" He reached Cambridge on
the 2d of July and on the following day was the chief figure in a
striking ceremony. In the presence of a vast crowd and of the
motley army of volunteers, which was now to be called the
American army, Washington assumed the command. He sat on
horseback under an elm tree and an observer noted that his
appearance was "truly noble and majestic." This was milder praise
than that given a little later by a London paper which said:
"There is not a king in Europe but would look like a valet de
chambre by his side." New England having seen him was henceforth
wholly on his side. His traditions were not those of the
Puritans, of the Ephraims and the Abijahs of the volunteer army,
men whose Old Testament names tell something of the rigor of the
Puritan view of life. Washington, a sharer in the free and often
careless hospitality of his native Virginia, had a different
outlook. In his personal discipline, however, he was not less
Puritan than the strictest of New Englanders. The coming years
were to show that a great leader had taken his fitting place.
Washington, born in 1732, had been trained in self-reliance, for
he had been fatherless from childhood. At the age of sixteen he
was working at the profession, largely self-taught, of a surveyor
of land.
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