tion, and only some strange chance of war could save him. Enthusiasm such as our poor soldiers had never known fired their hearts. Every man felt himself freedom's king. They made short work with their wily foe, whom they had got at last at a great disadvantage. They saw Washington's prudent plan of warfare ripening at last in a great and almost bloodless victory. Cannon from every quarter played upon the enemy's works and beat them down. The spade and pick opened a safe way to a close encounter with the caged lion. Seeing his certain fate, he surrendered, and in due time marched out into an open field and laid down his arms. This unequaled victory was the great ripe fruit of all their sufferings. It enheartened the whole. country and gave it name and credit abroad. The whole world was watching this American conflict. If the new nation maintained its independence, a new era was to open to mankind. The nineteenth of October, 1781, which brought Cornwallis' surrender, made sure this opening future.

Washington visited Mount Vernon, and after a few days repaired to Philadelphia where he spent the winter months of 1781 and 1782 with Congress, counseling in relation to both the civil and military affairs of the country. The army's suffering condition bore heavily on his generous heart.

A treaty of peace between Great Britain and the United States was signed at Paris, January 21, 1783. A letter from Lafayette to Congress, bearing the intelligence, reached that body March 23. Sir Guy Carlton informed Washington a few days after that he was ordered to proclaim a cessation of hostilities by land and sea. On the seventeenth of April Washington made a similar proclamation to his army by order of Congress.

On the eighteenth of the following October Congress discharged the army, many of whom had already gone to their homes on furloughs.

On the second of November Washington made his farewell address to the soldiers who had won the independence of America.

Thus closed the great Revolutionary War, the most important and justifiable of any that the world had then known; as import

ant, perhaps, in securing the liberties of the English as the American people. Now that it is so far in the past, all true men can unite in tributes of praise and honor to the people who so nobly sacrificed for their convictions; and to Washington, their great leader, who, under Providence, became truly the "Father of their country," and, perhaps, the most fortunate and truly great man, taken all in all, in the history of the world.

LIFE AT MOUNT VERNON.

Washington now retired to Mount Vernon to take up again those rural pursuits so congenial to his retiring and domestic nature. He at once set about improving his estate, embellishing his home and its surrounding and reviving his former pleasures and associations. But he could not forget the country he had helped to bring into being. His wide acquaintance with the resources of the country and its great possibilities, and his intimate knowledge of the people, filled his mind with speculations on the settlement of the wilderness, the means of land and water communication with the fruitful regions which he saw must soon be settled. His correspondence and his conversation with visitors were filled with these thoughts, which reached far away from Mount Vernon.

In December, 1784, he was invited to Annapolis, by the Virginia Assembly, to consider with other public spirited gentlemen, the best ways of improving inland navigation. The meeting resulted in the formation of two navigation companies, for opening the navigation of the Potomac and James rivers, under the coöperation of the assemblies of Virginia and Maryland. He was made president of both. It was a part of the plan to open a communication with western waters and facilitate the movements of settlements into those inviting regions. The Assembly of Virginia, as a mark of respect and in recognition of his great services given without remuneration to the country, voted one hundred and fifty shares in these companies as a gift to General Washington. This generous proposal puzzled and troubled him. It was one of his settled purposes not to accept

public gifts, because of their tendency to swerve the private judgment and put one under purchased obligation to the public. He had given eight years of the best of his life to fight for personal freedom, and now he would not accept a gift which might in any way act as a bribe upon that freedom; and yet he did not desire to seem not to appreciate the generous sentiments of his fellow-citizens. After much consideration he concluded to accept the gift, if the assembly would allow him to hold it in trust for some public institution. Later in life he applied it to public education.

It is the testimony of those who knew much of him that his character in private life was as free from guile and blemish as in public positions. His secretary, Mr. Lear, after two years residence in his family on very intimate relations, says: "General Washington, is, I believe, almost the only man of an exalted character, who does not lose some part of his respectability by an intimate acquaintance. I have never found a single thing that could lessen my respect for him. A complete knowledge of his honesty, uprightness and candor in all his private transactions, has sometimes led me to think he was more than a man."

