eral, with the rank of major, was commissioned to drill and inspect the militia. Washington, at the age of nineteen, received the appointment to one of these districts; and in the following year the province was again divided into four grand military divisions, of which the northern was assigned to him as adjutantgeneral. In 1753 the French crossed the lakes, to establish posts on the Ohio, and were joined by the Indians. Major Washington was sent by the Governor of Virginia to warn them to retire. This expedition was one of difficulty and of delicacy. He crossed the Alleghany Mountains, reached the Ohio, had interviews with the French commander and the Indians, and returned to Williamsburg to make report to the governor. Of this journey, full of perilous adventures and narrow escapes, he kept a journal, which was published by the governor; was copied into most of the newspapers of the other colonies; and was reprinted in London as a document of much importance, exhibiting the views and designs of the French. In 1754 he was appointed, with the rank of lieutenant-colonel, second in command of the provincial troops raised by the legisla ture to repel the French invasion. On the first encounter with a party of the enemy, under Jumonville, on the 28th of May, 1754, the chief command devolved on Washington, in the absence of his superior. The French leader was killed, and most of his party were taken prisoners. Washington commanded also at the battle of the Great Meadows, and received a vote of thanks for his services from the House of Burgesses. This was in 1754, when he was at the age of twenty-two. During the next year, in consequence of the effect of some new arrangement of the provincial troops, he was reduced from the rank of colonel to that of captain, and thereupon retired from the army, with the consolation that he had received the thanks of his country for the services he had rendered. In 1755 he consented to serve as aide-de-camp to General Braddock, who had arrived from England with two regiments of regular troops. In this capacity he served in the battle of the Monongahela with much distinction. The two other aids were wounded and disabled early in the action, and the duty of distributing the general's orders devolved wholly upon Washington. It was in this battle that he acquired with the Indians the reputation of being under the special protection of the Great Spirit, because he escaped the aim of many of their rifles, although two horses were shot under him, and his dress was perforated by four bullets. His conduct on this occasion became known and celebrated throughout the country; and when he retired to Mount Vernon, as he did soon after, at the age of three-and-twenty, he not only carried with him a decisive reputation for personal bravery, but he was known to have given advice to Braddock, before the action, which all men saw, after it, would, if it had been duly heeded, have prevented his defeat. But he was not allowed to remain long in retirement. In August, 1755, he was appointed commander-in-chief of all the provincial forces of Virginia, and immediately entered upon the duties of reorganizing the old and raising new troops, in the course of which he visited all the outposts along the frontier. Soon afterwards, a dispute about rank having arisen with a person who claimed to take precedence of provincial officers because he had formerly held the king's commission, it became necessary for

Colonel Washington to make a visit to Boston, in order to have the point decided by General Shirley, the commander-in-chief of his majesty's armies in America. He commenced his journey on the 4th of February, 1756, and passed through Philadelphia, New York, New London, Newport, and Providence, and visited the governors of Pennsylvania and New York. In all the principal cities his character, and his remarkable escape at Braddock's defeat, made him the object of a strong public interest. At Boston he was received with marked distinction by General Shirley and by the whole society of the town, and the question of rank was decided according to his wishes. General Shirley explained to him the intended operations of the next campaign; and, after an absence from Virginia of seven weeks, he returned to resume his command. The next three years were spent in the duties of this laborious and responsible position, the difficulties and embarrassments of which bore a strong resemblance to those which he afterwards had to encounter in the war of the Revolution. In 1758 he commanded the Virginia troops in the expedition against Fort Duquesne, under General Forbes. Great deference was paid by that officer to his opinions and judgment, in arranging the line of march and order of battle, on this important expedition; for the fate of Braddock was before him. The command of the advanced division, consisting of one thousand men, was assigned to him, with the temporary rank of brigadier. When the army had approached within fifty miles of Fort Duquesne, the French deserted it; its surrender to the English closed the campaign; and in December Washington resigned his commission, and retired to Mount Vernon. What he had been, and what he then was, to the colony of Virginia, is shown by the address presented to him by the officers of the provincial troops on his retirement. "In our earliest infancy," said they, "you took us under your tuition, trained us up in the practice of that discipline which alone can constitute good troops, from the punctual observance of which you never suffered the least deviation. Your steady adherence to impartial justice, your quick discernment, and invariable regard to merit, wisely intended to inculcate those genuine sentiments of true honor and passion for glory from which the greatest military achievements have been derived, first heightened our natural emulation and our desire to excel. How much we improved by those regulations and your own example, with what alacrity we have hitherto discharged our duty, with what cheerfulness we have encountered the severest toils, especially while under your particular directions, we submit to yourself, and flatter ourselves that we have in a great measure answered your expectations. . . . It gives us additional sorrow, when we reflect, to find our unhappy country will receive a loss no less irreparable than our own. Where will it meet a man so experienced in military affairs, one so renowned for patriotism, conduct, and courage? Who has so great a knowledge of the enemy we have to deal with? Who so well acquainted with their situation and strength? Who so much respected by the soldiery? Who, in short, so able to support the military character of Virginia? Your approved love to your king and country, and your uncommon perseverance in promoting the honor and true interest of the service, convince us that the most cogent reasons only could induce you

