USA > New Hampshire > Merrimack County > Concord > New Hampshire in the American Revolution; an address delivered at the 9th annual meeting of the New Hampshire Society of Sons of the American Revolution, held at Concord, New Hampshire, April 21, 1897 > Part 1
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REYNOLDS HISTORICAL GENEALOGY COLLECTION
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NEW HAMPSHIRE (N. H.
IN THE
AMERICAN REVOLUTION.
AN ADDRESS
DELIVERED AT THE
NINTH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE NEW HAMPSHIRE SOCIETY OF SONS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, IIELD AT CONCORD, N. H., APRIL 21, 1897,
BY
SAMUEL COLCORD BARTLETT. 1
CONCORD : IRA C. EVANS, PRINTER, 12 SCHOOL STREET. 1898.
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with the best regards hun old friend J.C. Barelite
March 28. 1898
NEW HAMPSHIRE
IN THE 1779113
AMERICAN REVOLUTION
AN ADDRESS
DELIVERED AT THE
NINTH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE NEW HAMPSHIRE SOCIETY OF SONS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, HELD AT CONCORD, N. H., APRIL 21, 1897,
BY
SAMUEL COLCORD BARTLETT.
CONCORD : IRA C. EVANS, PRINTER, 12 SCHOOL STREET. 1898.
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ЈУЗЯ ИНДІЯЗМА
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Bartlett, Samuel Colcord,
1817-1898.
.842 1.076 New Hampshire in the American revolution. An address delivered at the ninth anual meeting of the New Hampshire society of Sons of the American revolution, held at Concord, N.H., April 21, 1897 ... Concord, 1898. 0.
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NEW HAMPSHIRE IN THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.
The part taken by New Hampshire in the American Revolution has not been fully told. This small state was then a great force. No body of foreign soldiers ever fought their way into her territory, but in the Revolutionary war her soldiers fought, and fought well, in all the chief battles from Canada to Virginia. And it is because of this generous haste to the outside rescue that their valorous deeds have been blended and merged in the narratives of other localities, and have failed to attract the distinctive credit which was their due.
There was an early and remarkable unanimity of sentiment through- out the colony in regard to the coming issue, and, when the issue was joined, an alertness to meet it not surpassed in any other common- wealth. The first cargo of taxed tea, (June 25, 1774), was at once reshipped ; the second likewise, and the consignee narrowly escaped violence for his delay. For already, (in May), the assembly had appointed a committee of correspondence looking towards a Conti- nental Congress. The amiable and unfortunate royal governor had dissolved the assembly. The dissolved assembly immediately crystal- ized again in the usual place. The governor brought the sheriff, who ordered them to disperse. They dispersed-to another house. There they proceeded, religiously, appointing a fast ; politically, calling another assembly ; and financially, raising a provincial tax. The new assembly chose two delegates to the Congress, and called for contribu- tions to beleaguered and suffering Boston. When Boston workmen had refused to build barracks for their British masters, and our Governor Wentworth had privately employed an agent to procure carpenters in New Hampshire, the Portsmouth committee had sum- moned the agent and made him apologize on his knees.
In September, 1774, the Congress recommended to the colonists to be " prepared for every emergency"; and the committee prepared. Just before the coming of the frigate Scarborough with a body of troops, they seized Fort William and Mary, capturing its small garri-
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NEW HAMPSHIRE IN
son, carrying off fifteen cannon, all the small arms, and a hundred barrels of powder, part of which afterward sped the bullets at Bunker Hill. They were led by Major Sullivan and Captain Langdon. It was the first armed resistance in the Revolution. Men of New Hamp- shire made it.
The governor dismissed from public trust all the men engaged in this enterprise, and issued a warning to the people against " the false arts of abandoned men." The next month the convention also issued its warning to the people, and exhorted them to learn one of those "arts"-the military art. Military train-bands sprang up at the call.
By the then existent militia law, thanks to the French and Indian wars, every male inhabitant from sixteen years old to sixty was to have his gun and bayonet, cartridge box and knapsack, a pound of powder, twenty bullets, and twelve flints. Although the interval of peace and the cost of equipments had caused some neglect, the very scantiness of ammunition, as the enemy soon found, had made careful and skilful marksmen.
The breach between the royal governor and the resolute assembly steadily widened, and the people grimly waited. The crisis came in the spring. On the 14th of April, 1775, General Gage in Boston had received Lord North's " conciliatory proposition " with its double edge - ostensibly home rule, enforced by British troops. He had orders to make the experiment, and he made it with both edges on the 18th. He called an assembly for "reconciliation," and the same night sent troops to seize the magazine at Concord. The first blood shed at Lexington on the way shocked the colonists just as the cannon at Fort Sumter, in the same month eighty-six years later, shocked the nation.
