Brown, Richard Dorsey, Henry E. Gaither, William D. Beall, Jacob Price, Edward Oldham, Jonathan Morris, John Kilty, Perry Benson, William Lamar, Benjamin Price, William Bruce, Edward Dyer, Edward Spurrier, Samuel McPherson, George Hamilton, Francis Reveley, Christopher Richmond, William Reily, Lloyd Beall, Michael Boyd, James Bruff, Adamson Tannehill, Philip Reed, Thomas Mason, John Hamilton, James Smith, John Gassaway.

Lieutenants Nicholas Ricketts, Isaac Rawlings, John J. Jacobs, Samuel B. Beall, William Pendergast, Thomas Rowse, Basil Burgess, Arthur Harris, Henry Clements, John T. Lowe, Malakiah Bonham, Henry N. Chapman, Benjamin Fickle, Mark McPherson, John Dow Cary, Samuel Hanson, John Brevitt, Thomas Boyd, Henry Baldwin, Thomas Price, Jr., Thomas A. Dryson, Samuel Edminston, William Smoot, Hezekiah Foard, Isaac Hanson, Thomas Beatty, John Sears. Officers of the staffPhysician to the army, James Craik; regimental surgeons, William Kilty and Ezekiel Haynie; surgeons' mates, John L. Elbert and Gerard Wood. The first officers elected for the Maryland Society of the Cincinnati were MajorGeneral Smallwood, president; Brigadier-General Mordecai Gist, vice-president; Brigadier-General Otho Holland Williams, secretary; Colonel Nathaniel Ramsay, treasurer; Lieutenant-Colonel John Eccleston, assistant treasurer. While many words of disapproval came from men high in standing and influence, they were in every case men who had not served their country on the battlefields of the Revolution. Samuel Adams, in a letter to Elbridge Gerry in 1784, when the society had its first general meeting in Independence Hall, Philadelphia, wrote: "I confess I do

not barely dislike the order. With you I think it dangerous and look upon it with the eye of jealousy. When the pride of family possesses the minds of men it is threatening the community in proportion to the good they have done, This is as rapid a stride toward a hereditary military nobility as ever was made in so short a time."

John Adams, John Jay, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and others equally important bitterly opposed the new military order. But Washington, clear-sighted and just, gave it the indelible stamp of his approval, and on October 29, 1783, wrote to Count Rochambeau as follows:

"The officers of the American Army, in order to perpetuate that mutual friendship which they contracted in the hour of common danger and distress, and for the purposes which are mentioned in the instrument of their association, have united together in a society of friends under the name of the Cincinnati and, having honored me with the office of president, it becomes a very agreeable part of my duty to inform you that the society has done itself the honor to consider you and the generals and officers of the army which you commanded in America as members of the society."

The French nation received this message in the proper spirit, and the King, recognizing it as a new tie assuring the duration of the reciprocal friendship begun when France sent her army to the assistance of the American colonies, granted the officers the privilege of wearing the insignia at the court, which was not accorded to any other foreign order excepting that of the Golden Fleece.

The officers of the French navy, who had served in the Revolutionary War presented to General Washington as

a mark of their esteem the Cincinnati Eagle in diamonds, which has been transmitted to each president-general in turn.

It is especially significant to find that the Tammany Society, or Columbian Order, was founded in the year 1789 in opposition to the Society of the Cincinnati. It is truly said in the register of this society that "It is a striking commentary on the trustworthiness of political prophecy that, while the Order of the Cincinnati has been of little weight in the history of the country and is now entirely without political influence, its old rival, with its membership of thousands and its arbitrary though nominally democratic methods, has gone on increasing in power and prestige until it has grown into the most formidable and possibly the most dangerous political organization in the Union."

The Society of the Cincinnati has kept strictly to the purpose for which its founders organized it. Founded upon patriotism by the patriots who had bled for their country's freedom, it has been perpetuated by their descendants, who have cherished the cause no less than the names of the Revolutionary officers. There are many other men eligible to membership in the Maryland Society who have not kept in touch with their hereditary claims.

CHAPTER LXX

UNSUNG HEROES OF THE REVOLUTION

As we dwell with pride and reverence upon the memory of Washington and upon the noble army which he so gallantly led on to victory, the unsung wing of the American forces should not be entirely forgotten. These we will call the fathers and mothers of the Revolution, who belong to that class of heroes of whom it is said, "They also serve who only stand and wait."

Let us see what this part of the army did worthy of recognition. The fathers of the Revolution were those who saw their sturdy sons march off to the scene of action, bidding them godspeed, while they, beyond the age of enlistment, stayed behind to guard the home in which was left the mother and the younger children. These were the men who attended to the food supplies for the army, who raised the crops and then defended them from the marauding parties of the British.

In the year 1781 many complaints were sent the governor about the parties of Englishmen who harassed the inhabitants along the rivers and creeks of the Eastern Shore of Maryland. These men were attempting to destroy or capture the means of subsistence of the American army, and were supplying the enemy with the same. As early as 1777 wheat, corn and flour were becoming higher in price because the army had so many of the young planters in the ranks.

All through the Journal of Correspondence we find the Council ordering the British vessels searched for provisions. The men who remained at home had no easy task to defend the home, and with the aid of a few slaves raise the crops with which to feed the army, for not only were the horses and young men gone, but insufficient arms and ammunition were provided the home defenders.

On these old men and on the women the Revolutionary War laid a heavy burden. The enthusiasm of patriotism, the sound of martial music and the clash of battle buoyed up the spirit of the young heroes whose memories we are keeping green.

But those who had the duller, more prosaic and less arduous duty of serving by waiting in the isolated country homes are entitled to our loving remembrance, too.

Many of these unsung heroes died in defense of their homes, and the event has been unchronicled save in the hearts of their descendants through family oral history. And the mothers of the Revolution-did not they lay their all on the war's red altar, and, like the Spartan mothers of old, nobly send out their brave young lads to victory or to death, admonishing them to come with their flag, or enshrouded in it?

We can imagine these mothers of the Revolution helping to make ready the old flintlock muskets which were to put to rout the British redcoats. And how these mothers spun and wove the cloth and fashioned comfortable garments and home-knit socks and mits to clothe not only their own sons but the motherless part of the army as well.

The insignia of the Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution is a spinning wheel, to which a