HOTT Transcript
Revolutionary War Veterans
Updated :
Sunday, April 17, 2005 3:44 PM
THE HOUR OF THE TIME
Tape No. 481: "Revolutionary Vets"
Friday, November 11, 1994
Ladies and gentlemen, today is Veterans' Day, and I want to wish all my
fellow veterans a very happy Veterans' Day, a very happy and prosperous
future, although it looks that those of us who have fought for this
nation in the past may have to soon fight for it again.
This makes me especially sad and reflective today, for when I fought in
Vietnam, upon leaving that war, I vowed to myself that I would never
take the life of another living thing during the rest of my life. And I
find myself preparing to do exactly that if the need manifests. And
indeed, ladies and gentlemen, it might.
So, while everybody is reminiscing about the Vietnam War, and the Korean
War, and World War II--and there may even be a few of us veterans who
can reminisce about World War I--the last Civil War veteran died several
years ago, and so we know that there is no one left alive who can
remember that war. And of course, there is indeed no one alive who can
remember the Revolutionary War which brought this nation into being.
So tonight, ladies and gentlemen, I'm going to bring you eye-witness
accounts of the Revolutionary War that, through the sacrifice of less
than probably three percent of the entire population of the colonies,
brought us out of the servitude of the king, and made us free men and
women.
We have them to thank, and I don't think we thank them enough.
On the 19th of April, in the year 1775, English rule over Americans
snapped.
Probably the most influential day in American history, and certainly a
vital one in the history of the world, it signalized a new direction in
the energies of the transatlantic settlers, and marked the climax of 168
years of English plantation.
Where the first great challenge to New World colonists had come from the
wilderness, from a novel climate, and marauding savages, the second came
from their own kinsmen: from the might of established empire.
They had conquered harsh winters and forbidding forests. And now they
must deal with the armies and navies of the foremost power of the world.
The shots fired at Lexington and Concord by militia farmers on British
regulars represented an open act of rebellion.
Now, this was no mob lawlessness, or fringe defiance--as in the Boston
Massacre five years before--but a concerted, fully-calculated action,
proceeding from the substantial farmers who composed the main stock of
the Bay Colony.
Their training companies were drilling regularly against just such a
crisis.
The arch-patriot Sam Adams had organized Committees of Correspondence to
keep the towns informed of British moves.
And in the atmosphere of tension that had existed since the home
government ordered the King's troops in Boston and cracked down on
Massachusetts with a series of stringent regulatory acts in 1774, any
jarring incident--any incident at all--could lead to war.
Behind the exchange of shots on Lexington Common lay 12 years of
mounting tension.
The sweeping of the French from North America, by the combined efforts
of English and American troops in 1763, had removed their common enemy,
and opened the way for imperialist legislation that drove colony and
mother country ever further apart.
Parliamentary taxes to defray the cost of the Seven Years War met with
mass meetings of outrage, colonial boycotts on English goods, and
thunderous pamphlets on the rights of self-governing colonists.
The issue sharpened with each successive attempted taxation--from the
Stamp Act of 1765 to the Tea Act of 1773--until Lord North and his Tory
Party felt the very base of Parliamentary authority attacked.
When Massachusetts men, dressed as Indians, dumped the offensive tea
into Boston Harbor--and never again would Americans indulge in the
English passion for tea--Parliament closed the port of Boston to
commercial shipping and sent General Thomas Gage with six regiments to
govern Massachusetts.
Now, these troops lived and moved in the midst of hostility.
Boston, the intellectual capital of the colonies, was being singled out
for special punishment, because Boston, you see, was politically the
most subversive American city.
Her rabble had broken into and wrecked the mansion of Governor
Hutchinson in the Stamp Act Riot of 1765.
They had provoked the king's troops beyond endurance in the so-called
Boston Massacre of 1770--an action in which John Adams and Josiah Quincy
had successfully defended the accused captain and his soldiers.
They alone, among all the seaport cities, had done violence to the
cargoes of tea shipped over in 1773.
When Gage arrived, patriots drilled openly on the Commons.
Openly on the Commons.
They organized a Provincial Congress, harangued in town meeting, coerced
the magistrates, threatened the Loyalists, insulted--INSULTED--the
king's men, and gathered military supplies.
