George Washington Greene

“ The history of the American war of independence has not yet taken the place which belongs to it in historical literature. Its causes, its actor's, and its events invest it with an interest for the statesman, for the philosopher, and for the lover of picturesque narrative which has never been surpassed. It is a great prose epic, with heroes whom we can love and revere, whose marvelous truths exceed the boldest inventions of fiction. ”

“ For Congress was once more sitting in Philadelphia, in the old hall where the Declaration of Independence had been made. But it was there with a task to perform, to which legislative bodies are altogether unequal: with a responsibility weighing upon it which none but a strong executive could have borne, vainly trying to govern by treasury boards and boards of war, to call out the resources of the country by requisitions and recommendations, and to decide questions which demanded immediate decision as they decided upon laws and acts which demanded careful, full, and deliberate discussion. ”

“ I have now reached the story of the longest and bloodiest war which the colonists had yet waged with the Indian. It is known in colonial history as King Philip’s war, and belongs more to the histories of Massachusetts and Connecticut than to that of Rhode Island, although two of its bloodiest battles were fought on Rhode Island soil. Like all wars with barbarians it is filled with strange mixtures of barbarism and heroism, the savage warrior often rising in the pursuit of his ideal to a moral grandeur which his civilized antagonist failed to attain. ”

“ The eighteenth century, it will be remembered, was still an age of mercenary soldiers. Men of hereditary rank let themselves out for military rank and the chances of military distinction. To be colonel and give your name to a regiment was to open the way to a new ribbon or a new star and the choicest circles. Even the lowest commission was a patent of nobility; for none were entitled to it in the French service who could not trace their claims through four generations. The German regiments in the French service were especially favored, and commissions in them eagerly sought after. ”

“ Thus far we have traced the progress of Rhode Island, step by step from the first small settlement on the banks of the Mooshausick to the flourishing Colony, which, by its firmness and perseverance had made it mistress of the shores and islands of Narragansett Bay. We have seen it taking for its corner stone a vital principle of human society, unrecognized as yet by the most advanced civilization. ”

“ Germain gave him a letter to Beaumarchais; Beaumarchais introduced him to Deane; Deane took him to Franklin. Thus they stood face to face, the philosopher-diplomatist with his Quaker-cut drab, and the soldier-courtier with the glittering star of the order of “Fidélité” on his breast; the eye that had been trained to look closely into the phenomena of nature, and read the workings of the heart in the play of the features, looking straight into the eye that had been trained to look into the cannon's mouth and detect the signs of success or disaster in the wild tumult of battle. ”

“ No sooner had the manufacture of iron become almost equal to that of England than it was prohibited by law. The same repression of manufacturing enterprise had been extended to other branches of industry. Could the colonists doubt that they were to be systematically cut off from the most important sources of wealth, and their prosperity made to depend upon the caprice of the mother country? And he esteemed the restrictions imposed upon American commerce equally unwise and unjust. It was not with raw material alone that the colonists purchased English goods. ”

“ While these events, so grievous in the present, so full of a glorious future, were passing, Samuel Ward, who had so nobly represented the highest conscience and culture of Rhode Island in the Continental Congress, was dying of small-pox in Philadelphia—the advanced post of civil heroism. An upright and conscientious man, who had drawn from books and men those lessons which make men wise in judgment and firm in principle and bold in action. ”

“ Gunning, the English minister to the Russian court, was instructed to begin negotiations for twenty thousand men: for it was not mere auxiliaries but an army that England sought to bring into the field, thus crushing the insurrection by a well-directed blow. In an interview with Count Panin, Catherine's prime minister, the British envoy asked, as if in casual conversation, whether, if the present measures for the suppression of the insurrection should fail, and his master should find himself under the necessity of calling in foreign troops, he could count upon a body of Russian infantry? ”

“ To have risen during the Seven Years War from a lieutenant of infantry to a responsible office on Frederick's own staff was a surer mark of superiority than the command of a division in any other army of those days. To have adapted the improvements of Prussian discipline to an army of freemen fighting for freedom required a fertility of resources, a familiarity with general principles, and a knowledge of human nature, which none but minds of a high order possess. ”

“ The commerce with England, whence the colonies had drawn their annual supplies for house and home, was broken off, and they looked to that of France and Spain for a compensation. To send a body of discontented officers home to tell in every coffee-house that the young nation had begun its career by violating a solemn contract would have dulled the edge of sympathy and excited the suspicions of commerce. The discarded officers took their disappointment to heart, and even the cool and judicious Kalb gave vent to his indignation in a bitter letter to the president of Congress. ”

“ In these days of mingled hope and fear, on the 19th of July, 1785, closed the long and useful career of Stephen Hopkins, whose name is closely interwoven with all that is greatest and best in Rhode Island history; an astronomer of no mean pretensions, a statesman of broad views and deep penetration, a supreme executive, prompt, energetic and fearless, a genial companion when wise men relax from care, and a trusty counselor when the duties of life bear heaviest on the scrupulous conscience. ”

“ But why, in place of that keen, stout sword, with its plain leather scabbard and plain brass guard familiar to a soldier's hand, take up the flimsy blade fit only to rest idly on a courtier's thigh or be crossed with some other flimsy blade in a courtier's quarrel? Rest, rest, rest — Steuben was weary and wanted rest. Far down in the depths of his nature, but overlaid hitherto and hidden by the necessities of his position, lay a love of ease, a longing for social life and the pleasures of refined intercourse. ”

“ A lover of pomp, capricious and reckless in his expenditure, he had been compelled to admit his son, the crown prince, to a partnership of authority, making the signatures of both essential to the validity of a document. Fortunately for the duke's creditors, the son was as parsimonious as the father was extravagant, and let no opportunity of raising money escape him. Such was the condition of the court of Brunswick when England sent Colonel William Fawcitt to ask for troops. ”

“ Those who look upon the history of our war of independence as an unqualified history of generous sacrifices, take a false view of the subject. Base and ignoble passions manifested themselves by the side of the noblest passions. Some men were always true, as some were always false. We had but one Arnold, but we had many lesser villains, who played the spy on both sides, sometimes fought on both sides, and grew rich by speculating upon the necessities of their country. Our national history, like the early history of Rome, has suffered greatly from apocryphal heroism. ”

“ Here is a sword to sell, perhaps something more; but what are swords good for but to cut men to pieces? and it is rather hard that I, who have passed over fifty of my seventy-one years in trying to teach men how to take care of themselves and convince them that they are never so happy as when they live like brothers — I, who have often said that I never knew a bad peace or a good war, should in my old age become a sharpener of swords and swordsmen. ”