In the congress of 1774 the leaders of Virginia were for the first time
brought into face-to-face conference with the men of the other colonies.
In 1765 Fauquier had dissolved the Burgesses with such sharp despatch,
upon the passage of Mr. Henry’s resolutions, that they were all gone
home before the call for a congress to act upon the stamp duties could
reach them. But in 1774 they were not to be so cheated. They had
themselves issued the call for a congress this time, and dissolution
could not drive them home. Their leaders could at least linger at the
Raleigh and concert means to have their way, House or no House. A
convention took the place of the Assembly; and seven leading members of
the House were sent to Philadelphia, with as full authority to speak and
act for the colony as if the Burgesses themselves had commissioned them.
Mr. Harrison declared in Philadelphia that “he would have come on foot
rather than not come”; and quiet Richard Bland, that “he would have gone
if it had been to Jericho.” Colonel Harrison struck his new colleagues
from the North as a bit rough in his free Southern speech and manner;
and Mr. Bland seemed to them “a plain, sensible man,” such as would be
more given to study than to agitation. If such men, artless and steady
as any downright country gentleman of old England, held so high a fancy
for the business of the congress, it was easy to conclude what the
hastier, younger men would be likely to plan and do; and the
Massachusetts delegates found themselves greatly heartened.
John Adams, Thomas Cushing, Samuel Adams, and Robert Treat Paine were
the representatives of Massachusetts. It was their people who had most
provoked Parliament to be high-handed and aggressive. The struggle with
the ministry at home had taken shape in Boston. It had come to actual
riot there. All the continent and all England had seen how stubborn was
the temper, how incorrigible the spirit of resistance, in that old seat
of the Puritan power, always hard set and proud in its self-willed
resolution to be independent; and all eyes were turned now upon Cushing
and Paine and this “brace of Adamses,” who had come, it was thought, to
hurry the congress into radical courses. Kindness, applause,
hospitality, “studied and expensive respect,” had attended them at every
stage of their long ride from Boston to Philadelphia. The country was
much stirred by the prospect of a general “congress of committees” at
Philadelphia; and the delegates from Massachusetts were greeted as they
passed even more generously than the rest, because their people had been
the first to suffer in this bad business; because their chief port at
Boston was closed, and red-coated sentries were on their streets. It
behooved the Massachusetts men, however, not to suffer themselves to be
misled. Many looked upon them askance; some distrusted them heartily.
Their own hot-headed mob had provoked the “massacre,” of which they made
so much. They had wantonly destroyed private property when they threw
the tea into their harbor to show the government their spirit. There had
been more than a touch of violence, more than a little turbulence, and a
vast deal of radical and revolutionary talk in all that they had done;
and the colonies were full yet of men who had no tolerance for anything
that transgressed, were it never so little, the moderate limits of
constitutional agitation. “There is an opinion which does in some degree
obtain in the other colonies that the Massachusetts gentlemen, and
especially of the town of Boston, do affect to dictate and take the lead
in continental measures; that we are apt, from an inward vanity and
self-conceit, to assume big and haughty airs,” said Joseph Hawley, who,
for all he had grown old as a quiet Massachusetts lawyer among his
neighbors, had kept his shrewd eyes abroad. “It is highly probable,” he
told John Adams, with a wholesome bluntness, “that you will meet
gentlemen from several of the other colonies fully equal to yourselves
or any of you in their knowledge of Great Britain, the colonies, law,
history, government, commerce.... By what we from time to time see in
the public papers, and what our Assembly and committees have received
from the Assemblies and committees of the more southern colonies, we
must be satisfied that they have men of as much sense and literature as
any we can, or ever could, boast of.” It was mere counsel of prudence
that they should play their part in the congress with modesty and
discretion.
