Washington's Birthday Part 21

The most beautiful spectacle I had ever beheld was the display of the British troops on that eventful morning.... The sun gleamed from their burnished arms, the river flowed tranquilly on their right, and the deep forest overshadowed them with solemn grandeur on the left.

_Braddock's Defeat_

It is needless to repeat here the tale of that day of defeat and slaughter. Historians have recorded its events, and poets have sung its story. Throughout the action Was.h.i.+ngton was in the thickest of the fight. "I expected every moment to see him fall," wrote Dr. Craik, his physician and friend. It was during this disastrous battle that Was.h.i.+ngton escaped perhaps the most imminent peril of his life. In company with Dr. Craik, in the year 1770, he descended the Ohio River on a journey of observation to the Great Kanawha, and it was there that an incident occurred, which is thus described by Irving:

Here Was.h.i.+ngton was visited by an old sachem, who approached him with great reverence and addressed him through Nicholson, the interpreter. He had come, he said, a great distance to see him. On further discourse, the sachem made known that he was one of the warriors in the service of the French, who lay in ambush on the banks of the Monongahela, and wrought such havoc to Braddock's army. He declared that he and his young men had singled out Was.h.i.+ngton, as he made himself conspicuous riding about the field of battle with the General's orders, and fired at him repeatedly, but without success; whence they concluded that he was under the protection of the Great Spirit, that he had a charmed life, and could not be slain in battle.

Was.h.i.+ngton himself wrote thus to his brother:

By all the powerful dispensations of Providence, I have been protected beyond all human probability and expectations; for I had four bullets through my coat and two horses shot under me; yet I escaped unhurt, although death was leveling my companions on every side.

His marvelous preservation was the subject of general remark; Mr.

Davies, later President of Princeton College, used these words in an address a few weeks after the Braddock defeat:

That heroic youth, Colonel Was.h.i.+ngton, whom I cannot but hope Providence has. .h.i.therto preserved in so signal a manner for some important service to his country.

_Escape from a Marriage_

The next apparently providential intervention in the affairs of the hero of the Revolution is connected with very different scenes from those of battle and carnage; it may, perhaps, be fairly described as a narrow escape from a marriage which, while it might have proved a happy alliance in so far as Was.h.i.+ngton himself was concerned, would almost certainly have resulted in the loss of his inestimable services to his country.

Was.h.i.+ngton's attachment to Mary Philipse is a fact beyond reasonable question; his offer of marriage to that young lady is somewhat traditional. It is certain, however, that during his necessary absence on military duty, Captain Morris, his a.s.sociate aide-de-camp in the Monongahela engagement, became a successful suitor for the hand of Miss Philipse.

What is far less generally known is the fact that, had Was.h.i.+ngton been successful in his early matrimonial aspirations, he would certainly have remained a loyal adherent of the royal cause, and would thus have been lost to his native land. Evidences of the justice of this theory are by no means lacking. The relatives and friends of the lady were nearly all devoted to the cause of England; Was.h.i.+ngton was the a.s.sociate of many of them; and Captain Morris, his successful rival, remained in the British service during his life. There can be, I think, little doubt that, in the event of his marriage with Miss Philipse, Was.h.i.+ngton, like Captain Morris, would have returned to England and been forever lost to America. Mrs. Morris survived her ill.u.s.trious admirer twenty-five years, dying about the year 1825.

_Was.h.i.+ngton Unrewarded_

A striking historical fact,--as strange as it is authentic--is the treatment of Was.h.i.+ngton by the English Government after the death of Braddock. Had General Braddock survived his terrible misfortune the result might well have been very different; for it is matter of history that the youthful officer had the undivided confidence of his commander.

But by the British Ministry, and even by the King himself, the young hero of the fatal battle was treated with scarcely disguised contempt and neglect.

In a letter to the British War Minister, Governor Dinwiddie speaks of Colonel Was.h.i.+ngton as a man of great merit and resolution, adding:

I am confident, that, if General Braddock had lived, he would have recommended him to the royal favor, which I beg your interest in recommending.

The sole results were a half-rebuke from the King, and a malicious fling from the lips of Horace Walpole. For more than three years Was.h.i.+ngton labored incessantly, by personal effort and by means of influential intercessors, to secure a royal commission.

In view of what the world knows now of Was.h.i.+ngton's well-nigh matchless ability as a soldier, and remembering especially the reputation he had already acquired--amazing in so youthful an officer--his persistent neglect by the military authorities "at home," and particularly the stubborn and doltish determination on the part of the King to ignore the man and his almost unexampled services, suggests the theory that the heart of King George, of England, was as truly and providentially "hardened" as was that of his royal prototype, Pharaoh, of ancient times. For, finding that all his efforts were ineffectual and believing that the chief object of the war was attained by the capture of Fort Duquesne, and the final defeat of the French on the Ohio, the young hero retired after five years of arduous and ill-requited service, in the words of a great writer of our own land and time:

The youthful idol of his countrymen, but without so much as a civil word from the fountain of honor. And so, when after seventeen years of private life he next appeared in arms, it was as the "Commander-in-Chief of the Army of the United Colonies, and of all the forces now raised, or to be raised by them."

The same writer elsewhere remarks:

Such was the policy by which the Horse Guards occasionally saved a Major's commission for a fourth son of a Duke, by which the Crown lost a continent; and the people of the United States gained a place in the family of nations. The voice of history cries aloud to powerful Governments, in the administration of their colonies: "Discite just.i.tiam moniti."

