AMERICANREVOLUTION.ORG

THE LAST MEN OF THE REVOLUTION

INTRODUCTION.

Every American desires to know all that can be known of the surviving soldiers of the Revolution. It was in this desire that the following work originated, and with a view to its gratification that it has been prepared.

Of these venerable and now sacred men but seven remain. Four reside in the State of New York, one in Maine, one in Ohio, and one, if he be yet living, in Missouri. These soon must pass away. Already, with perhaps a single exception, each has outlived his century. One is in his one hundred and first year, one, in his one hundred and second, two in their one hundred and third, one in his one hundred and fifth, one in his one hundred and sixth, and of one the age is not known. This their extreme age, remarkable not only in their personal history but in the modern history of the race, forbids the hope that they can continue much longer among the living. Soon they too must answer the final challenge and go to join the full ranks of those who have preceded them to the invisible world. The present is the last generation that will be connected by living link with the great period in which our national independence was achieved. Our own are the last eyes that will look on men who looked on Washington; our ears the last that will hear the living voices of those who heard his words. Henceforth the American Revolution will be known among men by the silent record of history alone. It was thus a happy thought of the artists who projected this work to secure such memorials as they might of these last survivors of our great national conflict, before they should forever have passed away. Indulging thus their own affectionate and grateful interest, they have done a work for which their countrymen will thank them, and the value of which will increase with all the future. Possible now, it will soon be impossible forever, and now neglected, it would be forever regretted. What would not the modern student of history give for the privilege of looking on the faces of the men who fought for Grecian liberty at Marathon, or stood with Leonidas at Thermopylæ. With what interest would every lover of liberty regard the pictures of the last of the Scots who were with Bruce at Bannockburn, or of the Swiss who followed Tell, or of Cromwell's Ironsides! How precious a collection to every true American, did it exist, would be the portraits of the seven men who fell, on the morning of the nineteenth of April, 1775, on Lexington Green! Around such men there gathers the interest of the periods with which they were associated, whose greatness they helped to achieve. In them as the last survivors of those periods, their interest seems to culminate and they stand thenceforth as their representatives. In the memorials of such men moreover the past seems still to live. The connection with it of their personal history gives it reality. Ever, it is only through association with the men who were actors in them that the periods of history seem real. History lives only in the persons who created it. The vital words in its record are the names of men. Thus everything of personal narrative gives reality to the past. This these memorials of the last living men of the Revolution will do for that great period of our history. As we look upon their faces, as we learn the story of their lives, it will live again before us, and we shall stand as witnesses of its great actions.

The chief interest of this work lies, of course, in the pictorial representations of the men. The artists have accompanied these with views of their residences, that, so far as it is possible without personal visit to them, their countrymen may see them, as in the closing days of their long lives, they live. The biographical sketches are designed only to gratify the natural interest which, seeing the men, will be felt to know something of their history.

For the purpose of personal interview with them, and to procure from themselves the materials for these sketches, the writer in the month of July visited them in their homes. It was a visit long to be remembered by him for its interest and enjoyment, and if he shall succeed in making it to others but in part what it was to himself, he will feel abundantly rewarded for his labor.