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which he wrote to his mother on the subject of their defeat; and yet his two pages are infinitely more graphic than any ten-page account in the histories, eloquent as those are upon one topic on which he maintains silence, the good judgment of Washington.

Washington's power in argument first shows itself in his letter to Mr. Fairfax concerning the Stamp Act. The whole composition reads as convincingly as the most brilliant passages in Burke, and yet there is nothing more adorned than this: "I think the Parliament of Great Britain have no more right to put their hands into my pockets, without my consent, than I have to put my hands into yours; and this being already urged to them in a firm but decent manner, by all the colonies, what reason is there to expect anything from their justice?" Fact and experience were eloquent to Washington without the aid of rhetoric. His acceptance of his appointment to the head of the army is full of the modesty and loyalty that marked all that he wrote. "Mr. President: Though I am truly sensible of the high honor done me, in this appointment, yet I feel great distress from a conciousness that my abilities and military experience may not be equal to the extensive and important trust. However, as the Congress desire it, I will enter upon the momentous duty, and exert every power I possess in their service, and for the support of the glorious cause... But I beg it may be remembered by every gentleman in this room that I, this day, declare with the utmost sincerity, I do not think myself equal to the command I am honored with."

As soon as Washington had taken command of the army he began a series of letters to Congress which continued throughout the war. These state all his plans and movements with rigid exactness. If anything was needed he asked for it simply: "We labor under great disadvantages for want of tents," or "I find myself already much embarrassed for want of a military chest." But there are no long petitions or complaints: his business was to act for the inter

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ests of the country and to report his movements to Congress without superfluous personal comment or criticism, much as the conditions would have justified him in making them. It took a Valley Forge to strike a spark of fire into Washington's rhetoric. His indignation on behalf of his men made him eloquently ironical for the first time. "We find gentlemen, without knowing whether the army was really going into winter quarters or not, reprobating the measure as much as if they thought the soldiers were made of stocks and stones, and equally insensible of frost and sorrow; and moreover as if they conceived it easily practicable for an inferior army, under the disadvantages I have described ours to be, which are by no means exaggerated, to confuse a superior one, in all respects well appointed and provided for a winter's campaign, within the city of Philadelphia. . . . I can assure these gentlemen, that it is a much easier and less distressing thing to draw remonstrances in a comfortable room by a good fireside than to occupy a cold bleak hill, and sleep under frost and snow, without clothes or blankets. However, although they seem to have little feeling for the naked and distressed soldiers, I feel superabundantly for them, and from my soul I pity those miseries, which it is neither in my power to relieve or prevent." In 1783 Washington made his famous farewell address to the army, a speech so full of sincere emotion that it could not but be eloquent, although he who spoke it, falteringly, was no practiced orator. A note of impassioned exhortation creeps in here for the first time, a device which an ambitious young orator might assume, but which Washington could come by only honestly through experience and suffering with his

men.

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Even so brief a survey as this gives us the impression that never was the saying that "the style is the man" true of any one than of Washington. The power of expression he would never have cultivated for artistic ends; it developed in him, step by step, only as his experience

Where a record of an expedi

demanded it for practical use. tion was necessary, he wrote with plain accuracy; where national events became more complex and demanded careful thought and reasoning, his letters to Congress became more philosophical; where an appeal must be made for his soldiers, he could be impassioned; and when the time came for him to disband his army he had so found himself through years of experience that he spoke with a genuine eloquence. The record reads like that of a man made an orator almost in spite of himself.

In the Farewell Address of 1796 we have the full cul

mination of all these powers. It was an occasion that demanded much of Washington, and perhaps the speech bears more than usual the consciousness of composition. But it does not lose in a single sentence the ingenuousness of that boyish journal of 1753; time has only added to it the trained intellect, the practiced logic, the experienced judgment, the mellowed sympathy, and the temperate emotion that must lie at the foundation of all good and great eloquence. These, combined with Washington's inborn sense of elegance and dignity in form and expression, make the Farewell Address a piece of rare, unpretentious oratory that deserves to be known by heart by every student of American liter

ature.

Mr. Henry Cabot Lodge, in his Life of Washington (American Statesmen Series), writes: "In September, 1796, Washington published his farewell address, and no man ever left a nobler political testament. Through much tribulation he had done his great part in establishing the government of the Union, which might have come to naught without his commanding influence. . . . Now from the heights of great achievement he turned to say farewell to the people whom he so much loved, and whom he had so greatly served. Every word was instinct with the purest and wisest patriotism. His admonitions were received by the people at large with profound respect, and sank deep into the public

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mind. As the generations have come and gone, the farewell address has grown dearer to the hearts of the people, and the children and the children's children of those to whom it was addressed have turned to it in all times and known that there was no room for error in following its counsel."

II. IMPORTANT EVENTS IN THE LIFE OF GEORGE WASHINGTON

1732. Feb. 22.

Born in Westmoreland County, in the Colony of Virginia.

1748. Appointed surveyor of the extensive Fairfax pro

perty.

1751. Appointed Adjutant of the Virginia troops at outbreak of French and Indian War.

1752. Came into the charge of Mount Vernon, on the death of his brother Lawrence.

1753. Appointed Commander of the northern military district of Virginia. First journey to the Ohio. Commanded Virginia troops in defence of Fort Necessity.

1755. Commissioned Commander-in-Chief of all the Virginia forces. Served in Braddock's Campaign. 1758. Commanded the advance guard of the expedition that captured Fort Duquesne.

1759. Married Mrs. Martha Custis and settled at Mount Vernon.

Elected to the House of Burgesses.

1774. Appointed by the Virginia Convention a delegate to the First Continental Congress at Philadelphia. 1775. July 2. Took command of the Continental Army at Cambridge, Massachusetts.

1776. Drove the British out of Boston.

1777-78. Spent the winter at Valley Forge.

1781. Forced Cornwallis to surrender at Yorktown.

1783. Dec. 28. Resigned his commission as Commanderin-Chief.

1787. Presided over the Federal Convention at Phila

delphia.

1789. Elected First President of the United States by unanimous vote of the people.

1792.

1796.

1797.

April 30. Took the oath of office upon the open
balcony of the Federal Hall in Wall Street, New
York.

Reëlected President.

Sept. 17. Published the Farewell Address.

Retired to Mount Vernon.

1799. Dec. 14. Died at Mount Vernon.

III. REFERENCES ON THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF WASH-
INGTON

Washington Irving, Life of Washington, 5 vols. New York,
1855-59. Putnam.

John Fiske, Washington and His Country (Classics for
Children Series). Boston, 1887. Ginn & Co.

(This is Irving's Life of Washington abridged for the use of schools.)

Jared Sparks, Life of Washington. Boston, 1839. Charles
Tappan.

Jared Sparks (editor), Writings of Washington, 12 vols.
Boston, 1837. Am. Stationers' Co.

W. C. Ford (editor), Writings of Washington, 14 vols.
New York, 1889-93. G. P. Putnam's Sons. Careful
and conscientious; standard edition.

W. C. Ford, George Washington, 2 vols. New York, 1900.
Charles Scribner's Sons.

"The reverence which all Americans feel for the memory of Washington has to some extent disadvantageously affected his biographers. Solicitous to present him always clothed in a lofty and majestic greatness, they have made him something like a mythical hero; grand but indistinct, like a distant mountain. We welcome, therefore, a

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