to erase this charge from a document generally printed in the fore-front
of their Constitution and Laws, and with which every schoolboy is
sedulously made familiar.

"Perhaps, indeed, it would have been otherwise had not the charge been
one which circumstances appeared to confirm. For, in fact, owing to
causes already indicated, the Americans never could make friends of the
Indians in the contest, and consequently the 'merciless savages'
continue in history to figure on the side of the British. Who could
wonder at it? At the date of the Declaration of Independence, the Indian
child had only just reached man's estate, who in the year of his birth
might have escaped being a victim to the bounty of L20, held out for the
scalp of every Indian woman and child, by Massachusetts, in 1775, whilst
one of L40 had been offered for that of his father, raised in 1776 to
L300. It did not require the retentive memory of the redskin to make him
look with suspicion on solicitations of friendship from men who might
have been parties to such schemes of extermination to his race." (The
Ludlow's History of the War of Independence, 1777-1783, Chap. v., pp.
124-126.)

"But Jefferson's violent pamphlet should, in fact, be looked upon less
as a Declaration of Independence than as a Declaration of War--less as
an assertion of right than as a cry of defiance uttered in the hour of
grave peril, and in the face of a formidable foe."--_Ib._, p. 126.]

[Footnote 76: Some of the members of Congress were, at times, not so
reticent as their oaths of secrecy required, and the squabbles of
Conference became known abroad. It is a curious illustration of the
dignity and character of a body, when the least publication of its
proceedings becomes its disgrace.

"In those days (1779), far unlike our own, the Congress resembled a
Committee or a Junta, much rather than a chamber of debate. The
speeches, it is said, were all in the style of private conversation.
There were never more than forty members present, often no more than
twenty. These small numbers, however, by no means ensured harmony, nor
precluded violent and unseemly quarrels, rumours of which were not slow
in passing the Atlantic. 'For God's sake,' thus wrote La Fayette from
France, 'for God's sake, prevent the Congress from disputing loudly
together. Nothing so much hurts the interest and reputation of America.'
Thus the object of concealment, unless, perhaps, for private purposes,
was most impe