Brief biographies from American history, for the fifth and sixth grades

by Edna Henry Lee Turpin

Montcalm and Wolfe

You have heard of the beginnings of the French power in America—how Cartier and La Salle, Marquette and Champlain, explored the country and claimed it in the name of their king. They went up and down the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi, and established along the streams their trading-posts and military forts.

The English meanwhile, settled along the Atlantic coast and established farms and villages.

The English patents granted to their colonists the land from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. The French claimed and were occupying the Mississippi valley. The English pressed westward and crossed the Alleghany Mountains through gaps made by the rivers which the French claimed; the French pressed eastward along these same rivers. Contact and conflict were inevitable. The French foresaw it and made their preparations accordingly. From the mouth of the St. Lawrence to the mouth of the Mississippi, they established posts and organized their forces. French traders, French missionaries, French settlers, upheld the power of their king. They made friends with the Indians of many tribes, but from the day that Champlain joined battle against the Iroquois, the Five Nations were the deadly enemies of the French and therefore the friends of the English.

The English were, as you may think, most unwilling to give up the western lands which they claimed. Governor Spottswood of Virginia, who in 1716 rode westward to the summit of the Blue Ridge at the head of a company of gentlemen, realized how important it was to hold this fair region against the French. He urged the English government to establish a chain of posts from the lakes to the Mississippi in order to keep back the French. His advice was unheeded. A few years later the French began to occupy the valley of the Ohio, and it became evident that there the two nations would clash.

During this time there were growing into manhood two youths who were to be leaders when the conflict came.

One of these was a Frenchman, Louis Joseph, Marquis de Montcalm. At the age of fourteen, he entered the army and at the age of eighteen he was a general. He did valiant service in Italy and in Germany.

Several years younger than Montcalm was the English soldier, James Wolfe. He also became a soldier at an early age and at sixteen was serving in the Netherlands, doing a man’s work in the battles which he described with boyish zest in his loving and dutiful letters to his mother in England.

About the middle of the eighteenth century, the French determined to shorten and strengthen their line of defence towards the south. They established a fort on French Creek and an outpost upon the Alleghany River. This was land which the English claimed, and George Washington, then a lad of twenty-one, was sent to the French to demand that they leave the Ohio. A forced march was made through the pathless winter woods. The French commander received the messenger courteously, but informed him that they regarded the land as their own and had no intention of yielding it to the English. This was in the winter of 1753. The next year Washington was sent in command of a little force of three hundred and fifty men to uphold the English claim, and was defeated at Great Meadows by a French force of double the size. The English began to build a fort at the junction of the Alleghany and Monongahela Rivers on a site selected by Washington, but the French drove them away and finished the fort, which they called Fort Du Quesne.

In this emergency the colonies at first did not act together. Troops were sent from Virginia, South and North Carolina, and Maryland; but the Quakers of Pennsylvania and the Dutch of New York said that the English claim to the valley of the Ohio was a matter of no importance, and did not move. Fortunately, the home government recognized the necessity of protecting the frontier, and of extending outposts; troops were sent from England for this purpose. Thus in 1755 began the Seven Years’ War which involved England and France in Europe; in America this contest was called the French and Indian War, from the enemies the English colonists had to encounter.

The English general Braddock led forces to the northwest just as he would have marched them in a European campaign. He paid with his life the penalty of his ignorance of Indian warfare, being defeated and fatally wounded by an Indian attack in the forest. This defeat was the first of many.

“I dread to hear from America,” said the English statesman, Pitt, as month after month, year after year, brought tidings of defeat.

In the spring of 1756, Montcalm was sent to Canada to command the French forces. He began a career of victory by capturing Fort Ontario at Oswego. The next year he captured Fort William Henry at the head of Lake George, with its garrison of twenty-five hundred men. In 1758, with thirty-six hundred men he defended Fort Ticonderoga against an English force of fifteen thousand. As he had neither men nor supplies to hold the place, he was compelled to abandon it the next year and retire to Quebec. Here he was to contend in a death struggle with the English general Wolfe, who was sent to America in 1758.

The English realized the value of their New World possessions. The best of their troops were sent over to prosecute the war with vigor. Montcalm, on the other hand, lacked men, means, ammunition, and supplies, for which he appealed in vain to the home government. With a sad heart he foresaw the downfall of French power in America. Resolved “to find his grave under the ruins of the colony,” he bent all his energies to the struggle.

