Excerpt from The Character and Portraits of Washington

There were, too, in that thinly-peopled region over which impends the Blue Ridge, beside the healthful freedom of nature, positive social elements at work. The aristocratic sentiment had a more emphatic recognition there than in any other of the English Cisatlantic colonies; the distinctions of landed property and of gentle blood were deeply felt; the responsibility of a high caste, and of per sonal authority and influence over a subject race, kept alive chivalric pride and loyalty; and, with the duties of the agriculturist, the pleasures of the hunt and of the table, and the rites of an established and unlimited hospitality, was mingled, in the thoughts and the conversation of the people, that interest in political affairs whence arise public spirit and patriotic enthusiasm. Thus, while estates carelessly cultivated, the absence of many conveniences, the rarity of modern luxuries, the free and easy habits of men accustomed rather to over see workers than to work themselves, the rough highways, the unsubstantial dwellings and sparse settlements, might not impress the casual observer as favorable to elegance and dignity, he soon discovered both among the families who boasted of a Cavalier ancestry and transmitted noble blood. The Virginia of Sir Walter Raleigh - a country where the most extravagant of his golden dreams were to be realized - had given place to a nursery of men, cultivators of the soil, and rangers of the woods, where free, genial, and brave-character found scope; and the name of the distant colony that graced Spenser's dedica tion of the Faerie Queene to his peerless sovereign, instead of being identified with a new El Dorado, was to become a shrine of Humanity, as the birth place and home of her noblest exemplar.

These advantages, however, Washington shared with many planters of the South, and manorial residents of the North, and they were chiefly negative. A broader range of experience and more direct influences were indispensable to refine the manners and to test the abilities of one destined to lead men in war, and to organize the scattered and discordant elements of a young republic.

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