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RICHARD MONTGOMERY:

THIS noble spirited hero, of vivid intellect and ardent susceptibilities, brought military experience and domestic virtue to the service of the Revolution; he influenced the cause of liberty by his example, and consecrated it by his early death.

Richard Montgomery was born of a good family at his father's seat, near the town of Raphoe, in the north of Ireland, December 2, 1736. We hear nothing of his early years, but that he received a liberal education, at Trinity College, Dublin, and at the age of eighteen, by his own choice and the wishes of his father, who gave also another son to the profession, entered the army. He was early introduced to America, in the vigorous campaigns devised by William Pitt, on his accession to power, for the subjugation of the French in their colonial possessions across the Atlantic. He was a participant with Wolfe in the brilliant conquest of Louisburg, in Amherst's expedition in 1758, and when that end was gained, served with his regiment in the neighborhood of Lake Champlain. He was then ordered to the West Indies, and had further opportunity of distinguishing himself in the arduous service against Martinique and the Havana, under Monckton and Albemarle.

The treaty of Versailles, in 1763, having closed the active service of the British troops in America, with the termination of the old French war, Montgomery, having been landed with his regiment at New York, was at liberty to seek permission to visit Europe. He accordingly returned to Great Britain, where we hear of his intimacy with the liberal members of Parlia ment, Fox, Burke and Barré, during the formative struggles of American Independence, implying that his mind was more or less in favor of the claims of the colonies. Something, too, is vaguely said of Government opposition to his promotion by purchase in the army. At any rate, in 1772, we find him selling his commission, and finally relinquishing the service, to settle in New York, where he arrived early in the following year.

There he was speedily married to the daughter of the eminent Robert R. Livingston, a Justice of the Supreme Court of the Colony, and father of the future Chancellor of the same name. He now retired to rural life, on the banks of the Hudson, at Rhinebeck, where, in the enjoyment of the territorial consequence of his influential marriage alliance, he passed his time happily in domestic life, the culture of

his mind by study and the improve. Schuyler, the advance was early inments of agriculture. A more agreeable trusted to his care. He entered upon round of occupations for a laurelled it with promptness. In the capture of warrior at the early age of thirty-six, St. Johns and other operations in the can hardly be imagined. The old vicinity, laying open Montreal to his Arcadian colonial simplicity, at these arms, and in his government of the upper waters of the Hudson, so de- latter place his magnanimity was as lightfully traced in the pictures of Mrs. evident as his courage. For these Grant, and the subsequent sketches of gallantly conducted operations, in the the Marquis de Chastellux, were des- autumn of 1775, he was created, by tined, however, to be ruthlessly dis- Congress, major-general. turbed. Montgomery early took part in the public life of the Revolution as a delegate to the Convention of the Province, held at New York in April, 1775. He was at once called to the field by Congress, on its first organization of the army, upon giving the command to Washington, creating him a brigadier-general. The neighborhood of Montgomery to General Schuyler, no doubt influenced the appointment; but the established military reputation and eminent service of the soldier of Amherst, needed no local or family recommendations.

It was resolved to attempt the conquest of Canada by a twofold expedition, penetrating the country by the routes of Lake Champlain and the Kennebec. The latter is known by the formidable difficulties it encountered in the wilderness, triumphantly surmounted by the spirit and energy of Arnold, who conducted his resolute force to the walls of Quebec. Montgomery's passage to the same spot was marked by prudence, activity, and military ability of a high order, overcoming many obstacles in the insubordination and even cowardice of his own forces. In consequence of the illness of Gen.

There now remained before him the advance upon Quebec. Arnold reached the neighborhood of that city a few days before Montgomery's entrance at Montreal, in the middle of November, made, with his small force, a rather vainglorious summons to surrender, and feeling the poverty of his resources, retired from the Heights to wait for reinforcements. In the meantime, Montgomery, with a calm glance at the prospects of the expedition, weighing all its difficulties, but unde terred by the gravest of them, was hurrying to his aid.

