No later President has interpreted so literally
his office as commander-in-chief of the army. As he reached Bedford,
Fort Cumberland, and other scenes of his campaigns against the French
a half-century before, he must have compared that errand with his
present one. Then he was saving helpless colonists from a foreign foe;
now he was preserving a government from its own constituents.
"No citizens of the United States," he wrote to Governor Lee, of
Virginia, when leaving him at the head of the militia in order to return
to Philadelphia for the opening of Congress, "can ever be engaged in a
service more important to their country. It is nothing less than to
consolidate and to preserve the blessings of that revolution, which, at
much expense of blood and treasure, constituted us a free and
independent nation."
It was also fortunate that Washington had passed through some
instructive experience in Revolutionary days on the disadvantages of
an insufficient military force. To put down the small body of insurgents
in the western borders of Pennsylvania he called for almost thirteen
thousand militiamen.
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