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 worn, and bruised and broken, and scarred all over with the deep cabala of premature old age. None but an eye-witness can tell, as it ought to be told, the story of individual suffering, protracted for such a time, the tale of individual heroism, continued year after year, under privation, cruelty, insult, and toil, beyond all that the men of Rome or Macedon, under Alexander himself, would have borne, in the spring-tide of their heart's valour.
Yes, though I would tell the tale before I die—old as I am, frail as the tenure is by which I hold to the earth, I must take my own time for it, and tell that which I do tell with the plainness and honesty of my nature, so that you may depend upon it. You know that I will tell you nothing which I do not know to be true. I need not add, therefore, that, where there is a disagreement between my story, and that which you will find in the blundering, tedious compilations, which are called the Histories of our Revolution, you will do well to rely upon mine.
Let this be copied, in a fair hand, by Frederick, and during the next week I will forward you two or three sheets more. Make no alteration in it—no corrections. If there be any part illegible, leave a blank, till I have an opportunity of supplying it. I would have this a family relic—the egitimate production of your father—an uneducated, plain soldier, and of him alone. It will then grow every year in your veneration, gain every year upon your heart, in solemnity and interest. Nay, let this intimation take a higher authority. I know the sacredness of ancient things. I command you, therefore, that you lay not your hand upon one letter of what I write. Men do not talk now as they used to—you see none of the old-fashioned kingly-looking people in this generation—nothing of their high carriage and attitude—hear nothing of their powerful voices, and legal tread—their thought, the currency of their heart is base and degenerate; it wears no longer the stamp of sovereignty—is no longer the coinage of God's kingdom; but the paltry counterfeit thereof base and showy. No! trust them not. Hold what there is left to you of other days, as the regalia of giants; to be visited only by torchlight, with downcast eyes and folded arms. Ye are a fettered people fettered too by manacles, that would have fallen from the limbs of your fathers like rain dropped from them, in the indignant heat of their mighty hearts, like the leaden entrenchments of a furnace.
My children—it has been my nature, from my childhood, to speak and write for myself. There are few men upon this earth, in whom it would not be presumption to alter what I have written. And you, my children, are not of their number. In you, it would be wicked and foolish. It would lead to a perpetual discus&ion, in your family, about the genuineness of the whole, and, in time, destroy all your reverence for me. No let there be no interpolation. My blessing shall not abide upon him that dares to add, alter, or leave out, one ot or tittle of the whole. No—let it go down, with your blood, the patent of your nobility, to the elder son, for ever and ever; and when you are able, multiply the copies among all that are descended from me, as the last legacy of one, that it would be an honour to them, whatever they may become, to be the posterity of.
My style may often, offend you. I do not doubt that it will. I hope that it will. It will be remembered the better. It will be the style of a soldier, plain and direct, where facts are to be narrated of a man, roused and inflamed, when the nature of man is outraged of a father, a husband, a lover, and a child, as the tale is of one or of the other.
You have all had a better education than your father. You have, most of you, a pleasant and graceful way of expressing yourselves on paper—and there is one among you, you know which I mean, the operations of whose mind are as vivid, and instantaneous, and beautiful, as flashes of coloured light—but there is not one among you, not one, that has yet learnt to talk on paper. Learn that—learn it speedily ; there is no time to be lost.
Farewell, my children, farewell: till the next mail. I shall expect you, a week, at least, before Christmas.