During the year 1775 ten town meetings had been held in Weymouth, and seven were held in 1776. And now we enter on a new phase of the struggle for independence. For us, with our recollections of the war of the rebellion still fresh in our memories, it is most curious to read these ancient records,--to observe how closely history repeats itself. We well remember the fierce, self-sacrificing patriotism of 1861,--how the country was all alive with eagerness, how money was poured forth like water, and how regiments enlisted faster than they could be put into the field. We remember how this lasted through a short six months, and how we then began to realize what war meant. Then bounties began to be paid,--then enlistments grew more difficult just in proportion as the call for men became more pressing,--then values were unsettled, prices rose, the feverish glow of excitement faded away, and stern-visaged war gradually assumed her whole hateful front. We generally, too, are apt to imagine that the earlier days were less selfish, more self-sacrificing, more harmonious than our own. The records tell a different story. The declaration of Independence had only just been ventured upon,--it was not yet entered upon the records of Weymouth, “there to remain as a perpetual memorial,”--when on the 15th of July, 1776, a town meeting was held to secure the enlistment of ten men for the continental army, that being the quota of the town. It was voted to raise £130, in order to give each recruit a town bounty of £13 in addition to the state bounty of £7,--making a bounty of £20 to each man. It was also voted to allow the citizens of Weymouth two days in which to enlist, after which a committee of two was to go forth in search of recruits elsewhere. But before the 22d of the month eight men more were called for, and so at its adjourned meeting the town had to increase its appropriation to £234, a portion of which sum was borrowed of Captain James White for one year,--being the earliest record of a Weymouth town debt.[94]