Freedom Line Blog

With Quin’s column this week reminding us of the lessons to learn from the War of 1812 (though the battle he writes about occurred in 1815), it’s nice to a plug for the Revolutionary War heroes flow from Eliot Cohen’s pen in today’s Wall Street Journal.  After recounting some of the highlights from America’s 200 years of military intrigue along the “Great Warpath” from Albany to Quebec, Cohen ends his masterful treatment with this poignant command from one of our nation’s first veterans:

One of the relics carefully preserved at the Fort Ticonderoga museum is the knapsack of Benjamin Warner, a some time soldier during the Revolution who, like many of his fellow citizens, fought, went home and returned to fight again, and not once but half a dozen times. Fifty years later, he left the battered canvas bag to his oldest son, with instructions to transmit it “to the latest posterity. And whilst one shred of it shall remain, never surrender your liberties to a foreign invader or an aspiring demagogue.” In this age of uncertainty and self-doubt, that spirit is yet another legacy of the Great Warpath worth pondering.