GEORGE.

In the family record contained in a Bible which belonged to the mother of Washington, and which is now in the possession of George Washington Bassett, of Hanover County, Virginia, who married a grandniece of Washington, the following entry is found:—"George Washington, son to Augustine and Mary his wife, was born ye 11th day of February 1732, about ten in the morning, and was baptized the 3rd of April following; Mr Beverly Whiting and Captain Christopher Brooks, godfathers; and Mrs Mildred Gregory, godmother."

George Washington was accordingly born on the 22d of February 1732, new style, in the county of Westmoreland, in the parish of Washington (so called from the family, whose seat it had been for three generations), on Pope's Creek, a small tributary to the Potomac, and at the distance of about half a mile from its junction with that river. The house in which he was born was destroyed before the American Revolution, but a stone with a suitable inscription was placed upon the spot a few years since, by the late George Washington Parke Custis, the grandson of Mrs Washington. This spot has lately been ceded to the State of Virginia.

The county of Westmoreland,—famous as the birthplace not only of Washington, but of several other eminent persons, such as Richard Henry Lee, who moved the resolution for declaring independence in the Congress at Philadelphia in 1776; his three brothers, Thomas, Francis, and Arthur, and his kinsman, General Henry Lee, all distinguished in their day; James Monroe, the fifth President of the United States; and Bushrod Washington, a nephew of the general and a justice of the Supreme Court,—lies between the Potomac and Rappahannock rivers, in what is called the northern neck of Virginia. Notwithstanding the notoriety of the facts, a statement is sometimes made in British publications, and has been repeated by a respectable writer within the past year (1858), that George Washington was born in England.

Augustine Washington, the father of the General, was twice married. His first wife was Jane Butler, by whom he had three sons and a daughter, viz., Butler, who died in infancy, Lawrence, Augustine, and Jane, the last named of whom also died in childhood. His second wife was Mary Ball, to whom he was married on the 6th of March 1730. By this marriage he had six children, viz., George, Betty, Samuel, John, Augustine, Charles, and Mildred, the last of whom died in infancy.

George Washington was the great-grandson of John Washington, who, with a brother named Lawrence, emigrated to Virginia in 1657. They were the great-grandsons of Lawrence Washington, sometime mayor of Northampton, and the first lay proprietor of the manor of Sulgrave, in Northamptonshire, which was granted to him in 1538. The eldest brother, Sir William Washington, married a half-sister of George Villiers, the famous Duke of Buckingham. This connection indicates, if it did not cause, a leaning of the family toward the Royal side in the civil wars. Another of the name, Sir Henry Washington, a relative though not a brother, signalised himself for his persevering gallantry in sustaining the siege of Worcester against the Republican forces. Of the two brothers who came to Virginia, Lawrence had been a student at Oxford; John had resided on an estate at South Cave, in Yorkshire, which gave rise to an erroneous tradition among his descendants that their ancestor came from the north of England.

There is no doubt that the politics of the family determined the two brothers, John and Lawrence, to emigrate to Virginia, that colony being the favourite resort of the Cavaliers during the government of Cromwell, as New England was the retreat of the Puritans in the period which preceded the Commonwealth. John Washington and his brother took up lands, and became successful planters in Virginia. The former, soon after his arrival, rose to the rank of colonel in the Indian wars, and gave his name to the parish in which he lived. He married Ann Pope, by whom he had two sons, Lawrence and John, and a daughter. Lawrence, the eldest son, married Mildred Warner, of the neighbouring county of Gloucester, and had three children, John, Augustine, and Mildred. The second son, Augustine, was the father of George Washington.

About fifty years before the emigration from England, the family removed from Sulgrave to Broughton (near Althorpe), in Northamptonshire. The name of Washington may still be seen on the grave-stones in the church of that and other parishes in the county. The original grantee of Sulgrave was probably born at Warton, in Lancashire, where his father is known to have lived. In the next generation after the emigration to America, another of the family, perhaps a brother, passed to the Continent and established himself in Bavaria, where the descendants, bearing the family name, and somewhat resembling General George Washington in personal appearance, are still found.

It may be mentioned as a somewhat striking fact, and one, we believe, not hitherto adverted to, that the families of Washington and Franklin—the former the great leader of the American Revolution, the latter not second to any of his patriotic associates—were established for several generations in the same central county of Northamptonshire, and within a few miles of each other: the Washingtons at Broughton and Sulgrave, belonging to the landed gentry of the county, and in the great civil war supporting the Royal side; the Franklins at the village of Ecton, living on the produce of a farm of thirty acres, and the earnings of their trade as blacksmiths, and espousing, some of them at least, and the father and uncle of Benjamin Franklin among the number, the principles of the Nonconformists. Their respective emigrations—germs of great events in history—took place, that of John Washington, the great-grandfather of George, in 1657 to loyal Virginia; that of Josiah Franklin, the father of Benjamin, about the year 1685 to the metropolis of Puritan New England.

The genealogy of George Washington is a matter of greater importance to the memory of his ancestors than to his own; he throws back far greater glory than he can inherit. Nevertheless it may be a matter of curiosity to note, that the family and name are traced by genealogists to the twelfth century, and to the county of Durham. Among those who held manorial estates in that region, in the period succeeding the Norman Conquest, was William de Hertburn, so called from his estate, probably the modern Hartburn on the Tees. This estate was exchanged by him for Wessynton, and with it the family name, which afterwards passed into that of Washington. From this person thus designated, the family of Washington in its various branches, and now widely spread in England, on the continent of Europe, and in the United States, is descended. For further details on this subject, the reader is referred to the appendix to the first volume of Mr Sparks' admirable edition of the *Writings of Washington*, and to

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1 The editor of the Cornwallis Papers. the first volume of his Life, by the late honoured and lamented Nestor of American literature, Mr Washington Irving. General Washington's own feelings on the genealogy of his family are intimated in his answer to a letter from Sir Isaac Heard, Garter King-at-Arms, in 1792. Sir Isaac having addressed a letter to Washington, at that time President of the United States, making inquiry about his genealogy, the President in his reply says—"This is a subject to which I confess I have paid very little attention. My time has been so much occupied in the busy and active scenes of life from an early period of it, that but a small portion of it could have been devoted to researches of this nature, even if my inclination or particular circumstances should have prompted to the inquiry."

Shortly after the birth of George Washington, his father removed his family from the county of Westmoreland to that of Stafford, and established himself on an estate upon the eastern bank of the Rappahannock river, opposite Fredericksburg, where he died in 1743, leaving a valuable landed property to his widow and five children. To his eldest son, Lawrence, he gave an estate near Hunting Creek, on the Potomac river, afterwards called Mount Vernon; to George, the eldest son of the second marriage, the estate opposite Fredericksburg; and to each of the other sons a plantation of 600 or 700 acres; the income of the whole being left within the control of the mother till the sons respectively should come of age.

The mother was a woman of superior intelligence and energy, and ruled her family and household with a firm hand. The means of education at that time, compared with the present day, were scanty in all the Anglo-American colonies, but especially at the South, where a larger portion of the inhabitants lived on their landed estates, and the population was less compact. The sons of affluent planters were sometimes sent "home," as it was called, and placed at the English schools and universities, and afterwards at the inns of court; but for others who, for any cause, were unable to avail themselves of these advantages, the instruction to be had at the local schools in the southern colonies did not extend beyond the ordinary branches of an English education. George Washington was taught reading, writing, book-keeping, and at a later period surveying—an important occupation at that time, being liberally compensated, and affording facilities for finding out and entering valuable ungranted lands in the almost boundless wilderness which lay west of the settled parts of the country.

Some of the manuscript books kept by him at school are still preserved. They are marked by neatness, method, skill in the use of figures, in the construction of tables, and in the delineation of plans; in a word, by the display of the favourite tastes which he carried through life, and manifested in the business details of military and civil affairs of importance.

According to still existing traditions, he evinced in his boyhood the military taste which seems to have been hereditary in his family. The self-elected but willingly obeyed leader of his comrades, he formed them into companies for their juvenile battles. His early repute for veracity and justice, with his athletic prowess beyond his years, made him the chosen umpire of their disputes. He wrestled, leaped, ran, threw the bar, and rode with the foremost. A spot is still pointed out where, in his boyhood, he threw a stone across the Rappahannock; he was proverbially strong of arm; in manhood he had one of the largest hands ever seen; and was through life a bold and graceful horseman.

Among his manuscripts still in existence, there is one written when he was under thirteen years of age, which deserves to be mentioned, as containing striking indications of early maturity. The piece referred to is entitled "Rules of Civility and Decent Behaviour in Company and Conversation." These rules are written out, in the form of maxims, to the number of one hundred and ten. "They form," says Mr Sparks, who gives a considerable specimen of them, "a minute code of regulations for building up the habits of morals, and manners, and good conduct in very young persons." Whether they were taken in a body from some manual of education, or compiled by Washington himself from various books, or framed from his own youthful observation and reflection, is unknown. The first is perhaps the more probable supposition. If compiled by a lad under thirteen, and still more, if the fruit of his own meditations, they would constitute a most extraordinary example of early prudence and thoughtfulness. Some of the rules which form a part of this youthful code of manners and morals, had their influence over Washington, and gave a complexion to his habits through life.

Washington's early education did not extend beyond his own language, nor was that taught grammatically, either in England or America, a hundred years ago. The grammatical rules of the English tongue were first learned from the study of the Latin language. Washington gave some attention to the French in after life, when the armies of Count de Rochambeau were placed under his command; but he never attempted to speak or write it. By long practice, attentive reading of good authors, and scrupulous care in the preparation of his letters and other compositions, he acquired a correct and perspicuous English style.

While he was still at school, a project was formed by some of his relatives and friends, which, if it had taken effect, would have changed the entire course of his life. His eldest brother, Lawrence, had been an officer in the war lately waged to avenge the loss of "Captain Jenkins' ears." He had served as captain on the Spanish main, and formed friendly relations with General Wentworth and Admiral Vernon. Observing the military turn of his brother George, he naturally thought he should promote his advancement in life by placing him in the British service. A midshipman's warrant was obtained for him, no doubt through Admiral Vernon's interest; but the prophetic heart of the mother rebelled at the last moment, and the project was abandoned, although his luggage, it is said, had been sent on board a ship of war lying in the Potomac.

Washington is unquestionably to be added to the list of eminent men whose characters have been moulded by a mother's influence. The control of their children's property, devolved upon her by the will of her husband, shows his confidence in her discretion and energy; and tradition represents her as a woman of vigorous character, fully equal to the trust. The modest dwelling in Fredericksburg in which she brought up her family is still standing, and in its unpretending style and dimensions forms a striking contrast with the ambitious, half-finished monument over her grave. She educated her children in habits of frugality, diligence, and virtue. Books at that time were few—the luxuries, not the daily food of the mind, even among persons of fortune and leisure. With those in narrower circumstances, the range of reading did not extend much beyond the Bible, manuals of devotion, the sermons of some standard divine, and books of practical piety. Among the few books belonging to the elder generation, and still preserved at Mount Vernon, is a well-worn copy of Sir Matthew Hale's Contemplations,—a volume which had belonged to George Washington's father, and in which the names of his two wives, Jane and Mary, are written,

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1 The late Hon. Timothy Pickering, who was secretary of state under Washington and the elder President Adams, said in our hearing, that General Washington was the only man whom he ever knew that had a larger hand than himself. Washington had early attracted his notice as a frequent Washington visitor at Belvoir.

About the time that George came to reside at Mount Vernon, George William Fairfax, the son of the proprietor of Belvoir, had married the daughter of Colonel Carey of Hampton, on James River, and had brought home his bride and her sister to his father's house. Washington's boyish manuscripts betray the secret of a youthful but not successful passion for a person whom he does not name, but whom he describes in prose and verse as a "lowland beauty," and whom tradition represents as Miss Grimes, who afterwards married a Colonel Lee, and became the mother of General Henry Lee, of the Revolutionary War, at all times a favourite of Washington, perhaps on the mother's account. The confidential letters of Washington to his young friends represent him as finding solace at Belvoir in the society of the bride's sister for the still lingering regrets of his boyish "lowland" disappointment.

But his residence at Mount Vernon and his visits at Belvoir were productive of much more important results, and formed a very important link in the chain of events which decided his fortunes for life. The vast possessions of Lord Fairfax were as yet unsurveyed, and "squatters" (as settlers without title are called in the United States) were rapidly seating themselves on the choice of his lands. There was at this period no general system of public surveys executed by authority, and the individual proprietor, after obtaining his grant, was obliged to procure the survey of his lands by licensed surveyors on his own responsibility. Lord Fairfax had formed so favourable an opinion of young Washington, that he determined to employ him on the important service of surveying his extensive estates; and he set off on his first expedition just a month from the time he had completed his sixteenth year, accompanied by young Fairfax, the son of the proprietor of Belvoir.

The best idea of the nature of the service in which he was now engaged will be formed from an extract from one of his own letters:—“Your letter,” says he to his correspondent, “gave me the more pleasure as I received it among barbarians and an uncouth set of people. Since you received my letter of October last, I have not slept above three or four nights in a bed; but after walking a good deal all the day, I have lain down before the fire upon a little hay, straw, fodder, or a bear-skin, whichever was to be had,—with man, wife, and children, like dogs and cats; and happy is he who gets the berth nearest the fire. Nothing would make it pass off tolerably but a good reward. A doubleton is my constant gain every day that the weather will permit my going out, and sometimes six pistoles. The coldness of the weather will not allow of my making a long stay, as the lodging is rather too cold for the time of year. I have never had my clothes off, but have lain and slept in them, except the few nights I have been in Fredericksburg.”

The hardships of this occupation will not be fully comprehended by those who are acquainted with the surveyor's duties only as they are practised in old and thickly settled countries. In addition to the want of accommodation, and the other privations alluded to in the letter just cited, the service was attended with serious peril. In new countries of which “squatters” have begun to take possession, the surveyor is at all times a highly unwelcome visitant, and sometimes goes about his duty at the risk of his life. Besides this, a portion of the country traversed by Washington formed a part of that debatable land, the disputed right of which was the original moving cause of the Seven Years' War. The French were already in motion both from Canada and Louisiana, to preoccupy the banks of the Ohio,

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1 In Chalmers' Biographical Dictionary we read:—“The biographer of Lord Fairfax informs us he was one of the writers of the Spectator, but the annotators on that work have not been able to ascertain any of his papers.” He may have been the author of some of the anonymous communications sent to the “Letter-box,” to which Steele often had recourse in making up a Number. Washington was employed in the survey of Lord Fairfax's lands for three years, passing the pleasant season in the wilderness, and spending his winters at Fredericksburg and Mount Vernon. The outdoor active life fortified his health and strengthened his frame. His surveys were executed in part, in the very region which became the theatre of his campaigns in the Seven Years' War. While engaged in the field he saw something of life and manners among the friendly Indians. He probably availed himself of opportunities to inspect valuable tracts of ungranted land, which he afterwards turned to good account. At a time when the minds of men were but little awakened to the future of the then unsettled West, he learned from actual observation to appreciate its vast importance. He soon became distinguished for the accuracy of his surveys, and obtained the appointment of a public surveyor, which enabled him to enter his plans as legally valid in the county offices. The imperfect manner in which land surveys at that time were generally executed led in the sequel to constant litigation; but an experienced practitioner in the western courts pronounced in after years, that of all the surveys which had come within his knowledge, those of Washington could alone be depended upon. (Everett's Orations, vol. iii. p. 440.)

His experience in border life prepared him for his military education, which was now about to commence. No military schools existed at that time even in the mother country; as late as the last generation, the Duke of Wellington was sent to a military school at Angers in France, for want of institutions of that kind at home. The restlessness of the French and Indians on the frontier, to which allusion has just been made, had as early as 1751 begun to create uneasiness in several of the Anglo-American colonies. The Assembly of Virginia divided that province into several military commands or districts; and in one of them Washington, now nineteen years of age, received the appointment of adjutant-general, with the rank of major. His duty was to assemble and exercise the militia, inspect their arms, and train them for active service in the event of a rupture. In connection with these duties, he gave his time and thoughts to his own preparation for the field. He read military treatises, acquainted himself with the manual exercise, and through the instructions of his brother and other officers of the late war whom he met at Mount Vernon, became expert in the use of the sword.

In these occupations he was interrupted by a painful domestic occurrence. His brother Lawrence, naturally of a feeble constitution, had suffered in his health from the effects of the campaign on the Spanish Main. He became consumptive, and was ordered to the West Indies. George was selected to accompany him. They sailed for Barbadoes in September 1751, and arrived after a five weeks' voyage. Experiencing no permanent relief in that island, the invalid determined to remove to Bermuda in the spring, and George was sent back to Virginia, to conduct the wife of Lawrence to the last-named island. He arrived in February, after a most tempestuous voyage, but the rapidly declining health of his brother caused the other portion of the arrangement just mentioned to be abandoned. While in Barbadoes in the autumn of 1751, George took the smallpox in the natural way. He had it severely, but owing to the mildness of the climate, the strength of his constitution, and good medical aid, he recovered in three weeks. He was, however, slightly marked through life. His journals kept at Barbadoes evince the spirit of accurate observation which was so prominent a feature of his character. The very first campaign of the Revolutionary War gave proof that his having had the smallpox in his youth was one of the providential events of his life. That loathsome disease, not yet robbed of its terrors by vaccination, made its appearance in the besieging army before Boston; but the life of its commander was safe.

His brother Lawrence returned home in the summer of 1752; he had derived no material improvement from his voyage, and died in a short time at the age of thirty-four, leaving a large fortune to an infant daughter. George was appointed one of the executors of his will, by which, in the event of the daughter's decease, Mount Vernon was bequeathed to him. Although the youngest of the executors, in consequence of his more thorough knowledge of his brother's affairs, the responsible management of his extensive estates devolved upon him. He did not, however, allow these private engagements to interfere with his public duties. As the probability of a collision on the frontier increased, greater attention was paid to the military organization of the province. On the arrival of Governor Dinwiddie in 1752, it was divided into four military districts; and Washington's appointment was renewed as Adjutant-General of the Northern Division, in which several counties were included. The duties devolving upon him, under this new commission, in attending the reviews of the militia and superintending their exercises, were performed with a punctuality and zeal which rapidly drew toward him the notice and favour of the community.

We now approach the commencement of Washington's public career, and of a train of events of great magnitude and interest; a service which, though on a small scale, and performed at the age of twenty-one, developed much of the mature strength of his character. The struggle of France and England for the exclusive possession of the eastern portion of the American continent (for the vast region lying west of the Mississippi was as yet unknown to both), was a principal cause of the European wars of the last century. England had established her prosperous colonies along the Atlantic coast. France had entrenched herself at the mouth of the St Lawrence and the Mississippi, and aimed, by a chain of posts drawn north and south through the interior, to prevent the progress of the English colonists westward, and to confine them within constantly reduced limits, hoping, no doubt, ultimately to drive them from the continent. This struggle postponed the civilization of America for a hundred years. It was the great national drama of the eighteenth century. In its progress it subjected the entire frontier to all the horrors of a remorseless border and savage war, and it resulted in the expulsion of the French from the North American continent; in reducing the British dominions to a portion of the territory (the Canadian provinces) which had been wrested from France; and in the establishment of the independence of the United States of America. Everything which preceded the treaty of peace at Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748 may be considered as preliminary to the grand series of events on which we now enter, and in which Washington is immediately to perform a conspicuous, and, eventually, the most important part.

