Part 2 (1/2)

[Ill.u.s.tration: Mount Vernon (rear view).]

His first care, on arriving at Mount Vernon, was to ascertain the condition of his private affairs; his next to make a tour of more than six hundred miles through the western country, with the double purpose of inspecting some lands of his, and of ascertaining the practicability of a communication between the head waters of the great rivers flowing east and west of the Alleghanies. He travelled entirely on horseback, in military style, and kept a minute journal of each day's observations, the result of which he communicated, on his return, in a letter to the Governor of Virginia, which Mr. Sparks declares to be ”one of the ablest, most sagacious, and most important productions of his pen,” and ”the first suggestion of the great system of internal improvements which has since been pursued in the United States.” On a previous tour, through the northern part of the State of New-York, he had observed the possibility of a water communication between the Hudson and the Great Lakes, and appreciated its advantages, thus foreshowing, at that early date, the existence of the Erie Ca.n.a.l. In 1784, Was.h.i.+ngton had a final visit from Lafayette, from whom he parted at Annapolis, with manifestations of a deeper tenderness than the weak can even know.

Arrived at home, he sat down at once to say yet another word to the beloved: ”In the moment of our separation, upon the road as I travelled, and every hour since,” (mark the specification from this man of exact truth,) ”I have felt all that love, respect and attachment for you, with which length of years, close connection, and your merits have inspired me. I often asked myself, as our carriages separated, whether that was the last sight I should ever have of you? And though I wished to say No!

my fears answered Yes!” He was right; they never met again, but they loved each other always. Lafayette's letters to Was.h.i.+ngton are lover-like; they are alone sufficient to show how capable of the softest feeling was the great heart to which they were addressed.

s.p.a.ce fails us for even the baldest enumeration of the instances of care for the public good with which the life of Was.h.i.+ngton abounded, when he fancied himself ”in retirement,” for we have unconsciously dwelt, with the reverence of affection, upon the picture of his character during the Revolution, and felt impelled to ill.u.s.trate it, where we could, by quotations from his own weighty words; weighty, because, to him, words were things indeed, and we feel that he never used one thoughtlessly or untruly. Brevity must now be our chief aim, and we pa.s.s, at once, over all the labor and anxiety which attended the settlement of the Const.i.tution, to mention the election of Was.h.i.+ngton to the Presidency of the States so newly united, by bonds which, however willingly a.s.sumed, were as yet but ill fitted to the wearers. The unaffected reluctance with which he accepted the trust appears in every word and action of the time; and it is evident that, as far as selfish feelings went, he was much more afraid of losing the honor he had gained than of acquiring new. The heart of the nation was with him, however, even more than he knew; and the ”mind oppressed with more anxious and painful sensations”

than he had words to express at the outset, was soon calmed, not only by the suggestions of duty, but by the marks of unbounded love and confidence lavished on him at every step of his way by a grateful people. The Inaugural Oath was taken, before an immense concourse of people, on the balcony of Federal Hall, New-York, April 30, 1789, and the President afterwards delivered his first Address, in the Senate Chamber of the same building, now no longer standing, but not very satisfactorily replaced by that magnificent Grecian temple wherein the United States Government collects the Customs of New-York. The house in which the first Presidential levee was held will always be a point of interest, and the consultations between Was.h.i.+ngton and the great officers of state about the simple ceremonial of these public receptions, are extremely curious, as showing the manners and ideas of the times, and the struggle between the old-country a.s.sociations natural to gentlemen of that day, and the recognized necessity of accommodating even court regulations to the feelings of a people to whom the least shadow of aristocratic form was necessarily hateful. We must not condemn the popular scrupulousness of 1789 as puerile and foolish, until we too have perilled life and fortune in the cause of liberty and equality.

[Ill.u.s.tration: House of the First Presidential Levee, Cherry street]

A dangerous illness brought Was.h.i.+ngton near the grave, during his first Presidential summer, and he is said never to have regained his full strength. In August his mother died, venerable for years and wisdom, and always honored by her son in a spirit that would have satisfied a Roman matron. She maintained her simple habits to the last, and is said never to have exhibited surprise or elation, at her son's greatest glory, or the highest honors that could be paid him. Her remains rest under an unfinished monument, near Fredericksburgh, Virginia.

Of the wife of the ill.u.s.trious Chief, it is often said that little is known, and there is felt almost a spite against her memory because she destroyed before her death every letter of her husband to herself, save only one, written when he accepted the post of Commander-in-Chief. But, to our thinking, one single letter of hers, written to Mrs. Warren, after the President's return from a tour through the eastern States, tells the whole story of her character and tastes, a story by no means discreditable to the choice of the wisest of mankind. Mr. Sparks gives the letter entire, as we would gladly do if it were admissible. We must, however, content ourselves with a few short extracts:--

