Washington's Birthday Part 18

Other misfortunes may be borne, or their effects overcome. If disastrous war should sweep our commerce from the ocean, another generation may renew it; if it exhaust our treasury, future industry may replenish it; if it desolate and lay waste our fields, still, under a new cultivation, they will grow green again, and ripen to future harvests. It were but a trifle even if the walls of yonder Capitol were to crumble, if its lofty pillars should fall, and its gorgeous decorations be all covered by the dust of the valley. All these might be rebuilt. But who shall reconstruct the fabric of demolished government? Who shall rear again the well-proportioned columns of const.i.tutional liberty? Who shall frame together the skillful architecture which unites national sovereignty with State rights, individual security, and public prosperity? No, if these columns fall, they will be raised not again. Like the Coliseum and the Parthenon, they will be destined to a mournful, a melancholy immortality. Bitterer tears, however, will flow over them than were ever shed over the monuments of Roman or Grecian art; for they will be the remnants of a more glorious edifice than Greece or Rome ever saw, the edifice of const.i.tutional American liberty.

But let us hope for better things. Let us trust in that gracious Being who has. .h.i.therto held our country as in the hollow of his hand. Let us trust to the virtue and the intelligence of the people, and to the efficacy of religious obligation. Let us trust to the influence of Washington's example. Let us hope that that fear of Heaven which expels all other fear, and that regard to duty which transcends all other regard, may influence public men and private citizens, and lead our country still onward in her happy career. Full of these gratifying antic.i.p.ations and hopes, let us look forward to the end of that century which is now commenced. A hundred years hence, other disciples of Washington will celebrate his birth, with no less of sincere admiration than we now commemorate it. When they shall meet, as we now meet, to do themselves and him that honor, so surely as they shall see the blue summits of his native mountains rise in the horizon, so surely as they shall behold the river on whose banks he lived, and on whose banks he rests, still flowing on toward the sea, so surely may they see, as we now see, the flag of the Union floating on the top of the Capitol; and then, as now, may the sun in his course visit no land more free, more happy, more lovely, than this our own country!

FOOTNOTES:

[21] At the beginning of the nineteenth century Marcus Tullius Cicero was often called Tully.

[22] A remark by Fisher Ames (1758-1808), of Ma.s.sachusetts,--perhaps the extremest Federalist of his time.

[23] The famous phrase, "honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none," was not Washington's but Jefferson's.

MOUNT VERNON, THE HOME OF WASHINGTON

BY WILLIAM DAY

_The following lines were written on the back of a picture at Mount Vernon_:

There dwelt the Man, the flower of human kind, Whose visage mild bespoke his n.o.bler mind.

There dwelt the Soldier, who his sword ne'er drew But in a righteous cause, to Freedom true.

There dwelt the Hero, who ne'er killed for fame, Yet gained more glory than a Caesar's name.

There dwelt the Statesman, who, devoid of art, Gave soundest counsels from an upright heart;

And, O Columbia, by thy sons caressed, There dwelt the Father of the realms he blessed; Who no wish felt to make his mighty praise, Like other chiefs, the means himself to raise; But there retiring, breathed in pure renown, And felt a grandeur that disdained a crown.

THE UNSELFISHNESS OF WASHINGTON

BY ROBERT TREAT PAINE

To the pen of the historian must be resigned the more arduous and elaborate tribute of justice to those efforts of heroic and political virtue which conducted the American people to peace and liberty. The vanquished foe retired from our sh.o.r.es, and left to the controlling genius who repelled them the grat.i.tude of his own country, and the admiration of the world. The time had now arrived which was to apply the touchstone to his integrity, which was to a.s.say the affinity of his principles to the standard of immutable right.

On the one hand, a realm to which he was endeared by his services almost invited him to empire; on the other, the liberty to whose protection his life had been devoted, was the ornament and boon of human nature.

Washington could not depart from his own great self. His country was free. He was no longer a general. Sublime spectacle! more elevating to the pride of virtue than the sovereignty of the globe united to the scepter of the ages! Enthroned in the hearts of his countrymen, the gorgeous pageantry of prerogative was unworthy the majesty of his dominion. That effulgence of military character which in ancient states has blasted the rights of the people whose renown it had brightened, was not here permitted, by the hero from whom it emanated, to shine with so destructive a l.u.s.ter. Its beams, though intensely resplendent, did not wither the young blossoms of our Independence; and Liberty, like the burning bush, flourished, unconsumed by the glory which surrounded it.