The new military governor bore all this patiently for a while, in hopes
of conciliating the irate colonists.
Squeezed between the pressure of the home government and the defiance of
the patriots, he faced an impossible task.
Lord Dartmouth wrote to Gage in January 1775 that a small force, acting
now against the "rude rabble" who had collected arms, would prove more
effective than a larger force meeting a more determined resistance
later.
In March, Franklin sailed home from London, giving up his diplomatic
battle for peace after the Commons had voted funds for 6,000 more troops
for Boston.
In April, Gage decided--or agreed--that the time had come for a show of
force to restore the dignity of Crown and Parliament.
His spies reported a concentration of stores of arms in Concord.
The night of the 18th, boat-loads of Redcoats slipped secretly across
the Charles River and began their early morning March 18 miles inland.
The efficient patriot intelligence service spied their movements and
forewarned the Minutemen along the route.
When Colonel Smith and Major Pitcairn reached Lexington with their 700
troops, some 70 militiamen stood on the green.
Seventy militiamen, warned by the intelligence service, faced 700 of
Britain's best.
Someone fired a shot--and a stormy debate would ensue as to which side
fired first and committed the overt act of war--and a general exchange
followed.
Through the rest of that shattering day, Yankee farmers fired at the
king's soldiers.
Both sides rushed their version of the affair to London.
The American ship out-raced the English, and won a propaganda victory
with a document of atrocity tales more lurid than General Gage's sober
account of insurrection.
Participants and historians have since greatly swollen the testimony.
But among the available accounts, that set down by Jonas Clarke,
Minister of Lexington, on the first anniversary of that fateful day,
best reveals the intensity of patriot emotion.
Jonas Clarke, born in 1730, died in 1805, was born in Newton,
Massachusetts of old Puritan stock.
He graduated from Harvard College in 1752; and from 1755 until his death
half a century later, occupied the First Parish Church of Lexington.
Puritanism in the late seventeenth century had crystallized into
orthodoxy and lost much of its theological vigor.
And Jonas Clarke preached more as a sturdy farmer and staunch patriot
than as a Calvinist reformer.
The titles of his published sermons reveal his thinking:
"The Importance of Military Skill"
"Measures for Defense" and
"A Marshall Spirit in a Time of Peace"
"The Fate of Blood"
"The Thirsty Oppressors" and
"God's Tender Care of His Distressed People"
And to this latter was appended the factual narrative that I am going to
relate to you tonight during "The Hour of the Time".
It describes the events of the first day of war.
Clarke possessed a commanding voice, an energetic presence, and in
moments of excitement, his resounding tones startled the cows in nearby
pastures.
He reached his full heights of rhetoric in the 1776 sermon denouncing
the British invader.
And I quote from that sermon:
"More like murderers and cut-throats than the troops of a Christian
king, without provocation, without warning, when no war was proclaimed,
they draw the sword of violence upon the inhabitants of this town; and
with a cruelty and barbarity which would have made the most innocent
savage blush, they shed innocent blood.
"But oh, my God, how shall I speak? Or how describe the distress? Yea,
the horror of that awful morn, that gloomy day. Yonder--yonder field
can witness the innocent blood of our brethren slain, and from thence
does their blood cry unto God for vengeance from the ground."
End quote.
Eight of Clarke's parishioners had died on the Commons to which he
pointed.
Oddly enough, the husky farmer and Puritan parson paid considerable
attention to dress and appeared in the pulpit in gown, cassock, and
bands crowned by a great white wig.
Clarke enjoyed important connections.
John Hancock and Sam Adams were close friends, and stayed with him on
the eve of battle.
One son-in-law became President of Columbia College; and another the
Hollis <sp?> Professor of Divinity at Harvard.
The latter, William Ware <sp?>, wrote a useful sketch of Clarke in W.
B. Sprague's <sp?> "Annals of the American Pulpit", published in New
York in 1857.
This story comes from the original edition; and it's a sermon, ladies
and gentlemen, preached at Lexington, April 19th, 1776, entitled:
"To Commemorate the Murder, Bloodshed, and Commencement of Hostilities
between Great Britain and America in that Town by a Brigade of Troops of
George the Third, under Command of Lieutenant Colonel Smith on the 19th
of April, 1775"
to which is added:
"A Brief Narrative of the Principle Transactions of That Day by Jonas
Clarke, A.M., Pastor of the Church in Lexington, Massachusetts State,
Boston, Printed by Powers and Willis in 1776"
and contained in our library.
