With many good wishes for the readers of this volume -that they may be pleased, benefitted, happy and blessed in their perusal of it, a work not faultless, yet compiled with great labor and care, a prefatory adieu is bade hem by the

AUTHOR.

INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS,

TO THE READERS OF THE FOLLOWING WORK.

As a first remark I would state to my readers that I have from advisement been induced to offer, instead of an ordinary introduction, an introductory address—a synopsis (as it were) of the services of Captain Dewees, his father, mother, brothers, sister and of his own son.

Although this course is somewhat of a departure from the established order of other authors, yet, I can rejoice that whilst I make the departure I still remain within the pale of truth, and look not so much to method or the routine of empty forms as I do to utility arising out of my design.

Believing that such an address will operate as a key to usher the reader into the more interesting departments of the work itself-that it will sharpen the taste of my readers and enable them to relish the history itself, proportionate to the increased anxieties created within them for a perusal thereof.

With this belief then, I offer it to the candid reader.

Ladies, Gentlemen and Volunteer Citizen Soldiers of my Columbia:

"When in the course of human events" it becomes necessary to arise to duty in a good cause, it is not unnatural to look for countenance and aid to those who do always approbate a laudable undertaking. It becomes necessary to give countenance and aid-to foster with a tender hand, one who has trudged the dark and stormy path of peril in the past, in defence of the Declaration of American Independence-American Independence, the offspring of that assembled band of patriotic

and sworn brothers, who constituted in 1776, the Columbian galaxy of nobleness, wisdom, patriotism, firmness, bravery, boldness, and high wrought heavenly magnanimity.

I have written, compiled and published a history of the life and services of CAPTAIN SAMUEL DEWEES, a soldier of the Revolution-a soldier of the last war. Capt. Samuel Dewees, a venerable patriot who has trudged the dark and stormy path of peril in the past, in defence of home, country and friends.

The frosts of nearly 84 winters have cast their blighting influences upon and around his patriotic brow of manhood and of bravery. His family, the family with which he was connected in the capacity of son and brother, were with himself, so patriotically identified with the well fought for and signally obtained liberty, peace, prosperity and lasting independence of my country, that father and mother, sister and brothers, daughter and sons might well have been denominated the patriotic warrior family.

The thirteen colonies, borne down by a long series of the most tyrannical and blighting usurpations, oppressive measures the most weighty were exercised in continuance toward them, and cruelty most demoniac and unreasonable of all, declared, you shall do that, which you cannot do. The things that are impossible, shall be your tasks to accomplish.

In this deplorable condition of things what did our fathers do? Did they lie down and tamely suffer that British myrmidons should trample upon and over their already borne down necks? Did they cringingly submit to these wanton abuses so profusely heaped upon them? No! God be thanked, they arose FREEMEN in their might, they flung the motto of "Don't tread upon me," to the wild breezes of Heaven, they called upon God as their WITNESS, JUDGE, PROTECTOR, HELPER AND FRIEND-sounded boldly the loud noted clarion of defensive violence; and with a strong, well nerved and matchless arm of innocence, they rolled back the tide of

war with an unexampled success upon the heads of their guilty, lawless, infuriated and unmerciful enemies. They hurled them in the display and exercise of a mighty and glorious military prowess-they hurled them in the exercise of an onward colonial strength gigantic, as enemies of freedom, from off LIBERTY'S soil.

Among those that nobly assisted in this bold strike for freedom and for freeman's rights, was the family to which the aged sire belonged, whom I am now bringing to your notice. A father embossed in the heaven-bound and sacred vessel of stern justice-a vessel containing the heaven-born and all glorious principles of Republicanism

-a father, first of all, clasped a bleeding country, and her dearest interests, close to his courageous heart. Next followed in the wake of a patriotic sire, two young, vigorous, manly and patriotic sons. Sons? Yes! Sons whose patriotic conduct was tantamount to this,

"We swear to keep thee great and free,

Columbia-land of liberty."

One of these passed unhurt through the fiery ordeal of a scathful war; whilst of the other no doubt remains of his having fallen a victim to the horrors of a long and a bloody conflict and perished among others, whose fates are unknown, upon the battle-fields of their country.

Who followed next in the stately steppings of bold and magnanimous patriotism?-Woman! Woman! A wife! A mother! A wife, a mother, when a husband, a father, fell covered with wounds and with glory at the siege of Fort Washington, in November, 1776; and was captured by a British foe, and she heard the sad news thereof, did she sit down and brood over the dark side of things? No! She was up and doing. No! She exhibited herself a woman among a thousand. No! She unscaredly laid hold of what she deemed the most favorable (although hazardous indeed) horn of the dilemma. She who combined the tenderness of woman, the faithfulness of wife, and the courage of a man in her nature. What did she do? She trusted to the strong

arm of the God of battles-to the Lord God of Hosts, took her life in her hands and went forth and threw herself into into what? Into a British camp, without having first procured the protection of an American flag to secure her person from insults and injuries that might have been offered to, or inflicted upon her person in her passage thither by the lawless sons of Belial.* There! Yes, there in a British camp, she demanded a permit of the British officers to visit a loathsome prisonship-a high road of and to speedy death. Demanded a permit to visit the pestilential prisonship, in which laid bleeding and suffering the object of her early attachment, the object of her first love,-the partner of her joys-the partner of her sorrows,-a husband to whom as his wife she had sworn allegiance to as her lord, at the sacred altar in marriage. She sought him that she might minister to his comforts and soothe him in his gloomy hospital. Sought him that she might with a tender hand alleviate his sufferings in the long and dark, dark hours of his painful extremity. The favor she demanded, and that her sex was entitled to receive, was not granted. She next implored and for a while, even her begging for God's sake was vain, and what the sacred name of the Deity and all her waste of words could not affect, her persevering spirit of importunity at length accomplished for her. She was permitted to visit the prisonship and was admitted into that horrible abode of human misery. This trial was a severe one, the sacrifice was too great, nature shrunk back from the task and this revolutionary mother sunk down under the weight of her accumulated sorrows-under this burden altogether too weighty to be borne. From these and the pestilential staunch arising within this crowded and sickly abode of sufferers, she fell sick, and as a reward for her own un

*It is not to be understood that the writer conceives that the British army was made up of a lawless material in the main, nor yet that he conceives that the armies of his own country were composed of angels, but humanity and justice to a fallen foe was ever the lovely characteristic in the bosoms of an American soldiery, officers and men, and for which my countrymen staud gloriously unrivalled upon the pages of history ancient and modern.