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BRITISH RULE IN AMERICA

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Suffer not your

Ask yourselves

of no way of judging of the future, but by the past. And judging by the past, I wish to know what there has been in the conduct of the British ministry for the last ten years, to justify those hopes with which gentlemen have been pleased to solace themselves and the House? Is it that insidious smile with which our petition has been lately received? Trust it not, sir; it will prove a snare to your feet. selves to be "betrayed with a kiss!" how this gracious reception of our petition comports with those warlike preparations which cover our waters and darken our land. Are fleets and armies necessary to a work of love and reconciliation? we shown ourselves so unwilling to be reconciled, that force must be called in to win back our love? Let us not deceive ourselves, sir. These are the implements of war and subjugation, the last "arguments" to which kings resort.

Have

I ask gentlemen what means this martial array, if its purpose be not to force us to submission? Can gentlemen assign any other possible motive for it? Has Great Britain any enemy in this quarter of the world, to call for all this accumulation of navies and armies? No, sir, she has none. They are meant for us: they can be meant for no other. They are sent over to bind and to rivet upon us those chains which the British ministry have been so long forging. And what have we to oppose to them? Shall we try argument? Sir, we have been trying that for the last ten years. Have we anything new to offer upon the subject? Nothing. We have held the subject up in

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every light of which it is capable; but it has been all in vain. Shall we resort to entreaty and humble supplication? What terms shall we find which have not been already exhausted? Let us not, I beseech you, sir, deceive ourselves longer. We have done everything that could be done, to avert the storm which is now coming on. We have petitioned, we have remonstrated, we have supplicated, we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the ministry and parliament. Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded; and we have been spurned with contempt from the foot of the throne.

AN APPEAL TO ARMS

PATRICK HENRY

The conclusion of a speech delivered at Richmond, Va.: March 28, 1775, before the second Revolutionary Convention, in support of the resolution that "the Colony of Virginia be immediately put into a posture of defense."

In vain may we indulge the fond hope of peace and reconciliation. There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free, if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending, if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged our

AN APPEAL TO ARMS

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selves never to abandon, until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained-we must fight! I repeat it, sir, we must fight! An appeal to arms and to the God of Hosts is all that is left us!

They tell us, sir, that we are weak; unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance, by lying supinely on our backs, and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot?

Sir, we are not weak, if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature has placed in our power. Three millions of people, armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us. Besides, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just God, who presides over the destinies of nations, and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us. The battle is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in

submission and slavery!

Our chains are forged!

Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable-and let it come! I repeat,it, sir, let it come!

It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, "Peace! peace!"-but there is no peace. The war is actually begun. The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms. Our brethren are already in the field. Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!

THE REVOLUTIONARY ALARM

GEORGE BANCROFT

This splendid piece of eloquence is taken from the beginning of Chapter XI., Volume I., of Bancroft's " History of the American Revolution," first published in 1852.

Darkness closed upon the country and upon the town, but it was no night for sleep. Heralds on swift relays of horses transmitted the war message from hand to hand, till village repeated it to village, the sea to the backwoods, the plains to the highlands, and it was never suffered to droop till it had been borne North and South and East and West, throughout the land. It spread over the bays that receive the Saco and the Penobscot; its loud reveille broke the rest of the trappers of New Hampshire, and ringing like bugle notes from peak to peak, overleapt the Green Mountains, swept onward to Montreal, and descended the ocean

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river till the responses were echoed from the cliffs at Quebec. The hills along the Hudson told to one another the tale. As the summons hurried to the South, it was one day at New York, in one more at Philadelphia, the next it lighted a watch-fire at Baltimore, then it waked an answer at Annapolis. Crossing the Potomac near Mount Vernon, it was sent forward, without a halt, to Williamsburg. It traversed the Dismal Swamp to Nansemond, along the route of the first emigrants to North Carolina. It moved onward and still onward, through boundless groves of evergreen, to Newbern and to Wilmington.

"For God's sake, forward it by night and day," wrote Cornelius Harnett, by the express which sped for Brunswick. Patriots of South Carolina caught up its tones at the border and dispatched it to Charleston, and, through pines and palmettos and moss-clad liveoaks, farther to the South, till it resounded among the New England settlements beyond the Savannah. The Blue Ridge took up the voice and made it heard from one end to the other of the valley of Virginia. The Alleghanies, as they listened, opened their barriers that the "loud call" might pass through to the hardy riflemen on the Holston, the Watauga, and the French Broad. Ever renewing its strength, powerful enough even to create a commonwealth, it breathed its inspiring word to the first settlers of Kentucky, so that hunters who made their halt in the valley of the Elkhorn commemorated the nineteenth day of April, 1776, by naming their encampment "Lexington." Lexington." With one impulse the Colonies sprung to arms; with one

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