"This army is of near eight years standing, six of which they have spent in the field, without any other shelter from the inclemency of the seasons than tents or such houses as they could build for themselves without expense to the public. They have encountered cold, hunger and nakedness. They have fought many battles and bled freely. They have done this without pay." This superb tribute to the men whose blood flows in the veins of the Sons and Daughters of the American Revolution, concludes with an earnest appeal to Congress for harmony. The jealousies already evident between the states filled his heart with anguish. He continues, "Unless our Union can be fixed upon this basis--the removal of the local prejudices which intrude upon and embarrass that great line of policy which alone can make us a free, happy and powerful people--unless our Union can be fixed on such a basis as to accomplish these, certain am I _that we have toiled, bled and spent our treasure to very little purpose_." With this eloquent utterance we conclude our extracts from the half-burned letters, with which the poor negro's egg-basket was lined. CHAPTER V THE BATTLE-GROUND In Virginia, about to become the battle-ground of the Revolution, the condition of affairs was gloomy, humiliating, apparently almost desperate. After a war of five years the state was still unfortified, unarmed, unprepared. Her strength, her money, her sons had been sent to fight her battles in the North. She had entered the war already loaded with debt from the Indian and French wars, and further depleted through her patriotic non-importation policy. Navigable rivers ran, at intervals of a few miles, from her interior to the coast. An invading fleet had but to sail up these rivers, to lay waste the entire country, and end all by a single, well-directed blow. Virginia was slow to appreciate the necessity of an armed naval force. She never desired to meet her enemy at sea. One of her sons declared in Congress, "I deem it no sacrifice of dignity to say to the Leviathan of the deep, 'We cannot contend with you in your own element, but if you come within our limits we will shed our last drop of blood in their defence,'" adding "What! Shall the great mammoth of the American forests leave his native element, and plunge into the water in a mad contest with a shark? Let him stay on shore and not be excited by the muscles and periwinkles on the strand to venture on the perils of the deep. Why take to water where he can neither fight or swim?"