James Parton

“ Will the people at home sustain us?
At nine o'clock President Hancock rapped to order. The first business was the reading of letters addressed to the Congress, which had arrived since the adjournment on Saturday. One of these, from General Washington in New York, contained news calculated to alarm all but the most stalwart spirits: Canada quite lost to the cause; Arnold's army in full, though orderly, retreat from that province; a powerful British fleet just arriving in New York harbor, three or four ships drifting in daily, and now forty-five sail all at once signalled from Sandy Hook. ”

“ Jefferson sat at his little desk composing the Declaration, with the windows open at that warm season, he must have heard the troops drilling in Independence Square. Twice a day they were out drilling, to the number of two thousand men, and more. Perhaps he was looking out of the window on the eleventh of June, the very day after the appointment of the committee to draw up the Declaration, when the question of independence was voted upon by the whole body of Philadelphia volunteers, and they all voted for independence except twenty-nine men, four officers and twenty-five privates. ”

“ Adams was an extremely passionate man. One evening, just before the breaking out of the Revolution, while spending an evening in company with an English gentleman, the conversation turned upon the aggressions of the mother country. He became furious with anger. He said there was no justice left in Britain; that he wished for war, and that the whole Bourbon family was upon the back of Great Britain. He wished that anything might happen to them, and, as the clergy prayed for enemies in time of war, that "they might be brought to reason or to ruin." ”

“ When Congress had assembled, John Adams rose, and, in a short speech, represented the state of the colonies, the uncertainty in the minds of the people, the distresses of the army, the danger of its disbanding, the difficulty of collecting another if it should disband, and the probability that the British army would take advantage of our delays, march out of Boston, and spread desolation as far as they could go. He concluded by moving that Congress adopt the army at Cambridge and appoint a general. ”

“ During the later years of the war, the city of New York was the chief source of information concerning the designs and movements of the enemy. General Washington, as early as 1778, had always two or three correspondents there upon whose information he could rely if only they could send it out to him. Sometimes, when his ordinary correspondents failed him, he would send in a spy disguised as a farmer driving a small load of provisions, and who would bring out some family supplies, as tea, sugar, and calico, the better to conceal his real object. ”

“ In the letters of General Washington we find a great many requests to Congress for a kind of money that would pass current anywhere, and suffer no deterioration at the bottom of a river in a freshet. He preferred gold as being the "most portable." He wrote in 1778 from White Plains:
"I have always found a difficulty in procuring intelligence by the means of paper money, and I perceive that it increases."
It continued to increase, until, I suppose, an offer of a million dollars in paper would not have induced a spy to enter the enemy's lines. In fact, the general himself says as much. ”

“ What would General Howe do next? If he crossed at Hell Gate, the American army, too small in numbers, and defeated the week before, might be caught on Manhattan Island as in a trap, and the issue of the contest might be made to depend upon a single battle; for in such circumstances defeat would involve the capture of the whole army. And yet General Washington was compelled to confess:
"We cannot learn, nor have we been able to procure the least information of late." ”

“ You know I have taken great pains to get our colleagues to agree upon some plan that we might be unanimous upon; but you know they will pledge themselves to nothing; but I am determined to take a step which shall compel them, and all the other members of Congress, to declare themselves for or against something. I am determined this morning to make a direct motion that Congress shall adopt the army before Boston, and appoint Colonel Washington commander of it. ”

“ Only the River Delaware separated the hostile armies, and the enemy waited but for the ice to form, in order to add Philadelphia to the list of his summer conquests.
Congress had adjourned from Philadelphia to Baltimore. New Jersey was ravaged by ruthless bands of soldiers. Disaffection was on every side. The winter, prematurely cold, threatened to make an ice-bridge over the stream in ten days, and within about the same time the terms of most of General Washington's troops would expire, and he might be left without even the semblance of an army. ”

“ Never was a public man more outrageously abused. On one occasion, a mob paraded the streets of Philadelphia, carrying an image of Mr. Jay holding a pair of scales. One of the scales was labeled, "American Liberty and Independence," and the other, "British Gold," the latter weighing down the former as low as it could go, while from the mouth of the effigy issued the words:
"Come up to my price and I will sell you my country." ”

“ Again all eyes were turned upon John Adams. Again he shrank from taking the floor. Mr. Edward Rutledge of South Carolina came to him and said:
"Nobody will speak but you upon this subject. You have all the topics so ready that you must satisfy the gentlemen from New Jersey."
Mr. Adams replied that he was ashamed to repeat what he had said twenty times before. As the new members still insisted on hearing a recapitulation, he at length rose once more, and gave a concise summary of the whole debate. The New Jersey gentlemen said they were fully satisfied and were ready for the question. ”

“ At an early period of the Revolution he was appointed Minister to Spain, where he struggled with more persistance than success to induce a timid and dilatory government to render some substantial aid to his country. He was afterwards one of the commissioners who negotiated the treaty with Great Britain, in which the independence of the United States was acknowledged, and its boundaries settled. Soon after his return home Congress appointed him Secretary for Foreign Affairs, which was the most important office in their gift, and in which he displayed great ability in the dispatch of business. ”