One place after another was captured by the English. News of their victories came now as regularly as tidings of their defeat had come a few months before. Louisburg, a naval station and fortified town commanding the mouth of the St. Lawrence, was attacked and taken. The French were driven from Fort Frontenac at Oswego which guarded the outlet of the Great Lakes. Fort Du Quesne was taken by Washington, and Crown Point was captured and strengthened.

In 1759 the rival powers made ready for a final struggle at Quebec, the stronghold of the French. Montcalm had retired there and collected his forces—fourteen thousand men. Wolfe, with a smaller army, besieged the place. Week after week the English endeavored to find a vulnerable spot; week after week the French held the strongly-fortified city. At last Wolfe determined to conduct soldiers up a bluff which was so steep that it was thought to be inaccessible and so was not strongly guarded.

One September night his boats dropped down the river and landed the soldiers who marched up the cliff. On the way Wolfe quoted some lines from Gray’s noble poem, “The Elegy in a Country Churchyard:”

“The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,

And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave

Await alike the inevitable hour:—

The paths of glory lead but to the grave.”

“I would rather have written that than to take Quebec,” he said.

By daybreak four thousand, five hundred men were on the heights above Quebec. Montcalm, with such a force as he could collect, made ready to attack.

Wolfe gave his last charge to his men: “The officers and men will remember what their country expects from them, and what a determined body of soldiers are capable of doing against five weak battalions, mingled with a disorderly peasantry. The soldiers must be attentive to their officers, and resolute in the execution of their duty.”

He led his men forward to the plains of Abraham, an open tract about a mile from Quebec. In the attack Wolfe was wounded. He was informed that the French were retreating and an eye-witness says that he “raised himself up on this news and smiled in my face. ‘Now,’ said he, ‘I die contented,’ and from that instant the smile never left his face till he died.”

Montcalm, too, was mortally wounded. On being told that death was near he said, “So much the better; I shall not live to see the surrender of Quebec.”

The fall of this stronghold was the practical loss of Canada. By the treaty of peace in 1763, France yielded to England all her northern possessions in America, and her claim on the eastern valley of the Mississippi.

Patrick Henry
An Eloquent Orator

Up to the very time that war was begun, Franklin hoped that it might be averted; even then while he hoped that the colonies would get their rights, he expected them to remain subject to England. Patrick Henry was one of the few men who looked with eagle eye into the future and saw that the American cause—the cause of freedom—must be upheld by force of arms.

Patrick Henry was born in Virginia, in 1736. He was an awkward and idle lad who picked up a smattering of an education at an “old field school,” as the country schools of the time were called. He was fond of books, but fonder still of his gun and his fishing-rod with which he spent most of his spare time in the woods.

It was, however, necessary for him to set to work when a boy of fifteen. He became a clerk in a store and then opened a little shop of his own—but he did not succeed either as clerk or shopkeeper. He married in young manhood and in order to support his wife and children he went to work on a farm; here also he failed. He went back to shopkeeping—and failed again. By this time people had a poor opinion of the idle, slovenly young man whose life had been a series of failures. The truth is, Henry was like a fish out of water; but in the course of time he was to find his element.

At the age of twenty-four, he read law for six weeks, was examined by judges, and was given a license to practice the profession. The judges granted his license with much hesitation. Henry was ignorant of the law,—had indeed read only the Virginia Statutes and one other law book. But he showed remarkable powers of thought and reasoning, natural not acquired qualifications, and the license was granted on condition that he would continue to study. One of the judges said, “Mr. Henry, if your industry be only half equal to your genius, I augur that you will do well, and become an ornament and an honor to your profession.”

It is not strange, however, that the small amount of law business which was in his community did not come Henry’s way. People naturally preferred to put their business in the hands of those whom they considered better qualified. He eked out a support for his family by aiding his father-in-law to manage a tavern.

In 1763 he had what seems to have been his first really important case,—one which was turned over to him because no one else cared to undertake it. This was the famous “Parsons’ Case.” In order to understand it, you must remember that the colony of Virginia was then a part of England and that the church of England, like its civil government, was established by law. The salaries of clergymen were raised by a regular tax on all the people. As money was scarce in the colonies, this tax was paid in tobacco which was the regular currency of Virginia. By law sixteen thousand pounds of tobacco was a clergyman’s yearly salary.

