The nearly seven long years of war were ended, and America had become a free nation.
The articles of peace between Great Britain and the United States were not signed till September 3, 1783. On November 4 the army was disbanded, with a touching address from their idolized commander. On December 4, in the city of New York, in a building on the corner of Pearl and Broad Streets, Washington said good-bye to his officers, losing for a time his wonderful self-command. "I cannot come to each of you to take my leave,"
he said, "but shall be obliged if each of you will come and take me by the hand." Tears filled the eyes of all, as, silently, one by one, they clasped his hand in farewell, and pa.s.sed out of his sight.
Then Washington repaired to Annapolis, where Congress was a.s.sembled, and at twelve o"clock on the 23d of December, before a crowded house, offered his resignation. "Having now finished the work a.s.signed me, I retire from the great theatre of action; and bidding an affectionate farewell to this august body, under whose orders I have long acted, I here offer my commission, and take my leave of all the employments of public life." "Few tragedies ever drew so many tears from so many beautiful eyes," said one who was present.
The beloved general returned to Mount Vernon, to enjoy the peace and rest which he needed, and the honor of his country which he so well deserved. John Parke Custis, Mrs. Washington"s only remaining child, had died, leaving four children, two of whom--Eleanor, two years old, and George Washington, six months old--the general adopted as his own. These brought additional "sweetness and light" into the beautiful home.
The following year the Marquis de Lafayette was a guest at Mount Vernon, and went to Fredericksburg to bid adieu to Washington"s mother. When he spoke in high praise of the man whom he so loved and honored, Mary Washington replied quietly, "I am not surprised at what George has done, for he was always a good boy." Blessed mother-heart, that, in training her child, could look into the future, and know, for a certainty, the result of her love and progress! She died August 25, 1789.
Three years later--May 25, 1787--a convention met at Philadelphia to form a more perfect union of the States, and frame a Const.i.tution.
Washington was made President of this convention. He had long been reading carefully the history and principles of ancient and modern confederacies, and he was intelligently prepared for the honor accorded him. When the Const.i.tution was finished, and ready for his signature, he said: "Should the United States reject this excellent Const.i.tution, the probability is that an opportunity will never again be offered to cancel another in peace; the next will be drawn in blood."
When the various States, after long debate, had accepted the Const.i.tution, a President must be chosen, and that man very naturally was the man who had saved the country in the perils of war. On the way to New York, then the seat of government, Washington received a perfect ovation. The bells were rung, cannon fired, and men, women, and children thronged the way. Over the bridge crossing the Delaware the women of Trenton had erected an arch of evergreen and laurel, with the words, "The defender of the mothers will be the protector of the daughters."
As he pa.s.sed, young girls scattered flowers before him, singing grateful songs. How different from that crossing years before, with his worn and foot-sore army, amid the floating ice!
The streets of New York were thronged with eager, thankful people, who wept as they cheered the hero, now fifty-seven, who had given nearly his whole life to his country"s service. On April 30, 1789, the inauguration took place. At nine o"clock in the morning, religious services were held in all the churches. At twelve, in the old City Hall, in Wall Street, Chancellor Livingston administered the oath of office, Washington stooping down and kissing the open Bible, on which he laid his hand; "the man," says T. W. Higginson, "whose generalship, whose patience, whose self-denial, had achieved and then preserved the liberties of the nation; the man who, greater than Caesar, had held a kingly crown within reach, and had refused it." Washington had previously been addressed by some who believed that the Colonies needed a monarchy for strong government. Astonished and indignant, he replied: "I am much at a loss to conceive what part of my conduct could have given encouragement to an address which to me seems big with the greatest mischiefs that can befall my country." After taking the oath, all proceeded on foot to St.
Paul"s Church, where prayers were read.
The next four years were years of perplexity and care in the building of the nation. The great war debt, of nearly one hundred millions, must be provided for by an impoverished nation; commerce and manufactures must be developed; literature and education encouraged, and Indian outbreaks quelled. With a love of country that was above party-spirit, with a magnanimity that knew no self-aggrandizement, he led the States out of their difficulties. When his term of office expired, he would have retired gladly to Mount Vernon for life, but he could not be spared.
Thomas Jefferson wrote him: "The confidence of the whole Union is centred in you.... North and South will hang together, if they have you to hang on."
