who resisted him would earn praises to eternity. From nearly
every colony came similar utterances, and flaming resentment at
injustice filled the volunteer army. Many a soldier would not
touch a cup of tea because tea had been the ruin of his country.
Some wore pinned to their hats or coats the words "Liberty or
Death" and talked of resisting tyranny until "time shall be no
more." It was a dark day for the motherland when so many of her
sons believed that she was the enemy of liberty. The iron of this
conviction entered into the soul of the American nation; at
Gettysburg, nearly a century later, Abraham Lincoln, in a noble
utterance which touched the heart of humanity, could appeal to
the days of the Revolution, when "our fathers brought forth on
this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty." The colonists
believed that they were fighting for something of import to all
mankind, and the nation which they created believes it still.

An age of war furnishes, however, occasion for the exercise of
baser impulses. The New Englander was a trader by instinct. An
army had come suddenly together and there was golden promise of
contracts for supplies at fat profits. The leader from Virginia,
untutored in such things, was astounded at the greedy scramble.
Before the year 1775 ended Washington wrote to his friend Lee
that he prayed God he might never again have to witness such lack
of public spirit, such jobbing and self-seeking, such "fertility
in all the low arts," as now he found at Cambridge. He declared
that if he could have foreseen all this nothing would have
induced him to take the command. Later, the young La Fayette, who
had left behind him in France wealth and luxury in order to fight
a hard fight in America, was shocked at the slackness and
indifference among the supposed patriots for whose cause he was