uals. It was degrading, also, because it involved currying favor with the British, and heaping unnatural abuse upon the country which gave them birth. They became ever more inflamed; until the hideous butchery of Wyoming and similar massacres and outrages in many parts of the country, which have aroused the horror of the world, were perpetrated at the instigation not of the British, nor even of the Indians, but of the tories; and the greatest of the barbarities committed were their work. When the British retired from any section of the country which they had occupied, the lot of the tories was to the last degree wretched; for they had no home; that in which they were born they had forfeited, and the English had none to offer them; they had always despised them, though they had used them; and now they turned their backs on them. But not all of these unhappy men were unworthy; many were honorable in their own eyes, and sincerely convinced that their patriotic fellow-countrymen were traitors, deserving of punishment. The whole subject of Toryism in America is one of unrelieved gloom or sinister iniquity. But there were other kinds of mischief afoot in these times. It might often appear surprising that the American army should have been the victim of so much suffering, knowing as we do that the country was not poor, but had enjoyed the comforts and many of the luxuries of life at the time the war broke out. How happened it, then, that our soldiers went shoeless and ill-clad; that they lacked blankets, tents, and the commonest necessaries of a campaign? A soldier does not expect to fare as sumptuously on the march as he does at home; but there is a wide margin between severe simplicity, and nakedness and starvation. The same men who in 1777 walked barefoot through ice and snow, slept on the bare earth, lacked even a pair of breeches, and sometimes had but one ragged suit of clothes between two of them-had, the year before, enjoyed whatever is requisite for reasonable ease and convenience. Why this sudden change? The explanation is to be found in the widespread and monstrous corruption that prevailed. It was not, nor is it ever, the case that a majority, or even a large proportion, of the people were dishonest. But those who were willing to make money out of the needs and perils of the country were sufficiently numerous, and forced themselves into positions, to produce the effect of a prevailing moral rottenness. We of this age, unfortunately, do not need to be told of the thievishness of government contractors, or of the selfish rapacity of individuals who have control of supplies. Yet it seems almost incredible that citizens of the States who were being defended by other citizens at the cost of comfort, property and life, should find it in their hearts to cheat them out of things essential to their support in the field; should sell food which would keep them from starving to the British troops and mercenaries who were brought to the country to destroy them; and should actually, on some occasions, destroy supplies rather than sell them to the patriot army at a government valuation. It seems improbable that officers of the commissary department should be so intent on filling their own pockets as to neglect to distribute supplies intended for the troops; so that while the latter were marching and fighting unshod and unclad, abundance of shoes and clothing should be rotting in cases and barrels by the roadside. We shrink from believing that, at this crisis of the national history, when the righting of the wrongs of a hundred years was on the point of being accomplished, soldiers and their officers should be found who would take money and bounties for services which they never meant to render, or use their positions not to fight for their country, but to defraud and dishonor it. We are slow to admit that officers of the army could be selected and appointed, not for any knowledge or ability in war, or any personal merits or intelligence which might render them worthy at least of the respect which is due to personal character-but solely because by ill-smelling intrigue and bribery they had wormed their way into places which were meant for posts of honor, but which they coveted only in order to use them as the means of thievish gains. Desertions and treason occur in all armies, and we could not expect the American army to be free from them; but neither should we expect the American army to be, as for a time it was, conspicuous above all others for these disgraceful crimes. All the abuses here enumerated, and many others, existed in appalling profusion; and it might safely be maintained that had they not existed, the war of the Revolution would have lasted but a third or a fourth as long as it did. The enemy in the field was far less dangerous and deadly than the enemy in our own house. At the very time when patriotism was being displayed by some in its purest and noblest forms, all the vices and meannesses that are most opposite to patriotism were being exhibited by others. Even among the ranks of the leaders of the nation men were found, whose virtue in the ordinary sense was beyond suspicion or cavil, who yet were so infected by envy, selfish ambition, prejudice and malice that they did not scruple to strike at the vitals of the state, if so they might injure or destroy the objects of their private animosity. There has never been a war more just in its object than that of our Revolution; and if, nevertheless, such evils could spring up in its footsteps, there seems reason in the common saying that war demoralizes a country. But a truer discrimination perceives that though war forces to the surface the latent crime and corruption in a community, it does at the same time lay deep the foundations of virtues which endure after the noxious but transient growths of evil have passed away. We have long since forgotten the creatures who lied and stole and stabbed in the back and betrayed; but we shall never forget Washington, Jefferson, Greene, Stark, the two Adamses in their nobler aspects, Lafayette, Gadsden, Hamilton, and the rest of that conclave; nor shall we ever cease to benefit by what they thought and did for their country and ours. It was the war which transfigured them out of simple country gentlemen or |