Statesman, Soldier, Patriot, Sage, Reformer of Creeds, Teacher of Truth and Justice, Achiever and Preserver of Liberty--the First of Men--Founder and Savior of his Country, Father of his People--this is he, solitary and unapproachable in his grandeur. Oh! felicitous Providence that gave to America OUR WASHINGTON!
High soars into the sky to-day--higher than the Pyramids or the dome of St. Paul's or St. Peter's--the loftiest and most imposing structure that man has ever reared--high soars into the sky to where
the monument which "We the people of the United States" have erected to his memory. It is a fitting monument, more fitting than any statue. For his image could only display him in some one phase of his varied character--as the Commander, the Statesman, the Planter of Mount Vernon, or the Chief Magistrate of his Country. So art has fitly typified his exalted life in yon plain lofty shaft. Such is his greatness, that only by a symbol could it be represented. As Justice must be blind in order to be whole in contemplation, so History must be silent, that by this mighty sign she may unfold the amplitude of her story.
In 1657, while yet "a Cromwell filled the Stuarts' throne," there came to Virginia with a party of Carlists who had rebelled against him John Washington, of Yorkshire, England, who became a magistrate and member of the House of Burgesses, and distinguished himself in Indian warfare as the first colonel of his family on this side of the water. He was the nephew of that Sir Henry Washington who had led the forlorn hope of Prince Rupert at Bristol in 1643, and who, with a starving and mutinous garrison, had defended Worcester in 1649, answering all calls for surrender that he "awaited His Majesty's commands."
And his progenitors had for centuries, running back to the conquest, been men of mark and fair renown. Pride and modesty of individuality alike forbid the seeking from any source of a borrowed lustre, and the Washingtons were never studious or pretentious of ancestral dignities. But "we are quotations from our ancestors," says the philosopher of Concord--and who will say that in the loyalty to conscience and to principle, and to the right of self-determination of what is principle, that the Washingtons have ever shown, whether as loyalist or rebel, was not the germ of that deathless devotion to liberty and country which soon discarded all ancient forms in the mighty stroke for independence?