The people do not seem to have objected to paying these salaries, and usually they found no fault with the amount of them. Twice, however, after bad crop years, the House of Burgesses passed laws allowing the payment of money instead of tobacco at a rate lower than the price of tobacco in these years of scarcity. Naturally, the clergymen did not like this, and they finally appealed to the king of England who decided that the salaries must be paid in tobacco every year. So the clergymen of Hanover county where Henry lived brought suit for the loss sustained by the payment of money instead of tobacco. As the king, who was the supreme authority, had decided the matter in favor of the clergymen, it seemed that there was nothing for the Virginia courts to do but to agree on the amount of damages due and pay them. Henry, however, offered to plead the case against the parsons and plead it he did with unexpected power. He told the people fearlessly that this was a matter for them to decide. They were to be governed by their House of Burgesses. It had made this law, and the king of England had no right to gainsay it. Henry spoke so eloquently that he won the sympathy of all. The jury could not put aside the king’s decree but it gave a nominal adherence to that and a real one to Henry’s argument; for it stated the clergymen’s damages as one penny each, about two cents.

From that time Henry was “the man of the people;” a little ahead of the conservative element, but always in sympathy with the people and always upon the side of the cause which in the end proved right. After his success in “the Parsons’ Case,” he did not lack law business. He was sent in the spring of 1765 to the House of Burgesses at Williamsburg. This was then the site of the Virginia government; having been selected after Jamestown was burned in the Great Rebellion.

The people of the colonies—even the loyal Virginians—were beginning to be dissatisfied with the treatment of the mother-country. The Seven Years’ War between England and France had come to an end two years before. It had, of course, cost a great deal of money; in particular, the sending of troops and supplies against the French in America had been very expensive. The English government said that the colonies ought to bear a large share of the war debt; the contest had begun on the American frontier and the English victory had extended colonial territory and trade. On the whole, this was not unfair. Probably the colonies would have agreed to it, if they had been allowed to send representatives to parliament—the English legislative body which has the power of taxation. But the English were not willing to grant that right. Then, said the Americans, “We must not be taxed. ‘Taxation without representation is tyranny.’”

England paid little attention to the protests from America. A Stamp Act was passed,—that is, a law requiring a stamp to be put on all papers to make them legal. The money for these stamps was to be a source of revenue to help pay the war debt. When the matter was being discussed, Virginia protested against this Stamp Act. Nevertheless, in May, 1765, a copy of the act was sent to the Virginia legislature, with the information that it had become a law and must be enforced at a certain time.

In the House of Burgesses, in 1765, among stately gentlemen in silks and velvets with their curled and powdered wigs, sat a raw country man dressed in shabby clothes and wearing his own plain hair. This was Patrick Henry. One day he arose and addressed that gathering of high-bred scholarly men and presented certain resolutions to the effect that the people of the colonies had all the rights and privileges of the people of Great Britain,—were like them Englishmen—and that the taxes must, according to “characteristics of British freedom” be laid by the people themselves or by those chosen by them—that only the general assembly of Virginia had a right to lay taxes on Virginians, and that the people were not bound to obey any other laws.

In the heated discussion which followed, Henry protested against the despotic action of the king. “Cæsar had his Brutus, Charles I. his Cromwell, and George III.”—

“Treason, treason!” came the interruption.

“May profit by their example,” concluded the orator. “If that be treason make the most of it.”

Henry’s resolutions were carried by a majority of one. These resolutions and his speech had “started the ball of revolution rolling.” The Stamp Act, so vigorously protested against, was repealed, but new and hateful taxes were laid on tea, glass, paper, and other articles.

Ten years passed during which Henry practiced his profession, served four years in the House of Burgesses, and took an interest in all public questions. During these ten years, the colonies had drifted and been driven further from England, the mother-country. Patrick Henry saw that the encroachments on the rights of the people must be resisted—not by words now, but by arms. In the spring of 1775 a convention of Virginia leaders met in St. John’s church in Richmond to consider the state of the country.

Henry rose and “resolved that this colony be immediately put in a posture of defence.” The matter was argued earnestly; many men advised sending new petitions to the king. Then Patrick Henry made the speech, which every schoolboy knows, urging not petition but action. “Is life so dear,” he ended, “or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take but as for me give me liberty or give me death!”

He carried the patriots with him and his resolutions were passed; thus Virginia announced that she would fight for her rights. A few weeks later the English general, Gage, attacked the people in Massachusetts and the colonies sprang to arms.

Henry served three years as governor of Virginia. After the Revolution, he took for some time an active part in public affairs and then withdrew to private life. In 1799, at the personal request of Washington, he became a candidate for office and was elected to the House of Delegates. But he did not live to take his seat, dying June 6, 1799.

