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Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919). New York. 1906.

Page 159

elements. It was therefore natural for the patriot party of New York to look before it leaped; but the leap once taken, it never faltered. No other State north of South Carolina was so harried by the forces of the king; and against no other State did they direct such efforts or send such armies,—armies which held portions of it to the close of the war. Yet the patriot party remained firm throughout, never flinching through the long years, cheering the faint-hearted, crushing out the Tories, and facing the enemy with unshaken front.
  Early in the summer a great armament began to gather in the lower bay; a force more numerous and more formidable than the famous Armada which nearly two centuries before had sailed from Spain against England. Scores of war-ships of every kind, from the heavy liner, with her tiers of massive cannon, to the cutter armed with a couple of light cannon, and hundreds of transports and provision-ships began to arrive, squadron by squadron. Aboard them was an army of nearly forty thousand fighting-men. A considerable number were Hessians, and other German troops, hired out by the greedy and murderous baseness of the princelets of Germany. The Americans grew to feel a peculiar hatred for these Hessians, because of the ravages they committed, and because of the merely mercenary nature of their-services; but the wrong lay not with the poor, dull-witted,