CHAPTER XII

THE HOUSE LONG DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF

I. UNPATRIOTIC CONFUSION OF OPINIONS AND INTERESTS

In order to appreciate the difficulties which Washington had to overcome, and therefore to make any just estimate of his character, his patriotism and his services in the cause of political liberty, the conditions in which he worked must be understood. It must not be assumed that he had a united country, a solid backing, and that there was unanimous patriotism sustaining him. To do so would not only be untrue, but it would belittle the almost superhuman task which gave birth to American government, and made possible the final organization through Abraham Lincoln of a land of the free, able to sustain its freedom against all the struggling masteries of the world. To suppose that Washington did his revolutionary work in the midst of reliable patriotism is as erroneous as to suppose that Lincoln did his nation-saving task in the midst of a unanimous North.

There was no such thing as patriotism at the time of Washington, according to the usual definition of patriotism, because there was no geographical territory holding a united people, for whom or for which to feel a national patriotism.

American patriotism, therefore, began in the patriotism for human rights, not thus making “a man without a country,” as patriotism for humanity has been sometimes defined alike by extreme pacifists and extreme militarists, but in the fact that American democracy and humanity are synonymous terms, in all they can mean for the rights of man.

There was then no political country to be patriotic for. There were only colonies. Patrick Henry’s cry, so pathetic in its divine need, and so little true for his fellows as shown in 1861, “I am not a Virginian, I am an American,” rang through the congress at Philadelphia with the thrill of a new vision of human faith, but it was almost a century, through an age of desperate reconstruction, before it could be even approximately called true; before American democracy and humanity could face the warring world, the King-made world, with one meaning, one service and one moral law.

John Adams, of indisputable authority, tells us that more than a third of the property owners and men of affairs, were opposed to the revolution throughout the war.

Lecky, in his history of England, declares that an examination of the correspondence of the revolution at any period shows that, “in the middle colonies at least, those who really desired to throw off the English rule were a small and not very respectable minority. The great mass were indifferent, half-hearted, engrossed with their private interests or occupations, prepared to risk nothing till they could clearly foresee the issue of the contest. In almost every part of the States--even in New England itself--there were large bodies of devoted royalists.”

After the war more than a hundred thousand, it is estimated, of irreconciliable royalists were expelled from the colonies.

When General Gage evacuated Boston, more than a thousand royalists from that immediate territory went with him to Halifax, Nova Scotia, so that our American grandmothers, even a hundred years later, when exasperated, would exclaim against their tormentor, with much of the ancient vehemence, “You go to Halifax!”

If we want to appreciate Washington and to understand his wonderful service for mankind, we must understand the difficulties and obstacles he had to overcome. The “Spirit of ’76” belonged at first to only a few inspired souls, who had a wonderful vision of human rights for a new world. Right was might with them and their might-right won the great cause as the immortal “Spirit of ’76.”

General Washington’s description of the conditions are vividly portrayed in a letter to Joseph Reed, from Cambridge, dated November 28, 1775:

“Such a dearth of public spirit, and such a want of virtue, such stock jobbing and such fertility in all the low arts to obtain advantages of one kind or another in this great change of military arrangement I never saw before, and pray God’s mercy that I may never be witness to again. What will be the end of these manoeuvers is beyond my scan. I tremble at the prospect. We have been till this time enlisting about three thousand five hundred men. To engage these I have been obliged to allow furloughs as far as fifty men to a regiment, and the officers, I am persuaded, indulge as many more. The Connecticut troops will not be prevailed upon to stay longer than their term, saving those who have enlisted for the next campaign and are mostly on a furlough; and such a mercenary spirit pervades the whole that I should not be at all surprised at any disaster that may happen. In short after the last of this month our lines will be so weakened that the Minute Men and Militia must be called in for their defense; and these being under no kind of government themselves, will destroy the little subordination I have been laboring to establish, and run me into one evil whilst I am endeavoring to avoid another; but the less must be chosen. Could I have foreseen what I have experienced, and am likely to experience, no consideration upon earth would have induced me to accept the command.”

At the meeting of the colonies in congress at Philadelphia in 1774, George the Third saw that it was a conquest of wills and he exclaimed, “The die is cast, the colonies must either submit or triumph.” But even when the British government was sending Hessian mercenaries over against the colonies, a thing regarded as a supreme outrage by those opposed to England, it was almost impossible to get together enough American patriotism to adopt a declaration of independence.

John Adams says that a large section of Congress regarded such a declaration with both terror and disgust. To those who have believed that a unanimous patriotism made only a little severe fighting necessary, backed by some clever generalship, there can be no proper appreciation of the great American achievement.

