Текст книги "With Americans of Past and Present Days"
Автор книги: Jean Jules Jusserand
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In his delight at being intrusted with the plan of the federal city he had never said a word about any remuneration, and he had not copyrighted his plan. At the time of his dismissal Washington had written to the Commissioners: "The plan of the city having met universal applause (as far as my information goes), and Major L'Enfant having become a very discontented man, it was thought that less than from two thousand five hundred to three thousand dollars, would not be proper to offer him for his services; instead of this, suppose five hundred guineas and a lot in a good part of the city were substituted?"
The offer was made; L'Enfant refused, without giving reasons. More and more gloomy times were in store for him; mishaps and disappointments multiplied. He had laid great store on the selling of copies of his plan, but since he had not copyrighted it, no royalty on the sale was reserved for him. He protested against this, against the way in which the engraving had been made, with grievous "errors of execution," and against the suppression of his name on it, "depriving me of the repute of the projector." Contrary, however, to the fear expressed at first by Washington, that out of spite he might, in his discontent, side with the many who disapproved of the vast and difficult undertaking, he remained loyal to it, and "there is no record of any act or word that tarnishes his life history with the blemish of disloyalty to the creation of his genius. He bore his honors and disappointments in humility and poverty."[140]
Poverty was, indeed, at his door, and soon in his house. Haunted by the notion of his wrongs, some only too real, some more or less imaginary, he sent to Congress memoir after memoir, recalling what he had done, and what was his destitution, the "absolute destruction of his family's fortune in Europe," owing to the French Revolution, his being reduced "from a state of ease and content to one the most distressed and helpless," living as he did, upon "borrowed bread"; but he would not doubt of "the magnanimity and justice of Congress."[141]
The family's fortune had been reduced, indeed, to a low ebb, his own lack of attention to his financial affairs making matters worse. His inability to properly attend to them is only too well evidenced by some letters from French relatives, showing that, while he was himself in absolute want, he neglected to receive the pension bestowed on him by the French Government, and which, in spite of the Revolution, had been maintained. He had also inherited from the old painter, his father, a small farm in Normandy, but had taken no steps about it, so that the farmer never ceased to pocket the revenues.[142]
One of these letters, which tells him of the death of his mother, who "died with the piety of an angel," shows what reports reached France as to the major's standing among his American friends: "All the persons whom I have seen and who know you, assured me that you enjoyed public esteem. This is everything in a country of which people praise the morals, the virtues, and the probity as worthy of our first ancestors."[143]
On two occasions, after many years, Congress voted modest sums for L'Enfant, but they were at once appropriated by his creditors. He was, moreover, appointed, in 1812, "professor of the art of military engineering in the Military Academy of the United States," a nomination which, in spite of the entreaties of James Monroe, then secretary of state, he declined. He is found in September, 1814, working at Fort Washington, when fifty men with spades and axes are sent him.
He survived eleven years, haunting the lobbies of the Capitol, pacing the newly marked avenues of "his" city, watching its growth, deploring the slightest deviation from his original design, for, as Washington had early noticed, he was "so tenacious of his plans as to conceive that they would be marred if they underwent any change or alteration,"[144] visiting the friends he had among the early settlers. "Mr. W.W. Corcoran, who lately departed this life in the city of Washington, full of years and honor ... had a very distinct recollection of the personal appearance of L'Enfant, the latter having been a frequent visitor at his father's house. He described him to me as a tall, erect man, fully six feet in height, finely proportioned, nose prominent, of military bearing, courtly air, and polite manners, his figure usually enveloped in a long overcoat and surmounted by a bell-crowned hat—a man who would attract attention in any assembly."[145]
He ended his days, the permanent guest of the Digges family, in their house near Washington. His death occurred there in 1825, and he was buried in their property at the foot of a tree. An inventory of his "personal goods and chattels" showed that they consisted in three watches, three compasses, some books, maps, and surveying instruments, the whole being valued at forty-six dollars.
