narchy was about to erect the Arch of
Triumph--poor, exhausted, bleeding, weeping America lay in agony upon
her bed of laurels.

Not a moment did Washington hesitate. He convened his officers, and
going before them he read them an address, which, for homethrust
argument, magnanimous temper, and the eloquence of persuasion which
leaves nothing to be added, is not exceeded by the noblest utterances
of Greek or Roman. A nobler than Coriolanus was before them, who needed
no mother's or wife's reproachful tears to turn the threatening steel
from the gates of Rome. Pausing, as he read his speech, he put on his
spectacles and said: "I have grown gray in your service, and now find
myself growing blind." This unaffected touch of nature completed the
master's spell. The late fomenters of insurrection gathered to their
chief with words of veneration--the storm went by--and, says Curtis in
his History of the Constitution, "Had the Commander-in-Chief been other
than Washington, the land would have been deluged with the blood of
civil war."

But not yet was Washington's work accomplished. Peace dawned upon the
weary land, and parting with his soldiers, he pleaded with them for
union. "Happy, thrice happy, shall they be pronounced," he said, "who
have contributed anything in erecting this stupendous fabric of freedom
and empire; who have assisted in protecting the rights of human nature,
and establishing an asylum for the poor and oppressed of all nations and
religions." But still the foundations of the stupendous fabric trembled,
and no cement held its stones together. It was then, with that
thickening peril, Washington rose to his highest stature. Without civil
station to call forth his utterance, impelled by the intrepid impulse of
a soul that could not see the hope of a nation perish without leaping
into the stream to save it, he addressed the whole People of America in
a circular to the governors of the states: "Convinced of the importance
of the crisis, silence in me," he said, "would be a crime. I will,
therefore, speak the language of freedom and sincerity." He set forth
the need of union in a strain that touched the quick of sensibility; he
held up the citizens of America as sole lords of a vast tract of
continent; he portrayed the fair opportunity for political happiness
with which Heaven had crowned them; he pointed out the blessings that
would attend their collective wisdom; that mutual concessions and
sacrifices must be