The Caucasian. (Shreveport, La.) 1900-192?, 1910-02-22
GEORGE WASHINGTON, MAN,
SOLDIER AND PATRIOT

All over this broad land the 2znd of
February Washington's BIRTHDAYS
celebrated
How shall any man add aught to the
praise or eulogy of George Washington?
History attd biography, eleqHeace and
poetry have exhausted their combined
riches Upon the successful leader of the
American Revolution and the founder
of the American Republic-our first
great national hero.
Every crisis in the history of the
world has found its man to control and
guide it. Call this Providence or acci-
dent, the American Revolution was no
exception to it. Before the first muir
lmurs of discomfort were heard in that
struggle the man was being prepared
for the crisis. On the banks of the Po-
tonac and the Rappahannock, thirty
years before Lexington and Bunker Hill,
a truthful and manly boy was growing
up, ripening into stalwart young man
hood With only the common school
education of that early day, the young
man was soon being educated in the
broader school Of nature and experience
in the great forest, under the open sky
with his surveyors chains and his sword
in Indian Wars, defending the frontier
settlements from savage incursions.
Growing still apace, the manly young
Virginian is soon the leading spirit and
military commander of all the Potomac
region, and his skill, endurance and
courage in those campaigns swell the
measure OF his fame. Then with peace.
the young commander lays down his
sword and marries and settles Upon his
inherited country seat at Mount Vernon
and ike his ancestors is now rich
landed proprietor, a Virginian farmer
and planter and country gentleman. So
he might have remained to the end had
not the voice of patriotism called him
to take part with his neighbors and
the oppressed people of the colonies
against the tyranny of the other coun-
try. Washington sat with Jefferson and
Richard Henry Lee and Mason and Pen
dleton, colleagues to that first contin-
mental congress at Philadelphia.
The guns at Lexington crack, and
their echoes reach the patriot congress
at Philadelphia. They walked the colo
nies to action. 1t had been debate and
and remonstrance before--it was war,
war for liberty now. Twenty thousand
patriot colonists had closed in upon the
rereating British in Boston Who should
their leader be? The hour found the
man, and out there stepped from the
Virginia delegation and advanced to the
bar of the house to accept his great
trust, this modest frontier colonel, legis-
lator and planter-talf, imposing ant
commanding in appearance, his fine
form made athletic and sinewy by long
manly exercise; his judgment ripened
| by experience in war and peace-the
very ideal picture of the hero which the
crisis demanded, George Washington
the man.
| Aside from all questions of success,
or failure, as we look at the man, what
was il that made Washinton great? Il
is clear that it was not the possession
OF great or brilliant intellectual facul
ties. Not in congress or convention
nor as speaker, writer, or even soldier
wer these displayed. Other men have
excelled him in all these ways, but il
a word it was manhood it was char.
acfer5: it was moral greatness. It was
that nice adjustment of the moral anc
intellectual faculties, that perfect blend
in, of the parts, that lofty sense Of duty
III the performance OF every trust, tina
spodess truth, that stainless honor, tha
incorruptible integrity, that fadltles
/, courage and mistaken endurance-a
these and more that made up that con
summate piece of manhood whic
: lowered out in that eighteenth centur
Of time and which is now evermore tn
priceless possession of glory and history
This is the supreme greatness of Georg
Observation-Disclosures Democrat.