mind has
seemed to proceed with a sort of geometric velocity, accomplishing for
human intelligence and human freedom more than had been done in fives or
tens of centuries preceding. Washington stands at the commencement of a
new era, as well as at the head of the New World. A century from the
birth of Washington has changed the world. The country of Washington has
been the theater on which a great part of that change has been wrought,
and Washington himself a principal agent by which it has been
accomplished. His age and his country are equally full of wonders; and
of both he is the chief.
If the poetical prediction, uttered a few years before his birth, be
true; if indeed it be designed by Providence that the grandest
exhibition of human character and human affairs shall be made in this
theater of the Western world; if it be true that,
"The four first acts already past,
A fifth shall close the drama with the day;
Time's noblest offspring is the last";
how could this imposing, swelling, final scene be appropriately opened,
how could its intense interest be adequately sustained but by the
introduction of just such a character as our Washington?
_The Spark of Human Freedom_
Washington had attained his manhood when that spark of liberty was
struck out in his own country which has since kindled into a flame and
shot its beams over the earth. In the flow of a century from his birth,
the world has changed in science, in arts, in the extent of commerce, in
the improvement of navigation, and in all that relates to the
civilization of man. But it is the spirit of human freedom, the new
elevation of individual man, in his moral, social, and political
character, leading the whole long train of other improvements, which has
most remarkably distinguished the era. Society, in this century, has not
made its progress, like Chinese skill, by a greater acuteness of
ingenuity in trifles; it has not merely lashed itself to an increased
speed round the old circles of thought and action; but it has assumed a
new character; it has raised itself from _beneath_ governments to a
participation in governments; it has mixed moral and political objects
with the daily pursuits of individual men; and, with a freedom and
strength before altogether unknown, it has applied to these objects the
whole power of the human understanding. It has been the era, in short,
when the social principle has triumphed over the feudal principle; when
society has maintained its rights against military power, and
established, on foundations never hereafter to be shaken, its competency
to govern itself.
_A New Governmental Experiment_
It was the extraordinary fortune of Washington that, having been
intrusted in revolutionary times, with the supreme military command, and
having fulfilled that trust with equal renown for wisdom and for valor,
he should be placed at the head of the first government in which an
attempt was to be made on a large scale to rear the fabric of social
order on the basis of a written constitution, and of a pure
representative principle. A government was to be established without a
throne, without an aristocracy, without castes, orders, or privileges;
and this government, instead of being a democracy existing and acting
within the walls of a single city, was to be extended over a vast
country of different climates, interests, and habits, and of various
communions of our common Christian faith. The experiment certainly was
entirely new. A popular government of this extent, it was evident, could
be framed only by carrying into full effect the principle of
representation or of delegated power; and the world was to see whether
society could, by the strength of this principle, maintain its own peace
and good government, carry forward its own great interests, and conduct
itself to political renown and glory. By the benignity of Providence,
this experiment, so full of interest to us and to our posterity
forever, so full of interest, indeed, to the world in its present
generation and in all its generations to come, was suffered to commence
under the guidance of Washington. Destined for this high career, he was
fitted for it by wisdom, by virtue, by patriotism, by discretion, by
whatever can inspire confidence in man toward man. In entering on the
untried scenes, early disappointment and the premature extinction of all
hope of success would have been certain, had it not been that there did
exist throughout the country, in a most extraordinary degree, an
unwavering trust in him who stood at the helm.
_The World Interested in the Experiment_
I remarked, Gentlemen, that the whole world was and is interested in the
result of this experiment. And is it not so? Do we deceive ourselves, or
is it true that at this moment the career which this government is
running is among the most attractive objects to the civilized world? Do
we deceive ourselves, or is it true that at this moment that love of
liberty and that understanding of its true principles which are flying
over the whole earth, as on the wings of all the winds, are really and
truly of American origin?
_Importance of the English Revolution of 1688_
At the period of the birth of Washington there existed in Europe no
political liberty in large communities, except in the provinces of
Holland, and except that England herself had set a great example, so
far as it went, by her glorious Revolution of 1688. Everywhere else,
despotic power was predominant, and the feudal or military principle
held the mass of mankind in hopeless bondage. One-half of Europe was
crushed beneath the Bourbon scepter, and no conception of political
liberty, no hope even of religious toleration, existed among that nation
which was America's first ally. The king was the state, the king was the
country, the king was all. There was one king, with power not derived
from his people, and too high to be questioned; and the rest were all
subjects, with no political right but obedience. All above was
intangible power, all below quiet subjection. A recent occurrence in the
French chamber shows us how public opinion on these subjects is changed.
