of the officers who were in no single respect distinguishable from the men, other than in the colored cockades, which for this very purpose had been prescribed in general orders; a different color being assigned to the officers of each grade. So far from aiming at a deportment which might raise them above their privates and thence prompt them to due respect and obedience to their commands, the object was, by humility, to preserve the existing blessing of equality, an illustrious instance of which was given by Colonel Putnam, the chief engineer of the army, and no less a personage than the nephew of the major-general of that name. 'What,' says a person meeting him one day with a piece of meat in his hand, 'carrying home your rations yourself, colonel! 'Yes,' says he, 'and I do it to set the officers a good example.'"

(Graydon's Memoirs, edition of 1846, p. 147.)

We have grown into a habit of depicting all our revolutionary forefathers, both privates and officers, in beautiful buff and blue uniform as if we were from the start a regularly organized, independent nation, fighting regular battles with another independent nation. There were, I believe, at times a select few, more usually officers, who succeeded in having such a uniform. But the great mass of our rebel troops had no uniforms at all. They wore a hunting shirt or smock frock which was merely a cheap cotton shirt belted round the waist and with the ends hanging outside over the hips instead of being tucked into the trousers. Into the loose bosom of this garment above the belt could be stuffed bread, pork, and all sorts of articles including a frying pan.

We of course do not like to have a picture of one of our ancestors painted in such a garment. It would not look well. It is better to have some theoretical uniform, the uniform that our fathers would have had if they had had the money and time to get one, painted on top of a picture of our ancestor.

Lafayette has described in his memoirs the rebel army he found in this country on his arrival in the summer of 1777:

When the French officers appeared among us after the alliance, our officers were often unable to entertain them for lack of decent clothes and food. Washington in an order of July 24, 1776, said:

That was the sort of army Washington commanded; an army to which he could seldom give orders but only recommendations and suggestions. It often melted away before his eyes without any power on his part to stop desertion. At New York in 1776 he collected as you know by the utmost exertion about 18,000 men, but so afflicted with camp fevers and disease that only 14,000 of them were effective, and these were more of a rabble than an army. At the battle of Long Island and other engagements round New York they were easily beaten by General Howe's huge army of 34,000, and as is generally believed could have been annihilated or exterminated if that general had chosen to do so. As it was they were so broken up and scattered that they disappeared to their homes, and Washington fled across New Jersey and crossed the Delaware with only 3,300 men.

The Continental Congress fled from Philadelphia. It was a migrating congress for many a day afterwards; travelling from one place of refuge to another with its little printing press and papers carried in a wagon.

If you had been living in those days you would have said that the rebellion had now certainly reached the point of scientific defeat and should be abandoned and all hope of independence given up. Thousands of people at that time said so. The loyalists of course said so; and many who had been rebels, or had been watching to see if the rebellion had any chance at all, now turned against it and took the British oath of allegiance. That is unquestionably what you would have done if you had been living at that time with your present opinions. Your great grandfather however was not of that mind, nor was Washington.

In fact, Washington prepared to become the worst kind of a guerilla; and you will find his letter on the subject in the second volume of Irving's life of him, chapter XLI. In case of being further pressed he said, "We must then retire to Augusta county, in Virginia. Numbers will repair to us for safety and we will then try a predatory war. If overpowered we must cross the Allegheny mountains."

What do you think of that? What a wicked man he must have been. He intended to abandon the seaboard colonies, taking with him all the rebels who would follow him; and a great many including your ancestor would have to follow him, for if they remained behind they would be hung. He proposed a "grand trek" to get away from those British who are said to govern so well, just as the Boers "treked" away from them into the deserts of South Africa nearly a hundred years ago, because they did not fancy what they had experienced of that supposed excellent government.

Having secured a refuge for the rebel congress and his followers on the edge of what was then the Western Wilderness, Washington proposes to maintain himself there by what he calls "predatory war," and I suppose you know what that is. If unsuccessful in that, he intended to cross the Allegheny mountains and plunge into that vast unknown region with the Indians and the buffaloes, which stretched away 3,000 miles to the Pacific ocean. There, assisted by the great distances he could play havoc with an invading British force; cut their slender communications and their cordons of blockhouses as the Boers are doing to-day in South Africa.

This last resort of the rebel colonists was so obvious that it was often discussed not only in the colonies but in England. It was greatly feared by the tory ministry, because it might indefinitely prolong the war. The whigs prophesied disaster from it; and Burke in one of his speeches refers to it in an eloquent passage in which he describes the rebel colonists retreating to that vast interior of fertile plains where they would grow into marvels of hardihood and desperation; how they would become myriads of American Tartars and pour down a fierce and irresistible cavalry upon the narrow strip of sea coast, sweeping before them "your governors, your councillors, your collectors and comptrollers and all the slaves that adhere to them."

In other words the tories dreaded what not so very long afterwards they accomplished in South Africa. They forced the Boers out of Cape Colony and they went by the grand trek into the interior plains where they founded two fierce and free republics, such as Washington might very readily have founded west of the Alleghenies. A turn of the hand, the failure of the French Alliance might have placed the United States in a position somewhat similar to that of South Africa or to that of Ireland if you like. The effect of British brutal and stupid violence on a high strung and independence-loving people will always be very much the same everywhere.

But to return to Washington's letter. You very likely read it when