George Washington Part 2

During the summer Was.h.i.+ngton returned to his military duties and led a troop to Fort Duquesne. He found the fort partly demolished, and abandoned by the French; he marched in and took it, and gave it the name of Fort Pitt, in recognition of the great statesman who had directed the revival of British prestige. The fort, thus recovered to English possession, stood on the present site of Pittsburgh. I quote the following brief letter from Was.h.i.+ngton to Mrs. Custis, as it is almost the only note of his to her during their engagement that has been preserved:

We have begun our March for the Ohio. A courier is starting for Williamsburg, and I embrace the opportunity to send a few words to one whose life is now inseparable from mine. Since that happy hour when we made our pledges to each other, my thoughts have been continually going to you as another Self. That an all powerful Providence may keep us both in safety is the prayer of your ever faithful and affectionate friend.[1]

[Footnote 1: P.L. Ford, _The True George Was.h.i.+ngton_, 93.]

Late in that autumn Was.h.i.+ngton returned for good from his Western fighting. On January 6, 1759 (Old Style), his marriage to Mrs. Custis took place in St. Peter's Church, near her home at the White House.

Judging from the fine writing which old historians and new have devoted to describing it, Virginia had seen few such elegant pageants as upon that occasion. The grandees in official station and in social life were all there. Francis Fauquier was, of course, gorgeous in his Governor's robes but he could not outs.h.i.+ne the bridegroom, in blue and silver with scarlet tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs, and gold buckles at his knees, with his imperial physique and carriage. The Reverend Peter Mossum conducted the Episcopal service, after which the bride drove back with a coach and six to the White House, while Was.h.i.+ngton, with other gentlemen, rode on horseback beside her acting as escort.

The bridal couple spent two or three months at the White House. The Custis estates were large and in so much need of oversight that if Was.h.i.+ngton had not appeared at this time, a bailiff, or manager, would have had to be hired for them. Henceforth Was.h.i.+ngton seems to have added the care of the White House to that of Mount Vernon, and the two involved a burden which occupied most of his time, for he had retired from the army. His fellow citizens, however, had elected him a member of the House of Burgesses, a position he held for many years; going to Williamsburg every season to attend the sessions of the a.s.sembly.

On his first entrance to take his seat, Mr. Robinson, the Speaker, welcomed him in Virginia's name, and praised him for his high achievements. This so embarra.s.sed the modest young member that he was unable to reply, upon which Speaker Robinson said, "Sit down, Mr.

Was.h.i.+ngton, your modesty is equal to your valor, and that surpa.s.ses the power of any language that I possess." In all his life, probably, Was.h.i.+ngton never heard praise more genuine or more deserved. He had just pa.s.sed his twenty-seventh year. In the House of Burgesses he had the reputation of being the silent member. He never acquired the art of a debater. He was neither quick at reb.u.t.tal nor at repartee, but so surely did his character impress itself on every one that when he spoke the a.s.sembly almost took it for granted that he had said the final word on the subject under discussion. How careful he was to observe the scope and effects of parliamentary speaking appears from a letter which he wrote many years later.

Agriculture has always been a particularly fine training-ground for statesmen. To persons who do not watch it closely, it may seem monotonous. In reality, while the sum of the conditions of one year tally closely with those of another, the daily changes and variations create a variety which must be constantly watched and provided for. A sudden freshet and unseasonable access of heat or cold, a scourge of hail, a drought, a murrain among the cattle, call for ingenuity and for resourcefulness; and for courage, a higher moral quality. Constant comrades.h.i.+p with Nature seems to beget placidity and quiet a.s.surance.

From using the great natural forces which bring to pa.s.s crops and the seasons, they seem to work in and through him also. The banker, the broker, even the merchant, lives in a series of whirlwinds, or seems to be pursuing a mirage or groping his way through a fog. The farmer, although he be not beyond the range of accident, deals more continually with causes which regularly produce certain effects. He knows a rainbow by sight and does not waste his time and money in chasing it.

