“For God’s sake, forward it by night and by day,” wrote Cornelius Harnett, by the express which sped for Brunswick. Patriots of South Carolina caught up its tones at the border and despatched it to Charleston, and through pines and palmettos and moss-clad live-oaks, farther to the south, till it resounded among the New England settlements beyond Savannah.
The Blue Ridge took up the voice, and made it heard from one end to the other of the valley of Virginia. The Alleghanies, as they listened, opened their barriers, that the “loud call” might pass through to the hardy riflemen on the Holston, the Watauga, and the French Broad. Ever renewing its strength, powerful enough even to create a commonwealth, it breathed its inspiring word to the first settlers of Kentucky; so that hunters who made their halt in the matchless valley of the Elkhorn commemorated the 19th day of April, 1775, by naming their encampment Lexington.
With one impulse the colonies sprung to arms; with one spirit they pledged themselves to each other “to be ready for the extreme event.” With one heart the continent cried, “Liberty or Death!”
THE VOLUNTEER
BY ELBRIDGE JEFFERSON CUTLER
“At dawn,” he said, “I bid them all farewell,
To go where bugles call and rifles gleam.”
And with the restless thought asleep he fell,
And glided into dream.
A great hot plain from sea to mountain spread,—