In Virginia, about to become the battle-ground of the Revolution, the condition of affairs was gloomy, humiliating, apparently almost desperate. After a war of five years the state was still unfortified, unarmed, unprepared. Her strength, her money, her sons had been sent to fight her battles in the North. She had entered the war already loaded with debt from the Indian and French wars, and further depleted through her patriotic non-importation policy. Navigable rivers ran, at intervals of a few miles, from her interior to the coast. An invading fleet had but to sail up these rivers, to lay waste the entire country, and end all by a single, well-directed blow.

Virginia was slow to appreciate the necessity of an armed naval force. She never desired to meet her enemy at sea. One of her sons declared in Congress, "I deem it no sacrifice of dignity to say to the Leviathan of the deep, 'We cannot contend with you in your own element, but if you come within our limits we will shed our last drop of blood in their defence,'" adding "What! Shall the great mammoth of the American forests leave his native element, and plunge into the water in a mad contest with a shark? Let him stay on shore and not be excited by the muscles and periwinkles on the strand to venture on the perils of the deep. Why take to water where he can neither fight or swim?"

But in 1775 the Convention of Virginia directed the Committee of Safety to procure armed vessels for the better defence of the colony.[17] About seventy vessels were placed in service, built at the Chickahominy Navy-yard, South Quay, and Hampton near Norfolk. George Mason, for the Committee of Safety, built two galleys and a fine battle ship, The American Congress, to carry fourteen guns and ninety-six marines. The vessels were to serve separately for the defence of the coast, but there was great difficulty in obtaining sailors to man them. Among the seamen were faithful negroes who purchased their freedom by serving through the war. These ships sometimes captured sloops laden with supplies for the officers of the invading army. Luxuries intended for British officers found their way to rebel tables. The planters lacked many essential articles,—food, clothing, medicines,—but they had a pineapple now and then. They sent out their own tobacco in ships which often never returned, and in time most of the Virginia ships were either destroyed or captured. Then it was that John Paul Jones obtained a commission from Congress to "harass the enemies of the Commonwealth," and swept the seas.

In January, 1781, Virginia was invaded by the enemy. Tarleton's cavalry carried the torch and sword throughout the whole James River region, burned houses, carried off horses, cutting the throats of those too young for service. They made a dash to the mountains and captured seven members of the assembly, then in session at Charlottesville, announcing an intention to go as far as Fredericksburg and Mount Vernon. In May, Tarleton was confidently expected at Fredericksburg. The planters abandoned their homes and removed their families from place to place for safety. The homestead was totally destroyed or pillaged, china pounded up, servants carried off, and every animal stolen or slaughtered. "Were it possible," said one old citizen, "I should remove my family to some other country, for nothing can compensate for the sufferings and alarms they daily experience. Scarce do they remain one week in a place, before they are obliged to abandon their shelter and seek an asylum from the bounty of others." The state was swept as by a tornado—growing crops destroyed, plantations laid waste. The destruction of property was estimated at thirteen million sterling. So dearly did the peaceful citizens of Virginia purchase freedom for their descendants!

Among the stories of this prince of raiders still told at Virginia firesides, is one of a day when he made a clean sweep of everything portable on an old lady's plantation. Standing calmly in her doorway, she watched the rifling of her poultry-yard. One cowardly and aged Muscovy drake basely abandoned his harem and hid in a hedge. The old dame espied him just as Tarleton and his staff rode off. "Here, you Jim," she called to a negro lad; "catch that old duck and ride for your life after that general. Tell him he forgot one lean old duck, and I send it to him with my compliments." "What did he say?" she asked the boy on his return. "He jes put dat old Muscovy in he wallet, an' he say he much obliged."

The raids of the enemy along the navigable waters of Virginia became incessant. Gunboats would ascend the rivers, to the terror of all who dwelt on their banks. One of these went up the Pamunkey at night, and was kept from landing by a handful of men who fired, ran on ahead and fired again, and so on until the captain, believing himself to be in the midst of a large force on shore, and uncertain as to the possibility of return, hoisted a white flag in the moonlight and surrendered! Then the captain on shore (John Otey, with only twenty men) was, indeed, in a dilemma! Waiting until the moon went down, he ordered the crew ashore, forbade any to speak, took their arms and marched them through the darkness to headquarters!

A schooner on April 9, 1781, ascended the Potomac as far as Alexandria, landing at every house on the way, burning, destroying, stealing, loudly declaring their errand to "burn out the traitors, George Washington and George Mason."

On the 12th six armed vessels ascended the river, and the counties of Stafford, Prince William, and Fairfax became the "scene of war." Fifty miles from Fredericksburg, Cornwallis was encamped with his main body of the British army. Twenty miles from Fredericksburg, Lafayette was protecting, with his small force, the homes of the mother, wife, and sister of the commander-in-chief. "Before this letter reaches you," warned Colonel Bannister, "the enemy will have penetrated to Fredericksburg."