“ He could not deceive. "Some scrubby fellow ought to have gone." At Norwalk he assumed the disguise of a Dutch schoolmaster, putting on a suit of plain brown clothes, and a round, broad-brimmed hat. He had no difficulty in crossing the Sound, since he bore an order from General Washington which placed at his disposal all the vessels belonging to Congress. For several days everything appears to have gone well with him, and there is reason to believe that he passed through the entire British army without detection or even exciting suspicion. ”

“ He made New York City his home until 1875, three years after the death of his wife, when he went to Newburyport, where he now lives. The London Athenæum well characterizes Mr. Parton as "a painstaking, honest, and courageous historian, ardent with patriotism, but unprejudiced; a writer, in short, of whom the people of the United States have reason to be proud." ”

“ But a gentleman sixty years of age cannot wait twenty years for the development of a speculation. Confident in the soundness of his calculations and expecting to be speedily rich beyond the dreams of avarice, he erected in Philadelphia a palace for his own abode, of the most preposterous magnificence. The architect assured him that the building would cost sixty thousand dollars, but the mere cellars exhausted that sum. ”

“ Your cruel dangers, your more cruel apprehensions, are soon to be renewed; the wounds yet unhealed are to be torn open again; in the daytime your path through the woods will be ambushed; the darkness of midnight will glitter with the blaze of your dwellings. ”

“ When he had been but a few months married, the Stamp Act was passed, which began the long series of agitating events that ended in severing the colonies from the mother country. The wealthy society of Boston, from the earliest period down to the present hour, has always been on what is called the conservative side in politics; and it was eminently so during the troubles preceding the revolutionary war. The whole story is told in a remark made by a Boston Tory doctor in those times:
"If Warren were not a Whig," said he, "he might soon be independent and ride in his chariot." ”

“ Captain Nathan Hale, a brilliant youth of twenty-one, recently graduated from Yale College, was one of those who reflected upon the subject. He soon reached a conclusion. He was of the very flower of the young men of New England, and one of the best of the younger soldiers of the patriot army. He had been educated for the ministry, and his motive in adopting for a time the profession of arms was purely patriotic. ”

“ For the want of it, he had seen General Braddock lead an army into the jaws of destruction, and he may have still possessed in some closet of Mount Vernon the coat with four bullet-holes in it which he had himself worn on that occasion. There are no warriors so skillful either at getting or concealing information as Indians, and all his experience hitherto had been in the Indian country and with warlike methods of an Indian character. ”

“ An entry in his private note-book shows that he paid this unknown individual $333.33 in advance.
A person who serves as a spy takes his life in his hand. It is a curious fact of human nature that nothing so surely reconciles a man to risking his life as a handsome sum in cash. General Washington, being perfectly aware of this fact, generally contrived to have a sum of what he called "hard money" at headquarters all through the war. Spies do not readily take to paper money. There are no Greenbackers among them. ”

“ The presence of the British troops in Boston roused all Warren's indignation. Overhearing one day some British officers saying that the Americans would not fight, he said to a friend:
"These fellows say we will not fight. By heavens, I hope I shall die up to my knees in their blood!" ”

“ Thomas Jefferson gives this writing-desk to Joseph Coolidge, Jr., as a memorial of affection. It was made from a drawing of his own by Benj. Randolph, cabinet-maker, at Philadelphia, with whom he first lodged on his arrival in that city, in May, 1776, and is the identical one on which he wrote the Declaration of Independence. Politics as well as religion has its superstitions. These, gaining strength with time, may one day give imaginary value to this relic for its associations with the birth of the Great charter of our Independence. ”

“ These methods of procuring intelligence in New York were all abused by real peddlers, who, when they were caught selling contraband goods to the enemy, pretended to be spies, and so escaped the penalty. At length the general chiefly depended upon two persons, one called "Culper Senior," and the other "Culper Junior," who may have been father and son, but whose real names and qualities have never been disclosed. General Washington's secrecy was perfect. ”

“ Fortunate is the family which in such circumstances has a mother wise and strong. She carried on the farm with the assistance of one of her sons so successfully that she was able to continue the education of her children, all of whom except the farmer obtained respectable rank in one of the liberal professions. This excellent mother lived in widowhood nearly fifty years, saw Thomas Jefferson President of the United States, and died 1803, aged ninety-three years, in the old house at home. ”

“ Thomas Pinckney, then, is to be distinguished from others of the name as the founder of the family in America.
The eldest son of Thomas, that grew to man's estate, was Charles Pinckney, who embraced the legal profession, and rose to be Chief Justice of the Province of South Carolina, and hence he is usually spoken of and distinguished from the rest of the family as "Chief Justice Pinckney." He was educated in England, and was married there. Returning to Charleston, he acquired a large fortune by the practice of his profession. ”

“ You are a father—the blood of your sons shall fatten your corn-fields. You are a mother—the war-whoop shall wake the sleep of the cradle."
He continued in this strain for some time, occasionally blazing into a simile that delighted every hearer with its brilliancy, while flashing a vivid light upon the subject; and I only wish the space at my command permitted further extracts. The conclusion of the speech recalled attention to the orator's feeble condition of health, which the vigor of his speech might have made his hearers forget. ”