Democratic Sentinel, Volume 21, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 February 1897 — Washington's Greatest Glory. [ARTICLE]

Washington's Greatest Glory.

The transcendent glory of Washington as a soldier is that when the war was ended he surrendered his victorious and stainless sword to the civil authority. For eight long years he had carried that great trust without salary or pecuniary compensation of any kind, never but once seeing his beloved Mount Vernon. A pliant army, smarting under grievances, would have made him king or dictator. He crushed the very suggestion with indignant rebuke. Cromwell and Napoleon, after successful revolutions, had held on to power. There is hardly another case in history where, under like circumstances, power has been voluntarily surrendered. Washington set for ail successful generals, in all ages after him, a noble and immortal, example, when he sought out that weak and migratory congress at Annapolis and in such dignified and manly words as these closed his impressive speech of resignation: “Having now finished the work assigned me, I retire from the great theater of action, and bidding an affectionate farewell to this nugust body, under whose orders I have so long acted, I here offer my commission and take my lbave of all the employments of public life.”