tions and reunited the British
Empire. The broken vessel could not be made whole.

Washington spent only a few days in getting ready to take over his new
command. On the 21st of June, four days after Bunker Hill, he set out
from Philadelphia. The colonies were in truth very remote from each
other. The journey to Boston was tedious. In the previous year
John Adams had traveled in the other direction to the Congress at
Philadelphia and, in his journal, he notes, as if he were traveling in
foreign lands, the strange manners and customs of the other colonies.
The journey, so momentous to Adams, was not new to Washington. Some
twenty years earlier the young Virginian officer had traveled as far as
Boston in the service of King George II. Now he was leader in the war
against King George III. In New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut he was
received impressively. In the warm summer weather the roads were good
enough but many of the rivers were not bridged and could be crossed only
by ferries or at fords. It took nearly a fortnight to reach Boston.

Washington had ridden only twenty miles on his long journey when the
news reached him of the fight at Bunker Hill. The question which he
asked anxiously shows what was in his mind: "Did the militia fight?"
When the answer was "Yes," he said with relief, "The liberties of the
country are safe." He reached Cambridge on the 2d of July and on the
following day was the chief figure in a striking ceremony. In the
presence of a vast crowd and of the motley army of volunteers, which was
now to be called the American army, Washington assumed the command.
He sat on horseback under an elm tree and an observer noted that his
appearance was "truly noble and majestic." This was milder praise than
that given a little later by a London paper which said: "There is not a
king in Europe but would look like a valet de chambre by his side."
New England having seen him was henceforth wholly on his side. His
traditions were not those of the Puritans, of the Ephraims and the
Abijahs of the volunteer army, men whose Old Testament names tell
something of the rigor of the Puritan view of life. Washington, a sharer
in the free and often careless hospitality of his native Virginia, had a
different outlook. In his personal discipline, however, he was not less
Puritan than the strictest of New Englanders. The coming years were to
show that a great leader had taken his fitting place.

Washington, born in 1732,