Washington's soul was busied now only with such things as the death of a mare, the laziness of his slaves, or the shiftlessness of a carpenter. Indolence always stirred his deepest emotions, and he could be driven to frenzy by such dolts as John Askew, a joiner to whom he paid £25 a year, and who annoyed him for eleven years. To Colonel Fairfax he poured out this choleric epistle, a vivid characterstudy incidentally of both author and subject:

"I shall beg leave to say a little now in regard to Jno. Askew. That he went to work at your House, was not only with my knowledge but by my express desire, and had he stayd there 'til this time it would have been perfectly agreeable to me; but as you know when he left your work, so I can assure you that he never came to mine until Wednesday or Thursday last.

"I then asked him if he did not think himself one of the most worthless and ungrateful fellows that ever lived for his treatment of me for you must know Sir that so small a job as making the Front Gate in my yard was left him to do when I went to Williamsburg abt the 10th of May last, and was found undone at my return, altho I urged him in the strongest manner I could to get it finished for this very prevalent Reason namely, that I might inclose my Chariot Horses in a Pasture round my House secured by a Post & Rail fence and by that means prevent them from breaking into a field where I had about 10 acres of Peas, that is now by his Idleness and there letting in my sheep, entirely rooted out.

"This as I before said he neglected, and I was from that time untill a day or two before Mr. Carlyle asked for him to go to Belvoir, ere I could get him to work again; so that you may partly judge from this of the provocation he has given me, but you will be more convinced of it when I tell you that the Ballce. he owes me is for Tools Imported for him, and money actually lent to keep him from starving, and from a Gaol, from whence (at least the Sheriff's custody) I have once or twice redeemed him—and lent him money to cloath & by necessaries for his Family.

"This is the real truth of the case, and it is so far from any wanting to keep him (longer than he will finish the Gate, and repays 7 days work due to my Carpenters, and how about) that I

never desire to see his face again, if he can fall upon any method of paying me what he owes me in money." 21

Such were the things that held Washington's soul close to the ground while all the nations were wrung with gigantic conflict, and hundreds of men were flashing into supposed immortality and thousands perishing in nameless misery.

Who could have imagined that this late-rising sun would one day drown them all in his light?

III

HE IGNORES THE WARS

IKE a boy who flings a careless match into a powder magazine and runs far off after the first few detona

L

tions, George Washington started the world-rocking World War, but did not stay to finish it.

Voltaire, Parkman, and others say that when, during a state of formal peace between England and France and their colonies, Washington's men shot down young Jumonville, who carried the credentials of an ambassador as well as the instructions of a spy, he touched the fuse to the stored explosives collected on both sides.

Peace did not officially end until 1757, two years after Braddock's Defeat, but Washington retired to his farm at the close of his first campaign with Forbes in 1758. Though he was then only twenty-six, nothing could draw him into battle again for seventeen years. There were opportunities enough and almost unbroken, not only for the five remaining years of the great war, but throughout the following decade.

Americans were fighting everywhere and winning ridicule, defeat, death, victory and fame everywhere. These things did not interest Washington. The borders of Virginia were constantly under attack, but he was not even tempted apparently to go to the rescue of his own province.

In 1759 the Cherokees came to clash with the Governor of South Carolina, who violated the laws of war and refused to release two hostages. The Indians were enraged and killed a number of Americans. The Americans retorted by

butchering the hostages. The Cherokees took a fierce revenge and butchered settlers.

The British sent Colonel Montgomery to crush them, but Washington commented, "Let him be wary. He has a crafty, subtle enemy to deal with, that may give him most trouble when he least expects it." 1

Montgomery, indeed, fell into an ambush and was heavily defeated, but later dealt the Cherokees a severe blow and returned to Albany for the attack on Canada. His successor, Major Hanson, was compelled to surrender Fort Loudoun to the Indians, with a garrison of two hundred, many of whom were slain. This was not the Fort Loudoun reluctantly built by Washington at Winchester, but Fort Loudon on the Holston, thirty miles southwest of the present site of Knoxville, Tennessee. The irony of it was that Governor Dinwiddie had spent £7,000 in 1756 "to assist the Cherokees in builds a Fort to defend yr Women and Children from the Insults of the French wn they go to War in assist's yr Bros, the English." "

2

Three years later the Cherokees proceeded to besiege an English garrison in the fort, and Virginia sent a relief force under Washington's old second in command, Colonel William Byrd of Westover, who had been coupled with Washington when General Forbes rebuked those two gentlemen for mercenary motives in advocating the old Braddock Road. He made such slow progress that he grew disheartened and gave up the command to Washington's former lieutenant-colonel, Adam Stephen, who made no better

progress.

Then the British sent down Lieutenant-Colonel Grant.

This was the very officer who had served with Washington under Forbes in 1758, and had insisted on making a dash against Fort Du Quesne. He had taken along with his own. kilted Highlanders, a major, eight officers and 168 of

Washington's men. The French and Indians had inflicted on him another Braddock's Defeat, thrown the Scotch and the Virginians into a complete panic, and slaughtered a quarter of them.

Washington had raged at Grant in a letter to Sally Fairfax. But Grant had returned from the dead as an exchanged prisoner, and had better luck fighting the unaided Cherokees.

For once Washington sympathized with the Indians, and wrote to Robert Cary:

"We have little or no news stirring. Our assembly is at present convened to grant supplies for carrying on the war against the Cherokee Indians, should they choose to continue it; but this I am persuaded they are by no means inclined to do, nor are they prepared for it, as they have been soliciting peace for some time past. I wish the powers of Europe were as well disposed to an accommodation as these poor wretches are. A stop would soon be put to the effusion of human blood, and peace and plenty would resume their empire again, to the joy and content, (I believe,) of most ranks and degrees of people."

Grant overpowered the Cherokees and peace was signed November 19, 1760. Later, when Pontiac's War threatened to crumple the whole Western border and played havoc with forts and settlements, Washington remained a simple country gentleman, though Dr. Koontz says that the Indians were kept from overrunning Virginia by the line of forts that Washington had built when he was commander-in-chief of the Virginia troops. But he had almost come to mutiny in his reluctance to build them, and their defence was left to Colonel Adam Stephen and Major Andrew Lewis, while the Swiss Colonel Bouquet must relieve Fort Pitt from siege by winning the ferocious battle of Bushy Run, with a force of 500, only a third of Braddock's, and against nearly three times as many Indians.

An example of Washington's aloofness from the border