Then, as now, the prosperous did not want their prosperity disturbed by any change. They didn’t want to lose their business, not to speak of their lives, by going into an army. But there had been a generation of people pouring into the colonies from the poverty-devastations of English misgovernment in Scotland and Ireland. They had never had any chance to protest against their wrongs in the old country, but fortune, or fate, or Providence, had banished them across the ocean directly into an opportunity to express their sentiments with guns, and they took the opportunity. They flocked to the recruiting stations of Washington’s army.

But so unsafe were business transactions with the party fighting Great Britain that the revolution was coming to the gates of despair because of the impossibility of getting military supplies and army equipments. There was fast growing a vision of collapse unless there was received the encouraging help of a foreign power. France in almost unceasing war with England was the only hope, and France could have no interest unless the colonies were fighting for separation from England, instead of against a tax on tea, as it bore the appearance, at the beginning, from a foreign point of view. France wanted to know what the colonies were fighting for. France wanted a bill of particulars. This brought American interests to a crisis. France had no interest in a mere family fuss. The French government could have no interest unless it was for something that lessened the power of England.

Under the early troubles, a peace party among the business interests was fast coming into power. Against this the commoners were aflame with the patriotic pamphlets of Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, the eloquence of Patrick Henry, the statesmanship of John Adams, and the work of the powerful-minded few who saw the sublime vision of American freedom. At last they were enabled to pass the Declaration of Independence, and France began, at first secretly and then openly, to give encouragement through money-loans, supplies, and volunteers. Burgoyne’s surrender in October, 1777, showed that America could be successful with France’s help, and early in the next year France recognized the independence of the colonies. They soon made the cause of America their own, and sent over not only necessary supplies but soldiers and ships. Known budgets of expenses, used in aid of the Colonies, exceed $500,000,000, not a cent of which was ever returned or asked for. Though there was the political interest to humble England, yet France was at heart a profound lover of human freedom and political liberty. Despite the implacable enemies of republican government in Europe, France has successfully kept the dead-lines across which “they shall not pass.” The moral debt which human liberty owes to France can never be paid except as it is paid to humanity, and, to that social justice, is dedicated the meaning of America.

II. SOMETIMES TOO LATE TO MEND

The English parliament, becoming suddenly aware of the growing power in the American subjects, now conceded every right asked for by the colonists, and enacted those rights into law. But it was too late. The middle-class mass of property owners and business men began to see the vision of an American republic and the tide swelled toward success. As the cutting off of supplies from the colonies had been the chief cause of American weakness, England tried to prevent supplies being sent to America, with the result that Denmark, Sweden, Russia and Holland declared an armed neutrality to enforce their right to sell military supplies to America. The dispute led to a war with Holland in 1780, so that by the close of that year Great Britain had not a friend on earth and was confronted by the united armies and navies of France, Spain, Holland and America. At the same time there was rebellion in India against the English rule, insurrections in Ireland, and so deep the discontent in England itself that a London mob was able for several days to make itself master of the city. The English lost control of the sea before the close of 1780, and on October 19, 1781, Cornwallis surrendered his army to Washington, from which historic hour a world-champion of the rights of man over the divine rights of kings was born in the Western world.

The difficulties which Washington had encountered and overcome in Virginia previous to the French and Indian war were in full exercise throughout New England at the opening of the Revolutionary War. They could act together in small, free groups for a particular object of their will, but to obey superior officers and to sacrifice their own private judgment to higher authority, which was so necessary in war and such a war as this, was utterly repugnant to their dispositions. That subserviency to authority was the very reason they were opposing the idea of taxation without representation, and why should they be required to do the very thing they were fighting against! That quandary and query has been the puzzle of every mind unable to see the vision of means necessary to future results. It is the blindness always of the fanatical pacifist who would sacrifice nothing for peace, and of the non-resistant doctrine that right and moral law have no need for material might in a material world.

The colonists had never known of anything but local patriotism. They seemed to be unable to distinguish between English king-made authority and American people-made authority, notwithstanding how much had been discussed the relations of representation and taxation. That difficulty has always existed concerning American militarism. It almost defeated Lincoln during the Civil War. It almost delivered the Union to Secession. If democratic militarism cannot be different from dynastic militarism, then American freedom and human liberty will be lost in the next American or world war.

The colonist would fight with the heroism he displayed in Indian warfare, but when the enemy was driven away from his neighborhood, it was the duty of the next neighborhood to take care of itself. Besides, the New Englander with a home had the same idea as the Virginian soldier twenty years before, and this was that, when he wanted to go home, why shouldn’t he! He was not a deserter, and in no sense a coward, but the discipline of army service was mere enslavement and any compulsion was despotism. To understand the making up of an efficient army under such circumstances is the only measure to estimate the greatness of Washington and the debt to him of the liberty-loving world.