to quit it; yet we, with the greatest deference, presume to entreat you to suspend those thoughts for another year, and to lead us on in the glorious work of extirpating our enemies, towards which so considerable advances have already been made. In you we place the most implicit confidence. Your presence only will cause a steady firmness and vigor to actuate every breast, despising the greatest dangers, and thinking light of toils and hardships, while led on by the man we know and love. But if we must be so unhappy as to part, if the exigencies of your affairs force you to abandon us, we beg it as our last request, that you will recommend some person most capable to command, whose military knowledge, whose honor, whose conduct, and whose disinterested principles we may depend on. Frankness, sincerity, and a certain openness of soul are the true characteristics of an officer, and we flatter ourselves that you do not think us capable of saying anything contrary to the purest dictates of our minds. Fully persuaded of this, we beg leave to assure you that, as you have hitherto been the actuating soul of our whole corps, we shall at all times pay the most invariable regard to your will and pleasure, and shall be always happy to demonstrate by our actions with how much respect and esteem we are," etc.

Washington's marriage took place soon after his resignation (January 6th, 1759), and his civil life now commenced. He had been elected a member of the House of Burgesses, before the close of the campaign, and in the course of the winter he took his seat. Upon this occasion, his inability, from confusion and modesty, to reply to a highly eulogistic address made to him by the speaker, Mr. Robinson, drew from that gentleman the celebrated compliment, "Sit down, Mr. Washington, your modesty equals your valor, and that surpasses the power of any language that I possess." He continued a member of the House of Burgesses until the commencement of the Revolution, a period of fifteen years. He was not a frequent speaker; but his sound judgment, quick perception, and firmness and sincerity of character, gave him an influence which the habit of much speaking does not give, and which is often denied to eloquence. As the time drew near when the controversies between the colonies and England began to assume a threatening attitude, he was naturally found with Henry, Randolph, Lee, Wythe, and Mason, and the other patriotic leaders of the colonies. His views concerning the policy of the nonimportation agreements were early formed and made known. In 1769 he took charge of the Articles of Association, drawn by Mr. Mason, which were intended to bring about a concert of action between all the colonies, for the purpose of presenting them to the assembly, of which Mr. Mason was not a member. In 1774 he was chosen a member of the first Virginia Convention, and was by that body elected a delegate to the first Continental Congress, where he was undoubtedly the most conspicuous person present. The second Virginia Convention met in March, 1775, and re-elected the former delegates to the second Continental Congress, from which Washington was removed by his appointment as commander-in-chief.

There can be no doubt, therefore, that Washington was chosen commander

in-chief for his unquestionable merits, and not as a compromise between sectional interests and local jealousies.

(The authorities for the statements in this note concerning Washington's history are the biographies by Marshall and Sparks, and the Writings of Washington, edited by the latter.)

I.-3

CHAPTER III.

1776-1777.

CONTINUANCE OF THE REVOLUTIONARY GOVERNMENT.-DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.-PREPARATIONS FOR A NEW GOVERNMENT.— FORMATION OF THE CONTINENTAL ARMY.

On the 7th of June, 1776, after the Congress had in fact assumed and exercised sovereign powers with the assent of the people of America, a resolution was moved by Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, and seconded by John Adams of Massachusetts, "That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states; and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally suppressed." This resolution was referred to a committee of the

1 Richard Henry Lee, the mover of this resolution, was born on the 20th of June, 1732, at Stratford, Westmoreland County, Virginia. His earlier education was completed in England, whence he returned in his nineteenth year. Possessed of a good fortune, he devoted himself to public affairs. At the age of twenty-five he entered the House of Burgesses, where he became a distinguished advocate of republican doctrines, and a strenuous opponent of the right claimed by Parliament to tax the colonies, of the Stamp Act, and of the other arbitrary measures of the home government, co-operating with Patrick Henry in all his great patriotic efforts. He was the author of the plan adopted by the House of Burgesses in 1773 for the formation of committees of correspondence, to be organized by the colonial legislatures, and out of which grew the plan of the Continental Congress. In 1774 he was elected one of the delegates from Virginia to the Congress, in which body, from his known ability as a political writer and his services in the popular cause, he was placed on the committees to prepare the addresses to the King, to the People of Great Britain, and to the People of the Colonies, the last of which he wrote. In the second Congress he was sclected to move the resolution of independence; and besides serving on other very important committees, he furnished, as chairman of the committee instructed to prepare them, the commission and instructions to General Washington. As mover of the resolution of independence, he would, according to the usual practice, have been made chairman of the committee to prepare the Dec