To the ill.u.s.trious founder of our Republic it was reserved to exhibit the example of a magnanimity that commanded victory, of a moderation that retired from triumph. Unlike the erratic meteors of ambition, whose flaming path sheds a disastrous light on the pages of history, his bright orb, eclipsing the luminaries among which it rolled, never portended "fearful change" to religion, nor from its "golded tresses"

shook pestilence on empire.

What to other heroes has been glory, would to Washington have been disgrace. To his intrepidity it would have added no honorary trophy, to have waded, like the conqueror of Peru, through the blood of credulous millions, to plant the standard of triumph at the burning mouth of a volcano. To his fame, it would have erected no auxiliary monument to have invaded, like the ravager of Egypt, an innocent though barbarous nation, to inscribe his name on the pillar of Pompey.

THE GENIUS OF WASHINGTON[24]

BY EDWIN P. WHIPPLE

The history, so sad and so glorious, which chronicles the stern struggle in which our rights and liberties pa.s.sed through the awful baptism of fire and blood, is eloquent with the deeds of many patriots, warriors, and statesmen; but these all fall into relations to one prominent and commanding figure, towering up above the whole group in unapproachable majesty, whose exalted character, warm and bright with every public and private virtue, and vital with the essential spirit of wisdom, has burst all sectional and national bounds, and made the name of Washington the property of all mankind.

This ill.u.s.trious man, at once the world's admiration and enigma, we are taught by a fine instinct to venerate, and by a wrong opinion to misjudge. The might of his character has taken strong hold upon the feelings of great ma.s.ses of men; but, in translating this universal sentiment into an intelligent form, the intellectual element of his wonderful nature is as much depressed as the moral element is exalted, and consequently we are apt to misunderstand both. Mediocrity has a bad trick of idealizing itself in eulogizing him, and drags him down to its own level while a.s.suming to lift him to the skies. How many times have we been told that he was not a man of genius, but a person of "excellent common sense," of "admirable judgment," of "rare virtues"! and, by a constant repet.i.tion of this odious cant, we have nearly succeeded in divorcing comprehension from his sense, insight from his judgment, force from his virtues, and life from the man. Accordingly, in the panegyric of cold spirits, Washington disappears in a cloud of commonplaces; in the rhodomontade of boiling patriots, he expires in the agonies of rant.

Now, the sooner this bundle of mediocre talents and moral qualities, which its contrivers have the audacity to call George Washington, is hissed out of existence, the better it will be for the cause of talent and the cause of morals; contempt of that is the condition of insight.

He had no genius, it seems. O no! genius, we must suppose, is the peculiar and shining attribute of some orator, whose tongue can spout patriotic speeches, or some versifier, whose muse can "Hail Columbia,"

but not of the man who supported states on his arm, and carried America in his brain. The madcap Charles Townshend, the motion of whose pyrotechnic mind was like the whiz of a hundred rockets, is a man of genius; but George Washington raised up above the level of even eminent statesmen, and with a nature moving with the still and orderly celerity of a planet round the sun,--he dwindles, in comparison, into a kind of angelic dunce! What is genius? Is it worth anything. Is splendid folly the measure of its inspiration? Is wisdom that which it recedes from, or tends towards? And by what definition do you award the name to the creator of an epic, and deny it to the creator of a country? On what principle is it to be lavished on him who sculptures in perishing marble the image of possible excellence, and withheld from him who built up in himself a transcendent character indestructible as the obligations of Duty, and beautiful as her rewards?

Indeed, if by the genius of action you mean will enlightened by intelligence, and intelligence energized by will,--if force and insight be its characteristics, and influence its test,--and, especially, if great effects suppose a cause proportionately great, that is, a vital causative mind,--then is Washington most a.s.suredly a man of genius, and one whom no other American has equaled in the power of working morally and mentally on other minds. His genius, it is true, was of a peculiar kind, the genius of character, of thought, and the objects of thought solidified and concentrated into active faculty. He belongs to that rare cla.s.s of men,--rare as Homers and Miltons, rare as Platos and Newtons, who have impressed their characters upon nations without pampering national vices. Such men have natures broad enough to include all the facts of a people's practical life, and deep enough to discern the spiritual laws which underlie, animate, and govern those facts.

Washington, in short, had that greatness of character which is the highest expression and last result of greatness of mind; for there is no method of building up character except through mind. Indeed, character like his is not _built_ up, stone upon stone, precept upon precept, but _grows_ up, through an actual contact of thought with things,--the a.s.similative mind trans.m.u.ting the impalpable but potent spirit of public sentiment, and the life of visible facts, and the power of spiritual laws, into individual life and power, so that their mighty energies put on personality, as it were, and act through one centralizing human will.