The crisis had come, and in New Hampshire men and women, old men and boys, sprang to meet it. News reached the little town of Salisbury on the next forenoon. Mrs. Mehitable Pettingill sent for her sixteen-year-old son, the oldest of six children, but Benjamin by name, who was at work in the field with his father, made him up a small bundle and started him for Cambridge with his father's musket- a musket which he fired on many a battle-field. A band of his towns- men went with him. From Boscawen, Captain Gerrish and sixteen men next day were on the march. Captain Chandler and thirty-six men hurried on from Concord. Colonel Cilley started with a hundred volunteers from Nottingham, and John Taylor Gilman with another hundred from Exeter. There were sixty from Hampton with Dear-
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THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.
born, forty-six from Temple, twenty-two from Swanzey. McClary left his plough in the field at Epsom. Worcester of Hollis dropped his razor, unused, to spread the alarm; and the three Nevins brothers drew out their crowbars and left the big stone propped on a boulder for seventy years, to make with eighty-seven others a night march to Cambridge. John Stark shut down his saw mill gate, hastened to his house, and in ten minutes more was on horseback headed for the fray. Two thousand New Hampshire men were flocking thither. Many were sent back to plant their crops, but enough remained with Stark and Reed to constitute, together with the three hundred New Hampshire troops in Prescott's special command, unquestionably more than half, it not two thirds, of the fifteen hundred men that fought the battle of Bunker Hill. On that day Stark instantly saw and seized the weak and dangerous spot; and there his two regiments calmly waited behind the breastwork of rails and hay till the British troops, led by General Howe in person, came to the dead-line stake which Stark had planted forty yards in front, then again and again mowed them down, till of seven hundred Welch Fusileers, ( says Stark's Life), but eighty-three next morning answered to the roll-call. When Prescott's redoubt was captured and further resistance hopeless, Stark mastered the retreat and drew off his reluctant men as coolly as he had entered from Charlestown Neck between the cross-fires of the Lively and the floating batteries. Without our troops that battle might have been fought ; but for them the retreat would have been a rout.
Then came a temporary pause, the pause of a spinning top; a whirl of excitement, military ardor and training, not without excesses. The royal governor had fallen on evil times, and was con- strained into conflict with the people. A clamorous royalist, sheltered in his house, was persuaded forth by a cannon planted before the door. The governor withdrew to the fort, to the frigate Scarborough, to Boston, to the Isles of Shoals, to Halifax. His house was pillaged after he left it. So disappeared in the flurry of the rising storm the liberal-minded and accomplished gentleman who gave its charter to Dartmouth College.
The convention now seized the whole administration, and appointed a committee of safety, instructed in true Roman style to see " that the public sustain no damage." The committee organized companies of rangers and artillery, and twelve regiments of infantry, four of them " minute men." I have a yellow document dated at East Kingston a fortnight before the battle of Bennington, signed by Enoch Chase and thirteen others, who engaged to be ready "at a minute's warn-
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NEW HAMPSHIRE IN
ing " to march to any part of the New England states. It was but one of many. There was in many places an "alarm list," in one of which, (Salisbury), I find the names of the minister, the town physi- cian - my grandfather - and three deacons.
Meanwhile the home work of the Revolution went vigorously on. The convention in December, 1775, adopted a state constitution. It was the first of the colonies to do so. On the following 15th of June it instructed Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, and Matthew Thorn- ton to vote in Congress for " declaring the thirteen united colonies a free and independent state "; and the first man in Congress to cast his vote in the roll-call on the declaration of independence was Josiah Bartlett, who boldly answered " Yes."
The people stood firmly behind their leaders. Already, in April, the written pledge had gone through the state, whereby every male citizen over twenty-one years of age was "solemnly to engage at the risk of life and fortune, with arms, to oppose the hostile proceedings of the British fleets and armies against the United Colonies of America." In some towns, as in Concord, Gilsum, Newport, Surrey, not a man refused to sign; in Boscawen but one, and that not from lack of patriotism but excess of crankiness; in Salisbury but two, one of them a Quaker, the other an actual helper in the cause. It has been said with apparent truth that loyalty to the cause of freedom was more unanimous here than in any other colony. Royalists abounded in New York. South Carolina was for a time divided, and in North Carolina and Virginia there were armed conflicts. When the British troops evacuated patriotic Boston they escorted more than a thousand royalists to Halifax. In the whole state of New Hampshire there were but seven hundred and forty-three persons who, as Quakers and for other reasons, refused to sign the pledge of armed resistance. The convention found occasion to proscribe but seventy-six persons who had abandoned the state, and to confiscate the property of but twenty- eight of these.
