hat in the fight the Virginian troops stood
their ground and were nearly all killed but the boasted regulars "were
struck with such a panic that they behaved with more cowardice than it
is possible to conceive." In the anger and resentment of this comment is
found the spirit which made Washington a champion of the colonial cause
from the first hour of disagreement.

That was a fatal day in March, 1765, when the British Parliament voted
that it was just and necessary that a revenue be raised in America.
Washington was uncompromising. After the tax on tea he derided "our
lordly masters in Great Britain." No man, he said, should scruple for
a moment to take up arms against the threatened tyranny. He and his
neighbors of Fairfax County, Virginia, took the trouble to tell the
world by formal resolution on July 18, 1774, that they were descended
not from a conquered but from a conquering people, that they claimed
full equality with the people of Great Britain, and like them would make
their own laws and impose their own taxes. They were not democrats; they
had no theories of equality; but as "gentlemen and men of fortune" they
would show to others the right path in the crisis which had arisen. In
this resolution spoke the proud spirit of Washington; and, as he brooded
over what was happening, anger fortified his pride. Of the Tories in
Boston, some of them highly educated men, who with sorrow were walking
in what was to them the hard path of duty, Washington could say later
that "there never existed a more miserable set of beings than these
wretched creatures."

The age of Washington was one of bitter vehemence in political thought.
In England the good Whig was taught that to deny Whig doctrine was
blasphemy, that there was no truth or honesty on the other side, and
that no one should trust a Tory; and usually the good Whig was true
to the teaching he had received. In America there had hitherto been
no national politics. Issues had been local and passions thus confined
exploded all the more fiercely. Franklin spoke of George III as drinking
long draughts of American blood and of the British people as so depraved
and barbarous as to be the wickedest nation upon earth, inspired by
bloody and insatiable malice and wickedness. To Washington George III
was a tyrant, his ministers were scoundrels, and the British people were
lost to every sense of virtue. The evil of it is that, for a posterity
which listened to no other comment o