Washington's attachment to Mary Philipse is a fact beyond reasonable question; his offer of marriage to that young lady is somewhat traditional. It is certain, however, that during his necessary absence on military duty, Captain Morris, his associate aide-de-camp in the Monongahela engagement, became a successful suitor for the hand of Miss Philipse.
What is far less generally known is the fact that, had Washington been successful in his early matrimonial aspirations, he would certainly have remained a loyal adherent of the royal cause, and would thus have been lost to his native land. Evidences of the justice of this theory are by no means lacking. The relatives and friends of the lady were nearly all devoted to the cause of England; Washington was the associate of many of them; and Captain Morris, his successful rival, remained in the British service during his life. There can be, I think, little doubt that, in the event of his marriage with Miss Philipse, Washington, like Captain Morris, would have returned to England and been forever lost to America. Mrs. Morris survived her illustrious admirer twenty-five years, dying about the year 1825.
Washington Unrewarded
A striking historical fact,—as strange as it is authentic—is the treatment of Washington by the English Government after the death of Braddock. Had General Braddock survived his terrible misfortune the result might well have been very different; for it is matter of history that the youthful officer had the undivided confidence of his commander. But by the British Ministry, and even by the King himself, the young hero of the fatal battle was treated with scarcely disguised contempt and neglect.
In a letter to the British War Minister, Governor Dinwiddie speaks of Colonel Washington as a man of great merit and resolution, adding:
I am confident, that, if General Braddock had lived, he would have recommended him to the royal favor, which I beg your interest in recommending.
The sole results were a half-rebuke from the King, and a malicious fling from the lips of Horace Walpole. For more than three years Washington labored incessantly, by personal effort and by means of influential intercessors, to secure a royal commission.
In view of what the world knows now of Washington's well-nigh matchless ability as a soldier, and remembering especially the reputation he had already acquired—amazing in so youthful an officer—his persistent neglect by the military authorities "at home," and particularly the stubborn and doltish determination on the part of the King to ignore the man and his almost unexampled services, suggests the theory that the heart of King George, of England, was as truly and providentially "hardened" as was that of his royal prototype, Pharaoh, of ancient times. For, finding that all his efforts were ineffectual and believing that the chief object of the war was attained by the capture of Fort Duquesne, and the final defeat of the French on the Ohio, the young hero retired after five years of arduous and ill-requited service, in the words of a great writer of our own land and time:
The youthful idol of his countrymen, but without so much as a civil word from the fountain of honor. And so, when after seventeen years of private life he next appeared in arms, it was as the "Commander-in-Chief of the Army of the United Colonies, and of all the forces now raised, or to be raised by them."
The same writer elsewhere remarks: