Chapter 9
Elected chief of freemen! greater far Than kings whose glittering parts are fixed by birth-- Nam'd by thy country's voice for long try'd worth, Her crown in peace, as once her shield in war!
Deign, Washington, to hear a British lyre, That ardent greets thee with applausive lays, And to the patriot hero homage pays.
O, would the muse immortal strains inspire, That high beyond all Greek and Roman fame, Might soar to times unborn, thy purer, nobler name!
DOCTOR AIKIN.
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Had he, a mortal, the failings attached to man?--Was he the slave of avarice? No. Wealth was an object too mean for his regard, and yet economy presided over his domestic concerns; for his mind was too lofty to brook dependence. Was he ambitious? No. His spirit soared beyond ambition's reach. He saw a crown high above all human grandeur. He sought, he gained, and wore that crown. But he had indeed one frailty--the weakness of great minds. He was fond of fame, and had reared a colossal reputation. It stood on the rock of his virtue. This was dear to his heart. There was but one thing dearer. He loved glory, but still more he loved his country. That was the master passion, and with resistless might it ruled his every thought and word and deed.
GOUVERNEUR MORRIS.
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Washington! Father and deliverer of his country! What sweetness dwells in his name--a name sounded by million-tongued fame through her golden trumpet into distant worlds. The sooty African that traverses Niger's sandy waste--the Algerian desperate in fight--the half-lived Laplander--the Arabian, swift as the wind--the Scythian--the inoffensive Brahmin,--have all heard it, and when mentioned, revere it.
WILLIAM CLARK FRAZER.
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Three times Washington's character saved the country; once by keeping up the courage of the nation till the Revolutionary War was ended; then, by uniting the nation in the acceptance of the Federal Constitution; thirdly, by saving it from being swept away into anarchy and civil war during the immense excitement of the French Revolution. Such was the gift of Washington, a gift of God to the nation, as far beyond any other of God's gifts as virtue is more than genius, as character is more than intellect, as wise conduct is better than outward prosperity.
JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE.
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Patriots of America--and military officers of every name, view the great example that is set before you. Emulate the virtues of Washington, and in due time your heads will also be adorned with the wreath of honor. Here you learn what is true and unfading glory. You will see that it is not the man who is led on by the blind impulse of ambition; who rushes into the midst of embattled hosts, merely to show his contempt of death; or who wastes fair cities or depopulates rich provinces,--to spread far the terrors of his name--who is admired and praised as the true hero and friend of mankind;--but the man, who, in obedience to the public voice, appears in arms for the salvation of his country, shuns no perils in a just cause, endeavors to alleviate instead of increase the calamities of war, and whose aim is to strengthen and adorn the temple of liberty, as resting on the immovable basis of virtue and religion. The voice of justice and the voice of suffering humanity forbid us to bestow the palm of true valor on the mad exploits of the destroyers of mankind.
Washington's delight was to save, not to destroy. His greatest glory is that with small armies and the loss of few lives--compared with the wastes of other wars--he made his country free and happy.
ROBERT DAVIDSON.
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Brave without temerity, laborious without ambition, generous without prodigality, noble without pride, virtuous without severity--Washington seems always to have confined himself within those limits where the virtues, by clothing themselves in more lively but more changeable and doubtful colors, may be mistaken for faults. Inspiring respect, he inspires confidence, and his smile is always the smile of benevolence.
MARQUIS CHASTELLEUX.
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God has given this nation many precious gifts; but the chief gift of all, the one, we may say, which has added something to every other one, is the gift of this great soldier, this great statesman, this great and good man, this greatest of all Americans, past, present--past, if not to come. Our heritage from him is illustrious above all others.
ANONYMOUS.
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Great without pomp, without ambition brave, Proud, not to conquer fellow-men, but save; Friend to the weak, a foe to none but those Who plan their greatness on their brethrens' woes; Aw'd by no titles--undefil'd by lust-- Free without faction--obstinately just; Warm'd by religion's sacred, genuine ray, That points to future bliss the unerring way; Yet ne'er control'd by superstition's laws, That worst of tyrants in the noblest cause.
--_From a London Newspaper_.
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Extract from a translation of a Dutch Ode to Washington. Dr. O'Calla has made a literal translation; Alfred B. Street, of Albany, the poetical translation.
No lofty monument thy greatness needs; The freedom which America from thee Received, and happiness of thy great deeds The everlasting monument shall be.
Thy proud foot trampled on the British chain; But O! beware lest some false foreign power Rivet his fetters on thy land again, For despots smile while waiting for their hour.
