George Washington Part 12

"''Tis well,' said he. About ten minutes before he expired his breathing became much easier; he lay quietly; he withdrew his hand from mine and felt his own pulse. I spoke to Dr. Craik who sat by the fire; he came to the bedside. The General's hand fell from his wrist.

I took it in mine and laid it upon my breast. Dr. Craik put his hand on his eyes and he expired without a struggle or a Sigh! While we were fixed in silent grief, Mrs. Was.h.i.+ngton, who was sitting at the foot of the bed, asked, with a firm and collected voice, 'Is he gone?' I could not speak, but held up my hand as a signal that he was. ''Tis well,'

said she in a plain voice. 'All is now over. I have no more trials to pa.s.s through. I shall soon follow him.'"[1]

[Footnote 1: Ford, XIV, 246-52. I have copied Tobias Lear's remarkable account of Was.h.i.+ngton's death almost verbatim.]

Once read, honest Tobias Lear's account of Was.h.i.+ngton's death will hardly be forgotten. It has a majestic simplicity which we feel must have accompanied Was.h.i.+ngton in his last hours. The homely sick-bed details; his grim fort.i.tude; his willingness to do everything which the physicians recommended, not because he wanted to live, nor because he thought they would help him, but because he wished to obey. We see him there trying to force out the painful words from his constricted throat and when he was unable to whisper even a "thank you" for some service done, Lear read the unuttered grat.i.tude in his eyes. The faithful Lear, lying on the outside of the bed in order to be able to help turn Was.h.i.+ngton with less pain, and poor old Dr. Craik, lifelong friend, who became too moved to speak, so that he sat off near the fire in silence except for a stifled sob, and Mrs. Was.h.i.+ngton, placed near the foot of the bed, waiting patiently in complete self-control.

She seemed to have determined that the last look which her mate of forty years had of her should not portray helpless grief. And from time to time the negro slaves came to the door that led into the entry and they peered into the room very reverently, and with their emotions held in check, at their dying master. And then there was a ceasing of the pain and the breathing became easier and quieter and Dr. Craik placed his hand over the life-tired eyes and Was.h.i.+ngton was dead without a struggle or even a sigh.

The pathos or tragedy of it lies in the fact that all the devices and experiments of the doctors could avail nothing. The quinsy sore throat which killed him could not be cured by any means then known to medical art. The practice of bleeding, which by many persons was thought to have killed him, was then so widely used that his doctors would have been censured If they had omitted it. Sixty years later it was still in use, and no one can doubt that it deprived Italy's great statesman of his chance of living. The premonition of Was.h.i.+ngton on his first seizure with the quinsy that the end had come proved fatally true.

The news of Was.h.i.+ngton's death did not reach the capital until Wednesday, December 18th. The House immediately adjourned. On the following day, when it rea.s.sembled, John Marshall delivered a brief tribute and resolutions were pa.s.sed to attend the funeral and to pay honor "to the memory of the Man, first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen," The immortal phrase was by Colonel Henry Lee, the father of General Robert E. Lee. President Adams, in response to a letter from the Senate of the United States, used the less happy phrase, "If a Trajan found a Pliny, a Marcus Aurelius can never want biographers, eulogists, or historians."

During the days immediately following Was.h.i.+ngton's death, preparations were made at Mount Vernon for the funeral. They sent to Alexandria for a coffin and Dr. d.i.c.k measured the body, which he found to be exactly six feet three and one half inches in length. The family vault was on the slope of the hill, a little to the south of the house. Mrs.

Was.h.i.+ngton desired that a door should be made for the vault instead of having it closed up as formerly, after the body should be deposited, observing that "it will soon be necessary to open it again." Mourning clothes were prepared for the family and servants. The ceremony took place on Wednesday. There were many troops. Eleven pieces of artillery were brought down from Alexandria and a schooner belonging to Mr. R.

Hamilton came down and lay off Mount Vernon to fire minute guns.

The pall-holders were Colonels Little, Charles Sims, Payne, Gilpin, Ramsay, and Marsteller, and Colonel Blackburne walked before the corpse. Colonel Deneal marched with the military. About three o'clock the procession began to move. Colonels Little, Sims and Deneal and Dr. d.i.c.k directed the arrangements of the procession. This moved out through the gate at the left wing of the house and proceeded around in front of the lawn and down to the vault on the right wing of the house. The procession was as follows: The troops; horse and foot; music playing a solemn dirge with m.u.f.fled drums; the clergy, viz.: the Reverends Mr. Davis, Mr. James Miner, and Mr. Moffatt, and Mr.

