me strange creature--a
holy white elephant of Siam, or the Grand Lama of Tibet. Age had
brought its own deductions and reservations. It does not appear that
parties rode to hounds after the fox any more at Mount Vernon. And
then there were the irreparable gaps that could not be filled. At
Belvoir, where his neighbors the Fairfaxes, friends of a lifetime,
used to live, they lived no more. One of them, more than ninety years
old, had turned his face to the wall on hearing of the surrender at
Yorktown. Another had gone back to England to live out his life there,
true to his Tory convictions.

Washington had sincerely believed, no doubt, that he was to spend the
rest of his life in dignified leisure, and especially that he would
mix no more in political or public worries; but he soon found that he
had deceived himself. The army, until it officially disbanded at the
end of 1783, caused him constant anxiety interspersed with fits of
indignation over the indifference and inertia of the Congress, which
showed no intention of being just to the soldiers. The reason for its
attitude seems hard to state positively. May it be that the Congress,
jealous since the war began of being ruled by the man on horseback,
feared at its close to grant Washington's demands for it lest they
should bring about the very thing they had feared and avoided--the
creation of a military dictatorship under Washington? When Vergennes
proposed to entrust to Washington a new subsidy from France, the
Congress had taken umbrage and regarded such a proposal as an insult
to the American Government. Should they admit that the Government
itself was not sufficiently sound and trustworthy, and that,
therefore, a private individual, even though he had been a leader of
the Revolution, must be called into service?

From among persons pestered by this obsession, it was not surprising
that the idea should spring up that Washington was at heart a believer
in monarchy and that he might, when the opportunity favored, allow
himself to be proclaimed king. Several years later he wrote to his
trusted friend, John Jay:

I am told that even respectable characters speak of a monarchical
form of government without horror. From thinking proceeds
speaking; thence to acting is often but a single step. But how
irrevocable and tremendous! What a triumph for our enemies to
verify their predictions! What a triumph for the advocates of
despotism to find, that we