How deeply touched, Humanity! your soul, When you beheld the grateful tears that rained Down a glad Nation's cheek, as Freedom's goal Was by that Nation's might in triumph gained.
O, Fatherland, whoever loves thy fame, Sighing shall mourn thy glory lost, when won; Freedom, when leaving thee, lit up her flame Within the patriot heart of Washington.
When Time shall sink in everlasting gloom, And Death with Time shall cease for evermore; When the dead burst the cerements of the tomb, As the last trumpet breaks in thunder o'er;
Then as it feels its pulses once more free, Let every heart Columbia claims as son Beat first for God, but let its next throb be For the eternal bliss of Washington.
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The character of Washington! Who can delineate it worthily? Modest, disinterested, generous, just, of clean hands and a pure heart, self-denying and self-sacrificing, seeking nothing for himself, declining all remuneration beyond the reimbursement of his outlays, scrupulous to a farthing in keeping his accounts, of spotless integrity, scorning gifts, charitable to the needy, forgiving injuries and injustices, brave, fearless, heroic, with a prudence ever governing his impulses, a wisdom ever guiding his valor, true to his friends, true to his country, true to himself, fearing God, no stranger to private devotion or public worship, but ever recognizing a divine aid and direction in all that he accomplished. His magnetism was that of merit, superior, surpassing merit; the merit of spotless integrity, of recognized ability, and of unwearied willingness to spend and be spent in the service of his country.
ROBERT C. WINTHROP.
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One of the best of modern Americans, James Russell Lowell, who was born on the same day of the month as Washington, February 22d, 1819, wrote shortly before his death, to a schoolgirl, whose class proposed noticing his own birthday: "Whatever else you do on the twenty-second of February, recollect, first of all, that on that day a really great man was born, and do not fail to warm your hearts with the memory of his service, and to brace your minds with the contemplation of his character. The rest of us must wait uncovered till he be served."
ELBRIDGE S. BROOKS.
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The fame of Washington stands apart from every other in history, shining with a truer luster and a more benignant glory. With us his memory remains a national property, where all sympathies, throughout our widely extended and diversified empire meet in unison. Under all dissensions and amid all the storms of party, his precepts and example speak to us from the grave with a paternal appeal; and his name--by all revered--forms a universal brotherhood, a watchword of our Union.
IRVING AND FISKE.
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The soul of Washington was one of the grandest of all ages that takes its equal rank with Greek and Roman and Hebrew names of renown for humane and prime worth, names that seem written not in our poor records, but on the sky's arch--names in the broad sunshine of whose moral glory, spreading through the world, all the little fires which men have made with the kindling of words from abstract conceptions,--go out. For however otherwise a man may be distinguished--unless there be in him a spirit of love, devotion, and self-sacrifice, we feel he lacks the very pith and beauty of manhood; and though he may be a great performer with his pen as one plays well on a musical instrument, a Great Being he is not.
_Christian Examiner_.
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It will be the duty of the historian and the sage of all nations to let no occasion pass of commemorating this illustrious man; and until time shall be no more, will a test of the progress which our race has made in wisdom and virtue, be derived from the veneration paid to the immortal name of Washington.
LORD BROUGHAM.
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The character of Washington may want some of those poetical elements, but it possessed fewer inequalities and a rarer union of virtues than perhaps ever fell to the lot of any other man. Prudence, firmness, sagacity, moderation, an overruling judgment, an immovable justice, courage that never faltered, patience that never wearied, truth that disdained all artifice, magnanimity without alloy. It seems as if Providence had endowed him in a pre-eminent degree with the qualities requisite to fit him for the high destiny he was called upon to fulfill.
IRVING AND FISKE.
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WASHINGTON'S NAME IN THE HALL OF FAME
BY MARGARET E. SANGSTER
Republics are ungrateful, but ours, its best-loved son Still keeps in memory green, and wreathes the name of Washington. As year by year returns the day that saw the patriot's birth, With boom of gun and beat of drum and peals of joy and mirth, And songs of children in the streets and march of men-at-arms, We honor pay to him who stood serene 'mid war's alarms; And with his ragged volunteers long kept the foe at bay, And bore the flag to victory in many a battle's day.
We were a little nation then; so mighty have we grown That scarce would Washington believe to-day we were his own. With ships that sail on every sea, and sons in every port, And harvest-fields to feed the world, wherever food is short, And if at council-board our chiefs are now discreet and wise, And if to great estate and high, our farmers' lads may rise, We owe a debt to him who set the fashion of our fame, And never more may we forget our loftiest hero's name.
