I20 WINTER SKETCHES. 



while those of New York and New England 

 were written in blood. 



The Indians having been exterminated, the 

 white men who became possessors of the soil 

 occupied it by right of might, as the Jews oc- 

 cupied Canaan after the destruction of the 

 Amorites, the Hittites, the Jebusites, and 

 other similar savages who had been smitten by 

 ** the sword of the Lord and of Gideon." 

 Then their own turn likewise came to be mas- 

 sacred or carried into captivity — and they 

 thought it hard. So the people of Bedford 

 failed to appreciate the retribution which, we 

 are told by the highest authority, descends 

 upon later generations for the sins of their 

 fathers, when, in 1779, Tarleton swooped down 

 upon them and burned their to\vn. The 

 neighborhood was the scene of many skir- 

 mishes during the Revolutionary war, and in 

 most of them the patriots, though far exceed- 

 ing the British in numbers, were defeated, not 

 so much because of their cowardice as for want 

 of arms and discipline. But what Bedford 

 lacked in military skill it compensated the 

 country for in giving birth to the greatest dip- 

 lomat of the time. In that capacity John 



