Union County Star And Lewisburg Chronicle

Copy of a Proclamation to the Citizens and Soldiers of the United States, issued October 20, 1780.

You are promised liberty by the leaders of your affairs, but is there an individual in the enjoyment of it save your oppressors? Who among you dare speak or write what he thinks against the tyranny that has robbed you of your property, imprisons your sons, drags you to the field of battle, and is daily deluging your country with your blood?

Your country once was happy, and had the proffered peace been embraced, the last two years of misery had been spent in peace and plenty, and repairing the desolation of a quarrel that would have set the quarrel of Great Britain and America in a true light, and cemented their friendship.

I wish to lead a chosen band of Americans to the attainment of peace, liberty and safety, the first objects in taking the field.

What is America but a land of widows, orphans and beggars?--But what need of argument to such as feel infinitely more misery than tongue can express?

I give my promise of most affectionate welcome to all who are disposed to join me in measures necessary to close the scene of our affliction, which must be increased till we are content with the liberality of the parent country, who still offers us protection and perpetual exemption from all taxes but such as we shall think fit to impose upon ourselves.

Benedict Arnold.

Read. Don't you hear some people talk in the same strain in our own day? Traitors and sympathizers with our country's foes seek to scare and coax the people into a short but dishonorable peace, just when our hopes are brightest, by hypocritically moaning about the "blood" they have shed themselves, and the "widows, orphans and beggars" they are making! "Come back to King George and good Royal times," cried Arnold and his Tories. "The Union as it was, with Slavery for ever!" cry the Georgeites of our day.