Young Charles Fox, second son of Lord Holland, who held an inferior office in the administration, had embraced the cause of the American colonies. Lord North wrote to him, on the 22d of February, "Sir—His Majesty has judged it wise to revise the Treasury Commission. I do not see your name there. [Signed] NORTH." The opposition received him into its ranks with joy. He had already given proof of the faults of his character and of the licentiousness of his life, yet at the same time he had secured the attachment of numerous and faithful friends, by his frank and open good-nature and by the generosity and sweetness of his soul. He had inspired in his adversaries a great admiration for his oratorical ability and the inexhaustible fertility of his wit. The young rival who was soon to dispute the pre-eminence with him and to vanquish him had not yet appeared on the horizon, except to sustain the feeble footsteps of his infirm father. The last time that Lord Chatham appeared in Parliament he was supported on the arm of the second William Pitt. Debates followed one another in the English Houses of Parliament. The opposition and the government exchanged proposals, which were conciliatory or perfidious, liberal or arbitrary, sustained in turn by the most eloquent voices. No measure, no speech, availed or could henceforth avail, to calm the growing irritation of the colonies. New England and Virginia, the sons of the Puritans and the descendants of the Cavaliers, marched at the head of the national movement, animated by the same spirit, however different were its manifestations. It was from Virginia that the call to arms came. Washington had said, with his usual moderation, "I do not pretend to indicate exactly what line it will be necessary to draw between Great Britain and the colonies, but I am decidedly of opinion that it will be necessary to draw one and to secure our rights definitively." Patrick Henry, less scrupulous and more ardent, uttered the war-cry. "We must fight," said he loudly, at the opening of the year 1775, at the session of the Virginia Convention; "an appeal to the sword and the God of armies is all that is left us." Already, in 1774, a general congress of all the provinces had met at Philadelphia, announcing a new session for the following year. Political resistance had henceforth found its centre. The day of armed resistance had come.
It was time for action. On the 18th of April, 1775, in the night, the choicest corps of the garrison of Boston went out of the town, by order of General Gage, governor of Massachusetts. The soldiers were as yet ignorant of their destination, but the "Sons of Liberty" had divined it. The governor had caused the gates of Boston to be shut. Some of the inhabitants, however, had found means of escape. They had spread the alarm in the country, and already the men were repairing to the posts designated beforehand. As the royal troops, approaching from Lexington, were confident of laying hands on two of the principal agitators, Samuel Adams and John Hancock, they stumbled in the night against a body of militia who guarded the way. The Americans remaining immovable before the command to withdraw, the English soldiers, led by their officers, fired. Some men fell. The war between England and America was entered on. The same evening Colonel Smith, in seeking to take possession of the supply depot formed at Concord, saw himself successively attacked by detachments hastily raised in all the villages. He retired in disorder, even as far as the shelter of the cannon of Boston. Some days later the town was besieged by an American army, and Congress, assembled at Philadelphia, appointed Washington general-in-chief of all the forces of the united colonies—"of all those which have been or which shall be raised there, and of all others which shall volunteer their services or shall join the army in order to defend American liberty and repulse every attack directed against her."
"There is a spectacle as fine as, and not less salutary than, that of a virtuous man struggling with adversity: it is the spectacle of a virtuous man at the head of a good cause and assuring its triumph. God reserved this good fortune for George Washington." [Footnote 2]
[Footnote 2: M. Guizot, Etude sur Washington.]
[Essay on the Character and Influence of Washington in the Revolution of the United States of America; page 13; http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/60668]
Born on the 22nd of February, on the banks of the Potomac, at Bridge's Creek in Virginia, the new general belonged to a good family of Virginia planters, descended from those country gentlemen who had formerly caused the English revolution. He lost his father at an early age, and was brought up by his mother, a distinguished woman, for whom he always preserved as much tenderness as respect. He had undergone in his youth a free and rough life as a land-surveyor. At the age of nineteen, during the war in Canada, he had taken his place in the militia of his country, and we have seen him fighting brilliantly by the side of General Braddock. When the war ended, his haughty discontent concerning a question of military rank brought him home again. His eldest brother was dead, and had left him the Mount Vernon estate. He settled there, became a great agriculturist and sportsman, was loved and esteemed of everybody, and was already the object of the confidence as well as the hopes of his fellow-citizens.
"Capable of raising himself to the highest destinies, he had been able to ignore himself without suffering from it, and to find in the cultivation of his land the satisfaction of those powerful faculties which were sufficient for the command of armies and the founding of a government. But when the occasion offered, when the necessity arrived, without effort on his part, without surprise on the part of others, the wise planter was a great man. He had in a high degree the two qualities which, in active life, render a man capable of great things. He knew how to believe firmly in his own idea, and to act resolutely according to what he thought, without fearing the responsibility of his action." [Footnote 3]