The salary of Commander-in-Chief had been set at five hundred dollars a month, but Washington in his address of acceptance, while declaring that no salary could have been made large enough to tempt him from the comforts and business interests of his home, said he would accept no salary, but would keep an exact account of his expenses, which they would no doubt refund to him.
“There is something charming to me,” said John Adams, who became the second president of the United States, when writing at the time to a friend, “in the conduct of Washington, a gentleman of one of the first fortunes upon the continent, leaving his delicious retirement, his family and friends, sacrificing his ease, and hazarding all in the cause of his country. His views are noble and disinterested.”
Washington now wrote to his half-brother, Augustine Washington, a characteristic letter.
“I am now to bid adieu to you, and to every kind of domestic ease for a while. I am embarked on a wide ocean, boundless in its prospect, and in which, perhaps, no safe harbor is to be found. I have been called upon by the unanimous voice of the Colonies to take command of the Continental army; an honor I neither sought after nor desired, as I am thoroughly convinced it requires great abilities, and much more experience than I am master of.”
But he added his belief that the Divine Providence, which had called him into such a dangerous duty, was wisely ordering the affairs of men, and would enable him in due course of time to perform all his tasks justly and with success.
What that task was through the revolutionary war can be appreciated only in the details of events that require volumes of description in telling. One cannot read it through with its ignoble intrigues, unpatriotic dissentions, and dangerous rivalries without feeling that Washington combined great manhood, great leadership, great statesmanship and great generalship, and that no other man of less character and genius than that could ever have welded together such discordant and diversified elements into a means sufficient to achieve the independence and liberty of America.