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Washington was so completely a public man, that his biography is necessarily a history of the period in which he lived. In compiling the following narrative I have, therefore, endeavoured not only to bring into view the transactions in which he was personally concerned, but all those contemporary events which were of sufficient importance to deserve attention in a general history of the period. The volume will, consequently, if I have succeeded in my design, present a history of Washington and his times.

The authorities on which I have chiefly relied, besides the biographies of Washington by Ramsay, Marshall, Paulding, Sparks, and others, are the general histories of the Revolution by Ramsay, Gordon, Allen, Botta, and others; the correspondence of Washington and his cotemporaries, state papers and documents, and a history of the United States, entitled the Western World. In using these authorities I have not hesitated to adopt their phraseology, where it was not too diffuse for a work of so limited extent as the present. This general acknowledgment, and the frequent references in the foot notes, are considered sufficient to enable the reader to recognise the grounds of authenticity upon which the narrative rests.

My thanks are due to many literary friends for the assistance they have rendered me in the present undertaking; and in particular to Dr. Thomas R. Maris, for the obliging loan of the sketch by Volozan, from which Mr. Croome's drawing was made for the fulllength portrait of Washington; and to my accomplished friend, Mr. J. Russel Smith, for the use of his original sketches of Braddock's Field, and the scenery in the neighbourhood of Mount Vernon.

Whoever has occasion to examine carefully into the history of the period in which Washington lived, will find his reverence for the character of that illustrious man always increasing. The more intimately one becomes acquainted with the facts, the more firmly he becomes convinced that Washington was, throughout the whole forming period of the republic, the grand moving power. Every thing seems to have depended on him. The leaders of popular opinion looked to him for advice; the Congress for direction. While the war was raging he guided every movement, re

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pressed all discontent, infused the breath of life into inert masses, and created the means of efficient warfare. When the war was ended, and a new form of government became necessary, he guided the deliberations on which it was founded. When its strength and efficiency were to be tested by experiment, the sovereign power was placed in his hands, which steered the new ship of the state through the most perilous storms, and conducted her into the secure haven of national

prosperity. He was present in every creative movement. The impress of his mind is stamped upon every great national institution. Never did any great benefactor of mankind more faithfully earn his titles, than the FATHER OF HIS COUNTRY-THE FOUNDER OF THE REPUBLIC.

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