“The British thought the war ended before they lost Trenton, I hear,” said Mrs. Allison, her eyes shining, for one of her ancestors had ridden with Nathaniel Bacon, the Virginian rebel, when there was British tyranny in the Old Dominion.
“No doubt of it; why, all of us in the army reckoned how the war couldn’t last much longer. We hadn’t rations nor clothes; the men were goin’ home when their time was up an’ wouldn’t enlist again. We heard that Cornwallis was goin’ home to tell the king how he’d licked us, an’ old Howe was gamblin’ an’ guzzlin’ in New York, spendin’ his prize money like water. Oh, they thought they had us licked for sure! 202 Long’s Washington lives they can’t lick us nohow, though they’ve got over thirty thousand men an’ plenty o’ money, an’ we with neither. But the soldiers are ’lowin’ as how France will help us. Benjamin Franklin is over there an’ they say he has a way o’ gittin’ what he goes after.”
“I believe it was Doctor Franklin’s ‘Poor Richard’ who said, ‘God helps those who help themselves.’ We’ve got to rely on ourselves,” Mrs. Allison said, as if speaking to herself, but all the while looking at Rodney.
He did not notice this, for he sat gazing into the fire, saying little, though no word of Angus escaped him. Finally, looking up and addressing his mother, he said, “Wasn’t it Mr. Mason who said he did not wish to survive the liberties of his country?”
“I think so,” she replied, adding, “but we say things in time of excitement which are pretty hard to live up to,” and turned away.
Rodney had secured quite profitable employment that winter. His mother’s health had improved, and the lad could hear the clatter of her loom through the open window one warm morning in early March when a passing horseman brought the news that “Dan Morgan was having hard work to raise a body of riflemen.” He had been appointed a colonel the previous fall, and, as soon as he was released from his parole, began to enlist men to go to the assistance of Washington at Morristown.
The man talked loudly, and the noise of the loom 203 ceased while Mrs. Allison listened. After supper that evening she said, “I hear that Colonel Morgan, of whom you have told me so much, is enlisting men.”
“Yes, mother, and there is no finer man for a leader than he, unless it is Washington.”
“I’ve thought, since Angus came home, that you were wishing you might enter the service.”
Rodney looked up quickly. “Why, if I could get away I’d like to go, but I––my duty is at home.”