Up to this time the fertile region west of the Alleghany Mountains, and now containing nearly half of the population of the United States, was, with the exception of a few scattered French trading posts and missionary stations, unoccupied by civilized man. In the western part of the State of Maine, in the entire State of Vermont, and in the Western portions of New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, in Kentucky, and the states south of it, in the rear of the Carolinas and Georgia, in the entire territory northwest of the Ohio and west of the Mississippi, a region now inhabited by fifteen millions of people, there did not, in the middle of the last century, arise the smoke of a single hamlet inhabited by the descendants of Englishmen. On the return of peace between France and England in 1748 the Ohio Company was formed. Its object was the occu- Washington and settlement of the fertile country south-east of the Ohio, and west of the Alleghany Mountains. It consisted of a small number of gentlemen in Virginia and Maryland, with one associate in London, Mr Thomas Hanbury, a distinguished merchant of that city. Lawrence Washington was largely interested and actively engaged in the enterprise. A grant of 500,000 acres of land was obtained of the Crown, by the terms of which the company was obliged to introduce a hundred families into the territory within seven years, and to build a fort and furnish a garrison adequate for their defence. Out of this germ of private enterprise grew the Seven Years' War, and by no doubtful chain of cause and effect, the war of American Independence.

The Ohio Company proceeded to fulfil the conditions of their grant. Preparations for Indian trade were made; a road across the mountains, substantially on the line of that constructed in after years by the authority of the United States, was laid out, and an agent sent to conciliate the Indian tribes. In 1752 a treaty was entered into between the Commissioners of Virginia and the Indians, by which the latter agreed not to molest any settlements which might be formed by the company on the southeastern side of the Ohio. On the faith of this compact, twelve families of adventurers from Virginia, headed by Captain Gist, proceeded to establish themselves on the banks of the Monongahela.

These movements were viewed with jealousy by the French colonial government in Canada. Although Great Britain and France had recently concluded a treaty of peace, emissaries were sent from Canada to induce the Indians on the Ohio to break up the friendly agreement just entered into with Virginia. Some of the traders, it was said, were seized and sent to France, and by orders of the French government a fort was immediately commenced on a branch of French Creek, about 15 miles south of Lake Erie, as a position from which the Indians could be controlled and the Virginians held in check. These proceedings were promptly reported to Governor Dinwiddie by the servants of the Ohio Company, and the Governor immediately determined to make them the subject of remonstrance addressed to the French commandant, rather, it may be supposed, with a view to ascertain precisely the facts of the case by a special messenger, than on a supposition that movements of this kind could be arrested by anything less than the interference of the supreme authority at Paris and London.

It was no easy matter to transmit an official message in the state of the country at that time, from the banks of James' River to the shores of Lake Erie. The distance to be travelled was between 500 and 600 miles, the greater part of the way through a wilderness. Mountains were to be climbed and rivers crossed; tribes of savages occupied a considerable portion of the intervening space, and all the hazards of an Indian frontier, in a state of daily increasing irritation, were to be encountered. To all these difficulties the season of the year (it was now November) added obstacles all but insuperable in the absence of artificial communications. It is not to be wondered at, that some persons to whom Governor Dinwiddie first proposed the service should excuse themselves. It was offered to Major Washington, and by him promptly accepted, although the decease of his brother had thrown upon him domestic duties, which would have furnished an honest excuse for shrinking from the laborious and dangerous commission. But Washington never shrank from the performance of a duty. He received his instructions, and started from Williamsburg on the 30th of November 1753.

He was joined at Captain Gist's settlement on the Monongahela by that brave pioneer of civilization. At Logstown he held a conference with Tanacharison, who was the chief or half-king of the friendly Indians seated there, Washington and who, with two or three others of the natives, accompanied Washington and Gist, first to Venango, a post on the French Creek, and then to the head-quarters of M. de St. Pierre, the French commandant, a short distance further north to the north. Here Washington performed his errand, by delivering his despatches, and receiving the reply of the commandant; carefully noting the character and strength of the place, and gaining such information as he was able of the extent of the military operations in progress. The return journey was a series of the severest exposures and the most imminent perils. Their wearied horses were sent by land back to Venango; while Washington and his associates, in a canoe, descended the river, swollen by wintry rains, and at best of hazardous navigation. At Venango they had reason to suspect hostile intentions from the French and savages, and Washington and Gist, with a single Indian guide, in order to hasten their return to the settlements, started through the wilderness on foot, with their packs on their shoulders and guns in their hands. They were dogged through the woods by Indians in the French interest. Their guide exerted all the arts of savage cunning, after leading them out of their path in the forest, to get possession of Washington's gun, but without success. Baffled by their wariness, and perceiving them at nightfall to be fatigued by the weary march, he turned upon them, and, at a distance of 15 feet, fired with his double-barrelled rifle, but without injuring either of them. Gist would have put him to death on the spot, but Washington insisted upon sparing his life, justly as it had been forfeited. After detaining him to a late hour, they allowed him to escape; and in order to forestall an attack from such confederates as he might have lurking in the woods, they pursued their own journey, weary as they were, through the long December's night.

Not doubting that the savages would soon be on their trail, they dared not stop till they reached the Alleghany river, a clear and rapid stream, which they hoped to be able to cross on the ice, their only consolation under the stinging severity of the weather. The river unfortunately was neither frozen across nor wholly open, but fringed with ice for 50 yards on each shore, and the middle stream filled with cakes of ice furiously drifting down the current. With "one poor hatchet," to use Washington's own expression, they commenced the construction of a raft, which it took them all day to complete. They launched it upon the river, but were soon so surrounded and wedged in by drifting masses of ice, that they expected every moment that their raft would go to pieces, and they themselves be hurled into the water at the extreme peril of their lives. Washington put out his pole to stop the raft, till the fields of ice should float by; but the raft was urged with so much violence upon his pole, that he himself, holding to it, was thrown into the river where it was 10 feet deep. He saved his life by clinging to a log; but unable to force the raft to either shore, they were compelled to leave it, and passed the night on an island in the middle of the river. So intense was the cold, that the hands and feet of Captain Gist, an experienced woodsman, were frozen. Happily the river froze wholly over during the night, and they were enabled to cross to the opposite bank in the morning on the ice. To this circumstance they were indebted, no doubt, for their escape from the tomahawk of the pursuing savages.

The foregoing adventure has been given in some detail from Washington's official report, which was sent by Governor Dinwiddie to London, and there published. It throws light on traits of his character, which in after life have been somewhat overlooked, in consequence of the habitual circumspection and prudence which were forced upon him by circumstances during his revolutionary career. This dangerous errand was undertaken by Washington through an unsettled wilderness infested by savages, at a season of the year when the huntsman in his log-cabin shrinks from the storm; and this not by a penniless adventurer, taking desperate risks for promotion and bread, but by a young man allied by blood and connected by friendship with the most influential families in the colony, possessed of property in his own right, with large presumptive expectations. In this, his first official service, undertaken under these circumstances, he displayed the courage, the presence of mind, the fortitude, the endurance, the humanity (in a small scale indeed, but at the risk of his life in preserving that of a treacherous savage), which throughout his career never failed to mark his conduct.

Although war was not formally declared between France and England till May 1756, hostilities broke out the following year (1754) along the frontier of the Anglo-American colonies. Preparations, of which the promise was greater than the reality, were made by the provincial assemblies and governors. The Ohio Company commenced a fort at the confluence of the Monongahela and the Alleghany, and a regiment, feeble in numbers, "self-willed and ungovernable," of which Washington was second in command, was sent to their support. The movements of the French were more prompt and formidable; a large force of Europeans and savages in their interest came down from Venango; the servants of the Ohio Land Company were driven from the work which they had commenced at the junction of the rivers; and Fort Duquesne was erected on the spot. This was the first blow struck in the great Seven Years' War, and it is a memorable incident in the life of Washington, then but twenty-two years of age, and accidentally in command of a trifling force in the unsettled region beyond the Alleghanies, that it devolved on him to repel it. He immediately sent despatches to the neighbouring governors requesting aid, but, without waiting for the greatly needed reinforcements, pushed on through the wilderness to the defence of the frontier. Receiving intelligence from the friendly Indians that a party of the enemy was lurking in the woods, Washington, ignorant of their strength, and in order to be prepared for an emergency, threw up a slight work at a place called the Great Meadows, and which he described "as a charming field for an encounter." Having here received more particular information from Captain Gist and the friendly Indians of the whereabout of the enemy, he came upon them by surprise, after a forced march by night, with a company of picked men. In the conflict that ensued, ten of the French, including their leader, Jumonville, were killed, and twenty-one made prisoners.

By the death of Colonel Fry at Will's Creek, on the way to join the little army, Washington became its commander-in-chief. Reinforcements were put in motion, but none arrived, with the exception of an independent company from South Carolina, about a hundred strong, who reached the Great Meadows, under Captain Mackay. The main body of the French at Fort Duquesne, with their Indian allies, were believed greatly to outnumber the Anglo-Americans. Aware that as soon as the fate of Jumonville should become known to the French commandant, a formidable force would be sent against him, Washington strengthened his position at the Great Meadows, by an entrenchment and palisade, and called the work "Fort Necessity." Burdened by the Indians, who crowded his camp with their families, and harassed by the claims of precedence on the part of Captain Mackay, he made an advance movement, by a very laborious march, with a large portion of his force to the Monongahela. So difficult was the country for artillery, that ten days were required for a distance of thirteen miles. Arrived at Gist's settlement, he received intelligence from deserters and Indians that Fort Duquesne had been strongly reinforced by troops from Canada, and savages under the French influence. Apprehending an attack he ordered up Captain Mackay, who had been left with the reserve at the Great Meadows, to his support, who promptly obeyed the summons. It was decided, however, by a council of war, that it would be unsafe to risk a battle in the open field, and a retreat to Fort Necessity was determined on. This was effected with difficulty in two days; and as the troops, from fatigue and want of provisions, were unable to pursue the march, it was concluded to make a stand, and await the enemy within their entrenchments. The fort was soon invested by the French and Indians, who were able on one point to command the interior of the work. A severe action commenced on the 3d of July, which was prolonged till late in the evening. A capitulation was then proposed by the French commander, Capture of and accepted by Washington. It was drawn up in a drenching rain at night, after a hard fought day, in the French language, and signed by Washington, not knowing that, through the fraud or ignorance of his interpreter, Van Braam, the death of Jumonville was called in the act of capitulation, an "assassination;" a circumstance which was made a futile subject of reproach to Washington in France at the time, and has been occasionally revived since. The following day, the 4th of July, he led out his little force from the stockade, and conducted them in safety through ill-restrained bands of savages to Fort Cumberland.

The following year serious efforts were made, both by France and England, to strengthen themselves on the banks of the Ohio. Two regiments were sent from England, under the brave but self-sufficient, obstinate, and unfortunate Braddock. New orders came with them relative to precedence, which disgusted the provincial officers. Washington threw up his commission, but strongly attached to the profession of arms, he gladly accepted an invitation from General Braddock to join his military family as a volunteer. Great delays attended the collecting of supplies and forwarding of troops. Washington fell dangerously ill, and was of necessity left behind, determined however to rejoin the army at the first moment of convalescence. The general, inexperienced in the warfare of the wilderness, neglected the measures necessary to conciliate the Indians, and the precautions requisite to prevent surprise. Washington arrived at camp but the day before the catastrophe. He was accustomed in after life to describe the appearance of the army, as they crossed the Monongahela on the 9th of July, and moved forward in confident expectation of reducing Fort Duquesne the following day, as the most magnificent spectacle he had ever beheld. A few hours only passed before they fell into an ambuscade; the forest rang with the war-whoop of the Indians; the advance under Colonel Gage (afterwards the last royal governor of Massachusetts) was driven back on the main body, which was thereby thrown into confusion; officers and men dropped on every side under the murderous fire of the enemy, concealed in the woody ravines right and left; and at length the whole force, panic-struck and disorganized, after a terrific and deadly struggle of three hours, in which the loss of the enemy was trifling, suffered a total defeat. They ran before the French and Indians, says Washington, "like sheep before dogs." Of 1460 in Braddock's army, officers and privates, 456 were killed outright, and 421 were wounded; a greater proportion of killed and wounded than is reported in any of the celebrated actions of the present day. The General himself was mortally wounded, and brought off with difficulty from the field.

Washington acted as the general's aid throughout the engagement, and after the other aids, Orme and Morris, were disabled, the perilous duty devolved exclusively on him. It was performed by him, according to his brother- officer Orme, who witnessed his conduct, "with the greatest courage and resolution." "By the all-powerful dispensations of Providence," he writes to his brother, "I have been protected beyond all human probability or expectation, for I had four bullets through my coat and two horses shot under me, yet I escaped unhurt, though death was levelling my companions on every side." His friend and physician, Dr Craik said, "I expected every moment to see him fall."

A very curious anecdote has also been preserved on the authority of Dr Craik, who relates that when Washington, fifteen years later, made a journey to the great Kenhawa, he was approached by the chief of a band of Indians, who said that he had come a long distance to see Washington, at whom he had aimed his rifle many times in the battle of the Monongahela, but without effect. A seal of Washington, with his initials, probably shot away from his person, was found after a lapse of eighty years on the field of battle, and is now in the possession of a member of the family.

So prevalent was the impression of his almost miraculous escape from the perils of this disastrous day, that President Davis of New Jersey College, but at that time a clergyman in Virginia, in a sermon preached in the month of August following, before a company of volunteers, after commending the patriotic ardour which had been manifested in the colony, added, "as a remarkable instance of this, I may point out to the public that heroic youth, Colonel Washington, whom I cannot but hope Providence has hitherto preserved in so signal a manner for some important service to his country."

There is certainly something extraordinary in the brilliant reputation with which Washington, a young officer holding no higher position in the army than that of a volunteer aid to its unfortunate chief, returned from this disastrous campaign. His preservation, as we have just seen, was ascribed to nothing less than providential interposition. The exposed state of the frontier thrown open to the enemy required immediate measures of protection. A provincial force of 2000 men was immediately voted by the Assembly, and though the governor was supposed to favour another candidate, the command was given by him to Washington. He received this appointment in four weeks after his return from the battle of Monongahela. He immediately established his head-quarters at Winchester, then one of the most advanced settlements, and from that point superintended the operations of the Virginia frontier for the rest of the war. These, with the exception to be presently mentioned, were of a defensive character. No important expeditions were attempted; no great battles fought; but a line of feeble settlements, extending for several hundred miles, was to be protected from roving bands of savages, countenanced by the French commandants, emboldened by the events of 1755, and stimulated to plunder and bloodshed by outcasts from the colonies.

The task of the youthful commander-in-chief, responsible for the peace of the frontier, but with very inadequate means at his command, was arduous in the extreme. A reluctant and undisciplined militia was to be retained in the ranks by personal influence; without pay, without clothes, and very imperfectly armed. Contradictory and impracticable orders were continually received from Governor Dinwiddie, who was wholly unskilled in military matters, but obstinately insisted on directing everything. Greedy and dishonest contractors played their ancient game of fraud. The arrogant pretensions of a subaltern officer, bearing a royal commission, kept Fort Cumberland in an unsettled state, and compelled Colonel Washington in mid winter to go to Boston for a solution of the difficulty by Governor Shirley, then the commander-in-chief of the Royal forces on the continent. Wholesale desertions on the approach of danger weakened his little force; and the intrigues of rivals aspiring to his place, and seeking to gain it by traducing his character, outraged his feelings. In his official correspondence for 1756 and 1757, all these sources of embarrassment and annoyance are set forth, and we are struck with the similarity of the state of things then existing with that to which we shall presently have occasion to advert in the Revolutionary War. While nothing can be conceived more harassing, it must be admitted that it formed the best imaginable school of preparation for the more momentous scenes in which he was hereafter to act a leading part. It was not, however, unattended with personal danger. The fatigues and anxieties which he underwent again brought on a severe illness, with which he suffered for four months at the close of 1757 and the beginning of 1758.

The campaign of 1758 was devoted to an important military expedition from Pennsylvania and Virginia against Fort Duquesne, in which Washington, as commander of the Virginia contingent, took a leading part. The whole force destined for the expedition was placed under the command of General Forbes, and in consequence of his illness at Philadelphia, the loss of time in opening a new road into the wilderness (contrary to the advice of Washington), and the usual tardiness of military operations in colonies remote from the seat of power, it was late in the autumn before the army took the field. Washington, at his earnest solicitation, led the advance, to scour the forest and open the roads. It was, however, far in November before they reached the neighbourhood of Fort Duquesne, and the commander, after a serious check, was on the point of abandoning the enterprise for that year. The report brought by deserters of the weakness of the garrison determined him at the last moment to make the advance, and on the 25th of November 1758, he arrived at the fort, and found that it had been abandoned and burned by the enemy. The English and provincials erected a temporary work on the spot, to which, in honour of the great minister who had infused his spirit into the conduct of the war, they gave the name of Fort Pitt, still preserved in that of Pittsburg. The power of France was thus finally subverted on the Ohio, and the Anglo-Saxon race for ever established on "the beautiful river." The fall of Quebec the following year, and the provisions of the treaty of 1763, extinguished the French dominion in North America.

The health of Washington, as we have seen, had suffered severely in the progress of the war. He had made repeated attempts to obtain a commission in the Royal army; but although possessing in the highest degree, as a military man, the confidence of Governor Dinwiddie, General Braddock, and his successors, those attempts were unsuccessful. Commissions were monopolized by younger sons and the favourites of power at home. Thus was the wish of Washington to enter the Royal service baffled a second time. By what narrow chances the fate of empires is determined! Having no prospect of advancement in his favourite profession, and having, in the fall of Fort Duquesne, seen the great object of the contest obtained, as far as Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania were concerned, he determined to retire from public life, and devote himself to the care of his property, which had suffered by neglect, and the duties of a private citizen.

Having in the course of the preceding year paid his marriage addresses successfully to Mrs Martha Custis, the widow of Colonel John Custis of Virginia, he was married to that lady on the 6th January 1759. There is a constant tradition that three years before he had been a suitor to Mary Philipse, the sister-in-law of Colonel Beverley Robinson of New York, whose guest he was on his journey to and from the eastern colonies in 1756. On this occasion, Colonel Morris, his associate in arms at Braddock's defeat, and his companion in the excursion to the east, having lingered in New York after the return of Washington to the army, proved a successful rival and became the husband of the lady. She was the heiress of a large landed property in the State of New York, and her family adhered to the Royal side in the Revolution. This lady is said to have died in England at the age of ninety-four, having survived Washington about twenty-five years. One cannot but bestow a passing thought on the question, What might have been the effect on the march of events, if Washington, at the age of twenty-four, and before the controversies between the mother country and the colonies had commenced, had formed a matrimonial alliance with a family of wealth and influence in New York, which adhered to the Royal cause, and left America, as loyalists, when the war broke out? It is a somewhat curious fact, that Washington's headquarters during a part of the campaign of 1776 were established in the stately mansion of the Morises on Harlem River. (Lossing's *Mount Vernon* and its Associations, p. 46.)

His connection with Mrs Washington was in all respects fortunate. She was the mother of two children by her former marriage; she brought him a large accession of fortune for those days, and by her solid virtues, cheerful disposition, and simple and amiable manners, relieved him from the cares of domestic life, strengthened the attachment of his friends, and adorned the high public stations to which he was successively called. He remained childless, but he adopted her children as his own, and superintended their education and managed their fortunes with parental care. The daughter died in early life; the son became an aid to Washington during the Revolutionary War, but died in 1781, leaving three daughters and a son. The youngest daughter, who afterwards married Lawrence Lewis, Esq., and the son, George W. Parke Custis, who died at Arlington in Virginia, in the year 1857, were adopted by Washington, and brought up at Mount Vernon.