Not Cushing and Paine, but the Adamses, carried the strength of the
Massachusetts delegation; and it was Samuel Adams, rather than John, who
was just now the effective master in the great Bay Colony--“master of
puppets,” his enemies called him. Hale, bluff, adroit, plain, a man of
the people, he had grown old in the business of agitation. Fifty-two
years he had lived, planning always for others, never for himself. He
had “never looked forward in his life,” he frankly said; “never planned,
laid a scheme, or framed a design of laying up anything for himself or
others after him”; had let all his private business go neglected, and
lived upon the petty salary of a small public office, the indulgence of
fortune, and the good offices of the friends and neighbors who loved
him. He was in Philadelphia now wearing the plain suit and spending the
modest purse with which his friends and partisans had fitted him
out--the very impersonation of the revolution men were beginning so to
fear. No man had ever daunted him; neither could any corrupt him. He was
possessed with the instinct of agitation: led the people, not the
leaders; cared not for place, but only for power; showed a mastery of
means, a self-containment, a capacity for timely and telling speech,
that marked him a statesman, though he loved the rough ways of a
people’s government, and preferred the fierce democracy of the town
meeting to the sober dignity of senates. Like an eagle in his high
building and strength of audacious flight, but in instinct and habit a
bird of the storm. Not over-nice what he did, not too scrupulous what he
devised, he was yet not selfish, loved the principles he had given his
life to, and spent himself without limit to see them triumph.
John Adams, his cousin, was of a very different mould: a younger man by
thirteen years; no man of the people, but with a taste rather for the
exclusive claims of education and breeding; self-regardful; a thought
too calculating; too quick-witted to be patient with dull men, too
self-conscious to be at ease with great ones; and yet public-spirited
withal, and generous in action if not in judgment; of great powers, if
only he could manage to use them without jealousy. Samuel Adams thought
only of his end, not of himself; seldom spoke of himself, indeed; seemed
a sort of subtle engine for the people’s business. John Adams thought of
himself always, and yet mastered himself to play a great part with the
nobility of a man of genius, if not with the grace of a man of modesty
and self-forgetful devotion. For the time he could even hold back with
his wily cousin, resign leadership in the congress to Virginia, and act
in all things the wise part of those who follow.
It was a circumstance full of peril that the delegates of the several
colonies should at such a juncture be strangers to one another, and
provincials all, nowhere bred to continental affairs. Only since the
passage of the Stamp Act had they taken any thought for each other.
There was no assurance that even the best leaders of a colony could rise
to the statesman’s view and concert measures to insure the peace of an
empire. Rising lawyers like John Adams, brusque planters like Colonel
Harrison, well-to-do merchants like Thomas Mifflin, might bring all
honesty and good intention to the task and yet miserably fail. A
provincial law practice, the easy ascendency of a provincial country
gentleman, the narrow round of provincial trade, might afford capable
men opportunity to become enlightened citizens, but hardly fitted them
to be statesmen. The real first business of the delegates was to become
acquainted, and to learn how to live in the foreign parts to which most
of them had come. There was a continual round of entertainment in the
hospitable town, therefore, a universal exchange of courtesies, a rush
of visiting and dining, a flow of excellent wine, a rich abundance of
good cheer, such as for a while made the occasion seem one of festivity
rather than of anxious counsel. Many of the delegates had come to town a
week or more before the date set for the congress, and had settled to an
acquaintance before it was time to effect an organization; but the
gentlemen from Maryland and Virginia, more familiar with the journey,
arrived almost upon the day. They made an instant impression upon their
new colleagues. John Adams promptly declared them “the most spirited and
consistent of any,” and deemed Mr. Lee particularly “a masterly man.”
Joseph Hawley’s prediction was fulfilled. “The Virginia and indeed all
the Southern delegates appear like men of importance,” said Silas Deane;
“I never met, nor scarcely had an idea of meeting, with men of such
firmness, sensibility, spirit, and thorough knowledge of the interests
of America.” Mr. Lynch of South Carolina, though he wore “the
manufacture of this country,” and was in all things “plain, sensible,
above ceremony,” seemed to Mr. Deane to carry with him “more force in
his very appearance than most powdered folks in their conversation.”
