far from being enviable. It is, perhaps, impossible for us at this day to appreciate the difficulties which surrounded him during the whole period of the revolution. We have now a population of seventeen millions of souls, all ardent in patriotism, and attached by custom, as well as choice, to a government of their own creation, and as thoroughly organized as any on earth. The military department is systematized; arms, ammunition, and every other species of supplies can be furnished in any quantity at home; and, in case of war, we have a credit which could not fail to supply the treasury with abundant means. In all these respects our circumstances are very different from what they were sixty-five years ago. At that time we may be said to have been almost without a government. The mandates of congress were little more than recommendations to the states, which they obeyed or not at pleasure. Our military stores were mostly brought from abroad; our army was made up of quotas from the different states, enlisted for short periods, and frequently disbanding on the eve of a most important movement; our exchequer was empty; our credit gone; and our population, which then amounted to no more than one-sixth its present number, was divided by the civil war into two parties, one of which rendered every possible assistance to the enemy, and, in some parts, proved even a greater annoyance than the presence of the foreign invader.

We are too apt to look back on the revolution as a unanimous movement of the people, and to regard all who were engaged in those trying scenes as the friends of liberty and America. This, however, was far from the fact. Marshall informs us that in 1775, immediately after the battle of Lexington, a company of Connecticut troops were required in New-York to sustain the whigs against their tory adversaries. In the same year New-York is known to have furnished large and important supplies to the British army. At the arrival of General Howe in 1776, large crowds of devoted royalists assembled on the shore to receive him, renewed their oaths of fidelity to the crown, and many took up arms and joined his standard. In New-Jersey great numbers of troops were enlisted on the part of the king, and it is thought that in both New-Jersey and New-York the number that joined the royal standard was quite equal to that which enlisted in the army of the republic. In the two Carolinas royal regiments were raised in 1776 and 1779, consisting of more than two thousand troops. Even the person of Washington was far from being secure against tory zeal, and, in one instance at least, a conspiracy was formed to deliver him up to the English, in which some of his own guard participated. Indeed,

so great was the disaffection of the people at one time that it threatened the most serious consequences, and caused even Washington to speak somewhat doubtingly of the result. While flying through the Jerseys, deserted by his own troops, who were marching off by regiments, and closely pursued by his powerful and victorious foe, he writes to his brother thus:-"We are in a very disaffected part of the province, and, between you and me, I think our affairs are in a very bad condition: not so much from the apprehension of General Howe's army as from the defection of New-York, the Jerseys, and Pennsylvania. In short, the conduct of the Jerseys has been most infamous. Instead of turning out to defend their country, and affording aid to our army, they are making their submission as fast as they can. If they had given us any support we might have made a stand at Hackensack, and after that at Brunswick; but the few militia that were in arms disbanded themselves, and left the poor remains of our army to make the best we could of it." "In a word, my dear sir, if every nerve is not strained to recruit the new army with all possible expedition, I think the game is pretty nearly up, owing, in a great measure, to the insidious arts of the enemy and disaffection of the colonies before mentioned, but principally to the ruinous policy of short enlistments, and placing too great a dependence on the militia."

The dependence placed on the militia of the several states, and the system of short enlistments, which had been adopted by congress, arose from the extreme jealousy which the people entertained of a standing army. They were not more disposed to submit their necks to the yoke of a military despotism than they were to that of the British king. We must be permitted to respect the feeling which thus led them to guard their dearest interests, but we cannot, at the same time, fail to regret a caution which, it is now apparent, was ill-judged, and which was the cause of some of the most serious embarrassments that Washington was called to encounter. He opposed it with all his strength, and finally so far overcame the scruples of congress as to induce them to adopt, in part, his views. "Can any thing," he writes to the president of that body, "be more destructive to the recruiting service than giving ten dollars bounty for six weeks service of the militia who come in, you cannot tell how; go, you cannot tell when; and act, you cannot tell where; consume your provisions, exhaust your stores, and leave you at last at a critical moment?"

To add to the embarrassments occasioned by this legalized desertion, the condition of the soldiers was often most afflicting. Few armies have ever been called to suffer what the army of our

revolution passed through in achieving the independence of America. "I believe, or at least hope," says Washington in a letter to Bryan Fairfax before the great drama was opened, "that we have virtue enough left among us to deny ourselves every thing but the bare necessaries of life." It was a noble, a sublime faith, and deserved the rich rewards with which it was destined to be crowned. The result proved that it was a faith which had not been misplaced: amidst all their sufferings, the majority of the people continued firm to the last. Not only did they often want the common necessaries of life, but even the means of subsistence and the ordinary clothing necessary to preserve them against the cold and storms of a northern winter. During the winter of 1777-8, while the army was at Valley Forge, in Pennsylvania, its sufferings were past description. Large numbers were not only destitute of shoes but also of blankets, and instead of reposing themselves on comfortable beds, were obliged to sit up all night by camp fires to keep from freezing. "We have," says Washington in one of his letters, "by a field return this day made no less than two thousand eight hundred and ninety-eight men, now in camp, unfit for duty, because they are barefoot and otherwise naked." "The soap,

vinegar, and other articles allowed by congress, we see none of, nor have we seen them, I believe, since the battle of Brandywine. The first, indeed, we have now little occasion for; few men having more than one shirt, many only the moity of one, and some none at all." "For some days there has been little less than a famine in camp. A part of the army have been a week without any kind of flesh, and the rest three or four days. The soldiers are naked and starving."