Washington, though absent with the army, had been elected to the Virginia House of Burgesses in 1757. After his retirement from the service, he took his seat, and continued a member of that body under repeated re-elections, till the commencement of the Revolutionary War. He was remarkably diligent and punctual in the performance of his duties as a legislator and a representative, but seldom took part in debate properly so called, and never made a long speech. In this respect he resembles two others of the foremost leaders of the American Revolution, Franklin and Jefferson, men who, in general intellectual culture and political training, had the advantage of Washington, but who, like him, had never formed themselves to the habit of debate. His recommendation to a nephew, on being chosen a member of the House of Burgesses, may be taken as the indication of his own rule of conduct,—“If you have a mind to command the attention of the house, the only advice I will offer is, to speak seldom but on important subjects, except such as particularly relate to your constituents; and in the former case make yourself perfectly master of the subject. Never exceed a decent warmth, and submit your sentiments with diffidence. A dictatorial style, though it may carry conviction, is always accompanied with disgust.”

Such was the habit of Washington himself; it was the only course consistent with his natural disposition and peculiar balance of mental qualities. There is no doubt that in this, as in some other respects, the possession of more brilliant qualities would have marred the symmetry of his character and lessened his influence. Shining powers of debate, for instance, had he possessed them, would, by the necessity of that talent, have fixed him as a partisan, and consequently have impaired that influence through which he controlled all parties. As it was, no one possessed greater ascendancy in all deliberative bodies of which he was a member. On the return to Virginia of the delegates to the first continental Congress at Philadelphia, Patrick Henry, himself generally regarded as the first of American orators, was asked who was the greatest man in the assembly. His reply was, “If you speak of eloquence, Mr Rutledge of South Carolina is by far the greatest orator; but if you speak of solid information and sound judgment, Colonel Washington is unquestionably the greatest man on the floor.”

Shortly after his marriage, Washington established his permanent home at Mount Vernon, and gave himself up to the usual routine of plantation life, as pursued in those days. Tobacco was then the great staple product of this part of Virginia, and Washington was in the habit of shipping his crops directly to London, to Liverpool, and to Bristol. All supplies of manufactures for clothing, implements of husbandry, and matters of taste and luxury, were derived by direct importation from England, usually twice a year. All the business connected with the cultivation of his estates, and the exportation of his crops on the one hand, and the orders for his return supplies on the other, were superintended by him in person. His letters were written and copied, and his account-books kept by himself in mercantile order, and with extreme neatness and precision. In the course of these transactions, the minutest details of domestic economy necessarily received his attention, down to the most trifling article of clothing for the children. While he gave his hours of labour to these humble occupations, he found a much cherished relaxation in the sports of the field. He was a bold rider, and followed the fox-hounds, sometimes two or three times a week, with untiring spirit. It is related that, at the battle of Princeton (where, as he told the painter Trumbull, he was in greater danger than ever before in the course of his life, being at one time between the fire of both armies), perceiving a regiment of the enemy in full retreat down the hill, he leaped his favourite roan hunter over a stone-wall which crowned the summit, gave the view halloo, and said to his aids, “A perfect fox-chase!”

In the year 1770 Washington revisited the scenes of his youthful adventure and service. Accompanied by Dr Craik, who shared with him the hazards of Braddock’s field, and a party of friends and servants, he went on horseback to Pittsburgh, then in its infancy, and descended the Ohio River from that place to the mouth of the Great Kenhawa in Virginia. A net of railroads now covers the region through which they rode, and hundreds of steamers ply the waters of the Ohio. Washington and his party floated down the river in an open boat, exposed to the savages on the right bank, on which, at that time, there were no white settlements, and obliged to land at night and encamp in the woods. Having reached the Kenhawa, they ascended that stream, and made valuable selections of fertile lands. It was on this occasion that the interview with the Indian chief took place, which has been already described.

The contest of legislation had been for some years in progress, which precluded the great scene of Washington’s very services and fame, the American Revolution. With a view to American revenue, the Stamp Act was passed. It was repealed, but with the assertion of a right to tax America; and this theory carried out in practice by the enactment of the duties on tea, glass, and painters’ colours, of which the first-named was persistently retained when the others were rescinded, brought on the war. These ill-advised measures, which we have grouped in a sentence, were spread over eight years of irritation, disaffection, and rising revolt. Washington, by nature the most loyal of men to order and law, whose rule of social life was obedience to rightful authority, was from the first firmly on the American side; not courting, not contemplating even till the eve of the explosion, a forcible resistance to the mother country, but not recoiling from it, when forced upon the colonies as the inevitable result of their principles. An impression has existed in some quarters, on the other side of the Atlantic, that Washington originally leaned to the Royal side in the great conflict of opinion and feeling that preceded the Revolutionary War. His correspondence, not less than his public course as a member of the House of Burgesses, shows this impression to be utterly groundless. It may have had its origin in the fact, that, not being a public speaker or writer, he was less frequently and prominently brought before the public as an open champion of the cause, than some of the other leaders of the Revolution. The spurious letters bearing his name, and which were industriously published in a volume at London during the war, in order to shake the faith of his countrymen in his integrity, contributed no doubt to strengthen this impression. It is matter of surprise that the title of a fabrication of this kind, which one is pleased to think would, at this time of day, be deemed unworthy a place among the instruments of honourable warfare, should be admitted as a genuine publication into a respectable literary manual.

Washington was the near neighbour and confidential friend of George Mason, who drew the plan of the association not to import British manufactures in 1774, and in the absence of Mason from the House of Burgesses, and as chairman of the meeting at which the resolves were adopted, he presented it to the Assembly. There is not the slightest trace of dissent on his part from any of the measures of the popular leaders, except that he deemed it wrong to forbid the export of American produce to England, as this was the only fund out of which the colonies were able to pay their debts to the British manufacturer. His name is found in conjunction with those of the most constant patriots, in the anxious years that preceded the appeal to arms; and when the House of Burgesses was dissolved by the royal governor in the summer of 1774. Washington was a member of the convention chosen to take its place, and was, with five associates, elected delegate to the first continental Congress, which met in Philadelphia in the autumn of that year. Of his position in that assembly, the estimate formed by Patrick Henry, one of the most fervid of patriots, has already been given. A letter written by him from Philadelphia to one of his former companions in arms—Captain Mackenzie, then stationed at Boston—exhibits the state of Washington's mind at this period, as of that of the class of men whom he represented. The following extract will suffice:—"I think I can announce it as a fact, that it is not the wish nor the interest of the government of Massachusetts, or any other government upon this continent, separately or collectively, to set up for independence; but this you may rely upon, that none of them will ever submit to the loss of those valuable rights and privileges which are essential to the inhabitants of every free state; and without which life, liberty, and property, are rendered totally insecure." The object of holding the congress, as expressed in the resolution of the convention of delegates in Virginia, by which Washington and his associates were elected, was declared to be, "to consider the most proper and effectual manner of so operating upon the commercial connection of the colonies with the mother country, as to procure redress for the much injured province of Massachusetts Bay, to secure British America from the ravage and ruin of arbitrary taxes, and speedily to procure the return of that harmony and union so beneficial to the whole empire, and so ardently desired by all British America."

The Congress met at Philadelphia on the 5th of September. Washington's letter to Captain Mackenzie was written on the 9th of October, and the petition to the King, which closes the journal of the session, terminates with the following loyal aspirations: "That your majesty may enjoy every felicity, through a long and glorious reign, over loyal and happy subjects; and that your descendants may inherit your prosperity and your dominions, till time shall be no more, is and always will be our sincere and fervent prayer!"

Before we enter upon a brief survey of the career of Washington, as the great military leader of the American Revolution, we cannot but reflect upon the adaptation of the first portion of his life as a school of preparation for the sequel. His great vocation may be considered as commencing with the Revolutionary War. He was the providentially appointed leader of that great contest, whose results, direct and remote, are of equal moment to the Old World and the New. We can scarcely imagine a course of life better fitted to train him for his arduous work than that which he led from the age of sixteen, when he entered the wilderness as a surveyor of unsettled lands, to his retirement from the army eleven years afterwards. In this period he had received a thorough athletic training, and had studied the art of war, not on the black board at military schools, but in actual service, and that of the most perilous and trying kind, under rigid disciplinarians of the best school of that day; for Braddock had been selected for the command, as an experienced and thoroughly accomplished officer.

But military command was but one part of the career which awaited Washington. Almost all the duties of government centred in his hands, under the inefficient administration of the old Congress. A merely military education would have furnished inadequate preparation for the duties to be performed by him. It was accordingly a most auspicious circumstance that from the year 1759 to the Revolution, he passed fifteen years as a member of the House of Burgesses, where he acquired a familiar knowledge of civil affairs and of politics. The ordinary legislation of a leading colonial government, like that of Virginia, was no mean school of political experience; and the state of affairs at the time was such as to expand and elevate the minds of men. Everything was inspired with an unconsciously developed, but not the less stirring revolutionary energy, and many of his associates were men of large views and strenuous character.

While his public duties, civil and military, prepared him, in this way, for the positions he was to fill in war and in peace, the fifteen years which he passed in the personal management of a large landed estate, and the care of an ample fortune, furnished abundant occasion for the formation of the economical side of his character, and gave a thoroughness to his administrative habits which has not been witnessed in the career of many very eminent public men in Europe or America. It will not be easy to find another instance of a great military and political leader, who, to the same degree, has been equal to the formation and execution of the boldest plans, and to the control of the most perplexed combinations of affairs, and yet not above the most ordinary details of business, nor negligent of minute economics. But it was precisely this union of seemingly inconsistent qualities of mind and character which was most needed from the time he took command of the Revolutionary army to the close of his presidential service.

To do full justice to the character of Washington, as the great leader of the American Revolution, would require a detailed history of the war by which the independence of the United States was established. A very brief sketch of those events in which he was directly concerned is all that can be attempted. It may first be observed, that it would be unjust to Washington to place his military reputation on ordinary strategical grounds. He had an army to call into being, as well as to conduct; the entire materiel of war to create; supplies to raise, without credit or the power of taxation, from a small and scattered population, subject to separate state governments, and not yet organized under one efficient central authority. At no period of the war was he supported by a strong civil power, for Congress acted only by recommendations addressed to the States; he was never furnished with a well-supplied military chest (there was a moment in the disastrous campaign of 1776, when he wrote to Mr Morris at Philadelphia, that L100 would be of great service to him); and he never was at the head of what, at the present day, would be called an efficient force, unless we except the allied American and French army at Yorktown, and there be achieved a brilliant success. It would of course be unreasonable, under these circumstances, to compare his military operations with those of the great captains of Europe, who, in the service of rich and powerful governments, and at the head of immense bodies of veteran troops, with the aid of experienced subalterns in every rank of the army, and with a boundless supply of all the materiel of war, gain the victories which fill the pages of history, and earn for themselves immortal fame.

The actual commencement of hostilities in the war of the American Revolution might be said to be accidental. A series of ill-judged and oppressive measures, on the part of the British Parliament, aimed principally at the province of Massachusetts Bay (as it was then called), had produced a great degree of irritation there, in which the other colonies cordially sympathized. Military preparations had been going on for a year or two in Massachusetts, and small stores of powder and arms had been collected. A few field-pieces had been procured at Concord, a village lying about 18 miles west of Boston; and this fact coming to the knowledge of General Gage, the royal governor and commander-in-chief in Boston, he despatched a considerable force into the country, on the night of the 18th of April 1775, with the twofold object of destroying the provincial stores, and, as was supposed, of arresting Hancock and Adams, who had been proscribed by name, and who were then at Lexington, a village situated on the road to Concord. This rash movement brought on a collision at Lexington and Concord on the morning of the 19th, between the Royal force and the militia of those places and others on the line of march and in the vicinity. Blood was shed on both sides; the alarm spread with great rapidity through the neighbouring towns; and the Royal force was saved from annihilation only by a disorderly and tumultuous retreat to Boston. Here they were immediately blockaded by 15,000 or 20,000 men of the militia of Massachusetts and the other New England colonies, who, as the news of the commencement of hostilities spread through the country, had poured in from every side. As Massachusetts was the seat of the war, the control of this force, and the conduct of the struggle, thus improvised, devolved by the necessity of the case, and by tacit understanding, upon the provincial Congress (as it was called) of that colony; an extra constitutional body called into existence by the exigency of the times, and assimilated as nearly as possible to the assembly organized under the colonial charter. Major-General Ward of Massachusetts thus became, by acquiescence, the commander-in-chief of the forces hastily assembled around Boston. The second session of the continental Congress commenced at Philadelphia, about three weeks after the events at Lexington and Concord, and measures were immediately adopted for recognizing the forces already concentrated round Boston as a continental army, and for raising additional troops in the other States.

Early in June 1775 the question of an appointment of a Chosen commander-in-chief came up. Colonel Washington, as commandant has been seen, was one of the delegates from Virginia to the Continental Congress. His distinguished services in the Seven Years' War were still freshly remembered; and he had acquired in the intervening period, in the Virginia Assembly, a substantial reputation for prudence, energy, and practical wisdom. Combined with this reputation, his large fortune, his attractive and imposing personal appearance and manners, and general weight of character, gave him influence; and motives of patriotic expediency inclined the delegates from Massachusetts, and especially their ardent and eloquent leader, John Adams, afterwards the second President of the United States, to waive whatever claim that colony might be supposed to possess, and to give their support to the accomplished Virginia colonel as commander-in-chief of the continental armies. Washington was unanimously elected, and in accepting the appointment, which he did in person in his place in Congress, he modestly avowed his "consciousness that his abilities and military experience might not be equal to the extensive and important trust," and added, "Lest some unlucky event should happen unfavourable to my reputation, I beg it may be remembered by every gentleman in the room, that I this day declare, with the utmost sincerity, that I do not think myself equal to the command I am honoured with." The compensation of the commander-in-chief having, before the election, been fixed at five hundred dollars per month, he declined to accept any salary, but stated that he should keep an exact account of his expenses, not doubting that these would be reimbursed to him by Congress. This account is in existence, wholly made out in Washington's handwriting. It has been lithographed in fac-simile, and is a document of great curiosity and interest. Washington's commission passed Congress on the 17th of June 1775, the day on which the memorable battle of Bunker Hill was fought. The news of that battle reached him on his way to join the army before Boston, and on learning that the militia had sustained themselves gallantly in a conflict with regular troops, he declared that the cause of America was safe.

He arrived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on the 2d of July, and on the following day presented himself at the head of the army. His head-quarters remained at Cambridge, till the evacuation of Boston by the Royal forces on the 17th of March 1776. The position of affairs was one of vast responsibility and peril. The country at large was highly excited, and expected that a bold stroke would be struck and decisive successes obtained. But the army was without organisation and discipline; the troops unused to obey; the officers for the most part unaccustomed, some of them incompetent, to command. A few of them only had had a limited experience in the Seven Years' War. Most of the men had rushed to the field on the first alarm of hostilities, without any enlistment, and when they were enlisted it was only till the end of the year. There was no military chest; scarce anything that could be called a commissariat. The artillery consisted of a few old field-pieces of various sizes, served, with a very few exceptions, by persons wholly untrained in gunnery. There was no siege train, and an almost total want of every description of ordnance stores. Barrels of sand represented as powder were from time to time brought into the camp, to prevent the American army itself from being aware of its deficiency in Washington's letters disclose extreme impatience under the inaction to which he was condemned; but the gravest difficulties attended the expulsion of the Royal forces from Boston. It could only be effected by the bombardment and assault of that place, an attempt which must in any event have been destructive to the large non-combatant population, that had been unable to remove into the country, and which would have been of doubtful success for the want of a siege train, and with troops wholly unused to such an undertaking. Having in the course of the year received some captured ordnance from Canada, and a supply of ammunition taken by privateers at sea, Washington was strongly disposed to assault the town as soon as the freezing of the bay on the western side of the peninsula would allow the troops to pass on the ice. The winter, however, remained open longer than usual, and a council of war dissuaded this attempt. He then determined to occupy Dorchester Heights (an eminence at the extremity of Dorchester "Neck," as it was called, separated from Boston by a narrow arm of the harbour), and Dorchester Heights, which commanded Nook's Hill and the town itself. In this way, the Royal forces would be compelled to take the risk of a general action, for the purpose of dislodging the Americans, or else to evacuate the town. The requisite preparations having been made with secrecy, energy, and dispatch, the heights were covered with breastworks on the night of the 4th of March 1776, as "by enchantment;" a partial movement undertaken by the Royal army to dislodge the Americans was frustrated by stress of weather, and on the 17th of March, in virtue of an agreement to that effect with the municipal government, the town and harbour of Boston were evacuated by the British army and navy without firing a gun. Thus, without a battle and without the destruction of a building in Boston, the first year of the war was brought to a successful and an auspicious close.

The British army, under General Howe, after evacuating Boston, sailed for Halifax; but in the course of the summer a general concentration of the Royal forces took place in the vicinity of New York, Staten Island being the headquarters. There the landing of the British was effected on the same day on which the independence of the United States was declared at Philadelphia. General Howe was reinforced at Staten Island by the troops under Clinton and Cornwallis, who had been despatched to the South, and who had been repulsed in an attack upon Sullivan's Island, which was defended with signal valour and success by General Moultrie. A naval armament, with a large reinforcement of German mercenaries, also arrived at New York, under Lord Howe, the brother of the General, who was clothed with full powers as a commissioner, and who brought unavailing overtures for pacification. These he addressed at first to "George Washington, Esq.;" afterwards, with melancholy pertinacity but equal want of success, enlarging the superscription with a thrice repeated et cetera. No man could care less than Washington for the empty parade of titles, but he did not, of course, choose to acquiesce in the intentional refusal to recognise him in the only capacity in which Lord Howe was warranted to communicate with him at all.

By the several accessions alluded to, the British army was swelled to between twenty-five and thirty thousand well appointed troops. The American army in the aggregate was numerically of almost equal size, but reduced, by sickness, detachment, and absence on leave, to about eleven thousand men fit for duty, and those not to be compared with efficient veteran soldiers. It was necessary that this small army should be widely distributed. A considerable force was stationed at Brooklyn on Long Island, and the residue at various posts and forts on New York Island and the North and East Rivers. The head-quarters were in the city of New York. General Greene commanded on Long Island, but this able officer falling ill, his place was taken by General Sullivan. The British began to land detachments of troops on Long Island on the 22d of August, but it remained uncertain for some days where he would strike the main blow. On the 25th, General Putnam was ordered with a strong reinforcement to Brooklyn, where the following day was spent by the Commander-in-chief in the necessary arrangements for the expected battle. On the 27th, a general action was fought, with greatly superior forces on the part of the British. The Americans were defeated with heavy loss, Generals Sullivan and Lord Stirling being among the prisoners. General Howe encamped for the night in front of the position of the Americans, expecting, no doubt, to follow up his success the next day by their total rout. He probably overrated their strength; the day was rainy, and no forward movement was made by the British army on the 28th. In the course of that day an activity prevailed on Staten Island, which was thought to threaten an attempt on the city; and during the night, under cover of a dense fog, a masterly retreat, conducted by General Washington in person, was commenced, and before morning the entire American force on Long Island was brought off in safety. The battle of Long Island was one of the most disastrous events of the war; and the undiscovered retreat of the troops, within hearing of the hostile sentries, one of its most brilliant achievements. On these two eventful days, Washington was for nearly forty-eight hours in the saddle, during which he did not close his eyes.

The greatly superior numbers of the Royal army, and the control of the waters on which New York stands, compelled the retreat of the Americans successively from the city and island of New York; and at the close of October, Washington occupied an intrenched camp at White Plains, a strong position about midway between the Hudson and East River. Here a pretty severe but partial action took place, which resulted favourably to the British. A general engagement seemed in prospect, but Sir William Howe (lately decorated with the order of the Bath) thought the position of Washington, who had withdrawn to higher grounds too strong to be forced, and concentrated his own troops at Harlem and on the Hudson, with the evident design of crossing into New Jersey and marching on Philadelphia. To anticipate this movement, Washington, after despatching Heath with a detachment to hold the Highlands, and leaving Lee in command near White Plains, crossed into New Jersey with the troops belonging to the States west of the Hudson. Lee, in whose military capacity and fidelity to the American cause too much confidence was reposed, was directed to remain at White Plains, or to follow the Commander-in-chief as the exigencies of the service might require.