”You know me well enough to believe that I am fond only of what comes from the heart. Under a conviction that the demonstrations of respect and affection to him originate in that source, I cannot deny that I have taken some interest and pleasure in them. The difficulties which presented themselves to view in his first entering upon the Presidency, seem thus to be in some measure surmounted. * * * I had little thought, when the war was finished, that any circ.u.mstances could possibly happen which would call the General into public life again. I had antic.i.p.ated that from that moment we should be suffered to grow old together, in solitude and tranquillity. That was the first and dearest wish of my heart. I will not, however, contemplate with too much regret, disappointments that were inevitable, though his feelings and my own were in perfect unison with respect to our predilection for private life. Yet I cannot blame him for having acted according to his ideas of duty, in obeying the voice of his country. The consciousness of having attempted to do all the good in his power, and the pleasure of finding his fellow-citizens so well satisfied with the disinterestedness of his conduct, will doubtless be some compensation for the great sacrifice I know he has made. * * * With respect to myself, I sometimes think the arrangement is not quite as it ought to have been, that I, who had much rather be at home, should occupy a place with which a great many younger and gayer women would be extremely pleased. * * * I am still determined to be cheerful and happy, in whatever situation I may be; for I have learned from experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions and not on our circ.u.mstances. We carry the seeds of the one or the other about with us, in our minds, wherever we go.” The whole letter bespeaks the good, kind, dutiful and devoted wife, the loving mother,--for she represents her grandchildren as her chief joy,--and the sensible, domestic woman. What more can any man ask in the partner of his bosom? She was the best wife possible for Was.h.i.+ngton, and he thought her such, and loved her entirely and always. The picture by Stuart shows her, even in the decline of life, to have been of a delicate and sprightly beauty.

Another eight years of public duty and public life--two presidential terms--were bravely borne by the pair always longing for Mount Vernon.

The reluctance of Was.h.i.+ngton to the second term of office was even stronger than that which he had expressed to the first, but he was overborne by stress of voices. ”The confidence of the whole Union,”

writes Jefferson, ”is centred in you. * * * There is sometimes an eminence of character on which society have such peculiar claims, as to control the predilection of the individual for a particular walk of happiness, and restrain him to that alone arising from the present and future benedictions of mankind. This seems to be your condition, and the law imposed on you by Providence in forming your character, and fas.h.i.+oning the events on which it was to operate.” And Hamilton says--”I trust, and I pray G.o.d, that you will determine to make a further sacrifice of your tranquillity and happiness to the public good.” And such were, throughout, the sentiments of the first men of the country, without distinction of politics. Thus urged, he yielded once more, even after he had prepared a farewell address to the people on his contemplated resignation.

It was during this second term that Fox spoke of Was.h.i.+ngton before Parliament, concluding thus:--”It must indeed create astonishment, that, placed in circ.u.mstances so critical, and filling for a series of years a station so conspicuous, his character should never once have been called in question. * * * For him it has been reserved to run the race of glory without experiencing the smallest interruption to the brilliancy of his career.” And Mr. Erskine, writing to Was.h.i.+ngton himself, says:--”I have taken the liberty to introduce your august and immortal name in a short sentence which will be found in the book I send you.[1] I have a large acquaintance among the most valuable and exalted cla.s.ses of men; but you are the only human being for whom I ever felt an awful reverence. I sincerely pray G.o.d to grant a long and serene evening to a life so gloriously devoted to the universal happiness of the world.”

The evening was indeed serene, but it was not destined to be long. Two years were spent in domestic and social duty and pleasure, the old Virginia hospitality being carried to an enormous extent at Mount Vernon, over which General and Mrs. Was.h.i.+ngton presided, with all that good sense, dignity, and _bonhommie_ united, which seems now to have characterized their home life. Mrs. Was.h.i.+ngton, content with the greatness described by the wise king, looked well to her maidens, and so managed the affairs of a large establishment that ”the heart of her husband could safely trust in her, so that he had _no need of spoil_.”

Who knows how much the good management of his household affairs had to do with Was.h.i.+ngton's superiority to the temptations of gain? The ladies should see to it that they so regulate their habits of expense that their husbands have ”no need of spoil.” The extravagant tastes of Mrs.

Arnold, amiable woman though she was, are known to have heightened her husband's rapacity, and thus added to the incentives which resulted in treason and just ruin. Mrs. Was.h.i.+ngton, when she was in the highest position in the nation, wore gowns spun under her own roof, and always took care, in her conversation with the ladies about her, to exalt domestic employments, and represent them as belonging to the duty of woman in any station. She was supposed to have written a patriotic paper, published in 1780, called ”The Sentiments of American Women,” but the authors.h.i.+p has not been ascertained. The energy and consistency of her patriotic feeling was, however, perfectly well understood, and she is said to have borne her part in the conversation of the distinguished company at Mount Vernon, with invariable dignity and sweetness. The General had returned with unction to his rural and agricultural pursuits, keeping up his life-long habit of rising before the sun, and after breakfast making the tour of the plantation on horseback. These employments were somewhat interrupted by the speck of war which troubled our horizon in 1798, on which occasion all eyes were turned to him, and his friends and the President called upon him once more to give his services to the country. His reply was consistent with the tenor of his life, ”In case of actual invasion by a formidable force, I certainly should not intrench myself under the cover of age and retirement, if my services should be required by my country in repelling it.” Without waiting for his reply, the Senate had appointed him to the post of Commander-in-Chief, and the Secretary at War was despatched immediately to Mount Vernon with the commission, which was at once accepted. This involved Was.h.i.+ngton once more in a press of correspondence and many anxious duties; and his letters during this time show that his mind had lost none of its fertility or his judgment of its soundness. He predicted at once that France would not invade the United States, and the event justified his foresight. But another Enemy lay in wait for him, and to this one the hero succ.u.mbed, in the same manly spirit in which he had battled with an earthly foe. Great suffering was crowded into the twenty-four hours' illness which served to prostrate that vigorous form, and to still that active brain; but he could look up, at the last, and say--”I am not afraid to die.”