No better idea of Was.h.i.+ngton's activity as a planter can be had than from his brief and terse journals as an agriculturist. He sets down day by day what he did and what his slaves and the free employees did on all parts of his estate. We see him as a regular and punctual man.

He had a moral repugnance to idleness. He himself worked steadily and he chided the incompetent, the s.h.i.+rkers, and the lazy.

A short experience as landowner convinced him that slave labor was the least efficient of all. This conviction led him very early to believe in the emanc.i.p.ation of the slaves. I do not find that sentiment or abstract ideals moved him to favor emanc.i.p.ation, but his sense of fitness, his aversion to wastefulness and inefficiency made him disapprove of a system which rendered industry on a high plane impossible. Experience only confirmed these convictions of his, and in his will he ordered that many slaves should be freed after the death of Mrs. Was.h.i.+ngton. He was careful to apportion to his slaves the amount of food they needed in order to keep in health and to work the required stint. He employed a doctor to look after them in sickness.

He provided clothing for them which he deemed sufficient. I do not gather that he ever regarded the black man as being essentially made of the same clay as the white man, the chief difference being the color of their skin. To Was.h.i.+ngton, the Slave System seemed bad, not so much because it represented a debased moral standard, but because it was economically and socially inadequate. His true character appears in his making the best of a system which he recognized as most faulty. Under his management, in a few years, his estate at Mount Vernon became the model of that kind of plantation in the South.

Whoever desires to understand Was.h.i.+ngton's life as a planter should read his diaries with their brief, and one might almost say brusque, entries from day to day.[1] Was.h.i.+ngton's care involved not only bringing the Mount Vernon estate to the highest point of prosperity by improving the productiveness of its various sections, but also by buying and annexing new pieces of land. To such a planter as he was, the ideal was to raise enough food to supply all the persons who lived or worked on the place, and this he succeeded in doing. His chief source of income, which provided him with ready money, was the tobacco crop, which proved to be of uncertain value. By Was.h.i.+ngton's time the Virginians had much diminished the amount and delicacy of the tobacco they raised by the careless methods they employed. They paid little attention to the rotation of crops, or to manuring, with the result that the soil was never properly replenished. In his earlier days Was.h.i.+ngton s.h.i.+pped his year's product to an agent in Glasgow or in London, who sold it at the market price and sent him the proceeds. The process of transportation was sometimes precarious; a leaky s.h.i.+p might let in enough sea water to damage the tobacco, and there was always the risk of loss by s.h.i.+pwreck or other accident. Was.h.i.+ngton sent out to his brokers a list of things which he desired to pay for out of the proceeds of the sale, to be sent to him. These lists are most interesting, as they show us the sort of household utensils and furniture, the necessaries and the luxuries, and the apparel used in a mansion like Mount Vernon. We find that he even took care to order a fas.h.i.+onably dressed doll for little Martha Custis to play with.

[Footnote 1: See for instance in W.C. Ford's edition of _The Writings of George Was.h.i.+ngton_, II, 140-69. Diary for 1760, 230-56. Diary for 1768.]

The care and education of little Martha and her brother, John Parke Custis, Was.h.i.+ngton undertook with characteristic thoroughness and solicitude. He had an instinct for training growing creatures. He liked to experiment in breeding horses and cattle and the farmyard animals. He watched the growth of his plantations of trees, and he was all the more interested in studying the development of mental and moral capacities in the little children.

In due time a tutor was engaged, and besides the lessons they learned in their schoolbooks, they were taught both music and dancing. Little Patsy suffered from epilepsy, and after the prescriptions of the regular doctors had done no good, her parents turned to a quack named Evans, who placed on the child's finger an iron ring supposed to have miraculous virtues, but it brought her no relief, and very suddenly little Martha Custis died. Was.h.i.+ngton himself felt the loss of his unfortunate step-daughter, but he was unflagging in trying to console the mother, heartbroken at the death of the child.

