“We don’t want to fight,
  But by jingo! if we do,
  We’ve got the men, we’ve got the ships,
  We’ve got the money too.”

Meanwhile, the Virginia Planter watched the course of events, pursued his daily business regularly, attended the House of Burgesses when it was in session, said little, but thought much.  He did not break out into invective or patriotic appeals.  No doubt many of his acquaintances thought him lukewarm in spirit and non-committal; but persons who knew him well knew what his decision must be.  As early as April 5, 1769, he wrote his friend, George Mason: 

At a time, when our lordly masters in Great Britain will be satisfied with nothing less than the deprivation of American freedom, it seems highly necessary that something should be done to avert the stroke, and maintain the liberty, which we have derived from our ancestors.  But the manner of doing it, to answer the purpose effectually, is the point in question.

That no man should scruple, or hesitate a moment, to use a—­ms in defence of so valuable a blessing, on which all the good and evil of life depends, is clearly my opinion.  Yet a—­ms, I would beg leave to add, should be the last resource, the dernier resort.  Addresses to the throne, and remonstrances to Parliament, we have already, it is said, proved the inefficiency of.  How far, then, their attention to our rights and privileges is to be awakened or alarmed, by starving their trade and manufacturers, remains to be tried.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Ford, II, 263-64.]

Thus wrote the Silent Member six years before the outbreak of hostilities, and he did not then display any doubt either of his patriotism, or of the course which every patriot must take.  To his intimates he spoke with point-blank candor.  Years later, George Mason wrote to him: 

    I never forgot your declaration, when I had last the pleasure of
    being at your house in 1768, that you were ready to take your
    musket upon your shoulder whenever your country called upon you.

Some writers point out that Washington excelled rather as a critic of concrete plans than of constitutional and legal aspects.  Perhaps this is true.  Assuredly he had no formal legal training.  There were many other men in Massachusetts, in Virginia, and in some of the other Colonies, who could and did analyze minutely the Colonists’ protest against taxation without representation, and the British rebuttal thereof; but Washington’s strength lay in his primal wisdom, the wisdom which is based not on conventions, even though they be laws and constitutions, but on a knowledge of the ways in which men will react toward each other in their primitive, natural relations.  In this respect he was one of the wisest among the statesmen.