Addison; the General's horse, with his saddle, holsters, and pistols, led by two grooms, Cyrus and Wilson, in black; the body borne by officers and Masons who insisted upon carrying it to the grave; the princ.i.p.al mourners, viz.: Mrs. Stuart and Mrs. Low, Misses Nancy and Sally Stuart, Miss Fairfax, and Miss Dennison, Mr. Low and Mr. Peter, Dr. Craik and T. Lear; Lord Fairfax and Ferdinando Fairfax; Lodge No.

23; Corporation of Alexandria. All other persons, preceded by Mr.

Anderson, Mr. Rawlins, the Overseers, etc., etc.

The Reverend Mr. Davis read the service and made a short extempore speech. The Masons performed their ceremonies and the body was deposited in the vault. All then returned to the house and partook of some refreshment, and dispersed with the greatest good order and regularity. The remains of the provisions were distributed among the blacks. Mr. Peter, Dr. Craik, and Dr. Thornton tarried here all night.[1]

[Footnote 1: From notes by T. Lear, Ford, XIV, 254-55.]

The Committee appointed by Congress to plan a suitable memorial for Was.h.i.+ngton proposed a monument to be erected in the city of Was.h.i.+ngton, to be adorned with statuary symbolizing his career as General and as President, and containing a tomb for himself and for Mrs. Was.h.i.+ngton. The latter replied to President Adams that "taught by the great example which I have so long had before me, never to oppose my private wishes to the public will, I must consent to the request made by Congress, which you have had the goodness to transmit me, and in doing this, I need not say, I cannot say, what a sacrifice of individual feeling I make to a sense of public duty." The intended monument at the capital was never erected. Martha Was.h.i.+ngton lies beside her husband where she wished to be, in the family vault at Mount Vernon. From her chamber window in the upper story of the Mount Vernon house she could look across the field to the vault. She died in 1802, a woman of rare discretion and good sense who, during forty years, proved herself the worthiest companion of the founder of his country.

I have wished to write this biography of George Was.h.i.+ngton so that it would explain itself. There is no need of eulogy. All eulogy is superfluous. We see the young Virginia boy, born in aristocratic conditions, with but a meagre education, but trained by the sports and rural occupations of his home in perfect manliness, in courage, in self-reliance, in resourcefulness. Some one instilled into him moral precepts which fastened upon his young conscience and would not let him go. At twenty he was physically a young giant capable of enduring any hards.h.i.+p and of meeting any foe. He ran his surveyor's chain far into the wilderness to the west of Mount Vernon. When hardly a man in age, the State of Virginia knew of his qualities and made him an officer in its militia. At only twenty-three he was invited to accompany General Braddock's staff, but neither he nor angels from heaven could prevent Braddock from plunging with typical British bull-headedness into the fatal Indian ambush. He gave up border warfare, but did not cease to condemn the inadequacy of the Virginia military equipment and its training. He devoted himself to the pursuits of a large planter, and on being elected a Burgess, he attended regularly the sessions at Williamsburg. Wild conditions which in his boyhood had reached almost to Fauquier County, had drifted rapidly westward. Within less than ten years of Braddock's defeat, Fort Duquesne had become permanently English and the name of Pittsburgh reminded men of the great British statesman who had urged on the fateful British encroachment on the Ohio River. For Was.h.i.+ngton in person, the lasting effect of the early training and fighting in western Pennsylvania was that it gave him direct knowledge of the Indian and his ways, and that it turned his imagination to thinking out the problem of developing the Middle West, and of keeping the connections between the East and the West strong and open.