Jack Custis was given in charge of the Reverend Jonathan Boucher, an Anglican clergyman, apparently well-meaning, who agreed with Was.h.i.+ngton's general view that the boy's training "should make him fit for more useful purposes than horse-racing." In spite of Was.h.i.+ngton's carefully reasoned plans, the youth of the young man prevailed over the reason of his stepfather. Jack found dogs, horses, and guns, and consideration of dress more interesting and more important than his stepfather's theories of education. Was.h.i.+ngton wrote to Parson Boucher, the teacher:

Had he begun, or rather pursued his study of the Greek language, I should have thought it no bad acquisition; ... To be acquainted with the French Tongue is become a part of polite education; and to a man who has the prospect of mixing in a large circle, absolutely necessary. Without arithmetic, the common affairs of life are not to be managed with success. The study of Geometry, and the mathematics (with due regard to the limits of it) is equally advantageous. The principles of Philosophy, Moral, Natural, etc. I should think a very desirable knowledge for a gentleman.[1]

[Footnote 1: W.C. Ford, _George Was.h.i.+ngton_ (1900), I, 136-37.]

There was nothing abstract in young Jack Custis's practical response to his stepfather's reasoning; he fell in love with Miss Nelly Calvert and asked her to marry him. Was.h.i.+ngton was forced to plead with the young lady that the youth was too young for marriage by several years, and that he must finish his education. Apparently she acquiesced without making a scene. She accepted a postponement of the engagement, and Custis was enrolled among the students of King's College (subsequently Columbia) in New York City. Even then, his pa.s.sion for an education did not develop as his parents hoped. He left the college in the course of a few months. Throughout John Custis's perversities, and as long as he lived, Was.h.i.+ngton's kindness and real affection never wavered. Although he had now taught himself to practice complete self-control, he could treat with consideration the young who had it not.

By nature Was.h.i.+ngton was a man of business. He wished to see things grow, not so much for the actual increase in value which that indicated, as because increase seemed to be a proof of proper methods.

Not content, therefore, with rounding out his holdings at Mount Vernon and Mrs. Was.h.i.+ngton's estate at the White House, he sought investment in the unsettled lands on the Ohio and in Florida, and on the Mississippi. It proved to be a long time before the advance of settlement in the latter regions made his investments worth much, and during the decade after his marriage in 1759, we must think of him as a man of great energy and calm judgment who was bent not only on making Mount Vernon a model country place on the outside, but a civilized home within. In its furnis.h.i.+ngs and appointments it did not fall behind the manors of the Virginia men of fas.h.i.+on and of wealth in that part of the country. Before Was.h.i.+ngton left the army, he recognized that his education had been irregular and inadequate, and he set himself to make good his defects by studying and reading for himself. There were no public libraries, but some of the gentlemen made collections of books. They learned of new publications in England from journals which were few in number and incomplete. Doubtless advertising went by word of mouth. The lists of things desired which Was.h.i.+ngton sent out to his agents, Robert Cary and Company, once a year or oftener, usually contained the t.i.tles of many books, chiefly on architecture, and he was especially intent on keeping up with new methods and experiments in farming. Thus, among the orders in May, 1759, among a request for "Desert Gla.s.ses and Stand for Sweetmeats Jellies, etc.; 50 lbs. Spirma Citi Candles; stockings etc.," he asks for "the newest and most approved Treatise of Agriculture--besides this, send me a Small piece in Octavo--called a New System of Agriculture, or a Speedy Way to Grow Rich; Longley's Book of Gardening; Gibson upon Horses, the latest Edition in Quarto." This same invoice contains directions for "the Busts--one of Alexander the Great, another of Charles XII, of Sweden, and a fourth of the King of Prussia (Frederick the Great); also of Prince Eugene and the Duke of Marlborough, but somewhat smaller." Do these celebrities represent Was.h.i.+ngton's heroes in 1759?