_A Furious Conflict_

The last of the six marvelous escapes of our hero from impending and fatal disaster occurred during the historic night march of Was.h.i.+ngton and the American Army on Princeton, where, on the third of January, 1776, he compa.s.sed the entire destruction of one regiment of the enemy, and captured or forced to ign.o.ble retreat two others. This battle was the subject of one of Colonel Trumbull's most famous paintings; and it was during this engagement--as Was.h.i.+ngton himself told the ill.u.s.trious artist--that he was in greater peril than even at the time of Braddock's defeat.

In the height of the battle the two armies were for a brief season in furious conflict, and Was.h.i.+ngton between them within range of both fires. Was.h.i.+ngton Irving writes:

His Aide, Colonel Fitzgerald, losing sight of him in the heat of the fight when enveloped in smoke and dust, dropped the bridle on the neck of his horse and drew his hat over his eyes, giving him up for lost. When he saw him, however, emerging from the cloud, waving his hat, and beheld the enemy giving way, he spurred up to his side: "Thank G.o.d," cried he, "your Excellency is safe!" "Away, my dear Colonel, and bring up the troops," was Was.h.i.+ngton's reply; "the day is our own."

Trumbull's immortal picture shows us the hero of that decisive battle standing on the memorable day of Princeton by the side of his white war-horse. Says an eloquent writer:

Well might he exult in the event of the day, for it was the last of a series of bold and skilful manoeuvres and successful actions, by which, in three weeks, he had rescued Philadelphia, driven the enemy from the banks of the Delaware, recovered the State of New Jersey, and, at the close of a disastrous campaign, restored hope and confidence to the country.

Such are the six memorable events which it well becomes the American people to recall with devout grat.i.tude and awe, realizing anew the Providence that watches alike over human beings and the affairs of nations, and recognizing the solemn truth that ever, as, signally, in those times that tried the souls of men,

"G.o.d fulfills Himself in many ways."

CHARACTERISTICS OF WAs.h.i.+NGTON

_Von Braam and Was.h.i.+ngton_

Was.h.i.+ngton began to be a soldier in his boyhood. During the British campaign against the West Indies, Lawrence Was.h.i.+ngton, George's half-brother, made the acquaintance of a Dutchman, named Jacob von Braam, who afterwards came to Virginia. These young men were great heroes to the ten-year-old George. Von Braam took the lad in hand and began his military education. He drilled him in the manual of arms and sword exercise, and taught him fortification and engineering. All the theory of war which Was.h.i.+ngton knew was gained from von Braam; the practice he was soon to gain in the field.

_Was.h.i.+ngton's Athletic Skill_

Many stories are told which show Was.h.i.+ngton's athletic skill. During a surveying expedition he first visited the Natural Bridge, in Virginia.

Standing almost directly under it, he tossed a stone on top, a distance of about two hundred feet. He scaled the rocks and carved his name far above all others. He was said to be the only man who could throw a stone across the Potomac River. Was.h.i.+ngton was never more at home than when in the saddle. "The general is a very excellent and bold horseman," wrote a contemporary, "leaping the highest fences and going extremely quick, without standing on his stirrups, bearing on his bridle, or letting his horse run wild."

After his first battle Was.h.i.+ngton wrote to his brother, "I heard the bullets whistle about me, and, believe me, there is something charming in the sound." But years after, when he had learned all there was to know of the horrors of war, he said, sadly, "I said that when I was young."

_Punctuality_

Punctuality was one of Was.h.i.+ngton's strong points. When company was invited to dinner, he made an allowance of only five minutes for variation in watches. If the guests came late he would say: "We are too punctual for you. I have a cook who does not ask if the company has come, but if the hour has come."

In a letter to a friend he wrote: "I begin my diurnal course with the sun; if my hirelings are not in their places by that time I send them messages of sorrow for their indisposition."

A letter to his sister, Betty, shows his businesslike manner: "If your son Howell is with you and not usefully employed in your own affairs, and should incline to spend a few months with me in my office as a writer (if he is fit for it), I will allow him at the rate of 300 a year, provided he is diligent in discharging the duties of it from breakfast till dinnertime.... I am particular in declaring beforehand what I require, so that there may be no disappointment or false expectations on either side."

_His Stepchildren_

Was.h.i.+ngton's relations with his stepchildren show a very pleasant side of his character. We find him ordering from London such articles as "10 s.h.i.+llings' worth of toys, 6 little books for children beginning to read, 1 fas.h.i.+onable-dressed baby to cost 10 s.h.i.+llings, and a box of gingerbread toys and sugar images, or comfits." Later he sent for "1 very good spinet," for Patsey, as Martha Parke Custis was called.

His niece, Hariot, who lived in the Was.h.i.+ngton home from 1785 to 1796, was a great trial to him. "She has," he wrote, "no disposition to be careful of her clothes, which she dabs about in every hole and corner, and her best things always in use, so that she costs me enough."

One of the characteristics of a truly great man is his readiness to ask pardon. Once when Nelly Custis, Mrs. Was.h.i.+ngton's granddaughter, was severely reprimanded for walking alone by moonlight in the grounds of Mount Vernon, Was.h.i.+ngton tried to intercede for the girl.

"Perhaps she was not alone; I would say no more," he said.

"Sir," said Nelly Custis, "you have brought me up to speak the truth, and when I told grandmamma that I was alone, I hoped that you would believe me."

"My child," said Was.h.i.+ngton, bowing in his courtly fas.h.i.+on, "I beg your pardon."