Indeed the royalists led but a hare's life in New Hampshire. One day early in 1775, while the British were in Boston and the men of Hollis were at Cambridge, a mounted Hollis "suspect," bearing despatches from Canada to Boston came to Jewett's Bridge on Nashua River. There he had a "reception " by a company of women led by a Hollis-born woman and armed with pitchforks and muskets, who dismounted him, took the despatches from his boots, and delivered him into custody.
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THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.
Our troops were constantly in the service from April, 1775, till 1783, marching, fighting, or enduring worse things than fighting, such as the terrible scourge of the small-pox and the camp fever at Canada and Crown Point, the march thence marked by bleeding feet, and the dire destitution of Valley Forge. On one march a thou- sand men went barefoot.
After the battle of Bunker Hill three of our regiments remained till Boston was evacuated, then were sent to New York, and soon on the fruitless expedition ordered by Congress, to Canada. While these were on the way to Montreal which was captured, our Dear- born with a small body of our men accompanied Arnold on that distressing march to Quebec through the wilderness of Maine, where the men begged Dearborn's dog for food and made soup of his bones. Our Sullivan, who succeeded the reckless Arnold in command, though failing in his attack on Three Rivers, brought off the army by a skilful retreat, for which he received the official thanks of Congress and the warm personal thanks of his brilliant circle of field officers, including Stark, Reed, Poor, Wayne, and St. Clair. Captured on Long Island, he was exchanged in season to command one of the two attacking divisions at Trenton, with John Stark at its head. Though their arms were wet and nearly useless, yet with fixed bayo- nets and three cheers they drove all before them, and, nobly seconded by Greene's division, finished the fight in thirty-five minutes. A week later, at Princeton, Stark's and Reed's regiments did gallant service in driving back and routing the British Fortieth and Fifty-Fifth.
It was these two battles, Trenton and Princeton, which at home and abroad, in Washington's dark days, began the reaction in his favor. Our men had outstayed by six weeks the term of their enlist- ment to fight these very battles.
By an amazing blunder, with outside pressure, Congress had super- seded Stark and he resigned. But the country's emergency called him forth. From Bunker Hill to Yorktown there was no greater danger and no more critical affair than at Bennington. And there the part of New Hampshire was as signal as at Bunker Hill. When Burgoyne came down along Lake Champlain with his select army of seven thousand German and British troops, to be joined by Tories and Indians, and to be met by Clinton from below, it meant the isolation and subjection of New England, to be followed by the easy conquest of the other colonies. By the abandonment of Ticonderoga through Schuyler's neglect to heed Trumbull's warning, the way was open and Burgoyne was on the way, and a panic before him. A
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message of alarm came from the Catamount Tavern in Vermont, to Massachusetts and New Hampshire, for help or all was lost. Only one hundred and fifty Massachusetts troops arrived in season, and the good soldiers of Vermont were few, and scattered by the Hubbardton defeat. It was then that New Hampshire troops, led by a New Hamp- shire colonel, through the pledged fortune of a New Hampshire merchant, came to the rescue. When the appeal came our committee of safety faced an empty treasury. It was a dark hour for the country. It was then that John Langdon made his famous offer of his money and merchandise and the mortgage of his house and plate as a loan, if Stark might lead the troops ; then that Stark received his independ- ent command ; and then that he forgot the affront of Congress. His name roused enthusiasm once more. Fifteen hundred men, (1,525), were ready to follow him to Bennington, and those who could not go, to help them off. Rev. Timothy Walker stopped his Sunday ,services for the soldiers to leave the house, and shoes were made that night for Phineas Virgin and John Eastman to march next morning. In Boscawen, Mrs. Peter Kimball sat up all night to make shirts for two destitute men in her husband's company; and, when left with five children ranging from seven years to five weeks of age, rode with her infant, on horseback, to the neighboring town and engaged a boy of fourteen to help her gather in the harvest. Andrew Bohonon's son Stephen, fifteen years old, joined his father, refusing to be captain's clerk for safety, and serving in the ranks. Augustine Hibbard, one of the first six graduates of Dartmouth College, schoolmaster Evans of Salisbury, Jeremiah 'Smith, future governor and chief justice, and Capt. Ebenezer Webster, father of Daniel, were there. Two thirds of the men who fought that day were New Hampshire men. And when that body of raw militia stormed, routed, and captured a body of the best regular troops of Europe, completely equipped, armed to the teeth, and behind their cannon and entrenchments, it was an exploit unequalled in that war, and seldom surpassed in any other And when the battle was over New Hampshire sent her most noted physician, afterwards chief justice, president, and governor of the state, to care for the sick and wounded.