The narrative is paged 1 through 7, following the sermon on pages 1 to
32.
It was reprinted separately with four plates from the contemporary
engravings of Amos Doolittle in a very large folio edition of Boston,
James R. Osgood and Company in 1875, under the title:
"Opening of the War of the Revolution, 19th of April, 1775."
And I begin Jonas Clarke's narrative:
"On the evening of the 18th of April, 1775, we received two
messages--the first verbal, the other, by express, in writing--from the
Committee of Safety, who were then sitting in the westerly part of
Cambridge, directed to the Honorable John Hancock, Esq., who, with the
Honorable Samuel Adams, Esq., was then providentially with us, informing
that eight or nine officers of the king's troops were seen just before
night passing the road towards Lexington in a musing, contemplative
posture; and it was suspected they were out upon some evil design.
"Both these gentlemen had been frequently, and even publicly, threatened
by the enemies of this people, both in England and America, with the
vengeance of the British administration.
"And as Mr. Hancock, in particular, had been more than once personally
insulted by some officers of the troops in Boston, it was not without
some just grounds supposed that under coverage of the darkness, sudden
arrest--if not assassination--might be attempted by these instruments of
tyranny.
"To prevent anything of this kind, ten or twelve men were immediately
collected in arms to guard my house through the night.
"In the meantime, said officers passed through this town on the road
towards Concord.
"It was, therefore, thought expedient to watch their motions and, if
possible, make some discovery of their intentions.
"Accordingly, about ten o'clock in the evening, three men on horses were
dispatched for this purpose.
"As they were peaceably passing the road towards Concord and the borders
of Lincoln, they were suddenly stopped by said officers, who rode up to
them, and, putting pistols to their breasts and seizing their horses'
bridles, swore if they stirred another step, they should be all dead
men.
"The officers detained them several hours as prisoners, examined,
searched, abused, and insulted them; and in their hasty return,
supposing themselves discovered, they left them in Lexington.
"Said officers also took into custody, abused, and threatened with their
lives, several other persons, some of whom they met peaceably passing on
the road; others, even at the doors of their dwellings, without the
least provocation on the part of the inhabitants, or so much as a
question asked by them.
"Between the hours of twelve and one on the morning of the 19th of
April, we received intelligence, by express, from the intelligence
service, the Honorable Joseph Warren, Esq. at Boston, that a large body
of the king's troops, supposed to be a brigade of about twelve or
fifteen hundred, were embarked in boats from Boston and gone over to
land on Lake Marispoint <sp?>, so-called, in Cambridge.
"It was shrewdly suspected that they were ordered to seize and destroy
the stores of arms belonging to the colony, then deposited at Concord,
in consequence of General Gage's unjustifiable seizure of the provincial
magazine of powder at Medford, and other colony stores, in several other
places.
"Upon this timely intelligence, the militia of this town were alarmed,
and ordered to meet on the usual place of parade.
"This, this was not with any design of commencing hostilities upon the
king's troops, but to consult what might be done for our own and the
people's safety; and also, to be ready for whatever service Providence
might call us out to upon this alarming occasion, in case--just in
case--overt acts of violence or open hostilities should be committed by
this mercenary band of armed and blood-thirsty oppressors.
"About the same time, two persons were sent, express, to Cambridge, if
possible to gain intelligence of the motions of the troops and what
route they took.
"The militia met, according to order, and waited the return of the
messengers that they might order their measures as occasion should
require.
"Between three and four o'clock, one of the expresses returned,
informing that there was no appearance of the troops on the roads,
either from Cambridge or Charlestown, and that it was supposed that the
movements in the army the evening before were only a feint to alarm the
people.
"Upon this, therefore, the militia company were dismissed for the
present, but with orders to be within call of the drum, waiting the
return of the other messenger who was expected in about an hour, or
sooner, if any discovery should be made of the motions of the troops.
"But he was prevented by their silent and sudden arrival at the place
where he was waiting for intelligence, so that, after all this
precaution, we had no notice of their approach till the brigade was
actually, actually in the town, and upon a quick march, within about a
mile and a quarter of the meeting house and place of parade.
