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If he does what's been reported, he's going to lose more than he can even fathom.

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George Washington:
The Commander In Chief

Excerpt:

As the Commander in Chief of the Continental Army the services and achievements of George Washington are unique in the world's history. He was much more than the Commander in Chief. He was the one necessary person, whose calm, unswerving, determined sense of patriotic duty to country, and ability put real backbone into the Revolution and kept it from collapsing or merging into a civil conflict, under the hardships and unexpected privations encountered during the eight years of war.

Without General Washington at its head it could never have succeeded. His faith in the cause and his devotion to the ideals it embodied made him the symbol of America — the spirit of the Revolution.

From boyhood on Washington lived in a military atmosphere much of his time. Under his brother's influence and direction he was trained in fencing, also probably in the manual of arms. He assumed service and responsibility in the Virginia militia; and by the time he was serving as an aide to General Braddock he made the assertion, "My inclinations are strongly bent to arms."

Each of the different tasks that fell to his hand seemed to contribute to the store of knowledge useful to him the next one to follow.

His experience as a surveyor was a fine preparation for the dangerous mission to the Ohio with Governor Dinwiddie's letter to the French commander. These gave him a real insight into pioneer settlement conditions, the wary methods of Indian warfare, and the difficulties of travel through unbroken forests in midwinter.

The Braddock campaign taught him many of the weaknesses in the military system of training British Regular officers and men.

He also had tragic evidence of the uselessness and folly of the pomp and display, and the paraphernalia of the formal English movements and practices and learned some vastly important facts of the helplessness of the British soldier in unfamiliar environment where his former European battlefield training could not be employed.

Witnessing all of the horrors of Braddock's defeat, more of a massacre than a battle, George Washington's personal courage had its baptism of fire and bore the acid test of every experience with honor.

With two horses shot beneath him and four bullets through his coat, he not only continued his duties as aide but when General Braddock was mortally wounded and most of the other officers either killed or wounded, it was the young provincial colonel who took command of the remnant of the brilliant English Army and brought it and the wounded leader out of the terrifying forest ambush of Indians to safety.

Following this, his experiences of the French and Indian War gave him additional knowledge of border warfare, invaluable experience in training, disciplining, and subsisting his men far from their base of supplies, meeting every emergency and through resourcefulness and initiative creating out of every emergency opportunity to turn to the advantage of his forces. In these early days it is said that fear had no part in his make-up.

Through his 15 years in the House of Burgesses his opinions were solidifying into fixed standards and settled convictions that were to hold him fast and keep him true to the defense of the principles of representative government for the Colonies.

He had felt the spell of Patrick Henry's ringing challenges to the spirit of free-born Englishmen: "If this be treason make the most of it — Give me liberty or give me death."