Great knightly soul who came in time to serve his country's need, To serve her with the timely word and with the valiant deed, Along the ages brightening as endless cycles run Undimmed and gaining luster in the twentieth century's sun, First in our Hall of Fame we write the name all folk may ken, As first in war, and first in peace, first with his countrymen.
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ESTIMATES OF WASHINGTON
George Washington, the brave, the wise, the good. Supreme in war, in council, and in peace. Washington, valiant, without ambition; discreet, without fear; confident, without presumption.
DR. ANDREW LEE.
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More than any other individual, and as much as to one individual was possible, has he contributed to found this, our wide spreading empire, and to give to the Western World independence and freedom.
CHIEF JUSTICE MARSHALL.
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Let him who looks for a monument to Washington look around the United States. Your freedom, your independence, your national power, your prosperity, and your prodigious growth are a monument to him.
KOSSUTH.
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More than all, and above all, Washington was master of himself. If there be one quality more than another in his character which may exercise a useful control over the men of the present hour, it is the total disregard of self when in the most elevated positions for influence and example.
CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS.
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WASHINGTON'S RELIGIOUS CHARACTER
BY WILLIAM M'KINLEY
_In an Address, February 22, 1898_
Though Washington's exalted character and the most striking acts of his brilliant record are too familiar to be recounted here, yet often as the story is retold, it engages our love and admiration and interest. We love to record his noble unselfishness, his heroic purposes, the power of his magnificent personality, his glorious achievements for mankind, and his stalwart and unflinching devotion to independence, liberty, and union. These cannot be too often told or be too familiarly known.
A slaveholder himself, he yet hated slavery, and provided in his will for the emancipation of his slaves. Not a college graduate, he was always enthusiastically the friend of liberal education....
And how reverent always was this great man, how prompt and generous his recognition of the guiding hand of Divine Providence in establishing and controlling the destinies of the colonies and the Republic....
Washington states the reasons of his belief in language so exalted that it should be graven deep in the mind of every patriot:
No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the invisible hand which conducts the affairs of man more than the people of the United States. Every step by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency; and in the important revolution just accomplished in the system of their united government the tranquil deliberations and voluntary consents of so many distinguished communities from which the events resulted cannot be compared with the means by which most governments have been established, without some return of pious gratitude, along with an humble anticipation of the future blessings which the same seems to presage. The reflections arising out of the present crisis have forced themselves strongly upon my mind. You will join me, I trust, in thinking that there are none under the influence of which the proceedings of a new and free government are more auspiciously commenced.
In his Farewell Address, Washington contends in part:
(1) For the promotion of institutions of learning;
(2) for cherishing the public credit;
(3) for the observance of good faith and justice toward all nations....
At no point in his administration does Washington appear in grander proportions than when he enunciates his ideas in regard to the foreign policy of the government:
Observe good faith and justice toward all nations; cultivate peace and harmony with all; religion and morality enjoin this conduct. Can it be that good policy does not equally enjoin it? It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and, at no distant period, a great nation, to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence.
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WASHINGTON
ANONYMOUS
We are met to testify our regard for him whose name is intimately blended with whatever belongs most essentially to the prosperity, the liberty, the free institutions, and the renown of our country. That name was a power to rally a nation in the hour of thick-thronging public disasters and calamities; that name shone amid the storm of war, a beacon light to cheer and guide the country's friends; its flame, too, like a meteor, to repel her foes. That name in the days of peace was a loadstone, attracting to itself a whole people's confidence, a whole people's love, and the whole world's respect; that name, descending with all time, spread over the whole earth, and uttered in all the languages belonging to the tribes and races of men, will forever be pronounced with affectionate gratitude by everyone in whose breast there shall arise an aspiration for human rights and human liberty.
Washington stands at the commencement of a new era, as well as at the head of the New World. A century from the birth of Washington has changed the world. The country of Washington has been the theater on which a great part of that change has been wrought, and Washington himself a principal agent by which it has been accomplished. His age and his country are equally full of wonders, and of both he is the chief.
It is the spirit of human freedom, the new elevation of individual man, in his moral, social, and political character, leading the whole long train of other improvements, which has most remarkably distinguished the era. Society has assumed a new character; it has raised itself from beneath governments to a participation in governments; it has mixed moral and political objects with the daily pursuits of individual men, and, with a freedom and strength before altogether unknown, it has applied to these objects the whole power of the human understanding. It has been the era, in short, when the social principle has triumphed over the feudal principle; when society has maintained its rights against military power, and established on foundations never hereafter to be shaken its competency to govern itself.
