Part 24

A short time after the adjournment of Congress, at a second Virginia Convention, held at Richmond, Patrick Henry, in closing one of the grandest efforts he ever made, thus boldly declared his mind: "The time of reconciliation is past; the time for action is at hand. It is useless to send further petitions to the government, or to await the result of those already addressed to the throne. We must fight, Mr. Speaker: I repeat it, sir, we must fight! An appeal to arms and to the God of hosts is all that is left us!" The great orator did but give voice to the feelings and sentiments of thousands of pure patriots, among whom was Washington, who represented his district in this convention also. No one regretted more sincerely than he that they were thus compelled to take up the sword as the only remedy of their wrongs and grievances. In his own mind, he had fully resolved, if needful, to devote his life and fortune to the cause; and was willing, he told his brother, to arm and equip a thousand men at his own expense, and lead them to the succor of Boston, at that time blockaded by the British fleet. Grave and thoughtful, and pondering deeply all these things, he went to his home; and, in this frame of mind, the winter months passed slowly by.

It was now apparent to all, that open hostilities between the Colonies and the mother-country were no longer avoidable; and on the nineteenth of April, 1775, the battle of Lexington announced to the world that the first blood of a desperate struggle had been shed, and that civil war, with all its train of horrors, had begun.

When the tidings reached Mount Vernon, the impressions made on Washington's mind were solemn and profound, if we may judge from a letter written at the time, in which he says, "Unhappy it is to reflect, that a brother's sword has been sheathed in a brother's breast, and that the once-peaceful plains of America are to be drenched with blood, or inhabited by slaves. Sad alternative! But can a virtuous man hesitate in his choice?" Early in May, as he was just on the eve of setting out for Philadelphia to take his seat in the second session of the Congress, news reached him of the capture of Ticonderoga by Col. Ethan Allen. It was a brilliant little exploit enough, and the very kind to raise undue expectations in the many, who looked no further into the future than to-night, when it is yet evening; but it could have no other effect than to deepen the thoughtfulness of a mind like Washington's, that could look through the glare of these accidental hits of war, and behold the untried perils still further beyond.

As the war had now begun in earnest, so dreaded and deeply deplored by all the good men, as the only remedy left to their distress, the deliberations of the second Congress turned chiefly on the devising of means for their defence and safety. Towards this object, nothing effectual could be done till some person was fixed upon to be the leader of the army, which they had yet, in large measure, to raise, arm, and equip.

There were not a few, who, for age, talent, experience, fortune, and social position, as well as for the sacrifices they had already made to the cause, were, in the opinion of their friends, and perhaps in that of their own, justly entitled to this high distinction. After some time spent in viewing the matter in all its bearings, and carefully weighing the claims of each, without being able to fix upon a choice, John Adams decided the question by addressing the House to the following effect: That the person intrusted with a place of such importance to Americans must be a native-born American; a man of large fortune, in order to give him a strong personal interest in the issue of the contest, and the means of carrying it on; he should be a man of military experience, and accustomed to the government of large bodies of men; he should be of tried integrity and patriotism, of great courage and bodily endurance, and known ability; and a resident of some central province, that in him might be blended the extreme interests of North and South, which would tend to lessen the jealousies of the two sections, and harmonize them, as it were, into one. Such a province was Virginia, and such a man was Col. Washington; whom, therefore, he commended to the favor and consideration of the Honorable House.

Before this address was ended, Washington, perceiving that he was the person on the point of being singled out, rose from his seat, much agitated and embarrassed, and hastily quitted the House.

Next morning, Mr. Adams's recommendation was acted upon; and the House, without a single dissenting voice, chose GEORGE WASHINGTON to be Commander-in-chief of all the army of the United Colonies, with the salary of six thousand dollars a year. In his reply, Washington expressed his grateful sense of so signal a proof of the confidence reposed in him by his countrymen, and added,--

"But lest some unfortunate event should happen, unfavorable to my reputation, I beg that it may be remembered by every gentleman in this room, that I this day declare, with the utmost sincerity, that I do not think myself equal to the command I am honored with. As to pay, I beg leave to assure the Congress, that, as no pecuniary consideration could have tempted me to accept of this employment at the expense of my domestic ease and happiness, I do not wish to make any profit of it. I will keep an exact account of my expenses: these, I doubt not, they will discharge; and that is all I desire."

In a letter to Mrs. Washington, informing her of the great change thus made in his destiny, he deplores the hard necessity that makes it his duty to give up the sweet pleasures of home and her society; and exhorts her, in affectionate language, to bear up under their separation with cheerfulness and fortitude; at the same time giving her the gratifying assurance, that with her he could have more happiness at Mount Vernon in one month, than he could hope to find without her, were he to remain abroad seven times seven years. From the tone of this letter, she must readily have guessed that the place was not one of his own seeking.

Accordingly, on the 21st of June, General Washington,--for so we must now call him,--having received his commission, set out to take command of the American army, then lying before Boston, which, being occupied by the king's troops, was in a state of siege. A company of Pennsylvania light-horse escorted him from Philadelphia to New York, where he was received with all the honor due, not only to the high station he had been called to fill, but also to his exalted character and distinguished abilities. Here he heard further particulars of the battle of Bunker's Hill, fought near Boston a few days before. From New York, the general-in-chief proceeded to Boston, and was greeted everywhere on the way with the greatest enthusiasm by the people, who came streaming in from all quarters to behold the man into whose keeping had been intrusted the destinies of America.