Again he accepted the office of President. Affairs called more than ever for wisdom. He continually counselled "mutual forbearances and temporizing yieldings on all sides." France, who had helped us so n.o.bly, was pa.s.sing through the horrors of the Revolution. The blood of kings and people was flowing. The French Republic having sent M. Genet as her minister to the United States, he attempted to fit out privateers against Great Britain. Washington knew that America could not be again plunged into a war with England without probable self-destruction; therefore he held to neutrality, and demanded the recall of Genet. The people earnestly sympathized with France, and, but for the strong man at the head of the nation, would have been led into untold calamities. The country finally came to the verge of war with France, but when Napoleon overthrew the Directory, and made himself First Consul, he wisely made peace with the United States.
Washington declined a third term of office, and sent his beautiful farewell address to Congress, containing the never-to-be-forgotten words: "Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.... Observe good faith and justice towards all nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all."
He now returned to Mount Vernon to enjoy the rest he had so long desired. Three years later the great man lay dying, after a day"s illness, from affection of the throat. From difficulty of breathing, his position was often changed. With his usual consideration for others, he said to his secretary, "I am afraid I fatigue you too much." "I feel I am going," he said to his physicians. "I thank you for your attentions, but I pray you to take no more trouble about me." The man who could face death on the battle-field had no fears in the quiet home by the Potomac.
In the midst of his agony, he could remember to thank those who aided him, and regret that he was a source of care or anxiety. Great indeed is that soul which has learned that nothing in G.o.d"s universe is a little thing.
At ten in the evening he gave a few directions about burial. "Do you understand me?" he asked. Upon being answered in the affirmative, he replied, ""Tis well!" when he expired without a struggle, December 14, 1799. Mrs. Washington, who was seated at the foot of the bed, said: ""Tis well. All is now over. I shall soon follow him. I have no more trials to pa.s.s through."
On December 18, 1799, the funeral procession took its way to the vault on the Mount Vernon estate. The general"s horse, with his saddle and pistols, led by his groom in black, preceded the body of his dead master. A deep sorrow settled upon the nation. The British ships lowered their flags to half-mast. The French draped their standards with c.r.a.pe.
Martha Washington died three years later, May 22, 1802, and was buried beside her husband. In 1837, the caskets were enclosed in white marble coffins, now seen by visitors to Mount Vernon. In 1885 a grand marble monument, five hundred and fifty-five feet high, was completed on the banks of the Potomac, at the capital, to the immortal Washington.
Truly wrote Jefferson: "His integrity was most pure; his justice the most inflexible I have ever known; no motives of interest or consanguinity, of friendship or hatred, being able to bias his decision.
He was, indeed, in every sense of the word, a wise, a good, and a great man."
The life of George Washington will ever be an example to young men. He had the earnest heart and manner--never trivial--which women love, and men respect. He had the courage which the world honors, and the gentleness which made little children cling to him. He controlled an army and a nation, because he understood the secret of power--self-control. Well does Mr. Gladstone call him the "purest figure in history;" unselfish, fair, patient, heroic, true.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Benj. Franklin with Signature]
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.
"To say that his life is the most interesting, the most uniformly successful, yet lived by any American, is bold. But it is, nevertheless, strictly true." Thus writes John Bach McMaster, in his life of the great statesman.
In the year 1706, January 6 (old style), in the small house of a tallow-chandler and soap-boiler, on Milk Street, opposite the Old South Church, Boston, was born Benjamin Franklin. Already fourteen children had come into the home of Josiah Franklin, the father, by his two wives, and now this youngest son was added to the struggling family circle. Two daughters were born later.
The home was a busy one, and a merry one withal; for the father, after the day"s work, would sing to his large flock the songs he had learned in his boyhood in England, accompanying the words on his violin.
From the mother, the daughter of Peter Folger of Nantucket, "a learned and G.o.dly Englishman," Benjamin inherited an attractive face, and much of his hunger for books, which never lessened through his long and eventful life. At eight years of age, he was placed in the Boston Latin School, and in less than a year rose to the head of his cla.s.s. The father had hoped to educate the boy for the ministry, but probably money was lacking, for at ten his school-life was ended, and he was in his father"s shop filling candle-moulds and running on errands.
For two years he worked there, but how he hated it! not all labor, for he was always industrious, but soap and candle-making were utterly distasteful to him. So strongly was he inclined to run away to sea, as an older brother had done, that his father obtained a situation for him with a maker of knives, and later he was apprenticed to his brother James as a printer.
