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Show yrL BY THE PRESIDENT' .wIlTC Installment 17 The Count de Grasse, with twenty-eight twenty-eight ships of the line, six frigates, and twenty thousand men, was in the West Indies, and in August sent word to Washington that he was about to bring his whole fleet to the Chesapeake, Chesa-peake, as Washington had urged. Either Eith-er the Chesapeake or New York, had been Washington's prayer to him. Making as if he were but moving about New York from north to south for some advantage of position, Washington Wash-ington suddenly took two thousand Continentals and four thousand Frenchmen, all the long four hundred miles to York river In Virginia, to find Cornwallis already entrapped there, as he had planned, between Grasse's fleet In the bay and Lafayette intrenched across the peninsula with eight thousand thou-sand men, now the French had loaned him three thousand. Praise From Cornwallis. A few weeks' siege and the decisive decis-ive work was done, to the admiration of Cornwallis himself. The British army was taken. The generous Englishman could not withhold an expression of his admiration admir-ation for the extraordinary skill with which Washington had struck all the way from New York with six thousand men as easily as If with six hundred. "But, after all," he added, "your excellency's ex-cellency's achievements in New Jersey Jer-sey were such that nothing could surpass sur-pass them." Does Not Bring Peace. The victory at Yorktown brought neither peace nor ease in affairs. The revolution was indeed accomplished that every man could see who had the candor to look facts in the face; but its accomplishment brought tasks harder even than the tasks of war. Hostilities slackened were almost wholly done with before another spring had come. No more troops came over sea. The ministry in England Eng-land were discredited and ousted. Every 6ne knew that the proud mother country must yield, for all her stout defiance of the world. But a long year dragged by, nevertheless, before be-fore even preliminary articles of accommodation ac-commodation were signed; and still another before definite peace came, 'with independence and the full fruits of victory. Shadowy Powers of Congress. Meanwhile there was an army to be maintained, despite desperate incompetence incom-petence on the part of the congress and a hopeless indifference among the people; and a government to be kept presentably afoot, despite lack of money mon-ey and lack of men. The articles of confederation proposed pro-posed at the heart of the war-time (November 15, 1777) had at last been adopted (March 1, 1781), In Beason to create at least a government govern-ment which could sign treaties and conclude wars, but neither soon enough nor wisely enough to bring order or-der out of chaos. The states, glad to think the war over, would do nothing for the army, nothing for the public credit, nothing even for the maintenance mainten-ance of order; and the articles of confederation only gave the congress written warranty for offering advice; they did not make Its shadowy power real. Washington Keeps His Command. It was beyond measure fortunate that at such a critical time as this Washington still kept his command, Btlll held affairs under the steady pressure pres-sure of his will. 1 HiB successes had at last given him place of authority in the thoughts and affections of his countrymen in some sort commensurate with his capacity ca-pacity and his vision in affairs. He had risen to a very safe footing of power among all the people as the war drew towards Its close, filling their imaginations, and reigning imong them as securely as among his troops, who for so long had felt his will wrought upon them day by day. His very reserve, and the large dignity dig-nity and pride of his steady bearing, made him seem the more like a hero In the people's eyes. They could understand un-derstand a man made In this ample in simple kind, give them but time emugh to see him in his full propor-ios. propor-ios. It answered to their thought f him to find him too proud to dis-emble, dis-emble, too masterful to brook unreadable unrea-dable faults, and yet slow to grow Impatient, though he must wait a hol8 twelve-month to see a plan mature, ma-ture, or coax a half-score states to get a purpose made good. And they could not deem him cold, though they found him self-possessed, keeping his own counsel; for was not the country full of talk how passionately he was like to act at a moment of crisis and in the field? A Fearless Leader. They only feared to lose a leader so reckless of himself when danger was sharpest. "Our army love their general very much," one of his officers had said, "but they have one thing against him, which is the little care he takes of himself in any action;" for he had seen how Washington pressed at Trenton and at Princeton to the points that were most exposed, thinking of his troops, not of himself. him-self. The spirit of fight had run high in Washington the whole war through. Even during those dismal weeks of 1776, when affairs looked darkest, and he had but a handful of men about him aB he all but fled before Howe through New Jersey, he had spoken, as if In the very