What aggravated the distress of the commander-in-chief was the fact, that he could not make his true situation known, and that in the midst of his weakness he was obliged to appear strong lest he should invite the advances of his enemy. He was, therefore, exposed to censure for his inactivity without being able to vindicate himself, and even blamed for going into winter quarters, although his force was inadequate to any effective service, and the weather exceedingly severe. In speaking of the remonstrance of the Pennsylvania legislature against his retiring to Valley Forge, he thus feelingly alludes to his situation :-"I can assure those gentlemen that it is a much easier and less distressing thing to draw remonstrances in a comfortable room by a good fireside, than to occupy a cold, bleak hill, and sleep under frost and snow without clothes or blankets. However, although they seem to have little feeling for the naked and distressed soldiers, I feel superabundantly

for them, and from my soul I pity those miseries which it is neither in my power to relieve or prevent."

In the midst of his difficulties his only relief was to address himself to congress: but that body was able to afford him but little succor. Its own powers were too feeble to command respect. Its mandates were disregarded; its requisitions on the states were seldom fully answered. With a bankrupt treasury, a ruined commerce, a depreciated currency, and resources that were everywhere exhausted, the most that it could do was to issue new supplications to the states, and clothe the commander-in-chief with new powers. In this way the war dragged on. Congress was firm; Washington faltered not in the midst of all his trials. He rose with the occasion which called forth his exertions, and was never so great as when surrounded by ruin. His letters throughout breathe the same determined spirit, and are mostly marked with an unshaken confidence in the result. "I do not believe," he says, "that Providence has done so much for nothing." Again, "The great Governor of the universe has led us too long and too far on the road to happiness and glory to forsake us in the midst of it." When asked what he would do if Philadelphia should be taken, he replied:-"We will retreat beyond the Susquehanna river; and thence, if necessary, to the Alleghany mountains." The American army was many times subdued, but the spirit of such a man could not be conquered. When his army was dwindled to a handful, and Lord Cornwallis was about sailing for England with the tidings of its dispersion, he suddenly turned on his pursuers, crossed the Delaware in the face of a keen wintry wind, accompanied with snow and sleet, and while large cakes of ice were floating fearfully down the current; and, by a master stroke of daring and generalship, won a decided victory, which retrieved his sinking fortunes and restored the confidence of his countrymen.

Much has been said of the merits of Washington as a military commander, and some have assigned him the very highest, and others only a moderately advanced position among the heroes of the world. We are persuaded that in neither of these extremes is his true position to be found. Washington possessed a strong, masculine understanding; a steady, unwavering courage; and the greatest firmness of purpose. But his genius was inferior to that of Napoleon, Hannibal, Cesar, or Cromwell. His mind acted slowly, and although his judgment, when once formed, was sound beyond that of his most distinguished compeers, yet it was not the intuitive sense of a commanding genius, and always derived aid from a consultation with others. His battles were, therefore,

planned with skill and ability, but an unexpected event—a movement of the enemy which had not been forescen—an accident which interfered with his original plan, was very apt to derange his whole operations and decide the fate of the day against him. Such unlooked-for occurrences occasioned his losses at Long Island, at Brandywine, at Germantown. But his prudence and skillful arrangements saved him in all these cases from total defeat. It was not thus however with the great captains whom we have named. The towering genius of Napoleon, for instance, enabled him to meet, at the fortunate moment, any untoward obstacle or to grasp any unexpected advantage. Brougham justly observes, that it was his glory never to let an error pass unprofited by himself, nor to give his adversary an advantage which he could not ravish from him with ample interest before it was turned to any fatal account. He possessed an intuitive perception of his enemy's position, strength, and motions, and an accurate knowledge of all that battalions could perform. His generals yielded to his decisions as to a master mind, never doubting, even for a moment, his superior skill, and regarding his knowledge as little short of inspiration.

It would be in vain to claim for Washington a genius so transcendent. But if he was inferior to Napoleon in this, the highest endowment of the mere warrior, he was far superior to him in wisdom. Macauley quaintly observes, that "the French emperor is among conquerors what Voltaire is among writers, a miraculous child. His splendid genius was frequently clouded by fits of humor as absurdly perverse as those of the pet of the nursery, who quarrels with his food and dashes his playthings to pieces." Washington, on the other hand, was what the same writer says of Cromwell, "emphatically a man." He was never elated by success; never intoxicated by victory. He had a manly strength of understanding; a steadiness of mind which allowed neither flattery nor passion to move him from the fixed purpose of his soul. He had nothing in common with that class of great men whose conduct attracts attention in lower posts, but who exhibit their incapacity as soon as they are called to take the lead: but his truly great mind, neither seeking honors nor shunning responsibilities, reposed in placid dignity in the loftiest stations, expanding without effort to fill the vaster sphere of his duties.

As a mere warrior, then, his place was in the second rank. But as the champion of liberty; as the defender of the rights of man; as a hero, whose sword was drawn only for the good of his fellows, he knew no equal. His natural endowments, too, were great. His courage, whether in council or in battle, was of the