Washington's Birthday Part 16

HISTORICAL MEMORABILIA OF WAs.h.i.+NGTON

COMPILED BY H.B. CARRINGTON

1732. February 22 (February 11, O.S.), born.

1748. Surveyor of lands at sixteen years of age.

1751. Military inspector and major at nineteen years of age.

1752. Adjutant-general of Virginia.

1753. Commissioner to the French.

1754. Colonel, and commanding the Virginia militia.

1755. Aide-de-camp to Braddock in his campaign.

1755. Again commands the Virginia troops.

1758. Resigns his commission.

1759. January 6. Married.

1759. Elected member of Virginia House of Burgesses.

1765. Commissioner to settle military accounts.

1774. In First Continental Congress.

1775. In Second Continental Congress.

1775. June 15. Elected commander-in-chief.

1775. July 2. In command at Cambridge.

1776. March 17. Expels the British from Boston.

1776. August 27. Battle of Long Island.

1776. August 29. Masterly retreat to New York.

1776. September 15. Gallant, at Kipp's Bay.

1776. October 27. Battle of Harlem Heights.

1776. October 29. Battle near White Plains.

1776. November 15. Enters New Jersey.

1776. December 5. Occupies right bank of the Delaware.

1776. December 12. Clothed with "full power."

1776. December 14. Plans an offensive campaign.

1776. December 26. Battle of Trenton.

1777. January 3. Battle of Princeton.

1777. July. British driven from New Jersey, during.

1777. July 13. Marches for Philadelphia.

1777. September 11. Battle of Brandywine.

1777. September 15. Offers battle at West Chester.

1777. October 4. Battle of Germantown.

1778. Winters at Valley Forge.

1778. June 28. Battle of Monmouth.

1778. British again retire from New Jersey.

1778. Again at White Plains.

1779. At Middlebrook, New Jersey, and New Windsor.

1780. Winters at Morristown, New Jersey.

1781. Confers with Rochambeau as to plans.

1781. Threatens New York in June and July.

1781. Joins Lafayette before Yorktown.

1781. October 19. Surrender of Cornwallis.

1783. November 2. Farewell to the army.

1733. November 25. Occupies New York.

1783. December 4. Parts with his officers.

1783. December 23. Resigns his commission.

1787. Presides at Const.i.tutional Convention.

1789. March 4. Elected President of the United States.

1789. April 30. Inaugurated at New York.

1793. March 4. Re-elected for four years.

1796. September 17. Farewell to the people.

1797. March 4. Retires to private life.

1798. July 3. Appointed commander-in-chief.

1799. December 14. Died at Mount Vernon.

A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF WAs.h.i.+NGTON[20]

BY HENRY MITCh.e.l.l MACCRACKEN

George Was.h.i.+ngton was a son of Augustine Was.h.i.+ngton and his second wife, Mary Ball, and a descendant of John Was.h.i.+ngton, who emigrated from England about 1657, during the protectorate of Cromwell. He was born in the English colony of Virginia, in Westmoreland County, on February 22, 1732. His education was simple and practical. To the common English instruction of his time and home, young Was.h.i.+ngton added bookkeeping and surveying. The three summers preceding his twentieth year he spent in surveying the estate of Lord Fairfax on the northwest boundary of the colony, an occupation which strengthened his splendid physical const.i.tution to a high point of efficiency, and gave him practice in topography,--valuable aids in the military campaigning which speedily followed.

In 1751, at nineteen, he was made Adjutant in the militia, with the rank of Major. In the following year he inherited the estate of Mount Vernon.

In the winter of 1753-54, at twenty-one, he was sent by the Governor of Virginia on a mission to the French posts beyond the Alleghanies. Soon after his return he led a regiment to the headwaters of the Ohio, but was compelled to retreat to the colony on account of the overwhelming numbers of the French at Fort Duquesne. In Braddock's defeat, July 9, 1755, Was.h.i.+ngton was one of the latter's aides, and narrowly escaped death, having had two horses shot under him. During the remaining part of the French and Indian War, he was in command of the Virginia frontier, with the rank of Colonel, and occupied Fort Duquesne in 1758.