Samuel Adams
A Massachusetts Patriot

Samuel Adams is often called “the father of the Revolution.” He was the great-grandson of one of the Puritan settlers who came to Massachusetts in the seventeenth century, and was born at Boston, Massachusetts, in 1722.

Adams was not a typical thrifty New Englander. His private life was a series of business failures and hardships that remind us of the early career of Patrick Henry. Adams, however, unlike Henry, was college bred, having been educated at Harvard. He tried law as a profession, but did not like it well enough to continue its practice. Then he became, first a clerk and then a merchant, and as both he was a failure. Next he became a brewer, and in this trade, also, he was unsuccessful. The truth is, he kept too busy attending to public business to pay proper attention to his private affairs. Perhaps his attention was first called to public matters by a private grievance. A law passed by Parliament against certain stock-companies made it necessary to close a banking company with which his father was connected and swept away his fortune.

SAMUEL ADAMS

Unsuccessful as Samuel Adams was as a business man, it was known that he was a good citizen, with wise and patriotic views about public matters. He ably voiced colonists’ objections to the arbitrary taxation of the British government. “If taxes are laid upon us,” he said, in a paper in 1764, “in any shape without our having a legal representation where they are laid, are we not reduced from the character of Free Subjects to the miserable state of tributary Slaves? We claim British rights not by charter only. We are born to them!”

Adams was a member of the Massachusetts legislature in 1765 and the famous “Massachusetts Resolves” were his work. They expressed loyalty to the king, but refused to aid to execute the Stamp Act. It was not against England as yet but against the unjust laws of the despotic king and ministry that there was hostility.

Hutchinson, who was the royal governor, informed the home government that its course was unwise. “It cannot be good policy,” he said, “to tax the Americans; it will prove prejudicial to the national interests. You will lose more than you will gain. Britain reaps the profit of all their trade and of the increase of their substance.” But his warning was unheeded, and it devolved upon him to execute the unpopular acts. He suffered as the instrument of British oppression. His house was attacked and destroyed, and he and his family were driven away.

The first of November came—the day on which the Stamp Act was to go into effect. Boston church bells tolled and minute guns were fired. The stamps lay untouched; business stopped, because people would not buy and use them as required by law. The Stamp Act was repealed, but Parliament at the same time took occasion to assert “that it was competent to legislate for the colonies in all cases whatsoever.” Other unjust taxes were laid and protest followed protest from the colonies.

In order to uphold the king’s authority, British soldiers were sent to Boston. On a March day in 1770 occurred one of the many quarrels between the soldiers and the citizens. A company of soldiers was sent out to disperse the mob; it refused to disperse, and the soldiers fired, killing three people and wounding several others. This was the famous “Boston massacre.”

The infuriated people would have attacked the soldiers but Samuel Adams persuaded them to refrain from disorder and bloodshed; he advised them to demand from the governor the withdrawal of the two regiments stationed in Boston. This was agreed to and the next day a committee, of which Samuel Adams was the spokesman, went to Governor Hutchinson to make this demand. The governor said at first that he had no authority to remove the troops; after talking with the commander, however, he promised to send one regiment away.

“Sir,” said Samuel Adams, “if you have authority to remove one regiment you have authority to remove two; and nothing short of the departure of the troops will satisfy the public mind or restore the peace of the province.”

The governor finally had to yield to the demand of the people that he withdraw “both regiments or none” and the soldiers were sent to the castle.

As time passed, Adams ceased to hope for reconciliation between the colonies and England. He realized that it was important for the colonies to make common cause in defence of their rights. On his motion in the Massachusetts legislature in 1772 citizens were appointed as Committees of Correspondence to “state, communicate, and publish the rights of the colonies.” From this beginning grew the union of the colonies.

Matters came to a crisis in Boston when the tea on which a tax was laid was sent to the port. It had been sent to New York and Philadelphia, and there the people refused to allow it to be landed and it was returned to England. In South Carolina it was landed and left to mold in cellars because the people would not purchase it. In December, 1773, Samuel Adams, so often the spokesman of the people, went to ask the governor to send the tea back to England, instead of having it landed in Boston. In old South Church were assembled seven thousand people, to hear the result of his embassy. The governor refused.

“This meeting can do nothing more to save the country,” said Samuel Adams when he announced the fact. But another scheme was on foot which was probably known to Adams if not inspired by him. Some men disguised as Indians went to the harbor and threw overboard the three hundred and forty chests of tea. The next morning the patriots drank a decoction of native herbs while the Chinese tea floated on the salt waters of the bay. The Boston Tea Party, as it was called, by its disregard of the rights of property and its defiance of his authority, made the king very angry. There was passed the Boston Port Bill, which forbade vessels to enter or leave that port.

