The Wonderful Story of Washington Part 7

There was strong opposition in parliament, not only against all such taxation but also against a.s.serting the right of such taxation. Lord North, however, reflecting the will of King George, said, "The properest time to exert our right of taxation is when the right is refused."

So it is with all set wills. The colonists thought the same thing from an opposite point of view. It was an irresistible body meeting an immovable body. Something had to break.

Lord North declared that "a total repeal can not be thought of, till America is prostrate at our feet." That is, the master determines not to hear the complaint of the slave until the slave's will is broken at his owner's feet. The wilderness-made minds with their self-made freedom were not built that way. The King's mind-evil could not be met by resistence, but, as it emerged into colonial wrongs, the only way to defeat them and save the freedom of moral law was through revolutionary war. The evil mind using coertion to enforce its slave-making wrongs went out of the mental regions of non-resistence into the physical regions of wrongs where nothing but force can save.

Lord North's promise could have nothing to do with the case. The colonists had no idea of taking such a position as being prostrate at the feet of the King. They had felt the freedom that is born of the wilderness and that freedom was life. It was American and it remains the hope of the world.

CHAPTER X

ANTAGONISMS AND HOSTILITIES

I. BLAZING THE WAY TO WAR

Nothing ill.u.s.trates better the conditions of mind in the long, bitter turmoil, than an incident, infuriating the people of Boston, which happened March 5, 1770. A number of young men and boys, probably fifty or sixty of them, gathered on Boston Common to throw s...o...b..a.l.l.s. A company of militia being near, offered too tempting an object, and they began to pelt the soldiers. The claim was that some of the s...o...b..a.l.l.s contained rocks, though no one was seriously injured. The soldiers charged the bunch of boys, not with weapons, but with fists, and put them to flight. This was not enough for the victors, and so the soldiers pursued the flying enemy. Seeing this, some citizens rang alarm bells. A mob a.s.sembled around the custom house and was ordered away. The troops were a.s.sailed with clubs and stones. They fired into the crowd and killed four, wounding several others. The town was aflame with wrath and the troops were removed to the barracks outside to prevent further bloodshed. Though it was hardly disastrous enough to deserve the name, "Boston Ma.s.sacre," yet there was no doubt that nothing in the early days of the revolution, had more effect in setting the minds of the people against England. It was a sign of the times, and was like a little word that may sometimes mean as much as a whole discourse, especially when a social group of minds is unified in one interest of opposition or defense.

It was during these stirring times in the North that Was.h.i.+ngton was prevailed on by the Colonial government to visit the Indian tribes on the Ohio for a better understanding of the right of each side under the existing treaties. His journey to the site of old Fort Duquesne, renamed Fort Pitt, where Pittsburg now stands, was full of romantic memories, and was met with many a.s.surances of friends.h.i.+p among the now reconciled Indians.

Through the many interesting scenes, still somewhat perilous from the uncertainty of Indian friends.h.i.+p, he arrived at the mouth of the Great Kanawha. It was at this place where Was.h.i.+ngton was visited by an old Indian Sachem, who approached him with great reverence as if he were in the presence of a very superior being. Through the interpreter, the Indian chief said that he had heard of his coming to their country and had come a long way to see him. He explained his unusual interest by saying that he had led his warriors against the English under General Braddock. It was he with his band of braves who had lain in ambush on the banks of the Monongahela and had done such deadly slaughter to the English troops. But his reverence for Was.h.i.+ngton had a special reason. The Indians saw Was.h.i.+ngton as one of the boldest, riding fearlessly over the battlefield, carrying the General's orders.

The chief and his warriors had singled Was.h.i.+ngton out as one they must kill. They had tried their best but their bullets never found him. At last they would not waste their bullets on him because he had a charmed life, under the protection of the Great Spirit. And who knows about these things! Everything may not be of inevitable physical order! The simple Indian may have been nearer the truth than would be any psychological or scientific explanation.

The Indians very generally believed that the Great Spirit exercised power over bullets, and, in many instances, faced death fearlessly in the faith raised by their "medicen-man" that the enemy's bullets could not harm them. Religious a.s.surance of some kind is the consolation of every mind.

II. THE DOUBLE-QUICK MARCH TO REVOLUTION

That Was.h.i.+ngton could be righteously indignant and unmercifully sarcastic may be inferred from a letter written to Colonel George Muse, who had been Was.h.i.+ngton's military instructor at Mount Vernon in 1751. Colonel Muse had been accused of cowardice in the campaign with Was.h.i.+ngton to the Ohio in 1754, and Was.h.i.+ngton had with difficulty obtained for him a grant of ten thousand acres of land in the Ohio territory, as was given to the other officers in the expedition.

