George Washington

Front matter

Class J[LJ3_/_2^- Book Tift' ^^

BY

ADA RUSSELL, MA.

Contents

CHAPTER , PAGE

Introduction ......... v

I. The Ancestors 1

CHAPTER I: The Ancestors

BEFORE beginning our story of the eighteenth century and its great movements, which will centre in our hero George Washington, we must go briefly over the history of the rise and growth of the British colonies in North America, — to what President Wilson has called the 'swarming of the English.'

The thirteenth century A.D. saw the beginnings of that rich eastern commerce which was the dream and prize of the medieval merchant and made cities like Venice and Genoa so great and prosperous; but hardly had the riches of the Orient begun to pour into Europe than the growing power of the Turks made the land routes to Asia almost impracticable. However, the invention of the mariners' compass in the fourteenth century made long sea-voyages possible, and the idea became stronger and stronger that Asia could be reached by sea.

As only a few of the most enlightened people seriously entertained the notion that the earth was spherical in form, the first schemes were directed to the possible route round Africa, for although no one knew the extent of Africa to the south there was a very strong belief that it came to an end somewhere. Prince Henry 'the Navigator' of Portugal, therefore, an illustrious prince whose knowledge and enterprise raised Portugal to a leading position in the scientific world, gathered together experienced mariners, founded a naval college and an observatory, and fitted out expeditions for exploring the African coast.

All sailors with dreams of adventure and all seacaptains who desired to share in the profitable trade with Asia, wandered to Lisbon, and thither came among the rest the famous Genoese mariner, Christopher Columbus, the ancestor of American civilisation.

Prince Henry the Navigator unfortunately never saw the reward of his toil and faith, dying in 1473, before the great discoveries, for not until 1487 did Bartholomew Diaz round the Cape of Good Hope, and so find the long4ioped for path to Asia by the eastern seas, and not until 1492 did Columbus set sail for the West.

Columbus had no idea of following in the steps of the Portuguese pioneers. Devoted all his life to the study of geography, in the intervals of his seafaring he read ancient Greek geographical writers and became inspired with the belief that to him Providence had reserved the greatest of all geographical discoveries, the proof of the sphericity of the globe; and if the earth were indeed spherical in shape he believed that by sailing west he must necessarily reach Asia, for that another great continent lay between Europe and Asia did not even enter his head. Now that Prince Henry was dead he could expect no help from the Portuguese sovereign, and he tried in turn all the kings of Europe, and at last obtained the assistance of the Spanish crown. He set sail therefore on 3d August, 1492, and on 11th October landed on the Bahamas, which he

The Ancestors

named the West Indies. His discovery aroused eager enthusiasm in Spain, which was not slow to follow up her fortunate enterprise, and within twenty-seven years from his first departure from Spain the eastern shores of South and Central America had been explored by Spaniards, nearly to the southern tip of the continent.

Spain founded a mighty empire in Central and Southern America, and she was such a powerful nation that it seemed to all men a miracle when England was able to maintain her independence against her in the sixteenth century. It was indeed almost an impertinence for England to oppose her power, but from the time England became a Protestant country she hated Spain bitterly, and she resented her monopoly of the New World, whither English mariners were longing to sail treasure-himting and adventure-seeking. A little crew of Bristol sailors planted the English flag in Newfoundland in 1497, but there was no public interest in this colony, and Canada for the moment passed to the French, who also colonised Louisiana, to the south. It was necessary for England to make haste if she was to obtain any part in the rich heritage which had fallen so unexpectedly to the old countries of Europe.

So one hundred years after Columbus attempted to put into execution his dreams, Frobisher set out on the same errand. He was followed by the famous unfortunate hero Sir Humphrey Gilbert, and to fight Spain and found American colonies was the twin ambition of all Elizabethan sailors. The soldierpoet Sir Walter Raleigh was haunted by these ambitions and he projected the plantation on the Atlantic seaboard which was called *Virgmia' after the Virgin Queen Elizabeth, and consolidated under James I. Virginia, the home of Washington and many another of America's future statesmen, was thus the first of the English colonies, and it always had different traditions from the States that were founded subsequently. It had, strangely enough, no traditions of revolt, religious or political, and as it was afterward to lead the others in rebellion, so now it led them in politeness and the arts, in obedience to the Mother Country and the Established Church and Crown.

