The Rangers; or, The Tory's Daughter: A Tale Illustrative of the Revolutionary History of Vermont and the Northern Campaign of 1777Thompson, Daniel P. (Daniel Pierce)
History
The Rangers; or, The Tory's Daughter: A Tale Illustrative of the Revolutionary History of Vermont and the Northern Campaign of 1777
Thompson, Daniel P. (Daniel Pierce)
Vermont -- History -- Revolution, 1775-1783 -- Fiction
In the first place, all the supposed actors and abettors of the massacre
within reach were seized and secured, excepting Redding and one or
two others of a like character, who, by their activity in assisting to
apprehend the fugitive comrades whom they had so meanly deserted, and
their offers to give evidence against them, had purchased an exemption
from punishment, and excepting also the Janus-faced Chandler, who, by
his duplicity, had contributed more than any other man, perhaps, towards
this catastrophe, but who now contrived to make even his iniquities
count in his favor. [Footnote: As the acts of this notorious personage,
whose character we have been at considerable pains to ascertain, and
accordingly portray, will have no further connection with our story,
we cannot forbear, before dismissing him entirely, giving the reader a
short account of his subsequent career, and singular end. Although, by
his facility of accommodating his political principles to those of
the majority, and his alacrity of tacking about, and mounting, like
a squirrel on a wheel, so as to be found rising to the top in every
revolution or counter-revolution of public sentiment, he thus adroitly
managed to get appointed to some offices of minor importance, under
the new state government, yet, becoming every year better and better
understood, and consequently more and more distrusted, he finally sunk
into utter insignificance and contempt; and, falling into pecuniary
embarrassments, brought about by a long course of secret fraud in
selling wild lands, of which he had no titles, he was confined for debt
in the very building in which the massacre occurred; where, as if by the
retribution of Heaven for the part he once there acted, he soon died,
unhonored and unlamented. And, what is still more remarkable, his
remains were strangely destined to be denied even the respect of a
common burial. For some exasperated creditor having attached the body,
and the neighbors, from a notion that prevailed at that time, supposing,
that by removing the body for a public burial they would make themselves
liable for his debts, suffered it to remain till it became too offensive
to be endured, when, at the dark hour of midnight, a few individuals
went silently to the prison, got the putrid mass into some rough box,
and drew it on the ground to the fence of the neighboring burial-ground;
and, having dug a horizontal trench under the fence, and a deep pit on
the other side, pushed through and buried up all that remained of the
once noted Chief Justice Chandler. An old, decayed oak stump, still
standing, is the only object that marks the site of his grave.] After
this was effected, the victors, all but enough to constitute a safe
guard, laid aside their arms, and resolved themselves into a sort of
civil convention, to take measures for the trial of the prisoners by
some mode, which, in the absence of all proper authorities, should
answer for a legal process.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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