The federal city, Washington had written in 1798 to Mrs. Sarah Fairfax, then in England, will be a great and beautiful one "a century hence, if this country keeps united, and it is surely its policy and interest to do it." It took, indeed, a great many years, and for a long time doubters could enjoy their doubts, and jokers their jokes. The Duke de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt visited the incipient town in 1797; he found that it possessed one hundred and fifty houses, scattered here and there; the house for the President was ready to be covered the same year, and the only wing of the Capitol yet begun was to receive its roof the year following, both being "handsome buildings, in white stones very well wrought." But the unredeemable fault, in his eyes, was the very magnitude and beauty of the plan. "The plan," he wrote, "is fine, cleverly and grandly designed, but it is its very grandeur, its magnificence, which causes it to be nothing but a dream." The distance, so heartily approved of by Washington, between the President's house and the Capitol, seemed to the traveller a serious objection; the raising of five hundred houses would be necessary to connect the two buildings; not one is in existence. "If this gap is not filled, communication will be impracticable in winter, for one can scarcely suppose that the United States would undergo the expense for pavement, footpaths, and lamps for such a long stretch of uninhabited ground."[146] This wonder has, however, been seen.
For a long time, for more than half the present duration of the city's life, deriders could deride to their heart's content. Few cities have ever been so abundantly nicknamed as Washington, the "wilderness city," the city "of magnificent distances," the "village monumental," the city, as reported by Jean-Jacques Ampère, the son of the great scientist, who visited it in 1851, of "streets without houses, and of houses without streets." He saw in its fate "a striking proof of this truth that one cannot create a great city at will." But this truth, as some others, has proved an untruth.
The growth was slow, indeed, but constant, and when the century was over, Washington's prophecy and L'Enfant's foresight were justified by the event. A city had risen, ample and beautiful, a proper capital for a wealthy and powerful nation, one quite apart, copied on no other, "not one of those cities," as was remarked, in our days, by one of Washington's successors, Mr. Roosevelt, "of which you can cut out a piece and transplant it into another, without any one perceiving that something has happened."
Then at last came L'Enfant's day. What he had always expected for "his" city took place; what he had never expected for himself took place also. In January, 1902, both the "Park Commission," composed of Daniel H. Burnham, Charles F. McKim, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, and F.L. Olmsted, and the Senate committee presented their reports on the improvement and development of Washington; the conclusions were: "The original plan of the city of Washington, having stood the test of a century, has met universal approval. The departures from that plan are to be regretted, and wherever possible, remedied." It was thus resolved to revert, as much as circumstances allowed, and in spite of a heavy outlay, to several of L'Enfant's ideas, especially to one which he considered of greatest importance, and which had been kept so long in abeyance, the giving of its proper character to that "grand avenue" between the Capitol and the White House, meant to be "most magnificent and most convenient." It is now going to be both.
As for L'Enfant himself, one more appropriation, this time not to go to his creditors, was voted by Congress on account of the major, and it was resolved that his ashes, the place of which continued to be marked only by a tree, should be removed to Arlington National Cemetery, to lie in that ever-growing army of the dead, former members of the regiments of that Republic for which he had fought and bled. His remains were brought to what had been "Jenkins's Hill," and placed under the great dome of the Capitol. In the presence of the chief of the state, President Taft, of representatives of Congress, the Supreme Court, the Society of the Cincinnati, and other patriotic and artistic societies, and of a vast crowd, on the 28th of April, 1909, orations were delivered by the Vice-President of the United States, James Sherman, and by the Chief Commissioner of the District, Henry B. McFarland, the latter amply making up, by his friendly and eloquent address, for the long-forgotten troubles of his predecessors with L'Enfant. The Vice-President courteously concluded thus: "And turning to you, Mr. Ambassador ... I express the hope that the friendship between our nations, which has existed for more than a century, will be but intensified as time passes, and that we will in the future join hands in advancing every good cause which an all-wise Providence intrusts to our care." The hearse, wrapped in the three colors of France and America, was accompanied to Arlington by the French naval and military attachés, and an escort from one of those regiments of engineers to which the major himself had belonged.
A handsome monument was unveiled two years later by Miss E.C. Morgan, the great-granddaughter of William Digges, who had befriended L'Enfant in his last days, the chief speeches being delivered by President Taft, and by the secretary of state, Elihu Root.[147] "Few men," Mr. Root said, "can afford to wait a hundred years to be remembered. It is not a change in L'Enfant that brings us here. It is we who have changed, who have just become able to appreciate his work. And our tribute to him should be to continue his work." The monument, by W.W. Bosworth, who, like L'Enfant had received in Paris his artistic education, is in the shape of a table, on which has been engraved a facsimile of the original plan of the city by the French soldier-artist. From the slope where it has been raised can be seen, on the other side of the river, the ceaselessly growing federal capital, called Washington, "a revered name," another French officer, the Chevalier de Chastellux, had written, when visiting, in 1782, another and earlier town of the same name in Connecticut, "a revered name, whose memory will undoubtedly last longer than the very city called upon to perpetuate it."