Then came various instalments of religious refugees. When the Stuarts came to the throne of England in 1603 they found that bodies of all shades and shapes of religious opinion were hoping for their acceptance and support, and only waiting until stern Elizabeth, who suppressed both Roman Catholics and Non-conformists, should have died. To their dismay, James I continued the policy of Queen Elizabeth. He had learned in Scotland to dislike the Presbyterians, who had little respect for royalty — they called him *God's silly vassal' — and he used to say 'No bishop, no King.' So when the Pilgrim Fathers, who had fled from the Elizabethan regime to Holland, found that conditions were not improved under James, they set sail in the 'Mayflower' for the New World. 'Y/e are well weaned from the delicate milk of the mother country,' wrote one of their ministers, *and inured to the difficulties of a strange land. The people are industrious and frugal. We are knit together as a body in a most sacred covenant of the Lord, of the violation whereof we make great

The Ancestors

conscience, and by virtue whereof we hold ourselves strictly tied to all care of each other's good and of the whole.' They landed in 1620 on the coast of Massachusetts, and soon the colonies of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont and Rhode Island, and later New Hampshire and Maine, represented 'New England.' As the Lincolnshire Boston had helped to fit out one of these Puritan emigrations, the name of Boston was given to that famous New England town, the capital of Massachusetts.

James I disliked the Roman Catholics less than the Puritans, and so he very readily granted to a Catholic nobleman. Lord Baltimore, the permission to found a Roman Catholic colony in America. Charles I granted it a royal charter and it was incorporated under the name of Maryland, after Queen Henrietta Maria. Here religious liberty first flourished, for in English colonies Roman Catholics dared not persecute Protestants, and the State religion being Roman Catholic, Protestants could not persecute Roman Catholics.

You will all have heard of the *Laudian persecution' in the Church of England at home. Under the influence of Laud and with the approbation of Charles I, the Church of England drew immeasurably away from Puritanism. Ritual and ceremony, moot points for so long after the Reformation and throughout the sixteenth century, were enforced rigorously, and Puritan usages, including the strict observance of the Sabbath Day and the marriage of priests, were discouraged. The immediate consequence was the emigration of thousands of Puritans to the New World.

Thus, long before the new ideas of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity came over to America from France, there was a set of colonies founded by people who had given up home and kith and kin for the sake of freedom of faith, people who were willing to give up life itself for their idea of duty and what they conceived were their rights.

In the latter half of the seventeenth century, the English colonies were added to by the Dutch wars. Between INIaryland and New England there was a Swedish colony which subsequently became Dutch, with a capital— New Amsterdam. By the treaty with Holland which Charles II made, this colony was handed over to Britain and New Amsterdam received the title of the King's brother, the Duke of York, being called New York. Delaware was ceded by the Dutch at the same time, and Britain also made good her claim to the small colony of New Jersey. New York, like Virginia, had no peculiar religious traditions, and her history, hke that of Virginia, always shows this.

A further Puritan colony was that of Pennsylvania, founded by William Penn especially for Quakers (but granting religious toleration to all), under James II; and in the same reign the colony of Carolina, called after Charles II, who had granted its charter, was established to the South of Virginia. Carolina obtained its population chiefly from emigrations from Ireland of Ulster men, aud to these emigrations the population of Georgia, to the west, was also chiefly due; and so two States sprang up in the South quite different from the Virginian type, now the old aristocracy of the colonies.

The Ancestors

These colonies thus came to occupy a large, compact stretch of territory on the Atlantic coast, stretching for over 1,000 miles between Spanish Florida on the South and French Canada on the North. They prospered in the most marvellous fashion, and in the middle of the century following that of their formation Burke said they seemed to him:

'Rather ancient nations grown to perfection through a long series of fortunate events and a train of successful industry, accumulating wealth in many centuries, than the colonies of yesterday; than a set of miserable outcasts, a few years ago, not so much sent as throwTi out en the bleak and desert shore of a barren wilderness, three thousand miles from all civilised intercourse.'