The high bearing and capacity of the Southern delegates came upon the
New England men like a great surprise: where they had expected to see
rustic squires they found men of elegance and learning. But there was,
in fact, no good reason to wonder at the natural leadership of these
men. Their life had bred them more liberally than others. It required a
much more various capacity and knowledge of the world to administer a
great property and live the life of a local magnate in the South than
sufficed to put a man at the front of trade or of legal practice in
Boston or New York or Philadelphia.
[Illustration: WASHINGTON
(From the portrait by Rembrandt Peale in the Vice-President’s Room at
the Capitol, Washington)]
The Southern colonies, besides, had lived more in sympathy with the life
of the empire than had their Northern neighbors. Their life had depended
directly upon that of England hitherto, and had partaken of it with a
constant zest. They had no rival trade; they had wanted no rival
government. The general air of the wide empire had blown in all ordinary
seasons through their affairs, and they had cultivated none of that
shrewd antagonism towards the home government which had so sharpened the
wits and narrowed the political interests of the best men in New
England. They had read law because they were men of business, without
caring too much about its niceties or meaning to practise it in
litigation. They had read their English history without feeling that
they were separate from it. Their passion for freedom was born not of
local feeling so much as of personal pride and the spirit of those who
love old practices and the just exemptions of an ancient constitution.
It was the life they had lived, and the conceptions of personal dignity
and immemorial privilege that had gone always with it, that gave them so
striking an air of mastery. It was not simply because the Massachusetts
delegates kept themselves prudently in the background and the rest
yielded to her pretensions that Virginia was accorded primacy in the
congress: it was also because her representatives were men to whom power
naturally fell, and because she had won so honorable a place of
leadership already in the common affairs of the continent.
Colonel Washington, striking and forceable man though he was, did not
figure as a leader among the Virginian delegates. Peyton Randolph was
elected president of the congress; Richard Henry Lee and Patrick Henry
stood forth as the Virginian leaders on the floor. “If you speak of
solid information and sound judgment, Colonel Washington is
unquestionably the greatest man on that floor,” was Henry’s confident
and generous verdict; but Washington was no politician, and did not
stand in exactly the same class with the rest. He had headed committees
and presided over popular meetings among his own neighbors in Fairfax,
and had been prompt to join them in speaking with high spirit against
the course of the ministry in England. He had been forward in urging and
punctiliously careful in practising non-importation. He had declared
Gage’s conduct in Boston “more becoming a Turkish bashaw than an English
governor.” But he was a man of action rather than of parliaments. “I
will raise one thousand men, enlist them at my own expense, and march
myself at their head for the relief of Boston,” had been his impetuous
utterance in the Virginian convention--“the most eloquent speech that
ever was made,” Mr. Lynch declared. “I have heard he said,” reported an
admiring Philadelphian--“I have heard he said he wished to God the
liberties of America were to be determined by a single combat between
himself and George!” But his fellow Virginians understood him better.
They had chosen him for force and sobriety; not as an orator, but as the
first soldier and one of the first characters of the commonwealth; and
he had made the impression they expected. He had not been put upon their
committee of correspondence, or been appointed with Nicholas and
Pendleton and Lee and Henry to draw resolutions and remonstrances; but
when it came to choosing those who should represent the Old Dominion in
the congress, but two names stood before his in the vote. Peyton
Randolph, 104; Richard Henry Lee, 100; George Washington, 98; Patrick
Henry, 89; Richard Bland, 79; Benjamin Harrison, 66; Edmund Pendleton,
62--such had been the preference of the convention. The Northern
delegates admired his “easy, soldier-like air and gesture” and his
modest and “cool but determined” style and accent when he spoke; and
wondered to see him look scarce forty, when they recalled how his name
had gone through the colonies twenty years ago, when he had met the
French so gallantly at Great Meadows, and with Braddock at the forks of
the Ohio.
The Massachusetts delegates had reason to admire his manly openness,
too, and straightforward candor. An old comrade in arms whom he
esteemed--a Virginian now in regular commission, and stationed with the
troops in Boston--had written him very damaging things about the
“patriot” leaders of the beset town; of their “tyrannical oppression
over one another,” and “their fixed aim at total independence,” and had
charged them roundly with being no better than demagogues and rebels.
