Page:The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1914, v. I.djvu/35

Rh at Pohick, and both he and his wife were communicants. Meantime he was always at the service of his friends or the community for any aid or counsel that he could render them. He was often called on to be an arbitrator, 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 marriage, 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 rendered 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. Washington was naturally of a cautious and conservative 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 succeeded each other, beginning with the stamp-act, the repeal of which he hailed with delight, and followed by the