Talking of one Lord Bathurst, he was, says Burke, in 1704 of an age to be made to comprehend such things, and 'Suppose . . . that the angel of this auspicious youth, foreseeing the many virtues which made him one of the most amiable, as he is one of the most fortunate men of his age, had opened to him in vision that when, in the foiuth generation, the third prince of the House of Brunswick had sat twelve years on the throne of that nation, which . . . was to be made Great Britain, he should see his son. Lord Chancellor of England, turn back the current of hereditary dignity to its fountain, and raise him to a higher rank of peerage, whilst he enriched the family with a new one. If amidst these bright and happy scenes of domestic honour and prosperity, that angel should have drawn up the curtain and unfolded the rising glories of his country and, whilst he was gazing with admiration on the then commercial grandeur of England, the genius should point out to him a little speck scarce visible in the mass of the national interest . . . and should tell him: "Young man, there is America," which at this day serves for little more than to amuse you with stories of savage men and uncouth manners; yet shall, before you taste of death, show itself equal to the whole of that commerce which now attracts the envy of the world!'

In the warm regions of the South, cotton and tobacco were grown, largely by slave labour. These, by the 'Navigation Laws,' might only be exported to British possessions and constituted the chief part of the commercial riches of Britain. The raw cotton exported to Lancashire inaugurated the commercial greatness of that county and so exercised an important influence on English hfe then and ever afterward. To work the tobacco and cotton plantations of the South, slaves were imported in large numbers and a slave trade, common to both North and South, developed and became almost a rival to tobacco and cotton as a mercantile item. The new ideas of the rights of man made people examine their consciences, and a very strong minority began to look upon slavery as a social evil; but profit and conscience had a hard struggle and for a long time profit won the day. Carrying slaves and the products of the Southern plantations, a brisk transport business sprang up in New England, but for the most part agriculture and cattle-rearing were the staple industries of the Northern colonies.

Each colony was governed after the fashion at Home, by three Estates — Governor, representing the King; senators; and a popular element in the House of Burgesses. Where the Governor, as often happened, had great ideas of the royal prerogative and his own dignity, he often, before there was any idea of revolt from England at large, got across the House of Burgesses and even the local Senates. The Board of Trade at Home received by almost every mail from some of the colonies reams of complaints by the Governor of the impertinence to which he was subjected and reams of representations from the colonists against the conduct of the Governor. It is impossible not to feel on reading these papers, still unpublished in the archives of the Public

The Ancestors

Record office, that, long before the American Revolution, American Pyms and Hampdens were collecting their arguments, polishing their grievances and fretting at their subjection to institutions entirely alien to their inherent tastes and trend of mind.

As a social institution, the Governor was wellliked in an aristocratic State like Virginia, where social life in the eighteenth century resembled very much that of England at the same period. He made a centre for polite life, and his position made a hierarchy of social precedence possible. The carriages of the local gentry, like the Lees and Washingtbns, with liveried servants in the English manner, would drive into Williamsburg or Annapolis (in Maryland) of a winter evening, and ladies in enormous crinolines and tower-like head-dresses would step out on to the red carpet and trip up the steps of big houses under an awning, while the sounds of a gay band would issue; and the gentlemen in knee-breeches, silken hose, silver-buckled shoon, gaily coloured coats, frilled ruffles and powdered wigs, would hand them out of their carriages and lead them to the ballroom and dance with them the stately minuet, even as their brothers and cousins at Home were doing in London, Bath or Wells.

But there was very little of such aristocratic life in the colonies. Indeed, it was confined to the big planter colonies and to large towns like New York. Elsewhere, the Governor conflicted with popular institutions and tastes, as representative of class distinctions and privileges of birth and rank that the New World was already conscious of a wish to abolish.

