Behind the popular myths, behind the statuesque figure of the orator and the preacher, behind the general and the president of the historian, there was a strong, vigorous man, in whose veins ran warm, red blood, in whose heart were stormy passions and deep sympathy for humanity, in whose brain were far-reaching thoughts, and who was informed throughout his being with a resistless will.  The veil of his silence is not often lifted, and never intentionally, but now and then there is a glimpse behind it; and in stray sentences and in little incidents strenuously gathered together; above all, in the right interpretation of the words, and the deeds, and the true history known to all men,—­we can surely find George Washington “the noblest figure that ever stood in the forefront of a nation’s life.”

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GEORGE WASHINGTON

CHAPTER I

THE OLD DOMINION

To know George Washington, we must first of all understand the society in which he was born and brought up.  As certain lilies draw their colors from the subtle qualities of the soil hidden beneath the water upon which they float, so are men profoundly affected by the obscure and insensible influences which surround their childhood and youth.  The art of the chemist may discover perhaps the secret agent which tints the white flower with blue or pink, but very often the elements, which analysis detects, nature alone can combine.  The analogy is not strained or fanciful when we apply it to a past society.  We can separate, and classify, and label the various elements, but to combine them in such a way as to form a vivid picture is a work of surpassing difficulty.  This is especially true of such a land as Virginia in the middle of the last century.  Virginian society, as it existed at that period, is utterly extinct.  John Randolph said it had departed before the year 1800.  Since then another century, with all its manifold changes, has wellnigh come and gone.  Most important of all, the last surviving institution of colonial Virginia has been swept away in the crash of civil war, which has opened a gulf between past and present wider and deeper than any that time alone could make.

Life and society as they existed in the Virginia of the eighteenth century seem, moreover, to have been sharply broken and ended.  We cannot trace our steps backward, as is possible in most cases, over the road by which the world has traveled since those days.  We are compelled to take a long leap mentally in order to land ourselves securely in the Virginia which honored the second George, and looked up to Walpole and Pitt as the arbiters of its fate.