Note (in a note) — Chapter XXV

[386] "The theory that the popular leaders were playing a game of hypocrisy may be tested in the case of Washington, whose sterling patriotism was not more conspicuous than his irreproachable integrity. The New York Provincial Congress, in an address to him (June 26th, 1775), on his way from Philadelphia to the American camp around Boston, say that accommodation with the mother country was 'the fondest wish of each American soul.' Washington, in reply, pledged his colleagues and himself to use every exertion to re-establish peace and harmony. 'When we assumed the soldier,' he said, 'we did not lay aside the citizen; and we shall most sincerely rejoice with you in that happy hour when the establishment of American liberty on the most solid and firm foundations shall enable us to return to our private stations, in the bosom of a free, peaceful, and happy country.'[387] There was no incompatibility in the position of military leader of a great uprising with a desire to preserve the old political ties. When the Barons of Runnymede, surrounded by their retainers, wrested from King John the great Charter, they meant not to renounce their allegiance, but simply to preserve the old government. Though an act of apparent rebellion, yet it was in the strictest sense an act of loyalty. So the popular leaders, in their attitude of armed resistance, were loyal to what they conceived to be essential to American liberty. They were asserting the majesty of constitutional law against those who would have destroyed it, and thus were more loyal to the Constitution than was George III. There really is no ground on which justly to question the sincerity of declarations like those of Congress and Washington. They aimed at a redress of grievances; and the idea was quite general, of a Bill of Rights, or an American Constitution, embodying the conditions on which the integrity of the empire might be preserved. This was their last appeal for a settlement on such a basis." (Frothingham's Rise of the Republic of the United States, Chap. xi., pp. 438, 439.)