THE CONDITION OF AMERICA. By our prayers and many tears, Spare him!-he our love hath shared ! "Take thy banner!—and if e'er The warrior took that banner proud : 117 Ex. LXXI.-ANSWER TO INQUIRIES AS TO THE CONDI TION OF AMERICA, PARIS, 1780. JOHN ADAMS.* YOUR first proposition, Sir, is "to prove, by striking facts, that an implacable hatred and aversion reigns throughout America." In answer to this, I beg leave to say, that the Americans are animated by higher principles, and better and stronger motives than hatred and aversion. They universally aspire after a free trade with all the commercial world, instead of that mean monopoly in which they were shackled by Great Britain, to the disgrace and mortification of America, and to the injury of all the rest of Europe, to whom it seems as if God and nature intended that so great a magazine of productions, so great a source of commerce, and so rich a nursery *Mr. Adams was sent to Europe in 1779, to endeavor to negotiate a peace and a treaty of commerce with Great Britain. While abroad he wrote and published many letters on subjects similar to that of the present one, with the purpose of enlightening public sentiment as to the character of the contest going on in America. Peace was declared in 1783, and two years afterwards Mr. Adams was appointed the first minister to England. He was subsequently elected Vice-President, and then President, of the United States. After leaving the latter office, he passed his time mainly in retirement, his last public service being to attend as delegate a convention for revising the Constitution of Massachusetts, his native state. This was in 1820, when he was in the eighty-sixth year of his age. of seamen, as America is, should be open. They despise, Sir, they disdain the idea of being again monopolized by any one nation whatsoever; and this contempt is at least as powerful a motive for action as any hatred. Moreover, Sir, they consider themselves contending for the purest principles of liberty, civil and religious; for those forms of government under the faith of which their country was planted, and for those great improvements of them which have been made by their new constitutions. They consider themselves not only as contending for these great blessings, but against the greatest evils that any country ever suffered; for they know, if they were to be deceived by England into breaking their union among themselves, and their faith with their allies, they would ever after be in the power of England, who would bring them into the most abject submission to a parliament, the most corrupted in the world, in which they have no voice or influence, at three thousand miles distance from them. But if hatred must come into consideration, I know not how to justify their hatred better than by showing the provocations they have had to hatred. If tearing up from the foundation those forms of government under which they were born and educated, and thrived and prospered, to the infinite emolument of England; if imposing taxes upon them, or endeavoring to do it, for twenty years, without their own consent; if commencing hostilities upon them-burning their towns-butchering their people deliberately starving prisoners-exciting hosts of Indians to torture and scalp them, and purchasing Germans to destroy them, and hiring negro servants to murder their masters; if all these, and many other things as bad, are not provocations enough to hatred, I would request to be informed what is or can be. And all these horrors the English have practised in America, from Boston to Savannah. To learn the present state of America, it is necessary to read the public papers. The present state of Great Britain and its dependencies may be learned in the same way. The omnipotence of the British army, and the omnipotence of the British navy, are likely to go the same way. ANNIVERSARY ORATION. 119 Ex. LXXII.—ANNIVERSARY ORATION, DELIVERED MARCH 5, 1781. THOMAS DAWES. MAY the name of Washington continue steeled, as it ever has been, to the dark slanderous arrow that "flieth in secret." As it ever has been! for none have offered to eclipse his glory but have afterwards sunk away diminished and "shorn of their beams.” Justice to other characters forbids our stopping to gaze at the constellation of heroes who shine brightest in our country's annals, and would fain draw forth a eulogium upon all who have gathered true laurels from the fields of America. "Thousands the tribute of our praise Demand; but who can count the stars of heaven? Whither has our gratitude borne us? Let us behold a contrast;-the army of an absolute prince-a profession distinct from the citizen, and in a different interest-a haughty phalanx, whose object of warfare is pay, and who, the battle over, and if perchance they conquer, return to slaughter the sons of peace. Oh, our bleeding country! was it for this our hoary sires sought thee through all the elements, and having found thee sheltering away from the western wave, disconsolate, cheered thy sad face, and decked thee out like the garden of God? There was a time when we were all