Washington's Birthday

Part 1

Our American Holidays

WASHINGTON'S BIRTHDAY

Its History, Observance, Spirit, and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse, with a Selection from Washington's Speeches and Writings

Edited by

ROBERT HAVEN SCHAUFFLER

New York Dodd, Mead and Company

PREFACE

The popular idea of Washington has recently begun to veer away from the vision of an eighteenth century demigod in a wig,--an old-fashioned statue in dusky bronze, stern and forbidding. We are swinging around toward the idea of a loveable, fallible, very human personality with humor, a hot temper, and a genuine love of pleasure.

Accordingly, in gathering material for this book the editor has passed by those earlier writers who are mainly responsible for this distorted view; and he has aimed to gather here the essays, orations poems, stories, and exercises which best exhibit the modern conception of Washington; together with a selection from his own writings and the finest of the elder tributes to the memory of our greatest National Hero.

NOTE

The Editor and Publishers wish to acknowledge their indebtedness to Houghton, Mifflin & Company; Doubleday, Page & Company; J.B. Lippincott & Co.; Mr. David McKay, John Macy, and others who have very kindly granted permission to reprint selections from works bearing their copyright.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

I THE DAY

WASHINGTON'S BIRTHDAY Oliver Wendell Holmes WASHINGTON'S BIRTHDAY Margaret E. Sangster THE BIRTHDAY OF WASHINGTON Anonymous WASHINGTON'S BIRTHDAY George Howland WASHINGTON AND OUR SCHOOLS AND COLLEGES Charles W. Eliot CROWN OUR WASHINGTON Hezekiah Butterworth WASHINGTON-MONTH Will Carleton

II EARLY YEARS

A GLIMPSE OF WASHINGTON'S BIRTHPLACE Grace B. Johnson SOMETHING OF GEORGE WASHINGTON'S BOYHOOD Anonymous WASHINGTON'S TRAINING Charles Wentworth Upham WASHINGTON AS HE LOOKED

III THE GENERAL

WASHINGTON IS APPOINTED COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF Sydney George Fisher WASHINGTON AT TRENTON Richard Watson Gilder GEORGE WASHINGTON VALLEY FORGE Henry Armitt Brown WASHINGTON AT VALLEY FORGE Canon R.G. Sutherland A FRENCHMAN'S ESTIMATE OF WASHINGTON IN 1781 Claude C. Robin

IV THE PRESIDENT

WASHINGTON AND THE CONSTITUTION John M. Harlan WASHINGTON'S ADMINISTRATION Edward S. Ellis WASHINGTON Mary Wingate WASHINGTON'S INAUGURATION Edward Everett Hale WASHINGTONIANA LESSONS FROM THE WASHINGTON CENTENNIAL George A. Gordon PRESIDENT WASHINGTON'S RECEPTIONS William Sullivan THE FOREIGN POLICY OF WASHINGTON Charles James Fox

V LAST DAYS

GEORGE WASHINGTON Hamilton Wright Mabie WASHINGTON'S LAST DAYS Elisabeth Eggleston Seelye THE MOUNT VERNON TRIBUTE THE WORDS OF WASHINGTON Daniel Webster

VI TRIBUTES

MEMORIALS OF WASHINGTON Henry B. Carrington FROM THE "COMMEMORATION ODE" Harriet Monroe WASHINGTON'S STATUE Henry Theodore Tuckerman TRIBUTES WASHINGTON'S NAME IN THE HALL OF FAME Margaret E. Sangster ESTIMATES OF WASHINGTON WASHINGTON'S RELIGIOUS CHARACTER William M'Kinley WASHINGTON Anonymous

VII WASHINGTON'S PLACE IN HISTORY

THE HIGHEST PEDESTAL William E. Gladstone WASHINGTON IN HISTORY Chauncey M. Depew TO THE SHADE OF WASHINGTON Richard Alsop THE MAJESTIC EMINENCE OF WASHINGTON Chauncey M. Depew FOR A LITTLE PUPIL Anonymous WASHINGTON'S FAME Asher Robbins WASHINGTON, THE BRIGHTEST NAME ON HISTORY'S PAGE Eliza Cook WASHINGTON, THE PATRIOT

VIII THE WHOLE MAN

Part 2

GEORGE WASHINGTON John Hall Ingham HISTORICAL MEMORABILIA OF WASHINGTON H.B. Carrington A BIRD'S-EYE VIEW OF WASHINGTON Henry Mitchell MacCracken THE CHARACTER OF WASHINGTON Daniel Webster MOUNT VERNON, THE HOME OF WASHINGTON William Day THE UNSELFISHNESS OF WASHINGTON Robert Treat Paine THE GENIUS OF WASHINGTON Edwin P. Whipple WASHINGTON'S SERVICE TO EDUCATION Charles W.E. Chapin ADDRESS AT THE DEDICATION OF THE WASHINGTON MONUMENT John W. Daniel THE CHARACTER OF WASHINGTON Henry Cabot Lodge

IX ANECDOTES AND STORIES

ANECDOTES OF WASHINGTON THE ABUSE OF WASHINGTON Thomas Wentworth Higginson PROVIDENTIAL EVENTS IN THE LIFE OF WASHINGTON Irving Allen CHARACTERISTICS OF WASHINGTON GREAT GEORGE WASHINGTON Kate Douglas Wiggin and Nora A. Smith HEADQUARTERS IN 1776 Paul Leicester Ford

