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Bernard knew to whom he was speaking. "Mount Vernon!' I exclaimed; and then drawing back with a stare of wonder, 'Have I the honor of addressing General Washington?' With a smile whose expression of benevolence I have rarely seen equalled, he offered his hand and replied: An odd sort of introduction, Mr. Bernard; but I am pleased to find you can play so active a part in private, and without a prompter.'" So they rode on together to the house and had a chat, to which we must recur further on.

There is no contemporary narrative of which I am aware that shows Washington to us more clearly than this little adventure with Bernard, for it is in the common affairs of daily life that men come nearest to each other, and the same rule holds good in history. We know Washington much better from these few lines of description left by a chance acquaintance on the road than we do from volumes of state papers. It is such a pleasant story, too. There is the great man, retired from the world, still handsome and imposing in his old age, with the strong and ready hand to succor those who had fallen by the wayside; there are the genuine hospitality, the perfect manners, and the well-turned little sentence with which he complimented the actor, put him at his ease, and asked him to his house. Nothing can well be added to the picture of Washington as we see him here, not long before the end of all things came. We must break off, however, from the quiet charm of home life, and turn again

briefly to the affairs of state. Let us, therefore, leave these two riding along the road together in the warm Virginia sunshine to the house which has since become one of the Meccas of humanity, in memory of the man who once dwelt in it.

The highly prized retirement to Mount Vernon did not now, more than at any previous time, separate Washington from the affairs of the country. He continued to take a keen interest in all that went on, to correspond with his friends, and to use his influence for what he thought wisest and best for the general welfare. These were stirring times, too, and the progress of events brought him to take a more active part than he had ever expected to play again; for France, having failed, thanks to his policy, to draw us either by fair words or trickery from our independent and neutral position, determined, apparently, to try the effect of force and ill usage. Pinckney, sent out as minister, had been rebuffed; and then Adams, with the cordial support of the country, had made another effort for peace by sending Pinckney, Marshall, and Gerry as a special commission. The history of that commission is one of the best known episodes in our history. Our envoys were insulted, asked for bribes, and browbeaten, until the two who retained a proper sense of their own and their country's dignity took their passports and departed. The publication of the famous X, Y, Ꮓ letters, which displayed the conduct of France, roused a storm of righteous indignation from one

end of the United States to the other. The party of France and of the opposition bent before the storm, and the Federalists were at last all-powerful. A cry for war went up from every corner, and Congress provided rapidly for the formation of an army and the beginning of a navy.

Then the whole country turned, as a matter of course, to one man to stand at the head of the national forces of the United States, and Adams wrote to Washington, urging him to take command of the provisional army. To any other appeal to come forward Washington would have been deaf, but he could never refuse a call to arms. He wrote to Adams on July 4, 1798: "In case of actual invasion by a formidable force, I certainly should not intrench myself under the cover of age or retirement, if my services should be required by my country to assist in repelling it." He agreed, therefore, to take command of the army, provided that he should not be called into active service except in the case of actual hostilities, and that he should have the appointment of the general's staff. To these terms Adams of course acceded. But out of the apparently simple condition relating to the appointment of officers there grew a very serious trouble. There were to be three major-generals, the first of them to have also the rank of inspectorgeneral, and to be the virtual commander-in-chief until the army was actually called into the field. For these places, Washington after much reflection selected Hamilton, Pinckney, and Knox, in the or

der named, and in doing so he very wisely went on the general principle that the army was to be organized de novo, without reference to prior service. Apart from personal and political jealousies, nothing could have been more proper and more sound than this arrangement; but at this point the President's dislike of Hamilton got beyond control, and he made up his mind to reverse the order, and send in Knox's name first. The Federalist leaders were of course utterly disgusted by this attempt to set Hamilton aside, which was certainly ill-judged, and which proved to be the beginning of the dissensions that ended in the ruin of the Federalist party. After every effort, therefore, to move Adams had failed, Pickering and others, including Hamilton himself, appealed to Washington. At a distance from the scene of action, and unfamiliar with the growth of differences within the party, Washington was not only surprised, but annoyed by the President's conduct. In addition to the evils which he believed would result in a military way from this change, he felt that the conditions which he had made had been violated, and that he had not been treated fairly. He therefore wrote to the President with his wonted plainness, on September 25th, and pointed out that his stipulations had not been complied with, that the change of order among the major-generals was thoroughly wrong, and that the President's meddling with the inferior appointments had been hurtful and injudicious. His views were expressed in the most courteous way,

although with an undertone of severe disapproval. There was no mistaking the meaning of the letter, however, and Adams, bold man and President as he was, gave way at once. Mr. Adams thought at

the time that there had been about this matter of the major-generals too much intrigue, by which Washington had been deceived and he himself made a victim; but there seems no good reason to take this view of it, for there is no indication whatever that Washington did not know and understand the facts; and it was on the facts that he made his decision, and not on the methods by which they were conveyed to him. The propriety of the decision will hardly now be questioned, although it did not tend to make the relations between the ex-President and his successor very cordial. They had always a great respect for each other, but not much sympathy, for they differed too widely in temperament. Even if Washington would have permitted it, it would have been impossible for the President to have quarrelled with him, but at the same time he felt not a little awkwardness in dealing with his successor, and was inclined to think that that gentleman did not show him all the respect that was due. He wrote to McHenry on October 1st: "As no mode is yet adopted by the President by which the battalion officers are to be appointed, and as I think I stand on very precarious ground in my relation to him, I am not over-zealous in taking unauthorized steps when those that I thought were authorized are not likely to meet with much respect."

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