In what he wrote there is no trace of the ambitious schemer, no threatening nor blustering, no undue despondency nor excited hopes.

But there is a calm understanding of all the conditions, an entire freedom from self-deception, and the power of seeing facts exactly as they were, which were all characteristic of his intellectual strength, and to which we shall need to recur again and again.
The repeal of the Stamp Act was received by Washington with sober but sincere pleasure.

He had anticipated "direful" results and "unhappy consequences" from its enforcement, and he freely said that those who were instrumental in its repeal had his cordial thanks.

He was no agitator, and had not come forward in this affair, so he now retired again to Mount Vernon, to his farming and hunting, where he remained, watching very closely the progress of events.

He had marked the dangerous reservation of the principle in the very act of repeal; he observed at Boston the gathering strength of what the wise ministers of George III.