X SELECTIONS FROM WASHINGTON'S SPEECHES AND WRITINGS

SELECTIONS FROM THE RULES OF CIVILITY SAID BY WASHINGTON WASHINGTON BEFORE THE BATTLE OF LONG ISLAND, AUGUST, 1776 FROM VARIOUS LETTERS, SPEECHES, AND ADDRESSES WASHINGTON'S FAREWELL TO THE ARMY PRESIDENT WASHINGTON'S RESPONSE TO THE FRENCH AMBASSADOR ON RECEIPT OF THE COLORS OF FRANCE, 1769 WASHINGTON'S FAREWELL ADDRESS

XI EXERCISES

DECORATIONS FOR WASHINGTON'S BIRTHDAY EXERCISES SOME YEARS IN WASHINGTON'S LIFE M. Lizzie Stanley SOMETHING BETTER Clara J. Denton THE STATES CROWNING WASHINGTON Kate Bowles Sherwood THE NEW GEORGE WASHINGTON Anonymous IN PRAISE OF WASHINGTON

INTRODUCTION

A good deal of American history was once violently distorted by the partisanship of the eighteenth century, frozen solid by its icy formalism, and left thus for the edification of succeeding generations. For example, it was not until 1868 that Franklin's Autobiography was by accident given to the world in the simple natural style in which he wrote it. The book had been "edited" by Franklin's loyalist grandson, and had been cut and tortured into the pompous, stilted periods that were supposed to befit the dignity of so important a personage. When John Bigelow published the original with all its naïveté and homely turns of phrases and suppressed passages, he shed a flood of light upon Benjamin Franklin.

But not such a flood as has still more recently been shed upon our struggle for independence, and the hero who led it.

Mr. Sydney George Fisher has shown how the history of the Revolution has been garbled by the historians into the story of a struggle between a villainous monster on the one hand, and a virtuous fairy on the other: He has shown how a period that is said to have changed the thought of the world like the epochs of Socrates, of Christ, of the Reformation, and of the French Revolution, has been described in a series of "able rhetorical efforts, enlarged Fourth-of-July orations, or pleasing literary essays on selected phases of the contest." These writers have ignored the fearful struggle of the patriots with the loyalists, the early leniency of England as expressed in the conduct of General Howe, the Clinton-Cornwallis controversy, and many other important subjects. In short, their design was--as Mr. Wister has happily put it, "to leave out any facts which spoil the political picture of the Revolution they chose to paint for our edification; a ferocious, blood-shot tyrant on the one side, and on the other a compact band of 'Fathers,' downtrodden and martyred, yet with impeccable linen and bland legs."

In view of this state of affairs, it is not strange that Washington should have shared in the general misrepresentation. Like Franklin's, his writings, too, were altered by villainous editors. In his letters, for example, such a natural phrase as "one hundred thousand dollars will be but a flea-bite" was changed to "one hundred thousand dollars will be totally inadequate."

The editors were aided in their refrigerating enterprise by a throng of partisan biographers, first among whom was the Rev. Mr. Weems, that arch-manipulator of facts for moral purposes. They were helped also by many of our old sculptors and painters, who were evidently more concerned to portray a grand American hero in a wig than to give us a real man of flesh and blood.

"By such devices," writes Owen Wister, "was a frozen image of George Washington held up for Americans to admire, rigid with congealed virtue, ungenial, unreal, to whom from our school-days up we have been paying a sincere and respectful regard, but a regard without interest, sympathy, heart--or, indeed, belief. It thrills a true American to the marrow to learn at last that this far-off figure, this George Washington, this man of patriotic splendor, the captain and savior of our Revolution, the self-sacrificing and devoted President, was a man also with a hearty laugh, with a love of the theater, with a white-hot temper ... a constant sportsman, fox-hunter, and host...."

"The unfreezing of Washington was begun by Irving, but was in that day a venture so new and startling, that Irving, gentleman and scholar, went at it gingerly and with many inferential deprecations. His hand, however, first broke the ice, and to-day we can see the live and human Washington, full length. He does not lose an inch by it, and we gain a progenitor of flesh and blood."

Since Irving the thawing process has been carried on with growing success by such able biographers as Lodge and Scudder, Hapgood and Ford, Woodrow Wilson, Owen Wister, and Frederick Trevor Hill.

As yet this new idea of Washington's essential humanity has seemed too novel and startling to make its way deep into the popular conviction. I say "new idea." In reality it is a very old idea; only it has been smothered by the partisan writers of history and biography. Certainly the accounts of the first celebrations of Washington's Birthday do not sound as though our ancestors were trying to work up their enthusiasm over a steel-engraving hero.

"It was the most natural thing," writes Walsh, "for our forefathers to choose Washington's Birthday as a time for general thanksgiving and rejoicing, and it is interesting to note that the observance was not delayed until after the death of Washington. Washington had the satisfaction of receiving the congratulations of his fellow-citizens many times upon the return of his birthday, frequently being a guest at the banquets given in honor of the occasion. In fact, after the Revolution, Washington's Birthday practically took the place of the birthday of the various crowned heads of Great Britain, which had always been celebrated with enthusiasm during colonial times. When independence was established, all these royal birthdays were cast aside, and the birthday of Washington naturally became one of the most conspicuous in the calendar of America's holidays.

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