"However, the commanding officer thought best to call the company
together, not with any design of opposing so superior a force, much less
of commencing hostilities, but only with a view to determine what to do,
when and where to meet, and to dismiss and disperse.
"Accordingly, about half an hour after four o'clock, alarm guns were
fired, and the drums beat to-arms, and the militia were collecting
together; some to the number of about fifty or sixty or possibly more
were on the parade; others were coming towards it.
"In the meantime, the troops, having thus stolen a march upon us, to
prevent any intelligence of their approach, seized and held prisoners
several persons whom they met unarmed upon the road.
"They seemed to come determined for murder and bloodshed; and that,
whether provoked to it or not.
"When within about half a quarter of a mile of the meeting house they
halted, and the command was given to prime and load, which, being done,
they marched on till they came up to the east end of said meeting house,
in sight of our militia, collecting us aforesaid, who were about twelve
or thirteen rods distant.
"Immediately upon their appearing so suddenly and so nigh, Captain
Parker, who commanded the militia company, ordered the men to disperse,
and take care of themselves, and not to fire.
"Upon this, our men dispersed, but many of them not so speedily as they
might have done, not having the most distant idea of such brutal
barbarity, and more than savage cruelty, from the troops of a British
king as they immediately experienced.
"For no sooner did they come in sight of our company, but one of them,
supposed to be an officer of rank, was heard to say to the troops:
"Damn them! We will have them!"
"Upon which, the troops shouted aloud, and huzzah-ed, and rushed
furiously toward our men.
"About this same time, three officers, supposed to be Colonel Smith,
Major Pitcairn, and another officer, advanced on horseback to the front
of the body, and coming within five or six rods of the militia, one of
them cried out: "Ye villains! Ye rebels! Disperse, damn you!
Disperse!" or words to this effect.
"One of them, whether the same or not is not easily determined, said:
"Lay down your arms! Damn you! Why don't you lay down your arms?!"
"The second of these officers, about this time, fired a pistol towards
the militia as they were dispersing.
"The foremost, who was within a few yards of our men, brandishing his
sword, and then pointing towards them, with a loud voice said to the
troops: "Fire! By God, fire!"--which was instantly followed by
discharge of arms from the said troops, succeeded by a very heavy and
close fire upon our dispersing party, so long as any of them were within
reach.
"Eight were left dead upon the ground.
"Ten were wounded.
"The rest of the company, through Divine goodness, were, to a miracle,
preserved unhurt in this murderous action.
"Having thus vanquished the party in Lexington, the troops marched on
for Concord, to execute their orders in destroying the stores belonging
to the colony deposited there.
"They met with no interruption in their march to Concord; but by some
means or other, the people of Concord had notice of their approach and
designs, and were alarmed about break of day; and collecting as soon and
as many as possible, improved the time they had before the troops came
upon them to the best advantage, both for concealing and securing as
many of the public stores as they could, and in preparing for defense.
"By the stop of the troops at Lexington, many thousands were saved to
the colony, and they were, in a great measure, frustrated in their
design.
"When the troops made their approach to the easterly part of the town,
the provincials of Concord and some neighboring towns were collected,
and collecting, in an advantageous post on a hill just a little distance
from the meeting house north of the road, to the number of about 150 or
maybe 200.
"But finding the troops to be more than three times as many, they very
wisely retreated, first to a hill about 80 rods further north, and then
over the North Bridge--so-called--about a mile from the town.
"And there they waited the coming of the militia of the towns adjacent
to their assistance.
"They spied the British in the distance. The British detachment marched
into the center of the town.
"A party of about 200 was ordered to take possession of said bridge;
other parties were dispatched to various parts of the town in search of
public stores; while the remainder were employed in seizing and
destroying whatever they could find in the townhouse and other places
where stores had been lodged.
"But before they had accomplished their design, they were interrupted by
a discharge of arms at said bridge.
"The provincials, who were in sight of the bridge, observing the troops
attempting to take up the planks of said bridge, thought it necessary to
dislodge them.
"They accordingly marched, but with express orders not to fire unless
first fired upon by the king's troops.
"Upon their approach towards the bridge, Captain Laurie's party fired
upon them; killed Captain Davis and another man upon the spot; and
wounded several others.
