It was loudly declared to have been the most ardent wish of even the most advanced advocate of rebellion, to have secured a reconciliation with the ilother Country and a restoration of harmony and good-will among the adverse parties throughout the several Colonies : ' how much more of wisdom there would have been displayed among those who had seized the reins of government, therefore, had they practised their hands in the work of reconciliation and harmony and goodwill among their neighbors, instead of driving the staid and the quiet and the conscientious and the law-abiding, among the latter, into active and bitter ])artisauship, and of spreading alarm and strife and misery and ruin over the entire County. There might have been fewer transformations of moral and intellectual pigmies into potent political giants -- there might have been a smaller number of fortunes rapidly and largely increased from the plunder of neighboring betterprovided-for households and farmyards -- but there would have been, also, fewer outrages against the I^aws of both man and of God; less occasion for bitterness among the descendants of those who were, then, neighbors in locality, if not in fact ; and very much less for the faithful historian to condemn and to denounce, while reciting the annals of the American Revolution, as that Revolution was developed

1 "The thought that we might be driren to the sad neceaiity ot break- " ing our coniwtiiiii with Great Britain, exclusive of tin- carnage anri " destruction, which it was ea-sy to see luust attend llie separation, always " gave n>e a gri'at deal ot grief. And even no%v, I would cheerfully re- " tire fnim pulilic life, forever, renounce all chance for honors or "profits from the public, nay, I would cheerfully contribute niy little "property, to ol>t<iiu peace and lilierty." -- (./»/»m .IiJumi* Io ku Wife, "October, 177.'>.")