The Youth of Washington: Told in the Form of an Autobiography

by S. Weir Mitchell

Increasing infirmity and too frequent aches and ailments remind me that I am nearing the awful moment when I must bid adieu to sublunary things, and appear before that Divine Being to whom alone my country owes the success with which we have been blessed. But the great Disposer of events is also the Being who has formed the instruments of his will and left them responsible to the arbitration of conscience. Therefore I have of late spent much time in considering my past life, and how it might have been better or more successful, and in thankfulness that it has escaped many pitfalls.

My reflections have brought back to mind a remark which seems to me just, made by my aide, Colonel Tilghman, a man more given to philosophic reflection than I have been. He asked me if I did not think there was something providential in the way each period of my life had been an education for that which followed it. I said that this idea had at times presented itself to my mind, and when I betrayed curiosity, he went on to say that my very early education in self-reliance and my training as a surveyor of wild lands had fitted me for frontier warfare, that this in turn had prepared me for action on a larger stage, and that all through the greater war my necessities called for constant dealing with political questions, and with men who were not soldiers. He thought that this had in turn educated me for the position to which my countrymen summoned me at a later time.

As I was silent for a little, this gentleman, who became my aide-de-camp in June, 1780, and for whom I conceived a warm and lasting affection, thinking his remark might have been considered a liberty, said as much, excusing himself.

I replied that, so far from annoying me, I found what he had to say interesting.

When, recently, these remarks of Colonel Tilghman recurred to me, I felt that they were correct, and dwelling upon them at this remote time, my interest in the sequence of the events of my youthful life assumed an importance which has led me of late to endeavour, with the aid of my diaries, to refresh my memories of a past which had long ceased to engage my attention.

I remember writing once that any recollections of my later life, distinct from the general history of the war, would rather hurt my feelings than tickle my pride while I lived. I do not think vanity is a trait of my character. I would rather leave posterity to think and say what they please of me. Those who served with me in war and peace will be judged as we become subjects of history, and time may unfold more than prudence ought to disclose. Concerning this matter I wrote to Colonel Humphreys that if I had talent for what he desired me to do, I had not leisure to turn my thoughts to commentaries. Consciousness of a defective education, and want of leisure, I thought, unfitted me for such an undertaking. I did, however, answer certain questions put to me by Colonel Humphreys concerning the Indian wars, but he has, so far, made no use of these notes.

One of these considerations does not so much apply at present, for I possess the leisure, and in recording my early reminiscences I shall do so for myself alone, and assuredly shall find no satisfaction in comments on the conduct of other officers who, like myself, were honestly engaged in learning, and at the same time practising, a business in which none of us had a large experience. I shall confine my attention to recalling the events of my youth, and as I hate deception even where the imagination only is concerned, I shall try, for my own satisfaction, to deal merely with facts. General Hamilton, whose remarks I have often just reason to remember, once wrote me that no man had ever written a true biography of himself, that he was apt to blame himself excessively or to be too much prone to self-defence. He went on to state that an autobiography was written either from vanity and to present the man favourably to posterity, or because he desired for his own pleasure in the study of himself to recall the events of his career. In the latter case there is no need of publication.

It is only in order to such self-examination as that to which he refers that I am induced to set down the remembrances of my earlier days, and because writing of them will, I feel, enable me more surely to bring them back to mind. I have no other motive.