If this is properly appreciated we can understand the mental breadth and vigor which enabled Washington to shake off at once all past habits and become an independent leader of an independent people.

He felt to the very core of his being the need of national self-respect and national dignity.

To him, as the chief of the armies and the head of the Revolution, all men, no matter what tongue they spake or what country they came from, were to be dealt with on a footing of simple equality, and treated according to their merits.
There was to him no glamour in the fact that this man was a Frenchman and that an Englishman.

His own personal pride extended to his people, and he bowed to no national superiority anywhere.

Hamilton was national throughout, but he was born outside the thirteen colonies, and knew his fellow-citizens only as Americans.