Choice Specimens of American Literature, and Literary Reader: Being Selections from the Chief American WritersMartin, Benj. N. (Benjamin Nicholas)
General
Choice Specimens of American Literature, and Literary Reader: Being Selections from the Chief American Writers
Martin, Benj. N. (Benjamin Nicholas)
American literature
Physical and even corporeal national characteristics, did not escape
comparison in this normal contest. The American rather more active and
more demonstrative than his ancestors, many of the officers of imposing
figure, Scott and McNeil particularly, towering with gigantic stature
above the rest, stood opposed in striking contrast to the short, thick,
brawny, burly Briton, hard to overcome.... The Marquis of Tweedale,
with his sturdy, short person, and stubborn courage, represented
the British.... Even the names betokened at once consanguinity and
hostility. Scott, McNeill, and McRee, in arms against Gordon, Hay, and
Maconochie. And the harsh Scotch nomenclature, compared with the more
euphonious savage Canada, Chippewa, Niagara, which latter modern English
prosody has corrupted from the measure of Goldsmith's Traveller:--
"Where wild Oswego spreads her swamps around,
And Niagara stuns with thundering sound."
... Mankind impressed by numbers and bloodshed, regard the second more
extensive battle near the falls of Niagara, on the 25th of the same
month, between the same parties with British reinforcements, known as
the battle of Bridgewater, as more important than its precursor.... The
victory of Chippewa was the resurrection or birth of American arms,
after their prostration by so long disuse, and when at length taken up
again, by such continual and deplorable failures, that the martial and
moral influence of the first decided victory opened and characterized
an epoch in the annals and intercourse of the two kindred and rival
nations, whose language is to be spoken, as their institutions are
rapidly spreading, throughout most of mankind. Fought between only some
three or four thousand men in both armies, at a place remote from
either of their countries, the battle of Chippewa may not bear vulgar
comparison with the great military engagements of modern Europe.
... The charm of British military invincibility was as effectually
broken, by a single brigade, as that of naval supremacy was by a single
frigate, as much as if a large army or fleet had been the agent.
* * * * *
=_Henry M. Brackenridge,[38] 1786-._= (Manual, p. 505.)
From "Recollections of the West."
=_120._= OLD ST. GENEVIEVE, IN MISSOURI.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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