In the December following General Washington said
farewell to his officers and returned to Mount Vernon, his estate on the
Potomac. There he was busied through the next few months in putting his
private affairs in order, in superintending the reparation of his
plantation, and in receiving those who came to him for counsel or to
express their gratitude. It was as a level bit of the mountain trail from
which the traveller catches glimpses of a peaceful valley. And that is all
that the traveller usually sees.
But there is a farther view. From that level path one can see over the
Alleghanies the great valley so familiar to our eyes from other points of
view, stretching toward the Mississippi.
In the autumn of 1784 (eight months after his farewell to the army)
Washington leaves his home, as it appears, to visit some lands which he
had acquired as one result of his earlier and martial trips out beyond the
Laurel Hills. He had title to forty thousand acres beyond the mountains.
He had even purchased the site of this first battle in the meadows, where
he had built Fort Necessity and where he was himself captured by the
French, but from which he was permitted to go back over the mountains with
his flags flying and his drums beating.
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