Colonel Muse was dissatisfied and so wrote a letter to Was.h.i.+ngton, the contents of which we can surmise only from Was.h.i.+ngton's reply.

"Sir,--Your impudent letter was delivered to me yesterday," he wrote.

"As I am not accustomed to receive such from any man, nor would have taken the same language from you personally, without letting you feel some marks of my resentment, I advise you to be cautious in writing me a second of the same tenor; though I understand you were drunk when you did it, yet give me leave to tell you that drunkenness is no excuse for rudeness."

After describing what had been done for the ungrateful man, Was.h.i.+ngton closed his letter by saying, "All my concern is that I ever engaged myself in behalf of so ungrateful and dirty a fellow as you are."

Meanwhile, the King of England was searching for means to wear down the opposition of the colonies to his a.s.sertion of the right to personal rule over them through Parliament. So complete was the refusal of the colonies to use tea, that the warehouses of the East India Company were full of tea, and their profit dwindled. A happy suggestion was made to the King. Let the tea go free duty, and so cheap on account of the surplus, to the colonies, that they will buy it and thus not only relieve the warehouses but also establish the principle of the right to tax articles sold in the colonies. The proposition was put into effect. The contents of the warehouses were emptied into s.h.i.+ps and sent to various ports in the American colonies.

The King depended on human nature as he understood it to be. Like many another ruler who believes he can rule by juggling ideas and manipulating minds, he deceived himself. The people were starving for tea! They had long lived without tea like foolish children who would play no way but their own way. Now, they would tumble over one another to get the long desired tea. There would be a carnival carousal of tea drinking in America! But somehow the thing didn't work. There was still a wonderful perverseness in the half-civilized subjects of the King in the American wilderness. They seemed suddenly to be all alike.

No doubt there were many who would gladly have profited by the King's contempt for principle, but profit was timid and principle was bold.

New York and Philadelphia turned the s.h.i.+ps around and ordered them to set sails at once for England. In Charleston they stored the tea in cellars where it remained untouched until it was ruined. In Boston, upon which the King's anger was centered, as the cause of all the strife, the conflict of wills was more desperate. The captains found that they could not unload the tea and when they tried to get clearance papers to leave the harbor, they were refused. They could not come in nor go out. But this meant, as the people soon saw, that the tea was to be held there on the s.h.i.+ps until the soldiers could be used to enforce the sale of tea, and thus coerce the people into acknowledging the claims of the King "to rule and reign over them,"

according to his will.

The two sides had now "chosen up," as it were, and had begun to climb the steps to war.

To forestall the landing of the tea under cover of the soldiers, a company of Boston people a.s.sembled on the night of December 18, 1773, disguised themselves as Indians, boarded the s.h.i.+ps, broke open all the chests of tea, and emptied the object of all the trouble into the sea.

There was no excitement apparent in doing this. When all the tea in Boston harbor was floating on the waves, the make-believe Indians returned peacefully to their homes, and went to bed, doubtless sleeping "the sleep of the righteous."

All the wrath of the King and his a.s.sociates were now centered definitely on Boston. In swift retaliation the Boston Port Bill was pa.s.sed by Parliament, closing the harbor and transferring the capital to Salem. A little later, the charter of the province was changed so as to bring the colony directly under the control of the English government. Then a Riot Bill was pa.s.sed so that any person, if indicted for a high crime, could be sent to England for trial. First, it was taxing without representation, then it was quartering soldiers upon them without their consent, and now it was a violation of the right to be tried by a jury of their peers. The intolerable had climbed the swift steps of war to the impossible. American freedom could not thus be made the puppet of any king.

It was historical evidence how "one thing brings on another" in a quarrel of wills, and how force can not control rebellious minds.

Brain-storms of feeling, whether in child or mob, are not to be stilled by retaliation or despotism.

III. VIOLENCE AND FLATTERY AS METHODS OF MASTERY

In wide contrast to the use of force for Ma.s.sachusetts, was the plan being carried out to pacify Virginia. Lord Dunmore was sent as governor to Virginia with the same idea of princely show as characterized Lord Botetourt. He established a court circle with almost kingly pomp and splendor. He began the great game of playing to the aristocracy of the "Ancient Dominion." All the wealthy families were entertained at the Governor's mansion in gorgeous style.

