Crawford avalanche. (Grayling, Mich.) 1879-19??, 1900-02-22
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FIRST IN AMER
ICAN HEARTS.
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q Il is impossible at this day to add any
thing of a new character to the ac
q count of men and events of hundred
years and more ago, for the field of his
tory, in so far as it relates to the Ameri-
can revolution and the men who were
representative in its accomplishment, has
been wen explored and yoluminously ex-
pounded by hundreds OF men equal to the
task. Nor is there school child of IL
years in all this country, who Vaas not
written his essay on these same men and
events, so that their history is in-burned
in the minds of all Americans. Yet this
is one of the hopeful signs of the dispo-
sition of a great people towards those
who called its nation into existence. And
of the leader of all those courageous
men, the one who before all others car
ried to an astonishing and successful
achievement the herculcan labors of
bringing victorious Il handful of ragged
and unframed soldiers through the dark
ness of a struggle with one of the most
powerful countries on earth, certainly
nothing now needs be said.
AS young man, Washington was prob
ably no less fippant and worldly than
hundreds of others in the colonies. His
manners, which have been thought extra
ordinary in their courtliness, were prob
ably not the slightest bit more so than
those of the majority of his acquaint-
ances. He was not frcc from the faults
of men of his time. He was accustomed
TO methodical exactness from his expert
ence on his mothers plantation and to
her he no doubt owed many of the traits
which afterwards stood him in such good
stead. From his school teachers, Will
liam Hobby, who was also the church
sexton, and Thomas Williams, he learn
ed to read and to write as well as to un-
derstand the art of computation. The
latter of the two also gave him the rudi-
ments of surveying which served as much
as any other one thing TO develop him in
10 the general of the American forces
For it was on account of his knowledge
of this science that he spent three of
his years of early manhood in the wilds
of the forests, running lines, determin-
ing levels. fixing boundaries. His wages
at this time were sufficient to enable him
to purchase large pieces of that trackless
wilderness bordering on streams, which
were afterwards of great value, thus de-
yeloping his insight and shrewdness as a
business man. But the Lessons that he
learned from that rugged nature in the
solitary hours, were priceless, and the
constitution that was hardened by his
life in the woods enabled him in after
years to endure untolu strains of expos
urc and suffering, to rescue Braddock af-
ter that generals defeat by the Fire Ich,
TO conceive the crossing of the Delaware
on that bleak and cheerless December
night, to undergo Valley Forge and to
emerge from them all, the modest, self
contained, reserved gentleman. 1t was
because of his knowledge of the ways of
the forest that he was sent on that
seemingly needless errand to warn the
French off English territory in the win
ter of 1884, on which he quilted him
self well and learned his first lessons i'm
practical warfare. The next year he
was chosen to go with Braddock on his
Inflated expedition against the French.
Here it was that Washington learned for
the first time, that Americans were of
Just as good stuff as Englishmen, that
they could fight just as bravely as the
seasoned veterans of the mother country.
For it was through the efforts of the
ush-whacking" Virginians that Brad
docks force escaped entire destruction.
The colonists knew better than did Brad
dock that the evolutions of the parade
ground were of no avail in the sort of
warfare in which they were at that time
engaged. The physical strain undergone
by Washington at this time was extra
ordinary. From the ninth to the six
tecnth OF that July, he had little sleep,
walking and riding, sometimes all night
long through the forest, and succeeding
in bringing up some support for Brad
docks retreating army. He was then
- years old. In the course of that one
expedition he had seen enough to give
him an unconquerablc faith in the valor
and abilities of his fellow coonists. This
faith, it may have been, that so upheld
him through the dark hours of defeat and
intrigue. when his army well nigh per-
ished from lack of food and clothing.
Washington had no ioea, even when the
colonies were being greatly reused over
the injustice of their treatment by Eng
land, that the end would be war. He
did not desire war. And it was only when
there was no other way to decide the
momentous question of principle that he
set his heart on hostilities. The cour-
age of the man in accepting the position
or commander-in-chicf which was offered
to him by the assembly was sublime.
The mother country could send hundreds
OF thousands of trained soldiers against
the colonists; her ships ruled the seas.
On the other hand. the colonists were a
few thousands undisciplined in any war
fare except that against the Indians;
their resources were comparatively insig-
nihcant. Ii seems as il there could have
been but one outcome. But Washington
modestly undertook the task, refusing
first any money remuneration for the
services he might render. And then his
sagacity rs commander began to display
11self. Quietly did he collect stores and