remote, with a mail perhaps every fortnight. There were no large
towns, no great factories. Nearly half of the population
consisted of negro slaves. It is one of the ironies of history
that the chief leader in a war marked by a passion for liberty
was a member of a society in which, as another of its members,
Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, said,
there was on the one hand the most insulting despotism and on the
other the most degrading submission. The Virginian landowners
were more absolute masters than the proudest lords of medieval
England. These feudal lords had serfs on their land. The serfs
were attached to the soil and were sold to a new master with the
soil. They were not, however, property, without human rights. On
the other hand, the slaves of the Virginian master were property
like his horses. They could not even call wife and children their
own, for these might be sold at will. It arouses a strange
emotion now when we find Washington offering to exchange a negro
for hogsheads of molasses and rum and writing that the man would
bring a good price, "if kept clean and trim'd up a little when
offered for sale."

In early life Washington had had very little of formal education.
He knew no language but English. When he became world famous and
his friend La Fayette urged him to visit France he refused
because he would seem uncouth if unable to speak the French
tongue. Like another great soldier, the Duke of Wellington, he
was always careful about his dress. There was in him a silent
pride which would brook nothing derogatory to his dignity. No one
could be more methodical. He kept his accounts rigorously,
entering even the cost of repairing a hairpin for a ward. He was
a keen farmer, and it is amusing to find him recording in his