ever swerved from its task
through resentment or jealousy, that never through war or peace felt the
touch of a meaner ambition, that knew no aim save that of guarding the
freedom of his fellow-countrymen, and no personal longing save that of
returning to his own fireside when their freedom was secured. It was
almost unconsciously that men learned to cling to Washington with a
trust and faith such as few other men have won, and to regard him with a
reverence which still hushes us in presence of his memory. But even
America hardly recognised his real greatness while he lived. It was only
when death set its seal on him that the voice of those whom he had
served so long proclaimed him "the man first in war, first in peace, and
first in the hearts of his fellow-countrymen."

[Sidenote: Declaration of Independence,]

Washington more than any of his fellow-colonists represented the
clinging of the Virginian landowners to the mother country, and his
acceptance of a military command proved that even the most moderate
among the colonists had no hope now save in arms. The struggle opened
with a skirmish between a party of English troops and a detachment of
militia at Lexington on the nineteenth of April 1775; and in a few days
twenty thousand colonists appeared before Boston. The Congress
reassembled, declared the States they represented "The United Colonies
of America," and undertook the work of government. Meanwhile ten
thousand fresh English troops landed at Boston. But the provincial
militia, in number almost double that of the British force which
prepared to attack them, seized a neck of ground which joins Boston to
the mainland; and though on the 17th of June they were driven from the
heights of Bunker's Hill which commanded the town, it was only after a
desperate struggle in which their bravery put an end for ever to the
taunts of cowardice which had been levelled against the colonists. "Are
the Yankees cowards?" shouted the men of Massachusetts as the first
English attack rolled back baffled down the hill-side. But a far truer
courage was shown in the stubborn endurance with which Washington's raw
militiamen, who gradually dwindled from sixteen thousand to ten,
ill-fed, ill-armed, and with but forty-five rounds of ammunition to each
man, cooped up through the winter a force of ten thousand veterans in
the lines of Boston. The spring of 1776 saw them force these troops to
withdraw from the city to New York, where the whole