Washington's Birthday Part 3

A GLIMPSE OF WASHINGTON'S BIRTHPLACE

BY GRACE B. JOHNSON

From _The Christian Endeavor World_

Seldom visited and almost unknown is the Wakefield Farm in Virginia, the birthplace of our first President. Recent attempts have been made to popularize the place, but there is little to attract the ordinary traveler; and its distance from a city makes excursions impracticable.

Lying on the Potomac River, about seventy miles below the city of Washington, one edge of the estate reaches down a steep, wooded bank to dip into the water, while, stretching back, it rambles on in gra.s.sy meadows and old stubble-fields to the corn-lands and orchards of the adjoining plantations. Skirting the land on one side is Pope's Creek, formerly Bridges' Creek, which in Washington's time was used as the main approach to the estate. On this side there is an easy, undulating slope; but this entrance has been abandoned. Only at high tide can small boats enter the creek, and another way had to be adopted. An iron pier nearly two miles away has been built, and is the landing-place for large and small craft.

All is quiet here now. There is only the rustle of the leaves, the drowsy hum of insects, and the interrupted discourse of the preacher-bird in the clump of trees near which stood the first home of Washington, to break the stillness on a summer day. No one lives here.

Indeed, no one has lived here since the fire which destroyed the house and negro cabins, in Washington's boyhood. But here the baby life was spent, in the homestead founded by his great-grandfather, John Washington, who came from England in 1657.

Only a heap of broken bits grown over with catnip showed the place of the great brick chimney the first time I visited the farm; and the second time these, too, were gone. Now a plain, graceful shaft, bearing the simple inscription, "Washington's Birthplace," and below, "Erected by the United States, A.D. 1895," marks the place.

From the monument through the trees, can be seen the gleaming river, rippling its way silently to the bay, and over all rests the same brooding sense of peace and quietness which one feels at Mt. Vernon or at Arlington, the city of our nation's dead.

SOMETHING OF GEORGE WASHINGTON'S BOYHOOD

ANONYMOUS

From _The Evangelist_

George Washington was born at a time when savagery had just departed from the country, leaving freshness and vigor behind. The Indian had scarcely left the woods, and the pirate the sh.o.r.e near his home. His grandfather had seen his neighbor lying tomahawked at his door-sill, and his father had helped to chase beyond the mountains the whooping savages that carried the scalps of his friends at their girdle. The year his brother was born, John Maynard's ship had sailed up the James River with the b.l.o.o.d.y head of Blackbeard hanging to the bowsprit.

He had only one uncle, a brother Lawrence, and a cousin Augustine, all older than he, but the youngest of his older brothers was twelve years of age when George was born, while his cousin Augustine was only four years older, and his cousin Lawrence six years older than himself. When he was seven years old his sister Betty was a little la.s.s of six. Two brothers, Samuel and John, were nearing their fourth and fifth birthdays. Charles, his baby brother, was still in his nurse's arms.

Early the shadow of death crossed his boyish path, for his baby sister, Mildred, born soon after he was seven, died before he was nine.

The first playmate Washington had, out of his own immediate family, was another Lawrence Washington, a very distant cousin, who lived at Chotauk on the Potomac, and who, with his brother, Robert Washington, early won Washington's regard, and kept it through life. When Washington made his will he remembered them, writing, "to the acquaintances and friends of my juvenile years, Lawrence Washington and Robert Washington, I give my other two gold-headed canes having my arms engraved on them."

It was at Chotauk, with Lal and Bob Washington, that George Washington first met with traffic between the old world and the new. There was no money used except tobacco notes, which pa.s.sed among merchants in London and Amsterdam as cash. Foreign ships brought across the ocean goods that the Virginians needed, and the captains sold the goods for these tobacco notes. Much of Washington's time was spent with these boys, and when he grew old he recalled the young eyes of the Chotauk lads, as they, with him, had stood on the river-bank vainly trying to see clearly some object beyond vision, and in memory of the time he wrote in his will, "To each I leave one of my spy-gla.s.ses which const.i.tuted part of my equipage during the late war."

Of Washington's first school there is no record or tradition other than that gathered by Parson Weems. He says: "The first place of education to which George was ever sent was a little old field school kept by one of his father's tenants, named Hobby, an honest, poor old man, who acted in the double capacity of s.e.xton and schoolmaster. Of his skill as a gravedigger tradition is silent; but for a teacher of youth his qualifications were certainly of the humbler sort, making what is generally called an A, B, C schoolmaster. While at school under Mr.

Hobby he used to divide his playmates into parties and armies. One of them was called the French and the other American. A big boy named William Bustle commanded the former; George commanded the latter, and every day with cornstalks for muskets and calabashes [gourds] for drums, the two armies would turn out and march and fight."