FOOTNOTES
[80] Philadelphia, February 18, 1782. Washington papers, Library of Congress.
[81] Same letter.
[82] March 1, 1782. Washington papers.
[83] Brother of the minister to the United States, New York, December 10, 1787; unpublished. Archives of the French Ministry of Colonies.
[84] Mentioned before, p. 21.
[85] Brevet 14,302. Archives of the Ministry of War, Paris.
[86] Steuben writes him from West Point on July 1, 1783, sending him "a resolution of the convention of the Cincinnati of June 19, 1783, by which I am requested," he says, "to transmit their thanks to you for your care and ingenuity in preparing the designs which were laid before them by the president on that day." Original in the L'Enfant papers, in the possession of Doctor James Dudley Morgan, of Washington, a descendant of the Digges family, the last friends of L'Enfant. To him my thanks are due for having allowed me to use those valuable documents.
[87] December 18, 1783. Rochambeau papers.
[88] Asa Bird Gardner, The Order of the Cincinnati in France, 1905, pp. 9 ff.
[89] An undated memoir (May, 1787?), in the Hamilton papers, Library of Congress.
[90] Text annexed to L'Enfant's letter to Rochambeau, June 15, 1786. (Rochambeau papers.) On August 1, 1787, however, Francastel was still unpaid, for at that date one of L'Enfant's friends, Duplessis, i.e., the Chevalier de Mauduit du Plessis, who, like himself, had served as a volunteer in the American army, writes him: "J'ai vu ici M. Francastel le bijoutier qui vous a fait une fourniture considérable de médailles de Cincinnatus et qui m'a dit que vous lui deviez 20,000 livres, je crois, plus ou moins. Je l'ai fort rassuré sur votre probité." (L'Enfant papers.)
[91] Only his orthography is corrected in the quotations. Orthography was not L'Enfant's strong point in any language. His mistakes are even worse in French than in English, the reason being, probably, that he took even less pains.
[92] Unpublished, n.d., but probably of 1784. (Papers of the Continental Congress—Letters, vol. LXXVIII, p. 583, Library of Congress.) His ambition would have been to be asked to realize his own plan, "as Brigadier-General Kosciusko, at leaving this continent, gave me the flattering expectation of being at the head of [such] a department."
[93] On this visit, see below, p. 225.
[94] New York, 3d November, 1785. Papers of the Continental Congress—Letters, I. 78, vol. XIV, p. 677.
[95] October 13, 1789.
[96] Taggart, Records of the Columbia Historical Society, XI, 215.
[97] Thomas E.V. Smith, The City of New York in 1789, p. 46, quoting contemporary magazines.
[98] Ibid.
[99] C.M. Bowen, The Centennial Celebration of the Inauguration of George Washington, 1892, pp. 15, 16.
[100] "Mr. Lear does himself the honor to inform Major L'Enfant that Mrs. Washington intends to visit the federal building at six o'clock this evening.—Saturday morning, 13th June, 1789." (L'Enfant papers.)
[101] Martha J. Lamb, History of the City of New York, 1881, vol. II, pp. 321 ff.
[102] Ten had already voted the Constitution, which made its enactment certain, for Congress had decided that an adoption by nine States would be enough for that. As is well known, there remained in the end only two dissenting States, North Carolina and Rhode Island.
[103] To James Madison, August 12, 1801.
[104] Number of July 24, 1788.
[105] Martha J. Lamb, ibid.
[106] July 26, 1788.
[107] New York Journal, July 24.
[108] To his brother, Philadelphia, November 17, 1806. Revue des Deux Mondes, November 15, 1908, p. 421.
[109] Original (several times printed in part) in the Library of Congress, Miscellaneous—Personal. The rest of the letter treats of the necessity of fortifying the coasts.
[110] To David Stuart, November 20, 1791.
[111] W.B. Bryan's History of the National Capital, 1914, p. 127.
[112] Records of the Columbia Historical Society, II, 151.
[113] April 8, 1791. Hamilton Papers, vol. XI, Library of Congress.