This process may not, if you please, make the great philosopher or the great poet; but it does make the great _man_,--the man in whom thought and judgment seem identical with volition,--the man whose vital expression is not in words, but deeds,--the man whose sublime ideas issue necessarily in sublime acts, not in sublime art. It was because Washington's character was thus composed of the inmost substance and power of facts and principles, that men instinctively felt the perfect reality of his comprehensive manhood. This reality enforced universal respect, married strength to repose, and threw into his face that commanding majesty which made men of the speculative audacity of Jefferson, and the lucid genius of Hamilton, recognize, with unwonted meekness, his awful superiority.

FOOTNOTES:

[24] From "Character and Characteristic Men." Published by Houghton, Mifflin & Co.

WASHINGTON'S SERVICE TO EDUCATION

BY CHARLES W.E. CHAPIN

Washington's ideas concerning education have the approval of educators of our day. He was in advance of his age; it is a question if we have quite caught up with him. Of the two plans of his mature years and ripened experience, one has been realized, the West Point idea, which brings together, from every State and Territory of the Union, young men to be trained for military service; that other plan of a National University, with schools of administration and statesmanship, is yet being considered.

Washington shared neither the least nor the most of the educational advantages of his colony. The elder brothers, Lawrence and Augustine, had realized their father's hopes, and had been sent to England for their schooling as he had been for his, but the early death of the father defeated that plan for George, so he obtained the early preparation for his life work from the "home university," over which Mary Washington presided, a loving and wise head. At times George was with his brother Augustine at Bridges Creek, to be near the best parish school, and then he was at home; but all the time he was advancing rapidly in that school of men and affairs. "He was above all things else, a capable, executive boy," says Woodrow Wilson in his biography.

"He loved mastery and he relished acquiring the most effective means of mastery in all practical affairs. His very exercise books, used at school, gave proof of it." As he did these things with care and industry, so he followed with zest the spirited diversions of the hunt and the life in fields and forests. Very early he put his knowledge of the surveyor's art to practical test, and applied the chain and logarithm to the reaches of the family lands. His skill came to the notice of Lord Fairfax, who wished to know the extent of the lands he had inherited in the New World. Washington, though but sixteen, was equal to the task; in a month's time, after fording swollen streams and penetrating the forests, he presented to Lord Fairfax maps and figures which showed him the extent and boundaries of his estate. For three years Washington followed this fascinating yet perilous work, and then, being strongly recommended by Lord Fairfax, and himself being able to show in clear, round style his mastery of the art and science of surveying, he received in 1748 from the President of William and Mary College the appointment as official surveyor for Culpeper County; such a certificate was equivalent to a degree of civil engineer in those days.

Thus from an inst.i.tution of higher learning, George Washington received the first public recognition of service, and of merit. It was the turning point in his life; it opened up fully the path to those experiences which equipped him for that efficient service in the French and Indian War, and the Revolution.

The honorable position of Chancellor had been held by the Bishops of London from the foundation of the College in 1693 to the Revolution. The old statute defining the duties of the office is interesting: "The Chancellor is to be the Maecenas, or patron of the College; such a one as by his favor with the King and by his interest with all other persons in England may be enabled to help in all the College affairs. His advice is to be taken, especially in such arduous and momentous affairs as the College shall have to do in England. If the College has any pet.i.tions at any time to the King, let them be presented by the Chancellor." We can imagine a grim smile on Washington's countenance as he read the provisions made concerning the functions of his office, especially that of conferring with the King.

In his letter to Samuel Griffin, Esq., Rector of the College, accepting his appointment, he says: "Influenced by a heartfelt desire to promote the cause of science in general and the prosperity of the College of William and Mary in particular, I accept the office of Chancellor in the same, and request you will be pleased to give official notice thereof to the learned body who have thought proper to honor me with the appointment. I confide fully in their strenuous endeavors for placing the system of education on such a basis as will render it most beneficial to the State, and the Republic of letters, as well as to the more extensive interests of humanity and religion." This call to the leadership of education in his own State antedated his election to the Presidency of the new Republic by a year, and he continued in that service to the College of William and Mary until the close of his life.

