A slave-owner, an aristocrat, and a churchman, Washington came to Cambridge to pass over the heads of native generals to the command of a New England army, among a democratic people, hard-working and simple in their lives, and dissenters to the backbone, who regarded episcopacy as something little short of papistry and quite equivalent to toryism.

Yet the shout that went up from soldiers and people on Cambridge common on that pleasant July morning came from the heart and had no jarring note.

A few of the political chiefs growled a little in later days at Washington, but the soldiers and the people, high and low, rich and poor, gave him an unstinted loyalty.

On the fields of battle and throughout eight years of political strife the men of New England stood by the great Virginian with a devotion and truth in which was no shadow of turning.

Here again we see exhibited most conspicuously the powerful personality of the man who was able thus to command immediately the allegiance of this naturally cold and reserved people.
What was it that they saw which inspired them at once with so much confidence?
They looked upon a tall, handsome man, dressed in plain uniform, wearing across his breast a broad blue band of silk, which some may have noticed as the badge and symbol of a certain solemn league and covenant once very momentous in the English-speaking world.
They saw his calm, high bearing, and in every line of face and figure they beheld the signs of force and courage.