As time went on, his commissions for books were less restricted to agriculture, and comprised also works on history, biography, and government.

But although incessant activity devoted to various kinds of work was a characteristic of Was.h.i.+ngton's life at Mount Vernon, his attention to social duties and pleasures was hardly less important. He aimed to be a country gentleman of influence, and he knew that he could achieve this only by doing his share of the bountiful hospitality which was expected of such a personage. Virginia at that time possessed no large cities or towns with hotels. When the gentry travelled, they put up overnight at the houses of other gentry, and thus, in spite of very restricted means of transportation, the inhabitants of one part of the country exchanged ideas with those of another. In this way also the members of the upper cla.s.s circulated among themselves and acquired a solidarity which otherwise would hardly have been possible. We are told that Mount Vernon was always full of guests; some of these being casual strangers travelling through, and others being invited friends and acquaintances on a visit. There were frequent b.a.l.l.s and parties when neighbors from far and near joined in some entertainment at the great mansion. There were the hunt b.a.l.l.s which Was.h.i.+ngton himself particularly enjoyed, hunting being his favorite sport. Fairfax County, where Mount Vernon lay, and its neighboring counties, Fauquier and Prince William, abounded in foxes, and the land was not too difficult for the hunters, who copied as far as possible the dress and customs of the foxhunters in England. Possibly there might be a meeting at Mount Vernon of the local politicians. At least once a year Was.h.i.+ngton and his wife--"Lady," as the somewhat florid Virginians called her--went off to Williamsburg to attend the session of the House of Burgesses. Was.h.i.+ngton seldom missed going to the horse-races, one of the chief functions of the year, not only for jockeys and sporting men, but for the fas.h.i.+onable world of the aristocracy. Thanks to his carefulness and honesty in keeping his accounts, we have his own record of the amounts he spent at cards--never large amounts, nor indicative of the gamester's pa.s.sion.

Thus Was.h.i.+ngton pa.s.sed the first ten years of his married life. A stranger meeting him at that time might have little suspected that here was the future founder of a nation, one who would prove himself the greatest of Americans, if not the greatest of men. But if you had spent a day with Was.h.i.+ngton, and watched him at work, or listened to his few but decisive words, or seen his benign but forcible smile, you would have said to yourself--"This man is equal to any fate that destiny may allot to him."

CHAPTER III

THE FIRST GUN

Meanwhile the course of events was leading toward a new and unexpected goal. Chief Justice Marshall said, as I have quoted, that 1763, the end of the French-Indian War, marked the greatest friends.h.i.+p and harmony between the Colonies and England. The reason is plain. In their incessant struggles with the French and the Indians, the Colonists had discovered a real champion and protector. That protector, England, had found that she must really protect the Colonies unless she was willing to see them fall into the hands of her rival, France. Putting forth her strength, she crushed France in America, and remained virtually in control not only of the Colonies and territory from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, but also of British America. In these respects the Colonies and the Mother Country seemed destined to be bound more closely together; but the very spirit by which Britain had conquered France in America, and France in India, and had made England paramount throughout the world, prevented the further fusion, moral, social, and political, of the Colonies with the Mother Country.

That spirit was the Imperial Spirit, which Pla.s.sey and Quebec had called to life. The narrow Hanoverian King, who now ruled England, could not himself have devised the British Empire, but when the Empire crystallized, George III rightly surmised that, however it had come about, it meant a large increase in power for him. The Colonies and Dependencies were to be governed like conquered provinces. Evidently, the Hindus of Bengal could hardly be treated in the same fas.h.i.+on as were the Colonists of Ma.s.sachusetts or Virginia. The Bengalese knew that there was no bond of language or of race between them and their conquerors, whereas American Colonists knew that they and the British sprang from the same race and spoke the same language. One of the first realizations that came to the British Imperialists was that the owners.h.i.+p of the conquered people or state warranted the conquerors in enriching themselves from the conquered. But while this might do very well in India, and be accepted there as a matter of course, it would be most ill-judged in the American Colonies, for the Colonists were not a foreign nor a conquered people. They originally held grants of land from the British Crown, but they had worked that land themselves and settled the wilderness by their own efforts, and had a right to whatever they might earn.

