With Americans of Past and Present Days

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The treaty of commerce, accompanying the treaty of alliance of 1778,[12] had been in itself a justification of this judgment. Help from abroad was so pressingly needed in Americ...

They were now confronted by the unknown. What would that unknown be? Rochambeau had only his first division with him; would he be attacked at once by the English, who disposed o...

Chastellux, who saw him at his camp, where the band of the American army played for him the "March of the Huron," could draw from life his well-known description of him, ending:...

The combined armies had, in the meantime, done their best to confirm the English commander in such happy dispositions. They had built in the vicinity of New York brick ovens for...

As to the members of the French army who had started for the new crusade two years before, they had at once the conviction that, in accordance with their anticipation, they had...

The King, the ministers, the whole country gave Rochambeau the welcome he deserved. At his first audience on his return he had asked Louis XVI, as being his chief request, permi...

[13] Vergennes had written in the same way to the Marquis de Noailles, French ambassador in London: "Our engagements are simple; they are aggressive toward nobody; we have desir...

L'Enfant served first as a volunteer and at his own expense. "In February, 1778," we read in an unpublished letter of his to Washington, "I was honored with a commission of capt...

The impression was a general one among the French that those insurgents whom they had helped to become a free nation were to be a great one, too. Leaving England, where he was a...

But so they are, thought L'Enfant. For him the city was his city, his child, and a father has a right to rear his child as he pleases. Remonstrating went on some time. Jefferson...

Washington's acquaintance with things French began early and was of a mixed nature. As a pupil of the French Huguenot Maryes, who kept a school at Fredericksburg, and did _not_...

Washington keeps his French friends aware of the progress of the country and of his hopes for its greatness; he wants to visit the United States to the limit of what was then th...

During the early stages of the French Revolution, Washington had followed with the keenest sympathy and anxiety the efforts of our ancestors, taking pride in the thought that th...

He died without knowing that the threatening clouds would soon be dispelled; that the next important event which would count in the annals of the United States and make their gr...

[171] Sending him a farewell letter in which he said: "You may rest assured that your abilities and dispositions to serve this country were so well understood, and your service...

But, to a man, the increasing numbers of French Liberals, making ready for a definitive attempt at a republican form of government in their own land, were for the abolition of s...

[227] _Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States_, vol. XIII, col. 33 ff., November 2 and 3, 1803. Senator White had also objected that the price, of fifteen...

His shrewd good sense, seconded by a no less enjoyable good humor, never failed him. When he began, one important question had first to be decided: would he admit in his work on...

That practical results have been secured is certain; that better ones are in store, if we act wisely, is no less certain. Mankind longs for less troubled days, and moves toward...