To be brave and serene became the high duty of the commander's family. They must present an example of fortitude and courage. This was the obligation laid upon them by their position. Nor did they demand, because of this position, anything more than the protection accorded to all. No sentries or guards were posted around their dwellings, no force detailed for their special protection. When Mary Washington's daughter expressed alarm, her mother reminded her that "the sister of the commanding General must be an example of fortitude and faith." Even the general himself could not repress a cry of anguish when he heard of the desolation of his native state. "Would to God," he said, "would to God the country could rise as one man and extirpate Cornwallis and his whole band!"

The general's family held their posts in calm silence, expressing no excitement or alarm. Tarleton's cavalry—mounted on Virginia's race-horses—were dashing all over the country, and liable at any moment to appear wherever it pleased him. For Mary Washington there was no security, no peace, save in the sanctuary of her own bosom. Virginia was the battle-ground, convulsed through her borders with alarms! Finally, General Washington could bear it no longer. Despite her remonstrance he removed his mother to the county of Frederick, in the interior of the state, where she remained for a short time to escape the Red Dragoons of the dreaded Tarleton.

"As for our present distresses," he wrote to George Mason, "they are so great and complicated that it is scarcely within the powers of description to give an adequate idea of them. We are without money and have been so for a long time; without provision and forage, without clothing, and shortly shall be (in a manner) without men. In a word; we have lived upon expedients till we can live no longer."

The eventful year of 1781—destined to bring so great a deliverance to the country—brought infinite sorrow to Mary Washington and her daughter. The good man and pure patriot, Fielding Lewis, died in January. Always too frail in health to bear arms, he had sent his sons to the front, advanced £7000 for the manufacture of arms, and so impoverished himself by advances of money to the colony that he was unable to pay his taxes (Calendar State Papers, Vol. i, p. 503; Henings Statutes, Vol. ix, p. 71).

In the same year Samuel Washington died at his home, "Harewood," in Jefferson County. The family bond was close in Mary Washington's household and no one was dearer than her son Samuel!

Washington's letters in 1780 repeat the story of Valley Forge. "The present situation of the army" (Jan. 8, 1780) "is the most distressing of any we have experienced since the beginning of the war. For a fortnight past the troops, both officers and men, have been almost perishing from want. The troops are half starved, imperfectly clothed, riotous, and robbing the country people of their subsistence from sheer necessity." In April things had not improved. "We are on the point of starving," he wrote to Reed of Pennsylvania. "I have almost ceased to hope. The country in general is in such a state of insensibility and indifference to its interests that I dare not flatter myself with any change for the better." And he adds, like a sigh of hopeless anguish, "In modern wars the longest purse must chiefly determine the event."

The English were fully cognizant of this state of affairs. "We look on America as at our feet," wrote Horace Walpole, in 1780, to Mann.

"Poorly clothed, badly fed, and worse paid," said General Wayne in 1780, "some of them not having had a paper dollar for nearly twelve months; exposed to winter's piercing cold, to drifting snows and chilling blasts, with no protection but old worn-out coats, tattered linen overalls, and but one blanket between three men! In this situation, the enemy begin to work upon their passions, and have found means to circulate proclamations among them. The officers in general, as well as myself, stand for hours every day exposed to wind and weather among the poor naked fellows while they are working at their huts, assisting with our own hands, sharing every vicissitude in common with them, participating in their ration of bread and water. The delicate mind and eye of humanity are hurt—very much hurt—at their distress."

These were the trials to which the soldiers of the American Revolution were subjected, and which those who endured to the end bore without murmuring; for no stress of suffering could wring from their brave hearts a word of injury to the cause for which they suffered!

May the honors now so gladly awarded to those brave men, by those descended from them, never be given by inadvertence or mistake to the caitiff host that forsook their commander in his dark hour!

The army that bore the sufferings of which so many have written was a small one. Few armies have ever shown a nobler self-devotion than that which remained with Washington through the dreary winter at Valley Forge, but the conscientious historian must not give honor equally to them and the mighty host of the American people who had no sympathy with the movement. Washington himself wrote, Dec. 30, 1778, "If I were called upon to draw a picture of the times and of the men from what I have seen, heard, and part know, I should in one word say that idleness, dissipation, and extravagance seem to have laid fast hold upon them; that speculation, peculation and an insatiable thirst for riches seem to have got the better of every other consideration—that party disputes and quarrels are the great business of the day; whilst the momentous concerns of an empire, a great and accumulating debt, ruined finances, depreciated money, and want of credit—which in its consequence is want of everything—are but of secondary consideration."

Under these circumstances the nobility and beauty of the character of Washington can indeed hardly be surpassed. "He commanded," says Lecky, "a perpetually fluctuating army, almost wholly destitute of discipline and respect for authority, torn by the most violent personal and provincial jealousies, wretchedly armed, wretchedly clothed, and sometimes in danger of starvation. Unsupported for the most part by the population among whom he was quartered, and incessantly thwarted by Congress, he kept his army together by a combination of skill, firmness, patience, and judgment which has rarely been surpassed, and he led it at last to a signal triumph."

But while he thus held his army discontent, distrust, suspicion,—the train which inevitably follows failure,—possessed the minds of the people and embittered the hearts of those who were striving to serve them. The leaders were blamed for the misfortunes of the time, their ability doubted, their patriotism suspected.

Thus hampered and trammelled, weak, sick at heart, America stretched out appealing hands to France.