Becoming America - An Exploration of American Literature from Precolonial to Post-Revolution, 2018a

BECOMING AMERICA
REVOLUTIONARY AND EARLY NATIONAL PERIOD LITERATURE
the sentiments they inspired grew with my earliest knowledge, and were grafted
upon the rst rudiments of my education. On the other hand, shall I arm myself
against that country where I rst drew breath, against the play-mates of my youth,
my bosom friends, my acquaintance?—the idea makes me shudder! Must I be
called a parricide, a traitor, a villain, lose the esteem of all those whom I love, to
preserve my own; be shunned like a rattlesnake, or be pointed at like a bear? I have
neither heroism not magnanimity enough to make so great a sacrice. Here I am
tied, I am fastened by numerous strings, nor do I repine at the pressure they cause;
ignorant as I am, I can pervade the utmost extent of the calamities which have
already overtaken our poor aicted country. I can see the great and accumulated
ruin yet extending itself as far as the theatre of war has reached; I hear the groans
of thousands of families now ruined and desolated by our aggressors. I cannot
count the multitude of orphans this war has made; nor ascertain the immensity of
blood we have lost. Some have asked, whether it was a crime to resist; to repel some
parts of this evil. Others have asserted, that a resistance so general makes pardon
unattainable, and repentance useless: and dividing the crime among so many,
renders it imperceptible. What one party calls meritorious, the other denominates
agitious. These opinions vary, contract, or expand, like the events of the war on
which they are founded. What can an insignicant man do in the midst of these
jarring contradictory parties, equally hostile to persons situated as I am? And
after all who will be the really guilty?—Those most certainly who fail of success.
Our fate, the fate of thousands, is then necessarily involved in the dark wheel of
fortune. Why then so many useless reasonings; we are the sport of fate. Farewell
education, principles, love of our country, farewell; all are become useless to the
generality of us: he who governs himself according to what he calls his principles,
may be punished either by one party or the other, for those very principles. He
who proceeds without principle, as chance, timidity, or self-preservation directs,
will not perhaps fare better; but he will be less blamed. What are we in the great
scale of events, we poor defenceless frontier inhabitants? What is it to the gazing
world, whether we breathe or whether we die? Whatever virtue, whatever merit
and disinterestedness we may exhibit in our secluded retreats, of what avail?
We are like the pismires destroyed by the plough; whose destruction prevents
not the future crop. Self-preservation, therefore, the rule of nature, seems to be the
best rule of conduct; what good can we do by vain resistance, by useless eorts? The
cool, the distant spectator, placed in safety, may arraign me for ingratitude, may
bring forth the principles of Solon or Montesquieu; he may look on me as wilfully
guilty; he may call me by the most opprobrious names. Secure from personal danger,
his warm imagination, undisturbed by the least agitation of the heart, will expatiate
freely on this grand question; and will consider this extended eld, but as exhibiting
the double scene of attack and defence. To him the object becomes abstracted, the
intermediate glares, the perspective distance and a variety of opinions unimpaired
by aections, presents to his mind but one set of ideas. Here he proclaims the high
guilt of the one, and there the right of the other; but let him come and reside with us
Page | 417