"I am sorry that during this campaign I have been favored with so few opportunities of addressing you on subjects of the greatest importance, both with respect to this life and that which is to come; but what is past cannot be recalled, and NOW time will not admit an enlargement, as we have the greatest reason to expect the advancement of our enemies as speedily as Heaven will permit. [The wind blew strongly to the north.] Therefore, at present let it suffice to bring to your remembrance some necessary truths. "It is our common faith, and a very just one too, that all events on earth are under the notice of that God in whom we live, move, and have our being: therefore we must believe that in this important struggle with the worst of enemies he has assigned us our post here at Ticonderoga. Our situation is such that, if properly defended, we shall give our enemies a fatal blow, and in a great measure prove the means of the salvation of North America. Such is our present case, that we are fighting for all that is near and dear to us, while our enemies are engaged in the worst of causes, their design being to subjugate, plunder, and enslave a free people that have done them no harm. Their tyrannical views are so glaring, their cause so horribly bad, that there still remains too much goodness and humanity in Great Britain to engage unanimously against us: therefore they have been obliged--and at a most amazing expense, too--to hire the assistance of a barbarous, mercenary people, that would cut your throat for the small reward of a sixpence. No doubt these have hopes of being our task-masters, and would rejoice at our calamities. "Look, oh, look, therefore, at your respective States, and anticipate the consequences if these vassals are suffered to enter! It would fail the most fruitful imagination to represent in a proper light what anguish, what horror, what distress, would spread over the whole! See, oh, see the dear wives of your bosoms forced from their peaceful habitations, and perhaps used with such indecency that modesty would forbid the description! Behold, the fair virgins of your land, whose benevolent souls are now filled with a thousand good wishes and hopes of seeing their admirers return home crowned with victory, would not only meet with a doleful disappointment, but also with such insults and abuses that would induce their tender hearts to pray for the shades of death! See your children exposed as vagabonds to all the calamities of this life! Then, oh, then adieu to all felicity this side of the grave! Now, all these calamities must be prevented if our God be for us,--and who can doubt of this who observes the point in which the wind now blows?--if you will only acquit yourselves like men, and with firmness of mind go forth against your enemies, _resolving either to return with victory or to die gloriously_.