"Was it treason I committed, when I boldly and openly marched from Jamestown to Orapacks, at the head of the brave men who drove before them the savages by whom the dwellings of the Colony had been burned, and its women and children murdered? Did not the house of burgesses request the Governor to sign the commission, which the people had unanimously put into my hands? Did he not pledge his knightly word that the commissions should be ratified? Under the authority of that commission and that promise, have I not driven the enemies of civilized man before me, as I marched through the Peninsula? Have I not done what has never before been done? cut out a broad line of separation between the habitations of the white man and the savage? Have I not avenged the murders committed on the night of the massacre? Have I not avenged injuries committed against more than one member of this very court, by the bloody confederation? Have I not, with these hands, rescued the sister-in-law of the president of this very tribunal from the murderous tomahawk of the savages? True, it was only to die--but it was worthy of all my poor exertions to rescue her body from their unhallowed hands, that it might rest in consecrated ground. Have I not annihilated the confederation itself, cut to pieces the assembled tribes--rescued the prisoners, razed to the ground the fortifications at the falls, and made prisoners of the brave remnant of those misguided nations who erected it? If this be treason, then indeed am I a traitor! "Why is it that this great and glorious country, opened to the oppressed and crowded nations of the old world by a kind and beneficent Providence, must so often become the theatre of struggles for personal aggrandizement and power? Why is it that our arms must be turned against ourselves in fratricidal conflict, when so many enemies have been swarming upon our frontiers, and devastating our settlements? Must the great and evident designs of the Creator be thus constantly retarded? the great destinies of this vast land obscured in the dawn, by the petty struggles of contending chieftains? Who can tell how far to the mighty west the tide of civilization and emigration would have rolled their swelling waves, but for the scenes of personal rivalry and contention like the present, which have disgraced our annals? "The rosy tints of the morning dawn of destiny have scarcely risen in the east of this mighty continent--the boldest and the wildest imagination cannot soar into futurity, and predict its noon-day glories, or count up the tides and floods of human beings, that shall be wafted to these shores, and thence roll in successive waves, to the dark and as yet unknown west.