up standing armies; that the invasion of the colonies with large armaments by sea and land was a style of asking gifts not reconcilable to freedom; that the resolution did not propose to the colonies to lay open a free trade with all the world; that, as it involved the interest of all the other colonies, they were bound in honor to share one fate with them; that the bill of Lord Chatham on the one part, and the terms of congress on the other, would have formed a basis for negotiation and a reconciliation; that, leaving the final determination of the question to the general congress, they will weary the king with no more petitions, the British nation with no more appeals." "What, then," they ask, "remains to be done?" and they answer: "We commit our injuries to the justice of the even-handed Being who doth no wrong."

"In my life," said Shelburne, "I was never more pleased with a state paper than with the assembly of Virginia's discussion of Lord North's proposition. It is masterly." At Versailles, Vergennes was equally attracted by its wisdom and dignity; he particularly noticed the insinuation that a compromise might be effected on the basis of the modification of the navigation acts; and, as he saw many ways opened of settling every difficulty, it was long before he could persuade himself that the British ministry was so infatuated as to neglect them all. From Williamsburg, Jefferson repaired to Philadelphia; but, before he arrived there, decisive communications had been received from Massachusetts.

That colony still languished in anarchy, from which they were ready to relieve themselves, if they could but wring the consent of the continental congress to their "taking up and exercising the powers of civil government." The congress of Massachusetts further invited the general congress "to assume the regulation and direction of the army, then collecting from different colonies for the defence of the rights of America." In the same moment Samuel Adams received a private letter from Joseph Warren, interpreting the words as a request that the continent should "take the command of the army by appointing Washington as its generalissimo.” The bearer of the letter had hardly finished his commission of explaining more fully the wishes of Massachusetts, when

an express arrived with the news that Howe and Clinton and Burgoyne had landed in Boston; that British re-enforcements were arriving; that other parts of the continent were threatened with war. A letter received from the congress of New Hampshire intimated that "the voice of God and nature" was summoning the colonies to independence.

On the earliest occasion John Adams explained the composition and character of the New England army, its merits and its wants, the necessity of its being adopted by the continent, and the consequent propriety that congress should name its general. Then, speaking for his constituents, he pointed out George Washington as the man above all others fitted for that station, and best able to promote union. Samuel Adams seconded his colleague. The delegates from the Ancient Dominion, especially Pendleton, Washington's personal friend, disclaimed any wish that the Massachusetts commander should be superseded by a Virginian, and from delicacy declined the nomination of their own colleague. Washington himself had never aspired to the honor, though for some time he had been "apprehensive that he could not avoid the appointment."

The balloting for officers was delayed, that the members from New York might consult their congress on the nominations from that colony.

With an empire to found and to defend, congress had not as yet had the disposal of one penny of money. In the urgency of extreme distress, they undertook to borrow six thousand pounds, to be applied to the purchase of gunpowder for what was now for the first time called THE CONTINENTAL ARMY.

In the arrangement of its committees and the distribution of business, its policy was an armed defence, while waiting for a further answer from the king. On the seventh of June one of its resolutions spoke of "the Twelve United Colonies," Georgia being not yet included; and the name implied an independent nation; but on the eighth it recommended to Massachusetts not to elect a governor of their own, but to intrust the executive power to the elective council "until a governor of the king's appointment would consent to govern the colony according to its charter."

The twelfth of June is a memorable day, for it brought

into the clearest light the difference between the dispositions of America and of the British government. On that day Gage established martial law throughout Massachusetts and by public proclamation proscribed Samuel Adams and John Hancock, reserving them for condign punishment as rebels and traitors, in terms which included as their abettors not only all who should remain in arms about Boston, but every member of the Massachusetts government and of the continental congress.

On the twelfth of June the general congress made its first appeal to the people of the twelve united colonies by enjoining them to keep a fast on one and the same day, on which they were to recognise "King George III. as their rightful sovereign, and to look up to the great Governor of the world for the restoration of the invaded rights of America and a reconciliation with the parent state."

Measures were next taken for organizing and paying an American continental army. At that moment troops might without effort have been enlisted for the war; congress, with want of foresight, ordered them to be enlisted only till the end of the year, before which time a favorable answer from the king was hoped for. Washington, Schuyler, and others, were deputed to prepare the necessary rules and regulations. It was further resolved to enlist six companies of expert riflemen in Pennsylvania, two in Maryland, and two in Virginia; and, on the fifteenth of June, it was voted to appoint a general. Thomas Johnson of Maryland nominated George Washington; and he was elected by ballot unanimously.

Washington was then forty-three years of age. In stature he a little exceeded six feet; his limbs were sinewy and wellproportioned; his chest broad; his figure stately, blending dignity of presence with ease. His robust constitution had been tried and invigorated by his early life in the wilderness, the habit of occupation out of doors, and rigid temperance; so that few equalled him in strength of arm, or power of endurance, or noble horsemanship. His complexion was florid; his hair dark brown; his head in its shape perfectly round. His broad nostrils seemed formed to give escape to scornful anger. The lines of his eyebrows were long and finely arched. His dark blue eyes, which were deeply set, had an expression of

resignation, and an earnestness that was almost pensiveness. His forehead was sometimes marked with thought, but never with inquietude; his countenance was pleasing and full of benignity.

At eleven years old left to the care of an excellent but unlettered mother, he grew up without learning. Of arithmetic and geometry he acquired just knowledge enough to be able to practice measuring land; but all his instruction at school taught him not so much as the orthography or rules of grammar of his own tongue. His culture was altogether his own work; yet from his early life he never seemed uneducated. At sixteen he went into the wilderness as a surveyor, and for three years continued the pursuit, where the forests trained. him, in meditative solitude, to freedom and largeness of mind; and nature revealed to him her obedience to serene and silent laws. In his intervals from toil he seemed always to be attracted to the society of the best men, and to be cherished by them. Fairfax, his employer, an Oxford scholar, already aged, became his fast friend. He read little, but with close attention. Whatever he took in hand he applied himself to with care; and his papers, which have been preserved, show how he almost imperceptibly gained the power of writing correctly, always expressing himself with clearness and directness, often with a happy choice of language and with grace.

When the frontiers on the West became disturbed, he at nineteen was commissioned an adjutant-general with the rank of major. At twenty-one he went as the envoy of Virginia to the council of Indian chiefs on the Ohio, and to the French officers near Lake Erie. Fame waited upon him from his youth; and no one of his colony was so much spoken of. He conducted the first military expedition from Virginia that crossed the Alleghanies. Braddock selected him as an aid, and he was the only man who came out of the disastrous defeat near the Monongahela with increased reputation, which extended to England. The next year, when he was but four-andtwenty, "the great esteem" in which he was held in Virginia, and his "real merit," led the lieutenant-governor of Maryland to request that he might be "commissioned and appointed second in command" of the army designed to march to the

Ohio; and Shirley, the commander-in-chief, heard the proposal "with great satisfaction and pleasure," for "he knew no provincial officer upon the continent to whom he would so readily give that rank as to Washington." In 1758 he acted under Forbes as a brigadier, and but for him that general would never have crossed the mountains.

Courage was so natural to him that it was hardly spoken of; no one ever at any moment of his life discovered in him the least shrinking in danger; and he had a hardihood of daring which escaped notice, because it was enveloped by calmness and wisdom.

All agree that he was most amiable. His address was most easy and agreeable, his step firm and graceful, his air neither grave nor familiar. He was as cheerful as he was spirited, frank and communicative in the society of friends, fond of the fox-chase and the dance, often sportive in his letters, and he liked a hearty laugh. "His smile," writes Chastellux, “was always the smile of benevolence." This joyousness of disposition remained to the last, though the vastness of his responsibilities was soon to take from him the right of displaying the impulsive qualities of his nature, and the weight which he was to bear was to overlay and repress his gayety and

openness.

His hand was liberal, giving quietly and without observation, as though he was ashamed of nothing but being discovered in doing good. He was kindly and compassionate, and of lively sensibility to the sorrows of others; so that, if his country had only needed a victim for its relief, he would have willingly offered himself as a sacrifice. But while he was prodigal of himself, he was ever parsimonious of the blood of his countrymen.

He was in his own right possessed of an independent and affluent fortune, which he managed with prudent care; but, as a public man, he knew no other aim than the good of his country, and in the hour of his country's poverty he refused personal emolument for his service.

His faculties were so well balanced and combined that his constitution, free from excess, was tempered evenly with all the elements of activity, and his mind resembled a well-ordered