Salvation to America depends upon our holding fast our attachment to them. I shall date our ruin from the moment that it is exchanged for anything Great Britain can say or do. She can never be cordial with us. Baffled, defeated, disgraced by her colonies, she will ever meditate revenge. We can find no safety but in her ruin, or at least in her extreme humiliation, which has not happened, and cannot happen until she is deluged with blood, or thoroughly purged by a revolution, which shall wipe from existence the present king with his connexions, and the present system, with those who aid and abet it. For God's sake, my dear sir, quit not the councils of your country, until you see us forever disjoined from Great Britain. The old leaven still works. The fleshpots of Egypt are still savoury to degenerate palates. Again, we are undone if the French alliance is not religiously observed. Excuse my freedom. I know your love to our country, and this is my motive. May heaven give you health and prosperity.
William Wirt Henry, Patrick Henry: Life, Correspondence and Speeches (New York. 1891), I, 564-565.
204. A Desperate Sea-Fight (1779)
BY CAPTAIN JOHN PAUL JONES
The capture of the Serapis was the most striking naval victory of the war. Jones was born in Scotland, but had served as a brilliant officer in the American navy from its organization in 1775 (see No. 194 above). — Bibliography: Winsor, Narrative and Critical History, VI, 568-591; Mackenzie, Life of Paul Jones ; Maclay, United States Navy, I, 114-136.
ON the morning of that day, the 23d [September, 1779], the brig from Holland not being in sight, we chased a brigantine that appeared laying to, to windward. About noon, we saw and chased a large ship that appeared coming round Flamborough Head, from the northward, and at the same time I manned and armed one of the pilot boats to send in pursuit of the brigantine, which now appeared to be the vessel that I had forced ashore. Soon after this, a fleet of forty-one sail appeared off Flamborough Head, bearing N. N. E. This induced me to abandon the single ship which had then anchored in Burlington Bay; I also called back the pilot boat, and hoisted a signal for a general chase. When the fleet discovered us bearing down, all the merchant ships crowded sail towards the shore. The two ships of war that pro-