Fort Washington, a strong post on the Hudson, commanded by Colonel Magaw, was immediately invested by the British, and the garrison, amounting to over three thousand men, capitulated. This was another most disastrous blow to the American cause. Lord Cornwallis was immediately despatched into New Jersey with six thousand men; and to prevent Sir William Howe from marching on Phila- Philadelphia with his entire army, Washington was compelled to retreat from river to river through that state. His numbers were much reduced by the loss of the garrison at Fort Washington, by the detachment of Heath to the Highlands, and the unpardonable tardiness of Lee in obeying the repeated orders of the Commander-in-chief to join the main body of the army. The further pernicious effects of his insubordination were prevented, after his arrival at Morriston in New Jersey, by his surprise and capture in the night, by a party of the enemy, who had received a hint of his whereabouts. This event, discreditable to himself, was hardly to be regretted by Washington, whom he was secretly plotting to undermine, and whom he omitted no opportunity to disparage. The Commander-in-chief crossed the Delaware river with barely four thousand troops. He was soon joined by other detachments of the army, but was in no condition to defend Philadelphia, if Sir William Howe, at the head of a large and well appointed army, should, as soon as the Delaware was frozen, cross the ice, and attempt the city by assault.

The state and prospects of the American army and cause were at this time more gloomy than at any other period of the war. The army, feeble and poorly provided at best, was on the point of dissolution, by the expiration of its term of enlistment. The year 1776 and the campaign were closing amidst universal despondency. Washington almost alone remained unshaken, and on one occasion declared that if the enemy succeeded in obtaining possession of the whole of the Atlantic States, he would retreat behind the Alleghanies, and bid them defiance there. But it was precisely at this juncture that he struck the boldest stroke of the war, and, in less than two weeks, not only changed the entire face of affairs, and retrieved the fortunes of the campaign, but established his own reputation as a consummate chieftain.

A detachment of the Royal army, consisting principally of the Hessian mercenaries, but with a squadron of British dragoons, had been pushed to the Delaware river, and occupied Trenton. Smaller bodies of Royal troops were stationed at other points down the river; a still larger force was posted at Brunswick. Washington conceived the plan of crossing the Delaware and surprising the Hessians at Trenton, and the other corps at Burlington and Bordentown. This was to be effected by dividing his own small force into three parties, which should pass the river above and below Trenton, headed respectively by himself, Cadwalader, and Ewing. On the night of the 25th of December, when the Delaware, a broad and rapid stream, was filled with floating ice, under a driving storm alternately of snow, rain, and sleet, and with the weather so cold that two of his men froze to death by the way, his own part of the movement was successfully accomplished. Trenton was surprised by him about eight o'clock in the morning, and after a brief action, with nominal loss to the Americans, a thousand Hessians were taken prisoners—their commander, Colonel Ralh, being killed. The dragoons escaped down the river, and owing to the impossibility of crossing it, the masses of drift ice having become too fixed for the boats to pass through, the other portions of the plan failed. Washington recrossed the Delaware in safety with his prisoners, who were nearly half as numerous as his own detachment, and after an interval of two or three days, returned with his disposable force to the left bank of the river, to resume the offensive.

Lord Cornwallis, who was on the eve of sailing for England, considering the campaign as closed, was detained by Sir William Howe, and sent in haste to Trenton, to arrest the progress of Washington. The latter, who had stationed himself behind the Assanpink, knowing the great inferiority of his force, decamped in the night from the bank of that river, and, forcing a march on Princeton, surprized a detachment of the Royal army, which was on the Washington to reinforce Cornwallis at Trenton. A sharp action ensued, in which Washington, as has been stated, informed Colonel Trumbull, who painted a picture of the scene, that he was in greater personal danger than on any other occasion in his life, not excepting Braddock's defeat. The Royal force was defeated with great loss both in killed and prisoners. Many also fell on the American side; among them the gallant and lamented Mercer.

By these bold and successful operations the fortune of the war was completely reversed. All thoughts of moving on Philadelphia were for the present abandoned by Sir William Howe, and he confined himself for the rest of the winter to the positions occupied by his troops at New York, Amboy, and Brunswick. General Washington went into winter quarters at Morristown, and the authority of Congress was restored throughout New Jersey, except in the places in the actual occupation of the British troops. These brilliant results, achieved at the moment of accumulated disaster and almost of despair, revived the confidence of the country, and earned for Washington a brilliant reputation as a strategist in the estimation of Europe.

With the opening of the campaign of 1777, Sir William Howe, at the head of a vastly superior force, in vain endeavored to draw Washington into a general engagement. Burgoyne entered Canada, and the American commander was for some time at a loss what might be Sir William's ulterior plan of operations. It soon appeared that Philadelphia was his object; but not deeming it safe to march through New Jersey with the American army on his flanks and rear, Sir William hastily embarked his troops at Staten Island, and went round by sea to Chesapeake Bay. As soon as the news reached Washington that the Royal fleet was seen at the Capes of Delaware, he moved on Germantown, and thence to Chester.

It was at this time that Lafayette was introduced to the Commander-in-chief; and notwithstanding the caution with which foreigners were necessarily received, he was immediately taken into the confidence of Washington, which he justly retained to the end of his life. Serving as the medium of communication between the two countries, and possessing influence with both, the connection of Lafayette with the American Revolution contributed materially to its successful issue.

Sir William Howe ascended the Chesapeake Bay, and landed his army at the head of Elk. Washington met him on the Brandywine with inferior numbers, and after a wise severe action, in which Lafayette was wounded, the Americans were compelled to retreat. Notwithstanding this reverse, Washington succeeded for eight or ten days, by skilful maneuvering and avoiding a general action, in keeping the Royal army occupied; nor was it till the 22d of September that Sir William Howe was able to enter Philadelphia. A considerable detachment of his forces was stationed at Germantown. Washington, notwithstanding the suffering condition of his army, after a forced night-march of seventeen miles, on the 4th of October attacked the Royal troops at Germantown, and at first with decided success. The fortune of the day, in consequence of untoward circumstances, turned against him; but the fact that he was able so soon to resume the offensive was regarded both at home and abroad as a proof of his unbroken spirit, and was so spoken of by the Count de Vergennes, in his communications with the American Commissioners at Paris.

In the meantime, the success of Stark at Bennington, in Capitulation of the army of Burgoyne at Saratoga, which took place a few days after the affair at Germantown. This capitulation was an all-important event in its influence on the progress of the war; but its immediate effect was unpro- picious to the reputation of the Commander-in-chief, who was compelled, at the close of the year, to place his army, in a state of almost total destitution, in winter quarters at Valley Forge. The brilliant success of General Gates at Saratoga, in contrast with the reverses which had befallen the American army under the immediate command of Washington, encouraged the operations of a cabal against him, which had been formed by certain disaffected officers of the army, and was countenanced by a party in Congress. The design was, by a succession of measures implying a want of confidence, to drive Washington to retire from the service in disgust, and, when this object was effected, to give the command of the army to General Gates, who lent a willing ear to these discreditible intrigues. A foreign officer in the American army of the name of Conway was the most active promoter of the project, which was discovered by the accidental disclosure of a part of his correspondence with Gates. Washington bore himself on this occasion with his usual dignity, and allowed the parties concerned in the army and in Congress to take refuge in explanations, disclaimers, and apologies, by which those who made them gained no credit, and those who accepted them were not deceived.

A part of the machinery of this wretched cabal was the publication in London, and the republication in New York, of the collection of forged letters already mentioned bearing the name of Washington, and intended to prove his insincerity in the cause of the Revolution. Nothing perhaps more plainly illustrates his conscious strength of character than the disdainful silence with which he allowed this miserable fabrication to remain for twenty years without exposure. It was only in the year 1796, and when about to retire from the Presidency, that he filed in the department of state a denial of its authenticity.

The year 1778 was one of great moment. Early in May intelligence was received by Congress (which sat at Yorktown, in Pennsylvania, during the occupation of Philadelphia by Sir William Howe) that the American Commissioners in Paris had negotiated treaties of alliance and commerce with France. It would be easy to prove, from the diplomatic correspondence of the day, that whatever credit is due to the skill with which the negotiations at Paris were conducted by Franklin, the confidence reposed by the French government in the character of Washington was a very great inducement for hazarding a step which involved as its first consequence a war with Great Britain.

Sir William Howe had gained nothing by the campaign of 1777, though it had resulted in the temporary possession of Philadelphia. The occupation of that city was barren of results; the Ministry were dissatisfied with his conduct of the war, and he resigned his command. Sir Henry Clinton was appointed in his place; and an expedition against the French possessions in the West Indies being determined upon by the Ministry, a strong force was detached for that purpose from the Royal army in America. The evacuation of Philadelphia, after eight months' occupation, was the first step in the new plan of campaign. Having shipped his cavalry, his German troops, the American loyalists, and his heavy baggage, to go round by sea, Sir Henry marched for New York, with the main body of his troops, across New Jersey. Washington immediately started with his newly organized army in pursuit, and in six days was on the left bank of the Delaware. He was desirous of bringing the Royal army to a general engagement; but the council of war called by him was divided on the expediency of the measure. General Lee, who had been exchanged for the British general Prescott and was now second in command, vehemently opposed it. Washington, however, determined to assume the responsibility of the measure, and having overtaken Sir Henry near Monmouth, sent forward Lafayette, and afterwards Lee, with a strong advance to engage the Royal army. Hastening himself to their support, he encountered Lee in full retreat, at the head of 5000 men. This retrograde movement was arrested by Washington, and the engagement vigorously renewed. The close of the day put an end to the conflict; but Washington passed the night with his army on the field, determined to renew the action the following morning. Sir Henry, however, continued his march undiscovered during the night, and in the morning was out of reach. This engagement, though hardly to be called a victory, was a decided advantage on the part of Washington. In his own words, "from an unfortunate and bad beginning, it turned out a glorious and happy day." His loss was far inferior to that acknowledged by Sir Henry Clinton. The British army pursued its march to New York, and Washington, crossing the Hudson, resumed his former position at White Plains.

The day after the battle of Monmouth, a correspondence took place between Lee and Washington, which resulted in the trial of the former by a court-martial. The charges were disobedience of orders; an unnecessary, disorderly, and shameful retreat; and language disrespectful to the Commander-in-chief. The court spared him the epithet of "shameful," but found him guilty of the rest of the charges, and suspended him from his command for a twelvemonth. He left the army never to return, and died before the close of the war at Philadelphia. Washington's heroic patience was never more signalized displayed than in tolerating, as he did from public motives for three years, the arrogant pretensions of this coarse and empty braggart, whom recent discoveries have proved also to have been a concealed traitor to the American cause. In the course of the summer the Count d'Estaing, with 14 sail of the line, arrived in the American waters, and a combined expedition was undertaken, but without success, against the Royal forces in Newport. Causes of dissatisfaction arose between the American officers in command in Rhode Island and the Count d'Estaing; but the mediating influence of Washington was exerted with consummate skill to avert the consequences. His head-quarters were established at Fredericksburg in New York, about thirty miles from West Point, and the campaign closed without further events of importance.

The year 1779 passed without any general engagement of the main army of Washington. A very extensive expedition against Canada had been projected in Congress, but it was not favoured by the French Government, and was wholly discountenanced by Washington. The summer was employed by the British army in predatory excursions. On the American side a brilliant success was gained by General Wayne at Stony Point. The British fleet followed Count d'Estaing to the West Indies. Sir Henry Clinton sailed with a strong detachment to the southern States, and at the close of the season the army of General Washington went into winter quarters. In the course of the year a visit was made to the Commander-in-chief at his head-quarters by M. Gerard, the French minister, who, in his report of their conference to the Count de Vergennes, uses the following language:—"I have had many conversations with General Washington, some of which have continued for three hours. It is impossible for me briefly to communicate the fund of intelligence which I have derived from him. . . . I will now say only that I have formed as high an opinion of the powers of his mind, his moderation, his patriotism, and his virtues, as I had before conceived from common report of his military talent, and of the incalculable services which he has rendered his country."

Before the end of April 1780, Lafayette returned to the United States from France, with the news that an auxiliary army would be despatched to the assistance of the Americans. On the 10th of July, the first division of the French fleet arrived at Newport, under the Chevalier de Ternay, having on board an army of 5000 men, commanded by the Count de Rochambeau's army, General Washington established his head-quarters at Newburgh, on the Hudson river. Here the American army, in the new certain prospect of peace, justly dissatisfied with the want of all provision to give effect to the resolution of October 1780, by which half-pay for life was promised to the officers, endeavoured, by a new appeal to Congress, to obtain a definitive settlement of their claims by an equitable commutation. Congress was divided on the expediency of the measure; and, if it had been unanimous, possessed no power to give effect to its recommendations. Vague promises were made, but nothing effective done. Great irritation arose on the return of the delegates to head-quarters. A meeting of the officers was called, and an inflammatory appeal to the army was circulated, celebrated as the Newburgh Address, "in which the troops were exhorted not to allow themselves to be disbanded till justice was obtained." It was a moment of great alarm and real danger, but the influence of the Commander-in-chief, official and personal, was promptly called into action, and moderate counsels prevailed.

So tardy were communications across the Atlantic at that time, that official information of the provisional treaty was not received in the United States till the spring of 1783, when it came by the way of Cadiz, and it was first officially proclaimed to the army on the 19th of April 1783, the anniversary of the day on which, eight years before, the war commenced at Lexington and Concord. Furloughs were freely granted to officers and men from that time forward, and on the 18th of October the army was formally released from service. New York was surrendered by Sir Guy Carleton to General Washington on the 25th of November, and on the 4th of December the Commander-in-chief took an affectionate and pathetic leave of his brother-officers. Repairing to Annapolis, to which place Congress had adjourned, General Washington, on the 23rd of December, made his formal resignation, in an address of surpassing beauty and dignity, which we quote at length:

"Mr President.—The great events on which my resignation depended having at length taken place, I have now the honour of offering my sincere congratulations to Congress, and of presenting myself before them to surrender into their hands the trust committed to me, and to claim the indulgence of retiring from the service of my country.

"Happy in the confirmation of our independence and sovereignty, and admiring with the opportunity afforded the United States of becoming a respectable nation, I resign with satisfaction the appointment I accepted with diffidence; a diffidence in my abilities to accomplish so arduous a task, which, however, I am encouraged by a confidence in the rectitude of our cause, the support of the supreme power of the Union, and the patronage of Heaven.

"The successful termination of the war has verified the most sanguine expectations; and my gratitude for the interposition of Providence, and the assistance I have received from my countrymen, increases with every review of the momentous contest.

"While I repeat my obligations to the army in general, I should do injustice to my own feelings not to acknowledge, in this place, the peculiar services and distinguished merits of the gentlemen who have been attached to my person during the war. It was impossible the choice of confidential officers to compose my family should have been more fortunate. Permit me, sir, to recommend in particular those who have continued in the service to the present moment as worthy of the favourable notice and patronage of Congress.

"I consider it an indispensible duty to close this last act of my official life by commending the interests of our dearest country to the protection of Almighty God, and those who have the superintendence of them to his holy keeping.

"Having now finished the work assigned me, I retire from the great theatre of action, and bidding an affectionate farewell to this august body, under whose orders I have so long acted, I here offer my commission, and take my leave of all the employments of public life."

Immediately on resigning his commission, General Washington returned to his home at Mount Vernon, which, during the eight years of the war, he had visited but twice. and then hastily, on his way to and from Yorktown in the year 1781, with the Count de Rochambeau. Greatly attached to his agricultural and horticultural pursuits, he devoted his time to the care of his plantations, garden, and grounds, to the management of what was considered in America at that time a large landed property; to the extensive correspondence which devolved upon him, particularly in connection with the events of the war; and to the reception and entertainment of visitors, who came in great numbers from every part of the United States and from Europe. This last mentioned call upon his time and attention, necessarily very serious, was rendered less oppressive than it would otherwise have been by the excellent housewifery of Mrs Washington, who administered with method and skill the liberal but unostentatious hospitality of Mount Vernon. For two years after the war, he carried on his heavy correspondence without clerical aid, writing and copying his letters with his own hand. To the close of his life he kept his account books with great care, and with his own hand, according to the system of double-entry.

In the autumn of 1784, General Washington crossed the Alleghanies, partly for the purpose of examining the lands which he had formerly taken up in that region; and partly to explore the head waters of the Potomac and James rivers, with reference to their connection with the streams which flow into the Ohio. This was a subject which had, from an early period, been familiar to his thoughts, as one of vast importance to the growth and prosperity of the United States. The result of his inquiries was highly favourable to a system of inland navigation, connecting the Atlantic seaboard with the great rivers of the west, and the region drained by them. On his return he addressed an elaborate, well-reasoned, and persuasive letter on the subject to the governor of Virginia. This communication had a powerful effect on the public mind, and led to the organization of the James River and Potomac Canal Companies. In acknowledgment of his agency in bringing about this result, and still more in gratitude for his revolutionary services, the State of Virginia presented him with 50 shares in the Potomac Canal Company, valued at 10,000 dollars, and 100 shares in the James River Canal Company, valued at 50,000 dollars. In obedience to the principle which governed him through life, this grant was accepted by Washington only on condition that he should be allowed to hold the property in trust for some public object. The shares in the James River Canal were finally appropriated for the endowment of a college at Lexington, in Rockbridge county, Virginia, which in consequence assumed the name of Washington College. The shares in the Potomac Canal Company were appropriated for the endowment of a university at the seat of the Federal government—an appropriation which remains without effect.

Agriculture was at this period of his life, as indeed at almost every period, his main occupation. He looked upon his official duties, civil and military, as an interruption to its pursuit. A resident in the lower part of Virginia, and the owner of extensive landed estates, he was, as a matter of course, a slaveholder. His correspondence shows him to have been a strict and vigilant, but at the same time a just, thoughtful, and humane master, studying his own interest in the cultivation of his farms not more than the comfort and welfare of his dependants. In common with most, if not all, the leading statesmen of Virginia of that day, he was opposed to slavery; but he happily lived at a time when the subject, which now so violently agitates the American Union, had not yet been drawn into the party divisions of the country, and was discussed exclusively in its bearings on the public welfare. As early as 1786, he had formed a resolution never, unless compelled by particular circumstances, "to possess another slave by purchase;" and, in a letter to Mr Morris, written in that year, he says, "there is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do to see a plan adopted for the abolition of slavery. But there is only one proper and effectual mode by which it can be accomplished, and that is by legislative authority; and this, as far as my suffrage will go, will never be wanting." This sentiment is repeated in several parts of his correspondence; but his habitual respect for the law led him to deprecate all interference with legal rights; and it is the object of the letter to Mr Morris, from which the above extract is taken, to remonstrate, with reference to a particular case, against such interference on the part of "individuals and private societies."

The period succeeding the peace of 1783, up to the adoption of the Constitution of the United States in 1788, was more critical, with reference to the permanent prosperity of the country, than that of the war itself, however oppressive and exhausting. A reduction of the States which had declared themselves independent to the former colonial condition, could not have been brought about by continuing the war; but the peace found the United States without a government, unable to command respect abroad, or to start upon a career of prosperous growth and development at home. The country was exhausted by the war; there were no manufactures, very little commerce, and no means, except recommendations of the Congress of the Confederation, which were treated with utter neglect, of raising a revenue for the purpose either of paying the interest of the foreign debt, or to meet any public expenditure for domestic purposes. The manifold evils of this state of things were felt by every intelligent person, but the remedy was all but hopeless. The most obvious resort was to clothe the Federal Congress with the power to raise a revenue by imposts and direct taxation. But there was, on the part of some of the states, a great reluctance to confer larger powers on that body; and few, even of the most farsighted individuals, had conceived the idea of converting the old confederation, which was simply a league of independent states, assembled in Congress, each with equal powers, and acting only by recommendations addressed to their separate state governments, into a federal government possessing authority that should bind the individual citizen. This change, however, was at length effected, and, by a series of agencies, at first in striking disproportion to the importance of the result, and in no small degree under the influence of Washington. Although wholly retired to private life, his name and authority were, at this time, almost the only vital power in the country; the common respect and reverence for him almost the only bond of union.