General Gage was sent to Boston with soldiers to enforce the king’s laws. General Gage realized that Samuel Adams, “the Cromwell of New England,” was the ringleader of the rebellion. An attempt was made to bribe Adams, who was very poor, with money or with position. But Adams was proof against the British offers. “I trust I have long since made my peace with the King of kings,” he said. “No personal consideration shall induce me to abandon the righteous cause of my country.”

In June Gage dissolved the general court, and the patriots organized a government of their own. Largely through the influence of Samuel Adams, it was resolved that representatives of the colonies should meet in Philadelphia to discuss affairs. He went as the representative of Massachusetts, which was suffering most from British oppression, having her port closed and an army stationed on her soil. We are told that Adams rode to Philadelphia on a borrowed horse, wearing a coat presented to him “to enable him to make a decent appearance.”

Delegates from eleven colonies met in this Congress in September, 1774, and discussed their situation. Among the delegates was a traitor who gave the royalists a full account of the meetings. This man said, “Samuel Adams eats little, drinks little, sleeps little, and thinks much. He is most decisive and indefatigable in the pursuit of his object. He is the man who, by his superior application, manages at once the factions in Philadelphia and the factions of New England.”

The people were now getting ready to fight. Minute men were being drilled, firearms and powder and ball were being collected. Samuel Adams encouraged all these preparations.

One night lights in the belfry of the North Church at Boston—a system of signals agreed upon—informed the patriots that British troops were leaving the city. They were going to seize the military stores collected at Concord and Worcester by the patriots. Longfellow’s poem, “Paul Revere,” tells in stirring phrase how the patriot-messenger galloped forth to give the alarm. In Medford he roused John Hancock and Samuel Adams, two leaders whom Gage was anxious to capture. The minute men sprang to arms. When the British soldiers, eight hundred in number, reached the village of Lexington about four o’clock on the morning of April 19, 1775, they found sixty or seventy men collected on the green.

“Disperse, you rebels!” said the English officer. “Lay down your arms.”

The men stood firm. Captain Parker had already given his orders: “Stand your ground! Don’t fire unless fired upon, but if they mean war let it begin here.”

The British fired and the shots of the Americans rang out in answer; eight Americans lay dead on the green. The War of the Revolution was begun. Adams and Hancock heard the shots as they galloped from Medford.

“Oh, what a glorious morning for America this is,” said Adams.

At Concord the minute men assembled and put the British to flight. From there to Boston, sixteen miles away, they fired on the British from behind trees and stone walls. Finally, the British broke and ran.

On the northwest Boston was commanded by Bunker Hill and Breed’s Hill. A force of Americans under Colonel Prescott occupied Breed’s Hill one night and threw up earthworks to protect the city. The British soldiers marched forth to attack them and the American troops formed behind the earthworks and on the edge of Bunker Hill.

“Wait till you can see the whites of their eyes,” said the American leader, wishing to use the small supply of ammunition with deadly results. Twice the British attacked and twice they were driven back. Then the ammunition of the patriots was exhausted and they had to retreat. The news of the battle between the patriots and the king’s troops was borne to the other colonists; they came to the aid of Massachusetts.

Samuel Adams, who had done so much to inspire resistance to oppression, did not serve the patriot’s cause on the battle-field. His work was in Congress, and his position as a leader was so well recognized that the English excluded from the offer of pardon to the rebels two men—Hancock, the first signer of the Declaration of Independence, and “one Samuel Adams.”

After the war was over, Adams served as governor of Massachusetts. He aided to draft the state constitution, the only one of the old constitutions adopted immediately after the Revolution which is still in force. He died, October 2, 1803, and was buried in Boston. In the busy business heart of the city, there is a metal disc bearing the inscription, “This marks the grave of Samuel Adams.”

George Washington
The Leader of the Revolution

The story of Washington, the personal history of the man who was identified with the independence of our country, has been told over and over and yet it never fails to find interested listeners and one can well believe that it never will. He was born, February 22, 1732, on a plantation, or large farm, in Westmoreland County, Virginia. His father, Augustine Washington, was master of many broad acres but lacked what seem to us the very comforts of life. There was a houseful of children, too—four by the first wife, and six (of whom George was the eldest), by the second wife Mary Ball.

