off the hope of Canadian and tory help, and detached the last band of Indian allies. "The very existence of the infant state of Vermont," wrote Ira Allen long afterward, "their families and property, were all pending on the event." We might almost call it our Thermopyla, only that our Leonidas and most of his troops survived to strike other blows for their country.

It is a singular token of the skill of our marksmen and the bewilderment of the foe that while the British "left two hundred and seven dead on the spot," and many others mortally wounded, our loss was but thirty killed and about forty wounded. Thirteen tories, "buried in one hole," mostly shot through the head as they looked over the breast work, told of the aim of the New Hampshire sharpshooters, and the bayonet of William Clement, that never was withdrawn from the skull of another, told of the hand-to-hand conflict that closed the strife.

But there was mourning on our side. The chief havoc was in the regiment of Nichols, which gave the signal and opened the fight on the hill. In each of four honored homes in Bennington there were orphans and a widow. Four New Hampshire officers were killed, and two died of their wounds. Ten of their townsmen, privates, were laid with them in the grave. Chaplain Hibbard in his old age remembered well that "burial service" as the most mournful occasion of his life. New Hampshire sent two of her foremost men, Josiah Bartlett and Stephen Peabody, "to do everything in their power to assist the sick and wounded." Let the names of those dead be carved

here on a monument that shall be coeval with this state and this nation, and while the grass grows on these mountain sides and the granite rock lies firm and solid over beyond the Connecticut let the name of Seth. Warner be green in Vermont and the name of John Stark lie embedded in the heart of New Hampshire.

Friends and fellow citizens: The records of the past speak to us in vain unless they speak also for the future. Many a suggestive thought clings to this historic spot. And first of all, the battlefield of Bennington is as commemorative of piety as of bravery. I should be false to the truth of history did I fail to recognize the strong religious spirit in which this victory had its preparation and achievement. The smoke of the battlefield mingled as it rose with the incense of prayer. Each of the three states that shared the victory had appointed in the first half of August its special Fast Day, in view of the approaching conflict. The Berkshire men fired no shot in the battle till their pastor had prayed with them to the God of battles. Colonel Nichols is said to have knelt with his men in prayer before he led them to the onset. McClary, on the previous Sabbath, was exhorting his soldiers to remember the Lord's day, and the bullet from his fatal wound and the Bible from his breast pocket were long preserved together in his family. All day long, while the sound of the cannon came pealing from the battlefield, in the churches of Benningtonand Williamstown the voice of prayer was ascending, and it never ceased till tidings came of victory. John

Stark forwarded to New Hampshire the Hessian equipments as trophies of "that glorious victory given them by the divine Being who overpowers and rules all things." The men that achieved our deliverance here feared God, and they feared nothing else.

"They came as brave men ever come,

To stand, to fight, to die;

No thought of fear was in their heart,
No quailing in the eye;

If the lip faltered, 't was with prayer,
Amid those gathering bands,
For the sure rifle kept its poise

In strong, untrembling hands.”

This consecrated spot speaks to us also a lesson of fraternity. This region was once the New Hampshire Grants, and Bennington's charter transmits the name of Benning Wentworth, a New Hampshire governor. Nine tenths of the early settlers of Vermont came from Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. The troops of three commonwealths fought in noble rivalry and with equal courage for the safety of these homes and for the common weal. Their dead sleep side by side. And as I look over the roster of those regiments I read the Welsh name of Evans, the Norwegian Peterson, the Scotch Webster and Bohonnon. The names of McGregor, McClary, Gregg, Stark, and their companions show that the Scotch-Irish furnished some of the best fighting stock of America, while the great bulk of those troops were of pure Anglo-Saxon blood.

So was it on the broader scale throughout the

war.

The name of General Sullivan's ancestors was O'Sullivan. Lafayette was already with Washington. Kosciusco the Pole was about to plan the entrenchments at Saratoga, and his countryman Pulaski was now a volunteer and a prospective martyr for American liberty. And though those German troops that we fought on yonder heights had been sold like sheep in the shambles and fell here like sheep in the slaughter, we may not forget that it was Germans and Dutchmen who ten days before had defeated St. Leger at Oriskany, and that Herkimer was dying of his wounds even while Stark was winning this victory; nor may we forget the faithful De Kalb, already in our ranks, and Steuben who made our fighters into soldiers and our soldiers into an army, then died in poverty and slept in a long-forgotten grave. And why need I mention the names of Duportail, Gouvion, Radière, Launoy, Fleury, and the Chevalier Armand? "Out of twenty-nine major-generals in our Revolutionary war eleven were Europeans." The toil and blood of many races purchased our land of rest and privilege. To many races let it be a home of privilege and blessing. Yea, they have come - Scandinavians and Welsh and Irish and Scotch and Hebrews and Italians. Six millions of Germans are gathered voluntarily on the soil of our country. Here let them flourish. Five millions of Africans, here not by their own will, toiled and suffered, but not on the battlefield, and their deliverance too came in due time. A hundred and fifty thousand Chinese are but the avant-couriers of millions to follow.

Let them too come on with their industry and economy. The free friction of our free institutions shall wear off from them at length the rust of ages and stamp them with the superscription of this great republic. Does

as

it not stand written in the Declaration made by this new state, seven months before the battle, that "the inhabitants that may hereafter become resident, either by procreation or by emigration within said territory, shall be entitled to the same privileges and on the same conditions "the present inhabitants" and as "of any of the free states of America"? We have but to be true to those civil principles for which the Green Mountain boys fought and to that God to whom Nichols and Allen and McClary prayed before they fought, and then shall these vast bodies of diverse. elements, enough to have changed the character of half the empires of Christendom, be assimilated by the same wonder-working power as heretofore; and that Constitution which has been foolishly called a "rope of sand" shall continue to be a wall of adamant around us all.

But Bennington teaches too that the foreigner must come hither to enjoy, and not to destroy, our institutions as a law-abiding citizen, never as a lawless invader. He may not mistake the home of freedom for a land of license, nor think that when he has escaped the terror of the gendarmes abroad he may inaugurate a Reign of Terror here. The Communists who burned down the Tuileries and the Hotel de Ville cannot, under the name of brotherhoods and unions, be suffered to make bonfires of our railway stations