It will be borne in mind that before the adoption of the present constitution of the United States, the several states were, in all their commercial affairs, in the relation to each other of independent nations; and it happened, in some instances, that conterminous states pursued a policy of mutual hostility. In the month of March 1785, Commissioners on the part of Maryland and Virginia met at Alexandria in the latter state, for the purpose of "keeping up harmony in the commercial regulations of the two states, with reference to the navigation of the Rivers Potomac and Pocomoke, and of the Chesapeake Bay," the waters of which were to some extent common to the two states. General Washington was one of the commissioners on the part of Virginia, and his associates being on a visit to him at Mount Vernon, it was there agreed by them to recommend to their respective states the appointment of a new commission with enlarged powers, to devise a plan for the establishment, under the sanction of Congress, of a naval force on the Chesapeake Bay, and a uniform tariff of duties on imports, to which the laws of the two states should conform. The proposal thus concerted at Mount Vernon was adopted by the legislature of Virginia, and being brought before that body at a time when it had under consideration Washington, a project for granting enlarged commercial powers to Congress, a resolution was passed, directing that so much of the report of the commissioners as referred to a uniform tariff of duties should be communicated to the other states, with an invitation to attend the proposed meeting. On the 21st of January 1786, a resolution passed by the legislature of Virginia, appointing commissioners to meet with those which might be appointed by the other states, "to take into consideration the trade of the United States; to examine the relative situation and trade of the said states; to consider how far a uniform system in their commercial regulations may be necessary to their common interest and their permanent harmony." Washington, at his own instance, for personal reasons, was not a member of this commission, though the object was one which he had greatly at heart. The meeting was appointed to be held in Annapolis in September 1786; but delegates from five states only attended, and some of them with powers too limited for any valuable purpose. Nothing, accordingly, was attempted beyond the preparation of a report, setting forth the existing evils, and recommending to the several states to appoint delegates to meet at Philadelphia the next May. A copy of this report was sent to the Congress, which still retained a nominal existence; and that body, by recommending the proposed measure, gave it, in the opinion of some persons, that necessary constitutional sanction in which the meeting at Annapolis was deficient. This report was adopted by Virginia, and seven delegates appointed, with Washington at their head, to represent that state in the proposed convention.

This body, now usually called the "Federal Convention," assembled in Philadelphia on the 2d of May 1787. Washington was unanimously elected its president. In anticipation of the meeting, and the duties which might devolve upon its members, "he read," says Mr Sparks, "the history and examined the principles of the ancient and modern confederacies. There is a paper in his handwriting which contains an abstract of each, and in which are noted, in a methodical order, their chief characteristics, the kinds of authority they possessed, their modes of operation, and their defects. The confederacies analysed in this paper are the Lycian, Amphictyonic, Achaean, Helvetic, Belgic, and Germanic. The debates in the Convention were principally had in committee of the whole, in which, by the appointment of Washington as the presiding officer of the body, the chair was occupied by Hon. Nathaniel Gorham of Massachusetts. Without his taking an active part in the debates, the influence of Washington was steadily exerted, and in the direction of an efficient central government. The Convention remained in session about four months, and on the 17th of September 1787, the result of their labours, as embodied in the present constitution of the United States, was communicated to the Federal Congress, with a letter signed by General Washington as president of the Convention. This instrument of government, under which the United States have so signalized prospered for nearly three-fourths of a century, though not deemed perfect in every point by Washington, or probably by any of its most ardent friends, was regarded by him, and declared to be in his correspondence, the best that could be hoped for in the condition of the country, and as presenting the only alternative for anarchy and civil war. "There is a tradition," says Mr George T. Curtis in his valuable history of the Constitution (vol. ii., p. 487), "that when Washington was about to sign the instrument, he rose from his seat, and holding the pen in his hand, after a short pause, pronounced these words—'Should the States reject this excellent constitution, the probability is, that an opportunity will never again be offered to cancel another in peace, the next will be drawn in blood.'"

The Convention by which the Constitution was framed was not clothed with legislative power, nor was the Congress of the Confederation competent to accept or reject the new form of government. It was referred by them to the several states represented by conventions of the people, and it was provided in the instrument itself, that it should become the supreme law of the land when adopted by nine states. The residue of the year 1787 and the first half of 1788 were taken up with the holding of these conventions, and it was not till the summer of 1788 that the ratification of nine states was obtained. The action of these conventions was watched with great solicitude by Washington, and his influence was efficiently employed through the medium of his correspondence to procure the adoption of the new form of government.

The 4th March 1789 had been appointed by the Congress as the time when the new constitution should go into operation. Previous to that time the choice of the electoral colleges, and of the senators and representatives who were to compose the first Congress, was to be had in the several states. By the constitution, as originally framed, two persons were to be voted for by the presidential electors as president and vice-president, without designating for which of the two offices the candidates were respectively supported. The candidate receiving the majority of votes was to be the president; and in case of equality of two or more candidates, the house of representatives, voting not per capita but by states, the members from each state, whether great or small, casting one vote, was to designate a president and vice-president from the three highest candidates having an equal number of votes. The whole number of electoral votes given in the first election was but sixty-nine, and they were all for General Washington. Thirty-four votes were given for John Adams, and a much smaller number of votes being scattered among several other candidates, George Washington and John Adams were elected the first president and vice-president of the United States.

The private and confidential correspondence of Washington shows the sincerity of his uniform public declarations, United States, that he shrank from the office with a candid reluctance, both as a candidate and after his election. He is probably the only person who has ever been called to the chair of state without having desired, and to some extent perhaps exerted himself to obtain, the nomination.

Such was the apathy of the country with reference to the new form of government, and such the tardiness of the new Congress in coming together, that although the 4th of March 1789 was appointed as the day of meeting, a quorum of the two houses was not assembled till the 6th of April. The first business was to count the electoral votes for president and vice-president, and to communicate the result to the persons chosen. Washington received the official notification of his election at Mount Vernon, on the 14th of April, and started immediately for the seat of government, which was for the first two years established at New York. His journey through the states of Maryland, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey was a triumphal procession. Debates on the proper official style by which he was to be addressed, and a disagreement between the two houses on that subject, which ended in nothing being done, caused some delay; and it was not till the 30th of April 1789 that he took the oath prescribed by the Constitution as the first President of the United States. There were other statesmen in the country who stood high in the respect and in the affections of the people, but the preference for Washington was absolute and unqualified. No other individual was thought of for a moment as a rival candidate. In advance of all the constitutional forms of election, which in his case were but forms, he was chosen unanimously in the hearts of the people. He was fifty-seven years old when he entered upon the office. His frame was naturally vigorous and athletic, but its strength Washington was perhaps somewhat impaired by the labours and exposures of two wars, and by repeated severe attacks of disease. Such an attack threatened his life immediately after entering upon the presidency; and in a letter to Lafayette he speaks of himself at the age of fifty-one as having inherited the constitution of a short-lived family. His father died young, but his venerable mother lived to witness his elevation to the presidency, and died at the age of eighty-two. Washington had made a farewell visit to her before repairing to the seat of government. His great elevation and distinguished honours produced no change in her simple mode of life. She occupied to the last the humble dwelling of one upright story at Fredericksburg, in which he had passed his boyhood, and which, somewhat modernised, is still standing. Her habitual commendation of him was, that "George had always been a good son."

At the close of his first presidential term of four years, though extremely desirous of retiring from public life, Washington yielded to the urgency of friends of all parties, and consenting to accept the office for a second period, was again unanimously elected. His administration, therefore, may be spoken of as covering a space of eight years from the date of the new government. As that government was in its leading features a new political system, and all its departments were to be organized and put in action for the first time, unusual difficulties attended his administration, for the want of precedents to which he could look for guidance. Other difficulties grew out of the state of public affairs abroad and at home. The interest felt in the American Revolution by the friends of liberty in Europe had to a considerable degree passed away, and the United States had not acquired a strength which enabled them to command the respect of foreign powers. Worse than this, it was some time before a fiscal system could be organised and a revenue raised for paying the interest of the foreign debt, a debt paltry in amount; but no debt is small which a man is unable to pay. Difficulties arose with England relative to the execution of the treaty of 1783, by which the independence of the United States was acknowledged. She complained that the States threw obstacles in the way of the recovery of debts due to British subjects; and the United States in turn complained that the military posts on the north-western frontier were retained by England, and the Indians encouraged in their hostility against the Union. Soon the French Revolution broke out, and each of the belligerents gave great cause of complaint to the American government. Meantime important questions and interests divided opinion, and gradually led to the formation of parties in the Union; the assumption by Congress of the revolutionary debts of the States, the funding system, the location of the seat of the federal government, the taxes to which resort had been had to create a revenue, the establishment of a national bank, and as the French Revolution advanced, the relations of the Union to the two great belligerents.

At the commencement of his administration, and before the organization of the parties which afterwards took place, General Washington surrounded himself in the executive offices with the most distinguished men in the country. Mr Jefferson in the department of State, and Mr Hamilton in the Treasury, the prospective leaders of the two great parties into which the country was before long divided, received equal marks of his confidence; and when his retirement from office at the end of the first term was proposed by him, they with equal urgency entreated him to accept a renomination. Had it been possible for any person to administer the presidential office without the aid of party support, or rather to conciliate unanimous support by merits and services which win the respect and gratitude of all parties, Washington was certainly marked out by the entire course of his life and the history of the country as such a person. It was his earnest desire to give this Washington character to his administration. He had composed it of the individuals who, in different parts of the Union, possessed most of the public confidence, and whom he had called to his assistance on the sole ground of being best qualified to conduct the public business to the satisfaction of the people. But the administration of a government, and especially one coming into existence, where much of the detail of organization is to be struck out anew, necessarily assumes a certain leading character founded on general principles and ideas, with respect to which the judgments of men naturally differ. It is only in times of extreme peril, and hardly then, that they can be brought to think alike, and act in one united mass, without party divisions. General Washington's administration commenced with a state of public opinion predisposed to the formation of parties. The Constitution had been adopted in the most important States by slender majorities, and in the face of a strong opposition. Those who opposed the adoption of the Constitution were, generally speaking, persons who regarded a strong central government with apprehension, as dangerous to the prerogatives of the State governments and the liberties of the people. It was a matter of course that, after the adoption of the Constitution, the measures of the new government, which tended to give it strength and efficiency, should be feared and opposed by the same class of statesmen and citizens. Among these measures were some which, by their friends, were deemed of vital importance to the government of the country, such as the funding system, the assumption of the revolutionary debts of the several States, and the establishment of a national bank. On these measures the members of the first cabinet were divided. Mr Hamilton, the secretary of the treasury, by whom they were proposed, and Knox, the secretary of war, were on one side; Mr Jefferson, the secretary of state, and Mr Randolph, the attorney-general, on the other. The political influences throughout the country were about equally divided, Mr Hamilton and Mr Jefferson being respectively the acknowledged representatives of the systems which favoured and opposed a strong central government. General Washington, with untiring assiduity and patience, sought to conciliate the opposite opinions, holding himself in suspense as long as the public service admitted as to the adoption of particular measures, and seeking advice with equal anxiety on both sides. Eventually, however, a decision must be made. The measure is a distinct political issue, and must be adopted or rejected. In reference to the subjects above referred to, the President sustained the general views of the secretary of the treasury; and in this way, though standing aloof from all electioneering plans and arrangements of party, became at length identified in public opinion with the principles and measures of the party of which Mr Hamilton was the acknowledged leader. His great name and spotless character shielded him for a considerable time from the assaults of party warfare. The persons that opposed his administration were content with condemning its measures, and inveighing against those members of the Cabinet and of Congress by whom they were projected and sustained. Some check was imposed on all general censures upon his administration so long as Mr Jefferson remained at the head of it, and responsible even for some of the measures most obnoxious to its opponents, such as the proclamation of neutrality in the war between France and England. All restraint of this kind ceased with his retirement from the Cabinet soon after the commencement of his second term. That of Mr Hamilton took place not long afterward; but the withdrawal of these great rivals, instead of relieving Washington from the embarrassments arising from their hostile relations to each other, was in fact the signal for a stricter organization, in Congress and through- out the country, of the parties of which they were severally the leaders. Mr Hamilton was understood to carry with him more of the confidence and sympathy of the president, who was from that time more and more identified in public opinion with the federal, which was still the dominant party. Party defamation, however, reached him only by slow degrees, and if one may use that phrase, with moderation. He possessed a hold on the affections of the country too strong to be seriously loosened by newspaper diatribes. It was notorious to the whole people that office, so far from being an object of his ambition, was regarded by him as a burden. His revolutionary services were still everywhere freshly and enthusiastically appreciated. Men of high character, though opposed to his political system, desired to treat him personally with respect; vulgar detraction could not reach him. Accordingly, though parties might be considered as distinctly organized by the close of the first term of his administration, he was, as we have stated, unanimously re-elected, having received 132 votes in the electoral colleges, that being the entire number of the presidential electors.

In the first year of his administration, the President made a hasty tour through the Eastern States of the Union; and in the following spring he visited the Southern States, on each occasion (it is mentioned as a trait of manners) travelling with his own carriage and horses. The United States at that time numbered a population of about four millions; the largest cities, Philadelphia, Boston, and New York, were then small towns; the great branches of industry were almost unknown; a small military force guarded the Indian frontier; there was not a single public vessel, nor a state government west of the Alleghenies. This state of things but ill sustains a comparison with that which we now behold in the American Union: thirty-three States, some of the largest in the basin of the Mississippi and two on the Pacific Ocean; a population of thirty millions; a commercial tonnage inferior to that of England alone, if inferior even to that; a highly advanced condition of the great industrial pursuits; a respectable military and naval establishment; and creditable progress in science and literature. Yet the United States, as Washington saw them on his tours in 1789 and 1790, presented such a contrast with the colonies, as he traversed them on his way to Boston in 1756, as was probably never brought within the experience of one man, and within so narrow a compass as thirty-three years.

Washington entered upon his second term of the presidential office, to which, as we have seen, he had been unanimously re-elected, on the 3d of March 1793. He still stood before the country with unshaken personal popularity, in a relation unshared, indeed unapproached by any other individual, but at length driven by the force of circumstances, and strongly against his private impulses, into the position of the head of an administration, which, if warmly supported, was also warmly opposed. Shortly after the commencement of his second term of office, the war between France and England broke out. The French Revolution, as was natural from the all-important services rendered by France to the United States in their own revolutionary struggle, enlisted the warm sympathy of the American people. Washington fully shared this sentiment, and his great personal regard for Lafayette, with whom he kept up a regular correspondence, and from whom he naturally derived his general impressions of the march of events, led him to look with a favourable eye upon the movements of which Lafayette was for a considerable time an influential leader. But that judicial moderation, which was the most striking trait of Washington's character, soon took alarm at the excesses of the French Revolution, and the conclusions of his own mind were confirmed by the tenor of the despatches of Mr Gouverneur Morris, who, as the American minister at Paris, enjoyed much of the confidence of Louis the Sixteenth and his family, and of the still faithful friends of the tottering monarchy.

As the United States were first introduced to the family of nations by the alliance with France of 1778, the very important question arose, on the breaking out of the war between France and England, how far they were bound to take part in the contest. The second article of the treaty of alliance seemed to limit its operation to the then existing war between the United States and Great Britain; but by the eleventh article the two contracting powers agreed to "guarantee mutually from the present time and for ever against all other powers," the territories of which the allies might be in possession respectively at the moment the war between France and Great Britain should break out, which was anticipated as the necessary consequence of the alliance.

Not only were the general sympathies of America strongly with France, but the course pursued by Great Britain toward the United States since the peace of 1783 was productive of extreme irritation, especially her refusal to give up the western posts, which, as has been intimated, had the effect of involving the north-western frontier in a prolonged and disastrous Indian war. These causes, together with the recent recollections of the revolutionary struggle disposed the popular mind to make common cause with France, in what was regarded as the war of a people struggling for freedom against the combined despots of Europe. Washington, however, from the first, determined to maintain the neutrality of the country. The news of the war reached him at Mount Vernon, and he immediately addressed letters to the heads of departments, to prepare them to express their opinions, on his return to the seat of Government, as to the measures necessary to prevent the country from being drawn into the vortex. They agreed unanimously on the expediency of issuing a proclamation of neutrality, and of receiving a minister from the French Republic; while on some other points submitted to them, especially the extent of the above-mentioned "guarantee," the members of the Cabinet were equally divided.

This proclamation, though drafted by Mr Jefferson and unanimously adopted by the Cabinet, was violently assailed by the organs of the party which followed his lead. A series of questions which General Washington had confidentially submitted to the Cabinet, embracing all the phases of the relations between the two countries, had found its way to the public, and the President was assumed to have answered in his own mind adversely to France every question proposed by him for the opinion of his constitutional advisers. The growing excitement of the popular mind was fanned to a flame by the arrival at Charleston, South Carolina, of "Citizen" Genet, who was sent as the minister of the French Republic to the United States. Without repairing to the seat of government, or being accredited in any way in his official capacity, he began to fit out privateers in Charleston, to cruise against the commerce of England. Although the utmost gentleness and patience were observed by the executive of the United States in checking this violation of their neutrality, Genet assumed from the first a tone of defiance, and threatened before long to appeal from government to the people. These insolent demonstrations were of course lost upon Washington's firmness and moral courage. They distressed but did not in the slightest degree intimidate him; and their effect on the popular mind was to some extent neutralized by the facts, that the chief measures to maintain the neutrality of the country had been unanimously advised by the Cabinet, and that the duty of rebuking his intemperate course had devolved upon the Secretary of State, the recognised head of the party to which Genet looked for sympathy.

If the conduct of France and of the French minister gave great offence to the American government, that of England Washington was scarcely less exceptionable. Besides the causes of irritation already mentioned, she had added materially to the existing animosity by orders in council, by which the lawful carrying trade of the United States was vexatiously interfered with, and still more by the impressment of seamen from the American vessels. At the close of the first year of President Washington's second administration, a very able and elaborate report was drawn up by Mr Jefferson, then about to retire from office, on the commercial relations of the country. At the Session of Congress of 1794, a discrimination against the commerce of England was proposed in a series of resolutions introduced by Mr Madison, the leader of the opposition in the House of Representatives, and a statesman whose general moderation was not less conspicuous than his ability and patriotism. Proportionate weight attached to a measure brought forward under his advocacy. The subject was debated in various forms in the course of the session, and an act passed the House of Representatives embracing the principle of discrimination, which was, however, lost in the Senate by the casting vote of the vice-president.

In this critical state of affairs, General Washington determined to take a decisive step to extricate the country from the embarrassment of being at variance, at the same time, with both of the belligerents. This step was the appointment of a special minister to England; and the selection for this important trust of the Chief-Justice of the United States, John Jay, one of the wisest and most circumspect, as well as one of the most experienced, of the public men of the day. His nomination was violently assailed by the opposing party, and barely passed the Senate. He succeeded in negotiating a treaty, by which the principal points in controversy between the two governments were settled; the western posts were given up, indemnification promised by the United States for the losses accruing by the non-payment of debts due to British creditors, and by Great Britain for illegal captures; and the commercial intercourse of the two nations was in most respects satisfactorily regulated. The twelfth article failed to obtain the confirmation of the Senate, inasmuch as it stipulated that molasses, sugar, coffee, cocoa, and cotton should not be carried in American vessels, either from the British Islands or from the United States, to any foreign port; the great agricultural staple of the country, of which more than four millions of bales will be exported the present year (1860), not being known sixty-five years ago to the negotiators on either side, as an article of American production!