[114] September 30, October 24, 1791. Correspondence of the French Ministers, ed. F.J. Turner, 1904, p. 62. "Salente," the ideal city, in Fénelon's Télémaque. During the War of Independence Chevalier Jean de Ternant had served as a volunteer officer in the American army. He was at Valley Forge, at Charleston, took part under Greene in the Southern campaign and was promoted a colonel by a vote of Congress.
[115] To Jefferson, March 11, 1791.
[116] To Hamilton, April 8, 1791.
[117] Same letter to Hamilton.
[118] L'Enfant's Observations Explanatory of the Plan, inscribed on the plan itself.
[119] First report to the President, March 26, 1791.
[120] For he was depended upon for that, too: "M. L'Enfant," Ternant wrote, "aura aussi la direction des bâtimens que le Congrès se propose d'y faire élever." September 30, 1791. See also the documents quoted by W.B. Bryan, History of the National Capital, 1914, p. 165, note. L'Enfant actually made drawings for the Capitol, the President's house, the bridges, the market, etc., which he complained later the commissioners to have unjustly appropriated. Records of the Columbia Historical Society, II, 140.
[121] March 25, 1798.
[122] L'Enfant's Observations Explanatory of the Plan, inscribed on it.
[123] Conclusion of his third report.
[124] "Opinion on Capital," November 29, 1790. Writings, ed. Ford, V, 253.
[125] Which agreed perfectly with L'Enfant's constant desire to ever do things "en grand." Washington writes to him that, "although it may not be immediately wanting," a large tract of ground must be reserved. The lands to be set apart, "in my opinion are those between Rock Creek, the Potowmac River, and the Eastern Branch, and as far up the latter as the turn of the channel above Evens's point; thence including the flat back of Jenkins's height; thence to the road leading from Georgetown to Bladensburg as far easterly along the same as to include the Branch which runs across it, somewhere near the exterior of the Georgetown Session. Thence in a proper direction to Rock Creek at or above the ford, according to the situation of ground." Mount Vernon, April 4, 1791, Washington's manuscript Letter Book, vol. XI, Library of Congress.
[126] Same letter.
[127] To the Commissioners, December 18, 1791.
[128] Philadelphia, March 12, 1793.
[129] March 31, 1791.
[130] April 8, 1791. Hamilton papers, vol. XI.
[131] To David Stuart, November 20, 1791.
[132] Report to the President, August 19, 1791.
[133] December 2, 1791.
[134] L'Enfant papers.
[135] March 9, 1792. Records of the Columbia Historical Society, II, 137.
[136] To the Commissioners, November 30, 1792.
[137] Morris had bought for it a whole block, limited on its four sides by Chestnut, Walnut, Seventh, and Eighth Streets.
[138] May 9, 1793. (L'Enfant papers.)
[139] He seems to have tried to help the financier rather than to be helped by him. Ill-satisfied as he was with the house, for which he, apparently, never paid l'Enfant anything, Morris wrote: "But he lent me thirteen shares of bank stock disinterestedly, and on this point I feel the greatest anxiety that he should get the same number of shares with the dividends, for the want of which he has suffered great distress." Written about 1800. W.B. Bryan, History of the National Capital, 1914, p. 181.
[140] S.C. Busey, Pictures of the City of Washington in the Past, 1898, p. 108.
[141] Memoirs of 1801, 1802, 1813, in the Jefferson papers, Library of Congress.
[142] Letter from his cousin, Destouches, Paris, September 15, 1805, greatly exaggerating, as shown by the letter mentioned below, his mother's state of poverty. (L'Enfant papers.)
[143] From his cousin, Mrs. Roland, née Mallet, whose husband had a modest position at the Ministry of the Navy; Paris, May 5, 1806. The mother's furniture and silver plate was valued at 1,500 livres. Allusion is made to L'Enfant's deceased sister and to her "mariage projeté avec Mr. Leclerc." (L'Enfant papers.)
[144] To David Stuart November 20, 1791.
[145] Hugh T. Taggart, in Records of the Columbia Historical Society, XI, 216.
[146] Voyage en Amérique, VI, 122 ff.
[147] May 22, 1911.
