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CHAPTER VIII.

AMERICAN MANHOOD IN THE REVOLUTION

It would be foolish to say that the Revolutionary soldiers never quailed. Militia too often gave way before the steady bayonet charge of British regulars, at times fleeing panic-stricken. Troops whose term of service was out would go home at critical moments. Hardships and lack of pay in a few instances led to mutiny and desertion. But the marvel is that they fought so bravely, endured so much, and complained so little. One reason was the patriotism of the people at large behind them. Soldiers who turned their backs on Boston, leaving Washington in the lurch, were refused food along the road home. Women placed rifles in the hands of husbands, sons, or lovers, and said “Go!”

The rank and file in this war, coming

from farm, work-bench, logging-camp, or fisher's boat, had a superb physical basis for camp and field life. Used to the rifle from boyhood, they kept their powder dry and made every one of their scanty bullets tell. The Revolutionary soldier's splendid courage has glorified a score of battle-fields; while Valley Forge, with its days of hunger and nights of cold, its sick-beds on the damp ground, and its bloody footprints in the snow, tell of his patient endurance.

At Bunker Hill an undisciplined body of farmers, ill-armed, weary, hungry and thirsty, calmly awaited the charge of old British campaigners, and by a fire of dreadful precision drove them back. "They may talk of their Mindens and their Fontenoys," said the British general, Howe, "but there was no such fire there." At Charleston, while the wooden fort shook with the British broadsides, Moultrie and his South Carolina boys, half naked in the stifling heat, through twelve long hours smoked their pipes and carefully pointed their guns. At Long Island, to gain time

for the retreat of the rest, five Maryland companies flew again and again in the face of the pursuing host. At Monmouth, eight thousand British were in hot pursuit of the retreating Americans. Square in their front Washington planted two Pennsylvania and Maryland regiments, saying, Gentlemen, I depend upon you to hold the ground until I can form the main army." And hold it they did.

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Heroism grander than that of the battlefield, which can calmly meet an ignominious death, was not lacking. Captain Nathan Hale, a quiet, studious spirit, just graduated from Yale College, volunteered to enter the British lines on Long Island as a spy. He was caught, and soon swung from an appletree in Colonel Rutgers's orchard, a corpse. Bible and religious ministrations denied him, his letters to mother and sister destroyed, women standing by and sobbing, he met his fate without a tremor. "I only regret," comes his voice from yon rude scaffold, "that I have but one life to give for my country." It is a shame that Amer

ica so long had no monument to this heroic man. One almost rejoices that the British captain, Cunningham, author of the cruelty to Hale, himself met death on the gallows,

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in London, 1791. How different from Hale's the treatment bestowed upon André, the British spy who fell into our hands. He was fed from Washington's table, and supported to his execution by every manifestation of sympathy for his suffering.

VOL. II.-IO

The stanch and useful loyalty of the New England clergy in the Revolution has been much dwelt upon-none too much, however. With them should be mentioned the Rev. James Caldwell, Presbyterian pastor at Elizabeth, N. J., who, when English soldiers raided the town, and its defenders were short of wadding, tore up his hymnbook for their use, urging: "Give them Watts, boys, give them Watts."

No fiercer naval battle was ever fought than when Jones, in the old and rotten Bon Homme Richard, grappled with the new British frigate Serapis. Yard-arm to yardarm, port-hole to port-hole, the fight raged for hours. Three times both vessels were on fire. The Serapis's guns tore a complete breach in the Richard from main-mast to stern. The Richard was sinking, but the intrepid Jones fought on, and the Serapis struck.

As the roll of Revolutionary officers is called, what matchless figures file past the mind's eye! We see stalwart Ethan Allen entering Ticonderoga too early in the

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