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Primary source: Alexander Graydon, Memoirs of a Life, Chiefly Passed in Pennsylvania, Within the Last Sixty Years, 1822.
Caption: Alexander Graydon (1752–1818), a captain in the Continental army, recounted the problems he encountered as he recruited men to fight the war, and he commented on the meaning of the Revolution.
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A number of fellows at the tavern, at which my party rendezvoused, indicated a desire to enlist, but although they drank freely of our liquor, they still held off. I soon perceived that the object was to amuse themselves at our expense. . . . One fellow . . . began to grow insolent, and manifested an intention to begin a quarrel. . . .
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This incident would be little worthy of relating, did it not serve in some degree to correct the error of those who seem to conceive the year 1776 to have been a season of almost universal patriotic enthusiasm. It was far from prevalent, in my opinion, among the lower ranks of the people, at least in Pennsylvania. At all times, indeed, licentious levelling principles are much to the general taste, and were, of course, popular with us; but the true merits of the contest were little understood or regarded. The opposition to the claims of Britain originated with the better sort: it was truly aristocratic in its commencement; and as the oppression to be apprehended had not been felt, no grounds existed for general enthusiasm. The cause of liberty, it is true, was fashionable, and there were great preparations to fight for it; but a zeal, proportioned to the magnitude of the question, was only to be looked for in the minds of those sagacious politicians, who inferred effects from causes, and who, as Mr Burke expresses it, "snuffed the approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze."
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Alexander Graydon, Memoirs of a Life, Chiefly Passed in Pennsylvania, Within the Last Sixty Years (Edinburgh: W. Blackwood, 1822), 132–33.
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