III
WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH
WASHINGTON AND THE FRENCH
I
Washington's acquaintance with things French began early and was of a mixed nature. As a pupil of the French Huguenot Maryes, who kept a school at Fredericksburg, and did not teach him French,[148] we find him carefully transcribing, in his elegant youthful hand, those famous "Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation," which have recently been proved to be French. Whether this French teaching given him by a Frenchman engraved itself in his mind or happened to match his natural disposition, or both, certain it is that he lived up to the best among those maxims, those, for example, and they are remarkably numerous, that deprecate jokes and railing at the expense of others, or those of a noble import advising the young man to be "no flatterer," to "show no sign of choler in reproving, but to do it with sweetness and mildness," those prescribing that his "recreations be manful, not sinful," and giving him this advice of supreme importance, which Washington observed throughout life: "Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience."
Another chance that Washington had to become acquainted with things French was through his reading, and was less favorable to them. An early note in his hand informs us that, about the year 1748, he, being then sixteen, had, "in the Spectator, read to No. 143." All those numbers had been written by Steele and Addison at a period of French wars, at the moment when we were fighting "Monsieur Malbrouk." Not a portrait of the French in those numbers that is not a caricature; they are a "ludicrous nation"; their women are "fantastical," their men "vain and lively," their fashions ridiculous; not even their wines find grace in the eyes of Steele, who could plead, it is true, that he was not without experience on the subject, and who declares that this "plaguy French claret" is greatly inferior to "a bottle or two of good, solid, edifying port."
Washington was soon to learn more of French people, and was to find that they were something else than mere ludicrous and lively puppets.
A soldier born, with all that is necessary to prove a good one and to become an apt leader, having, as he himself wrote, "resolution to face what any man durst."[149] Washington rose rapidly in the ranks, becoming a colonel in 1754, at the age of twenty-two. He was three times sent, in his younger days, to observe, and check if he could, the progress of his future allies, in the Ohio and Monongahela Valleys. His journal and letters show him animated toward them with the spirit befitting a loyal subject of George II, none of his judgments on them being spoiled by any undue leniency.
On the first occasion he was simply ordered to hand to the commander of a French fort a letter from the governor of Virginia, and to ask him to withdraw as having "invaded the King of Great Britain's territory." To which the Frenchman, an old officer and Knight of Saint Louis, Mr. de Saint-Pierre, who shortly before had been leading an exploration in the extreme West, toward the Rockies,[150] politely but firmly declined to assent, writing back to the governor: "I am here by the orders of my general, and I entreat you, sir, not to doubt but that I shall try to conform myself to them with all the exactness and resolution which must be expected from a good officer." He has "much the air of a soldier," Washington wrote of him.
Mr. de Saint-Pierre added, on his part, a word on the bearer of Governor Dinwiddie's message, who was to be the bearer also of his answer, and in this we have the first French comment on Washington's personality: "I made it my particular care to receive Mr. Washington with a distinction suitable to your dignity as well as to his own personal merit.—From the Fort on the Rivière-aux-Bœufs, December 15, 1753." Having received plentiful supplies as a gift from the French, but entertaining the worst misgivings as to their "artifices," the young officer began his return journey, during which, in spite of all trouble, he managed to pay a visit to Queen Aliquippa: "I made her a present," he wrote, "of a match-coat and a bottle of rum, which latter was thought much the best present of the two." On the 16th of January, 1754, he was back at Williamsburg, handed to the governor Mr. de Saint-Pierre's negative answer, and printed an account of his journey.[151]
The second expedition, a military one, was marked next year by the sad and famous Jumonville incident and by the surrendering, to the brother of dead Jumonville, of Fort Necessity, where the subjects of King George and their youthful colonel, after a fight lasting from eleven in the morning till eight in the evening, had to capitulate, being permitted, however, by the French to withdraw with "full military honors, drum-beating, and taking with them one small piece of ordnance." (July 3, 1754.) The fort and the rest of the artillery remained in the hands of the captors, as well as part of that diary which, although with interruptions, Washington was fond of keeping, whenever he could, his last entry being dated Friday, December 13, 1799, the day before his death. The part found at Fort Necessity—March 31 to June 27, 1754—was sent to Paris, translated into French, printed in 1756 by the royal government,[152] and the text given in Washington's writings is only a retranslation from the French, the original English not having been preserved.
