CHAPTER V
THE WAR OFFICE IN THE CEDARS—AN INDIAN TALE—INCIDENTS
The old war office at Lebanon, Conn., is still to be seen. That war office is a relic room and a library now. The great cedars are gone that once surrounded it, and the old Alden Tavern, which was enlivened by colonial tales, and in later times by the queer Revolutionary tale of the humiliation of the captured Prescott, has now left behind it the borders of the village green. The ground where Washington reviewed the army of Rochambeau is still held sacred, and near by rises the church of the Revolution, and in a wind-swept New England graveyard, on the hillside, in a crumbling tomb, sleeps Governor Trumbull, Washington’s “Brother Jonathan,” whom the great leader of the soldier commoners used to consult in every stress of the war.
In the same lot of rude, mossy, zigzag headstones rests one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, William Williams, who married Governor Trumbull’s daughter.
This place of rare history stands apart from the main traveled roads. To reach it, go to Willimantic, and take a branch railroad to Lebanon, which town of hidden farms was so called from its cedars.
What a wonder to a lover of history this place is! The farms, with orchards, great barns and meadows, rise on the hill-slopes as beautiful as they are thrifty. The town is some two or more miles from the railroad, and the visitor wonders how a place that decided the greatest events of history could have been left to primitive life, simplicity, and country roads, amid all the industrial activities that circle round it in near great factory towns.
There may be seen the New England of old—the same bowery landscapes and walls that the rugged farmers knew, who left their plows for Bunker Hill, after the Lexington alarm. Putnam often rode over these hills, and young John Trumbull, as we have shown, began his historical pictures there.
The little gambrel-roofed house called the war office, where the greatest and most decisive events of the Revolution had their origin, or support, was probably the country store of Governor Trumbull’s father, and was erected near the beginning of the eighteenth century.
Why did this little building gain this great importance, an importance greater than any other, except, perhaps, the old State House, Boston, and Independence Hall, Philadelphia? Let us repeat some facts for clearness.