<h2 id="c17"><span class="h2line1">Chapter XVI</span> <br/><span class="h2line2">Last Days</span></h2>
<p>Washington had enjoyed the pleasures
of retirement on his estate for four years
when his country again claimed his services
for the general good and he was
unanimously elected President of the United States.
He had misgivings as to his ability to fulfil the duties
of the highest office in the government. His success
in the military field, he argued, did not guarantee
that he was capable of becoming a wise administrator.
The people, however, thought otherwise. In the
countless decrees and orders which Washington had
issued during the long period of the war, the great
statesman had been apparent as well as the great
general. And especially at the moment when the
constitution, which had been amended in the meanwhile,
was to receive its first trial, every one felt that
no hand could hold the rudder of State so securely
as Washington’s. His friends urged him to sacrifice
his love of private life once more for his country.
He hesitatingly accepted. “To-day,” he writes in
his diary on April 16, 1789, “I bade farewell to
private life and domestic felicity. I am so overwhelmed
with care and painful emotion that words
fail me to express it. I have set out on the journey
to New York to obey the call of my country with the
best intentions to serve her in every possible way,
but with poor prospect of fulfilling her expectations.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_136">136</div>
<p>His journey resembled a triumphal procession.
The inhabitants of Trenton paid him particular
honors, in remembrance of his memorable crossing
of the Delaware twelve years previously. Triumphal
arches were erected on the bridge, bearing
appropriate inscriptions, and little girls in white
dresses strewed the path which the “choice of the
people” was to tread with flowers. A gayly decorated
vessel, guided by thirteen pilots in the name
of the thirteen States, brought him into New York
Harbor. The love of the people touched and encouraged
him, but did not suffice to quite banish
the burden of care which the contemplation of all
the difficulties which were awaiting him had laid
upon him. It was to be read in his face and in his
whole bearing. He said in his inaugural address:</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_137">137</div>
<p>“It would be peculiarly improper to omit in this
first official act my fervent supplications to that
Almighty Being who rules over the Universe, who
presides in the councils of nations, and whose providential
aids can supply every human defect that
His benediction may consecrate to the liberties and
happiness of the people of the United States, a
government instituted by themselves for these
essential purposes, and may enable every instrument
employed in its administration to execute with
success the functions allotted to his charge. In
tendering this homage to the great Author of every
public and private good, I assure myself that it
expresses your sentiments, not less than my own,
nor those of my fellow citizens at large less than
either. No people can be bound to acknowledge
and adore the invisible hand which conducts the
affairs of men more than the people of the United
States.” The close says: “There is no truth more
thoroughly established than that there exists in the
economy and course of nature an indissoluble union
between virtue and happiness, between duty and
advantage, between the genuine maxims of an
honest and magnanimous policy and the solid
rewards of the public prosperity and felicity. Since
we ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious
smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation
that disregards the eternal rules of order and right
which Heaven itself has ordained, and since the
preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the
destiny of the republican model of government are
justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally, staked
on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the
American people.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_138">138</div>
<p>He wrote to his friend Lafayette: “Harmony,
honesty, industry, and temperance are the qualities
to make us a great and happy people. This path
to the attainment of the people’s happiness is as
plain and straight as a ray of light.” He would not
accept a salary even as President. He considered
it a great boon to be in a position to render services
to the State without remuneration. With grave
earnestness he took up the labors of his position, in
order to master the difficulties that awaited him on
all sides. A heavy load of debt was hanging over
the country, commerce and trade needed encouragement,
and the frontiers suffered much from the
depredations of Indian tribes. With the outbreak
of the French revolution new difficulties arose.
Washington considered the events in Paris a natural
consequence of previous misgovernment, but in spite
of his esteem for certain Frenchmen, he soon felt
that the moral earnestness essential for the attainment
of true liberty was lacking among the masses
of the French people. His prophetic soul already
foresaw what the end of the movement would be.
He pointed out the erratic qualities of the French
people and the bloody acts of revenge of which they
were guilty and continued: “There certainly are reefs
and sand-bars enough on which the Ship of State
may be wrecked, and in this case a much more disastrous
despotism will result from the movement than
that from which the people have suffered before.”
Whatever was sound in the French revolution was
brought back by the French who had fought in
America. Unfortunately the sound ideas, as we know,
did not long prevail, and with the reaction came
corresponding bestial degeneration. The fate which
overtook King Louis the Sixteenth moved Washington
profoundly; never in his life, those close to him
have told us, had he been so crushed and bowed
down as when the news of Louis’ execution was
received. The horrors in France had their echoes
in America; clubs were formed which presented
the claims of the French Jacobins. A picture was
published by them with the inscription, “Washington’s
Funeral,” in which he was represented standing
under the guillotine; they did not conceal their
intention of ignoring the President and the Constitution.
Washington stood firm amidst party storms,
as he had once stood on the Delaware when storm
and ice threatened to destroy his bark. This firmness
and the further development of the bloody
drama in France caused the extreme party in America
gradually to lose its influence with the people and
finally to disappear.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_139">139</div>
<p>Washington was elected President for the second
time in 1793. The eight years of his administration
were very prosperous ones. His interpretation and
administration of the Constitution have always been
considered the standard, among the best of his successors,
for their actions. At the end of his second
term, when Washington learned that the people
really intended to confer on him for the third time
the highest honor in the land, he begged his fellow
citizens to put the rudder of State into younger hands,
and in an official declaration he decisively declined
a reëlection. He also took leave of the nation, at
the same time giving them some golden words of
advice: “Of all the dispositions and habits which
lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are
indispensable supports. In vain would that man
claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to
subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these
firmest props of the duties of men and citizens.
The mere politician, equally with the pious man,
ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume
could not trace all their connections with private
and public felicity. Let it simply be asked, where is
the security for property, for reputation, for life, if
the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths,
which are the instruments of investigation in courts
of justice; let us with caution indulge the supposition
that morality can be maintained without religion.
Whatever may be conceded to the influence
of refined education on minds of peculiar structure,
reason and experience both forbid us to expect that
national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious
principle.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_140">140</div>
<p>In closing he said: “Though, in reviewing the
incidents of my administration, I am unconscious
of intentional error, I am, nevertheless, too sensible
of my defects not to think it probable that I may
have committed many errors. Whatever they may
be, I fervently beseech the Almighty to avert or
mitigate the evils to which they may tend. I shall
also carry with me the hope that my country will
never cease to view them with indulgence; and that,
after forty-five years of my life dedicated to its
service with an upright zeal, the faults of incompetent
abilities will be consigned to oblivion as myself
must soon be to the mansions of rest.”</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_141">141</div>
<p>For a year and a half thereafter he led a life of
tranquil happiness on his estate in the country. On
the twelfth of December, 1799, during a ride, he was
overtaken by a storm and took a severe cold. All
treatment was unavailing. His breathing became
very painful. He said to the doctor, with unclouded
glance and in a calm voice, “Doctor, I die hard, but
I am not afraid to go. I believed from my first
attack that I should not survive it. My breath
cannot last long.” In the evening, at ten o’clock,
he sank to eternal rest.</p>
<p>His death took place December 14, 1799, in his
sixty-eighth year. In his will Washington freed
his slaves, providing at the same time for the old
and infirm among them, and setting aside large
sums for the founding of a university and of a free
school for poor children.</p>
<div class="pb" id="Page_142">142</div>
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