Author's Introduction

The author has often been asked if there were any foundation in real
life for the delineation of the principal character in this book. He can
give no clearer answer to the question than by laying before his readers
a simple statement of the facts connected with its original publication.

Many years since, the writer of this volume was at the residence of an
illustrious man, who had been employed in various situations of high
trust during the darkest days of the American Revolution. The discourse
turned upon the effects which great political excitement produces on
character, and the purifying consequences of a love of country, when
that sentiment is powerfully and generally awakened in a people. He who,
from his years, his services, and his knowledge of men, was best
qualified to take the lead in such a conversation, was the principal
speaker. After dwelling on the marked manner in which the great struggle
of the nation, during the war of 1775, had given a new and honorable
direction to the thoughts and practices of multitudes whose time had
formerly been engrossed by the most vulgar concerns of life, he
illustrated his opinions by relating an anecdote, the truth of which he
could attest as a personal witness.

The dispute between England and the United States of America, though not
strictly a family quarrel, had many of the features of a civil war. The
people of the latter were never properly and constitutionally subject to
the people of the former, but the inhabitants of both countries owed
allegiance to a common king. The Americans, as a nation, disavowed this
allegiance, and the English choosing to support their sovereign in the
attempt to regain his power, most of the feelings of an internal
struggle were involved in the conflict. A large proportion of the
emigrants from Europe, then established in the colonies, took part with
the crown; and there were many districts in which their influence,
united to that of the Americans who refused to lay aside their
allegiance, gave a decided preponderance to the royal cause. America was
then too young, and too much in need of every heart and hand, to regard
these partial divisions, small as they were in actual amount, with
indifference. The evil was greatly increased by the activity of the
English in profiting by these internal dissensions; and it became doubly
serious when it was found that attempts were made to raise various corps
of provincial troops, who were to be banded with those from Europe, to
reduce the young republic to subjection. Congress named an especial and
a secret committee, therefore, for the express purpose of defeating this
object. Of this committee Mr.----, the narrator of the anecdote,
was chairman.

In the discharge of the novel