Washington went at once to the men accused, to learn from their own lips
their principles and intentions, taking Richard Henry Lee and discreet
Dr. Shippen along with him as his sponsors and witnesses. “Spent the
evening at home with Colonel Lee, Colonel Washington, and Dr. Shippen,
who came in to consult us,” was John Adams’s entry in his diary for
September 28th. No doubt Samuel Adams found the interview a trying one,
and winced a little under the examination of the calm and steady
soldier, going so straight to the point, for all his Virginian ceremony.
There had been many outward signs of the demagogue in Adams’s career. He
had been consciously and deliberately planning and scheming for
independence ever since 1768, and had made public avowal of his purpose
no longer ago than last year. It must have taxed even his adroit powers
to convince these frank Virginians that his purpose was not rebellion,
but liberty; that he venerated what they venerated, and wished only what
they wished. But the truth somehow lay open before the evening was gone.
There was frank cordiality in the parting: Washington was convinced of
their genuineness and sobriety. “Though you are led to believe by venal
men,” he replied to Captain Mackenzie, “that the people of Massachusetts
are rebellious, setting up for independency, and what not, give me
leave, my good friend, to tell you that you are abused, grossly abused.
This I advance with a degree of confidence and boldness which may claim
your belief, having better opportunities for knowing the real sentiments
of the people you are among, from the leaders of them, in opposition to
the present measures of the administration, than you have from those
whose business it is not to disclose truths, but to misrepresent facts
in order to justify as much as possible to the world their own conduct.”
The Massachusetts men had come to a better understanding of the
game--began to see how cautiously it must be played, how slowly and how
wisely. It was a critical business, this of drawing all the colonies
into a common congress, as if to create a directing body for the
continent, without constitution or warrant. The establishment of
committees of correspondence had seemed little short of seditious, for
it was notorious the committees were formed to concert action against
the government at home; but this “congress of committees” was an even
more serious matter. Would the colonies venture a continental
organization to defy Parliament? Dangerous differences of opinion were
blown hot between neighbors by such measures. Some of the best men in
America were opposed to the course which was now evidently to be taken.
So long as it was merely a matter of protest by the colonies severally,
they had no criticism to make--except perhaps that Mr. Otis and Mr.
Henry had held unnecessarily high language, and had been bold and
defiant beyond measure; but when they saw how the opposition gathered
head, hastened from protest to concerted resistance, put popular
conventions into the place of lawful legislative assemblies, and
advanced at length to a continental organization, they deemed it high
time to bestir themselves, vindicate their loyalty to his Majesty’s
government, and avert a revolution. They were not men to be trifled
with. Had they been able to unite upon active measures, had they
advanced from defence to aggressive action, they might have rendered
themselves formidable beyond possibility of defeat. Everywhere men of
substance and of influence were to be found by the score who were
opposed to a revolutionary agitation, such as this that now seemed to be
gathering head. Even in Massachusetts men who bore the best and the
oldest names of the commonwealth were of this number; in New York and
Pennsylvania, at the very heart of the continent, they could, it was
believed, boast a majority, as well as to the far southward, in the low
country of South Carolina and Georgia. No one, they declared, but
designing politicians and men without property, those who had much to
gain and nothing to lose by the upsetting of law and ordered government,
wished to see this contest with the ministry pushed to extremes. They
wished no less than others to see the colonies keep their lawful and
chartered liberties, but the thing must be accomplished soberly, and
without loss of things equally dear--of honor, and the maintenance of an
unbroken English Empire.