On the arrival and before the official promulgation of the treaty, it was violently assailed. It was barely adopted by the constitutional majority (two-thirds) of the Senate, and on its official publication became the subject of unmeasured denunciation. Boston led the way in a town meeting, where resolutions strongly condemning the treaty were adopted and ordered to be transmitted to the President. He had made up his mind that the public interest required the confirmation of the treaty, and returned to the Boston remonstrants a dispassionate answer to that effect. With this example from a portion of the country, where the strength of his administration was concentrated, it was not likely that the tone of opposition would be gentler in other parts of the Union. On the contrary, the vehemence with which the treaty was assailed daily gathered strength, and at length the barriers of deference toward the personal character of the President were wholly broken down.

"The mission of Jay," says Chief-Justice Marshall in his Life of Washington, "visibly affected the decorum which had been usually observed toward him, and the ratification of the treaty brought into open view feelings which had long been ill concealed. With equal virulence, the military and political character of the President was attacked, and he was averred to be totally destitute of merit either as a soldier or a statesman. The calumnies with which he was assailed were not confined to his public conduct; even his qualities as a man were the subject of detraction. That he had Washington violated the constitution in negotiating a treaty without the previous advice of the Senate, and in embracing within that treaty subjects belonging exclusively to the legislature, was openly maintained, for which an impeachment was publicly suggested; and that he had drawn from the treasury for his private use more than the salary annexed to his office, was unabashedly asserted!"

Such was the frenzy of party; it afflicted Washington, but did not cause him to swerve a hair's breadth from his course.

An attempt was made in the House of Representatives to withhold the appropriations necessary to carry the treaty into effect. The party metaphysics of the day revelled in the plausible argument which has since reappeared on similar occasions, that, as no money can be constitutionally drawn from the treasury without a specific appropriation, it was not competent for the President and Senate, as the treaty-making power, to pledge the faith of the country to the expenditure of money. It was forgotten, however, that a treaty is by the same constitutional authority supreme law of the land, and as such binding on the conscience of the legislature. The extreme views of the opponents of the administration did not prevail, and the appropriations necessary to carry the treaty into effect passed the two houses. It was on this subject that Mr Fisher Ames, of Massachusetts, made the celebrated speech which is still freshly remembered.

Among the other measures of the opposition was the demand made by the House of Representatives for the communication of the instructions under which the treaty was negotiated. In the modern usage of Congress, a call of this kind from either house is complied with as a matter of course, containing, as it always does in important cases, a reservation that the communication can, in the President's opinion, be made without detriment to the public service. The practice of the government had not yet been established by usage in reference to subjects of this kind. The demand for the communication of the instructions, under which Mr Jay had acted, was regarded, and justly, as a hostile movement against the administration, and the President refused to communicate the paper. He planted himself resolutely on the ground, that the treaty-making power was confided by the Constitution to the President and Senate, and that it was not competent for the House of Representatives to require the communication of the instructions which might have been given to the negotiators. The resolution, as originally moved, made an unqualified demand for the instructions and other papers connected with the treaty. Further reflection led the mover (Mr Livingston) so far to modify the call as to except from it papers the communication of which might affect existing negotiations. A further amendment was moved by Mr Madison to except such papers "as it might be inconsistent with the interests of the United States at this time to disclose." But this wise and temperate suggestion, from the ablest and most sagacious member of the opposition, was rejected by a decisive vote of the house. Had it passed, it is probable that the President would have communicated the instructions, which, in the absence of that qualification, he resolutely withheld.

No transaction in the civil life of the President throws stronger light on the firmness of his character and his resolute adherence to principle. This has been shown by subsequent events more clearly than it was understood at the time. It was believed by the opponents of the administration, and that impression was no doubt shared to some extent by the public, that the instructions given to Mr Jay might contain matters which it would not be entirely convenient to the administration, or the President as its head, to disclose. It was probably supposed by many persons that Washington would have yielded to the request of the House of Representatives, had not some motive stronger than mere abstract principle prevented his doing so. It is the only instance probably in the history of the government where a paper, which could be laid before the public without inconvenience to the country or the administration has, when asked for by either House of Congress, been withheld. Such, however, was indubitably the fact in this instance. The instructions in question remained for thirty years buried in the public archives and undivulged.

At length, in compliance with a call of the Senate of the United States in 1825, and in reference to the illegal captures of American vessels made by the French cruisers prior to 1800, a mass of papers filling a large octavo volume was communicated to the Senate, and among them these once celebrated instructions. It was then found by the few who took the trouble to examine them as a matter of historical curiosity, that nothing could be more innocent; that they contained nothing which the most prejudiced opponent could have tortured to the discredit of the administration; and that Washington had no motive whatever for withholding them but that of constitutional principle.

The limits of this article do not admit of a detailed narrative of events; but we ought not to omit all mention of the firmness and resolution of Washington in calling into action the military force of the Union, to suppress almost the only very formidable attempt to resist the laws, which has taken place since the adoption of the federal constitution. The tax levied on distilled spirits in 1792 had been from the first unpopular in some portions of the country, and especially in Western Pennsylvania. The newspapers teemed with inflammatory appeals to the people, the payment of the duty was in many cases refused, the tax-gatherers and other officers of the United States were insulted, meetings to oppose the law were held, and at length preparations made for organized forcible resistance. These proceedings extended over a period of nearly two years. Trusting to the return of reason on the part of the disaffected, no coercive measures beyond the ordinary application of the law were for a long time resorted to by the federal government. This lenity was, however, ascribed to fear, and led to daily increasing boldness on the part of the malcontents in western Pennsylvania, till in 1794 it became manifest that more decisive measures must be adopted. The militia of the neighbouring states of New Jersey, Maryland, and Virginia were called out in aid of the militia of Pennsylvania, to the amount in the whole of 15,000 troops. The President avowed the intention of taking the field in person, and repaired to the rendezvous of the troops at Cumberland and Bedford. These demonstrations produced the desired result, the disaffected perceived the madness of their course, and the insurrection subsided without a conflict.

President Washington's sympathies were warmly enlisted in favour of Lafayette, after it became necessary for him to abandon his army, and give himself up to the Prussians. On his first arrival in America, he had the good fortune, as we have seen, to gain the confidence of the Commander-in-chief, which he retained by the uniform propriety of his conduct to the close of the war. There is no stronger testimony to the solid merit of the young French nobleman, than his having played his difficult part, military and political, to the entire satisfaction of his illustrious American chief. The ties of personal attachment between them were added to those of official confidence and respect. A friendly correspondence was kept up between Washington and Lafayette and his wife, after the close of the Revolutionary War. The hopeful interest taken by Washington in the French Revolution in its early stages was, as has been stated, in some degree inspired by his regard for Lafayette, and by confidence in his principles, of which he had given such satisfactory proof in America. After his denunciation by the Jacobins at Paris, and his escape from his army, Washington having heard that Madame Lafayette was in want endeavoured, through his ministers, to contribute to her relief, delicately seeking to make his donation assume the form of the repayment of a debt. After Lafayette, by a refinement of barbarous stupidity, of which it would not be easy to find a parallel, had, though a fugitive from the guillotine in Paris, been thrown into a fortress in Austria, Washington addressed a letter in his favour to the Emperor of Germany. It received no answer; and Lafayette remained in the fortress of Olmütz, till, by a just retribution, his enlargement, which was refused to the respectful request of Washington, was extorted by the command of Napoleon. Sir Walter Scott, by a strange inadvertence, states that Lafayette was given up on the 19th of December 1795, in exchange for the Duchess d'Angoulême. His release was peremptorily demanded by Napoleon in the conferences at Leoben, which preceded the treaty of Campo Formio, and he was finally set at liberty on the 23rd of September 1797.

During his confinement, and while Madame Lafayette was imprisoned in Paris, awaiting that fate which in one day had smitten her grandmother, the Duchesse de Noailles, her mother, the Duchesse d'Ayen, and her sister, the Countess de Noailles, but which she happily escaped by the downfall of Robespierre, her son George Washington Lafayette, just of age for the conscription, succeeded, through the friendly aid of the late Messrs Thomas H. Perkins and Joseph Russell of Boston, in making his escape to America. He found a paternal welcome at Mount Vernon, where he lived, as a member of the family, for about three years, and returned to France on the liberation of his father. During the residence of young Lafayette at Mount Vernon, the Duke of Orleans (afterwards King Louis Philippe) was also a visitor there with his brother; and tradition points to the border of the paper-hangings in one of the parlours as having been cut out and prepared for pasting on the walls by these young French exiles (in conjunction with the youthful members of the Washington family); happier perhaps, certainly freer from care, while so employed, than at any earlier or later period of their chequered and eventful lives.

At length the last year of President Washington's second quadrennial term of office arrived. Suggestions began to be made to him by his friends, looking to another re-election, but nothing could now shake his purpose to retire; and he determined to put all doubt on that subject at rest by a very formal announcement of his purpose. Having this immediate object in view, with parental interest in the present welfare of his countrymen, and provident forethought for the future, he determined to connect with it another object of still greater ulterior importance—a Farewell Address to his fellow-citizens, embodying his last counsels for their instruction and guidance. The steps taken by Washington for the preparation of this address were marked with more than his usual circumspection and care. They have been the subject of some difference of opinion and discussion on various occasions, in which it would exceed the limits of this article to engage. All the known facts of the case are brought together and set forth, with great acuteness and precision, by Honourable Horace Binney, one of the most distinguished jurists of America, in an essay just published at Philadelphia (October 1859), entitled, An Inquiry into the Formation of Washington's Farewell Address.

It had been the intention of Washington, from an early period of his administration, to decline a re-election at the close of the term of office for which he was chosen in 1789. Early in 1792 he considered the expediency of a farewell address, in connection with the announcement of his purpose to retire. Among other confidential friends consulted by him at this time was Mr Madison, with whom he communicated both orally at Philadelphia and by letter after the recess of Congress. Mr Madison, in reply to his letter, after earnestly dissuading the President from his purpose to retire, transmitted to him the draft of an address, which has been preserved. It is of no great length, and was evidently intended not to go far beyond the hints contained in the President's letter, either in the choice or treatment of the topics. Washington having been induced by the earnest and unanimous solicitation of his friends to consent to a re-election, this address was of course laid aside.

In the spring of 1796, and in the last year of his second administration, having, as we have seen, made up his mind irrevocably to decline a renomination, Washington again took counsel on the subject of a farewell address. In the progress of the political divisions of the day, Mr Madison had ceased to be of the number of his confidential advisers, and the President called upon Hamilton to aid him on this occasion. Washington's first step was to prepare himself a rough sketch of a farewell address. It consisted of a few preliminary sentences introducing the draft furnished by Mr Madison in 1792 (to which, for particular reasons, Washington adhered with some tenacity), and this was followed by the thoughts and sentiments which he deemed most appropriate for such an address. As this paper was intended only to furnish materials, that portion of it which follows Madison's draft, and was composed by Washington himself, is a series of remarks and suggestions, not studiously arranged nor elaborated for promulgation. This paper was shown by Washington to Hamilton at Philadelphia in the spring of 1796, and the wish expressed that he would "redress" it. It was also suggested that, besides doing this, Hamilton, if he thought best, "should throw the whole into a new form," "predicated upon the sentiments contained" in Washington's draft.

This was accordingly done. Hamilton first prepared the address thrown wholly into a "new form," and then digested, in another paper, in connection with Mr Madison's short address, the thoughts and suggestions appended to it, as we have seen in Washington's original draft. The President gave a decided preference to the new form, and, after very careful revision by him, it was published on the 19th of September 1796.

Of the documents and papers connected with this interesting production, there have been preserved, in addition to most if not all the correspondence between Washington and Hamilton, Washington's original rough draft of a farewell address and Hamilton's revision of it (these two papers exist only in the copies taken by Mr Sparks, the originals having disappeared), and Hamilton's original draft of an address in the "new form." There is also preserved among Hamilton's papers "an abstract of points to form an address," which appears to have been drawn up by him as a guide in preparing his original draft. Hamilton's original draft, as revised and corrected, and adopted by Washington, has disappeared. The original manuscript of the Farewell Address, from which it was printed, is in existence, and it is wholly in the handwriting of Washington. It contains very many corrections, erasures, and interlineations, which are also all in Washington's handwriting. It was presented to the editor of the paper in which it was published, Claypole, at his request, by Washington himself; and at Claypole's decease it was purchased for twenty-five hundred dollars by James Lennox, Esq. of New York, who has caused a very carefully prepared edition of it to be privately printed, with all the variations accurately noted in the margin.

The above statement is believed to contain the material facts of the case, as far as they appear from the papers now in existence. The limits of this article will not admit a more detailed investigation of the question of authorship, nor could it be made to advantage without a careful examination and comparison of the original papers in the case. From such an examination it will, we think, appear that the Farewell Address, as drawn up by Hamilton, and published by Washington to the people of the United States, commencing with the material portions of Mr Madison's draft of 1792, presents in a more developed form the various ideas contained in Washington's original draft, and treats in argumentative connection the topics therein more aphoristically propounded, the whole combined with original suggestions of a kindred type from Hamilton's own pen. Great skill is evinced by him in interweaving, in its proper place, every suggestion contained in Washington's draft (with a single exception); nor is there believed to be anything superadded by Hamilton of which the germ at least cannot be found in Washington's draft, in his multifarious correspondence or in other productions unquestionably from his pen.

A single topic contained in Washington's draft was excluded, with his full consent and approbation, from the published address. The passage in question consisted of suggestions of a personal character, an indignant allusion to the efforts made by "some of the gazettes of the United States," by misrepresentations and falsehoods, "to wound his reputation and feelings," and "to weaken, if not entirely destroy, the confidence" reposed in him by the country; a proud assertion of the uprightness of his intentions; a touching demand of respect for "the gray hairs of a man 'who had passed the prime of his life in the service of the country,' that he may 'be suffered to pass quietly to his grave';" with a concluding observation, that his fortune had not been improved by the emoluments of office. These ideas, rather more carefully digested than any other portion of Washington's original draft, are, in the published address, omitted almost wholly, and this with the distinct approbation of Washington. It appears to have been thought that, in a paper calculated to descend to posterity, allusions to temporary causes of irritation had better be suppressed. From this opinion we are compelled, with great diffidence, to dissent. We are under the impression, that though this part of Washington's draft, like the rest of it (but less than the other portions), was "in a rough state," the substance of it, with some softening of the language, which was never intended for publication, might have been retained. The opponents of Washington were not conciliated by its absence, and posterity has lost a lesson on the license and ferocity of party defamation nearly as important as any contained in the Address. It reflects new lustre on the modesty of Washington, that, in a matter personal to himself, he deferred to the judgment of a trusted friend; but this judgment, in the present case, we conceive to have been erroneous.

It may finally be observed, that Washington, with reference to this address, as to every act in life, aimed, with the entire sacrifice of self, to accomplish the desired good. He was accustomed, as a military chieftain, to employ daily the pens of active and intelligent secretaries in communicating his plans, transmitting his commands, and generally carrying on his correspondence, without the thought that they were any the less the dictates of his own mind and judgment, because conveyed in the words of another. This habit he carried with him to the Presidency, freely putting in requisition the aid of such official advisers and personal friends as, in his opinion, would best enable him to perform the duty of the day. In doing this, he retained and exercised an independent judgment, and he adopted nothing furnished to him by others, which did not, after rigid scrutiny, stand the test of his own marvellous discernment and unerring wisdom.

The vice-president, Mr John Adams, was chosen his successor by a majority so slender as to show that the country was now divided into two parties nearly equal. The tone of the public journals and the debates in Congress displayed an intensity of party feeling usually found under similar circumstances. Twelve members of the House of Representatives voted against the response of the house to the President's address to Congress at the opening of the last session, and a member from Virginia allowed himself to say, "that he did not regret the President's retirement." On the 3d of March, the last day of his administration, he gave a farewell dinner to the foreign ministers, the president and vice-president elect, and other distinguished persons of both sexes. Much hilarity prevailed; till toward the close of the entertainment, filling his glass, he said to the company with a gracious smile, "Ladies and gentlemen, this is the last time I shall drink your health as a public man. I do it with sincerity, wishing you all possible happiness." Bishop White, in relating this anecdote, adds that there was an end of all gaiety; and that, having directed his eye accidentally to Lady Liston, the wife of the British minister, he perceived the tears running down her cheeks. The next day General Washington attended the inauguration of President Adams, and received on that occasion the most striking tokens of the public respect and veneration. The crowd followed him with acclamations from the chamber of the House of Representatives, where the inaugural ceremonies of his successor were performed, to his own door. "There turning round, his countenance assumed a grave and almost melancholy expression, his eyes were bathed in tears, his emotions were too great for utterance, and only by his gestures could be indicate his thanks and convey his farewell blessing." Similar demonstrations of respect were repeated at a splendid entertainment given to him in the evening by the citizens of Philadelphia.

The last official letter of General Washington as President of the United States was addressed to the secretary of state, for the purpose of placing on record a formal denunciation of the forgeries to which allusion has been already made. This letter, after denying the truth of the facts which were alleged for the sake of giving a show of probability to this wretched fabrication, adds, with touching pathos, "As I cannot know how soon a more serious event may succeed to that which will this day take place, I have thought it a duty which I owed to myself, to my country, and to truth, now to detail the circumstances above recited, and to add my solemn declaration that the letters herein described are a base forgery, and that I never saw or heard of them till they appeared in print." Washington left Philadelphia about the 11th or 12th of March 1797, accompanied by Mrs Washington, Miss Custis, and George Washington Lafayette and his tutor, and returned to Mount Vernon by the way of Baltimore, accompanied by the blessings of the people.

Here it was his fondly cherished wish and hope to pass the remainder of his days in tranquil retirement. He was sixty-five years of age a few days before he retired from the presidency, and, as has been already mentioned, he did not consider himself as of a long-lived family. He had taken a definitive leave of political life; he was fond of agricultural pursuits; and his private affairs, much neglected during the eight years of his presidency, as they had also been while he was in the military service of his country, imperatively demanded his attention. In addition to this, the state of parties was such as to dispose him more than ever to stand aloof. Extreme opinions tending in opposite directions more than ever divided the country, and the voice of moderation, ever scorned by zealots, was, even if uttered by Washington, less likely than ever to be heard.

But his hopes of unmolested retirement, however ardently cherished, were doomed to be disappointed. The Washington course pursued by the French Directory was such as to exhaust the patience alike of the government and people of the United States. From the first arrival of M. Genet in 1793, although his successor did not come quite up to the standard of his indecorum, the diplomatic relations with France had been of the most unsatisfactory kind. The neutrality observed by the United States in the war raging in Europe was, or was pretended to be, taken in ill part, and the negotiation of Jay's treaty gave new cause of offence. While the French ministers in America scarcely kept within the bounds of civility towards the federal government, her ministers to France were either not received, or received to be insulted, and her commerce was surrendered a hopeless prey to the public cruisers and the privateers of the Republic.

It was necessary that outrages like these, of which the injury was great and the shame worse than the injury, should at length have an end. The despatches of the envoys to France, detailing the affronts which had been put upon them and their country, were laid before Congress, and a just resentment was kindled in that body and throughout the Union. A suitable addition was voted to the naval and military force of the United States, and active preparations commenced for the impending conflict. With the first serious alarm of an approaching struggle, all eyes were turned towards Washington, as the necessary leader of the armies of the country. No other person was thought of for the chief command. Washington was early prepared for the call, which could not fail to be made upon him, by the letters of his confidential friends; and though sagaciously predicting that the French Directory would not have the madness to push matters to a war, he avowed his purpose to obey the call of the country. After alluding to his occupations at Mount Vernon, he adds in writing to Hamilton, "If a crisis should arrive, when a sense of duty or a call from my country should become so imperious as to leave me no choice, I should prepare for relinquishment, and go with as much reluctance from my present peaceful abode as I should go to the tomb of my ancestors."

