ETHAN ALLEN
When Ethan Allen, the Green Mountain Boy, broke into Fort Ticonderoga at the head of a handful of followers and demanded its surrender, its bewildered and still sleepy Commandant began to stutter out a very natural inquiry as to the authority in whose name Allen acted. History has recorded Allen’s grandiloquent reply: In the name of the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress! (But certain old Vermonters will have it that his actual words were, Here, come out of that, you old rascal and give us the fort, quick, or we’ll smoke you out like rats!)
ANTHONY WAYNE
Mad Anthony Wayne was wounded in the head by a musket-ball during his famous assault on Stony Point. He fell to the ground with blood streaming over his face, and for a moment supposed himself to be mortally wounded. His order to his aids was eminently characteristic, Carry me into the fort and let me die at the head of the column.
JOHN STARK
It was before the Battle of Bennington, fought and won in defiance of the orders of the too cautious Congress, that bold John Stark uttered his famous invocation to his men: There they are, boys, he shouted, waving his sword toward the enemy; we’ll get ’em, or to-night Molly Stark’ll be a widow.
BENEDICT ARNOLD
A pitiful story is told of the death in London, twenty years after the War, of Benedict Arnold, the traitor. His last request was for the old epaulettes and sword-knot given him by Washington. Let me die, said he, in the old American uniform, in which I fought my battles. God forgive me for ever having put on any other!
GEORGE THE THIRD
It is well to remember, in these days, that George Washington was in reality an Englishman who fought a German king whom chance had seated on the throne of England. And it is well to recall also that George the Third, though obstinate and wrong-headed enough, gave in at last with a better grace than might have been expected. To John Adams, our first minister to England, he said: Sir, I will be very free with you. I was the last to consent to the separation, but the separation having been made ... I have always said and I say now, that I would be the first to meet the friendship of the United States as an independent power.