As the Commander in Chief of the Continental Army the services and achievements of George Washington are unique in the world's history. He was much more than the Commander in Chief. He was the one necessary person, whose calm, unswerving, determined sense of patriotic duty to country, and ability put real backbone into the Revolution and kept it from collapsing or merging into a civil conflict, under the hardships and unexpected privations encountered during the eight years of war. Without General Washington at its head it could never have succeeded. His faith in the cause and his devotion to the ideals it embodied made him the symbol of America — the spirit of the Revolution.
From boyhood on Washington lived in a military atmosphere much of his time. Under his brother's influence and direction he was trained in fencing, also probably in the manual of arms. He assumed service and responsibility in the Virginia militia; and by the time he was serving as an aide to General Braddock he made the assertion, "My inclinations are strongly bent to arms."
Each of the different tasks that fell to his hand seemed to contribute to the store of knowledge useful to him the next one to follow. His experience as a surveyor was a fine preparation for the dangerous mission to the Ohio with Governor Dinwiddie's letter to the French commander. These gave him a real insight into pioneer settlement conditions, the wary methods of Indian warfare, and the difficulties of travel through unbroken forests in midwinter. The Braddock campaign taught him many of the weaknesses in the military system of training British Regular officers and men. He also had tragic evidence of the uselessness and folly of the pomp and display, and the paraphernalia of the formal English movements and practices and learned some vastly important facts of the helplessness of the British soldier in unfamiliar environment where his former European battlefield training could not be employed.
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