“ I wish, most sincerely, that all prejudices in favor or against General Reed or myself, may be laid aside on the present occasion, and that truth and justice may influence the determination of the public.
The world is now in possession of General Reed's address to me, relating to a conversation I had with him at Bristol, in the winter of 1776, and as it contains the grossest reflections upon my character, as a man of veracity and a patriot, it is incumbent on me to reply.
Mankind have been much the same, in every age, with respect to their conduct in political life. ”

“ At New York, a few years since—afterwards, in the Musical Fund Hall, in this city—more recently at Dickinson College—quite lately at Harvard University, in short, everywhere, and on all occasions, the self same tune has lulled his audiences into a general slumber. How any one whose cheek is not formed of brass, can stand up as Mr. Reed has accustomed himself to do, and thus dole out, on all occasions, and before all assemblies, the patriotism of a grandfather for whose "treason" he should blush, I am at a loss to imagine. ”

“ Such is the man, who, with a thorough knowledge of his grandfather's delinquencies, persists in upholding him to the world as a true and sterling patriot; who, knowing him to be a "Traitor," steeped in "Treason" to the very eyelids, and seeking to barter away his country and its liberties for British gold and office, represents him, unblushingly, as the worthy compeer of Washington, a fellow labourer in the same vineyard, toiling from the rising to the setting of the sun!!! But Mr. Reed's race of eulogy of his ancestors is nearly run. ”

“ Conscious of my own innocence, and the unworthy methods taken to injure me, I can with boldness say to my persecutors in general, and to the chief of them in particular, that in the hour of danger when the affairs of America wore a gloomy aspect, when our illustrious general was retreating through New Jersey, with a handful of men, I did not propose to my associates basely to quit the general, and sacrifice the cause of my country to my personal safety, by going over to the enemy and making my peace. ”

“ When you insinuated, in the former part of your address, a superior knowledge in military matters, by saying you had more "experience," I gave up the point, and left you the happiness of thinking so; for why should I have contended a point with a man who, throughout his pamphlet, assumes to himself the merit of all those brilliant successes, so highly commended even by our enemies, and which determined the fate of American independence. And if I was sensible that the charge you now make was true, or could be thought so, by competent judges, I would scorn to defend my error. ”

“ Then let all history be rewritten, and let the puling mawkishness which the hypocrites call manly indignation, reject from the page of history the infamy of a Nero, the cruelty of a Tiberius, and the treason of an Arnold. If it be proper for the entertainment or instruction of posterity, that [Pg 73] the vices and crimes of the men of history shall be faithfully detailed, why should not the "treason" of General Reed, contemplated or effected, be spread upon his country's annals? ”

“ Whatever motives may have actuated "Valley Forge" to the publication of documents affecting the revolutionary services and fame of General Joseph Reed, and we pretend not either to scan them, or doubt their honorable complexion—for truth, when on the side of country and patriotism, admits not of suspicion or mistrust—whatever motive, we say, may have impelled him to the revelation of these important historical documents, there can exist no doubt as it respects the principle which sustains the ransacking of the grave, for the sake of truth. ”

“ The generous, the brave, the frank, the self-devoted patriot, rushed headlong into the contest, putting in peril, life, honor, property, fame, family, friends, children—all that is dear to life, and all that life endears. The calculating and timid palsied their daring counsels by weak irresolution of wicked duplicity. Among these time-servers, it seems General Joseph Reed stood prominent. Careful of his person, he shunned danger. Calculating the probable miscarriage of the Revolution, he occupied the prudent ground of a tory royalist, seeming to battle for liberty, but ready, at any moment ”

“ A Congress so corrupt, that Livingston writes, 'I am so discouraged by our public mismanagement, and the additional load of business thrown upon me by the villainy of those who pursue nothing but accumulating fortunes, to the ruin of their country, that I almost sink under it.' False friends and traitors intrigue against him—even Gen. Reed, the very man Mr. Irving so delighted to honor, and an inmate of his household, writes a letter to Gen. Lee, the aspiring rival of Washington, reflecting, with harsh severity, on the conduct and character of his commander and benefactor. ”

“ Reed is by any means, either intellectually or extrinsically, the most formidable member of the combination; but now it is known that he is the author of those attacks upon the character of a good citizen, of a man against whom for years the minions of the Bank have been directing their warfare without the ability to discover a crevice in his coat of mail, the arm of the puny assailant falls paralyzed to his side, and his intended victim laughs at him in a tone of scorn, in which the whole community participates. ”

“ Davenport; but your friend, hinted at in Major Lennox's certificate, had consented to accompany you in your intended desertion. The height of your iniquity does not end here; you endeavoured, by your influence, to spread general disaffection, in order to lessen your share of the infamy, by dividing it among many. Had you conferred with men whose principles were in every instance like your own, you might have succeeded, as every person concerned might have carried off his particular friend with him. ”

“ Before I received yours of the 10th, I had prepared a small publication, which the receipt of your letter did not influence me to alter or delay; as no signature could change the nature of things, and make falsehood truth, or truth falsehood. Having there declared the insinuation in Oswald's paper of the 7th instant to be false, I now apply the same epithet to your avowal of them; and am sorry, though not surprised, that your violence of temper should have occasioned such a deviation from the line of veracity so essential to the character of a gentleman. ”

“ William B. Reed has written essays, reviews and paragraphs innumerable, to induce the public to believe, that when in 1778 or 1779, Governor Johnstone and the other British Commissioners, proposed to General Reed a reward of 10,000 pounds sterling, and a lucrative office, upon condition that he would lend himself to the views of Great Britain, he indignantly spurned the proposal, and replied, "I am not worth the purchase, but such as I am, King George is not rich enough to make it." ”