In the House of Burgesses Was.h.i.+ngton was a taciturn member, yet he seemed to have got a great deal of political knowledge and wisdom so that his colleagues thought of him as the solid man of the House and they referred many matters to him as if for final decision. He followed political affairs in the newspapers. Above all, at Mount Vernon he heard all sides from the guests who pa.s.sed his domain and enjoyed his hospitality. From the moment that the irritation between Great Britain and the Colonies became bitter he seems to have made up his mind that the contention of the Colonists was just. After that he never wavered, but he was not a sudden or a shallow clamorer for Independence. He believed that the sober second sense of the British would lead them to perceive that they had made a mistake. When at length the Colonies had to provide themselves with an army and to undertake a war, he was the only candidate seriously considered for General, although John Hanc.o.c.k, who had made his peac.o.c.k way so successfully in many walks of life, thought that he alone was worthy of the position. Who shall describe Was.h.i.+ngton's life as Commander-in-Chief of the Colonial forces during the Revolutionary War? What other commander ever had a task like his? For a few weeks the troops led by Napoleon--the barefooted and ragged heroes of Lodi and Arcola and Marengo--were equally dest.i.tute, but victory brought them food and clothes and prosperity. Whereas Was.h.i.+ngton's men had no comfort before victory and none after it.

Some of the military critics to-day deny Was.h.i.+ngton's right to be ranked among the great military commanders of the world, but the truth is that he commanded during nearly eight years and won one of the supreme crucial wars of history against far superior forces. The General who did that was no understrapper. The man whose courage diffused itself among the ten thousand starving soldiers at Valley Forge, and enabled them to endure against the starvation and distress of a winter, may very well fail to be cla.s.sified among the Prince Ruperts and the Marshal Neys of battle, but he ranks first in a higher cla.s.s. His Fabian policy, which troubled so many of his contemporaries, saved the American Revolution. His t.i.tle as General is secure. Nor should we forget that it was his scrupulous patriotism which prevented the cropping out of militarism in this country.

Finally, a country which owed its existence to him chose him to be for eight years its first President. He saw the planting of the roots of the chief organs of its government. In every act he looked far forward into the future. He shunned making or following evil precedents. He endured the most virulent personal abuse that has ever been poured out on American public men, preferring that to using the power which his position gave him, and denaturing the President into a tyrant. Nor should we fail to honor him for his insistence on dignity and a proper respect for his office. His enemies sneered at him for that, but we see plainly how much it meant to this new Nation to have such qualities exemplified. Had Thomas Jefferson been our first President in his _sans-culotte_ days, our Government might not have outlasted the _sans-culottist_ enthusiasts in France. A man is known by his friends. The chosen friends of Was.h.i.+ngton were among the best of his time in America. Hamilton, Henry Knox, Nathanael Greene, John Jay, John Marshall--these were some.

Although Was.h.i.+ngton was less learned than many of the men of his time in political theory and history, he excelled them all in a concrete application of principles. He had the widest acquaintance among men of different sorts. He heard all opinions, but never sacrificed his own.

As I have said earlier, he was the most _actual_ statesman of his time; the people in Virginia came very early to regard him as a man apart; this was true of the later days when the Government sat in New York and Philadelphia. If they sought a reason, they usually agreed that Was.h.i.+ngton excelled by his character, and if you a.n.a.lyze most closely you will never get deeper than that. Reserved he was, and not a loose or glib talker, but he always showed his interest and gave close attention. After Yorktown, when the United States proclaimed to the world that they were an independent Republic, Europe recognized that this was indeed a Republic unlike all those which had preceded it during antiquity and the Middle Age. Foreigners doubted that it could exist. They doubted that Democracy could ever govern a nation. They knew despots, like the Prussian King, Frederic, who walked about the streets of Berlin and used his walking-stick on the cringing persons whom he pa.s.sed on the sidewalk and did not like the looks of. They remembered the crazy Czar, Peter, and they knew about the insane tendencies of the British sovereign, George. The world argued from these and other examples that monarchy was safe; it could not doubt that the supply of monarchs would never give out; but it had no hope of a Republic governed by a President. It was George Was.h.i.+ngton more than any other agency who made the world change its mind and conclude that the best President was the best kind of monarch.

It is reported that after he died many persons who had been his neighbors and acquaintances confessed that they had always felt a peculiar sense of being with a higher sort of person in his presence: a being not superhuman, but far above common men. That feeling will revive in the heart of any one to-day who reads wisely in the fourteen volumes of "Was.h.i.+ngton's Correspondence," in which, as in a mine, are buried the pa.s.sions and emotions from which sprang the American Revolution and the American Const.i.tution. That George Was.h.i.+ngton lived and achieved is the justification and hope of the United States.

THE END