Quotes from Willard Sterne Randall

But Henry was not prepared to submit. In a speech supporting his resolutions, he supposedly exclaimed, "Tarquin and Caesar had each his Brutus, Charles the First his Cromwell, and George the Third..." Before he could finish the phrase, red-robed Speaker of the House John Robinson cried, "Treason! Treason," as other burgesses took up the cry. But Henry stared the Speaker in the eye and finished his sentence: "...may profit by their example! If this be treason, make the most of it!

Hamilton's second pamphlet made clear his maturing belief that private interest was the glue that would hold American society together and make it succeed. Just as long as Americans learned to rein in their impulse toward unbridled greed and could control, channel, and regulate their prosperity for the public good, they would be invincible even against English military might. 22

Working behind the scenes to advance his candidacy, Hamilton seemed unfazed by the fact that virtually all other commissions were going to native New Yorkers of wealth and social position. Here was a bastard, a newcomer who had arrived as an orphaned immigrant little more than three years earlier. But he was a nova whose writing, speaking, and fighting talents had dazzled more timid men with better claims on command.

When you ask for a frigate, they give you a raft. Ask for sailors, they give you tavern waiters. And if you want breeches, they give you a vest. Benedict Arnold to David Hawley, August 1776 In

Envy and malice are indefatigable. Where they have not invention enough to frame new slanders, or the slanders newly framed are found totally inadequate to their purpose, they will call in the feeble aid of old calumnies

I daily discover so much baseness and ingratitude among mankind that I almost blush at being of the same species, and could quit the stage without regret, was it not for some gentle, generous souls like my dear Peggy. Benedict

even in the Loyalist press inside British-occupied New York City by February 1779. The Royal Gazette, praising Benedict Arnold for being "more distinguished for valor and perseverance" than any other American, including Washington, wondered why the enemy was wasting his "military talents" and had permitted him "thus to fall into the unmerciful fangs of the executive council of Pennsylvania."1

The fiercely independent Arnold did not need the encouragement of Loyalists: he may have thought of changing sides as early as the seniority controversy two years earlier

in August 1777 that "no public or private injury or insult shall prevail on me to forsake the cause of my injured and oppressed country until I see peace and liberty restored or nobly die in the attempt."2

By 1778, British peace commissioners were offering to rectify all the American grievances of 1776, ignoring only the demand for independence.

No longer an American, Benedict Arnold was never accepted as an Englishman, either.

It would be the twentieth century before the opening of the British Headquarters Papers at the University of Michigan proved what the eighteenth century refused to believe that a young and beautiful woman was capable of helping Benedict Arnold plot the greatest conspiracy of the American Revolution and then completely fooling the astute warriors around her.

Prudence, policy and a true Christian spirit will lead us to look with compassion upon their errors without insulting them. While we are contending for our own liberty, we should be very cautious of violating the rights of conscience in others, ever considering that God alone is the judge of the hearts of men and to him only, in this case, they are answerable.16 When

One glaring problem was that the Continental Army, with few experienced officers, had to rely on foreign mercenaries. European officers from twenty countries

he often did at a moment of great crisis, Arnold threw a party for the congressmen in the mansion

against which all the force and artifice of tyranny will never be able to prevail. General

in status, he became a plantation manager,

By 1776, at least 225,000 Germans of at least 250 different Protestant sects migrated to America in the wake of European religious wars.

He had decided, almost hysterically it seems from the tone of this desperate letter to Washington, to turn his back on the people who had so rejected and wounded him, and make his peace with the British.

While he was to become adept at business, Hamilton, the man who was to found America's financial system, as a schoolboy had to struggle with mathematics.

Other Germans came not to settle but to fight beside the Americans, most notably the self-styled Baron von Steuben, a Prussian professional soldier who drilled the American troops at Valley Forge into a tightly disciplined, highly maneuverable army.

He claimed as a loss that "in consequence of his loyalty and engagements with Sir Henry Clinton he refused the command of the American Army in South Carolina, offered him by Washington, which was afterwards given to Greene, who [the memorialist is informed] has been rewarded . . . with the sum of 20,000 pounds . . . which would probably have been given to [Arnold] had he accepted the command."78

seventy to eighty former members of their secret police that the British left behind undetected in Philadelphia.

Return enraptur'd Hours, When Delia's heart was mine; When she, with wreaths of flowers, My Temples wou'd entwine. When Jealousy nor care Corroded in my Breast, But Visions, light as Air, Presided o'er my Rest— Now Nightly round my Bed No airy Visions play; No Flowers crown my Head Each Vernal Holyday? For far from those sad Plains My Lovely Delia flies, And rack'd with Jealous Pains, Her wretched Lover dies.34