WASHINGTON'S TRAINING

BY CHARLES WENTWORTH UPHAM

Among the mountain pa.s.ses of the Blue Ridge and the Alleghanies, a youth is seen employed in the manly and invigorating occupation of a surveyor, and awakening the admiration of the backwoodsmen and savage chieftains by the strength and endurance of his frame and the resolution and energy of his character. In his stature and conformation he is a n.o.ble specimen of a man. In the various exercises of muscular power, on foot, or in the saddle, he excels all compet.i.tors. His admirable physical traits are in perfect accordance with the properties of his mind and heart; and over all, crowning all, is a beautiful, and, in one so strong, a strange dignity of manner, and of mien--a calm seriousness, a sublime self-control, which at once compels the veneration, attracts the confidence, and secures the favor of all who behold him. That youth is the Leader whom Heaven is preparing to conduct America through her approaching trial.

As we see him voluntarily relinquishing the enjoyments, luxuries, and ease of the opulent refinement in which he was born and bred, and choosing the perils and hardships of the wilderness; as we follow him fording swollen streams, climbing rugged mountains, breasting the forest storms, wading through snowdrifts, sleeping in the open air, living upon the coa.r.s.e food of hunters and of Indians, we trace with devout admiration the divinely appointed education he was receiving to enable him to meet and endure the fatigues, exposures, and privations of the War of Independence.

Soon he was called to a more public sphere of action; and we again, follow him in his romantic adventures as he travels the far-off wilderness, a special messenger to the French commander on the Ohio, and afterwards, when he led forth the troops of Virginia in the same direction, or accompanied the ill-starred Braddock to the blood-stained banks of the Monongahela. Everywhere we see the hand of G.o.d conducting him into danger, that he might extract from it the wisdom of an experience not otherwise to be obtained, and develop those heroic qualities by which alone danger and difficulty can be surmounted; but all the while covering him with a shield.

When we think of him, at midnight and in midwinter, thrown from a frail raft into the deep and angry waters of a wide and rushing Western river, thus separated from his only companion through the wilderness with no aid for miles and leagues about him, buffeting the rapid current and struggling through driving cakes of ice; when we behold the stealthy savage, whose aim against all other marks is unerring, pointing his rifle deliberately at him, and firing over and over again; when we see him riding through showers of bullets on Braddock's fatal field, and reflect that never, during his whole life, was he ever wounded, or even touched by a hostile force--do we not feel that he was guarded by an unseen hand, warding off every danger? No peril by flood or field was permitted to extinguish a life consecrated to the hopes of humanity and to the purposes of Heaven.

For more than sixteen years he rested from his warfare, amid the shades of Mount Vernon; ripening his mind by reading and reflection, increasing his knowledge of practical affairs, entering into the whole experience of a citizen at home and on his farm, and as a delegate to the Colonial a.s.sembly. When, at last, the war broke out, and the unanimous voice of the Continental Congress invested him, as the exigency required, with almost unbounded authority, as their Commander-in-Chief, he blended, although still in the prime of his life, in the mature bloom of his manhood, the attributes of a sage with those of a hero. A more perfectly fitted and furnished character has never appeared on the theater of human action than when, reining up his war-horse beneath the majestic and venerable elm, still standing at the entrance of the Watertown road to Cambridge, George Washington unsheathed his sword and a.s.sumed the command of the gathered armies of American Liberty.

WASHINGTON AS HE LOOKED

From _The Christian Endeavor World_

According to Captain Mercer, the following describes Washington when he took his seat in the House of Burgesses in 1759:

He is as straight as an Indian, measuring six feet two inches in his stockings, and weighing one hundred and seventy-five pounds.

His head is well shaped, though not large, and is gracefully poised on a superb neck, with a large, and straight rather than prominent nose; blue-gray penetrating eyes, which are widely separated and overhung by heavy brows. A pleasing, benevolent, though commanding countenance, dark-brown hair, features regular and placid, with all the muscles under control, with a large mouth, generally firmly closed.

Houdon's bust accords with this description.

III

THE GENERAL

WASHINGTON IS APPOINTED COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF[8]

BY SYDNEY GEORGE FISHER

On the 16th of June, the day before the battle of Bunker Hill, the Congress, having accepted Ma.s.sachusetts' gift of the army before Boston, gave the command of it to Colonel George Washington, of Virginia, and made him a general and commander-in-chief of all the forces of the patriot cause.

Hanc.o.c.k, it is said, had ambitions in that direction, and was somewhat disappointed at the choice. But the fitness of Washington for the office was generally admitted as soon as John Adams urged his appointment. He would conciliate the moderate patriots, for he had clung to the old arguments as long as possible, and refrained from forcing events. If substantial independence of Parliament and the Ministry could be secured, he was willing to allow the King a vague or imaginary headship until in the course of years that excrescence should slough away.

