While the burden of his tnal was greatest there grew up in Congress an ugly scheme to put Gates in Washington's place. From the first there had been intrigue among the officers. °I am wearied to death,* John Adams wrote, after a visit to the army, °with the wrangles between military officers high and low. TheY quarrel lilce cats and dogs. They worry one an other like mastiffs, scrambling for rank and pay like apes for nuts.* Amid this Washington had lived disturbed, but not concented for him self. Now Congress was implicated in the plotting. Some were impatient with the Fabian policy, and, lilce Adams, wanted °a short and violent war.* A conceited or vain man would have resigned and let the whole cause go to per dition as a vindication of himself, hut Washing ton was nobler than that. Throughout the Revolution he kept the same spirit that ani mated him in the earlier years of border fight ing. Then he had declared: °I could offer myself a willing sacrifice to the blathering enemy, provided that would contribute to the people's ease.* He could °die by inches to save a people.* During the Revolution he risked reputation, sacrificed popularity, suffered in mind and heart all that he had been willing to suffer in body to °save a people.* Now he silently watched the plot ripen, and at the right moment exposed it with a royal contempt that quite crushed the plotters.
When the winter was gone there came the news of the French alliance. A fleet from France was menacing the British army in Phil adelphia, and orders cattle for the evacuation of the city. They began a march toward New Yotic across New Jersey. At Monmouth, 28 June 1778, the Amencan army fell upon them, and, but for the cowardly or traitorous conduct of General Lee, nothing but the fragments of the English army would havie reached its destination. In that moment men saw what a tempestuous nature Washington habitually held in check. He stopped the retreat that Lee had unaccountably ordered, and in tmgoverned rage cursed him for a coward. The troops were ral lied, and they successfully engaged the enemy, but the moment for victory had been lost. The British reached New York in safety and Wash ington took a post on the Hudson.
Now came the supreme test that proved the American leader's unrivaled fitness for the work that he had to.do. For three years, while Congress was helpless, unable to tax or get aid from the State.s, while it paid the soldiers in paper, so valueless that the pay of a colonel would not purchase oats for his horse, while nothing but a forced levy would secure food for the army, when a hundred men a month went over to the enemy in sheer desperation with suffering for food and clothing, while the great country that had so much at stake seemed absolutely indifferent —in the midst of blank despair Washington kept his heart and his pur pose. Again and again he was disappointed by the failure of the promised aid from France — the naval aid that would prevent the British escape by sea if they were worsted on land.
At last, however, the moment came when De Grasse with a French fleet held a temporary control of the sea, and Lafayette had pushed Cornwallis out on the peninsula at Yorktown. A few days' hesitation would have lost the op portunity, but the man who had waited three years knew the moment for action when he saw it. Making a feint that deceived the enemy at New York, he got well on the way before his aim was guessed. For 400 miles he urged his eager army, and brought 6,000 men to Lafay ette's aid at just the hour to render Cornwallis' escape impossible. The siege that then began
could have but one end as long as De Grasse controlled the sea. The British surrendered, 19 Oct. 1781, and the war was ended.
As men looked back over the years of strife, they saw clearly that the greatest factor in the final success of the Revolution was the per sonal leadership of Washington. If we seek an explanation, it was not his.great mind, for Franklin's was greater; not his force, energy, or tngenuity, for Benedict Arnold surpassed him in these qualities; not his military experi ence, for Charles Lee's was far more extensive; but it was the strength of character which day by day won the love of his soldiers and the perfect confidence of his countrymen. The ab sence of a mean ambition, the one desire of serving well his country and his fellow men, the faithfulness that could not be driven from its task through jealousy or resentment— these were the traits that gave him an unique and solitary place among the world's heroes.
Washington's service to his country was not to end with Yorktown. As he had been ((first in war,* because he was most fitted, so his unique character and pre-eminent place in American hearts fated him to become "first in peace." His last success had still more firmly fixed his power among the people. Their thoughts and imaginations were filled with him. But they had not even yet seen the sub limity of his character. With a discontented and insubordinate army still in arms and with no real government in existence, Washington was the only source of authority and law that had anything more than a local influence. The weak Union might have at once lost all cohe sion, and America might have degenerated into a number of petty, feeble and hostile States. Worse than that, the hopes for an American republic might have been indefinitely delayed, for, in the despair which settled upon many, there seemed but one escape from the political storm that threatened—they would make Washington king. In the army this plan was gravely considered, but when broached to Washington, he expressed himself as pained that such ideas existed in the army. "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 mischief that can befall my country.) To nobody could such a thought be more dis agreeable, he declared earnestly. "Let me con jure you, if you have any regard for your country, concern for yourself or posterity, or respect for me, to banish these thoughts from your mind.x' When the country seemed indifferent to the deserts of the army, when there was talk of disbanding it without provision for the future or even pay for what it had done, and when as a natural result there was mutiny and threat that the army would take government into its own holds— then it was Washington who tirelessly. urged. upon Congress and upon the States the justice of the soldiers' claims. Though, he longed to go back to his home and to have his work done, yet he waited through months of weariness until the British really left the country, and until the proper laws at least had been made to insure the soldiers' rights. Then at last he stood among his officers at Fraunce's Tavern, bidding them to take him by the hand, while he gave them each and all the warm-hearted farewell that so fittingly ended their long years of trial and companion ship.