The nice balance of parties was disclosed in the congress itself. The
Pennsylvanian delegation was led by Joseph Galloway, a man in the prime
of life, full of force and learning, who had been Speaker of the
provincial House these eight years by the almost unanimous choice of his
colleagues, and who now stood forth to utter the real voice of his
colony in proposing measures of accommodation. He proposed that the home
government be asked to sanction the establishment of a confederate
parliament for America, composed of delegates to be chosen every third
year by the legislatures of the several colonies, and acting under a
governor-general to be appointed by the crown. Edward Rutledge, of South
Carolina, hot orator for liberty though he was, declared it an “almost
perfect plan,” and was eager to see it adopted; influential members from
almost every quarter gave it their hearty support, Mr. John Jay, of New
York, among the rest; and it was defeated only by the narrow majority of
a single colony’s vote. Chatham might very justly commend the congress
of 1774 as conspicuous among deliberative bodies for its “decency,
firmness, and wisdom,” its “solidity of reasoning, force of sagacity,
and wisdom of conclusion, under such a complication of circumstances,”
for the complication of circumstances was such as even he did not fully
comprehend. For seven weeks of almost continuous session did it hammer
its stiff business into shape, never wearying of deliberation or debate,
till it could put forth papers to the world--an address to the King,
memorials to the people of Great Britain and to the people of British
America, their fellow-subjects, and a solemn declaration of
rights--which should mark it no revolutionary body, but a congress of
just and thoughtful Englishmen, in love, not with license or rebellion,
but with right and wholesome liberty. Their only act of aggression was
the formation of an “American Association” pledged against trade with
Great Britain till the legislation of which they complained should be
repealed. Their only intimation of intention for the future was a
resolution to meet again the next spring, should their prayers not
meanwhile be heeded.
Washington turned homeward from the congress with thoughts and purposes
every way deepened and matured. It had been a mere seven weeks’
conference; no one had deemed the congress a government, or had spoken
of any object save peace and accommodation; but no one could foresee the
issue of what had been done. A spirit had run through those
deliberations which gave thoughtful men, as they pondered it, a new idea
of the colonies. It needed no prophet to discern beyond all this sober
and anxious business a vision of America united, armed, belligerent for
her rights. There was no telling what form of scornful rejection awaited
that declaration of rights or the grave pleading of that urgent memorial
to the crown. It behooved every man to hold himself in readiness for the
worst; and Washington saw as clearly as any man at how nice a hazard
things stood. He had too frank a judgment upon affairs to cheat himself
with false hopes. “An innate spirit of freedom first told me that the
measures which administration hath for some time been and now are most
violently pursuing are repugnant to every principle of natural justice,”
had been his earnest language to Bryan Fairfax ere he set out for the
congress; “whilst much abler heads than my own hath fully convinced me
that it is not only repugnant to natural right, but subversive of the
laws and constitution of Great Britain itself, in the establishment of
which some of the best blood of the kingdom hath been spilt.... I could
wish, I own,” he had added, “that this dispute had been left to
posterity to determine”; but he knew more clearly than ever before, as
he rode homeward from the congress through the autumn woods, that it had
not been; that Lee and Henry and Mason were rightly of the same mind and
purpose with the men from Massachusetts; that conference had only united
and heartened those who stood for liberty in every colony; that there
could be no compromise--perhaps no yielding either--and that every man
must now take his soberest resolution for the times to come.
He turned steadily to his private business for the winter, nevertheless,
as was his wont--pushed forward the preparation and settlement of his
western lands, and stood guard, as before, over the soldiers’ grants
upon the Ohio, against official bad faith and negligence. “For a year or
two past there has been scarce a moment that I could properly call my
own,” he declared to a friend who solicited his promise to act as
guardian to his son. “What with my own business, my present ward’s, my
mother’s, which is wholly in my hands, Colonel Fairfax’s, Colonel
Mercer’s, and the little assistance I have undertaken to give in the
management of my brother Augustine’s concerns, together with the share I
take in public affairs, I have been constantly
[Illustration: CARPENTER’S HALL, PHILADELPHIA]
engaged in writing letters, settling accounts, and negotiating one piece
of business or another; by which means I have really been deprived of
every kind of enjoyment, and had almost fully resolved to engage in no
fresh matter till I had entirely wound up the old.” He promised to
undertake the new charge, nevertheless. It was stuff of his nature to
spend himself thus, and keep his powers stretched always to a great
compass.
With the new year (1775) public affairs loomed big again, and ominous.