The third occasion was the terrible campaign of 1755, which ended in Braddock's death and the defeat of the English regulars on the Monongahela, not far from the newly built Fort Duquesne, later Pittsburgh (July 9). Contrary to expectation[153] (there being "about three hundred French and Indians," wrote Washington; "our numbers consisted of about thirteen hundred well-armed men, chiefly regulars"[154]), the French won the day, nearly doing to death their future commander-in-chief. A rumor was even spread that he had actually succumbed after composing a "dying speech," and Washington had to write to his brother John to assure him that he had had as yet no occasion for such a composition, though very near having had it: "By the all-powerful dispensation of Providence, I have been protected beyond all human probability and expectation; for I had four bullets through my coat, and two horses shot under me, yet escaped unhurt, although death was levelling my companions on every side of me. We have been most scandalously beaten."[155]
By an irony of fate, in this expedition against the French, in which George Washington acted as aide-de-camp to the English general, the means of transportation had been supplied by Postmaster Benjamin Franklin.
The French were indubitably different from the airy fops of Addison's Spectator, but they were as far as ever from commanding young Washington's sympathy. It was part of his loyalism to hate them and to interpret for the worst anything they could do or say. The master of an ampler vocabulary than he is sometimes credited with, we find him writing to Richard Washington, in 1757, that the means by which the French maintain themselves in the Ohio Valley are—"hellish."[156]
A few years later the tone is greatly altered, not yet toward the French, but toward the British Government and King. In sad, solemn words, full already of the spirit of the Washington of history, he warns his friend and neighbor George Mason, the one who was to draw the first Constitution of Virginia, of the great crisis now looming: "American freedom" is at stake; "it seems highly necessary that something should be done to avert the stroke and maintain the liberty which we have derived from our ancestors. But the manner of doing it, to answer the purpose effectually, is the point in question.
"That no man should scruple or hesitate a moment to use a-ms [sic] in defense of so valuable a blessing, on which all the good and evil of life depends, is clearly my opinion. Yet a-ms, I would beg leave to add, should be the last resource, the dernier resort."[157] Absolutely firm, absolutely moderate, such was Washington to continue to the end of the impending struggle, and, indeed, of his days. The life of the great Washington was now beginning.
II
Some more years elapse, and when the curtain rises again on scenes of war, momentous changes have occurred. To the last hour the former officer of the colonial wars, now a man of forty-two, was still expressing the wish "that the dispute had been left to posterity to determine: but the crisis has arrived when we must assert our rights or submit to every imposition that can be heaped upon us, till custom and use make us as tame and abject slaves as the blacks we rule over with such arbitrary sway." It was hard for him to reconcile himself to the fact that the English were really to be the enemy; he long tried to believe that the quarrel was not with England and her King, but only with the ministry and their troops, which he calls the "ministerials." Writing on the 31st of May, 1775, from Philadelphia, where he was attending the second Continental Congress, to G.W. Fairfax in England, he gave him an account of the clash between the "provincials" of Massachusetts and "the ministerial troops: for we do not, nor can we yet prevail upon ourselves to call them the King's troops."[158]
The war was to be, in his eyes, a fratricidal one: "Unhappy it is, though, to reflect that a brother's sword has been sheathed in a brother's breast, and that the once happy and peaceful plains of America are either to be drenched with blood or inhabited by slaves. Sad alternative! But can a virtuous man hesitate in his choice?"
Two weeks later the signer of this letter was appointed, on the proposition of John Adams, of Massachusetts, commander-in-chief of a new body of troops just entering history, and called the "Continental Army."[159] Braddock's former aide was to become the leader of a yet unborn nation, in an eight-year conflict with all-powerful Britain, mistress of the coasts, mistress of the seas.
What that conflict was, and what the results have been, all the world knows. There were sad days and bright days; there were Valley Forge and Saratoga. "No man, I believe," Washington wrote concerning his own fate, "had a greater choice of difficulties."[160]
The French had ceased by then to inspire Washington with disdain or animosity; he was beginning to render them better justice, but his heart was far as yet from being won. French volunteers had early begun to flock to the American army, some of them as much an encumbrance as a help. "They seem to be genteel, sensible men," wrote Washington to Congress, in October, 1776, "and I have no doubt of their making good officers as soon as they can learn so much of our language as to make themselves well understood." One of them, the commander-in-chief learned, was a young enthusiast who had left wife and child to serve the American cause as a volunteer, and without pay, like George Washington himself. He had crossed the ocean, escaping the British cruisers, on a boat called La Victoire, he being called Lafayette. One more encumbrance, audibly muttered the general, who wrote to Benjamin Harrison: "What the designs of Congress respecting this gentleman were, and what line of conduct I am to pursue to comply with their design and his expectation, I know no more than the child unborn, and beg to be instructed."[161]
