During these marchings and inspections he caused all trees which were so near to a post as to shelter an advancing enemy, to be felled. The militia were scattered over an extensive range of wild country, in small detachments, and he was charged with the defence of more than four hundred miles of frontier, with an available force of only one thousand men. He at once initiated a system of sharp-shooters for each post. Ranges were established, so that fire would not be wasted upon assailants before they came within effective distance. When he resumed command, after returning from the Braddock campaign, he endeavored to reorganize the militia upon a new basis. This reorganization drew from his fertile brain some military maxims for camp and field service which were in harmony with the writings of the best military authors of that period, and his study of available military works was exact, unremitting, and never forgotten. Even during the active life of the Revolutionary period, he secured from New York various military and other volumes for study, especially including Marshal Turenne’s Works, which Greene had mastered before the war began. Washington resigned his commission in 1756; married Mrs. Martha Custis, Jan. 6, 1759; was elected member of the Virginia House of Burgesses the same year, and was appointed Commissioner to settle military accounts in 1765. In the discharge of this trust he manifested that accuracy of detail and that exactness of system in business concerns which have their best illustration in the minute record of his expenses during the Revolutionary War, in which every purchase made for the government or the army, even to a few horse-shoe nails, is accurately stated. Neither Cæsar’s Commentaries, nor the personal record of any other historical character, more strikingly illustrate an ever-present sense of responsibility to conscience and to country, for trusts reposed, than does that of Washington, whether incurred in camp or in the whirl and crash of battle. Baron Jomini says: “A great soldier must have a _physical_ courage which takes no account of obstacles; and a high _moral_ courage capable of great resolution.” There have been youth, like Hannibal, whose earliest nourishment was a taste of vengeance against his country’s foes, and others have imbibed, as did the ancient Hebrew, abnormal strength to hate their enemies while doing battle; but if the character of Washington be justly delineated, he was, through every refined and lofty channel, prepared, by early aptitudes and training, to honor his chosen profession, with no abatement of aught that dignifies character, and rounds out in harmonious completeness the qualities of a consummate statesman and a great soldier. CHAPTER II. THE FERMENT OF AMERICAN LIBERTY.