America. Washington was uncompromising. After the tax on tea he
derided "our lordly masters in Great Britain." No man, he said,
should scruple for a moment to take up arms against the
threatened tyranny. He and his neighbors of Fairfax County,
Virginia, took the trouble to tell the world by formal resolution
on July 18, 1774, that they were descended not from a conquered
but from a conquering people, that they claimed full equality
with the people of Great Britain, and like them would make their
own laws and impose their own taxes. They were not democrats;
they had no theories of equality; but as "gentlemen and men of
fortune" they would show to others the right path in the crisis
which had arisen. In this resolution spoke the proud spirit of
Washington; and, as he brooded over what was happening, anger
fortified his pride. Of the Tories in Boston, some of them highly
educated men, who with sorrow were walking in what was to them
the hard path of duty, Washington could say later that "there
never existed a more miserable set of beings than these wretched
creatures."

The age of Washington was one of bitter vehemence in political
thought. In England the good Whig was taught that to deny Whig
doctrine was blasphemy, that there was no truth or honesty on the
other side, and that no one should trust a Tory; and usually the
good Whig was true to the teaching he had received. In America
there had hitherto been no national politics. Issues had been
local and passions thus confined exploded all the more fiercely.
Franklin spoke of George III as drinking long draughts of
American blood and of the British people as so depraved and
barbarous as to be the wickedest nation upon earth, inspired by
bloody and insatiable malice and wickedness. To Washington George