g. He devoted himself to the
pursuits of a large planter, and on being elected a Burgess, he
attended regularly the sessions at Williamsburg. Wild conditions which
in his boyhood had reached almost to Fauquier County, had drifted
rapidly westward. Within less than ten years of Braddock's defeat,
Fort Duquesne had become permanently English and the name of
Pittsburgh reminded men of the great British statesman who had urged
on the fateful British encroachment on the Ohio River. For Washington
in person, the lasting effect of the early training and fighting in
western Pennsylvania was that it gave him direct knowledge of the
Indian and his ways, and that it turned his imagination to thinking
out the problem of developing the Middle West, and of keeping the
connections between the East and the West strong and open.

In the House of Burgesses Washington was a taciturn member, yet he
seemed to have got a great deal of political knowledge and wisdom so
that his colleagues thought of him as the solid man of the House
and they referred many matters to him as if for final decision. He
followed political affairs in the newspapers. Above all, at Mount
Vernon he heard all sides from the guests who passed his domain and
enjoyed his hospitality. From the moment that the irritation between
Great Britain and the Colonies became bitter he seems to have made up
his mind that the contention of the Colonists was just. After that
he never wavered, but he was not a sudden or a shallow clamorer for
Independence. He believed that the sober second sense of the British
would lead them to perceive that they had made a mistake. When at
length the Colonies had to provide themselves with an army and to
undertake a war, he was the only candidate seriously considered for
General, although John Hancock, who had made his peacock way so
successfully in many walks of life, thought that he alone was
worthy of the position. Who shall describe Washington's life as
Commander-in-Chief of the Colonial forces during the Revolutionary
War? What other commander ever had a task like his? For a few weeks
the troops led by Napoleon--the barefooted and ragged heroes of Lodi
and Arcola and Marengo--were equally destitute, but victory brought
them food and clothes and prosperity. Whereas Washington's men had no
comfort before victory and none after it.

Some of the military critics to-day deny Washington's right to be
ranked among the great military commanders of the