The petitions of the congress at Philadelphia had been received in
England almost with contempt. Chatham, indeed, with that broad and noble
sagacity which made him so great a statesman, had proposed that
America’s demands should be met, to the utmost length of repeal and
withdrawal of menace, and that she should be accorded to the full the
self-government she demanded in respect of taxation and every domestic
concern. “It is not cancelling a piece of parchment,” he cried, “that
can win back America,” the old fire burning hot within him; “you must
respect her fears and her resentments.” The merchants, too, in fear for
their trade, urged very anxiously that there should be instant and ample
concession. But the King’s stubborn anger, the Parliament’s
indifference, the ministry’s incapacity, made it impossible anything
wise or generous should be done. Instead of real concession there was
fresh menace. The ministry did, indeed, offer to exempt from taxation
every colony that would promise that by its own vote it would make
proper contribution to the expenses of public defence and imperial
administration--in the hope thereby to disengage the lukewarm middle
colonies from the plot now thickening against the government. But
Massachusetts was at once proclaimed in rebellion, every port in New
England was declared closed against trade, New England fishermen were
denied access to the Newfoundland fisheries, and ten thousand fresh
troops were ordered to Boston. Neither the pleas of their friends nor
the threats of their enemies reached the ears of the colonists promptly
from over sea that portentous spring; but they were not slow to perceive
that they must look for no concessions; and they did not wait upon
Parliament in their preparation for a doubtful future. Upon the very day
the “congress of committees” at Philadelphia adjourned, a “provincial
congress” in Massachusetts, formed of its own authority in the stead of
the House of Delegates the Governor had but just now dissolved, had
voted to organize and equip the militia of the colony and to collect
stores and arms. Virginia had been equally bold, and almost equally
prompt, far away as she seemed from the King’s troops at Boston. By the
end of January Charles Lee could write from Williamsburg: “The whole
country is full of soldiers, all furnished, all in arms.... Never was
such vigor and concord heard of, not a single traitor, scarcely a silent
dissentient.”
“Every county is now arming a company of men for the avowed purpose of
protecting their committees,” Dunmore had reported to the ministry
before the year 1774 was out, “and to be employed against government if
occasion require. As to the power of government which your lordship
directs should be exerted to counteract the dangerous measures pursuing
here, I can assure your lordship that it is entirely disregarded, if not
wholly overturned. There is not a justice of peace in Virginia that acts
except as a committeeman; the abolishing of courts of justice was the
first step taken, in which the men of fortune and pre-eminence joined
equally with the lowest and meanest.” Company after company, as it
formed, asked Colonel Washington to assume command over it, not only in
his own county of Fairfax, but in counties also at a distance--and he
accepted the responsibility as often as it was offered to him. “It is my
full intention,” he said, simply, “to devote my life and fortune to the
cause we are engaged in, if needful”; and he had little doubt any longer
what was to come. He found time, even that stirring year, to quicken his
blood once and again, nevertheless, while winter held, by a run with the
hounds: for he was not turned politician so sternly even yet as to throw
away his leisure upon anything less wholesome than the hale sport he
loved.
On the 20th of May, 1775, the second Virginian convention met, not in
Williamsburg, but at Richmond, and its chief business was the arming of
the colony. Maryland had furnished the ironical formula with which to
justify what was to be done: “Resolved, unanimously, that a
well-regulated militia, composed of the gentlemen freeholders and other
freemen, is the natural strength and only stable security of a free
government; and that such militia will relieve our mother-country from
any expense in our protection and defence, will obviate the pretence of
a necessity for taxing us on that account, and render it unnecessary to
keep any standing army--ever dangerous to liberty--in this province.”
Mr. Henry accepted the formula with great relish, in the convention at
Richmond, in his resolution “that the colony be immediately put into a
posture of defence,” but he broke with it in the speech with which he
supported his measures of preparation. In that there was no plan or
pretence of peace, but, instead, a plain declaration of war. Once more
did Edmund Pendleton, Richard Bland, Mr. Nicholas, and Colonel Harrison
spring to their feet to check him, as in the old days of the Stamp Act.
