scalp. Murder for the mere pleasure of murdering has an influence upon a
community far more sinister than that of death by war waged for
recognizable causes. The Puritans of the Eighteenth Century were another
people than those of the Seventeenth. There had been reason in the early
Indian struggles, when the savages might have hoped to exterminate the
settlers and leave their wilderness a wilderness once more; but there
could be no such hope now. The desire for revenge was awakened and
fostered as it had never been before. Many other circumstances combined to
modify the character of the people of New England during this century; but
perhaps this new capacity for revenge was not the least potent of the
influences that made the seven years of the Revolution possible.

Peter Schuyler protested in vain against the "savage and boundless
butchery" into which the conflict between "Christian princes, bound to the
exactest laws of honor and generosity," was degenerating; but the only way
to stop it appeared to be to extirpate the perpetrators; and to that end a
fifth part of the population were constantly in arms. The musket became
more familiar to their hands than the plow and spade; and their
marksmanship was near perfection. They gradually developed a system of
tactics of their own, foreign to the manuals. The first thing you were
aware of in the provincial soldier was the puff of smoke from the muzzle
of his weapon; almost simultaneously came the thud of his bullet in your
breast, or crashing through your brain. He loaded his gun lying on his
back beneath the ferns and shrubbery; he advanced or retreated invisibly,
from tree to tree. Your only means of estimating his numbers was from your
own losses. It was thus that the American troops afterward gained their
reputation of being almost invincible behind an intrenchment; it gave its
character to the engagements at Concord and along the Boston Road, and
sent hundreds of redcoats to death on the slopes of Bunker Hill. It was
not magnificent--to look at; but it was war; combined with the European