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I

HIS BELATED GLORY

F George Washington had died in his thirtieth year as

I

he expected to, he would have died the death. And

there would have been no great stir over the matter. Even his recently married wife, Martha, did not go with him to the obscure mineral springs where, as he wrote, "I once thought the grim king would certainly master my utmost efforts, and that I must sink, in spite of a noble struggle.”

He might, indeed, have lived on to his forty-third year and then vanished without gaining mention in a single schoolbook. His name would have been lost in the twilight sleep of those encyclopædic histories where minor heroes and the mute inglorious great are innumerably entombed.

In monographs by candidates for a doctorate it would be perhaps stated that Governor Dinwiddie of Virginia sent a certain Major Washington (1732-1761) to the French near Lake Erie, warning them off the English King's territory, and that he had returned safely with a polite reply warning the English off the French territory. Later, Major Washington, having been sent out to recapture an English fort from the French, had not waited for war to be declared, but had fired into a band of French scouts claiming to be ambassadors to the English, and had killed a young man named Jumonville; that the French under the dead man's brother had trapped Washington in a little stockade called Fort Necessity and after a nine hours' siege had made him. surrender and had secured his signature to a capitulation twice confessing the "assassination" of Jumonville.

(For all footnote references, see Appendix I, pp. 609-650.)

Nobody would have taken the trouble probably to find out that Washington did not understand French and denied both the assassination and the confession.

When Braddock's army attempted to recapture Fort Du Quesne, Washington's name might have been found among the records, but it would have been noted that he had no commission and merely carried messages for Braddock. The fable would never have been invented that he saved the remnants of the army.

State histories of Virginia would have referred briefly to the fact that he was put at the head of the colony's troops and, after a rather futile effort to check the French and Indians, and much abuse from the pamphleteers for the cowardice and debauchery of his troops, resigned again.

His killing of Jumonville might or might not have been blamed for the starting of the Seven Years' War, but little heed would have been paid to his reappearance under arms with General Forbes, his vain efforts to persuade Forbes to take the old Braddock Road, the rebukes he received for his insubordination and his selfish motives, or the fact that he commanded the pioneers and was with the troops that occupied the abandoned Fort Du Quesne, when its name was changed to Fort Pitt.

His resignation, his marriage to the rich widow of Daniel Parke Custis, and disappearance from all public life except a most obscure activity as a member of the House of Burgesses would probably not have been recorded even in a monograph, any more than the resignations of other officers and the committee memberships of other Virginians were mentioned.

In the preliminaries of the American revolution he played no important part and his selection as a compromise commander-in-chief, a "dark horse," for political reasons, amazed him as much as it surprised all the colonies.

From then on he developed into one of the greatest, noblest, and most influential souls in human chronicle. But if he had died, say, on June 14, 1775 (three days before the Battle of Bunker Hill, five weeks after Ticonderoga was taken, and two months after the battles of Concord and Lexington), he would have been even less remembered by an ungrateful republic than are hundreds of others who had done as much or more for the cause of freedom.

One proof of this is to be found in Nathaniel Ames' Almanacks, published annually at Boston from 1726 to 1775. The issue for 1756 mentions Washington twice, saying that he was "set upon by the French and Indians the 3d Day of July 1754, entirely defeated, and his Cannon all lost."1 He is given no credit, and not even spoken of at all in various references to Braddock's "shameful sad disaster."

He makes his next and final appearance in the issue for 1763-"Price Half a Dollar per Dozen, & Six Coppers single." Here he is included in the beginning of a long string of doggerel couplets called "A Brief Chronology of Remarkable Events, relating chiefly to the present War:

SINCE first the Sparks of this dire War begun,
In this new World, which into Europe run.
Since the perfidious French in hostile Ranks.
The English drove from smooth Ohio's Banks.

1749

1751

Since Washington enter'd the List of Fame,
And by a Journey to Lake Erie came.

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May 24, 1754

Since he defeats a French detached Band,
Under the brave Junonville's Command.

Since Contrecœur took hold of English Claim,

His Fortress builds and calls it Fort DuQuesne. June 13, 1754

Since Beau-se-jour yielded to British Fame,

And Cumberland adorns its present Name.

}

June 20, 1754

Since Fortune turn'd to Washington adverse,
Who makes good Terms with a superior Force.)
Since Braddock slain and all his Soldiers fail,
In a defeat near fam'd Monongahale.-

July 3, 1754

} July 9, 1755"

It goes on for ninety-six lines more, cataloguing British heroes, but making no further allusion to Washington. His fame stops in 1754 when "Fortune turn'd adverse." Ames' Almanack never referred to Washington again. Even in 1775 he was an almost forgotten man who had flared up twenty years before and retired into genteel oblivion, save for taking part in some of the numberless land-grabbing speculative bubbles that were set afloat after the French had been ousted from the West.

Those who knew Virginia could probably have said that the handsome young officer (whom some of the old people had seen when he rode up to Boston in 1756 and paid a brief visit to New York) was entertaining lavishly, and devoting himself to making friends and money, growing middle-aged gracefully and peacefully with no interest whatsoever in any of the wars that kept the borders anxious and red.

What would have happened to the American Republic if Washington had died at forty-three? It would be useless to try to imagine. In some ways it would be terrifying. For none of the other figures displayed quite the purity, selflessness, valor and resolution that made him forever after the standard by which all patriotisms are measured.

But certain it is that if he had lived only till forty-two, he would have cut no figure in such history as the public so inaccurately remembers. The weavers of myths would have chosen somebody else to obscure. The national capital would have worn some other name; and the demagogues, the genealogical societies and the others seeking their own.

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