his side the tomb of Martha his wife. As I stood there alone, with
no one by to irritate me by assertions of the man's absolute
supremacy, I acknowledged that I had come to the final resting-place
of a great and good man,--of a man whose patriotism was, I believe,
an honest feeling, untinged by any personal ambition of a selfish
nature. That he was pre-eminently a successful man may have been
due chiefly to the excellence of his cause, and the blood and
character of the people who put him forward as their right arm in
their contest; but that he did not mar that success by arrogance, or
destroy the brightness of his own name by personal aggrandizement,
is due to a noble nature and to the calm individual excellence of
the man.

Considering the circumstances and history of the place, the position
of Mount Vernon, as I saw it, was very remarkable. It lay exactly
between the lines of the two armies. The pickets of the Northern
army had been extended beyond it, not improbably with the express
intention of keeping a spot so hallowed within the power of the
Northern government. But since the war began it had been in the
hands of the seceders. In fact, it stood there in the middle of the
battle-field, on the very line of division between loyalism and
secession. And this was the spot which Washington had selected as
the heart and center, and safest rallying homestead of the united
nation which he left behind him. But Washington, when he resolved
to found his capital on the banks of the Potomac, knew nothing of
the glories of the Mississippi. He did not dream of the speedy
addition to his already gathered constellations of those Western
stars--of Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota, and Iowa; nor did he dream
of Texas conquered, Louisiana purchased, and Missouri and Kansas
rescued from the wilderness.