"Infatuated as your enemies have been from the beginning of this contest do you imagine they can flatter themselves with a hope of conquering you unless you are false to yourselves? When unprepared, undisciplined and unsupported--you opposed their fleets and armies in full conjoined force--then, if at any time, was conquest to be apprehended. Yet, what progress towards it have their violent and incessant efforts made? Judge from their own conduct. Having devoted you to bondage and after vainly wasting their blood and treasure in the dishonorable enterprise--they deigned at length to offer terms of accommodation with respectful addresses to that once despised body--the Congress--whose humble supplications, only for peace and safety, they had contemptuously rejected under pretence of its being an unconstitutional assembly. Nay more--desirous of seducing you into a deviation from the paths of rectitude from which they had so far and rashly wandered, they made most specious offers to tempt you into a violation of your faith given to your illustrious ally." "Foiled again and stung with rage, embittered by envy--they had no alternative but to renounce the inglorious and ruinous controversy or to resume their former modes of prosecuting it. They chose the latter. Again the savages are stimulated to horrid massacres of women and children and domestics to the murder of their masters. Again our brave and unhappy brethren are doomed to miserable deaths in jails and prison-ships. To complete the sanguinary system--all the 'EXTREMITIES of war' are denounced against you by authority. * * Rouse yourselves, therefore, that this campaign may finish the great work you have so nobly carried on for several years past. What nation ever engaged in such a contest under such a complication of disadvantages so soon surmounted many of them and in so short a period of time had so certain a prospect of a speedy and happy conclusion. We will venture to pronounce that so remarkable an instance exists not in the annals of mankind. * * * Consider how much you have done and how comparatively little remains to be done to crown you with success. Persevere and you insure peace, FREEDOM, safety, glory, sovereignty and felicity to yourselves, your children and your children's children." * * *