[38] John Fries (1764?-1825) was the leader of seven hundred men who forcibly resisted the levying of the "house or window" tax in Northampton, Bucks, and Montgomery counties, Pennsylvania, in 1798-1799. These men liberated prisoners and "arrested" the assessors themselves; and Fries, when marching toward Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, resisted a United States marshal. He was tried for treason in 1799, found guilty, given a new trial in 1800, again found guilty, and sentenced to be hanged; but President John Adams, against the advice of all his cabinet, pardoned him and gave a general amnesty to the rioters. Fries became a well-to-do merchant in Philadelphia. [39] Interesting examples of Webster's revision of important passages in this speech may be found by comparing the present standard text with the original versions as preserved in the Boston Public Library. The eulogium of Massachusetts, beginning "Mr. President, I shall enter on no encomium" and ending with "the very spot of its origin," was spoken thus: "Sir, I shall be led on this occasion into no eulogium on Massachusetts. I shall paint no portraiture of her merits, original, ancient or modern. Yet, Sir, I cannot but remember that Boston was the cradle of liberty, that in Massachusetts (the parent of this accursed policy so eternally narrow to the West), etc., etc., etc. I cannot forget that Lexington, Concord and Bunker Hill _are_ in Massachusetts, and that in men and means and money she _did_ contribute more than any other State to carry on the Revolutionary war. There was not a State in the Union whose soil was not wetted with Massachusetts blood in the Revolutionary war, and it is to be remembered that of the army to which Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown a majority consisted of New England troops. It is painful to me to recur to these recollections even for the purpose of self-defence, and even to that end, Sir, I will not extol the intelligence, the character and the virtue of the people of New England. I leave the theme to itself, here and everywhere, now and forever." The first form of the famous concluding passage was as follows: