civil service of his country, began to feel the greed, and injustice and tyranny of the English government. Her laws for the colonies were restrictive; often entrenched upon their rights; shut up their trade to her ships and ports; her governors in the colonies often vetoed the most wholesome laws, and, like Braddock with his regulars, seemed to forget the new circumstances of a new people. As he learned of Braddock that the English army, conducted on the home system, was an unwieldy, slow and expensive thing in an American border warfare; so he learned in the civil service that King George and his parliament, and the governors and judges they sent over, were as incompetent to conduct the civil service of America. Little by little he was learning England's faults; learning that one people cannot legislate for and rule wisely another people far away and living under essentially different circumstances.

Washington was a devoted English churchman, was a vestryman in the church at Alexandria, and also at Pohick, and always attended church with his family when the weather favored, and, Mr. Irving says, was a communicant. This consecrated his devotion to England and its government and order of life. He was in the House of Burgesses when questions of difference came up with the governor and home government; understood, both as a legislator and a business man; how the restrictive navigation and trade and anti-manufacturing laws hindered the business of the colonies; heard the arguments pro and con; heard the vehement and powerful eloquence of Patrick Henry, as he set forth the natural rights of men and the injury to those rights in the colonies, by the unnatural and oppressive measures of the mother country. Notwithstanding his great love of England, he could not be blind to her faults. He loved the colonies and saw the great prospects before them. His quickest, deepest sympathies were for humanity.

In Washington's quiet and careful life at Mount Vernon, he studied, as they came up one after another, the great questions at issue between the colonies and the king and parliament, and his clear judgment favored the colonies all the time. As a private citizen he studied the great questions of statecraft; of

natural and colonial rights; of the English constitution and law; of navigation and commerce; of taxation and representation; of the rights of the people; as they were discussed by the great minds of the colonies and England as they never had been before. It was the maturing period of his thoughts and principles, which was preparing him for public action on that grand scale and in those stirring scenes which made him "The father of his country" and one of the world's most illustrious of men.

PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS.

It is pleasant to think of great men as natural men; and such was Washington. He was intensely interested in human things; in human ambitions and pleasures; in human loves and affairs. He was careful in his dress; circumspect, polite and deferential in his manners; prudent in his speech; usually self-governed, yet of strong passions; was a good hunter; enjoyed duck-shooting; entered heartily into social intercourse; was a good horseman, and took pride in his horses; relished jokes; with all his dignity and aristocratic associations, was democratic in his sympathies. He loved women and children; was a thoroughly domestic man; he loved the stir and show and power of military combination and movement; loved the drill, promptness and obedience of a good soldier. He was an exact and methodical business man; kept his accounts with punctilious accuracy; wrote in a clear, round hand; kept his clothes, books, tools, affairs in complete order; was a good correspondent, warm in his friendships, severe in his censures of wrongdoing; courageous, yet prudent; kept a diary and preserved much of his personal history; was bashful and modest; not given to public speech, yet never fell into the mistake that he was not of much account; was a reader of good books; an accurate observer of men and things; was very practical, and of wide and varied wisdom; was large-hearted and public-spirited.

In his full manhood he stood six feet high; was broadshouldered and full-chested; was erect, stately; moved with grace and dignity. He was of robust constitution, invigorated

by outdoor occupation, rigid temperance and orderly habits. Few men equaled him in strength and endurance. His hair was brown, eyes blue, complexion florid, head round, face full, expression calm and serious.

COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF.

While Washington was quietly attending to the affairs at Mount Vernon and occupying his seat in the house of burgesses at its sessions, the disturbed affairs of the colonies moved rapidly on from bad to worse to an open rupture with the mother country, as related in the first chapter of this book. At the suggestion of John Adams, in the general Congress, seconded by Samuel Adams, he was nominated and unanimously elected commander-in-chief of the army of the united colonies. It was an office unsought and undesired. He accepted it to serve the distracted colonies and the suffering people, and with the con viction, as he said to Patrick Henry on the day of his election, that "This day will be the commencement of the decline of my reputation." He refused all pay, asking only that his expenses be provided for. No man in America was more honest and earnest in the position the colonies had taken, and he cast all he had and was into the cause, believing it would be of little worth if the cause was not sustained.