On January 17, 1759, he married a wealthy widow, Mrs. Martha Custis, and removed to Mount Vernon. The administration of his plantations involved a large measure of commerce with England, and he himself with his own hand kept his books with mercantile exactness.

Soon after the outbreak of hostilities, Was.h.i.+ngton was appointed by the Continental Congress, at forty-three years of age, Commander-in-Chief of the Armies of the Revolution, and a.s.sumed their control at Cambridge on July 3, 1775. In 1776 he occupied Boston, lost New York, then brilliantly restored the drooping spirit of the land at Trenton and Princeton. In the year following he lost Philadelphia, and retreated to Valley Forge. Threatened by the jealousy of his own subordinates, he put to shame the cabal formed in the interests of Gates, who had this year captured Burgoyne. For three years, 1778-80, he maintained himself against heavy odds in the Jerseys, fighting at Monmouth the first year, reaching out to capture Stony Point the next year, and the third year combating the treason of Arnold. In 1781, he planned the cooping up of Cornwallis on the peninsula of Yorktown, with the aid of the French allies, and received his surrender on October 19th.

Resigning his commission at Annapolis, December 23, 1783, he returned to his estate at Mount Vernon, but vastly aided the incipient work of framing the Const.i.tution by correspondence. In May, 1787, he took his seat as President of the Const.i.tutional Convention at Philadelphia. He was inaugurated the first President of the United States in April, 1789, after a unanimous election. He was similarly reflected in 1793, but refused a third term in 1796. In the face of unmeasured vituperation he firmly kept the nascent nation from embroiling herself in the wars of France and England. Retiring again to Mount Vernon in the spring of 1797, he nevertheless accepted, at sixty-six years of age, the post of Commander-in-Chief of the provisional army raised in 1798 to meet the insolence of the French Directorate. In December, 1799, while riding about his estates during a snowstorm, he contracted a disease of the throat, from which he died on December 14, 1799. He provided by his will for the manumission of his slaves, to take effect on the decease of his widow. No lineal descendants can claim as an ancestor this extraordinary man. He belongs to his country. His tomb is at Mount Vernon, and is in keeping of the women of America.

FOOTNOTES:

[20] From "The Hall of Fame." Published by G.P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1901.

THE CHARACTER OF WAs.h.i.+NGTON

BY DANIEL WEBSTER

_A Speech Delivered at a Public Dinner, Was.h.i.+ngton, February 22, 1832_

_The Power of the Name of Was.h.i.+ngton_

We are met to testify our regard for him whose name is intimately blended with whatever belongs most essentially to the prosperity, the liberty, the free inst.i.tutions, and the renown of our country;. That name was of power to rally a nation, in the hour of thick-thronging public disasters and calamities; that name shone, amid the storm of war, a beacon light, to cheer and guide the country's friends; it flamed, too, like a meteor, to repel her foes. That name, in the days of peace, was a lodestone, attracting to itself a whole people's confidence, a whole people's love, and the whole world's respect. That name, descending with all time, spreading over the whole earth, and uttered in all the languages belonging to the tribes and races of men, will forever be p.r.o.nounced with affectionate grat.i.tude by everyone in whose breast there shall arise an aspiration for human rights and human liberty.

We perform this grateful duty, Gentlemen, at the expiration of a hundred years from his birth, near the place so cherished and beloved by him, where his dust now reposes, and in the capital which bears his own immortal name.

All experience evinces that human sentiments are strongly influenced by a.s.sociation. The recurrence of anniversaries, or of longer periods of time, naturally freshens the recollection, and deepens the impression, of events with which they are historically connected. Renowned places, also, have a power to awaken feeling, which all acknowledge. No American can pa.s.s by the fields of Bunker Hill, Monmouth, and Camden, as if they were ordinary spots on the earth's surface. Whoever visits them feels the sentiment of love of country kindling anew, as if the spirit that belonged to the transactions which have rendered these places distinguished still hovered round, with power to move and excite all who in future time may approach them.

_Was.h.i.+ngton's Great Moral Example to the Youth of America_