SEVENTY‐SIX.
CHAPTER I.
Our Fathers—Where are they?—Bible.
Yes, my children, I will no longer delay it. We are passing, one by one, from the place of contention, one after another, to the grave; and, in a little time, you may say, "Our fathers!—the men of the Revolution—where are they?" Yes, I will go about it in earnest; I will leave the record behind me, and when there is nothing else to remind you of your father, and your children's children of their ancestor—nothing else, to call up his apparition before you, that you may see his aged and worn forehead—his white hair in the wind—you will but have to open the book that I shall leave to you, and lay your right hand devoutly upon the page. It will have been written in blood and sweat, with prayer and weeping. But do that—no matter when it is, generations may have passed away—no matter where I am—my flesh and blood may have returned to their original element, or taken innumerable shapes of loveliness—my very soul may be standing in the presence of the Most High. Yet do ye this, and I will appear to you, instantly, in the deepest and dimmest solitude of your memory! Yes! I will go about it this very day. And I do pray you and them, as they shall be born successively of you, and yours, when all the family are about their sanctuary—their own fireside—the holy and comfortable place, to open the volume, and read it aloud. Let it be in the depth of winter, if it may be, when the labour of the year is over, and the heart is rejoicing in its home; and when you are alone: not that I would frown upon the traveller, or blight the warm hospitality of your nature, by reproof; but there are some things, and some places, where the thought of the stranger is intrusion,—the touch and hearing of the unknown man little better than profanation. If you love each other, you will not go abroad for consolation; and if you are wise, you will preserve some hidden fountains of your heart, unvisited but by one or two—the dearest and the best. This should be one of them—I will have it so. I would not have your feeling of holy and solemn, and high enthusiasm, broken in upon by the unprepared, just when you have been brought, perhaps, to travel in imagination, with your father, barefooted, over the frozen ground, leaving his blood at every step as he went, desolate, famished, sick, naked, almost broken-hearted, and almost alone, to fight the battles of your country.
No! I would have thought go in pilgrimage; over the same ground, remembering that the old men who travelled it in the revolution, doing battle at every step for your inheritance, were an army journeying deliberately to martyrdom. Do this, my children, and let it be a matter of religion, with you: teach your children to do the same. Let every place of especial trial and bloodshed be a Mecca to you and to them, and God's blessing shall be upon you, for ever and ever.
We have had many a history of our country, many of the revolution; but none written by men acquainted by participation therein with our sorrow, and trial, and suffering: not one, where the mighty outline of truth is distinctly visible—no, not one. I make no exception. All of them are in my mind at this moment—there is not one. We wrestled, children as we were, for eight years, with armed giants: and wrenched—wrenched, with our own hands, the spoil from the spoiler, overcame them all at last, after eight years of mortal trial, and uninterrupted battle, even in their stronghold.
I was one of them that helped to do this. There is a vividness in my recollection that cannot deceive me. I knew personally, and intimately, the leading men in this drama. Most have gone down to their graves, dishonoured and trampled upon in their old age; many are yet wandering, helpless and dejected, among the beautiful and vast proportions of that edifice, which they built up with their blood and bones, like the spirits of venerable men, that have been driven away from their dwelling-places by banditti, and died in a foreign land-like shadowy sovereigns, coming back to a degenerate people, haunting the chambers of their greatness in olden time, and re-treading, with an air of authority and dominion, which is the scorn and mockery of men, whose fathers could not have stood upright in their awful presence—the courts where they have been dethroned—the ancient palaces, which they built with their own power and treasure, and from which they have been banished, day by day, with insult and derision. Yet, at my bidding they will appear! and harness and array themselves, and stand before you, as I have seen them stand before George Washington—a battalion of immoveable, impregnable, unconquerable old men.
I am familiar with all that they thought and did; they that were about me, I mean, time that I went among them a passionate, wild boy till I come out from them, battered and