Curtis, in his history of American Commonwealth, says, “Washington overcame these difficulties by dint of a patience and a selflessness almost without parallel in history, which gradually communicated itself to his fellow countrymen. In seven years he created a continental army which ended the war at Yorktown.”

III. SELECTING THE LEADER OF LIBERTY FOR AMERICA

Washington had to write many letters, endeavoring to spur up the really patriotic leaders to consistent work for the cause. In his letter to Joseph Reed he was almost in despair over the indifference of people from whom he expected the most patriotic service.

“It grieves me,” he wrote, “to see so little of that patriotic spirit which I was taught to believe characteristic of this people.” But this did not mean that the so-called “spirit of ’76” was not strong among them. Washington needed so much of the patriotic spirit that a little would not be any, and, to half-heal the wounds of a friend, was not very friendly to the cause, nor a sufficient friendship toward the needs of Washington’s work for America.

Ten years later, when Washington had matured, through the mind-making experiences of revolutionary times, he wrote to John Jay, saying, “Experience has taught us that men will not adopt and carry into execution measures the best calculated for their own good without the intervention of coercive power.” This meant that human society requires law, and the right of law is devoid of appreciation or application unless it is clothed with the might to keep its forms and values true.

Lecky says, “The common saying that you cannot make people virtuous by law is a dangerous half-truth. The virtue innate in a people may be utterly destroyed by bad institutions, for ‘the virtue,’ as Jay wrote to Washington, ‘like the other resources of a country, can only be drawn to a point by strong circumstances ably managed, or strong governments ably administered.’”

When it came to a question of who should be commander-in-chief of all the armies, the disruptions and jealousies of the sections seemed dangerously near wrecking any united action, which obviously must be fatal to any independence more than they then had from Great Britain. The Southern leaders were unanimous for Washington, and, with the efficiency of shrewd politicians, supported measures largely according to the pressure they brought to bear in the cause of having Washington for the commander-in-chief. But this support did not bring together any antagonism, because it was not made by any faction of admirers or supporters. Washington himself, though present, refused to lend any aid to the presentation of his own name.

It was John Adams, the whole-souled patriot from Massachusetts who was the leader in advocating the selection of Washington. In his diary, during these consequential times, Adams wrote, “I had no hesitation to declare that I had but one gentleman in my mind for that important command, and that was a gentleman from Virginia, who was among us, and very well known to us; a gentleman whose skilled experience as an officer, whose independent fortune, great talents, and excellent universal character would command the approbation of all America, and unite the cordial exertions of all the colonies better than any other person in the Union.”

There were many men who were able leaders, and who had already made great sacrifices in the cause of liberty, who believed with their friends that they were entitled to be selected for the head of the Army. Nevertheless, when the nomination was made, the election by ballot was unanimous for Washington.

The salary of Commander-in-Chief had been set at five hundred dollars a month, but Washington in his address of acceptance, while declaring that no salary could have been made large enough to tempt him from the comforts and business interests of his home, said he would accept no salary, but would keep an exact account of his expenses, which they would no doubt refund to him.

“There is something charming to me,” said John Adams, who became the second president of the United States, when writing at the time to a friend, “in the conduct of Washington, a gentleman of one of the first fortunes upon the continent, leaving his delicious retirement, his family and friends, sacrificing his ease, and hazarding all in the cause of his country. His views are noble and disinterested.”

Washington now wrote to his half-brother, Augustine Washington, a characteristic letter.

“I am now to bid adieu to you, and to every kind of domestic ease for a while. I am embarked on a wide ocean, boundless in its prospect, and in which, perhaps, no safe harbor is to be found. I have been called upon by the unanimous voice of the Colonies to take command of the Continental army; an honor I neither sought after nor desired, as I am thoroughly convinced it requires great abilities, and much more experience than I am master of.”

But he added his belief that the Divine Providence, which had called him into such a dangerous duty, was wisely ordering the affairs of men, and would enable him in due course of time to perform all his tasks justly and with success.

What that task was through the revolutionary war can be appreciated only in the details of events that require volumes of description in telling. One cannot read it through with its ignoble intrigues, unpatriotic dissentions, and dangerous rivalries without feeling that Washington combined great manhood, great leadership, great statesmanship and great generalship, and that no other man of less character and genius than that could ever have welded together such discordant and diversified elements into a means sufficient to achieve the independence and liberty of America.