This incident has been passed over altogether too carelessly by historians and biographers.

It has generally been used merely to show the general nobility of Washington's sentiments, and no proper stress has been laid upon the facts of the time which gave birth to such an idea and such a proposition.

It would have been a perfectly feasible thing at that particular moment to have altered the frame of government and placed the successful soldier in possession of supreme power.

The notion of kingly government was, of course, entirely familiar to everybody, and had in itself nothing repulsive.

The confederation was disintegrated, the States were demoralized, and the whole social and political life was weakened.