Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1841-1853, 1845-10-02

way Inc IRE OF belf muSKetfy leceded. Incl
cavalry left unsupported in the moment of victo
y were fam to retreats and the flied troopers couls
now be seen, with their prisoners mounted behns
them riding, slowly and reluctantly, back over th,
hill. The day was lost The entire British fore.
pressed forward reached the summit of the eminence
and then Pursuers and pursued disappeared in tn.
woods beyond.
That was the battle of CAMDEN The brave anS
vigilant Greene, second only in skill and conduct e
the Great Chief of the Revolution himself had for
once, been taken a. unawares; and the British
standard foated for brief space, from the heights
of Hobkirks Hill
And who was he that youthful watcher of the fight,
who now turned heart-sickened and despairing from
the post, which for hours he had eagerly maintain
ed, and cast himself down his prison floor, as if to
shut out the sight of his countrys defeat That boy
with his PALE stern face that boy, wounded, halclad,
exposed to want and prvation captive without hope
OF rescue; his body worn down with suffering, and
bearing already within him the seeds Of infectious
disease, that was, long, to bring him to the brink
of the grave that boy, thus seemingly abandoned
an early and hopeless fate-who was he The ma
ton, in whose prison he then lay, was, one day, to
know him well. America was to know him-and the
worlds
And yet, for season, Fortune seemed but to re-
double her prosecutions The exertions Of widow
ed mother did indeed suffice, within brief period to
procure the youths release from captivity and to
convey him, half Naked emaciated to skeleton and
Injected Win the smallpox, To their humble home
He reached it, only to become the witness, and the
victim, of fresh msfortunes Within two days he
stood by the deathbed of his only brother and him.
self became Immediately delirious, with a raging fe-
yer, that threatened life itself.
Slowly he recovered. But Fate had not yet ex-
hausted her culver. The arrow, of sharpest sting,
was yet behind. That mother who had watched with
solitary care his infancy and rescued his youth
from the pesence of prison, had still been spared.
And the brave and spirited boy had still been privi
legged to receive, from her lips his earliest lessons in
republicanism, his hereditary love of independence.
Mingled with all her instruction had been the
story of her country wrongs of the expressions that
had driven herself and her friends forth from her
native Ireland exiles to foreign shore. And when,
even to that foreign land, the tyranny still pur
sued her and hers well may believe, that the
warm and quick spirit Of her nation spoke forth, in
dignantly eloquent, to her son her youngest, and
now the sole survivor left to her by cruel war.
But not long these lessons that sink into the
heart deep, sustaining the soul and nerving the
in after years-not much longer the lessons
OF mother to fall on the young freeman's The
guardian of his YOUTH cherisher, protector, guide
her, too he to lose. She TO fall, victim to
that ready, impusive spirit of sympathy, the charac
terisc equally of her sex and Of tho green island of
her birth.
News reached the settlement that or board pris-
ship which had been peopled from the tomb-dun-
geons of Charleston the American rebelS-as reemen
ferng all the mseries that want and disease, aided
by confined berths crowded almost suocation could
infct upon captves. The silent appeal conveyed by
that tale of sickness and sorrow not made in
vain. Meyer, perhaps, throughout all the scenes of
sef-sacrifce that frightened the dark days of the
revolution, was there ampler justification of the POI
cts beautiful eulogy:
Oh woman In our hours Of ease,
Uncertain, coy, and hard to please,
And variable, the shade
BY the light, quveTng aspen made
When pain and anguish wiring the brow,
A mnisteriDg angel thou r
The mother left her son, not yet fully restored to
health and, joined by some of her neighbors, pro-
ceeded on her ministry of love. Size went-and she
returned Ii is known that she and her
companions were admitted to the crowded ship; that
they delivered supplies of food and raiment and med
lclne to the sufferers; that they remained days
tending the Sick and speaking comfort to the wound
ed and the destitute that the mother had commenced
her return to her when the contagious fever that
prevailed among the prisoners seized upon the heroic
woman, and terminated in few days, her labors and
her life That is known and that is all that is
known. The place of her death, the very spot where
her ashes repose, are, to this day, unrecOrded and
forgotten. All thus always has it been When reck-
ed history ever of the Good and the True and the
Mercifu! The departed despot has his niche, as
signed by fame a mausoleum marks the conQueror's
grave. But for this noble woman, greater far in her
humble sef-devoton, than they, in their pride, the
memory of her deeds has perished like the wayside
violet; her very name had she not lived again in her
son, would, even now, have been unknown.
Honored hallowed and honored be her memory
By the bed Of the dying patriot her last hours were
spent martyr in the holy cause Of mercy, among
strangers, she died
Her elegy might fifty be spoken in those beautiful
lines, of the most meodious ever written in our
language:
BY foreign hands thy dying eyes closed,
BY foreign hands thy decent limbs composed,
By foreign hands thy humble grave adorned,
BY strangers honored and by strangers mourned
What though no friends in sable weeds appear,
Gneve for an hour perhaps, then mourn a year,
And bear about the mockery of woe
To midnight dances and the public show
What though weeping Loves thy ashes grace,
Nor polished marble emulate thy face
What though sacred earth allow thee room,
Nor halow'd dirge be muttered Ger thy tomb
Yet shall thy grave with Using flowers be dressed,
And the green turf lie lightly on thy breast.
heap of dust alone remains of thee,
lis all thou art, and all the proud shall be 4.
The patriot-mother persisted and the orphan was
left, poor, riendless, alone alone, with his bold
heart and his iron will but these him more
than parents and friends and wealth.
: Yes for the name Of that orphan boy was ANDREW
JACKSON. Fame yet to crown him victor on the
plains of New Orleans. The acclamatiOns of na-
ton of freemen were yet to hail him SEVENTH Pre-
sIDENT of these United States.
All what was not gained for America IN that great
day, when, from the steps Of the old Philadelphia
State House, brave and good men, declared to the
world, that these United States are, and of right
ought to be. free and Independent Elsewhere,
throughout the civilized world, wander about
through ife each class separated from the other BY
lofty. almost impossible walls of demarcatlon. Rank
ancient family, great wealth. these correspond in Eu
rope, TO the various caStes of India. Between the
rich and well BORN and the child of poverty and Of
lowly oIrth there IS partly by law and more by GUS
tom, great gulf fixed, SO that they who would pass
cannot. As the rich man, in the parable, saw Laza-
a on hrah So only with fhnl