Thus, my dear children, I have brought you, step by step, up to that great event in Washington's life when his character and actions were to be subjected to the gaze and scrutiny, not only of his own age and country, but of all ages to come, and of all the nations of Christendom.

XXVI.

CONCLUSION.

Here Uncle Juvinell paused, and, with a countenance of undisturbed sobriety, emptied his ninth mug. In justice, however, to the good man, this pattern of old-fashioned gentility, it must be borne in mind, that the mug was a Dutch mug, and consequently a small one (as indeed are all things Dutch, from clocks to cheeses); and also that, small as it was, he never more than half filled it, except once or twice in the course of an evening, when he would gird up his loins, as it were, with a brimmer to help him over some passage in his story of unusual knottiness and difficulty.

Willie (whose surname should have been fox or weasel or lynx), having heretofore divided his attention between what his uncle imparted and what he imbibed, had, by careful counting, discovered that the ninth mug invariably closed their evening lessons: so, without waiting for any further signal that such was now the case, he alertly bounced from his chair, and, snatching up a basket of big red apples that black daddy had just brought in and set on the hearth, began handing them round to the rest of the company with a great show of playing the polite and obliging, but taking care, when unobserved, to pick out the largest and mellowest one of them all for himself, and smuggle it under his coat-tail. When all were helped, he reset the basket on the hearth, and with a grand flourish, unmasking his royal red, opened wide his mouth, as if he would have bolted it whole: but, seeming to think better of it, he carefully laid it in Uncle Juvinell's mug, which it exactly filled, saying as he did so, "It goes to my heart to part with you; but only the king of historians is worthy to enjoy the queen of apples." Then, plunging his hand into the basket, he snatched up another, hap-hazard, and began eating it with savage voracity, as if made reckless by this act of self-denial. Re-seating himself as he had chosen his apple, hap-hazard, he missed his chair, and keeled over, bringing his heels in the air where his head should have been, and his head on the rug where the dog and cat were, and the half-munched plug in his mouth, plump into his windpipe, so as to almost strangle him out of his breeches, and cause his buttons to fly like grains from a corn-cob when thrown into a corn-sheller. Of course, all the little folks fairly screamed with laughter, in which even Uncle Juvinell could not help joining right heartily: nor would he venture upon the broad wedge which he had cut out of his apple, till his chuckle was well ended; when he remarked, that "Willie was one of the boys we read about." To which Willie, picking himself up again, replied, that "he rather thought he was not, just then, but perhaps would be as soon as he could get back some of the breath he had lost, and gather up the buttons he had shed." Then, drawing down his waistcoat from under his arm-pits to hide a breadth of white muslin not usually intended for the eyes of a mixed company, he reseated himself with such care and circumspection, that the middle seam of his breeches tallied exactly with the middle round of the chair-back, and began mincing and nibbling his apple delicately like a sheep, as if to show that he meant to profit by the lesson his fit of strangling had taught him.

After a little while, when he saw that the children had had their fill of laughter and red apples, Uncle Juvinell wiped the blade of his knife with his bandanna, and said, "And now, my darlings, don't you think we are getting along swimmingly?"

"Swimmingly!" they all chimed in with one voice.

"Gloriously?" again inquired Uncle Juvinell.

"Gloriously!" cried all the children at once, as pat to their uncle's words as an echo to the sound. Whereupon the old gentleman's spectacles shone with a lustre that was charming to see. In a moment after, however, Bryce, the pugnacious urchin of ten, expressed himself a little disappointed that they had had so much building of forts, and digging and cutting of roads, and so much scouting and marching, and so much getting ready to fight, and yet withal so little downright fighting.

"You quite forget, Bryce, that affair of Grant's defeat there at Fort Duquesne," said Willie. "In my opinion, that was a very decent, respectable piece of bloodshed; and quite as good as Braddock's disaster, as far as it goes."

"How heartless you must be, Willie, to speak so lightly of such horrible things!" exclaimed Miss Laura with a look of refined disgust. "To my mind, Washington's courtship and wedding, and the pleasant life he led at Mount Vernon, are more entertaining than all your dismal battles."

"And those charming barge-rides by moonlight," chimed in Ella, "that the old Virginia planters used to take when they visited each other up and down the Potomac."

"You are welcome to your courtships and your weddings and your boat-rides by moonlight," cried Willie, turning up his nose; "but I would not have given a good fox-hunt with old Lord Fairfax for any of them: and what a glorious fellow Washington must have been, with his fine horses and his fine dogs, and his jumping twenty-one feet seven inches at a bound!"

"Oh, Willie! how can you be so wanting in respect as to call such a man as Washington 'fellow'?" exclaimed Laura, with a look of pious horror. "I am astonished at you!"

"But I said he was glorious; didn't I now, Miss Over-nice?" retorted Willie.

"Your Cousin Laura, William, is quite right in what she says," observed Uncle Juvinell, with something like severity in his look and tone. "We should never speak of the good and great in other terms than those of esteem and reverence; for the effect of such a habit is to cultivate in ourselves those very qualities of mind and heart which make them worthy of our love and admiration."

Willie was somewhat abashed by this mild rebuke, and apologized in a dumb way by coughing a time or two behind his slate.

"Uncle," inquired Ella, "is transcendentalism an art or a science?"