Abraham stoutly claimed that it would be better for us to take some chances, rather than remain idling our time away to no purpose, and declared that I had either dreamed the words which I quoted as coming from General Putnam, or else that officer had entirely forgotten us. However, Abel Grant and Sam were convinced that we could do no better than remain in partial hiding, and so we did, until it was told on the streets one night that Congress had adopted a Declaration of Independence which would be read on the Common next day by General Washington, and then, as Abraham said, we were right glad at being on the spot where we would have plenty of opportunity to see all that might be going on. And before the day was come to an end we saw very much that must have disheartened the Tories, and certainly did put new life into us Whigs. Within the limits of the story which I propose to tell, there is not time for me to go into any details as to what our company said or did during that 9th day of July when it was as if all New York was burning with the flame of liberty, and therefore shall I content myself with simply setting down what we saw, for after that time adventures came thick and fast until more than once we had a glut of them. It was a fine show which the citizens made as they marched toward the Common to hear the reading of the Declaration which we firmly hoped would some day be believed in by all the people of the colonies. A regular festival with processions, and banners, and music of fifes and drums, and the huzzas of the people, and the shouting of boys, and joyous cries of girls and women, until one would have said that already had we thrown off that yoke which the king would fasten yet more firmly around our necks. Marching in brave array was a company of sailors led by that Captain Bevan who had command of the Privateer brig Clinton when she captured the French ship La Pomme, and it was as if every one of those seamen was heart and soul a Whig. Then came the Sons of Liberty, with banners on which were painted “Resistance to tyrants,” “All men are created equal,” “George III is unfit to be the ruler of the free people,” “A Tory is a thing whose head is in England, its body in America, and whose neck ought to be stretched.” After this was a procession of men and women from the markets; then double-files of citizens, and all this throng had hardly more than formed themselves in orderly array around the Common, when the sound of martial music told that the soldiers were coming. It was a surprise to me to see so many men in uniform, and I could not force myself to believe that the Britishers might come against us in greater number. They marched in on the Common from every quarter, as it seemed to me, until that place was densely covered with human beings, and in the very center of them, a hollow square, within which sat General Washington and his aides on horseback.