Turning a page of the writings of George Washington at the Library of Congress this Saturday morning, I caught my reflection in the glass covering the brown reading desks. My face was enveloped by the image of the Jefferson reading room dome also bouncing off the glass. I noticed the sunlight pouring in through one of the stained glass windows.
Though I'm not one to long pause in front of a mirror, something about my auto-view held my attention. Perhaps it was the tranquility of the moment ... knowing that I was yet again hanging out in my favorite place in the District, a town where I have for the past eight months been living the life of my dreams. I am doing work in the nonprofit sector that means something to me, making new friends, collecting new experiences, and challenging my mind -- many new assertions unsettling what I thought I once knew.
I looked into the Library of Congress desk and wondered if I would be measuring my age by that very view in the years to come. I can not imagine ever leaving this city; I am perhaps more so than I have ever been, home.
Then I turned my eyes back to George Washington and the stark thoughts that were on his mind in 1776.
From a letter written on May 1 to Major General Charles Lee:
"... I thank you for your good wishes in our future operations, and hope that every diabolical attempt to deprive mankind of their inherent rights and privileges, whether made in the East, West, North or South, will be attended with disappointment and disgrace, and that the authors in the end will be brought to such punishment, as an injured people have a right to inflict."
Orders given to his troops in New York on July 2, while Congress was giving its initial approval to the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia, moved me even more:
"... The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them.
"The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army -- Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; this is all we can expect -- We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die: Our own Country's Honor, all call upon us for a vigorous and manly exertion, and if we now shamefully fail, we shall become infamous to the whole world.
"Let us therefore rely upon the goodness of the Cause, and the aid of the supreme Being, and whose hands Victory is, and we shall have their blessings and praises, if happily we encourage each other, and shew the whole world, that a Freeman contending for LIBERTY on his own ground is superior to any slavish mercenary on earth."
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