o be
of the strongest side, so that when they were most wanted they
vanished'. But history must preserve the fact that though often urged to
let them loose on the rebel provinces, in his detestation of cruelty he
would not suffer a savage to pass the frontier." (Bancroft's History of
the United States, Vol. VIII., Chap. lii., p. 186.)]

[Footnote 75: "Reading at the present day, we can see how the passionate
and declamatory rhetoric of the Declaration of Independence has left its
stain to this hour on most of the political writing and oratory of
America, and may wish that the birth of a nation had not been screamed
into the world after this fashion. Nothing could have been easier than,
in the like rhetorical language, to draw up a list of lawlessness and
utter outrage committed by the colonists. Some of the charges will not
bear examination.

"For instance, the aid of the Indians had been willingly accepted by the
colonists in the Canadian expedition since September, 1775; the general
question of their employment had been considered by Washington in
conference with a Committee of Congress and delegates of New England
Governments in October of the same year; and the main objection which
Washington and other officers urged against it, as shown by a letter of
his to General Schuyler, January 27, 1776, and the answer from the
latter, was that of expense. He had, nevertheless (April 19, 1776),
advised Congress 'to engage them on our side,' as 'they must, and no
doubt soon will, take an active part either for or against us;' and the
Congress itself had, on June 3rd--not a month before the Declaration of
Independence was actually accepted--passed a resolution to raise 2,000
Indians for the Canadian service, which, shortly afterwards, was
extended by another (referred to in a letter of Washington's of June
20), authorizing General Washington to employ such Indians as he should
take into the service in any place where he might think that they would
be most useful, and to offer them bounties, not indeed for scalps, but
for every officer and soldier of the King's troops whom they might
capture in the Indian country or on the frontiers of the colonies. When
all this had been done, it needed the forgetfulness and the blind
hypocrisy of passion to denounce the King to the world for having
'endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers the merciless
Indian savages;' yet the American people have never had the self-respect