There is a scrap
from Robert Morris, the financier; a letter or two from Judge Jay; and
one from General Lincoln, written, apparently, on the gallop, but
without any of those characteristic sparks that sometimes fly out in a
hurry, when all the leisure in the world would fail to elicit them.
Lincoln was the type of a New England soldier; a man of fair abilities,
not especially of a warlike cast, without much chivalry, but faithful
and bold, and carrying a kind of decency and restraint into the wild and
ruthless business of arms.
From good old Baron Steuben, we find, not a manuscript essay on the
method of arranging a battle, but a commercial draft, in a small, neat
hand, as plain as print, elegant without flourish, except a very
complicated one on the signature. On the whole, the specimen is
sufficiently characteristic, as well of the Baron's soldierlike and
German simplicity, as of the polish of the Great Frederick's aide-de-
camp, a man of courts and of the world. How singular and picturesque an
effect is produced, in the array of our Revolutionary army, by the
intermingling of these titled personages from the Continent of Europe,
with feudal associations clinging about them,--Steuben, De Kalb,
Pulaski, Lafayette!--the German veteran, who had written from one
famous battle-field to another for thirty years; and the young French
noble, who had come hither, though yet unconscious of his high office,
to light the torch that should set fire to the antiquated trumpery of
his native institutions.
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