The Americanism of Washington | Page 4

a misfortune for the people of America, even the
poorest among them, that there was a man able to advance sixty-four
thousand dollars out of his own purse, with no other security but his
own faith in their cause, to pay his daily expenses while he was leading
their armies? This unsecured loan was one of the very things, I doubt
not, that helped to inspire general confidence. Even so the prophet
Jeremiah purchased a field in Anathoth, in the days when Judah was
captive unto Babylon, paying down the money, seventeen shekels of
silver, as a token of his faith that the land would some day be delivered
from the enemy and restored to peaceful and orderly habitation.
Washington's substantial pledge of property to the cause of liberty was
repaid by a grateful country at the close of the war. But not a dollar of

payment for the tremendous toil of body and mind, not a dollar for
work "overtime," for indirect damages to his estate, for commissions on
the benefits which he secured for the general enterprise, for the use of
his name or the value of his counsel, would he receive.
A few years later, when his large sagacity perceived that the
development of internal commerce was one of the first needs of the
new country, at a time when he held no public office, he became
president of a company for the extension of navigation on the rivers
James and Potomac. The Legislature of Virginia proposed to give him a
hundred and fifty shares of stock. Washington refused this, or any other
kind of pay, saying that he could serve the people better in the
enterprise if he were known to have no selfish interest in it. He was not
the kind of a man to reconcile himself to a gratuity (which is the
Latinized word for a "tip" offered to a person not in livery), and if the
modern methods of "coming in on the ground-floor" and "taking a
rake-off" had been explained and suggested to him, I suspect that he
would have described them in language more notable for its force than
for its elegance.
It is true, of course, that the fortune which he so willingly imperilled
and impaired recouped itself again after peace was established, and his
industry and wisdom made him once more a rich man for those days.
But what injustice was there in that? It is both natural and right that
men who have risked their all to secure for the country at large what
they could have secured for themselves by other means, should share in
the general prosperity attendant upon the success of their efforts and
sacrifices for the common good.
I am sick of the shallow judgment that ranks the worth of a man by his
poverty or by his wealth at death. Many a selfish speculator dies poor.
Many an unselfish patriot dies prosperous. It is not the possession of
the dollar that cankers the soul, it is the worship of it. The true test of a
man is this: Has he labored for his own interest, or for the general
welfare? Has he earned his money fairly or unfairly? Does he use it
greedily or generously? What does it mean to him, a personal
advantage over his fellow-men, or a personal opportunity of serving

them?
There are a hundred other points in Washington's career in which the
same supremacy of character, magnanimity focussed on service to an
ideal, is revealed in conduct. I see it in the wisdom with which he, a son
of the South, chose most of his generals from the North, that he might
secure immediate efficiency and unity in the army. I see it in the
generosity with which he praised the achievements of his associates,
disregarding jealous rivalries, and ever willing to share the credit of
victory as he was to bear the burden of defeat. I see it in the patience
with which he suffered his fame to be imperilled for the moment by
reverses and retreats, if only he might the more surely guard the frail
hope of ultimate victory for his country. I see it in the quiet dignity
with which he faced the Conway Cabal, not anxious to defend his own
reputation and secure his own power, but nobly resolute to save the
army from being crippled and the cause of liberty from being wrecked.
I see it in the splendid self-forgetfulness which cleansed his mind of all
temptation to take personal revenge upon those who had sought to
injure him in that base intrigue. I read it in his letter of consolation and
encouragement to the wretched Gates after the defeat at Camden. I hear
the prolonged reechoing music of it in his letter to General