Moving among the members of the second Continental Congress, which met at Philadelphia in May, 1775, was one, and but one, military figure. George Washington alone attended the sitting in uniform. This colonel from Virgina... was a great landholder, an owner of salves, an Angelican churchman, an aristocrat, everything that stands in contrast with the type of a revolutionary radical. Yet from the first he had been an outspoken and uncompromissing champion of the colonial cause.... Washington, born in 1732, had been trained in self-reliance, for he had been fatherless from childhood . At the age of sixteen he was working at the professional, largely self-taught, of a surveyor of land.... In early life Washington, had very little of formal education. He knew no language but English.... The class to which Washington belonged prided itself on good birth and good breeding. We picture him as austere, but, like Oliver Cromwell, whom in some respects, he resembles, he was very human in his personal relations.... The age of Washington was one of bitter vehemence in political thought. In England the good Whig was taught to deny Whig doctrine was blasphemy, that there was no truth or honesty on the other side, and that no one should trust a Tory.... Keywords: Washington and His Comrades in Arms Vol. 12, Continental, Philadelphia, George M. Wrong, landholder, Aristocrat, revolutionary, champion, professional, Oliver Cromwell, Whig,

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