VII
WASHINGTON'S PLACE IN HISTORY
THE HIGHEST PEDESTAL
BY WILLIAM E. GLADSTONE
When I first read in detail the life of Washington, I was profoundly impressed with the moral elevation and greatness of his character, and I found myself at a loss to name among the statesmen of any age or country many, or possibly any, who could be his rival. In saying this I mean no disparagement to the class of politicians, the men of my own craft and cloth, whom in my own land, and my own experience, I have found no less worthy than other men of love and admiration. I could name among them those who seem to me to come near even to him. But I will shut out the last half century from the comparison. I will then say that if, among all the pedestals supplied by history for public characters of extraordinary nobility and purity, I saw one higher than all the rest, and if I were required at a moment's notice to name the fittest occupant for it, I think my choice at any time during the last forty-five years would have lighted, as it would now light, upon Washington.
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WASHINGTON IN HISTORY
BY CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW
No man ever stood for so much to his country and to mankind as George Washington. Hamilton, Jefferson, Adams, Madison, and Jay each represented some of the elements which formed the Union. Washington embodied them all.
The superiority of Washington's character and genius were more conspicuous in the formation of our government and in putting it on indestructible foundations than leading armies to victory and conquering the independence of his country. "The Union in any event" is the central thought of the "Farewell Address," and all the years of his grand life were devoted to its formation and preservation.
Do his countrymen exaggerate his virtues? Listen to Guizot, the historian of civilization: "Washington did the two greatest things which in politics it is permitted to man to attempt. He maintained by peace the independence of his country, which he conquered by war. He founded a free government in the name of the principles of order, and by re-establishing their sway."
Hear Lord Erskine, the most famous of English advocates: "You are the only being for whom I have an awful reverence."
Remember the tribute of Charles James Fox, the greatest parliamentary orator who ever swayed the British House of Commons: "Illustrious man, before whom all borrowed greatness sinks into insignificance."
Contemplate the character of Lord Brougham, pre-eminent for two generations in every department of human thought and activity, and then impress upon the memories of your children his deliberate judgment: "Until time shall be no more will a test of the progress which our race has made in wisdom and virtue be derived from the veneration paid to the immortal name of Washington."
Blot out from the page of history the names of all the great actors of his time in the drama of nations, and preserve the name of Washington, and the century would be renowned.
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TO THE SHADE OF WASHINGTON
BY RICHARD ALSOP
Exalted chief, in thy superior mind What vast resource, what various talents joined! Tempered with social virtue's milder rays, There patriot worth diffused a purer blaze; Formed to command respect, esteem, inspire, Midst statesmen grave, or midst the social choir, With equal skill the sword or pen to wield, In council great, unequaled in the field, Mid glittering courts or rural walks to please, Polite with grandeur, dignified with ease; Before the splendors of thy high renown How fade the glow-worn lusters of a crown; How sink diminished in that radiance lost The glare of conquest, and of power the boast. Let Greece her Alexander's deeds proclaim; Or Cæsar's triumphs gild the Roman name; Stripped of the dazzling glare around them cast, Shrinks at their crimes humanity aghast; With equal claim to honor's glorious meed. See Attila his course of havoc lead! O'er Asia's realms, in one vast ruin hurled. See furious Zingis' bloody flag unfurled. On base far different from the conqueror's claim Rests the unsullied column of thy fame; His on the woes of millions proudly based, With blood cemented and with tears defaced; Thine on a nation's welfare fixed sublime, By freedom strengthened and revered by time. He, as the Comet, whose portentous light Spreads baleful splendor o'er the glooms of night, With chill amazement fills the startled breast. While storms and earthquakes dire its course attest, And nature trembles, lest, in chaos hurled, Should sink the tottering fabric of the world. Thou, like the Sun, whose kind propitious ray Opes the glad morn and lights the fields of day, Dispels the wintry storm, the chilling rain, With rich abundance clothes the smiling plain, Gives all creation to rejoice around, And life and light extends o'er nature's utmost bound. Though shone thy life a model bright of praise, Not less the example bright thy death portrays, When, plunged in deepest we, around thy bed, Each eye was fixed, despairing sunk each head, While nature struggled with severest pain, And scarce could life's last lingering powers retain: In that dread moment, awfully serene, No trace of suffering marked thy placid mien, No groan, no murmuring plaint, escaped thy tongue, No lowering shadows on thy brow were hung; But calm in Christian hope, undamped with fear, Thou sawest the high reward of virtue near, On that bright meed in sweetest trust reposed, As thy firm hand thine eyes expiring closed, Pleased, to the will of heaven resigned thy breath, And smiled as nature's struggles closed in death.
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THE MAJESTIC EMINENCE OF WASHINGTON
BY CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW
_In an Address, February 22, 1888_
"Time's noblest offspring is the last."