Benjamin Franklin.
Very few Englishmen believed that the Americans would fight. Lord Sandwich said that they were a lot of undisciplined cowards, who would take to their heels at the first sound of a cannon, and that it would be easy to frighten them into submission. The "Pennsylvania Song" was evidently written to answer this assertion.
PENNSYLVANIA SONG
We are the troop that ne'er will stoop
To wretched slavery,
Nor shall our seed, by our base deed,
Despisèd vassals be;
Freedom we will bequeath to them,
Or we will bravely die;
Our greatest foe, ere long shall know,
How much did Sandwich lie.
And all the world shall know,
Americans are free;
Nor slaves nor cowards we will prove,
Great Britain soon shall see.
We'll not give up our birthright,
Our foes shall find us men;
As good as they, in any shape,
The British troops shall ken.
Huzza! brave boys, we'll beat them
On any hostile plain;
For Freedom, wives, and children dear,
The battle we'll maintain.
And all the world, etc.
What! can those British tyrants think,
Our fathers cross'd the main,
And savage foes, and dangers met,
To be enslav'd by them?
If so, they are mistaken,
For we will rather die;
And since they have become our foes,
Their forces we defy.
And all the world, etc.
Dunlap's Packet, 1775.
About the middle of December, 1774, deputies appointed by the freemen of Maryland met at Annapolis, and unanimously resolved to resist the attempts of Parliament to tax the colonies and to support the acts of the Continental Congress. They also recommended that every man should provide himself with "a good firelock, with bayonet attached, powder and ball," to be in readiness to act in any emergency.
MARYLAND RESOLVES
[December, 1774]