Now every spare moment was used in reading. The first book which he owned was Bunyan"s "Pilgrim"s Progress," and after reading this over and over, he sold it, and bought Burton"s "Historical Collections," forty tiny books of travel, history, biography, and adventure. In his father"s small library, there was nothing very soul-stirring to be found. Defoe"s "Essays upon Projects," containing hints on banking, friendly societies for the relief of members, colleges for girls, and asylums for idiots, would not be very interesting to most boys of twelve, but Benjamin read every essay, and, strange to say, carried out nearly every "project" in later life. Cotton Mather"s "Essays to do Good," with several leaves torn out, was so eagerly read, and so productive of good, that Franklin wrote, when he was eighty, that this volume "gave me such a turn of thinking as to have an influence on my conduct through life; for I have always set a greater value on the character of a doer of good than on any other kind of reputation; and, if I have been a useful citizen, the public owe the advantage of it to that book."
As the boy rarely had any money to buy books, he would often borrow from the booksellers" clerks, and read in his little bedroom nearly all night, being obliged to return the books before the shop was opened in the morning. Finally, a Boston merchant, who came to the printing-office, noticed the lad"s thirst for knowledge, took him home to see his library, and loaned him some volumes. Blessings on those people who are willing to lend knowledge to help the world upward, despite the fact that book-borrowers proverbially have short memories, and do not always take the most tender care of what they borrow.
When Benjamin was fifteen, he wrote a few ballads, and his brother James sent him about the streets to sell them. This the father wisely checked by telling his son that poets usually are beggars, a statement not literally true, but sufficiently near the truth to produce a wholesome effect upon the young verse-maker.
The boy now devised a novel way to earn money to buy books. He had read somewhere that vegetable food was sufficient for health, and persuaded James, who paid the board of his apprentice, that for half the amount paid he could board himself.
Benjamin therefore attempted living on potatoes, hasty pudding, and rice; doing his own cooking,--not the life most boys of sixteen would choose. His dinner at the printing-office usually consisted of a biscuit, a handful of raisins, and a gla.s.s of water; a meal quickly eaten, and then, O precious thought! there was nearly a whole hour for books.
He now read Locke on "Human Understanding," and Xenophon"s "Memorable Things of Socrates." In this, as he said in later years, he learned one of the great secrets of success; "never using, when I advanced anything that may possibly be disputed, the words _certainly_, _undoubtedly_, or any others that give the air of positiveness to an opinion; but rather say, I conceive or apprehend a thing to be so and so; it appears to me, or _I should think it so or so_, for such and such reasons; or, _it is so_, if _I am not mistaken_.... I wish well-meaning, sensible men would not lessen their power of doing good by a positive, a.s.suming manner, that seldom fails to disgust, tends to create opposition, and to defeat every one of those purposes for which speech was given to us, to wit, giving or receiving information or pleasure.... To this habit I think it princ.i.p.ally owing that I had early so much weight with my fellow-citizens, when I proposed new inst.i.tutions or alterations in the old, and so much influence in public councils when I became a member; for I was but a bad speaker, never eloquent, subject to much hesitation in my choice of words, and yet I generally carried my points." A most valuable lesson to be learned early in life.
Coming across an odd volume of the "Spectator," Benjamin was captivated by the style, and resolved to become master of the production, by rewriting the essays from memory, and increasing his fulness of expression by turning them into verse, and then back again into prose.
James Franklin was now printing the fifth newspaper in America. It was intended to issue the first--_Publick Occurrences_--monthly, or oftener, "if any glut of occurrences happens." When the first number appeared, September 25, 1690, a very important "occurrence happened," which was the immediate suspension of the paper for expressions concerning those in official position. The next newspaper,--the _Boston News-Letter_,--a weekly, was published April 24, 1704; the third was the _Boston Gazette_, which James was engaged to print, but, being disappointed, started one of his own, August 17, 1721, called the _New England Courant_. The _American Weekly Mercury_ was printed in Philadelphia six months before the _Courant_.
Benjamin"s work was hard and constant. He not only set type, but distributed the paper to customers. "Why," thought he, "can I not write something for the new sheet?" Accordingly, he prepared a ma.n.u.script, slipped it under the door of the office, and the next week saw it in print before his eyes. This was joy indeed, and he wrote again and again.
The _Courant_ at last gave offence by its plain speaking, and it ostensibly pa.s.sed into Benjamin"s hands, to save his brother from punishment. The position, however, soon became irksome, for the pa.s.sionate brother often beat Benjamin, till at last he determined to run away. As soon as this became known, James went to every office, told his side of the story, and thus prevented Benjamin from obtaining work.