pleasantry of daring, of what he would do should things come to the worst with him. His thought turned to those western fast-, nesses he knew so well, w'here the highlands of his own state lay, and he spoke calmly of a desperate venture-thither. venture-thither. "Reed," he exclaimed, to one of his aides, "my neck does not feel as though it was made for a halter. We must retire to Augusta county, in Virginia, and if overpowered, must pass the Alleghany mountains:" Faith In His Army. And when the last movement of the war came, it was still with the same feeling that he drew his lines about Cornwallis. ' "We may be beaten by the English," he said; "it is the chance of war; but there Is the army they will never conquer." "The privates are all generals, but not soldiers," the gallant Montgomery had cried, In his hot impatience with the heady militiamen he was bidden command; but it was not so In the presence of Washington, when once these men had taken his measure. They were then "rivals in praising him," the Abbe Robin declared, "fearing "fear-ing him even when he was silent, and retaining their full confidence in him after defeats and disgrace. French Officers Puzzled. The singular majesty and poise of this revolutionary hero struck the French officers as infinitely more remarkable re-markable than his mastery in the field and his ascendency in council. They had looked to find him great in action, but they had not thought to 'see in him a great gentleman, a man after their own kind in grace and courtesy and tact, and yet so lifted above the manner of courts and drawing-rooms by an incommunicable quality qual-ity of grave sincerity which they were at a loss how to describe. No one could tell whether It were a gift of the mind or of the heart. It was certainly only that it constituted the atmosphere and apotheosis of the man. The Marquis de Chastellux noted, not-ed, with a sort of reverent awe for this hero not yet turned of fifty, how perfect a union reigned between his physical and moral qualities. "One alone," he declared, "will enable you to judge of all the rest." "It is not' my intention to exaggerate," he said; "I wish only to express my Impression Impres-sion of a perfect whole, which cannot be the product of enthusiasm, since the effect of proportion is rather to diminish the idea of greatness." Change In Washington's Looks. Strangers who had noted his appearance ap-pearance in the earlier years of the war had remarked the spirit and life that sat in Washington's eyes; but when the war was over, and its strain relaxed, they found those eyes grown pensive, "more attentive than sparkling"; spark-ling"; steady still, and noble in their frankness and good feeling, but touched a little with care, dimmed with watching. The Prince de Broglie found him "still as fresh and active as a young man" in 1782, but thought "he must have been much handsomer three years ago," for "the gentlemen who had remained with him during all that time said that he seemed to have grown much older. 'Twould have been no marvel had he broken under the burden he had carried, athletic soldier and hardened campaigner though he was. "This is :the seventh year that he has commanded com-manded the army and that he has obeyed the congress; more need not be said," the Marquis de Chastellux declared, unconsciously uttering a very bitter gibe against the government, govern-ment, when he meant only to praise its general. Letters for All. Such service told the more heavily upon Washington because he had rendered ren-dered it in silence. No man among all the Revolutionary Revolution-ary leaders, it is true, had been more at the desk than he. Letters of command com-mand and persuasion, reports that carried every detail of the army's life and hopes in their careful phrases, orders of urgency and of provident arrangement, ar-rangement, writings of any and every sort that might keep the hard war afoot, he had poured forth Incessantly, Incessant-ly, and as If incapable of fatigue or discouragement. No one who was un der orders, no man who could lend the service a hand or take a turn at counsel, coun-sel, was likely to escape seeing the commander-in-chief's handwriting often oft-en enough to keep him in mind of his tireless power to foresee and to direct. di-rect. A Silent Man. Washington seemed present in every ev-ery transaction of the war. And yet always and to every one he seemed a silent man. What he said and what he wrote never touched himself. He spoke seldom of motives, always of what was to be done and considered; and even his secretaries, though they handled the multitude of his papers, were left oftentimes to wonder and speculate about the man himself so frank and yet so reserved, so straightforward and simple and yet so proud and self-contained, revealing powers, but somehow .not revealing himself. It must have seemed at times to those who followed him and pondered what they saw that he had caught from nature her own manner while he took hia breeding as a boy and his preparation as a man amidst the forests for-ests of a wild frontier; that his character char-acter spolce in what he did and without with-out self consciousness; that he had no 'moods but those of action. A Man Without