ity of winning the confidence of all honest
men.

Besides all this, he was heart and soul in the cause. While others had
discussed and hesitated, he had long ago made up his mind, not only that
the quarrel with the king would come to violence, but that all Americans
should resist to the utmost. "Shall we," he asked in a letter to a
friend, after enumerating Gage's despotic acts, "shall we after this
whine and cry for relief, when we have already tried it in vain? Or
shall we supinely sit and see one province after another fall a
sacrifice to despotism?" In a letter to a British officer at Boston, he
says, "Permit me with the freedom of a friend (for you know I always
esteemed you), to express my sorrow that fortune should place you in a
service that must fix curses to the latest posterity upon the
contrivers, and, if success (which, by the by, is impossible)
accompanies it, execrations upon all those who have been instrumental in
the execution.... Give me leave to add as my opinion that more blood
will be spilled on this occasion, if the ministry are determined to push
matters to extremity, than history has ever yet furnished instances of
in the annals of North America, and such a vital wound will be given to
the peace of this great country, as time itself cannot cure or eradicate
the remembrance of." Few in those days had such certainty of the result
of an outbreak, and few were so ready to participate in one. In the
Virginia convention he said, "I will raise a thousand men, subsist them
at my own expense, and march them to the relief of Boston." No wonder
this was designated "the most eloquent speech that ever was made." He
was not called on to make good his promise, but was sent to the two
continental congresses. At the second it was noticed that he attended
the sittings in his uniform of a Virginia colonel. Though he took no
part in the debates, he made himself felt. Patrick Henry said of him at
this time: "If you speak of solid information and sound judgment,
Colonel Washington is unquestionably the greatest man on the
floor."[108]

To make the Congress "adopt" the army at Boston, and to have Washington
appointed generalissimo, became the task of John Adams, who at this time
did the country perhaps his greatest service. There were objections to
putting a Virginian at the head of New Englanders, for colonial
jealousies, and even colonial lack of mutual understanding, might bring
about a fatal sullenness in the men