Not discouraged, the boy sold a portion of his precious books, said good-bye to his beloved Boston, and went out into the world to more poverty and struggle.
Three days after this, he stood in New York, asking for work at the only printing-office in the city, owned by William Bradford. Alas! there was no work to be had, and he was advised to go to Philadelphia, nearly one hundred miles away, where Andrew Bradford, a son of the former, had established a paper. The boy could not have been very light-hearted as he started on the journey. After thirty hours by boat, he reached Amboy, and then travelled fifty miles on foot across New Jersey. It rained hard all day, but he plodded on, tired and hungry, buying some gingerbread of a poor woman, and wishing that he had never left Boston. His money was fast disappearing.
Finally he reached Philadelphia.
"I was," he says in his autobiography, "in my working dress, my best clothes being to come round by sea. I was dirty from my journey; my pockets were stuffed out with shirts and stockings, and I knew no soul nor where to look for lodging. I was fatigued with travelling, rowing, and want of rest. I was very hungry, and my whole stock of cash consisted of a Dutch dollar and about a shilling in copper. The latter I gave the people of the boat for my pa.s.sage, who at first refused it, on account of my rowing, but I insisted on their taking it; a man being sometimes more generous when he has but a little money than when he has plenty, perhaps through fear of being thought to have but little.
"Then I walked up the street, gazing about, till near the Market-house I met a boy with bread. I had made many a meal on bread, and, inquiring where he got it, I went immediately to the baker"s he directed me to, in Second Street, and asked for biscuit, intending such as we had in Boston; but they, it seems, were not made in Philadelphia. Then I asked for a threepenny loaf, and was told they had none such. So, not considering or knowing the difference of money, and the greater cheapness, nor the names of bread, I bade him give me threepenny-worth of any sort. He gave me, accordingly, three great puffy rolls. I was surprised at the quant.i.ty, but took it, and, having no room in my pockets, walked off with a roll under each arm, and eating the other.
"Thus I went up Market Street as far as Fourth Street, pa.s.sing by the door of Mr. Read, my future wife"s father; when she, standing at the door, saw me, and thought I made, as I certainly did, a most awkward, ridiculous figure. Then I turned and went down Chestnut Street and part of Walnut Street, eating my roll all the way, and, coming round, found myself again at Market Street wharf, near the boat I came in, to which I went for a draught of the river water; and, being filled with one of my rolls, gave the other two to a woman and her child that came down the river in the boat with us, and were waiting to go farther."
After this, he joined some Quakers who were on their way to the meeting-house, which he too entered, and, tired and homeless, soon fell asleep. And this was the penniless, runaway lad who was eventually to stand before five kings, to become one of the greatest philosophers, scientists, and statesmen of his time, the admiration of Europe and the idol of America. Surely, truth is stranger than fiction.
The youth hastened to the office of Andrew Bradford, but there was no opening for him. However, Bradford kindly offered him a home till he could find work. This was obtained with Keimer, a printer, who happened to find lodging for the young man in the house of Mr. Read. As the months went by, and the hopeful and earnest lad of eighteen had visions of becoming a master printer, he confided to Mrs. Read that he was in love with, and wished to marry, the pretty daughter, who had first seen him as he walked up Market Street, eating his roll. Mr. Read had died, and the prudent mother advised that these children, both under nineteen, should wait till the printer proved his ability to support a wife.
And now a strange thing happened. Sir William Keith, governor of the province, who knew young Franklin"s brother-in-law, offered to establish him in the printing business in Philadelphia, and, better still, to send him to England with a letter of credit with which to buy the necessary outfit.
A mine of gold seemed to open before him. He made ready for the journey, and set sail, disappointed, however, that the letter of credit did not come before he left. When he reached England, he ascertained that Sir William Keith was without credit, a vain man and devoid of principle.
Franklin found himself alone in a strange country, doubly unhappy because he had used for himself and some impecunious friends one hundred and seventy-five dollars, collected from a business man. This he paid years afterward, ever considering the use of it one of the serious mistakes of his life.
He and a boy companion found lodgings at eighty-seven cents per week; very inferior lodgings they must have been. There was of course no money to buy type, no money to take pa.s.sage back to America. He wrote a letter to Miss Read, telling her that he was not likely to return, dropped the correspondence, and found work in a printing-office.