Meantime the Burgesses came together, and more money being voted, Dinwiddie hit on a notable plan for quieting dissensions between regulars and provincials by dividing all the troops into independent companies, with no officer higher than a captain.  Washington, the only officer who had seen fighting and led a regiment, resented quite properly this senseless policy, and resigning his commission withdrew to Mount Vernon to manage the estate and attend to his own affairs.  He was driven to this course still more strongly by the original cause of Dinwiddie’s arrangement.  The English government had issued an order that officers holding the king’s commission should rank provincial officers, and that provincial generals and field officers should have no rank when a general or field officer holding a royal commission was present.  The degradation of being ranked by every whipper-snapper who might hold a royal commission by virtue, perhaps, of being the bastard son of some nobleman’s cast-off mistress was more than the temper of George Washington at least could bear, and when Governor Sharpe, general by the king’s commission, and eager to secure the services of the best fighter in Virginia, offered him a company and urged his acceptance, he replied in language that must have somewhat astonished his excellency.  “You make mention in your letter,” he wrote to Colonel Fitzhugh, Governor Sharpe’s second in command, “of my continuing in the service, and retaining my colonel’s commission.  This idea has filled me with surprise; for, if you think me capable of holding a commission that has neither rank nor emolument annexed to it, you must entertain a very contemptible opinion of my weakness, and believe me to be more empty than the commission itself....  In short, every captain bearing the king’s commission, every half-pay officer, or others, appearing with such a commission, would rank before me....  Yet my inclinations are strongly bent to arms.”

It was a bitter disappointment to withdraw from military life, but Washington had an intense sense of personal dignity; not the small vanity of a petty mind, but the quality of a proud man conscious of his own strength and purpose.  It was of immense value to the American people at a later day, and there is something very instructive in this early revolt against the stupid arrogance which England has always thought it wise to display toward this country.  She has paid dearly for indulging it, but it has seldom cost her more than when it drove Washington from her service, and left in his mind a sense of indignity and injustice.

Meantime this Virginian campaigning had started a great movement.  England was aroused, and it was determined to assail France in Nova Scotia, from New York and on the Ohio.  In accordance with this plan General Braddock arrived in Virginia February 20, 1755, with two picked regiments, and encamped at Alexandria.  Thither Washington used to ride and look longingly at the pomp and glitter, and wish