CHAPTER II: TheRebeVsChild^ hood

GEORGE WASHINGTON was descended from an old planter family of Virginia, who had left England under the Commonwealth, and so had the reverse of republican ancestry. His ancestors indeed departed from the Old Country a few years after the execution of Charles I, full of sorrow and indignation at that act. They belonged to an old English family, undistinguished on the whole, but occasionally producing some notable person. Their chief seat was at Sulgrave in Northamptonshire, where stained glass and a few ancient brasses still preserve their name and arms. Sir Henry Washington fought for Charles I in the Civil War and showed some of the qualities of soldier and ruler that George afterward possessed. The Washingtons found England neither a safe nor pleasant place under the Puritan Commonwealth, and set sail in 1657 for Virginia, the loyal Church of England colony, where they could preserve in safety their loyalty and their religion. John and Lawrence, the uncles of Sir Henry, were the founders. They purchased lands on the west bank of the Potomac River, built a house there, and continued to live, so far as changed conditions permitted it, the life of English country gentlemen. The elder of the two

10 ',

The ReheVs Childhood

brothers. Colonel John Washington, great-grandfather of George, stands out as a wealthy planter and pioneer in Indian warfare, for in the border States Indian warfare was a constant feature. He removed the seat of his family to Bridges Creek, a short distance from the Potomac. His elder son Lawrence had three children — among them Augustine, father of George. Augustine was twice married and had a good many children, of whom George was the eldest by the second wife.

George Washington, the future President of the United States, was born on the 22d February, 1732, at Bridges Creek in the house built by his greatgrandfather. Colonel John Washington, of which not a stone remains to-day. A simple inscription only tells that it was the birthplace of Washington.

When he was about five years old his family left this house for another at the banks of the Rappahannock, a mighty river neighbouring Indian territory and hitherto navigated chiefly by the Indian's light canoe. It was bordered by primeval forests and represented the boundary of British civilisation as extended by the Washingtons and other big planters. Here Washington grew up and learned gradually to manage estates and deal prudently with a vast overseas commerce, for his family like their fellow planters shipped their own goods to Great Britain without the help of the shipping agencies. Here he studied the social and political life of his colony and took his part in its festivities, learning to ride, fish, hunt, and to protect himself against Indians. Part of his training was how to tame exuberant nature, and another part, and not the least important, was to face the bravest and most skilful foes the white man has ever met in his wanderings — the Redskins. In the border colonies there was a continual danger of Indian raids, of villages and farms being set on fire and the inhabitants scalped.

George played at Redskins at a period when they were still prowling round the White Man's settlements and stalking him, and in his teens he sat in their tents and watched their war-dances and heard their grim songs. When he was very small he played at soldiers, having a set of toy grenadiers, and he would assemble the negro children on his father's plantation and drill them lilce a martinet. He never dreamed of any other career for himself than that of a soldier.

His half-brother Lawrence, eldest son and heir, was sent to England to be educated. Having received the best instruction 'Home' (as the colonists still called the Old Country) could give, he returned to America to receive a commission as captain in His Britannic Majesty's Army, and served with distinction mider Admiral Vernon against Spain. The excitement of George knew no bounds when he heard of his brother's doings and promotion.

Being a younger son, he was not sent to the Old Country for his education. However, he learned * what's what' from Lawrence, who took great pains with him, and carefully observed the manners and ways of the English gentlemen and distinguished colonials he met from time to time. Lord Fairfax, a typical eighteenth century English gentleman, a great sportsman and yet a patron of the arts — even himself a contributor to that quintessence of intel-

The RebeVs Childhood

lectual England, 'The Spectator' — had wide estates in these parts and was on the most intimate terms with the Washingtons. It was astonishing, however, how little Americans really learned from eighteenth century England. They picked up her amusements and fashions m dress and furniture, but they were almost proof against her intellectual outlook at that time. The eighteenth century is one on which Britons may well look back with pride in almost every direction. England had built up a great commercial empire; she had established what for the time was a model system of government at home ; and she had a constellation of famous literary men whose works are still among the chief treasures of the race. But the literature produced at that time dealt largely in epigram and irony and could only have been produced and appreciated by a highly artificial society. It was full of humour and scholarship, and sparkled with wit, but it seemed to Americans to be too far removed from life. It incited to no high ideals or noble conduct; it made little appeal to the passions; it had no 'heart.' There was therefore between Great Britain and her colonies no intellectual bond which should endear her to them. Literary sympathy is often the best conductor of liking between nation and nation, and this literary sympathy in that age America found more in France than u\. England.