The Tory ideals, which took possession of the British Government when Lord Bute succeeded to William Pitt in power, were soon applied to England's relations to the American Colonies. The Seven Years' War left England heavily in debt. She needed larger revenues, and being now swayed by Imperialism, she easily found reasons for taxing the Colonies. In 1765 she pa.s.sed the Stamp Act which caused so much bad feeling that in less than a year she decided to repeal it, but new duties on paper, gla.s.s, tea, and other commodities were imposed instead. In the North, Ma.s.sachusetts took the lead in opposing what the Colonists regarded as the unconst.i.tutional acts of the Crown. The patriotic lawyer of Boston, James Otis, shook the Colony with his eloquence against the illegal encroachments and actual tyranny of the English. Other popular orators of equal eminence, John and Samuel Adams and Josiah Quincy, fanned the flames of discontent. Even the most radical did not yet whisper the terrible word Revolution, or suggest that they aspired to independence. They simply demanded their "rights" which the arrogant and testy British Tories had shattered and were withholding from them. At the outset rebels seldom admit that their rebellion aims at new acquisitions, but only at the recovery of the old.

Next to Ma.s.sachusetts, Virginia was the most vigorous of the Colonies in protesting against British usurpation of power, which would deprive them of their liberty. Although Virginia had no capital city like Boston, in which the chief political leaders might gather and discuss and plan, and mobs might a.s.semble and equip with physical force the impulses of popular indignation, the Old Dominion had means, just as the Highland clans or the Arab tribes had, of keeping in touch with each other. Patrick Henry, a young Virginia lawyer of st.u.r.dy Scotch descent, by his flaming eloquence was easily first among the spokesmen of the rights of the Colonists in Virginia. In the "Parsons Cause," a lawsuit which might have pa.s.sed quickly into oblivion had he not seen the vital implications concerned in it, he denied the right of the King to veto an act of the Virginia a.s.sembly, which had been pa.s.sed for the good of the people of Virginia. In the course of the trial he declared, "Government was a conditional compact between the King, stipulating protection on the one hand, and the people, stipulating obedience and support on the other," and he a.s.serted that a violation of these covenants by either party discharged the other party from its obligations. Doctrines as outspoken as these uttered in court, whether right or wrong, indicated that the attorney who uttered them, and the judge who listened, and the audience who applauded, were not blind wors.h.i.+ppers of the illegal rapacity of the Crown.

Patrick Henry was the most spectacular of the early champions of the Colonists in Virginia, but many others of them agreed with him. Among these the weightiest was the silent George Was.h.i.+ngton. He said little, but his opinions pa.s.sed from mouth to mouth, and convinced many. In 1765 he wrote to Francis Dandridge, an uncle of Mrs. Was.h.i.+ngton:

The Stamp Act imposed on the colonies by the Parliament of Great Britain, engrosses the conversation of the speculative part of the colonists, who look upon this unconst.i.tutional method of taxation, as a direful attack upon their liberties, and loudly exclaim against the violation. What may be the result of this, and of some other (I think I may add) ill-judged measures, I will not undertake to determine; but this I may venture to affirm, that the advantage accruing to the mother country will fall greatly short of the expectations of the ministry; for certain it is, that an whole substance does already in a manner flow to Great Britain, and that whatsoever contributes to lessen our importations must be hurtful to their manufacturers. And the eyes of our people, already beginning to open, will perceive, that many luxuries, which we lavish our substance in Great Britain for, can well be dispensed with, whilst the necessaries of life are (mostly) to be had within ourselves. This, consequently, will introduce frugality, and be a necessary stimulation to industry. If Great Britain, therefore, loads her manufacturies with heavy taxes, will it not facilitate these measures? They will not compel us, I think, to give our money for their exports, whether we will or not; and certain I am, none of their traders will part from them without a valuable consideration. Where then, is the utility of the restrictions? As to the Stamp Act, taken in a single view, one and the first bad consequence attending it, I take to be this, our courts of judicature must inevitably be shut up; for it is impossible, (or next of kin to it), under our present circ.u.mstances, that the act of Parliament can be complied with, were we ever so willing to enforce the execution; for, not to say, which alone would be sufficient, that we have not money to pay the stamps, there are many other cogent reasons, to prevent it; and if a stop be put to our judicial proceedings, I fancy the merchants of Great Britain, trading to the colonies, will not be among the last to wish for a repeal of it.[1]