Mr. Bancroft, in his history of the United States, says: "Never in the tide of time has any man lived who had in so great a degree the almost divine faculty to command the confidence of his fellow men and rule the willing. Wherever he became known, in his family, his neighborhood, his county, his native state, the continent, the camp, civil life, the United States, among the common people, in foreign courts, throughout the civilized world of the human race, and even among the savages, he, beyond all other men, had the confidence of his kind."

Washington was elected commander-in-chief on the fifteenth of June, 1775. He accepted the office with great diffidence, believing himself not equal to its great duties. He started as soon as he could set his affairs in order; not stopping to visit his family

at Mount Vernon. He met everywhere on the way the acclamations of the people. Confidence and enthusiasm were inspired at once in many who had been distrustful and disheartened.

On the third day of July, at Cambridge, Massachusetts, under an elm tree on the common, attended by great numbers of the best citizens, Washington assumed the command of the continental army. It was a great day for America; a great day for England also, for the liberties of her people were to be preserved and developed, as well as of those of the colonies; a great day for the world, for Washington's sword was unsheathed for the rights of humanity.

Governor Trumbull, of Connecticut, wrote him: "Be strong, and very courageous." Washington replied: "The cause of our common country calls us both to an active and dangerous duty; Divine Providence, which wisely orders the affairs of men, will enable us to discharge it with fidelity and success."

BOSTON BESIEGED.

Washington found Boston in the hands of a British army of some ten thousand men, well equipped, and supported by ships and munitions, under command of General Gage. It was a pretentious, self-assured army, confident of an easy victory over the rural rebels who had come down from the hills and shut them in. Their British conceit had been a little punished by the frays at Lexington and Bunker Hill, but a little of the art and power of English war, it was expected, would send them flying to their hills and homes again.

About three fifths of the citizens of Boston were remaining in their homes, suffering many indignities and deprivations. The army which Washington had come to command was a mixed multitude, gathered from the ships, shops and farms, under very little discipline, order, or government. It was poorly officered and armed, with but little ammunition and a poor prospect of getting supplied. It lacked everything which makes an efficient army, but high principles and manly courage; but perhaps never so large a body of men in an army knew better what they wanted and were resolved to have. It was

stretched in an irregular semi-circle, a distance of nine miles, around Boston from Dorchester to Malden. Its immediate business there was to keep the British lion in the den into which he had crept from the sea; its real and ultimate purpose was to tell King George and his parliament that the American colonies would not pay taxes without representation, nor submit to unjust laws.

Washington immediately set about making this intelligent, strong-willed, high-principled rabble into an army; learning the exact situation of things in and about Boston, and quickening congress and the several colonies to supply the wants and increase and make permanent the force of the army. The summer and autumn were spent in making the girdle about Boston stronger, in hedging up the highways in and out; in sweeping the surrounding islands of stock and supplies; in getting horses, cattle and supplies back into the country; in entrenching, throwing up breastworks, planting batteries, gathering arms, ammunition, tents, wagons; in drilling, picketing, skirmishing and capturing squads of the enemy.

This spade and pickaxe warfare by the close of the year had planted batteries on all the near heights around Boston, guarded with entrenchments all the outlets and waterways, built forts where these would best serve the siege operations, and made the British lion's palace a prison with short rations and a good prospect of none at all in a little while. In the way of military glory the British lion had got Lexington and Bunker Hill; in the way of luxury and booty it had got a military prison without supplies. In February, Washington entrenched himself strongly on Dorchester Heights, which commanded the city and the harbor. Early in March he was well entrenched on Nook's Hill, which commanded Boston Neck. And now the roaring lion became a frightened sheep, and took to his swift feet and ran into his ships and set sails for the open sea. Evacuated, Boston was the proud old city again, and her citizens flocked home with great joy. The colonies were glad, and praised the Lord. Washington had gained a great victory in his first campaign without fighting a battle.