For good or for evil, George Washington never had the slightest touch of the literary spirit of eighteenth century England, and there is nothing to make us suppose that he had the slightest sense of humour. His character was formed to greater issues, and he was perhaps fortunate in escaping from the cynical, ironical spirit that nearly became a plague in eighteenth century life at Home. In all other respects he grew up to the height of the age as a perfect gentleman, wise, sensible, straightforward, magnanimous, courteous, charitable, obstinate, patient, strong in every way; and the wonderful thing about him is that he showed most of these qualities almost as soon as he could speak. He was tall and handsome; he excelled every other boy in all manly games; and a place is still shown where he threw a stone across the Rappahannock at the lower ferry; he ran like a deer, he leapt like a cat; he could tame a wild horse like Alexander, and wrestle without a peer. His parents took more than ordinary pains that their children should be straightforward, truthful and religious.

Among many famous stories of George and his father, the only one I can be sure that every reader will have heard of is that of the Lie, and as none of you like this story — because nice people do not generally say that they 'cannot tell a lie' — I am glad to be able to tell you that it is almost certainly false. Tlie beautiful English cherry-tree spoiled by the toy hatchet has gone with the little boy who could not tell a lie to the land where nearly every other tale of Washington's childhood has fled. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, it was never a very truthful tale itself. The Hatchet of History has been applied mercilessly to the fertile legend of Washington's childhood and has left us literally nothing in the way of anecdote.

When he was five years old he was sent to the

The RebeVs Childhood

school of the village sexton, one Hobby, although his father remarked that 'a bright boy will run Hobby dry in two or three years'; and although Hobby might claim in later years to have laid the foundations of Washington's greatness, it is plain that the boy learned at home what was most valuable to him — the Scriptures, stories of history, and the description of other countries. He had little of the scholar in his disposition, and through lack of opportunity he never learned any foreign tongue, not even French. Legend says that both in the school and in the playground he was a model boy.

From Hobby's hands he passed to the school of one Mr. Williams, the best teacher to be found in Virginia, and went in especially for the study of arithmetic, book-keeping and surveying, as it was thought that these subjects would be most useful to him as a planter.

At thirteen he was already a man in stature and maturity of character, and had already drawn up sets of legal and commercial forms that he thought would be useful to him. His experience in making this 'Book of Forms,' still preserved, *gave him,' says his biographer, Washington Irving, 'throughout life a lawyer's skill in draughting documents, and a merchant's exactness in keeping accounts; so that all the concerns of his various estates, his dealings with his domestic stewards and foreign agents, his accounts with Governments, and all the financial transactions to this day are to be seen posted up in books, in his own handwriting, monuments of his method and unvaried accuracy.' He mapped and measured the farms near the school as if he were a professional surveyor. He also wrote out *Rules of Behaviour in Company and Conversation' — 110 of them — such as:

'Sleep not when others speak; sit not when others stand; speak not when you should hold your peace; walk not when others stop.'

'Break not a jest where none take pleasure in mirth; laugh not aloud nor at all without occasion; deride no man's misfortune, though there seem to be some cause.'

'Speak not injurious words, neither in jest nor earnest; scofif at none, although they give occasion.'

'Detract not from others, neither be excessive in commending.'

'Give not advice^without being asked; and when desired do it briefly.'

'Reprehend not the imperfections of othei's; for that belongs to parents, masters and superiors.'

'Be not apt to relate news, if you know not the truth thereof.'

George must have framed these rules on his reading, not on his experience, but the older members of his family agreed that if any one living were capable of carrying them out it was he.