[Footnote 1: Ford, II, 209-10.]

This pa.s.sage would suffice, were there not many similar which might be quoted, to prove that Was.h.i.+ngton was from the start a loyal American.

A legend which circulated during his lifetime, and must have been fabricated by his enemies, for I find no evidence to support it either in his letters or in other trustworthy testimony, insinuated that he was British at heart and threw his lot in with the Colonists only when war could not be averted. In 1770 the merchants of Philadelphia drew up an agreement in which they pledged themselves to practise non-importation of British goods sent to America. Was.h.i.+ngton's wise neighbor and friend, George Mason, drafted a plan of a.s.sociation of similar purport to be laid before the Virginia Burgesses. But Lord Botetourt, the new Royal Governor, deemed some of these resolutions dangerous to the prerogative of the King, and dissolved the a.s.sembly.

The Burgesses, however, met at Anthony Hay's house and adopted Mason's a.s.sociation. Was.h.i.+ngton, who was one of the signers of the a.s.sociation, wrote to his agents in London: "I am fully determined to adhere religiously to it."

Five years had now elapsed since the British Tories attempted to fix on the Colonies the Stamp Act, and although they had withdrawn that hateful law, the relations between the Mother Country and the Colonists had not improved. Far from it. The English issued a series of irritating provisions which convinced the Colonists that the Government had no real desire to be friendly, and that, on the contrary, it intended to make no distinction between them and the other conquered provinces of the Crown. Then and always, the English forgot that the Colonists were men of their own stock, equally stubborn in their devotion to principles, and probably more accessible to scruples of conscience. So they were not likely to be frightened into subjection. The governing cla.s.s in England was in a state of mind which has darkened its judgment more than once; the state of mind which, when it encounters an obstacle to its plans, regards that obstacle as an enemy, and remarks in language brutally frank, though not wholly elegant: "We will lick him first and then decide who is right." In 1770 King George III, who fretted at all seasons at the slowness with which he was able to break down the ascendency of the Whigs, manipulated the Government so as to make Lord North Prime Minister. Lord North was a servant, one might say a lackey, after the King's own heart. He abandoned lifelong traditions, principles, fleeting whims, prejudices even, in order to keep up with the King's wish of the moment. After Lord North became Prime Minister, the likelihood of a peaceful settlement between the crown and the Colonies lessened. He ran ahead of the King in his desire to serve the King's wishes, and George III, by this time, was wrought up by the persistent tenacity of the Whigs--he wished them dead, but they would not die--and he was angered by the insolence of the Colonists who showed that they would not shrink from forcibly resisting the King's command.

On both sides of the Atlantic a vehement and most enlightening debate over const.i.tutional and legal fundamentals still went on. Although the King had packed Parliament, not all the oratory poured out at Westminster favored the King. On the contrary, the three chief masters of British eloquence at that time, and in all time--Edmund Burke, William Pitt, and Charles James Fox--spoke on the side of the Colonists. Reading the magnificent arguments of Burke to-day, we ask ourselves how any group in Parliament could have withstood them. But there comes a moment in every vital discussion when arguments and logic fail to convince. Pa.s.sions deeper than logic controlled motives and actions. The Colonists contended that in proclaiming "no taxation without representation," they were appealing to a principle of Anglo-Saxon liberty inherent in their race. When King George, or any one else, denied this principle, he denied an essential without which Anglo-Saxon polity could not survive, but neither King George nor Lord North accepted the premises. If they had condescended to reply at all, they might have sung the hymn of their successors a hundred years later:

"We don't want to fight, But by jingo! if we do, We've got the men, we've got the s.h.i.+ps, We've got the money too."

