eet of
whaleboats." The rattlesnake flag--a yellow flag with a pine tree in the
centre and a rattlesnake coiled beneath its branches, with the words
"Don't tread on me"--was run to the masthead of the _Providence_, being
hauled there by the hands of the first lieutenant, John Paul Jones. That
little fleet of eight vessels, mounting only 114 guns, was sent forth to
confront a naval power of 112 battleships with 3,714 guns--not a single
gun of ours throwing a ball heavier than nine pounds, while five hundred
of the English guns threw a weight of metal of double that amount.
Wasn't it an audacious thing? Why, it seems to me one of the marvels of
human history when I reflect upon what was attempted by the Americans of
1776.

Look at the situation. Thirteen different colonies strung along a narrow
strip of coast; three thousand miles of rolling ocean on the one side
and three thousand miles of impenetrable wilderness on the other;
colonies with infinite diversity of interests--diverse in blood, diverse
in conditions of society, diverse in ambition, diverse in pursuits--the
English Puritan on the rock of Plymouth, the Knickerbocker Dutch on the
shores of the Hudson, the Jersey Quaker on the other side of the
Delaware, the Swede extending from here to Wilmington, Maryland
bisected by our great bay of the Chesapeake, Virginia cut in half by the
same water way, North Carolina and South Carolina lying south of
impenetrable swamps as inaccessible to communication as a range of
mountains, and farther south the sparsely-settled colony of Georgia.
Huguenot, Cavalier, Catholic, Quaker, Dutchman, Puritan, Mennonite,
Moravian, and Church of England men; and yet, under the hammer stroke of
British oppression, thirteen colonies were welded into one thunderbolt,
which was launched at the throne of George III.

That little navy under Hopkins--where were those sailors bred? Read
Burke's speech on the conciliation of America. They sprang from the
loins of hardy fishermen amidst tumbling fields of ice on the banks of
Newfoundland, from those who had speared whales in the tepid waters of
Brazil, or who had pursued their gigantic game into the Arctic zone or
beneath the light of the Southern Cross. That fleet of eight ships
sailed from the Delaware on the twenty-second of December, 1775, and
proceeded to the island of New Providence, among the Bahamas. Our
colonies and our armies were without arms, without powder, without
munitions of war. The