A Year With George Washington
January 15th, 1775 – After church services, Washington returned to Mt. Vernon with George Mason. They continued their work of organizing and arming citizens in anticipation of war with Great Britain.
George Washington spent the previous fall in Philadelphia as a Virginia delegate to the First Continental Congress. In his travel bag was a copy of A Summary View of the Rights of British America. The pamphlet, written by thirty-one-year-old Thomas Jefferson, was incendiary in its content but fit the tenor of the times perfectly. Referring to George III of Great Britain, Jefferson wrote that, “Kings are the servants, not the proprietors of the people. Open your breast, Sire, to liberal and expanded thought. Let not the name of George the Third be a blot in the page of history.”
True to form, Washington attended the Congress from beginning to end and managed to gain the respect of all those in attendance. More than that, he vowed that he “…will raise 1000 men, subsist them at my own expense, and march myself at their head for the relief of Boston.”
While Washington was away, his neighbor, George Mason, had helped raise a volunteer militia that had elected Washington to lead them. Washington was clearly aware of this, as during his time in Philadelphia, he ordered military supplies, including drums, fifes, and halberds for the militia, as well as military attire for himself. Washington also brought home in his saddlebag a copy of Thomas Webb’s A Military Treatise on the Appointments of the Army.
The First Continental Congress was conciliatory towards the King and Parliament and simply wanted its rights as British subjects restored and respected. Washington reflected that sentiment when he wrote, “I am well satisfied, as I can be of my existence, that no such thing is desired by any thinking man in all North America; on the contrary, that it is the ardent wish of the warmest advocates for liberty that peace and tranquillity, upon constitutional grounds, may be restored and the horrors of civil discord prevented.”
Fast-moving events that spring would seemingly hasten time itself. Washington would soon find himself at the head of an army battling the most powerful economic and military force in the world. The Battles of Lexington and Concord would come, then Bunker Hill. War was no longer imminent; it was here. Washington, again, rose to the moment, providence his only friend.
