e to the interests of
Virginia. Above all things he was an aristocrat, set apart by the
dark line of race, color, and hereditary servitude, as proud as the
proudest Austrian with his endless quarterings, as sturdy and vigorous
as an English yeoman, and as jealous of his rights and privileges
as any baron who stood by John at Runnymede. To this aristocracy,
careless and indolent, given to rough pleasures and indifferent to the
finer and higher sides of life, the call came, as it comes to all men
sooner or later, and in response they gave their country soldiers,
statesmen, and jurists of the highest order, and fit for the great
work they were asked to do. We must go back to Athens to find another
instance of a society so small in numbers, and yet capable of such an
outburst of ability and force. They were of sound English stock, with
a slight admixture of the Huguenots, the best blood of France; and
although for a century and a half they had seemed to stagnate in
the New World, they were strong, fruitful, and effective beyond the
measure of ordinary races when the hour of peril and trial was at
hand.

CHAPTER II

THE WASHINGTONS

Such was the world and such the community which counted as a small
fraction the Washington family. Our immediate concern is with that
family, for before we approach the man we must know his ancestors. The
greatest leader of scientific thought in this century has come to
the aid of the genealogist, and given to the results of the latter's
somewhat discredited labors a vitality and meaning which it seemed
impossible that dry and dusty pedigrees and barren tables of descent
should ever possess. We have always selected our race-horses according
to the doctrines of evolution, and we now study the character of a
great man by examining first the history of his forefathers.

Washington made so great an impression upon the world in his lifetime
that genealogists at once undertook for him the construction of a
suitable pedigree. The excellent Sir Isaac Heard, garter king-at-arms,
worked out a genealogy which seemed reasonable enough, and then wrote
to the president in relation to it. Washington in reply thanked him
for his politeness, sent him the Virginian genealogy of his own
branch, and after expressing a courteous interest said, in his simple
and direct fashion, that he had been a busy man and had paid but
little attention to the subject. His knowledge about his English
forefathers was in