shall transmit to our children as the richest legacy they can inherit.
The War of the Revolution, it has been justly remarked, was not a war of
armies merely--it was the war of nearly a whole people, and such a people
as the world had never before seen, in a death struggle for liberty.

"The losses, sacrifices, and sufferings of that period were common to all
classes and conditions of life. Those who remained at home suffered
hardly less than those who entered upon the active strife. The aged
father and another underwent not less than the son, who would have been
the comfort and stay of their declining years, now called to perform a
yet higher duty--to follow the standard of his bleeding country. The
young mother, with her helpless children, excites not less deeply our
sympathies, contending with want, and dragging out years of weary and
toilsome days and anxious nights, than the husband in the field,
following the fortunes of our arms without the proper habiliments to
protect his person, or the requisite sustenance to support his strength.
Sir, I never think of that patient, enduring, self-sacrificing army,
which crossed the Delaware in December, 1777, marching barefooted upon
frozen ground to encounter the foe, and leaving bloody footprints for
miles behind then--I never think of their sufferings during that terrible
winter without involuntarily inquiring, Where then were their families?
Who lit up the cheerful fire upon their hearths at home? Who spoke the
word of comfort and encouragement? Nay, sir, who furnished protection
from the rigors of winter, and brought them the necessary means of
subsistence?'

"The true and simple answer to these questions would disclose an amount
of suffering and anguish, mental and physical, such as might not have
been found in the ranks of the armies--not even in the severest trial of
that fortitude which never faltered, and that power of endurance which