LARGE BODIES MOVE SLOWLY
I. THE FIRST COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF
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:
‘Mark his majestic fabric! He’s a temple
Sacred by birth and built by hands divine;
His soul’s the deity that lodges there;
Nor is the pile unworthy of the God.’”
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.
II. BIG BUSINESS, MONEY-MAKERS AND PATRIOTISM
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.
III. THE STRONG MIND FOR GREAT NEEDS
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.