As such it has always been viewed, and will appear in the eyes of posterity one of the most honorable achievements of our great revolutionary struggle.

It was in the year seventeen hundred and eighty.

There is not an aged man here present, but must remember that gloomy and disastrous period, when, if ever, the freedom of our country was almost a desperate hope. The money, the credit, the men, the means, and I may almost say, the sentiment necessary for continuing the great contest, were either quite exhausted, or fast melting away.

Hardship, ill success, and a miserable scarcity of every necessary of life, had checked present exertion, and produced almost a hopelessness of the future. Our little army, the last reliance of the country, was cooped up at West Point, almost the last refuge of liberty remaining. Had that army, with its illustrious commander, been treacherously surrendered, and that strong-hold given up to the enemy, the communication between Canada and New York, then in his possession, would have been open -- the North and the South could no longer have co-operated with each other -- the spirit of our people had been broken -- the last stay of freedom destroyed, and the last ray of hope perhaps

a Generals Pierre van Cortlandt and Philip van Cortlandt, Daniel W. Birdsall, St. John Constant, Ward B. Howard, Benjamin Dyckman, Doctor Peter Goetchius, James Mandeville, and Doctor Samuel Strang.

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extinguished. What the final issue might have been, God only knows ; but we all know, the consequences would have shaken our good cause to its foundation. A plan for this purpose was agitated -- matured -- almost consummated by the treason of Arnold. To you it is not necessary to detail the particulars of this infamous and dangerous project, so familiar to the memory and hearts of our people.