WATSON
made a thorough study of military matters,
and was appointed second in command in
his regiment in 1754, and aide to General
Braddock in 1755. In 1758 he was elected
to the House of Burgesses. He was one
of the six Virginian delegates to the Con
tinental Congress in 1774, and in the
following year he received the command of
the Continental army. At the close of
the War of Independence he returned to
private life, but he was President of the
Philadelphia Convention which framed a
Constitution in 1787, and in 1789 he was
elected first President of the "United States.
He was re-elected in 1793, and his vigorous
and enlightened administration saw the
new State solidly established. He declined
re-election in 1796, and retired to Mount
Vernon to devote himself to agriculture.
There has been much controversy in
America about Washington s views on
religion, but the evidence is such that one
can attribute it only to reluctance to allow
Eationalism on the part of one of the
greatest of Americans. President Thomas
Jefferson, who ought to know, expressly
says that Washington was not a Christian
(Memoir, Correspondence, etc., vol. iv,
p. 512). He says that Gouverneur Morris,
who was intimate with Washington, " often
told me that General Washington believed
no more of that system [Christianity]
than he himself did." He says, on the
authority of the chaplain of Congress, that
the clergy, in presenting an address to
Washington after his retirement, pointedly
intimated to him that he had not yet said
a single word in public that identified him
with Christianity ; and that " the old fox "
evaded their hint, and gave them satisfac
tion on all points except that. The case
for orthodoxy is best put by Jared Sparks
in his Life of George Washington (1852),
and is an entire failure. There is a vague
reference to " all his writings "; whereas
Washington, apart from Theistic phrases,
merely spoke on one occasion of the
benign influence of the Christian religion,"
as Eenan might do. The main point is
that Washington had a pew, and regularly
871
attended church ; but the force of this is.
completely destroyed when Sparks admits
that, while Mrs. Washington always re
mained for the communion, Washington
himself always went home before that part
of the service. It is admitted that at
least after the war he never took the
communion ; and to plead that he was too
busy and distracted (in his retirement) for
so holy a function is ludicrous. The mean
ing is plain. There is a very questionable
statement that he said private prayer in
the morning (as a Theist might) ; but
Sparks himself gives a letter from Wash
ington s adopted daughter in which she
says that she does not know this. She
obviously knows that he was not a Chris
tian, and is seeking to obscure the fact.
Sparks discusses the subject in an appendix
(pp. 518-25) ; and all the evidence is
collected and analysed in Eemsburg s Six
Historic Americans. Finally, Sparks gives
minute accounts of the last days of Wash
ington, and from these it is clear that he>
had no minister of religion. Sparks takes
no notice of this. It is quite evident that
Washington was, like Franklin, Adams,
Jefferson, and so many other of the great
Americans, a Deist, though not so heterodox
as Jefferson. D. Dec. 14, 1799.
WATSON, James, publisher. B. Sep. 21,. 1799. Ed. by his mother, a Sunday-school teacher. Watson was put to work at domestic service in a clergyman s house at the age of twelve. In 1817 he entered a warehouse at Leeds, and two years later he was converted to Eationalism by reading Cobbett and Carlile. When Carlile was. imprisoned in 1822, Watson went to London to assist in his shop, and he thus began his long and heroic work for the freedom of the press and enlightenment. In 1823 he was sent for a year to prison, where he read Hume and Gibbon and deepened his Eationalist convictions. After his release he learned printing, and was for a time on Carlile s Lion. In 1826 he joined the Owen- ites, and was for some months storekeeper to the First Co-operative Trading Associa- 872