A minister had spoken of the "king's subjects." "There are no
subjects," exclaimed hundreds of voices at once, "in a country where the
people make the king!"
Gentlemen, the spirit of human liberty and of free government, nurtured
and grown into strength and beauty in America, has stretched its course
into the midst of the nations. Like an emanation from Heaven, it has
gone forth, and it will not return void. It must change, it is fast
changing, the face of the earth. Our great, our high duty is to show, in
our own example, that this spirit is a spirit of health as well as a
spirit of power; that its benignity is as great as its strength; that
its efficiency to secure individual rights, social relations, and moral
order, is equal to the irresistible force with which it prostrates
principalities and powers. The world, at this moment, is regarding us
with a willing, but something of a fearful, admiration. Its deep and
awful anxiety is to learn whether free States may be stable, as well as
free; whether popular power may be trusted, as well as feared; in short,
whether wise, regular, and virtuous self-government is a vision for the
contemplation of theorists, or a truth established, illustrated, and
brought into practice in the country of Washington.
_The United States a Western Sun_
Gentlemen, for the earth which we inhabit, and the whole circle of the
sun, for all the unborn races of mankind, we seem to hold in our hands,
for their weal or woe, the fate of this experiment. If we fail, who
shall venture the repetition? If our example shall prove to be one not
of encouragement, but of terror, not fit to be imitated, but fit only to
be shunned, where else shall the world look for free models? If this
great _Western Sun_ be struck out of the firmament, at what other
fountain shall the lamp of liberty hereafter be lighted? What other orb
shall emit a ray to glimmer, even, on the darkness of the world?
There is no danger of our overrating or overstating the important part
which we are now acting in human affairs. It should not flatter our
personal self-respect, but it should reanimate our patriotic virtues and
inspire us with a deeper and more solemn sense both of our privileges
and of our duties. We cannot wish better for our country, nor for the
world, than that the same spirit which influenced Washington may
influence all who succeed him; and that the same blessing from above,
which attended his efforts, may also attend theirs.
_Washington's Farewell Address_
The principles of Washington's administration are not left doubtful.
They are to be found in the Constitution itself, in the great measures
recommended and approved by him, in his speeches to Congress, and in
that most interesting paper, his Farewell Address to the people of the
United States. The success of the government under his administration is
the highest proof of the soundness of these principles. And, after an
experience of thirty-five years, what is there which an enemy could
condemn? What is there which either his friends, or the friends of the
country, could wish to have been otherwise? I speak, of course, of great
measures and leading principles.
In the first place, all his measures were right in their intent. He
stated the whole basis of his own great character, when he told the
country, in the homely phrase of the proverb, that honesty is the best
policy. One of the most striking things ever said of him is, that "_he
changed mankind's ideas of political greatness_."[22] To commanding
talents, and to success, the common elements of such greatness, he
added a disregard of self, a spotlessness of motive, a steady submission
to every public and private duty, which threw far into the shade the
whole crowd of vulgar great. The object of his regard was the whole
country. No part of it was enough to fill his enlarged patriotism. His
love of glory, so far as that may be supposed to have influenced him at
all, spurned everything short of general approbation. It would have been
nothing to him that his partisans or his favorites outnumbered, or
outvoted, or outmanaged, or outclamored, those of other leaders. He had
no favorites; he rejected all partisanship; and, acting honestly for the
universal good, he deserved, what he so richly enjoyed, the universal
love.
His principle it was to act right, and to trust the people for support;
his principle it was not to follow the lead of sinister and selfish
ends, nor to rely on the little arts of party delusion to obtain public
sanction for such a course. Born for his country and for the world, he
did not give up to party what was meant for mankind. The consequence is,
that his fame is as durable as his principles, as lasting as truth and
virtue themselves. While the hundreds whom party excitement, and
temporary circumstances, and casual combinations, have raised into
transient notoriety, sink again, like thin bubbles, bursting and
dissolving into the great ocean, Washington's fame is like the rock
which bounds that ocean, and at whose feet its billows are destined to
break harmlessly forever.
_His Conduct of America's Foreign Relations_