Once more, nevertheless, did he have his way, completely, triumphantly.
What he had proposed was done, and his very opponents served upon the
committee charged with its accomplishment. It was not doing more than
other colonies had done; it was only saying more; it was only dealing
more fearlessly and frankly with fortune. Even slow, conservative men
like John Dickinson, of Pennsylvania, shielded themselves behind only an
“if.” “The first act of violence on the part of administration in
America,” they knew, “or the attempt to reinforce General Gage this
winter or next year, will put the whole continent in arms, from Nova
Scotia to Georgia.”
What they feared very speedily came to pass. ’Twas hardly four weeks
from the day Mr. Henry proclaimed a state of war in the convention at
Richmond before the King’s regulars were set upon at Lexington and
Concord and driven back in rout to their quarters by the swarming
militia-men of Massachusetts. On the 19th of April they had set out
across a peaceful country to seize the military stores placed at
Concord. Before the day was out they had been fairly thrown back into
Boston, close upon three hundred of their comrades gone to a last
reckoning; and the next morning disclosed a rapidly growing provincial
army drawn in threatened siege about them. In the darkness of that very
night (April 20th), at the command of Dunmore, a force of marines was
landed from an armed sloop that lay in James River, in Virginia, to
seize the gunpowder stored at Williamsburg. The Virginians in their turn
sprang to arms, and Dunmore was forced, ere he could rid himself of the
business, to pay for the powder taken--pay Captain Patrick Henry, at the
head of a body of militia under arms.
On the 10th of May the second Continental Congress met at Philadelphia,
with business to transact vastly different from that to which the first
“congress of committees” had addressed itself--not protests and
resolves, but quick and efficient action. The very day it met, a body of
daring provincials under Ethan Allen had walked into the open gates at
Ticonderoga and taken possession of the stout fortress “in the name of
the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress”; and two days later a
similar exploit secured Crown Point to the insurgents. Active war had
begun; an army was set down before Boston--a rude army that had grown to
be sixteen thousand strong within the first week of its rally; the
country was united in a general resistance, and looked to the congress
to give it organization and guidance. Colonel Washington had come to the
congress in his provincial uniform, and found himself a great deal
sought after in its committees. Not only the drawing of state papers
which would once more justify their cause and their resort to arms in
the eyes of the world, but the actual mustering and equipment of an
army, quick fortification, the gathering of munitions and supplies, the
raising of money and the organization of a commissariat, the restraint
of the Indians upon the frontier, was the business in hand, and
Washington’s advice was invaluable when such matters were afoot. He
showed no hesitation as to what should be done. His own mind had long
ago been made up; and the sessions of the congress were not ended before
Virginia was committed beyond all possibility of drawing back. The 1st
of June saw her last House of Burgesses convene; for by the 8th of the
month Dunmore was a fugitive--had seen the anger of a Williamsburg mob
blaze hot against him, and had taken refuge upon a man-of-war lying in
the river. The province was in revolution, and Washington was ready to
go with it.
It meant more than he thought that he had come to Philadelphia habited
like a soldier. It had not been his purpose to draw all eyes upon him:
it was merely his instinctive expression of his own personal feeling
with regard to the crisis that had come. But it was in its way a
fulfilment of prophecy. When the first Virginian convention chose
delegates to attend the congress of 1774, “some of the tickets on the
ballot assigned reasons for the choice expressed in them. Randolph
should preside in congress; Lee and Henry should display the different
kinds of eloquence for which they were renowned; Washington should
command the army, if an army should be raised; Bland should open the
treasures of ancient colonial learning; Harrison should utter plain
truths; and Pendleton should be the penman for business.” No wonder the
gentlemen from Virginia, coming with such confidence to the congress,
made the instant impression they did for mastery and self-poise! “There
are some fine fellows come from Virginia,” Joseph Reed had reported,
“but they are very high. We understand they are the capital men of the
colony.” Washington alone awaited his cue. Now he was to get it, without
expecting it. The irregular army swarming before Boston was without
standing or government. It had run hastily together out of four
colonies; was subject to no common authority; hardly knew what
allegiance it bore; might fall to pieces unless it were adequately
commanded. The congress in Philadelphia was called upon to recognize and
adopt it, give it leave and authority to act for all the colonies, give
it a commander, and summon the whole country to recruit it. There was an
obvious political necessity that the thing should be done, and done
promptly. Massachusetts did not wish to stand alone; New England wanted
the active assistance of the other colonies; something must be attempted
to secure common action. The first thing to do was to choose an
acceptable and efficient leader, and to choose him outside New England.