"Upon this, our militia rushed on, with the spirit becoming freeborn
Americans, returned the fire upon the enemy; killed two; wounded
several; and drove them from the bridge; and pursued them towards the
town till they were covered by a re-enforcement from the main body.
"The provincials then took post on a hill at some distance north of the
town and, as their numbers were continually increasing, they were
preparing to give the troops a proper discharge on their departure from
the town.
"In the meantime, the king's troops collected; and having dressed their
wounded, destroyed what stores they could find, and insulted and
plundered a number of the inhabitants, prepared for a retreat.
"The troops began a hasty retreat about the middle of the day, and were
no sooner out of the town but they began to meet the effects of the just
resentments of this injured people.
"The provincials fired upon them from various quarters and pursued them,
though without any military order, with a firmness and intrepidity
beyond what could have been expected on the first onset, and in such a
day of confusion in distress.
"The fire was returned for a time with great fury by the troops as they
retreated, though through Divine goodness, but with little execution,
this scene continued with but little intermission till they returned to
Lexington, when it was evident that, having lost numbers in killed,
wounded, and prisoners that fell into our hands, they began to be not
only fatigued, but greatly disheartened.
"And it is supposed that they must have soon surrendered at discretion
had they not been re-enforced.
"But Lord Percy's arrival, with another brigade of about a thousand men
and two field pieces about half a mile from Lexington meeting house
towards Cambridge, gave them a seasonable respite.
"The coming of this re-enforcement with the cannon, which our people
were not so well acquainted with then as they have been since, brought
the provincials also to a pause for a time.
"But no sooner were the king's troops in motion but our men renewed the
pursuit with equal and even greater ardor and intrepidity than before.
"The firing on both sides continued with but little intermission to the
close of the day, when the troops entered Charlestown where the
provincials could not follow them without exposing the worthy
inhabitants of that truly patriotic town to their rage and revenge.
"That night and the next day, they were conveyed in boats over Charles
River to Boston, glad to secure themselves under the cover of the
shipping, and by strengthening and perfecting the fortifications at
every part against the further attacks of a justly incensed people, who
upon intelligence of the murderous transactions of this fatal day, were
collecting in arms around the town in great numbers, and from every
quarter.
"In the retreat of the king's troops from Concord to Lexington, they
ravaged and plundered as they had opportunity more or less in most of
the houses that were upon the road.
"But after they were joined by Percy's brigade in Lexington, it seemed
as if all the little remains of humanity had left them, and
rage--rage--and revenge had taken the reins and knew no bounds.
"Clothing, furniture, provisions, goods: plundered, broken, carried
off, or destroyed.
"Buildings, especially dwelling houses: abused, defaced, battered,
shattered, and indeed, almost ruined.
"And as if this had not been enough, numbers of them doomed to the
flames: free dwelling houses, two shops, and a barn were laid in ashes
in Lexington.
"Many others were set on fire in this town, in Cambridge, etc., and must
have shared the same fate had not the close pursuit of the provincials
prevented and the flames been seasonably quenched.
"Add to all this the unarmed, the aged and infirm, who were unable to
flee, were inhumanely stabbed and murdered in their habitations.
"Yes, even women in childbed, with their helpless babes in their arms,
did not escape the horrid alternative of either being cruelly murdered
in their beds, burnt in their habitations, or turned into the streets to
perish with cold, nakedness, and distress.
"But I forebear; for words are too insignificant to express the horrid
barbarities of that distressing day.
"Our loss in several actions of that day was 49 killed, 34 wounded, and
5 missing who were taken prisoners and have since been exchanged.
"The enemy's loss, according to the best accounts of killed, wounded,
and missing: about 300."
And so ends the narrative of Jonas Clarke, Minister of Lexington, on the
first anniversary of that fateful day--the day that began the War of
Independence and established, established for their posterity the
greatest nation that has ever been reared upon the face of this earth.
Albiggens <sp?> Waldo, in the valuable capacity of surgeon, served his
country faithfully from July 6th, 1775 until October 1st, 1779.
This is just a portion of his narrative:
"Valley Forge, December the 11th, 1777:
"I am prodigious sick and cannot get anything comfortable. What in the
name of Providence am I to do with a fit of sickness in this place,
where nothing appears pleasing to the sickened eye and nauseating
stomach? But I doubt not Providence will find out a way for my relief.