The share of our troops in that battle was well recognized at the time. There fell into my hands a few days ago the faded copy of some stanzas written by Gen. William Chamberlain of Vermont, one of those who stormed the British works, and who himself brought away a Hessian flag. I will cite one stanza for its cheery testimony as well as its breezy use of the national air, then new :
ظة
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THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.
"New Hampshire boys the victory won, Which does them lasting honor ; Commanded by brave General Stark And the intrepid Warner. And we would fight for liberty With Howe or Alexander,
And never fear the face of Clay With Stark for our commander.
CHORUS.
Sing Yankee Doodle, Victory, Sing Yankee Doodle Dandy : From Yankees see the British flee, And leave their arms quite handy."
And when, a generation later, the old warrior stood under a tree and with ardent emphasis and ominous gesture shouted them in the ears of his ten-year-old boy, we can well credit the son that it was the profoundest impression of his boyhood.
But Burgoyne had not got clear of our men. At the battle of Still- water, or Freeman's Farm, the first British onset was on Morgan's riflemen and our Dearborn's light infantry on the left; and when these recoiled Poor's brigade came to their support. In this conflict, so fierce that two British regiments were nearly annihilated, more than half the American loss, according to Wilkinson's returns, fell on Poor's and Dearborn's troops. In eighteen days came the battle of Saratoga, or Bemis Heights, opened, as Hildreth records, with a furious charge of Poor's brigade on the British left, while, as Bancroft relates, Dearborn's light infantry " descended impetuously on the British right,"-though Arnold's demoniac dash decided the day. That night, when the defeated Burgoyne explored for a retreat by the bridge of boats across the Hudson, he found John Stark and two thousand eight hundred New Hampshire men blockading the way. So came the surrender and dispersion of perhaps the blackest of the war- clouds. After the surrender our men marched forty miles in fourteen hours, fording the Mohawk, to head off General Clinton.
When now the war moved southward the share of our troops was relatively less. But there were no better soldiers. They were in the battles of Long Island, of Germantown, and Brandywine; and, in the battle of Monmouth, frustrated only by the treacherous miscon- duct of Charles Lee, they gained under Cilley's command the com- mendation of Washington for their determined stand: "I see they are my brave New Hampshire boys."
It was the good fortune of our troops to be around the commander- in-chief in the saddest epoch of the war. The regiment of our
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Moses Nichols had been assigned to the defence of West Point for a time. On the 25th of September, 1780, Benedict Arnold hurried from his breakfast table and fled to the Vulture. That evening - so relates Stephen Bohonon - Washington sent for Capt. Ebenezer Webster and requested him to order his company on guard around his tent that night. "For," said he, "if I cannot trust you, I cannot trust anybody." " You may rely on me and my men," said Webster. Bohonon was one of those who guarded the tent while Washington passed an absolutely sleepless night in writing; and Webster lived to cast his vote for Washington as president.
When at length the time came to cage and capture Cornwallis, as had been done to Burgoyne, Washington designated two of our regi- ments to important posts on the Hudson, and took with himself, among his two thousand, Scammell's light infantry, and Scammell himself as adjutant-general of the army. And in order to leave the north in safety he placed the northern department in charge of Stark - although subsequently, by the incoming of Heath, his senior officer, he was obliged to report to one who was at the same time his superior and his inferior - one whom Bancroft describes somewhat too severely as . vain, honest, and incompetent." There Stark re- mained "in exile," as he termed it, at Albany and Saratoga, longing to be at Yorktown. Though lacking in everything -in troops and supplies, even in paper on which to report to Heath-receiving but one payment for more than two years, but himself paying two dollars and a half for a pound of sugar, and twelve dollars for a gallon of rum, he endured, for the most part patiently, while his name and fame overawed the lurking bands of neighboring Tories and cowed all the constantly threatened invasions from Canada.