The unwelcome necessity presented itself. Toward the close of June 1798, letters were addressed to General Washington, both by the President and the Secretary-at-war, tendering to him informally the command of the army about to be organized. His replies were in unison with the sentiment just quoted, though filled with expressions of distress at the thoughts of leaving his retirement. Some delay took place in the transmission of the letters of the President and the Secretary to Mount Vernon, and before the answers to them could be received at the seat of government, Washington had been nominated to the senate by President Adams as commander-in-chief of the armies of the United States, with the rank of lieutenant-general, a title never conferred in any other instance in the United States before or since, except in that of General Scott, on whom it was justly bestowed a few years since by Congress.

General Washington accepted the commission, stipulating only that he should not take the field till the army was in a situation to need his presence, or the country was actually invaded. The President, however, in the letter communicating his appointment, had declared that he stood in urgent need of his advice and assistance, and indeed "of his conduct and direction of the war;" and Washington engaged in the organization of the army, with the spirit and energy of earlier days. Difficulties and embarrassments of no ordinary kind presented themselves; but the experience of two wars, and two civil administrations had sufficiently taught him, that these are unhappily at all times the conditions of the public service. It may be stated, in general terms, that the main difficulties which attend the adminis-

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1 President W. A. Duer's Recollections in Irving's Washington, vol. v. p. 271. Washing- tration of a government in peace or in war, spring not so much from the necessary and intrinsic conditions of the public service, as from the selfishness and the passions of individuals and the madness of parties.

There is a suggestion in a long and very interesting letter to the secretary at war, of the 4th of July 1799, written in reply to the overtures above alluded to, which shows that the newly appointed commander-in-chief was fully aware of the tremendous risks to which his military reputation might be exposed. He had evidently reflected on the possibility that he might be brought into actual conflict with the youthful French chieftain, who had already filled the world with the rumour of his military genius in those campaigns of 1796 and 1797, to which Europe had seen no parallel since the days of Julius Caesar. After some modest allusions to his advancing years, Washington, in the letter referred to, says, "I express these ideas not from affectation, for I despise everything that carries that appearance, but from the belief that, as it is the fashion of the present day, set or adopted by the French (with whom we are to contend), and with great and astonishing success too, to appoint generals of juvenile years to lead their armies, it might not be impossible that similar ideas and wishes might pervade the minds of our citizens." It was his often repeated sentiment, that if the French attempted to gain a foot-hold in America, they must not be permitted to land; and his reference to their youthful commanders shows that he must have contemplated the probability that, in the event of a war, he should be brought in direct collision with the youngest and most successful of them, the hero of Arcole and Lodi. But the "man of Destiny" had been led by his star in another direction, and the man of Providence was not called to meet him in the field. Four days before the letter of Washington just cited was written, Napoleon had landed at Alexandria. The directory saw, before it was too late, the madness of their proceedings, and showed a willingness to retrace their steps by an intimation that another mission from the United States should be honourably received. They might with propriety have been required to take the initiative in the work of peace, and to send their own envoys to America. But the United States were then a feeble power; and the administration was harassed by dissensions among its political friends, and by a formidable opposition. President Adams probably adopted the more prudent course, in closing with the overture of the directory. In the meantime the wheel of fortune was revolving; the bloody game of Egypt had been played out; Napoleon had returned to France; the directory had sunk before him; and his brother Joseph, on the 30th of September 1800, concluded with Messrs Ellsworth, Davie, and Murray, a treaty of peace.

The conclusion of a treaty of peace with France was a fulfillment of his anticipations which Washington did not live to witness. His illustrious life was drawing unexpectedly to a close. December 1799 found him apparently in unusual health. His favourite nephew Lewis, writing of him as he appeared to himself and a friend at that time, says, "the clear and healthy flush on his cheek and his sprightly manner brought the remark from both of us, that we had never seen the general look so well. I have sometimes thought him decidedly the handsomest man I ever saw."

On the 10th of December 1799, he completed the draft of an elaborate plan for the management of his plantations, laying down the rotation of the crops for a succession of years in advance. The morning of that day was clear and calm, but the afternoon was lowering. The next, the 11th of December, was a blustering, rainy day, and at night says the Diary, "there was a large circle round the moon." The morning of the 12th was overcast. Washington's last letter was written that morning. It was to Hamilton, and principally on the subject of a military academy. At ten o'clock Washington rode out as usual over his farms. "About one o'clock," he remarks in his Diary, "it began to snow, soon after to hail, and then turned to a settled cold rain." He was, however, protected by an outside coat, and remained in the saddle five hours.

On franking the letters brought to him for that purpose by his secretary, he said the weather was too bad to send a servant to the post-office, which was at Alexandria, 9 miles off. His secretary, Mr Lear, from whose narration these minute details are derived, perceiving the snow was clinging to his hair behind, expressed his fears that his neck must be wet. He said it was not; that his greatcoat had kept him dry. He went to dinner, which had been kept waiting for him, without changing his dress, and in the evening appeared as well as usual.

There were 3 inches of snow on the ground on the morning of Friday the 13th, and it continued to fall. In consequence of this state of the weather, and of a sore throat of which he complained, evidently the result of his exposure the day before, Washington omitted his usual morning ride around his plantations. It cleared up, however, in the afternoon, and he went out to mark some trees, which were to be cut down for the improvement of the grounds between the river and the house. He had a hoarseness upon him at this time, which increased in the evening, but he made light of it. This was the last time that he left his house.

The newspapers were brought from the post-office in the evening, and he passed it in the parlour reading them. At nine o'clock Mrs Washington went up to the room of her granddaughter, Mrs Lewis (who was confined), leaving the general and Mr Lear together. He was very cheerful, and when he found anything of interest, read it aloud as well as his hoarseness would permit. He requested Mr Lear to read aloud the debates in the Virginia Assembly on the election of senator and governor; and discovered some feeling at the remarks of Mr Madison respecting Mr Monroe. When he retired for the night, Mr Lear advised him to take something for his cold. He answered, "No, you know I never take anything for a cold; let it go as it came." These were the last words, hopeful of health, which passed his lips.

Saturday, the 14th, was the last day of his life. It was fatal and full of suffering. Between two and three o'clock in the morning he awoke Mrs Washington, telling her he had had an ague fit, and was very unwell. He could then scarcely speak, and breathed with difficulty. Thoughtful of others even in this emergency, he would not allow her to get up to call a servant, for fear of her taking cold. At daybreak, Caroline the servant came to make a fire, and was sent by her mistress to call Mr Lear. Hastening to the general's chamber, Mr Lear found him breathing with difficulty, and hardly able to articulate. He desired that his friend and physician, Dr Craik, who lived in Alexandria, should be sent for, and that in the meantime Mr Rawlins, one of the overseers, should bleed him.

A soothing mixture was prepared for his throat, but he was unable to swallow the smallest quantity. The effort to do so caused distress, almost suffocation. Rawlins came soon after sunrise, and prepared to bleed him. When the arm was ready, Washington, perceiving that he was agitated, said as plainly as he could, "Don't be afraid;" and when the vein was opened, observed, "The orifice is not large enough." The blood flowed pretty freely, but Mrs Washington, fearful that blood-letting might not be proper, begged that much should not be taken. When Mr Lear, however, was about to untie the ligature, the general raised his hand to prevent it, saying, "More, more." Mrs Washington being still anxious lest he should suffer by the loss of blood, about half a pint only was taken. His throat was now bathed with sal volatile, and his feet placed in warm Washington water, but without affording any relief. When the hand of the attendant was gently applied to his throat, he said, "It is very sore." About eight o'clock he rose and was dressed; but he found no relief from the change of position, and at ten returned to his bed.

The alarm rapidly increasing, a physician was sent for from Port Tobacco, on the other side of the river, but between eight and nine o'clock Dr Craik arrived. He immediately applied a blister to the throat, took more blood, and had a gargle prepared, which, however, the patient was wholly unable to use. Other remedial applications were attempted, but without effect. At eleven o'clock a third physician was sent for, and in the meantime the general was again bled. No benefit resulted from this treatment, and he remained unable to swallow.

About three o'clock Drs Dick and Brown arrived, and after consultation, the sufferer was for the fourth time bled. The blood came thick and slow, but its loss produced no faintness. He was now able to swallow a little, and active medicines were administered, but without beneficial effect.

About half-past four o'clock Mrs Washington was called to his bedside, and he requested her to go to his room and bring from his desk two wills, which she did. He looked at them, handed one to burn as useless, and gave the other into her possession.

After this Mr Lear returned to his bedside, and took his hand. "I find," said the general, "I am going. My breath cannot last long. I believed from the first that the disorder would prove fatal. Do you arrange and record all my late military letters and papers. Arrange my accounts and settle my books; and let Mr Rawlins finish recording my other letters, which he has begun." He then asked Mr Lear if he recollected anything which it was essential for him to do, as he had but a very short time to continue with them. Mr Lear expressed the hope that he was not so near his end. He observed with a smile that he certainly was, and that, as it was the debt which we must all pay, he looked to it with perfect resignation.

In the course of the afternoon he was helped up, and, after sitting about half an hour, desired to be undressed again and put to bed. Perceiving his servant Christopher, who had been in attendance most of the day, to be standing, he thoughtfully told him to be seated. In the course of the afternoon, he suffered great pain from the difficulty of breathing, and desired frequently to change his position in bed. On these occasions his secretary lay by his side, in order to turn him with as much ease as possible. He was touched with these attentions, and said, "I am afraid I shall fatigue you too much; it is a debt we must pay to each other, and I hope, when you want aid of this kind, you will find it."

About five o'clock in the afternoon, Dr Craik came again into the room, and, upon his going to the bed-side, the general said to him, "Doctor, I die hard, but I am not afraid to go. I believed from my first attack that I should not survive it. My breath cannot last long." Dr Craik, his companion on the field of battle and his friend through life, perceiving that the last hour was near, pressed the hand of Washington, but could not speak, and left the bedside in speechless grief.

Between five and six, the three physicians approached his bedside. Dr Craik asking if he could sit up in bed, he held out his hand and was raised up. He then said to the physicians, "I feel myself going; I thank you for your attentions; but I pray you to take no more trouble about me. Let me go off quietly; I cannot last long." He lay down again; restless and suffering, but without complaining, frequently asking what hour it was.

About eight o'clock the physicians again came into the room, and applied blisters and cataplasms to the legs. At ten o'clock he made several attempts to speak to Mr Lear, but for some time without success. At length he said, "I am fast going; have me decently buried; and do not let my body be put into the vault till three days after I am dead." Mr Lear, unable to speak, bowed assent. He then spoke again and said, "Do you understand me?" Mr Lear replied that he did; and Washington said, "It is well."

These were the last words which he uttered. Between ten and eleven o'clock, and about ten minutes before he died his breathing became easier. He lay quietly, withdrew his hand from Mr Lear's, and felt his own pulse. At this moment his countenance changed, his hand fell from his wrist, and he expired without a struggle. Mrs Washington, who was seated at the foot of the bed, said in a collected voice, "Is he gone?" A signal from Mr Lear gave the answer. "It is well," she said; "all is now over; I shall soon follow him; I have no more trials to pass through."

The disease of which General Washington died was what is now technically called "acute laryngitis," a disease of very rare occurrence, and at that time not discriminated from other inflammatory diseases of the throat. "During his whole illness," says Mr Lear, in the memorandum from which the foregoing account is taken almost verbatim, "he spoke but seldom, and with great difficulty and distress, and in so low and broken a voice as at times hardly to be understood. His patience, fortitude, and resignation never forsook him for a moment. In all his distress he uttered not a sigh nor a complaint, always endeavouring from a sense of duty, as it appeared, to take what was offered to him, and to do as he was desired by his physician."

On the 18th of December, followed by the sorrowing members of his family, by his friends and neighbours, his mortal remains were deposited in the family vault at Mount Vernon, where they still rest. In consequence of the suddenness of the event, the news of his illness and of his death went out at once to the country, and fell like the tidings of a domestic sorrow upon the hearts of the people. Appropriate resolutions, drawn by General Lee, one of the members from Virginia, were in his absence moved by his colleague, Mr John Marshall, afterwards chief-justice of the United States, expressive of the public sorrow at the loss of him "who was first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his fellow-citizens." The tributes of respect paid to his memory by Congress were repeated by the state legislatures, the courts, the municipal bodies, the seats of learning, and the associations of every description throughout the Union; and all the people mourned.

We have already seen that, a few hours before his death, Washington sent to his study for two wills, which, when brought, were handed by him to Mrs Washington, one to be destroyed and the other preserved by her. As he had kept them both to the close of his life, it may be supposed that, in conformity with his strictly methodical business habits, the two wills had been prepared by him to meet respectively the contingencies of surviving his wife or dying before her. Although, as he frequently observes in his correspondence, his affairs had greatly suffered by his long absences from home, he left a large estate. He inherited a small property from his father; his elder brother bequeathed to him the estate of Mount Vernon; he received a large accession of wealth with his wife; and he made extensive purchases of unimproved lands, not only in Virginia, but in several other states, some of which probably rose in value. A schedule appended to his will of that part of his property, which was to be sold for distribution among his general heirs, amounts, as estimated by him, to something more than half a million of dollars. The larger part of his estate was specifically bequeathed, and must have more than equalled this amount. President Adams the elder, writing to a friend in Massachusetts, at the time of Washington's election as commander-in-chief in 1775, speaks of him as "a gentleman of one of the finest fortunes upon the continent." It is prob- able that many of the unimproved lands, though possessing a speculative value, were unproductive, and of stocks and other property yielding a fixed income, the amount appears to have been small.

By the third item of the will, which was made about six months before his death, General Washington provided that, upon the decease of his wife, all the slaves held by him in his own right should receive their freedom. "To emancipate them during her life," the will proceeds, "would, though earnestly desired by me, be attended with such insuperable difficulties, on account of their intermixture by marriage with the dower negroes, as to excite the most painful sensations, if not disagreeable consequences to the latter, while both descriptions are in the occupancy of the same proprietor, it not being in my power under the tenure by which the dower negroes are held to manumit them."

For those emancipated, who from old age or bodily infirmity should be unable to support themselves, the will directs that a comfortable provision of food and clothing while they lived should be made by his heirs. Those who were too young to support themselves, and who had no parents able or willing to support them, were to be bound by the court till they were twenty-five years of age, were to be taught to read and write by the masters to whom they were bound, and brought up to some useful occupation. The will expressly forbids the sale or transportation out of Virginia of any slave of whom he might die possessed, under any pretence whatsoever, and it enforces the general intentions of the testator in the following stringent terms:

"And I do moreover most pointedly and solemnly enjoin upon my executors . . . to see that this clause respecting slaves and every part thereof be religiously fulfilled at the epoch at which it is directed to take place, without evasion, neglect, or delay, after the crops which may then be in the ground are harvested, particularly as it respects the aged and infirm; seeing that a regular and permanent fund be established for their support as long as there are subjects requiring it; not trusting to the uncertain provision to be made by individuals."

For his favourite servant Billy, who attended him throughout the Revolutionary War, a special provision was made in the following terms, and with characteristic precision:

"To my mulatto-man William, calling himself William Lee, I give immediate freedom, or if he should prefer it (on account of the accidents which have befallen him, and which have rendered him incapable of walking or of any active employment), to remain in the situation he now is, it shall be optional in him to do so; in either case, however, I allow him an annuity of thirty dollars, during his natural life, which shall be independent of the victuals and clothes he has been accustomed to receive, if he chooses the last alternative; but in full with his freedom if he prefers the first; and this I give him as a testimony of my sense of his attachment to me and for his faithful services during the Revolutionary War."

The estate of Mount Vernon was bequeathed to his nephew, Bushrod Washington (the son of the General's younger and favourite brother, John A. Washington), afterwards one of the associate justices of the Supreme Court of the United States. This bequest was made, in the words of the testator, "partly in consideration of an intimation to his deceased father, while we were bachelors, and he had kindly undertaken to superintend my estate during my military services in the former war between Great Britain and France, that, if I should fall therein, Mount Vernon, then less extensive in domain than at present, should become his property." On the decease of Mr Justice Washington without children, it came into the possession of a nephew, who bequeathed it to his widow. Her son, John A. Washington, is the present incumbent. Three years since a contract was entered into between Mr John A. Washington and "the Ladies' Mount Vernon Association of the Union," for the purchase of 200 acres of the estate, including the mansion-house and the tomb, for $200,000 dollars. The greater part of the stipulated purchase-money has been already paid.

We have in the foregoing article aimed to present the reader with a comprehensive, though necessarily greatly condensed sketch of the principal events of the life of Washington, as the best means of conveying an adequate impression of his character. As his active life covers very nearly half a century of the most important period in the history of the Anglo-American colonies and of the United States, and as he was himself intimately associated with the events of greatest consequence while he was on the stage, it was manifestly necessary to pass rapidly over the ground. Much has of necessity been omitted, and much superficially narrated. Mr Sparks' admirable Life and edition of the writings of Washington, the standard work of Chief-Justice Marshall, and Mr Washington Irving's classical volumes, have furnished most of the materials of the foregoing narrative, and their own words have been sometimes borrowed. The reader will probably wish that this had been done oftener.

General Washington's personal appearance was in harmony with his character; it was a model of manly strength appearance and beauty. He was about six feet two inches in height, and his person well proportioned; in the earlier part of life rather spare, and never too stout for active and graceful movement. The complexion inclined to the florid; the eyes were blue, and remarkably far apart; a profusion of brown hair was drawn back from the forehead, highly powdered, according to the fashion of the day, and gathered in a bag behind. He was scrupulously neat in his dress, and while in camp, though he habitually left his tent at sunrise, he was usually dressed for the day. His strength of arm, and his skill and grace as a horseman, have been already mentioned. His power of endurance was great, and there were occasions, as at the retreat from Long Island and the battle of Princeton, when he was scarcely out of his saddle for two days. Punctilious in his observance of the courtesies of society as practised in his day, he was accustomed, down to the period of his inauguration as President, at the balls given in his honour, to take part in a minuet or country dance. His diary uniformly records, sometimes with amusing exactness, the precise number of ladies present at the assemblies at which he was received on his tours through the Union. His general manner in large societies, though eminently courteous, was marked by a certain military reserve. In smaller companies he was easy and affable, but not talkative. He was frequently cheered into gaiety at his fireside by the contagious merriment of the young and happy, but often relapsed into a thoughtful mood, moving his lips, but uttering no audible sound.

Washington's religious impressions were in harmony with the rest of his character, deep, rational, and practical. On opinions, this topic our remaining space admits of little more than a reference to the interesting article on this subject, in the fourth section of the Appendix to Mr Sparks' twelfth volume. Washington was brought up in the Episcopal communion, and was a member of the vestry of two churches. He was at all times a regular attendant on public worship, and an occasional partaker of the communion; and is believed habitually to have begun the day with the reading of the Scriptures and prayer in his closet. His private correspondence, his general orders, and his public acts of all kinds, contain devout recognitions of a Divine providence in the government of the world; and his whole life bears witness to the influence of a prevailing sense of religious responsibility. In his last moments he breathed a truly pious spirit of resignation. In his own affecting words, "he died hard," but he was "not afraid to go." Though prevented by the rapid progress of his disease, and the almost total obstruction of the vocal organs, from expressing his feelings, he manifested to the last the submission of a sincere Christian to the will of the Great Disposer.