About the close of the Revolution, the State of Maryland began to broaden its educational inst.i.tutions. The School of Kent County at Chestertown was placed in 1780 under the charge of the Rev. Dr. William Smith, the minister of the parish who had been President of the College of Philadelphia until its charter was revoked. Dr. Smith conducted the Academy at Chestertown with great energy and ability, and in 1782 the Visitors of the Academy asked that it be made a college; the legislature made provision that when a total endowment of five thousand pounds currency should be provided for the school, it should be incorporated into a college, with enlarged courses of study and suitable professors, and should be denominated Washington College, "in honorable and perpetual memory of his Excellency, General Washington, the ill.u.s.trious and virtuous Commander-in-Chief, of the armies of the United States." In five months the energetic trustees raised $14,000; Washington contributed fifty guineas. The College was at once incorporated, and in the following year, at its first commencement, its endowment had increased to $28,000. It was the first college in Maryland; Washington was elected as a member of the first Board of Visitors, but being with the army at Newburgh, was unable to take his place on the Board, until the second commencement of the College in 1784. Five years later, the College bestowed upon Washington the degree of Doctor of Laws; his letter of acknowledgment expressed the sentiment that, "in civilized societies the welfare of the state and the happiness of the people are advanced or r.e.t.a.r.ded in proportion as the morals and education of the youth are attended to. I cannot forbear on this occasion to express the satisfaction which I feel on seeing the increase of our seminaries of learning through the extensive country, and the general wish which seems to prevail for establishing and maintaining these valuable inst.i.tutions." The old College has suffered by fire, and the vicissitudes of fortune, yet it has lived through the years, and is to-day doing a prosperous and n.o.ble work.

The Potomac and Virginia Company, and the James River Company were among those organizations for transportation which Washington aided for the opening up of the country. There was a recognition of his services to the country, and the legislature of Virginia in 1785, through Patrick Henry, then Governor, gave Washington fifty shares in the Potomac and Virginia Company, and one hundred shares in the James River Company.

Washington replied that he had resolutely shut his hand against every pecuniary recompense during the revolutionary struggle; and that he could not change that position. He added that, if the legislature would allow him to turn the gifts from his own private emolument to objects of a public nature, he would endeavor to select objects which would meet the most enlightened and patriotic views of the a.s.sembly of Virginia.

The proposition met with hearty approval, and Washington held the stock in both companies, awaiting the time when proper and worthy objects should be found for the benefactions.

In 1785 he proposed to Edmund Randolph and Thomas Jefferson, that the revenue of the stock in those companies be used for the establishment of two schools, one upon each river, for the education of poor children, particularly those whose parents had fallen in the struggle for liberty.

The idea was a n.o.ble one, yet Washington's call to the large service of the College of William and Mary as its Chancellor, and to the country as its President, prevented him from carrying it out. He carried out the spirit of his idea by giving fifty pounds a year for the instruction of poor children in Alexandria, and by making large provision for the education of the sons of soldiers. In 1783 he honored a Princeton commencement by his presence, and bestowed upon the College a gift of fifty pounds. A tour through Georgia in 1790 gave him opportunity to visit and approve of the Academy of Augusta. About the same time the indomitable Kirkland, missionary to the Iroquois, was trying every source of influence and money in behalf of an academy in Oneida County, New York, to be located near the old Property Line, where both the sons of the settlers and the children of the forest might be educated. His visit to Philadelphia secured a generous benefaction from Washington, and at the same time his influence and that of others, so that Congress appropriated $15,000 yearly to "instruct the Iroquois in agriculture and the useful arts."

Washington had now matured his idea of a national university. He was ready to lay it before the country, and to be the first contributor to its endowment. Virginia was taking new interest in its schools and the influence of William and Mary College was widening: there was a demand for more thoroughly equipped academies. The school at Augusta, which the Revolution had been the means of christening Liberty Hall, had become prominent. In 1796 Washington settled upon Liberty Hall as the proper recipient of the one hundred shares in the James River Company to augment its endowment. In accepting the gift the name of the academy was changed, and the trustees were able to sign themselves, "the trustees of Washington Academy, late Liberty Hall." Washington was greatly touched by the honor, and ascribed his ability to make the donation to "the generosity of the Legislature of the Commonwealth of Virginia."

The inst.i.tution prospered. About 1802 a new charter was granted with larger powers, under the name of Washington College. John Robinson, a soldier of the Revolution under Washington, gave, in emulation of his ill.u.s.trious commander, his entire estate to Washington College; from it the trustees realized $40,000 toward the endowment. The stock of the James River Company, which Washington transferred to the College, to-day yields an income of six per cent, on $50,000, and, after prospering years, the College has now a productive endowment of $600,000, and a property worth $800,000. The country has pa.s.sed through many critical periods since Washington's day, and the Union is stronger than ever. The old College is a witness to the all-healing power of time and kinship, for its name has again been added to: it is Washington and Lee University now; and thus is joined with the name of the Father of His Country the name of one whom the South has ever loved, whom the North long since forgave, and whose memory the country will ever cherish.

The Revolutionary War was a costly experiment of education in military affairs in the field; it cost heavily in blood and treasure. Washington realized that preparation for service in the army must be had in military schools.