I have followed out this comparison because it illustrates perfectly the entirely superficial character of the reasons which have led men to speak of Washington as an English country gentleman.  It has been said that he was English in his habits, moral standards, and social theories, which has an important sound, but which for the most part comes down to a question of dress and manners.  He wore black velvet and powdered hair, knee-breeches and diamond buckles, which are certainly not American fashions to-day.  But they were American fashions in the last century, and every man wore them who could afford to, no matter what his origin.  Let it be remembered, however, that Washington also wore the hunting-shirt and fringed leggins of the backwoodsman, and that it was he who introduced this purely American dress into the army as a uniform.

His manners likewise were those of the century in which he lived, formal and stately, and of course colored by his own temperament.  His moral standards were those of a high-minded, honorable man.  Are we ready to say that they were not American?  Did they differ in any vital point from those of Lincoln?  His social theories were simple in the extreme.  He neither overvalued nor underrated social conventions, for he knew that they were a part of the fabric of civilized society, not vitally important and yet not wholly trivial.  He was a member of an aristocracy, it is true, both by birth and situation.  There was a recognized social aristocracy in every colony before the Revolution, for the drum-beat of the great democratic march had not then sounded.  In the northern colonies it was never strong, and in New England it was especially weak, for the governments and people there were essentially democratic, although they hardly recognized it themselves.  In Virginia and the southern colonies, on the other hand, there was a vigorous aristocracy resting on the permanent foundation of slavery.  Where slaves are there must be masters, and where there are masters there are aristocrats; but it was an American and not an English aristocracy.  Lineage and family had weight in the south as in the north, but that which put a man undeniably in the ruling class was the ownership of black slaves and the possession of a white skin.  This aristocracy lasted with its faults and its virtues until it perished in the shock of civil war, when its foundation of human slavery was torn from under it.  From the slave-holding aristocracy of Virginia came, with the exception of Patrick Henry, all the great men of that State who did so much for American freedom, and who rendered such imperishable service to the republic in law, in politics, and in war.  From this aristocracy came Marshall, and Mason, and Madison, the Lees, the Randolphs, the Harrisons, and the rest.  From it came also Thomas Jefferson, the hero of American democracy; and to it was added Patrick Henry, not by lineage or slave-holding, but by virtue of his brilliant abilities,