These are some of the more salient points of our work in the Revolution. Many other services might be enumerated. In the winter of 1775, when the Connecticut troops had unexpectedly with- drawn from Cambridge, at the call of Washington thirty-one com- panies of ours, some two thousand men, promptly took their place. Our men were with Sullivan in his movement on the enemy in Rhode Island and the hot and successful battle of Butt's Hill. They were stationed on the Sound with a threefold outlook for protection. They aided in the repulse of Clinton at Springfield, N. J. Poor's brigade was one of the four that accompanied Sullivan in the memorable expedition when, in obedience to Washington's one stern command, " not merely to overrun but to destroy" the country, they fought the
CItes
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battle of Chemung, decided by the onset of Poor, and drove out thie perfidious and murderous Iroquois from the beautiful valleys between the Susquehanna and the Genesee.
It is neither practicable nor necessary to follow them throughout the war. Enough that they never failed their commanders. And they had but two questionable experiences. At the Cedars, in Canada, Bedell's regiment was surrendered by Major Butterfield, but against the remon- strances of his officers ; and at Hubbardton Hale's regiment, separated seven miles from the main body, in charge of the invalids, says Bel- knap, and with an invalid colonel in command, was put to light and captured by Frazer. That is all.
Nor less creditable was the quantity than the quality of our military contributions to the Revolution. The census of the state in 1775 showed a population of but 80,200, or some 2,000 less than the present city of Worcester, Mass., and these scattered through nearly 160 townships, three eighths of which had been incorporated less than ten years. But in 1775 there were 2,284 of our men in the field, 4,019 in 1776, 4,483 in 1777, and during the war 18,289. The report of Secretary Knox in 1790 gives the proportion of our soldiers to the population as one in eleven, although his own figures would seem to make it greater. Massachusetts and Connecticut, from their older settlements, exceeded us with one in seven, and Rhode Island equalled us. The other states receded from one in sixteen, in nineteen, in twenty-two, in twenty-four, to Virginia one in twenty-eight, Georgia and North Carolina one in thirty-two, South Carolina one in thirty- eight. Freemen fought for freedom. No better blood was shed in the conflict than the Scotch-Irish and English blood which flowed in the veins of the New Hampshire troops.
We lost some men of great promise, while some men of mark sur- vived. Major McClary, with his ardent spirit, resolute purpose, popular way, ringing voice, and gigantic stature, would have been heard from but for the chance shot that struck him down after the battle of Bunker Hill was over. Lieutenant-Colonels Colburn, Adams, and Conner were cut off in the desperate fights of Stillwater and Sara- toga. Scammel, already adjutant-general of the army, with his edu- cation, bravery, ability, and universal esteem, should have risen higher yet but for the brutal and fatal wound inflicted by the enemy after his capture at Yorktown. It was an evil day when the chivalrous Poor fell in an affair with another officer a year before the close of the war. Cilley, who fought under Wayne in the brilliant storming of Stony Point fortress, and gained Washington's approbation by his
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determined stand at Monmouth, afterwards served the state in honor- able posts, and the community by an admirable influence. Dearborn, who was with him at Monmouth and in gallant service elsewhere, became Jefferson's secretary of war and Monroe's minister plenipoten- tiary to Portugal. Sullivan, though open to criticism and the object of one military writer's constant invectives, is described by Bancroft as " not free from foibles, but active, enterprising, and able." He was more - he was an eminent figure. His errors were mostly born of his enterprise, and perhaps part of the enmities he encountered were the offspring of envies. Washington entrusted no other than Greene with so many important commands ; once protested effectually against a rash vote of Congress for his suspension ; and gave him the marks of his warm confidence not only through the war, but throughout his life. If he made mistakes, so did Greene, Putnam, and Wayne- not to mention Gates, Heath, and Schuyler. And Sullivan added to his mil- itary abilities in no small degree the sagacity of the lawyer, the wisdom of the statesman, the magnetism of the leader, and the capac- ity of the ruler. He proved his worth as fully in the council chamber as on the battle-field. Quick in discernment, prompt in action, elo- quent in speech, impressive in personal presence, and every inch a patriot, his fellow citizens invested him with every honorable and responsible post within their gift. Twice in Congress he served in committees of grave moment. At home, twice by his wisdom and firmness he saved the state from threatened riots; once when as attorney-general he donned his old war uniform and rode beside the judges to the court at Keene, and again when as president of the assembly at Exeter he faced the angry mob that barred his way with loaded muskets and the call to " fire," and that evening summoned the force that put them to flight. Not the least useful of his deeds was his double service to his state and his country when, as president of the convention, he strongly influenced the vote that accepted the national constitution and made a United States. Having thus helped knit the Union together and the state to the Union, he resigned the chief magistracy of his state to become, by appointment of his old commander-in-chief, the first district justice of the Union in the state, and to die in office, not advanced in years but old in service and honor and worn out with cares. The last public speech of his life was when he left his sick chamber to advocate the grant of 42,000 acres of wild lands to Dartmouth College.
