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376 was always at the service of his friends or the com- munity for any aid or counsel that he could render them. He was often called on to be an arbitra- tor, and his judgment and impartiality were never questioned. As a commissioner for settling the military accounts of the colony, after the treaty of peace of 1763, he spared himself no labor in the execution of a most arduous and complicated task. In a word, he was a good citizen, an exemplary Christian, a devoted father, a kind master to the slaves who had come to him by inheritance or mar- riage, and was respected and beloved by all.

At length, at forty-three years of age. he was called upon to begin a career that closed only with his life, during which he held the highest and most responsible positions in war and in peace, and ren- dered inestimable services to his country and to mankind. To follow that career in detail would require nothing less than a history of the United States for the next five-and-twenty years. Wash- ington was naturally of a cautious and conserva- tive cast, and by no means disposed for a rupture with the mother country, if it could be avoided without the sacrifice of rights and principles. But as the various stages of British aggression succeed- ed each other, beginning with the stamp-act, the repeal of which he hailed with delight, and fol- lowed by the tea tax and the Boston port bill, he became keenly alive to the danger of submission, and was ready to unite in measures of remon- strance, opposition, and ultimately of resistance. When he heard at Williamsburg, in August, 1773, of the sufferings resulting from the port bill, he is said to have exclaimed, impulsively : " I will raise a thousand men, subsist them at my own expense, and march with them, at their head, for the relief of Boston." He little dreamed at that moment that within two years he was destined to be hailed as the deliverer of Boston from British occu- pation. He accepted an election as a delegate to the 1st Continental congress in 1774, and went to the meeting at Philadelphia in September of that year, in company with Patrick Henry and Ed- mund Pendleton, who called for him at Mount Vernon on horseback. That congress sat in Car- penter's Hall with closed doors, but the great pa- pers that it prepared and issued form a proud part of American history. Those were the papers and that the congress of which Chatham in the house of lords, in his memorable speech on the re- moval of troops from Boston, 20 Jan., 1775, said: " When your lordships look at the papers trans- mitted to us from America, when you consider their decency, firmness, and wisdom, you cannot but respect their cause, and wish to make it your own. For my- self, I must de- clare and avow that in all my reading and observation — and it has been my favorite study — I have read Thucydi- des, and have studied and admired the master states of the world — that for solidity of reasoning, force of sagacity, and wisdom of "conclusion, under such a complica- tion of difficult circumstances, no nation or body of men can stand in preference to the general con- gress at Philadelphia." The precise part taken by Washington within the closed doors of Carpenter's Hall is nowhere recorded, but the testimony of one of its most distinguished members cannot be for- gotten. When Patrick Henry returned home from the meeting, and was asked whom he considered the greatest man in that congress, he replied : " If you speak of eloquence, Mr. Rutledge, of South Caro- lina, is by far the greatest orator ; but if you speak of solid information and sound judgment, CoL Washington is unquestionably the greatest man on that floor." It is an interesting tradition that, during the prayers with which Dr. Duche opened that meeting at Carpenter's Hall on 5 Sept., 1774, while most of the other members were standing, Washington was kneeling.

He was again a delegate to the Continental congress (the 2d) that assembled at Philadelphia on 10 May, 1775, bv which, on the 15th of June, on the motion of Thomas Johnson, a delegate of Maryland, at the earnest instigation of John Adams, of Massachusetts, he was unanimously elected commander-in-chief of all the Continental forces « raised, or to be raised, for the defence of American liberty. On the next morning he accepted the appointment and expressed his deep and grateful sense of the high honor conferred upon him, " but," added he, " lest some unlucky event should happen, unfavorable to my reputation, I beg it may be remembered by every gentleman in the room that I this day declare, with the utmost sincerity, that I do not think myself equal to the command 1 am honored with." " As to pay," he continued, " I beg leave to assure the congress that, as no pecuniary consideration could have tempted me to accept this arduous employment, at the expense of my domestic ease and happiness, 1 do not wish to make any profit of it. I will keep an exact account of my expenses. Those I doubt not they will discharge, and that is all I desire." " You may believe me," he wrote to his wife at once, " when I assure you, in the most solemn manner, that so far from seeking this appointment, I have used every endeavor in my power to avoid it, not only from my unwillingness to part with you and the family, but from a consciousness of its being a trust too great for my capacity." Washington's commission was agreed to by congress on 17 June, and on the 21st he set out from Philadelphia on horseback to take command of the American army encamped around Boston, of which place the British forces were in possession. The tidings of the battle of Bunker Hill reached him at New York on the 25th, and the next day he was in the saddle again on his way to Cambridge. He arrived there on 2 July, and established his headquarters in the old Vassall (afterward Craigie) mansion, which has recently been known as the residence of the poet Longfellow. On 3 July he took formal command of the arm v. drawing his sword under an ancient elm. which has of late years been suitably inscribed. The American army numbered about 17.000 men, but only 14.500 were fit for duty. Coming hastily from different colonies, they were without supplies of tents or clothing, and there was not ammunition enough for nine cartridges to a man. Washington's work in combining and organizing this mass of raw troops was most embarrassing and arduous. But he persevered untiringly, and, after a siege of eight months, succeeded in driving the British from Boston on 17 March, 1775. For this grand exploit congress awarded him a splendid gold medal, which bore an admirable likeness of him on one side, and on the other side the inscription " Hostibus primo fugatis Bostonium recuperatum." Copies of this medal in silver and bronze have