Reproach. Nor did men know him for what he Teally was until the war was .over. His .own officers then found they had something more to learn of the man they had fought under for six years and those six, all of them, such as lay bare the characters of men. What remained to be done during the two trying, anxious years, 1782 and 1783, seemed as if intended for a supreme and final test of the qualities quali-ties of the man whose genius and character had made the Revolution possible. "At the end of a long civil war," said the Marquis de Chastellux, with a noble pride for his friend, "he had nothing with which he could reproach re-proach himself"; but it waB these last years which were to crown this perfect per-fect praise with its full meaning. In the absence of any real government, govern-ment, Washington proved almost the only prop of authority and law. What the crisis was no one knew quite so thoroughly or so particularly as he. It consisted in the ominous fact that the army was the only organized and central power in the country, and that it had deep reason for discontent and Insubordination. When once it had served its pur-post pur-post greatly at Yorktown, and the war Beemed ended at a stroke, the country turned from it in Indifference left it without money; talked of disbanding it without further ceremony, and with no provision made for arrears of pay; seemed almost to challenge It to indignation in-dignation and mutiny. The Army on a War Footing. It was necessary, for every reason of prudence and good statesmanship, to keep the army still upon a war footing. foot-ing. There are sure signs of peace, no doubt, but no man could foretell what might be the course of politics ere England should have compounded her quarrel with France and Spain, and ended the wars with which the Revolution had become inextricably involved. 'Twere folly to leave the English army at New York unchecked. Premature Pre-mature confidence that peace had come might bring some sudden disaster dis-aster of arms, should the enemy take the field again. The array must be ready to fight, If only to make fighting unnecessary. No Power to Raise Money. Washington would have assumed the offensive again, would have crushed crush-ed Clinton where he lay in New York; and the congress was not slack as slackness was counted there in sustaining sus-taining his counsels. But the congress con-gress had no power to raise money; had no power to command. The states alone could make it possible pos-sible to tax the country to pay the army; their thirteen governments were the only civil authority, and they took the needs and the discontents of the army very lightly, deemed peace secure and war expenses unnecessary, and let matters drift as they would. They came very near drifting to another an-other revolution a revolution such as politicians had left out of their reckoning, reck-oning, and only Washington could avert. Washington Helps Congress. After Yorktown, Washington spent four months in Philadelphia, helping :he congress forward with the ousl-ness ousl-ness of the winter; but as March of the new year (1782) drew towards its close, he rejoined the army at New-burgh, New-burgh, to resume his watch upon New York. He had been scarcely two months at his post when a letter was placed in his hands which revealed, more fully than any observations of his own could have revealed it, the pass to which affairs had come. An Unwelcome Letter. The letter was from Colonel Lewis Nicola, an old and respected officer, who stood nearer than did most of his fellow officers to the commander-in-chief in intimacy and affection, and who felt it his privilege to speak plainly. plain-ly. The letter was calm in temper, grave and moderate in tone, with something of the gravity and method of a disquisition written upon abstract questions of government; did not broach its meaning like a revolutionary revolution-ary document. But what it proposed was nothing less, when read between the lines, than that Washington should suffer himself to be made king, and that so an end should be put to the incompetency and ingratitude of a band of weak and futile republics. An Overwhelming Rebuke. Washington met the suggestion with a rebuke so direct and overwhelming that Colonel Nicola must himself have wondered how he had ever dared make such a venture. "Be assured, sir," said the indignant commander, "no occurrence in the course of the war has given me more painful sensations than your information informa-tion of their being such ideas existing in the army. ... I am much at a loss to conceive what part of my conduct con-duct could have given encouragement to an address which to me seems big with the greatest mischiefs that can befall my country. If I am not de-cieved de-cieved in the knowledge of myself, you could not have found a person to Surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown. whom your schemes are more disagreeable. disa-greeable. . . . Let me conjure you, if you have any regard for your country, coun-try, concern for yourself or posterity, or respect for me, to banish these thoughts from your mind, and never communicate, as from yourself or any one else, a sentiment of the like nature." na-ture." (TO BE CONTINUED.) |