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Some Materials to Serve for a Brief Memoir of John Daly Burk (1868)
Some Materials to Serve for a Brief Memoir of John Daly Burk - 1868 Author:Charles Campbell Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: and their boasted armada and their redoubtable army disappear. The deplorable condition of the Republican army, in the Jerseys, next engages our attention and... more » sympathy. Those poor fellows, on whose swords hung the fate of liberty, were in want of everything. Without clothes, and often without food ; obliged occasionally to fight and retire before superior numbers, their patriotism, their constancy, did not for a moment desert them. The rout of this handful of heroes is tracked by the blood, which streamed from their naked and lacerated feet: the British are close in their rear, and escape appears impossible. The genius of liberty hangs her head, and almost despairs of the Republic. Trenton, Princetown, Quebec, Saratoga, Cowpens, Yorktown, deathless names! how shall I do justice to your fame. Although my zeal is untired, my time is limited, and I sink under the emotions excited by your glories. I find, however, consolation for my incompetence, by reflecting on your claims to immortality: you have furnished abundant matter for the Painter, the Historian and the Poet: more durable than monuments of brass, or than the Pyramids of Egypt; while those stupendous monuments of human force and human folly shall have long crumbled into dust, your names shall sail forever down the stream of time, ever young, fresh and immortal. The acknowledgment of independence by thepeace of '82 forms the third grand epoch in American history. This era had its rise in the love of liberty, which every where prevailed, and in the painful and constant sacrifices of the people. By this event, the principles of eternal justice were consecrated in the hearts of three millions of human beings, while at the same time, a glorious example was held out to the oppressed in every quarter of the globe. Now...« less