Account of a refractory warrior, and of the spirit which still pervaded
the
New-England provinces.
WHILE these preparations were going on, the general[4] was making every
effort of the neighbourhood to urge those who had promised assistance,
to come forward with their allotted quotas.
Footnote 4:
Shirley.
On the other side of the river, not very far from the Flats, lived a
person whom I shall not name, though his conduct was so peculiar and
characteristic of the times, that his anti-heroism is, on that sole
account, worth mentioning. This person lived in great security and
abundance, in a place like an earthly paradise, and scarcely knew what
it was to have an ungratified wish, having had considerable wealth left
to him; and from the simple and domestic habits of his life, had formed
no desires beyond it, unless, indeed, it were the desire of being
thought a brave man, which seemed his greatest ambition. He was strong,
robust, and an excellent marksman; talked loud, looked fierce, and
always expressed the utmost scorn and detestation of cowardice. The
colonel applied to him, that his name, and the names of such adherents
as he could bring, might be set down in the list of those who were to
bring their quota, against a given time, for the general defence: with
the request he complied. When the rendezvous came on, this talking
warrior had changed his mind, and absolutely refused to appear. The
general sent for him, and warmly expostulated on his breach of promise;
the bad example, and the disarrangement of plan which it occasioned. The
culprit spoke in a high tone, saying, very truly, that “the general was
possessed of no legal means of coercion; that every one went or staid as
they chose; and that his change of opinion, on that subject, rendered
him liable to no penalty whatever.” Tired of this sophistry, the enraged
general had recourse to club law, and seizing a cudgel, belaboured this
recreant knight most manfully, while several Indian sachems, and many of
his own countrymen and friends, coolly stood by—for the colonel’s noted
common was the scene of this assault. Our poor neighbour, (as he long
after became,) suffered this dreadful bastinado, unaided and unpitied;
and this example, and the consequent contempt under which he laboured,
(for he was ever after styled captain, and did not refuse the title,)
was said to have an excellent effect in preventing such retrograde
motions in subsequent campaigns.[5] The provincial troops, aided by the
faithful Mohawks, performed their duty with great spirit and
perseverance. They were, indeed, very superior to the ignorant,
obstinate, and mean-souled beings, who, in after times, brought the very
name of provincial troops into discredit; and were actuated by no single
motive but that of avoiding the legal penalty then affixed to
disobedience, and enjoying the pay and provisions allotted to them by
the province, or the mother country, I cannot exactly say which.
Afterwards, when the refuse of mankind were selected, like Falstaff’s
soldiers, and raised much in the same way, the New-York troops still
maintained their respectability. This superiority might, without
reproaching others, be in some measure accounted for from incidental
causes. The four New-England provinces were much earlier settled—assumed
sooner the forms of a civil community, and lived within narrower bounds;
they were more laborious; their fanaticism, which they brought from
England in its utmost fervour, long continued its effervescence, where
there were no pleasures, or indeed, lucrative pursuits, to detach their
minds from it: and long after that genuine spirit of piety, which,
however narrowed and disfigured, was still sincere, had, in a great
measure, evaporated, enough of the pride and rigour of bigotry remained,
to make them detest and despise the Indian tribes, as ignorant, heathen
savages. The tribes, indeed, who inhabited their district, had been so
weakened by unsuccessful warfare with the Mohawks, and were so every way
inferior to them, that after the first establishment of the colony, and
a few feeble attacks successfully repulsed, they were no longer enemies
to be dreaded, or friends to be courted. This had an unhappy effect with
regard to those provinces; and to the different relations in which they
stood with respect to the Indians, some part of the striking difference
in the moral and military character of these various establishments must
be attributed.
Footnote 5:
Above thirty years after, when the writer of these pages lived with
her family at the Flats, the hero of this little tale used very
frequently to visit her father, a veteran officer, and being a great
talker, war and politics were his incessant topics. There was no
campaign or expedition proposed, but what he censured and decided on:
proposing methods of his own, by which they might have been much
better conducted; in short, Parolles, with his drum, was a mere type
of our neighbour. Her father long wondered how kindly he took to him,
and how a person of so much wealth and eloquence should dwell so
obscurely, and shun all the duties of public life; till at length we
discovered that he still loved to talk arrogantly of war and public
affairs, and pitched upon him for a listener, as the only person he
could suppose ignorant of his disgrace. Such is human nature! and so
incurable is human vanity!
The people of New-England left the mother country, as banished from it
by what they considered oppression; came over foaming with religious and
political fury, and narrowly missed having the most artful and able of
demagogues, Cromwell himself, for their leader and guide. They might be
compared to burning lava, discharged by the force of internal
combustion, from the bosom of the commonwealth, while inflamed by
contending elements. This lava, every one acquainted with the
convulsions of nature must know, takes a long time to cool, and when at
length it is cooled, turns to a substance hard and barren, that long
resists the kindly influence of the elements, before its surface resumes
the appearance of beauty and fertility. Such were the almost literal
effects of political convulsions, aggravated by a fiery and intolerant
zeal for their own mode of worship, on these self-righteous colonists.
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