rred, during the third year of the war which
England and France last waged for the possession of a country that
neither was destined to retain.

The imbecility of her military leaders abroad, and the fatal want of
energy in her councils at home, had lowered the character of Great
Britain from the proud elevation on which it had been placed, by the
talents and enterprise of her former warriors and statesmen. No longer
dreaded by her enemies, her servants were fast losing the confidence of
self-respect. In this mortifying abasement, the colonists, though
innocent of her imbecility, and too humble to be the agents of her
blunders, were but the natural participators.

They had recently seen a chosen army from that country, which,
reverencing as a mother, they had blindly believed invincible--an army
led by a chief who had been selected from a crowd of trained warriors,
for his rare military endowments, disgracefully routed by a handful of
French and Indians, and only saved from annihilation by the coolness and
spirit of a Virginian boy, whose riper fame has since diffused itself,
with the steady influence of moral truth, to the uttermost confines of
Christendom.[2] A wide frontier had been laid naked by this unexpected
disaster, and more substantial evils were preceded by a thousand
fanciful and imaginary dangers. The alarmed colonists believed that the
yells of the savages mingled with every fitful gust of wind that issued
from the interminable forests of the west. The terrific character of
their merciless enemies increased immeasurably the natural horrors of
warfare. Numberless recent massacres were still vivid in their
recollections; nor was there any ear in the provinces so deaf as not to
have drunk in with avidity the narrative of some fearful tale of
midnight murder, in which the natives of the forests were the principal
and barbarous actors. As the credulous and excited traveller related the
hazardous chances of the wilderness, the blood of the timid curdled
with terror, and mothers cast anxious glances even at those children
which slumbered within the security of the largest towns. In short, the
magnifying influence of fear began to set at naught the calculations of
reason, and to render those who should have remembered their manhood,
the slaves of the basest of passions. Even the most confident and the
stoutest hearts began to think the issue of the contest was becoming
doubtful; and that abject class was hourly i