But I cannot eat beef if I starve, for my stomach positively refuses to
entertain such a company. And how can I help that?
"December 12th, 1777:
"A bridge of wagons made across the Schuylkill last night, consisting of
36 wagons with a bridge of rails between each. Some skirmishing over
the river. Militia and dragoons brought into camp several prisoners.
"Sunset:
"We were ordered to march over the river. It snows. I am sick. Eat
nothing. No whiskey. No forage. Lord, Lord, Lord, Lord. The army
were till sunrise crossing the river, some with the wagon bridge, and
some with the raft bridge below. Cold. Cold and uncomfortable.
"December 13th:
"The army marched three miles from the west side of the river and
encamped near a place called the "gulf"--and not an improper name,
either; for this gulf seems well adapted by its situation to keep us
from the pleasures and the enjoyments of this world, or being conversant
with anybody in it.
"It is an excellent place to raise the ideas of a philosopher beyond the
glutted thoughts and reflections of an epicurean. His reflections will
be as different from the common reflections of mankind as if he were
unconnected with the world, and only conversant with immaterial beings.
"It cannot be that our superiors are about to hold consultations with
spirits infinitely beneath their order by bringing us into these utmost
regions of the terraqueousphere. No, it is upon consideration for many
good purposes, since we are to winter here. Winter.
"First, there is plenty of wood and water. Secondly, there are but few
families for the soldiers to steal from, though far be it from a soldier
to steal. Fourthly, there are warm sides of hills to erect huts on.
Fifthly, they will be heavenly-minded like Jonah when in the belly of a
great fish. Sixthly, they will not become homesick, as is sometimes the
case when men live in the open world, since the reflections which will
naturally arise from their present habitation will lead them to the more
noble thoughts of employing their leisure hours in filling their
knapsacks with such materials as may be necessary on the journey to
another home.
"December 14th:
"Prisoners and deserters are continually coming in. The army, which has
been surprisingly healthy hitherto, now begins to grow sickly from the
continued fatigues they have suffered this campaign. Yet, they still
show a spirit of alacrity and contentment not to be expected from so
young troops.
"I am sick, discontented, and out of humor. Poor food, hard lodging,
and cold weather, fatigue, nasty clothes, nasty cookery. I vomit half
my time, smoked out of my senses. The devil is in it! I can't endure
it! Why are we sent here to starve and to freeze?
"What sweet felicities have I left at home! My charming, charming wife,
pretty children, oh, good beds, good food, ah, good, good cookery. All
agreeable, all harmonious.
"But here, all confusion, smoke and cold, hunger, and filthiness. A pox
on my bad luck! There comes a bowl of beef soup full of burnt leaves
and dirt, enough such to make a Hector spew. Away with it, boys! I'll
live like the chameleon upon the air. Paugh! Paugh! cries Patience
within me. You talk like a fool. Your being sick covers your mind with
a melancholic gloom which makes everything about you appear gloomy.
"See the poor soldier? When in health, with what cheerfulness he meets
his foes and encounters every hardship. If barefoot, he labors through
mud and cold with a song in his mouth extolling war and Washington.
"Washington! If his food be bad, he eats it, notwithstanding with
seeming content, blesses God for a good stomach, and whistles it into
digestion.
"But hark ye, Patience, a moment. There comes a soldier: his bare feet
seen through his worn out shoes; his legs nearly naked from the tattered
remains of an only-pair of stockings; his breeches not sufficient to
cover his nakedness; his shirt hanging in strings; his hair dishevelled;
his face meager; his whole appearance pictures a person forsaken and
discouraged. He comes and cried with an air of wretchedness and
despair, "I am sick, my feet lame. My legs are sore, my body covered
with this tormenting itch. My clothes are worn out; my constitution is
broken; my former activity is exhausted by fatigue, hunger, and cold.
Oh, it's cold! I fail fast. I shall soon be no more, and all the
reward I shall get will be: 'Poor Will is dead.'"
"People who live at home in luxury and ease, quietly possessing their
habitations, enjoying their wives and families in peace, have but a very
faint idea of the unpleasing sensations and continual anxiety the man
endures who is in a camp and is the husband and parent of an agreeable
family. These same people are willing we should suffer everything for
their benefit and advantage, and yet are the first to condemn us for not
doing more.
