Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker: Sometime Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel on the Staff of his Excellency General WashingtonMitchell, S. Weir (Silas Weir)
History
Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker: Sometime Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel on the Staff of his Excellency General Washington
Mitchell, S. Weir (Silas Weir)
Quakers -- Fiction; United States -- History -- Revolution, 1775-1783 -- Fiction
“Look at mine,” he cried, laughing. “I have only one suit, and the rest
are hardly better off.”
I drew back and waited. In a few minutes the general came out, and
mounting, sat still until all of the staff were in the saddle.
He had changed greatly from the fresh, clear-skinned country gentleman I
saw first in Philadelphia. His face was more grave, his very ruddy skin
less clear and more bronzed. I observed that his eyes were deep set,
light blue in colour, and of unusual size; his nose was rather heavy
and large; the mouth resolute and firm, with full lips. His general
expression was sedate and tranquil. In full, neat buff and blue, his
hair powdered, the queue carefully tied, he sat very erect in the
saddle, and looked to be a good horseman.
This is all I remember at that time of this high-minded gentleman. I
heard much of him then and later; and as what I heard or saw varies a
good deal from the idea now held of him, I shall not refrain from saying
how he seemed to us, who saw him in camp and field, or in the hour of
rare leisure. But I shall do better, perhaps, just now to let my friend
say what he seemed to be to his more observant and reflective mind. It
was writ long after.
“Abler pens than mine,” says Jack, “have put on record the sorrowful
glory of that dreadful campground by Valley Forge. It is strongly
charactered in those beseeching letters and despatches of the almost
heartbroken man, who poured out his grief in language which even to-day
no man can read unmoved. To us he showed only a gravely tranquil face,
which had in it something which reassured those starving and naked ones.
Most wonderful is it, as I read what he wrote to inefficient, blundering
men, to see how calmly he states our pitiful case, how entirely he
controls a nature violent and passionate beyond that of most men. He was
scarcely in the saddle as commander before the body which set him there
was filled with dissatisfaction.
“I think it well that we know so little of what went on within the
walls of Congress. The silence of history has been friendly to
many reputations. There need be no silence as to this man, nor any
concealment, and there has been much. I would have men see him as we saw
him in his anger, when no language was too strong; in his hour of serene
kindliness, when Hamilton, the aide of twenty, was ‘my boy’; in this
starving camp, with naked men shivering all night in their blankets by
the fires, when ‘he pitied those miseries he could neither relieve nor
prevent.’ Am I displeased to think that although he laughed rarely he
liked Colonel Scammel’s strong stories, and would be amused by a song
such as no woman should hear?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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