Was.h.i.+ngton was among the first to be so honored and entertained. It looked as if all Virginia was at the feet of the royal governor, rapturously "eating out of his hand."

The House of Burgesses convened and everything seemed to be going the King's way, when a letter was received stating what had been done to Boston. Then things were different. Principle, freedom and sympathy joined hands, and court-flattery went to the sc.r.a.p-heap.

The letter was read before the a.s.sembly. At once all other business was thrown aside. A protest was adopted to be sent to England, and a resolution was pa.s.sed setting apart the first day of June (the day on which the port of Boston was to be closed), as a day of fasting, prayer and humiliation, in which all minds should be united firmly opposing the contemplated suppression of American liberties, and to avert the evils of civil war.

Repeating what his predecessor, Lord Botetourt, had done and seeming to learn nothing from that really well-intentioned man's experiences, Lord Dunmore, the next morning ordered the House of Burgesses to appear before him in the council chamber.

"Mr. Speaker, and Gentlemen of the House of Burgesses," he began, "I hold in my hand a paper, published by order of your House, conceived in such terms, as reflect highly upon his Majesty and the Parliament of Great Britain, which makes it necessary for me to dissolve you, and you are dissolved accordingly."

But as before, the a.s.sembly did not disperse. It gathered in a hall where the members unanimously pa.s.sed the most drastic resolutions of defiance, and, what was most significant of all, ordered the Committee of Correspondence to communicate with the various colonies on the expediency of appointing deputies to meet annually in a General Congress of British America.

Every word and deed of Was.h.i.+ngton, and there is abundance of them on record, shows that he was in full and hearty sympathy with all these sentiments against Great Britain, though he and Lord Dunmore, and their families, mingled frequently in a social way. Was.h.i.+ngton's mind was not one to be swayed by particular instances of pride or profit. The goal before him was never obscured by side issues or temporary interests.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Was.h.i.+ngton and His Cabinet.]

CHAPTER XI

GREAT MINDS IN THE GREAT STORM

I. SUPPRESSING AMERICANS

General Thomas Gage was, in the approaching crisis, made military commander at Ma.s.sachusetts, as the man most experienced and able to enforce the Parliamentary laws. He had led the advance guard at Braddock's defeat, had married an American girl and had lived long in the colonies. It would seem that he ought to have known well the character of the colonists. But, he had already advised the King that, "The Americans will be lions only as long as the English are lambs."

The idea still prevails that there is a lamb-coward always in the presence of a lion-hero. General Gage promised that he would enforce all laws if given five regiments.

As suggested by the Virginia a.s.sembly, "a solemn league and covenant"

was circulated throughout the provinces, in which the subscribers bound themselves to cease from all intercourse with Great Britain, from the month of August, until Ma.s.sachusetts should regain its chartered rights. Furthermore, it was an iron-clad use of the boycott and lock-out. It pledged the signers that they would have no dealings with any one who refused to enter into that compact. This meant that home-principle had to have a method against home-profit. Capital was timidly cowering between what seemed to it as "the devil and the deep sea."

General Gage declared in a proclamation that the doc.u.ment was illegal and the signers traitors. He planted a force of infantry and artillery on the Boston Common and prepared himself to enforce the edict of the British Parliament and his own judgment. Thus, another high step was taken in the climb to war. The great drama was developing scene by scene that was to bring forth Was.h.i.+ngton as a warrior, president and statesman, the t.i.tular "Father of his Country."

As we proceed on our historic journey, needed to understand the making of Was.h.i.+ngton, and his meaning for Americans, we are now approaching his first appearance as a leader. This comes to pa.s.s after he decides that every resource and means have been used in vain for justice toward the colonies.

On July 18, 1773, a meeting of Fairfax County was held, with Was.h.i.+ngton as the presiding officer, to discuss their att.i.tude toward the English government and its methods toward the colonies. This general meeting of protest was held immediately after Was.h.i.+ngton's return from the session of the House of Burgesses at Williamsburg.

As Chairman of the committee on resolutions, he had probably much, if not all, to do with the language used, and it is significant, that the resolutions ended with a phrase which contained the threat of independence through war. They called on the King to reflect that "from our Sovereign there can be but one appeal." This shows the idea that was in Was.h.i.+ngton's mind for he had already decided, as shown by his letters, that the King could not be changed, and, therefore, that the only appeal was to be made to the higher authority of right through the might of war.