Mary Washington was kept busy with household cares. She superintended not only the cooking and washing and housework, but the spinning of thread, the weaving of cloth, the making of clothes, and other tasks which were then a part of home routine.

When George was three years old, the family moved to Washington, the place afterwards named Mount Vernon, and there they lived about four years.

When George was about seven, the family moved to a farm on the Rappahannock, across the river from what was then the little village of Fredericksburg. George was sent to an old field school where he was taught “to read and write and cipher.” He was fond of writing and he wrote a clear, careful hand. His early copy books have been kept and we can read on the yellowed pages the moral precepts which he copied down with great care when he was twelve years old.

George early learned to ride and swim and excelled at outdoor sports and games, thanks to a strong body and determined, energetic spirit. An early biographer, Weems, tells many stories of his childhood which are widely known. Of their truth or falsehood we cannot be sure. One is the famous story that George cut down a valuable cherry tree belonging to his father, and promptly confessed his misdeed, choosing punishment rather than falsehood. Another is that he undertook in boyish bravado to subdue his mother’s favorite colt and continued the struggle until the animal burst a blood-vessel and died. This, also, he immediately confessed, and his mother while grieved over the death of her colt “rejoiced that her son was brave and truthful.”

Mr. Washington died when George was only ten years old, and on the mother devolved the early training of the children. After his early childhood, George was with her but little. He was sent, soon after his father’s death, to live with one of his older brothers to attend school. When he was fourteen, it was planned that he should go as a sailor, but the plan was given up and he returned to school and took up the study of surveying.

His half-brother Lawrence, fourteen years older than he, was a soldier; perhaps as a boy George, who admired and loved this brother, wished and planned to be a soldier, too. If so, he no doubt thought that he would wear a British uniform and fight for the king as did his brother, for the colonists then were contented and loyal subjects of England.

Lawrence Washington after his father’s death inherited the estate of Washington and changed its name to Mount Vernon, in honor of an English admiral under whom he had served. Lawrence Washington, who was a fine, manly fellow, married a Miss Fairfax whose home was near Mount Vernon. She was a cousin of Thomas, Lord Fairfax, an English gentleman who came to America to look after land which he had inherited from his grandfather. This was a royal grant of all the land between the Rappahannock and Potomac Rivers. Lord Fairfax did not even know how many thousands of acres were in this great estate. So he employed young George Washington to explore and survey his lands.

George Washington was sixteen years old when he set out, March, 1748, with one companion, to explore and survey Lord Fairfax’s land. He had a good horse and a gun as well as his surveyor’s instruments, and the two youths spent several weeks on the trip. Sometimes they met Indians and sat beside their camp fires and watched their war dances. Sometimes they slept outdoors, sometimes they spent the night in the rude huts of the settlers. “I have not slept above three or four nights in a bed,” George Washington wrote, “but after walking a good deal all the day, I have lain down before the fire on a little straw, or fodder, or a bearskin, whichever was to be had, with man, wife, and children, like dogs and cats; and happy is he who gets the berth nearest the fire.”

On his return Washington gave such a glowing description of the beautiful and fertile country he had visited, that Lord Fairfax determined to move there and make his home at Greenway Court. He employed young Washington to make a careful survey of his lands and got him appointed public surveyor. During the next three years when Washington was not at work in the field he stayed at Greenway Court with Lord Fairfax. This gentleman was a scholar and a courtier and from intercourse with him the young surveyor gained breadth of mind and polished manners, while his outdoor life was making him strong and robust.

At twenty he was a picture of stalwart manhood—over six feet in height, straight as an Indian, and with dignified manners. About this time his brother Lawrence died, leaving Mount Vernon to his little daughter; George, his favorite brother, was to manage the estate and in case of the child’s death was to inherit it.

He went home to take charge of the fine old estate, but he did not long remain there. France and England were beginning their contest for supremacy in the country along the Ohio. When only twenty-one, George Washington was appointed to bear a protest to the French against their occupancy of the land. He set out the very day that he received his appointment, accompanied by some white woodsmen and Indian hunters. His was a long, difficult journey through the untraveled forest to a fort hundreds of miles away near Lake Erie, and it was a vain one. He was received courteously by the commander but was informed that the French were ordered to hold the country and would do so. The return journey was even more difficult than the journey to the fort. It was the depth of winter; the ground was covered with snow and the streams blocked with ice. Leaving the remainder of the party to follow later on horseback, Washington set out on foot with a woodsman named Gist. The two men made their way through the country inhabited by hostile Indians and fierce beasts. Once an Indian shot at young Washington, once he fell into an ice-blocked stream and came near losing his life; he accomplished the dangerous journey in safety and hurried to Williamsburg to inform the governor of the result of his expedition.

