Washington resigned his commission in 1756; married Mrs. Martha Custis, Jan. 6, 1759; was elected member of the Virginia House of Burgesses the same year, and was appointed Commissioner to settle military accounts in 1765. In the discharge of this trust he manifested that accuracy of detail and that exactness of system in business concerns which have their best illustration in the minute record of his expenses during the Revolutionary War, in which every purchase made for the government or the army, even to a few horse-shoe nails, is accurately stated.
Neither Cæsar’s Commentaries, nor the personal record of any other historical character, more strikingly illustrate an ever-present sense of responsibility to conscience and to country, for trusts reposed, than does that of Washington, whether incurred in camp or in the whirl and crash of battle. Baron Jomini says: “A great soldier must have a physical courage which takes no account of obstacles; and a high moral courage capable of great resolution.” There have been youth, like Hannibal, whose earliest nourishment was a taste of vengeance against his country’s foes, and others have imbibed, as did the ancient Hebrew, abnormal strength to hate their enemies while doing battle; but if the character of Washington be justly delineated, he was, through every refined and lofty channel, prepared, by early aptitudes and training, to honor his chosen profession, with no abatement of aught that dignifies character, and rounds out in harmonious completeness the qualities of a consummate statesman and a great soldier.
CHAPTER II.
THE FERMENT OF AMERICAN LIBERTY.
In 1755, four military expeditions were planned by the Colonies: one against the French in Nova Scotia; one against Crown Point; one against Fort Niagara, and the fourth, that of Braddock, against the French posts along the Ohio river.
In 1758, additional expeditions were undertaken, the first against Louisburg, the second against Ticonderoga, and the third against Fort Du Quesne. Washington led the advance in the third, a successful attack, Nov. 25, 1758, thereby securing peace with the Indians on the border, and making the fort itself more memorable by changing its name to that of Fort Pitt (now Pittsburgh) in memory of William Pitt (Lord Chatham), the eminent British statesman, and the enthusiastic friend of America.
In 1759, Quebec was captured by the combined British and Colonial forces, and the tragic death of the two commanders, Wolfe and Montcalm, made the closing hours of the siege the last opportunity of their heroic valor. With the capture of Montreal in 1760, Canada came wholly under British control. In view of those campaigns, it was not strange that so many Colonial participants readily found places in the Continental Army at the commencement of the war for American Independence, and subsequently urged the acquisition of posts on the northern border with so much pertinacity and confidence.
In 1761, Spain joined France against Great Britain, but failed of substantial gain through that alliance, because the British fleets were able to master the West India possessions of Spain, and even to capture the city of Havana itself.
In 1763, a treaty was effected at Paris, which terminated these protracted inter-Colonial wars, so that the thirteen American colonies were finally relieved from the vexations and costly burdens of aiding the British crown to hold within its grasp so many and so widely separated portions of the American continent. In the ultimate settlement with Spain, England exchanged Havana for Florida; and France, with the exception of the city of New Orleans and its immediate vicinity, retired behind the Mississippi river, retaining, as a shelter for her fisheries, only the Canadian islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon, which are still French possessions.
In view of the constantly increasing imposition of taxes upon the Colonies by the mother country, in order to maintain her frequent wars with European rivals, by land and sea, a convention was held at New York on the seventh day of October, 1765, called a Colonial Congress, “to consult as to their relations to England, and provide for their common safety.” Nine colonies were represented, and three others either ratified the action of the convention, or declared their sympathy with its general recommendations and plans. The very brief advance notice of the assembling of delegates, partly accounts for the failure of North Carolina, Virginia, New Hampshire, and Georgia, to be represented. But that convention made a formal “Declaration of Rights,” especially protesting that “their own representatives alone had the right to tax them,” and “their own juries to try them.”
As an illustration of the fact, that the suggestion of some common bond to unite the Colonies for general defence was not due to the agencies which immediately precipitated the American Revolution, it is to be noticed that as early as 1607, William Penn urged the union of the Colonies in some mutually related common support. The Six Nations (Indian), whom the British courted as allies against the French, and later, against their own blood, had already reached a substantial Union among themselves, under the name of the Iroquois Confederacy; and it is a historical fact of great interest, that their constitutional league for mutual support against a common enemy, while reserving absolute independence in every local function or franchise, challenged the appreciative indorsement of Thomas Jefferson when he entered upon the preparation of a Constitution for the United States of America.