The Old Bell of Independence | Page 7

sunlight that, to-morrow morn, will glimmer on scenes of
blood. We have met, amid the whitening tents of our encampment,--in
times of terror and of gloom have we gathered together--God grant it
may not be for the last time!
'It is a solemn moment. Brethren, does not the solemn voice of nature
seem to echo the sympathies of the hour? The flag of our country
droops heavily from yonder staff; the breeze has died away along the
green plain of Chadd's Ford--the plain that spreads before us, glistening
in the sunlight; the heights of the Brandywine arise gloomy and grand
beyond the waters of yonder stream, and all nature holds a pause of
solemn silence, on the eve of the uproar and bloodshed and strife of
to-morrow.'
"The propriety of this language was manifest. Breathless attention was
pictured upon every countenance, and the smallest whisper could be
distinctly heard. Pausing a moment, as if running back, in his mind's
eye, over the eventful past, he again repeated his text:--
"'They that take the sword shall perish by the sword.'
'And have they not taken the sword?
'Let the desolated plain, the blood-soddened valley, the burnt
farm-house, blackening in the sun, the sacked village, and the ravaged
town, answer; let the whitening bones of the butchered farmer, strewn
along the fields of his homestead, answer; let the starving mother, with
the babe clinging to the withered breast, that can afford no sustenance,
let her answer; with the death-rattle mingling with the murmuring tones
that mark the last struggle for life--let the dying mother and her babe
answer!
'It was but a day past and our land slept in peace. War was not
here--wrong was not here. Fraud, and woe, and misery, and want, dwelt
not among us. From the eternal solitude of the green woods arose the
blue smoke of the settler's cabin, and golden fields of corn looked forth
from amid the waste of the wilderness, and the glad music of human
voices awoke the silence of the forest.
'Now! God of mercy, behold the change! Under the shadow of a
pretext--under the sanctity of the name of God--invoking the Redeemer
to their aid, do these foreign hirelings slay our people! They throng our
towns; they darken our plains; and now they encompass our posts on
the lonely plain of Chadd's Ford.

"The effect was electric. The keen eye of the in-trepid Wayne flashed
fire. The neighboring sentinels, who had paused to listen, quickened
their pace, with a proud tread and a nervous feeling, impatient for
vengeance on the vandal foe.
"Gathering strength once more, he checked the choking sensations his
own recital had caused, and continued:
"'They that take the sword shall perish by the sword.'
"Brethren, think me not unworthy of belief, when I tell you that the
doom of the Britisher is near! Think me not vain, when I tell you that
beyond the cloud that now enshrouds us, I see gathering, thick and fast,
the darker cloud and the blacker storm of a Divine retribution!
'They may conquer us on the morrow! Might and wrong may prevail,
and we may be driven from this field--but the hour of God's own
vengeance will surely come!
'Ay, if in the vast solitudes of eternal space, if in the heart of the
boundless universe, there throbs the being of an awful God, quick to
avenge, and sure to punish guilt, then will the man, George of
Brunswick, called king, feel in his brain and in his heart the vengeance
of the Eternal Jehovah! A blight will be upon his life--a withered brain,
an accurst intellect; a blight will be upon his children, and on his people.
Great God! how dread the punishment!
'A crowded populace, peopling the dense towns where the man of
money thrives, while the labourer starves; want striding among the
people in all its forms of terror; an ignorant and God-defying
priesthood chuckling over the miseries of millions; a proud and
merciless nobility adding wrong to wrong, and heaping insult upon
robbery and fraud; royalty corrupt to the very heart; aristocracy rotten
to the core; crime and want linked hand in hand, and tempting men to
deeds of woe and death--these are a part of the doom and the retribution
that shall come upon the English throne and the English people!'
"This was pronounced with a voice of such power, that its tones might
have reached almost to the Briton's camp, and struck upon the ear of
Howe as the prophetic inspiration of one whose keen eye had read from
the dark tablets of futurity.
"Looking around upon the officers, he perceived that Washington and
Lafayette had half risen from their seats, and were gazing spell-bound
at him, as if to drink in every word he uttered.

"Taking