Proceedings of the New York Historical Association [1906]. New York State Historical Association. Meeting
![Proceedings of the New York Historical Association [1906] - New York State Historical Association. Meeting](limg_read866290.jpg "Proceedings of the New York Historical Association [1906] - New York State Historical Association. Meeting")
the latter years of the war, and if you search history for a thousand years you will not be able to find an aggregation of political castros equal to this same Continental Congress. The men who had made the primal congresses great had set themselves to serve the nation in other ways, and Congress had fallen to those who had some money without brains or brains without principle, or lacking both, were like our modern ones in that they loved "graft" and knew how to get it.
Sullivan was not a liar, and he himself says that his health was failing. If we care to plow through the many diaries kept by officers under him we can well believe that he told the truth, for with the spoiling of the provisions sent to the expedition most of the soldiers did suffer from chronic intestinal troubles, and it would be strange if the commander who takes the same fare as his subordinates should not suffer in the same manner.
And to back up this we must remember that even after he retired he never lost the confidence or the love of the greatest of them all, General Washington. Much has been written of General Sullivan's fallibilities, and fallibilities the greatest have.
We should remember that Sullivan was a Kelt. And through the centuries the Kelts have given us the lordliest orators and golden artists, but for tenacity of purpose no one has celebrated them.
General Sullivan when he was taken prisoner and fell under the influence of the British military power, and contrasting them with the meagerness that he had been accustomed to, for once his heart failed him and his soul sank within him, and it is no sorrow to his name to say that for the moment he thought the liberty of mankind in the Western continent was doomed.
He came from the British to us seeking peace, but after he was exchanged and in his old environment his true native Keltic courage returned and his after life was the life of an ardent patriot.
I do not think we give enough credit to the perceptions of the ignorant.
Suppose to ten thousand ignorant people this entirely hypothetical question should be stated: Around the globe is a people who for three hundred years had been fighting a tyrannical power and well nigh achieved success. Would it be right for a republic to step in and take them away from the power they were in rebellion against, and then this republic by force of arms prevent them from becoming an independent republic? State to ten thousand ignorant people this question, and they will shout with one voice "that it is not right." State this question to ten thousand college professors, and they will back and fill, debate and re-debate, and finally be fogged by their very knowledge and at last come to no conclusion at all.
It has never been sufficiently made clear that the classes fought the Revolutionary war. The educated, the elegant, the conservative, the well-to-do, in short the "better elements," were practically all with the British. While the broken, the ignorant, the discouraged, "the rabble," were the ones that won our liberty. Every single Tory that was expatriated could read and write, while I believe if the muster rolls of my own county, inhabited at that time by the educated Dutch, not one-third of those who enlisted could sign their names. So coldly did the wealthy Dutchman look upon the war that it was a common trick for him to send a slave to serve in the ranks instead of himself.
Sullivan by birth and position belonged among the former class, and yet in spite of position, broke with his own class and gladly took up the sword with the ignorant because he saw clearly that all social progress must from very necessity spring from the discontent of the Hoi Polloi. He was a true patriot for he lost his all by giving his attention to public rather than private affairs, and though respected by all and honored by his State, his last years were the years of gloom and the gathering clouds, for his life was beset by heartless creditors. The last scene is the saddest of all, for at his funeral his creditors tried to seize his body and would have done so, except that an old army general drew his pistols and drove off the bailiffs of the law. So was buried one of America's greatest patriots, a constant friend, a brave and good soldier, and a man who, take him ail in all, it is not an exaggeration to call "Great."
THE PRIMARY CAUSES OF THE
BORDER WARS
By Francis W. Halsey.
General Sullivan's expedition of 1779 was an immediate outcome of the massacres of Wyoming and Cherry Valley in the summer and autumn of 1778—not to mention those minor incidents of the Border Wars, which, beginning in the summer of 1777, had converted the valley of the upper Susquehanna into a land of desolation. It was a most drastic punishment that Sullivan inflicted, and such it was intended by Congress that his work should be. "The immediate objects," said Washington, in his letter of instruction to Sullivan, "are the total destruction and devastation of the Indian settlements," He added that the Indian country was "not to be merely overrun, but destroyed." If we have regard for proportions, greater losses were inflicted upon the Indians by Sullivan than were ever inflicted upon the settlements of New York by the Indians.
The expedition, however, failed completely in achieving its main purpose, which was to suppress the Indian raids. Sullivan and his army had scarcely left the Western country, when the Indian attacks were renewed and for three years were continued with a savage energy before unknown. The Indians' thirst for revenge having been thoroughly aroused, nothing could afterwards restrain their hands. Aside from the burning of German Flats and the battle of Oriskany (the latter not properly an incident of the Border Wars, since it was an integral part of the Burgoyne campaign), the injury done by the Indians to the Mohawk Valley was done subsequent to the Sullivan expedition.
In their entirety, the Border Wars constitute a phase of the Revolution of which far too little has been remembered. We may seek in vain for a territory elsewhere in the United States where so much destruction was done to non-combatants. In Tryon county alone, 12,000 farms went out of cultivation; fully two-thirds of the population either died or fled, While of the one-third who remained 300 were widows and 2,000 orphans. And yet, as I have said, the losses of the Iroquois were greater still.
But it is with the causes which led to this savage work that I am here to deal. For quite 100 years, Joseph Brant and the Tories of the Mohawk Valley, with Col. Guy and Sir John Johnson, and John and Walter Butler, at their head, were generally accepted as the original and inspiring forces in all the barbarities committed. The greater offenders, however, were men of much higher station and more ample powers—men who had never seen the valleys of the Susquehanna and the Mohawk, but who lived in London, and as members of the King's Cabinet were in direct charge of the war in America. One of them was the Earl of Dartmouth, the other Lord George Germaine; but it is to Germaine that we must ascribe the chief odium.
The administration of the Province of New York, when the Revolution began, was completely in the hands of Loyalists. New York was still a Crown colony, officials holding their appointments directly from London. Outside the official class, however, there were patriots in plenty; none of the colonies possessed more; but as New York City was completely dominated by Tory influences, so was the Mohawk Valley dominated by the Johnsons and their army of followers, in whom loyalty to England was a deep-seated sentiment and a fixed principle of conduct. Sir William Johnson had died just as the Revolution was about to begin. His successors became not only as great Loyalists as ever he had been, but, being men of smaller minds and fewer talents. They added to the sentiment of loyalty an expression of it which took the form of satanic bitterness and brute savagery. It was these men who, with their followers, became the hated Tories of the frontier of New York—men of whom in some instances, Joseph Brant said, they had been more savage than the savages themselves.
The attitude of the Indians can be best understood if we remember that they had been practically in alliance with the English of New York for a hundred years. When war began between the mother country and the colonies, or between what the Indians called "two brother nations," they were lost in amazement and tried in vain to understand it. Their own history for three hundred years had been