"December the 18th:
"Rank and precedence make a good deal of disturbance and confusion in
the American army. The army are poorly supplied with provisions,
occasioned, it is said, by the neglect of the Commissary of Purchases.
Much talk among officers about discharges. Money has become of too
little consequence. The Congress have not made their commissions
valuable enough. Heaven, avert the bad consequences of these things.
"Our brethren who are unfortunately prisoners in Philadelphia meet with
the most savage and inhumane treatments that barbarians are capable of
inflicting. Our enemies do not knock them in the head, or burn them
with torches to death, or flay them alive, or gradually dismember them
till they die--which is customary among savages and barbarians. No.
No! No, they are worse, by far. They suffer them to starve, to linger
out their lives in extreme hunger. One of these poor, unhappy men,
driven to the last extreme by the rage of hunger, ate his own fingers up
to the first joint from the hand before he died. Others ate the clay,
the lime, the stones--the very stones--of the prison walls. Several who
died in the yard had pieces of bark, wood, clay, and stones in their
mouths, which the ravings of hunger had caused them to take in for food
in the last, last agonies of life.
"These are thy mercies, O Britain!
"December the 21st. Valley Forge:
"Preparations made for huts. Provisions scarce. Mr. Ellis went
homeward. Sent a letter to my wife. Heartily wish myself at home. My
skin and eyes are almost spoiled with continual smoke.
"A general cry through the camp this evening among the soldiers: "No
meat! No meat! No meat! No meat!" The distant vales echoed back the
melancholy sound: "No meat! No meat! No meat! No meat! No meat! No
meat!" Imitating the noise of crows and owls also made a part of the
confused music.
""What have you for your dinners, boys?"
""Nothing but firecakes and water, sir."
"At night: "Gentlemen, the supper is ready."
""What is your supper, lads?"
""Firecake and water, sir."
"Very poor beef has been drawn in our camp the greater part of this
season. A butcher bringing a quarter of this kind of beef into camp one
day who had the white buttons on the knees of his breeches. A soldier
cries out: "There! There, Tom, is some more of your fat beef. By my
soul, I can see the butcher's breeches' buttons through it!"
"December 22nd:
"Lay excessive cold, and uncomfortable last night. My eyes are started
out from their orbits like rabbits' eyes, occasioned by a great cold and
smoke.
""What have you got for breakfast, lads?"
""Firecakes and water, sir."
"The Lord send that our Commissaries of Purchases may live on firecake
and water till their glutted guts are turned to pasteboard.
"Our division are under marching orders this morning. I'm ashamed to
say it, but I am tempted to steal fowls if I could find them, or even a
whole hog, for I feel as if I could eat one. Oh, yes. But the
impoverished country about us affords but little matter to employ a
thief, or to keep a clever fellow in good humor.
"But why do I talk of hunger and hard usage when so many in the world
have not even firecake and water to eat?
"December the 24th:
"Huts go on slowly. Cold and smoke make us fret. But mankind are
always fretting, even if they have more than their proportion of the
blessings of life. We are never easy, always repining at the providence
of an all-wise and benevolent Being, blaming--blaming--our country, or
faulting our friends, but I don't know of anything that vexes a man's
soul more than hot smoke continually blowing into his eyes, and when he
attempts to avoid it, being met by a cold, cold and piercing wind.
"December 25th. Christmas. Valley Forge:
"We are still in tents when we ought to be in huts. The poor, poor sick
suffer much in tents this cold weather. But we now treat them
differently from what they used to be at home, under the inspection of
old women and "Doctor Bolus Linctus". We give them mutton and grog and
a capital medicine once in a while to start the disease from its
foundations at once. We avoid piddling pills, powders, boluses,
linctuses, cordials, and all such insignificant matters whose powders
are only rendered important by causing the patient to vomit up his money
instead of his disease. But very few, very few of the sick men die.
"Ah, there stands General Washington in the cold wind; blowing about
him: his cloak; the snow up to his knees. And he stares off at his
frozen, suffering army.
"And I, I eat my firecakes and water."
Don't ever forget the men and women who brought this nation into being.
And don't ever forget for one moment that we may have to do this again.
Good night. And God bless you all.
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