To John Adams the choice seemed simple enough. There was no soldier in
America, outside New England--nor inside either--to be compared, whether
in experience or distinction, with Washington, the gallant,
straightforward, earnest Virginian he had learned so to esteem and trust
there in Philadelphia. He accordingly moved that congress “adopt the
army at Cambridge,” and declared that he had “but one gentleman in mind”
for its command--“a gentleman from Virginia, who was among us,” he said,
“and very well known to all of us; a gentleman whose skill and
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.” Washington, taken unawares, rose and
slipped in confusion from the room. Some of his own friends doubted the
expediency of putting a Virginian at the head of a New England army, but
the more clear-sighted among the New-Englanders did not, and the
selection was made, after a little hesitation, unanimously.
Washington accepted his commission with that mixture of modesty and
pride that made men love and honor him. “You may believe me, my dear
Patsy,” were his simple words to his wife, “when I assure you in the
most solemn manner, that, so far from seeking this appointment, I have
used every endeavor in my power to avoid it, not only from my
unwillingness to part with you and the family, but from a consciousness
of its being a trust too great for my capacity.... But as it has been a
kind of destiny that has thrown me upon this service, I shall hope that
my undertaking it is designed to answer some good purpose.... It was
utterly out of my power to refuse this appointment, without exposing my
character to such censures as would have reflected dishonor upon myself
and given pain to my friends.” He spoke in the same tone to the
congress. “I beg it may be remembered,” he said, “by every gentleman in
this room, that I this day declare with the utmost sincerity I do not
think myself equal to the command I am honored with.” His commission was
signed on the 19th of June; on the 21st he was on the road to the
north--the road he had travelled twenty years ago to consult with
Governor Shirley in Boston upon questions of rank, and to fall into Mary
Phillipse’s snare by the way; the road he had ridden after the races,
but three years ago, to put Jacky Custis at college in New York. “There
is something charming to me in the conduct of Washington,” exclaimed
John Adams; and it was wholesome for the whole country that such a man
should be put at the head of affairs. Many ignoble things were being
done in the name of liberty, and an ugly tyranny had been brought to
every man’s door--“the tyranny of his next-door neighbor.” There were
men by the score in the colonies who had no taste or sympathy for the
rebellion they now saw afoot--common men who knew little or nothing of
the mother-country, as well as gentlemen of culture who loved her
traditions and revered her crown; farmers and village lawyers, as well
as merchants at the ports who saw their living gone and ruin staring
them in the face. But the local committees and the “Sons of Liberty”
everywhere saw to it that such men should know and dread and fearfully
submit to the views of the majority. Government was suspended: there was
nowhere so much as a justice of the peace acting under the authority of
the crown. There might have been universal license had the rabble not
seen their leaders so noble, so bent upon high and honorable purposes.
It was an object-lesson in the character of the revolution to see
Washington ride through the colonies to take charge of an insurgent
army. And no man or woman, or child even, was likely to miss the lesson.
That noble figure drew all eyes to it; that mien as if the man were a
prince; that sincere and open countenance, which every man could see was
lighted by a good conscience; that cordial ease in salute, as of a man
who felt himself brother to his friends. There was something about
Washington that quickened the pulses of a crowd at the same time that it
awed them, that drew cheers which were a sort of voice of worship.
Children desired sight of him, and men felt lifted after he had passed.
It was good to have such a man ride all the open way from Philadelphia
to Cambridge in sight of the people to assume command of the people’s
army. It gave character to the thoughts of all who saw him.
GENERAL WASHINGTON