Many were inclined to think that a New England general should command the New England army that was gathered before Boston; but they were obliged to admit that the appointment of a general from Virginia, the most populous and prosperous of the colonies, would tend to draw the Southern interest to the patriot cause.

Washington was forty-three years old, which was the right age for entering upon the supreme command in what might be a long war. He had distinguished himself by helping to rescue Braddock's defeated army in 1755, and he had taken a more or less prominent part in the subsequent campaigns which ended in driving the French out of Canada. This military education and experience seemed slight, and not equal to that of the British officers who would be opposed to him. But it was American experience, no colonist was any better equipped, and he was of a larger intelligence than Putnam, Ward, and other Americans who had served in the French War.

His strong character and personality had impressed themselves upon his fellow-delegates in the Congress. It was this impressive personality which made his career and brought to him grave responsibility without effort on his part to seek office or position. When he was only twenty-one the governor of Virginia had sent him through the wilderness to interview the French commander near Lake Erie, a mission which required the hardihood of the hunter and some of the shrewd intelligence of the diplomat.

But much to the surprise of travelers and visitors, Washington never appeared to be a brilliant man. He was always a trifle reserved, and this habit grew on him with years. His methods of work were homely and painstaking, reminding us somewhat of Lincoln; and the laborious carefulness of his military plans seemed to European critics to imply a lack of genius.

But it was difficult to judge him by European standards, because the conditions of the warfare he conducted were totally unlike anything in Europe. He never commanded a real army with well-organized departments and good equipment. His troops were usually barefooted, half-starved, and for several years incapable of performing the simplest parade manoeuvre. Brilliant movements, except on a small scale, as at Princeton, were rarely within his reach; and large complicated movements were impossible because he had not the equipment of officers and organization for handling large bodies of men spread out over a great extent of country. He was obliged to adopt the principle of concentration and avoid making detachments or isolated movements that could be cut off by the British. To some of his contemporaries it therefore seemed that his most striking ability lay in conciliating local habits and prejudices, harmonizing discordant opinions, and holding together an army which seemed to the British always on the eve of disbanding.

He reasoned out, however, in his own way, the peculiar needs of every military position, and how he did this will appear more clearly as our narrative progresses. He often spoke of his own lack of military experience, as well as of the lack of it in the officers about him; and this seems to have led him to study every situation like a beginner, with exhaustive care, consulting with everybody, calling councils of war on every possible occasion, and reasoning out his plans with minute carefulness. This method, which his best friends sometimes ridiculed, was in striking contrast to the method of one of his own officers, General Greene, and also to the method of Grant in the Civil War. Both Greene and Grant dispensed altogether with laborious consultations and councils of war.

But the laborious method was well suited to Washington, whose mind was never satisfied unless it could strike a balance among a great ma.s.s of arguments and details which must be obtained from others, and not through his own imagination. He liked to reserve his decision until the last moment, and this trait was sometimes mistaken for weakness. His preparedness and devotion to details remind us of Napoleon. His cautious, balancing, weighing habit, developed by lifelong practice, runs through all his letters and every act of his life, appearing in some of the great events of his career as a superb and masterful equipoise. It became very impressive even to those who ridiculed it; it could inspire confidence through years of disaster and defeat; and it enabled him to grasp the general strategy of the war so thoroughly that no military critic has ever detected him in a mistake.

As a soldier he fought against distinguished British officers four pitched battles--Long Island, Brandywine, Germantown, and Monmouth; in the first three of which he was defeated, and the last was a draw. He conducted two sieges--Boston and Yorktown--in both of which he was successful; and he destroyed two outposts--Trenton and Princeton--in a manner generally regarded as so brilliant and effective that he saved the patriot cause from its first period of depression. His characteristics as a soldier were fa.r.s.eeing judgment and circ.u.mspection, a certain long-headedness, as it might be called, and astonishing ability to recover from and ignore a defeat. In his pitched battles, like Long Island and Brandywine, he knew that defeat was probable, and he prepared for it.[9]

He was compelled to act so much on the defensive, and the British methods were so slow, that his activities in the field were not numerous when we consider that he was in command for seven years. The greater part of his time and energy was employed in building up the cause by mild, balanced, but wonderfully effective arguments; reconciling animosities by tactful precautions; and by the confidence his personality inspired preventing the army from disbanding. A large part of this labor was put forth in writing letters of wonderful beauty and perfection in the literary art, when we consider the end they were to accomplish. Complete editions of his writings of this sort usually fill a dozen or more large volumes; and there have been few if any great generals of the world who have accomplished so much by writing, or who have been such consummate masters of language.