But perhaps the unique figure of all was John Stark, a trained, if not a born soldier. He proved equal to any emergency he ever met.
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He had an instinct toward the place of weakness and danger. He could lead an attack, resist an assault, storm a redoubt, stand immov- able behind a barricade of hay, move calmly through a crossfire of cannon, or make a retreat as orderly as a victory. As he brought up the rear at Bunker Hill, so after the repulse at Three Rivers, which he had predicted, he and his staff were in the last boat that crossed St. John's in sight of the enemy. He anticipated Washing- ton's disapproval of the abandonment of Ticonderoga. He knew better than Schuyler how to deal with Burgoyne. After Stillwater and Saratoga he could cut off an escape. He knew, as did not all Washington's high officers, how to obey orders. He consented by his personal influence to recruit soldiers, when he would rather have fought battles, and in comparative idleness to report to Heath when he longed to be on the Cornwallis hunt. What might have been his success in broader commands we have no means of knowing, but he missed no opportunity, was never at a loss, and, so far as appears, made no mistakes. When all was over he modestly retired to his farm for forty-five years of quiet and of honor, and lived and died an ancient Spartan.
When the war was ended and the constitution of the United States was before the country for adoption, under intense opposition, when the question had been carried in Massachusetts by a vote of 187 to 168, while two states seemed doubtful and two were dilatory, New Hampshire again met the crisis and by her affirmative vote secured the requisite two-thirds that made a nation.
If it lay within the scope of my theme to speak of the men who in convention discussed that constitution, as well as of those who shaped the constitution of our own state, I should present a list of patriot civilians not unworthy to be a companion piece to the roll of patriot soldiers. But I must refrain.
It is also to the special and lasting credit of this commonwealth that its officers, soldiers, and citizens were not only loyal to their country, but through all the criticism and even obliquy that were heaped upon him, to their great commander-in-chief. While Charles Lee was insolently disobeying him ; while Conway, Mifflin, Wilkinson, Wayne, and Gates were intriguing against him, aided for a time by Rush and Reed of Pennsylvania; while under a strange but happily transient hallucination, such eminent patriots as Congressmen Lovell, Wil- liams, and Gerry of Massachusetts, Roger Sherman of Connecticut, and William Ellery of Rhode Island were making or listening to talk for his removal; while Congress was overriding his wishes and his
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advice ; while even Samuel Adams was " impatient for more enter- prise," and stout John Adams declared himself " weary with so much insipidity, and sick of Fabian systems," and once exclaimed, "O heaven send us one great soul," I cannot learn that there was ever placed on record from a New Hampshire officer, soldier, or citizen any utterance of opposition or disparagement for the man whom our own historian Belknap on his last page pronounced " the illustrious Wash- ington," and whom the civilized world has since pronounced the peerless name in secular history.
I have thus imperfectly sketched the distinguished part of New Hamphire in the Revolution. Practically unanimous in the sentiment of freedom, early in its expression, determined in its maintenance, prompt in its enforcement, first to resort to arms, first to frame a con- stitution, foremost in the vote for independence, sharing in the six most signal battles, being in two of them the main victor, in two a great factor, and in the other two a volunteer and valiant force, present and active at the closing scene of all, ever trusty and true, enduring as well as fighting, responding to every call and always out- side of her own borders, furnishing eminent and patriotic civilians, distinguished officers and fearless soldiers, clenching the clasp that riveted the union, all and always loyal to the country and the country's magnificent chieftain,- it is a heritage of which her sons, wherever scattered through the nation and through the world, may well be proud - proud to be sons of New Hampshire, and Sons of the American Revolution. A high ancestry.
"Their feet had trodden peaceful ways, They loved not strife, they dreaded pain ; They saw not what to us is plain, That God would make man's wrath his praise.
Swift as the summons came, they left The plough mid-furrow standing still, The half-ground corn-grist in the mill, The spade in earth, the axe in cleft.
They went where duty seemed to call, They scarcely asked the reason why ; They only knew they could but die, And death was not the worst of all.
Of man for man the sacrifice, All that was theirs to give they gave; The flowers that blossomed on their grave Have sown themselves beneath all skies."
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