Posterity will not be left without a faithful representation of his person. The statue by Howden in the Capitol at Richmond, modelled at the age of fifty-three, is the accepted embodiment of his countenance and form, and has been followed substantially by all his successors in several monumental works of distinguished merit. A series of portraits by able artists, from the age of thirty-eight onwards, delineate him under all the modifications of feature and person gradually induced by the advance of years.

In the final contemplation of his character, we shall not hesitate to pronounce Washington, of all men that have ever lived, the greatest of good men, and the best of great men. Nor let this judgment be attributed to national partiality. In the year 1797, Mr Rufus King, then the American minister in London, wrote to General Hamilton—

"No one who has not been in England can have a just idea of the admiration expressed among all parties for General Washington. It is a common observation, that he is not only the most illustrious but the most meritorious character that has yet appeared." Lord Erskine, in writing to Washington about the same time, says—

"You are the only human being for whom I ever felt an awful reverence." Mr Charles James Fox remarks of him, that "a character of virtues so happily tempered by one another, and so wholly unalloyed by any vices, as that of Washington, is hardly to be found on the pages of history." Lord Brougham, in his brilliant comparative sketch of Napoleon and Washington, after a glowing picture of the virtues and vices of the great modern conqueror, exclaims—"How grateful the relief which the friend of mankind, the lover of virtue, experiences when, turning from the contemplation of such a character, his eye rests upon the greatest man of our own or of any age—the only one upon whom an epithet, so thoughtlessly lavished by men, may be innocently and justly bestowed!" Nor are these testimonies confined to Englishmen, in whom they might be supposed to be inspired in some degree by Anglo-Saxon sympathy. When the news of his death reached France, Fontanes, by direction of Napoleon, delivered an eloquent eulogium, in which he declared him to be "a character worthy the best days of antiquity." M. Guizot, a far higher authority, in his admirable essay on the character of Washington, pronounces, that "of all great men he was the most virtuous and the most fortunate." "All proclaimed him," says the historian Botti, "equal to the most renowned commanders of antiquity;" and Alifieri, in the dedication of the First Brutus, declares "that the name of the Liberator of America is alone worthy to stand at the head of a tragedy on the Liberator of Rome."

The comparison of Napoleon and Washington suggests a remark on the military character of the latter, who is frequently disparaged in contrast with the great chieftains of ancient and modern time. But no comparison can be instituted to any valuable purpose between individuals which does not extend to the countries and periods in which they lived, and to the means at their command. When these circumstances are taken into the account, Washington, as a chieftain, will sustain the comparison with any other of ancient or modern time. A recent judicious French writer (M. Edouard Laboulaye), though greatly admiring the character of Washington, denies him the brilliant military genius of Julius Caesar. It is, to say the least, as certain that Julius Caesar, remaining in other respects what he was, could not have conducted the American Revolution to a successful issue, as that Washington could not have subdued Gaul, thrown an army into Great Britain, or gained the battle of Pharsalia. No one has ever denied to Washington the possession of the highest degree of physical and moral courage; no one has ever accused him of missing an opportunity to strike a bold blow; no one has pointed out a want of vigour in the moment of action, or of forethought in the plans of his campaigns; in short, no one has alleged a fact from which it can be made even probable that Napoleon or Caesar, working with his means and on his field of action, could have wrought out greater or better results than he did; or that, if he had been placed on a field of action, and with a command of means like theirs, he would have shown himself unequal to the position.

There is in this respect a great mistake on the subject of Washington's temperament, which was naturally sanguine. Traditional accounts, which must, however, be received with great caution as far as particular anecdotes are concerned, authorize the belief that, in early life at least, he habitually waged a strenuous warfare with his own ardent temper. At all events, while he was placed in circumstances in both his wars which forced upon him the Fabian policy, there were occasions, as we have seen in the narration, when he seized the opportunity of making what, if it had failed, would have been called a rash movement. This showed him the possessor of an extensive capacity, conforming patiently to straits, and keeping good heart in adversity, but ready at a moment of change to move with vigour and power. When we add to this an unquestioned fondness for the military profession, who can doubt that, if he had been trained in the great wars of Europe, he would have proved himself equal to their severest test? It is a remarkable fact, that from his youth upward he evinced military capacity beyond that of all the trained and experienced officers with whom he was associated or brought in conflict. The neglect of his advice in 1755 cost the veteran Braddock his army and his life, and threw the valley of the Ohio into the power of the French; and all the skill and energy visible in the operations of General Forbes, by which it was recovered in 1758, were infused into them by Washington.

Akin to the argument against his military capacity, is the question whether, generally speaking, Washington was the conduct of a man of genius—a question not to be answered till that of affairs' word is explained. Dr Johnson calls it "that power which constitutes a poet;" and in that acceptation Washington certainly was not endowed with it. As little did he possess the genius of the orator, the man of letters, the sculptor, the painter, the musician. The term is so habitually, not to say exclusively, appropriated to that native power which enables men to excel in science, literature, and the fine arts, that those who are destitute of it in these departments are often denied it altogether. But there is a genius of political and military skill, of social influence, of personal ascendancy, of government; a genius for practical utility; a moral genius of true heroism, of unselfish patriotism, and of a stern public integrity, which is as strongly marked an endowment as those gifts of intellect, imagination, and taste, which constitute the poet and the artist. Without adopting Virgil's magnificent but scornful contrast between scientific and literary skill on the one hand, and those masterful arts on the other, by which victories are gained and nations are governed, we must still admit that the chieftain who, in spite of obstacles the most formidable, and vicissitudes the most distressing, conducts great wars to successful issues—that the statesman who harmonizes angry parties in peace; skilfully moderates the counsels of constituent assemblies, and without the resources of rhetoric, but by influence mightier than authority, secures the formation and organization of governments, and in their administration establishes the model of official conduct for all following time,—is endowed with a divine principle of thought and action as distinct in its kind as that of Demosthenes or Milton. It is the genius of a consummate manhood. Analysis may describe its manifestations in either case, but cannot define the ulterior

a newly constituted territory of the United States of North America, having been detached from Oregon territory by Act of Congress in 1853. It forms the extreme N.W. portion of the territory of the United States, and is bounded on the N. by the British North American possessions, the line of boundary being 49° N. Lat., E. by the Rocky Mountains, which separate it from the Nebraska territory; S. by Oregon, from which it is separated by the Columbia River, and parallel 46° of N. Lat.; W. by the Pacific Ocean; and N.W. by the Strait of Juan de Fuca, &c., separating it from Vancouver Island. It lies between 45° 32' and 49° N. Lat., and 111° 54' and 124° 40' W. Long.; and is about 600 miles in length from E. to W., by about 230 in width from N. to S., the estimated area being 123,022 square miles.

Comparatively little is yet known of this extensive country, except that in its general features it very much resembles the adjoining territory of Oregon. The coast line, however, is more broken, and the mountain ranges in general more scattered and irregular. Proceeding northward along the coast from the mouth of the Columbia River, which forms a large bay, bounded on the N. by Cape Disappointment, we come to Shoalwater Bay, a considerable sheet of water communicating with the Atlantic by a narrow mouth. North of this, in about parallel 47° of latitude, is Gray's Harbour, extending inland about 12 miles, and about 2½ miles across at its mouth, but afterwards attaining a width of 5 or 6 miles. From this point N. to Cape Flattery, which bounds the Strait of Juan de Fuca on the S., the coast is high and rocky, and but little indented. The Strait of Juan de Fuca is a vast arm of the sea, about 10 miles wide at its mouth, and about 100 miles deep. Extending southward from the head of this Strait into the territory of Washington for about 70 or 80 miles, are Admiralty Inlet, Puget's Sound, and Hood's Canal. These are of great extent, and form numerous islands, presenting a coast line of great length, with precipitous banks, so that vessels of the largest size can come close to the shore.

The surface of the country is naturally divided into three regions—the western, or coast region, lying between the Cascade Mountains and the sea; the central region; and the eastern or Rocky Mountain region. The western region has a breadth of about 150 miles, and is much broken in the surface by offshoots of the Cascade Mountains. A coast chain extends parallel to the coast, west of Puget's Sound, and has its principal point Mount Olympus, upwards of 8000 feet high. Except where traversed by the coast chain, this region slopes generally to the west. It discharges numerous streams into Puget's Sound and the Columbia River, but only a few directly into the sea, and of these the principal is the Satsamish; the Chehalis falls into Gray's Harbour, and several small ones empty themselves into Shoalwater Bay. This is the only part of the territory with settled habitations, and the greater part of it is covered with magnificent forests of pine, fir, oak, ash, cedar, and other trees. Some portions of the soil are of great fertility, and the climate is mild and salubrious. The Cascade Range is much less elevated than the Rocky Mountains, but it has several lofty summits, as Adam's, St Helen's, Rainier, and Baker, one or more of which rise to the height of upwards of 13,000 feet. The central region, lying east of the Cascade Range, belongs to the basin of the Columbia, and comprises principally the great plain of the Columbia, a vast rolling prairie, nearly 200 miles in length by about 100 in extreme width. This region is for the most part dry and arid except near the rivers and streams, and but little fitted for cultivation. It is bounded eastward by the Corus d'Alene Range, between which and the Rocky Mountains the surface consists of a succession of high mountains and elevated valleys, abounding in scenery of the wildest and most picturesque character. It is of course little suited for agriculture, but it contains spots of great fertility, and its lower parts are generally well wooded.

The principal river of Washington is the Columbia, which receives all those lying E. of the Cascade Range. It is about 7 miles wide at its mouth, but has a sand-bar, which impedes the navigation, and renders it inaccessible to vessels of more than 10 or 12 feet draught. At the Cascade Mountains it forms a series of falls and rapids, which entirely obstruct the navigation. Its principal affluents in this territory are the Snake River or Lewis Fork, which belongs chiefly to Oregon territory, the Yakema, Okanagan, Spokane, and Clarke's Fork. There are a number of lakes in the interior and eastern regions, and some of them of considerable size. As yet little is known of the mineral resources of the territory. Coal has been found on the Chehalis and in the neighbourhood of Puget's Sound; and it is generally believed that the country is well supplied with the useful if not also with the precious metals. Agriculture is rapidly extending, though the rearing of horses and cattle is as yet the chief object of pursuit by the settlers. Wood being plentiful, the lumbering trade receives some degree of attention, especially in the neighbourhood of Puget's Sound; and the fisheries are actively carried on, salmon and other fish being remarkably plentiful here. The country abounds in game and wild animals, as deer, elk, otter, beaver, fox, bear, &c. which are hunted by the Indians for the Hudson's Bay Company. Washington, as a part of Oregon territory, comprised the two counties of Lewis and Clarke, and in 1850 contained 1201 inhabitants. In 1854, a local census ascertained the population to be 3965, and in 1857 it was estimated at 10,000.

the capital of the United States of North America, is pleasantly situated on the left bank of the Potomac river, at its junction with a tributary called the Eastern Branch, 38, 136, and 226 miles S.W. from Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York respectively. The observatory from which American geographers generally reckon their meridians is in lat. 38° 53' 39" N., and long. 77° 2' 48" W. from Greenwich.

The district of Columbia, in which Washington is situated, was formed by Act of Congress in 1790, the States of Virginia and Maryland having each ceded a portion of their territory for that purpose. The two portions formed a square of 10 miles, or an area of 100 square miles. In 1846, however, the portion ceded by Virginia was restored to that state, so that the present district comprises only the The city of Washington was founded in 1793; and in 1800 the government, which had hitherto had its seat in Philadelphia, was transferred thither. Its site, which has a general elevation of about 40 feet above the river, is diversified by irregular elevations, which give a pleasant variety to the city, and furnish commanding positions for its principal buildings. It has on the south the Eastern Branch, and on the north it is separated from Georgetown by a stream called the Rock Creek, while a small stream, the Tiber Creek, flows through the town. At a little distance, it is surrounded by an amphitheatre of wooded hills of moderate elevation, commanding extensive and picturesque views, and affording eligible sites for suburban villas. The city is regularly laid out, and traversed by streets from 70 to 100 feet wide, running east and west, and north and south. Besides these, there are fifteen avenues, from 130 to 160 feet wide, named after the fifteen states which at the time of its formation constituted the Union, and extending from several centres in the direction of these states. It is about 4½ miles in length from N.W. to S.E., and about 2½ in breadth from N.E. to S.W.; but only a small portion of this area has yet been built upon, and hence Washington has not incorrectly been termed a "city of magnificent distances." The two great centres of the city, standing about a mile apart, are the Capitol and the President's House, from which most of the avenues diverge.

The Capitol, in which the National Congress hold their sittings occupies a commanding position 72 feet above the water-level of the Potomac. It was commenced in 1793, but operations were subsequently suspended in consequence of the war, and much that had been done was destroyed by the British in 1814; so that the whole edifice was recommenced in 1815, and was not entirely finished till 1828. In 1851 the foundation stone of two additional wings was laid; and including these and the space between the wings, the whole building will occupy an area of about 4½ acres. The original building, consisting of a centre and two wings, has a length of 352 feet, a depth at the wings of 121, and is crowned by a magnificent central dome, 145 feet in height from the ground, each of the wings being also surmounted by a flat dome. The exterior presents a rusticated basement of the height of the first story; the two others are comprised in a Corinthian elevation of columns and pilasters; and the whole building is surrounded by a balustrade of stone. The eastern and principal front, including the steps, projects 65 feet, and is embellished with a magnificent portico of eighteen columns 30 feet high, forming a colonnade 160 feet in length, the centre of which is crowned by a pediment of 80 feet span. The western front has a receding portico 100 feet in length, with ten columns. The two additional wings, not yet completed, are to be each 238 feet in length by 140 in width, surrounded on three sides by colonnades, and to communicate with the main building on the fourth by corridors 44 feet long and 50 wide. Within the Capitol are the Senate Chamber, Hall of Representatives, Rotunda, Congressional Library, the Chamber of the Supreme Courts, and numerous offices. The grounds, extending to about thirty acres, are enclosed by an iron railing, and are very tastefully laid out and planted, forming one of the pleasantest promenades in the city. Near the western entrance of the Capitol stands a monument erected by the officers of the navy, in memory of their brother officers, who fell in the war of Tripoli. It consists of a column of marble springing from a large square base, to the height of 40 feet, and surmounted by an eagle. On the abutments of the eastern front are two interesting groups representing "Columbus" and "Civilisation." In front of the Capitol is also a much admired colossal statue of Washington in a sitting posture, by Greenough, bearing the simple and appropriate inscription of "First in war, First in peace, First in the hearts of his countrymen."

The President's House, the White House, or Executive Mansion, stands in the centre of a beautiful plot of ground of twenty acres, 44 feet above the Potomac, tastefully laid out and adorned with trees and shrubbery. The edifice, which is of white freestone, is two stories in height, crowned by a balustrade; and extends 170 feet in front and 86 feet in depth. The north front has a lofty portico ornamented with four Ionic columns. The interior arrangements are elegant and well adapted to the various purposes for which the building is designed. In the centre of a small square in front is a bronze statue of Jefferson, and across Pennsylvania Avenue in the centre of Lafayette Square, is a bronze equestrian statue of General Jackson.

In the same square with the President's House are buildings for the state, treasury, war, and navy departments. The state department occupies a plain brick edifice to the N.E. of the President's House. It is 160 feet long by 55 wide, and is two stories in height. In this building all the diplomatic business of the country is transacted, and it also contains a large library of books, maps, &c. Immediately south of this is the treasury department, occupying an imposing stone building of three stories, 340 feet long by 170 wide, exclusive of the north and south wings. The eastern front has a magnificent colonnade of forty-two Ionic columns. The building of the War Department occupies the north-west corner of the square, and is precisely similar in design to the State Department buildings. The buildings occupied by the Navy Department lie directly west of the President's Mansion, and behind the War Office buildings.

One of the finest structures in Washington is the General Post-Office. It is of white marble, in the Corinthian order, three stories in height, 204 feet long, and 102 deep, containing in all eighty-one rooms. Near the post-office is the Patent-Office, a magnificent building, partly of freestone and partly of marble, three stories in height, having an elegant central portico, with eight Doric columns in front. It has several magnificent halls, one of which, designated the National Gallery, contains cabinets of natural history, relics of Washington and Franklin, &c. The City Hall is an elegant stuccoed building, 200 feet in length. One of the noblest institutions and finest structures in Washington is the Smithsonian Institution, situated on a gently rising ground, west of the Capitol, and surrounded by extensive grounds, laid out in gardens, &c. It originated in a bequest of more than half a million of dollars left by an Englishman, named Smithson, "to found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men." The building, which is of a reddish freestone, is Romanesque in style, and is 450 feet in length by 140 in width, and has nine towers, varying in height from 75 to 150 feet. It consists of a central compartment, 205 feet by 55, two connecting ranges of 60 feet, and two wings. It has a lecture-room capable of containing nearly 2000 persons, a museum for objects of natural history, 200 feet in length, a library capable of containing 100,000 volumes, a gallery for painting and statuary, 120 feet long, and one of the best-furnished laboratories in the United States.

The Washington monument on the Mall, between the president's house and the river, will, when completed, be a magnificent structure. It comprises a grand circular colonnaded building, 250 feet in diameter and 100 feet high, from the centre of which springs an obelisk shaft 70 feet square at the base, and 500 feet high, making a total elevation of 600 feet. The vast rotunda, forming the base of the monument, is surrounded by thirty massive columns, each 12 feet in diameter and 45 feet high, elevated upon a base 20 feet in height and 300 feet in diameter, and surmounted by an entablature 20 feet high, and crowned by a balustrade 15 feet in height. The terrace outside the colonnade is 25 feet wide, and the walk within the colonnade 25 feet wide. Over the columns severally is sculptured the escutcheon of each of the United States, while over the central portico is emblazoned the coat of arms of the Union. Around the rotunda are stationed statues of the signers of the declaration of the independence, and in niches statues of the fathers of the revolution; and directly opposite to the entrance is a statue of Washington himself. The interior of the shaft is embellished with a great variety of inscriptions and bas-reliefs, and in the centre of the monument will be placed the tomb of the father of his country.

The National Observatory is situated on the banks of the Potomac towards Georgetown, and is a very efficient establishment, chiefly conducted by naval officers. The arsenal occupies a fine position on Greenleaf's Point, at the junction of the Eastern Branch with the Potomac, and thus affords great facilities for the receiving and shipping of ordnance and other military stores. It contains an extensive model armory, and the machinery employed here is very complete. About a mile and a quarter N.E. of the arsenal, on the Eastern Branch, is the Navy Yard, covering an area of 20 acres, and enclosed by a wall. This is one of the largest naval-yards in the Union, and employs a great number of hands in the manufacture of anchors, chain-cables, steam-engines, &c. On the western side of the yard is a pyrotechnic laboratory. The Columbian College, incorporated in 1821, occupies a fine brick edifice, pleasantly situated on an eminence just beyond the limits of the city, and directly north of the President's House; and had in 1859 eight professors and teachers, and sixty-six students. The National Medical College, established in 1823, is a flourishing institution with eight professors and seventeen students. The National Institute, founded in 1840, and having for its object the promotion of general science, holds its meetings and has its head-quarters at the patent-office. The metropolis is well supplied with churches, there being in 1850 no fewer than thirty-seven. The finest building of this class is the Episcopalian Church of Trinity; but many of the others are handsome structures. Among the other buildings of Washington may be mentioned the barracks, coast survey office, penitentiary, hospital, jail, poor-house, and orphan asylum. There are several bridges over Rock Creek and the Eastern Branch, and one upwards of a mile in length over the Potomac. A spacious canal uniting the Potomac with the Eastern Branch passes through the city. Vessels drawing 14 feet of water can come up to the Potomac Bridge, and frigates can ascend the Eastern Branch to the navy yard without being lightened. In 1800 the population of Washington was only 3210, (1810) 8208, (1820) 13,247, (1830) 18,827, (1840) 23,364, (1850) 40,001.