ready to cry out that our fathers had done a vain thing--I mean upon that unnatural night which we now commemorate-when the fire of Brutus was in many a heart-when the strain of Gracchus was on many a tongue. "Wretch that I am, where shall I retreat? Whither shall I turn me? To the capitol? The capitol swims in my brother's blood! To my family? There must I see a wretched, a mournful and afflicted mother!" Misery loves to brood over its own woes; and so peculiar were the horrors of that night, so expressive the pictures of despair, so various the face of death, that not all the grand tragedies that have since been acted, can crowd from our minds that era of the human passions, that preface to the general conflict that now rages. May we never forget to offer a sacrifice to the memories of our friends who bled so early at the foot of liberty. Hitherto we have nobly avenged their fall; but as ages can not expunge the debt, their melancholy ghosts still rise at a stated season, and will forever wander in the night of this noted anniversary. Hark! even now in the hollow wind I hear the voice of the departed. "Oh, ye who listen to wisdom and aspire to immortality, as ye have avenged our blood, thrice blessed! As ye still war against the mighty hunters of the earth, your names are re corded in heaven!" Let justice then be done to our country, let justice be done to our great leader; and as the only means, under Heaven, of his salvation, let his army be replenished. That grand duty done, we will once more adopt an enthusiasm sublime in itself, but still more so as coming from the lips of a first patriot--the chief magistrate of this commonwealth. "I have," said he, a most animating confidence that the present noble struggle for liberty will terminate gloriously for America." Aspiring to such a confidence, "I see the expressive leaves of Fate thrown wide, The bright, wide ranks of martyrs-here they rise; Supreme shall rise-their crowded shores shall be Ex. LXXIII.-ADDRESS FROM THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK TO THEIR CONSTITUENTS, MARCH 13, 1781.* LISTEN, friends, fellow-citizens, and countrymen, to the recommendations of that great and good man, whose virtues * In the stormy and anxious days of the Revolution there were always some discontented spirits who gave more annoyance to the devoted patriots at the head of affairs than even their foreign enemies, because the effect of their murmurs was to clog the wheels of government and prevent those in office. and patriotism, as the soldier and the citizen, have drawn down the admiration, not of America only, but all Europe; whose well-earned fame will roll down the tide of time until it is absorbed in the abyss of eternity. Listen to what he recommended to your army on a recent and an alarming occasion, and seriously apply it to yourselves and to us : "The general is deeply sensible of the sufferings of the army; he leaves no expedient unused to relieve them; and he is persuaded that Congress and the several States are doing everything in their power for the same purpose. But while we look to the public for the fulfilment of its engagements, we should do it with proper allowance for the embarrassments of public affairs; we began a contest for liberty and independence ill provided with the means of war, relying on our patriotism to supply deficiencies; we expected to encounter many wants and difficulties, and we should neither shrink from them when they happen, nor fly in the face of law and government to procure redress. There is no doubt the public will, in the event, do ample justice to the men fighting and suffering in their defence; but it is our duty to bear present evils with fortitude, looking forward to the period when our country will have it more in its power to reward our services. History is full of examples of armies suffering, with patience, extremities of distress which exceed those we have experienced, and those in the cause of ambition and conquest, not in that of the rights of humanity, of their country, of their families, and of themselves. Shall we, who aspire to the distinction of a patriot army, who are contending for everything precious in society, against everything hateful and degrading in slavery; shall we, who call ourselves citizens, discover less constancy and military virtue than the mercenary instruments of ambition ?" These are the sentiments of a Washington; and although he had us not immediately in view, yet every sentence is replete with wholesome admonition to all orders of men in these States. The force and artifice of the enemy have hitherto proved equally abortive. Britain's proud boasts of conquest are no more, and all Europe detests her cause. You are already within sight of the promised land, and, by the blessing of Heaven, and adequate efforts on your part, you from making the most of the scanty means at their command. We have here an earnest appeal from one of the perturbed and weary councils of the nation, in which the noblest incentives are held up to the malcontents in the hope of allaying their restless spirit of discontent. |