December 14, 1799, was the day of his death, and the 18th of the same month saw him laid, by a weeping mult.i.tude, in the family vault at Mount Vernon; not the tomb in which his ashes now repose, but the old one, which he had been planning to rebuild, saying ”Let that be done first, for perhaps I shall want it first.”

We have thus traced the Father of our Country through all his earthly Homes, to that quiet one by the side of the Potomac, the object of devout pilgrimage to millions yet unborn. One more Home there is for him, even in this changing world--that which he possesses in the hearts of his countrymen, one which we cannot picture or describe, but from which he can never be displaced by the superior merit of mortal man.

Other heroes may arise, will arise, as the world shall need them, exponents of their times and incarnations of the highest spirit of the race from which they spring; but America can have but one Was.h.i.+ngton--one man in whom the peculiar virtues of the _American_ character found their embodiment and their triumph. In saying this we may well be proud but not vainglorious. If the great truth it implies be not yet known and read of all men, we should be humbled by the thought that we are so slow to follow our immortal leader. Was.h.i.+ngton's indomitable spirit of freedom, as evident when at nineteen he withstood the English governor, as when in 1774 he ”went to church and fasted all day,” in sympathy with the people of Boston, in their resolution against the Port Bill; his self-control, the perfection of which made his fierce pa.s.sions the sworn servants of virtue; his humanity, which no personal suffering or fatigue could blunt, and no provocation extinguish; his manly temper, never daunted by insolence or turned into arrogance by triumph; the respect for the civil virtues which he carried with him through all the temptations and trials of war; the faith in G.o.d and man which sustained him, and was indeed the secret of his power and his success,--what a legacy are these! All that he accomplished is less to us than what he was. To have left an example that will never need defence or subst.i.tution to the end of time; an ideal that will warm the heart and point the aspiration of every true American, when hundreds of millions shall be proud of the name; to stand forth, for ever, as what we, happy citizens of the country in which that great soul was cradled, and to which his heart and life were devoted, think a MAN ought to be--what a destiny for him! It is his reward. G.o.d has granted his prayers. Nothing earthly would have satisfied him, as we know by what he rejected. He has received that for which he labored. Who dare imagine the complacency--only less than divine, with which the retrospect of such a life may be fraught! Let us indulge the thought that when in the heat of party, the l.u.s.t of power, or the still deadlier hunger for wealth, we depart from his spirit, he is permitted to see that the dereliction is but temporary and limited; that his country is true to him if his countrymen sometimes err; that there is for ever imprinted, on the heart and life of the nation, the conviction that in adherence to his precepts and imitation of his character there is safety, happiness, glory; in departure from that standard, deterioration and decay. It must be so, for can we conceive him blest without this?

[Ill.u.s.tration: Was.h.i.+ngton's Tomb.]

As if to stamp the American ideal with all perfection, it is remarkable that Was.h.i.+ngton stood pre-eminent in manly strength and beauty, and that a taste for athletic exercises kept him, in spite of illnesses brought on by toil, anxiety, and exposure, in firm health during most of his life. His picture at sixty-two, that which he himself thought the best likeness that had been taken of him, exhibits one of the loveliest faces that an old man ever wore. And it is marvellous how any one that ever looked into the clear blue depths of the eye in Stuart's unfinished picture, could be persuaded to believe Was.h.i.+ngton stern, cold, and unfeeling. Some have even thought it added to his dignity to represent him thus. All the historians in the world could not prove such a contradiction to the stamp of nature. But the picture by Pine--the old man, faded somewhat, and a little fallen in outline, wears the face of an angel; mild, firm, modest, sensitive, aspiring, glorious! It meets your gaze with a tenderness that dims our eye and seems almost to dim its own. Of all the portraits of Was.h.i.+ngton, this and the half-imaginary one made by Mr. Leutze from a miniature taken when Was.h.i.+ngton was seventeen, are the most touchingly beautiful, and, as we verily believe, most characteristic of the man.

It is proper, though scarcely necessary, to say that this sketch of Was.h.i.+ngton's life is drawn from Mr. Sparks' history, since no research can discover a single fact overlooked by that faithful and just chronicler.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] On the causes and consequences of the war with France.