His kind, wise father died shortly before George went to Mr. Williams' school. He was overcome with the most passionate sorrow, for he 'thought the world of his father,' it was said, 'and his father thought the world of him.' Lawrence married one of the Fairfax girls very shortly afterward, and settled on an estate nearby, bequeathed him by his father, calling it after his favourite admiral, by the now famous name of Mount Vernon, to be associated in later days with his famous brother. George soon spent all his spare time and holidays here. The estate on the Rappahannock was settled on him.

George was not quite sixteen when he left school for good, and he was already in the throes of his

The RebePs Childhood

first love affair, of which the object was a lady identified by tradition with the future mother of General Henry Lee, one of the heroes of the Revolution. Perhaps he was influenced, as he was very much in everything, by the marriage of Lawrence; anyway he wrote verses to the Lady of his Thoughts, and was very unhappy for an unusually long time. It is an episode without a fellow in a life that was to be romantic indeed, but in a bigger way.

At Mount Vernon, where he met many officers, George, strongly encouraged by Lawrence, once turned his thoughts to the British Navy; a midshipman's warrant was obtained for him and his trunk actually put aboard the man-of-war in the Potomac, when his mother repented and begged him to stay with her. After a sharp struggle, George consented to do so, and so the big man-of-war sailed away with his first ambition as the unknown fair lady sailed away with his first love. Not in vain had his parents taught him obedience and quoted often the grim text:

'The eye that mocketh at his father and despiseth to obey his mother, the ravens of the valley shall pick it out, and the young eagles shall eat it.'

Washington's mother, unlike his father, lived to see the harvest of the virtues she had so carefully planted, and in the coming days of the American Republic *the mother of Washington' enjoyed a renown not unlike that of the 'Mother of the Gracchi' under the Roman Republic of old. To the end of her days she maintained her authority over children and household; George still obeyed her when he became President of the United States, and a relation wrote of the times when the children were young:

'Of the mother I was ten times more afraid than I ever was of my own parents. She awed me in the midst of her kindness, for she was, indeed, truly kind. I have often been present with her sons, proper, tall fellows, too, and we were all as mute as mice; and even now, when time has whitened my locks, and I am grandparent of a second generation, I could not behold that remarkable woman without feelings it is impossible to describe. WTioever has seen that awe-inspiring air and manner so characteristic in the Father of his Country, will remember the matron as she appeared when the presiding genius of her well-ordered household, commanding and being obeyed.'

CHAPTER III: The Hero's Life Among the Redskins

WHEN George, not quite sixteen years of age, left school, he went to Hve at Mount Vernon with Lawrence, already a man of influence and importance, a member of the House of Burgesses of Virginia and Adjutant General of his district. At Belvoir, not far away, he met the Fairfaxes and became a constant companion of Lord Fairfax in his hunting. Their friendship led to the engagement of George to survey Lord Fairfax's estate and many consequent adventures which all helped to train the young man in hardihood and judgment.

On horseback, with a hunting-knife and tomahawk in his belt, he set out with one of the Fairfaxes and a few servants on a surveying expedition. Sometimes they bivouacked at some Indian campfire, and they depended for food on what they shot or caught — wild turkey or other game — cooking it on forked sticks and eating it off pieces of wood they found suitable for plates. Sometimes they came at night to a squatter's hut. A letter from George to a friend says: 'Since you received my last letter I have not slept above three or four nights in a bed, but after walking a good deal all day I have lain down before the fire upon a little straw, hay, fodder or a bear-skin — whichsoever was to be had — with man, wife and children, Hke dogs and cats; and happy is he who gets the berth nearest the fire. I have never had my clothes off, but have lain and slept in them, except the few nights I have been in Fredericksburg.' For the first time he saw Indian settlements and wigwams and war-dances and heard their war-whoops. Sometimes they found the settler's hut too filthy to sleep in; and at the house of one 'Solomon Hedge, Esq., J. P.,' where they supped, they were given neither knife nor fork to eat with.