It was resolved to defend the frontiers, and some men were sent out to build a fort at the Forks of the Ohio River near Pittsburg. But these men were attacked and defeated by the French who finished and occupied the fort. This they called Fort Du Quesne. The French soldiers marched forth in the spring of 1754 to meet the little band commanded by Washington. Washington, having defeated a small body of the French, stopped at a place called Great Meadows, and defended his troops by an earthwork which he called Fort Necessity. Here he and his soldiers fought bravely against a French force of far superior numbers to which they had to yield at last.

The next year, Washington, in charge of the Virginia troops, went with General Braddock, commanding the English forces, to attack the French and take Fort Du Quesne. Braddock was brave but stubborn and ignorant of the methods of Indian warfare. Washington wished the Virginia rangers to march in front in order to guard the army against surprise.

“What!” said Braddock, “a Virginia colonel teach a British general how to fight!”

Off he marched with flags flying, drums beating, and men in close ranks. Before they reached Fort Du Quesne, the French and Indians attacked them and inflicted a terrible defeat. Braddock paid the penalty of his folly with his life. Washington made a gallant effort to redeem the day. He said, “I had four bullets through my coat and two horses shot under me, yet escaped unhurt, altho’ death was levelling my companions on every side of me.” On him devolved the difficult task of leading the shattered remnant of the army back home, protecting it against the unfriendly Indians and the hostile French.

After this campaign he was tendered a vote of thanks in the House of Burgesses. When he rose to reply, he blushed and faltered so that the Speaker said, “Sit down, Colonel Washington, sit down. Your modesty equals your valor, and that surpasses the power of any language I possess.”

Two years later, as commander of the troops raised in Virginia to defend the frontier he marched against Fort Du Quesne. The French, unable to hold it, set fire to it and retreated; on the spot, the English built a new fort which they called Fort Pitt in honor of an English statesman, and on the site of this fort stands now the city of Pittsburg. The English were victors now and as most of the fighting was in New York and Canada instead of the Ohio country, Washington resigned his commission and went home to Virginia.

In January, 1759, he married Mrs. Martha Custis, a widow with a fine estate and two children. Washington had no children of his own and his step-children, John Parke Custis and Martha Parke Custis, were like his own children. In the lists of goods he ordered from England we find such items as “One fashionable dress Doll to cost a guinea” and “A box of Gingerbread Toys and Sugar Images or Comfits.” “Patsy,” as the little girl was called, died in early girlhood, but the boy lived to become a man and married, leaving at his death four children of whom two, George Washington Parke Custis and Eleanor Parke Custis, made their home at Mount Vernon as Washington’s adopted children.

Probably the happiest and most carefree years of Washington’s life were those after his marriage which were spent at Mount Vernon which he had inherited at the death of his niece. Farming was his “most favorite pursuit,” and he devoted himself with characteristic energy to improving his land by manures and rotation of crops, and his stock of sheep, cattle, and horses by selection and breeding. He was a member of the House of Burgesses, took an interest in public affairs, and was regarded as one of the leading men in the colony.

Not long after the French and Indian War, trouble arose between the colonies and England about taxation without representation. As you know, the trouble in Boston finally led to the passage of the Boston Port Bill. Virginia and the other colonies sympathized with Massachusetts. In a speech in the House of Burgesses Washington said, “I will raise a thousand men, subsist them at my own expense, and march with them, at their head, for the relief of Boston.”

George Washington was one of the six Virginia delegates to the first continental congress in September, 1774. It was decided to raise a colonial army, and, June 15, 1775, Washington was appointed its commander-in-chief. In his speech accepting the office he refused to receive pay for his services, saying that only his expenses in the service should be repaid him at the end of the war. June 21 he left Philadelphia and rode to Massachusetts to take charge of the troops. On the third of July, at Cambridge under a great elm-tree still known as “Washington’s elm,” he assumed command of the army. He was an imposing figure, a tall handsome man dressed in a blue coat with buff facings and buff small clothes or knee trousers. The army of which he took command, was, he said, “a mixed multitude of people, under very little discipline, order, or government.” These troops, about sixteen thousand in number, had most of them been enlisted for but a short time and they lacked provisions and supplies,—above all, ammunition. Throughout the war there was scarcity of ammunition and the enemy’s stores of powder and ball and firearms were the most welcome part of an American victory. During the first months, however, the Americans had more experience of defeat than of victory.

