off his bright “middy” uniform, he folded it away in his new sailor chest, never to be worn again. When he saw the warship, which had been anchored below Mount Vernon, sailing away in the morning sunshine, young George Washington’s future looked as dark as ever it could to a heartbroken lad of fifteen. But who would have led the colonists in their rebellion against England if George Washington had entered the English navy then, and had later become a British admiral instead of commanding general of the American army?
By the time George was twenty-one his brother Lawrence was dead and, as his father had willed it, most of the property, including “Mount Vernon,” belonged to the oldest son of the second wife. George at once provided for his mother against worry or want in future. But he had to tell her that he was a man now and that his devotion to country must come first—even before his duty to his mother.
The English governor of Virginia sent him, still little more than a boy, as messenger of the British government to the French and Indian commanders in the distant Ohio region. This was a lonely journey of many hundred miles through frozen and pathless forests full of cruel savages. George had several hairbreadth escapes, once from drowning in an icy river, and once from being shot by a treacherous Indian guide. A great writer says of his wonderful success on this difficult and dangerous errand through that western wilderness: “He went in a schoolboy, he came out the first soldier in the colonies.”
The brave youth was appointed Major Washington, and given command of a little army to fight the French and Indians. He soon gained a victory which was called “the first blow” in a war which lasted, in America and Europe, more than fifty years. As a member of General Braddock’s staff young Washington saved the remaining part of the British army at Fort Duquesne.
He was Colonel Washington when he was sent to the Congress which adopted the Declaration of Independence. While there he was made commander-in-chief of the Continental Army in the War for Independence. His faith and courage and patience endeared him so to the country that no other man could be thought of for the first President of the United States except the “Father of his Country.”
ALEXANDER HAMILTON, THE ORPHAN BOY FROM THE WEST INDIES
ON the little island of Nevis, in the West Indies, lived a small boy who had lost his mother, a bright young woman from France. His father, James Hamilton, who was a Scotch planter, soon left the island, and the boy, Alexander, heard little of him after that. No one knows to-day what became of the father of Alexander Hamilton, but his grandfather was a Scottish laird, or lord.