“ If you turn to the records of the court, or review the correspondence with my brother on that subject, you must blush at such a subterfuge. From that time, and owing thereto, I avoided your company. I could here make the proper reflections, with respect to your veracity and integrity, but the world will do you justice.
The critical situation of our affairs, in the winter of 1776, is well known to every inhabitant of the United States; but those only who were at that time in the field, can have a true idea of the circumstances which often threatened the dissolution of the militia. ”

“ It bears on its very face, the irresistible force of a first principle; for if the grave cannot cover up the good deeds of men, it never can be made to conceal their evil ones. The lessons of history, like the lessons of life, are derived more from the wicked than the good. The striking contrast of example, comes from the man who has perpetuated deeds that curdle the blood with fear, or crimson the cheeks with shame. ”

“ It is a little too bad that this man should be reverenced by posterity as one of the purest of the men of the revolution, when you and I, and all who were really active in those times, know that nothing but accident prevented his taking the start of Benedict Arnold. Though not communicative, General Washington was always candid, and upon the subject of Reed's premeditated betrayal of the country to England, he has frequently conversed with me very freely. ”

“ Reed was a student of the Pennsylvania University, of becoming somewhat intimately acquainted with his bent of mind; and if there ever was a school-boy despised and detested by his fellows, William was that youth. "The boy's the father of the man," and those who have known him only in his ripened years, if they apply the truth of this axiom, will have no difficulty in correctly conjecturing what must have been his early youth. ”

“ It would have been very dangerous, at that critical period, to have exposed your weakness and timidity to the militia, as such an example might have been attended with the most fatal consequences to our cause. And as your conduct, upon this occasion, appeared to me to proceed from want of fortitude, and not the baser motives,—and as from the observations I made to you at the time, you seemed to resume more spirited sentiments in conversation, as well as from political motives, I continued to show an appearance of confidence, and concluded it best not to mention it to the General. ”

“ I should be extremely sorry to accuse without a just foundation, or to adduce a charge, were I not convinced that it is of the utmost importance that the public,—the people at large—should be enabled to form a right opinion of such men, who have been honoured, or may be honoured with their suffrages, and thereby exalted to places of the highest trust and confidence. ”

“ Then there's that General Reed has been behaving very strangely again. Not a man nor officer in the army that does not hate the sight of him; we all believe that he came very near betraying us, only that the General [Washington] found him out in time. We all remember Valley Forge last winter. Before the battle began, I myself heard Gen. Washington whisper to General Greene and Wayne, to keep a sharp eye upon Reed's movements, and if he made any suspicious attempt, to order him under arrest, and shoot him if he resisted. ”

“ I never knew a man capable of stronger attachments; he had none of the vices of humanity, and fewer of its weaknesses than any man I ever knew. I do not believe Mr. Jefferson meant to be unjust; but the character drawn of Washington, which appears in his recently published papers and correspondence, falls, in all respects, very far short of doing him justice. Mr. Jefferson had not the sort of mind which was entirely capable of appreciating, or even exactly understanding, a character like that of Washington's. I saw much of the old General in his latter days ”

“ After my escape from Philadelphia, last November, I wrote to you, but whether you received my letter or not I cannot tell, for I have never heard a word of you since. We have had a dreadful time of it through the winter at Valley Forge. Sometimes for a week at a time with nothing but frozen potatoes, and even worse off still for clothing; sometimes the men obliged to sleep by turns for want of blankets to cover the whole, and the rest keeping watch by the fires. There is hardly a man whose feet have not been frost bitten. ”

“ But what must the world think of your effrontery, when they read the following letter of Col. Alexander Hamilton, who was then Aid-de-Camp to the Commander-in-chief, and now a delegate in Congress; whose conduct and character are well known and approved by the citizens of every State in the Union,—a gentleman, who, being a resident of the State of New York, cannot be supposed in any manner concerned in the politics of Pennsylvania? ”

“ The charge you have brought against a party in the state, of an opposition to its constitution, deserves some attention. I will digress a little from my main subject to examine how far this charge is true, and how far the thing is in itself criminal.
Government is generally so reverenced among men, that those who attempt to subvert any system of it whatever, have to contend against a very natural prejudice. But this prejudice can only be in degree with the antiquity of its establishment; for modern error, how high soever its authority, has but little claim to our veneration. ”

“ To my civilities, at that time, I thought him entitled from the signal services he had rendered his country; services infinitely superior to those you so much boast of; he stood high, as a military character, even in France, and after your prosecution, he was continued in command by Congress; appointed first, by the commander-in-chief, to the command of the left wing of the army, and afterwards to that important post of West Point, where his treacherous conduct exceeded, I fancy, even your own idea of his baseness. ”

“ I foresaw that an "arrest," or discovery, on my part, would produce all the bad effects naturally to be apprehended from actual desertion; I mean with respect to the discouragement which such an example would have caused in the army, but particularly in the militia; and especially, as at that time the militia were assembling at Philadelphia, under General Putnam, from every part of the country, influenced by the example of the city troops, as well as by a sense of danger and duty. ”

“ And what has become of that charge now? No one believes it. We have triumphed over all the allegations made against us in the matter, and thousands of individuals are left to weep now, because they did not believe, and act on our testimony at the time it was given.
So in the present case, we are charged with publishing forged letters, and even with forging them ourselves. But on what authority? Why, on the assertion of Mr. John Spear Smith, of Baltimore, made, we do not doubt, in all sincerity, but evidently hastily, and without giving a single reason for his coming to that conclusion. ”