Bishop White says of him: "I know no man so carefully guarded against the discoursing of himself or of his acts, or of anything that pertained to him, and it has occasionally occurred to me when in has company, that if a stranger to his person were present, he would never have known from anything said by him that he was conscious of having distinguished himself in the eye of the world." His wife's grandchild who lived in his family, Miss Custis, has written of him: "He spoke little, generally; never of himself. I never heard him relate a single act of his life during the war."

He was social, fond of company, of children and youth; loved their laughter and gaiety; laughed himself sometimes immoderately; yet was usually calm and benignant. His friendships were very strong. Many of his companions in arms became very dear to him; General Greene, Lafayette and Hamilton in particular. To his early friendships he was always steadfast. The little excellencies of spirit and conduct, like the

little touches of the painter's brush, gave the last and delicate finish to the solid and grand character which made him the wonderful man he was.

THE CONFEDERATION AND THE CONSTITUTION.

When Washington returned from the army to Mount Vernon, he went to spend the rest of his life in retirement. But the troubles of the country he had called into being would not let him rest. The debts incurred in the war; the settlement of claims and differences; the need of money that could not be furnished, of laws that in many places would not be accepted, of authority with force behind it; the general distraction, and in some places actual rebellion, convinced him that the confederation of the states under which the war had been fought out, was but a rope of sand. He saw, and urged in letters and in private conversation, the need of a strong central government, a league of all the people which should be a power over the states, which should make a nation in which the states should exist as local bodies. With these thoughts in his mind, he read much of the ancient republics and of those nations which had existed without kings. He made known his views all over the Union in correspondence with the leading minds. He wrote: "I have ever been a friend to adequate powers in Congress, without which it is evident to me we shall never establish a national character, or be considered as on a respectable footing by the powers of Europe. We are either a united people under one head for federal purposes, or we are thirteen independent sovereignties eternally counteracting each other. If the former, what ever such a majority of the states as the constitution points out conceives to be for the benefit of the whole, should, in my humble opinion, be submitted to by the minority. I can see no evil greater than disunion." Again he writes: "I do not conceive we can exist long as a nation without lodging somewhere a power which will pervade the whole Union in ast energetic a manner as the authority of the state governments extends over the several states. To be fearful of investing Congress, constituted as that body is, with ample authorities for

national purposes, appears to me the very climax of popular absurdity and madness.”

The people were drifting into anarchy. The states were selfish and jealous. Washington felt that they were rejecting his counsel, solemnly given in his farewell address to the soldiers. and people. He was alarmed and troubled and asked, "What, then, is to be done? Things cannot go on in this strain forever." There are many letters extant, written about this time, full of the sorrow of his great heart and the fear that the war had been in vain. He did not dream it, though these letters, and a plan of federate organization started at Mount Vernon by the commissioners appointed by the assemblies of Maryland and Virginia, the year before, had given hints of the remedy needed for the prevailing disasters and dangers. These great matters were being considered in the state assemblies and resulted in a proposition for a convention of delegates from all the states, to meet in Philadelphia, for the purpose of revising and correcting the federal system; the action of the convention to be reported to congress and the state legislatures for their approval.

Washington was put at the head of the Virginia delegation. The convention was appointed for the second Monday in May, 1786; but enough delegates to form a quorum did not get there till the twenty-fifth. Washington was unanimously elected president of the convention. The convention continued in session four months. It was a great deliberative body. It came together thoroughly alarmed for the safety of the new country. It worked in earnest and with a will, and produced the great constitution under which the United States have become a great country and lived a hundred years-the greatest compend of deliberative wisdom, perhaps, which has been produced in this world.

The constitution was sent to Congress, and by that body to the state legislatures, which appointed state conventions to consider it. It must be accepted by nine before it became the fundamental law of the land. On the thirteenth of September, 1788, Congress, the constitution having been ratified by a sufficient number of states, appointed the first Wednesday in January,