winter's day with some Marblehead
fishermen. The quarrel was at its height, when suddenly into the brawl
rode the commander-in-chief. He quickly dismounted, seized two of the
combatants, shook them, berated them, if tradition may be trusted,
for their local jealousies, and so with strong arm quelled the
disturbance. He must have longed to take more than one colonial
governor or magnate by the throat and shake him soundly, as he did his
soldiers from the woods of Virginia and the rocks of Marblehead, for
to his temper there was nothing so satisfying as rapid and decisive
action. But he could not quell governors and assemblies in this way,
and yet he managed them and got what he wanted with a patience and
tact which it must have been in the last degree trying to him to
practice, gifted as he was with a nature at once masterful and
passionate.

Another trial was brought about by his securing and sending out
privateers which did good service. They brought in many valuable
prizes which caused infinite trouble, and forced Washington not only
to be a naval secretary, but also made him a species of admiralty
judge. He implored the slow-moving Congress to relieve him from this
burden, and suggested a plan which led to the formation of special
committees and was the origin of the Federal judiciary of the United
States. Besides the local jealousies and the personal jealousies, and
the privateers and their prizes, he had to meet also the greed and
selfishness as well of the money-making, stock-jobbing spirit which
springs up rankly under the influence of army contracts and large
expenditures among a people accustomed to trade and unused to war.
Washington wrote savagely of these practices, but still, despite all
hindrances and annoyances, he kept moving straight on to his object.

In the midst of his labors, harassed and tried in all ways, he was
assailed as usual by complaint and criticism. Some of it came to him
through his friend and aide, Joseph Reed, to whom he wrote in reply
one of the noblest letters ever penned by a great man struggling with
adverse circumstances and wringing victory from grudging fortune. He
said that he was always ready to welcome criticism, hear advice, and
learn the opinion of the world. "For as I have but one capital object
in view, I could wish to make my conduct coincide with the wishes of
mankind, as far as I can consistently; I mean, without departing from
that great line of duty which, though hi