n6 Singing Valleys 



red-coats if you're hungry. There's cider in that jug. Drink it 

 down, man/' Running back to the kitchen to mix and knead 

 and bake more loaves. And still more. 



Not that the Revolution was popular. It wasn't. Even the 

 Continental Congress found it impossible to be of one mind 

 about it. According to John Adams, "Every important step 

 was opposed, and carried by bare majorities." In the discussion 

 the delegates from New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, 

 Maryland, Delaware and South Carolina stood against revo- 

 lution. Finally, all but the New York representatives yielded, 

 and the resolution was passed. 



The Yankee merchants and mechanics were for the war. 

 So were the Southern planters, and the mountain men who 

 knew that the valleys of the Yadkin, Ohio, Kentucky and 

 Wabash Rivers were good for corn. Was all that territory to 

 be kept a wilderness in order to supply King George and his 

 Whig ministers with beaver hats? But the ordinary run of 

 country people were slow to interest in the struggle. The tracts 

 of a Tory propagandist who signed himself A. W. Farmer were 

 widely circulated and widely commented on. Their obvious 

 intention was to make the farmers in the middle colonies, al- 

 ready disinclined to war, mistrust the policies of the Com- 

 mittee of Sixty. In Hall's New York Journal, under date of 

 Thursday, December 22, 1774, appears a letter: 



To the City and Country Inhabitants of New York, Friends and 

 Fellow Mortals, 



The division between Britain and her colonies is very alarming, 

 but what I think would be more alarming, is a division between 

 the inhabitants of the colonies, the effect of which we have from 

 holy writ, that a house divided against itself cannot stand. 



I have seen a pamphlet published by Mr. Rivington entitled the 

 Country Farmer which seems to be calculated to throw all into 

 confusion, and to no other end; and artfully to gain his point as 

 a Farmer, he addresses himself to the Farmers and their wives; he 

 tells the latter they cannot treat a neighbor with a dish of tea; 

 and that will be a dreadful thing indeed. To the former he saith 



