We remember that Ethan Allen thundered on the portal of all earthly
kings at Ticonderoga; but we also remember that his hatred for the great
state of New York brought him and his men of Vermont perilously close to
the mire which defiled Charles Lee and Conway, and which engulfed poor
Benedict Arnold.

We follow Gates's army with painful sympathy to Saratoga, and there we
applaud a victory, but we turn from the commander in contempt, his
brutal, selfish, shallow nature all revealed.

We know him. We know them all--Ledyard, who died stainless, with his own
sword murdered; Herkimer, who died because he was not brave enough to do
his duty and be called a coward for doing it; Woolsey, the craven Major
at the Middle Fort, stammering filthy speeches in his terror when Sir
John Johnson's rangers closed in; Poor, who threw his life away for
vanity when that life belonged to the land! Yes, we know them
all--great, greater, and less great--our grandfather Franklin, who
trotted through a perfectly cold and selfishly contemptuous French
court, aged, alert, cheerful to the end; Schuyler, calm and
imperturbable, watching the North, which was his trust, and utterly
unmindful of self or of the pack yelping at his heels; Stark, Morgan,
Murphy, and Elerson, the brave riflemen; Spencer, the interpreter;
Visscher, Helmer, and the Stoners.

Into our horizon, too, move terrible shapes--not shadowy or lurid, but
living, breathing figures, who turn their eyes on us and hold out their
butcher hands: Walter Butler, with his awful smile; Sir John Johnson,
heavy and pallid--pallid, perhaps, with the memory of his broken
parole; Barry St. Leger, the drunken dealer in scalps; Guy Johnson,