Meanwhile, the Virginia Planter watched the course of events, pursued his daily business regularly, attended the House of Burgesses when it was in session, said little, but thought much. He did not break out into invective or patriotic appeals. No doubt many of his acquaintances thought him lukewarm in spirit and non-committal; but persons who knew him well knew what his decision must be. As early as April 5, 1769, he wrote his friend, George Mason:

At a time, when our lordly masters in Great Britain will be satisfied with nothing less than the deprivation of American freedom, it seems highly necessary that something should be done to avert the stroke, and maintain the liberty, which we have derived from our ancestors. But the manner of doing it, to answer the purpose effectually, is the point in question.

That no man should scruple, or hesitate a moment, to use a--ms in defence of so valuable a blessing, on which all the good and evil of life depends, is clearly my opinion. Yet a--ms, I would beg leave to add, should be the last resource, the dernier resort.

Addresses to the throne, and remonstrances to Parliament, we have already, it is said, proved the inefficiency of. How far, then, their attention to our rights and privileges is to be awakened or alarmed, by starving their trade and manufacturers, remains to be tried.[1]

[Footnote 1: Ford, II, 263-64.]

Thus wrote the Silent Member six years before the outbreak of hostilities, and he did not then display any doubt either of his patriotism, or of the course which every patriot must take. To his intimates he spoke with point-blank candor. Years later, George Mason wrote to him:

I never forgot your declaration, when I had last the pleasure of being at your house in 1768, that you were ready to take your musket upon your shoulder whenever your country called upon you.

Some writers point out that Was.h.i.+ngton excelled rather as a critic of concrete plans than of const.i.tutional and legal aspects. Perhaps this is true. a.s.suredly he had no formal legal training. There were many other men in Ma.s.sachusetts, in Virginia, and in some of the other Colonies, who could and did a.n.a.lyze minutely the Colonists' protest against taxation without representation, and the British reb.u.t.tal thereof; but Was.h.i.+ngton's strength lay in his primal wisdom, the wisdom which is based not on conventions, even though they be laws and const.i.tutions, but on a knowledge of the ways in which men will react toward each other in their primitive, natural relations. In this respect he was one of the wisest among the statesmen.

He does not seem to have joined in such clandestine methods as those of the Committees of Correspondence, which Samuel Adams and some of the most radical patriots in the Bay State had organized, but he said in the Virginia Convention, in 1774: "I will raise one thousand men, subsist them at my own expense and march myself at their head for the relief of Boston."[1] The ardor of Was.h.i.+ngton's offer matched the increasing anger of the Colonists. Lord North, abetted by the British Parliament, had continued to exasperate them by pa.s.sing new bills which could have produced under the best circ.u.mstances only a comparatively small revenue. One of these imposed a tax on tea. The Colonists not only refused to buy it, but to have it landed. In Boston a large crowd gathered and listened to much fiery speech-making.

Suddenly, a body of fifty men disguised as Mohawk Indians rushed down to the wharves, rowed out to the three vessels in which a large consignment of tea had been sent across the ocean, hoisted it out of the holds to the decks and scattered the contents of three hundred and forty chests in Boston Harbor.

[Footnote 1: _John Adams's Diary_, August 31, 1774, quoting Lynch.]

The Boston Tea Party was as sensational as if it had sprang from the brain of a Paris Jacobin in the French Revolution. It created excitement among the American Colonists from Portsmouth to Charleston.