In the spring of 1776 the Americans took possession of Dorchester Heights and the British evacuated Boston a few days later. When their fleet put to sea, Washington marched across the country, hoping to keep them from landing in New York. But the enemy were too strong for him and they took possession of the city.

Up to this time the patriots had been fighting for their rights as British colonists. July 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was adopted and the fight was now for freedom. Of this Washington said, “When I first took command of the army I abhorred the idea of independence, but I am fully convinced that nothing else will save us.”

At Cambridge Washington had used a flag with thirteen stripes of red and white, and the red and white cross of the British flag in the corner; in 1777 Congress adopted as the national flag one with the stripes but having, instead of the British cross, thirteen stars to represent the thirteen colonies.

As we said, the Americans were unable to prevent the British from landing in New York. Then the patriots were defeated in the battle of Long Island and Washington was forced to retreat. Pursued through New Jersey, he crossed the river into Pennsylvania, with about three thousand ragged, hungry, discouraged soldiers. It was now winter and it was supposed that the troops would go into winter quarters. But Washington did not wish to give up the year’s campaign without striking one successful blow. By a sudden march the day after Christmas, he surprised and captured a force of one thousand Hessians at Trenton and then he defeated an English force at Princeton. These victories inspired hope and the patriots began the campaign of 1777 with renewed courage.

But it was a year of reverses. The patriots were defeated at Brandywine in September and at Germantown in October and went into winter quarters at Valley Forge in December in a pitiable condition. They lacked clothing, food, military stores. The campaign in the north was more successful. At Saratoga General Gates won a signal victory and Burgoyne was forced to surrender his army. It was this victory which led the French to declare in favor of the colonists.

There was formed a conspiracy to depose Washington and to put at the head of the army General Gates who had won the victory of the campaign. Congress, however, supported Washington and collected men and supplies for a new campaign. The army was drilled in the winter of 1778 by Baron von Steuben, a Prussian officer who had served under Frederic the Great.

In 1778 the British evacuated Philadelphia and Washington attacked them at Monmouth. Here he had a clash with General Charles Lee; his temper, usually under control, rose at what he considered General Lee’s failure to perform his duty.

The little army marched north and encamped near White Plains. In this vicinity it remained during the year. During the campaign of 1779 also, Washington remained in the Highlands of the Hudson on the defensive. The next year came French aid. That same year the plot of General Arnold to surrender West Point to the English was discovered from papers in the possession of a captured spy. This spy, the brave young General André, paid the penalty with his life; the traitor Arnold escaped to the British.

In 1781 brilliant victories were won at the south by General Greene, General Morgan and by Marion, called “the Swamp Fox.” That same year Washington, aided by the French troops, invested Lord Cornwallis’s men at Yorktown, and forced them to surrender.

A treaty of peace, made in September, 1783, ended the war which, as Pitt said, “was conceived in injustice, nurtured in folly, and whose footsteps were marked with blood and devastation.” In November the British evacuated New York and on December the fourth Washington read his farewell address to the army. He resigned his commission to Congress, thinking that his remaining days were to be spent in private life at the home he loved.

But his country needed him still. Victory had been won indeed, but the debt and burden of war remained. Congress with its limited delegated power was unable to settle matters, and there seemed danger that the colonies, united in their struggle against British oppression, would drift apart. Washington had won public confidence; it was he who could best advance the work of peace. He presided over the Convention of 1787 which framed a Constitution for the newly-established United States. This was adopted by the required number of states and Washington was unanimously chosen President of the United States. On April 30, 1789, he assumed the duties of the office in New York, which was the first seat of national government. He entered upon the performance of his work as president with the conscientious attention which he gave to all matters. He aided to organize the different departments of the government and appointed as their heads the ablest men in the country—Hamilton, Jefferson, and others. He never openly allied himself with either the Federalist party led by Hamilton or the Democratic-Republican party led by Jefferson, but strove for union and peace.

After serving eight years, he declined to be a candidate a third time—thus establishing a precedent that no President shall serve a third term. In 1796 Washington delivered a farewell address to the people he had led and served. He retired to private life, but did not live long to enjoy his well-earned rest. December 14, 1799, he died and was buried at his home at Mount Vernon. The eulogy pronounced on him by “Light Horse Harry” Lee well said that he was “First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen, he was second to none in the humble and endearing scenes of private life.”