With inadequate means, and with a small force, numbering at the end of his severe journey but three hundred men, he finally, in the beginning of December, joined Arnold's body of five hundred before Quebec. The calcula tions he had made in advance were confirmed on the spot. But a slight show of investment could be made, and the batteries of gabions filled with snow and ice, from which a few guns were fired, could hardly be expected to resist solid cannon balls. The small American force, exposed to the severities of the bitter Canadian midwinter, were thinned by the smallpox. There

colonies equalled only by the fate of

was also some disaffection in a part of Arnold's command. In the midst of Warren. Congress, by resolution of

these disheartening circumstances, a plan of storming operations was determined upon between Arnold and Montgomery, which awaited only a favorable opportunity for its execution. The outer defences of the town were to be attacked on different sides by the several American officers, and a combined assault to be made upon one of its most accessible gates. To Montgomery was assigned one of the southerly approaches to the lower town. The thirtieth of December brought with it the coveted opportunity in a threatening snow-storm. In the night of that day, or rather before the dawn of the next, the forces assembled at their stations. Montgomery led his men, composed of Campbell's New York regiment and a portion of militia from Massachusetts, through a thick snow-storm from Wolfe's Cove, along the side of the cliff beneath Cape Diamond to a point where a fortified block-house stood, protected in front by a stockade. A loaded cannon stood ready charged with grape. It was fired, tradition says, by a drunken sailor, who returned to his post as his comrades fled. However this may be, the discharge was fatally effective. Montgomery fell, with his aid, Captain Macpherson, and the brave Captain Cheeseman of New York.

January 25, 1776, resolved that a funeral oration in his honor should be delivered, and called Dr. William Smith, the learned and eloquent head of the college at Philadelphia, to pronounce the eulogium. A monument also was decreed, which was executed— a graceful work, under the charge of Franklin-in Paris, and placed beneath the portico of St. Paul's Church, in Broadway, New York, where it arrests the eye of the passer by, with its beauty of form and appropriate inscription. In 1818, the remains of the gallant leader were brought from Quebec to repose near this sculptured stone.1

The tears and eloquence of his country, and its fune

real monument, bear witness to the worth of the man and all was paid his memory in the exclamation of Lord North, in Parliament, in a verse of Addison

the hero; but perhaps the most significant tribute of

"Curse on his virtues, they've undone his country."

The remark of Lord North was in reply to the eulogies of Colonel Barré and Burke. "He conquered," said the

latter, "two-thirds of Canada in one campaign." Fox seconded the tribute. It was then that North interposed

with his polished remonstrance, admitting indeed, "that he was brave, able, humane, generous; but still he was

only a brave, able, humane and generous rebel," adding the line from Cato. Fox then again rose.

"He was the less earnest," he said, "to clear him of the imputation,

for that all the great assertors of liberty, the saviors of their country, the benefactors of mankind in all ages, had been

called rebels; they even owed the constitution which enabled them to sit in that house to a rebellion," closing

with a most felicitous quotation from Virgil, an application of that sentence where the chief sees pictured on the

walls of the temple at Carthage, in a distant land, the honorable exploits of his brethren fallen at Troy"Sunt hic etiam sua præmia laudi,

The death of Montgomery, the old companion of Wolfe, falling in an attempt to renew his brilliant victory, created an impression through the foe.

Sunt lacrymæ rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt," Fox never appeared nobler than in thus erecting in the very sanctuary of Parliament this monument to a fallen

JOHN JAY.

THE ancestry of Jay, "the Christian | friends was enabled to sail for Charlespatriot" of the Revolution, carries us ton, South Carolina, a region which back to the history of that fatal persecution in France, consequent on the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, in the last quarter of the seventeenth century, which sent so many brave and good men, the very life blood of their country, wanderers about the world, to taste the hardships of poverty and exile in foreign lands. But it frequently happened, that while France was impoverished by the forced departure of her choicest spirits, other countries gained strength from their presence, while they themselves, after having been tossed on many seas, found at last the prosperous Lavinian shore. Of those who, under another sun, became founders of families, and we may add founders of the state, none are more worthy of distinction than the Jays of New York. The Huguenot ancestor from whom the family is descended was Pierre or Peter Jay, a prosperous merchant of Rochelle, in France, who escaped with a portion of his property to England, when the persecution became no longer endurable, leaving his son Augustus, then absent on a foreign venture, to provide for his own safety on his return. The son, following the father's example, by the aid of his

afforded a home to many of the exiles whose descendants have adorned the annals of that State. Driven from South Carolina, however, by ill health, Augustus took refuge in New York, a friendly haven which had in like manner sheltered many of his unhappy brethren. The Protestant influences of the place furnished a bond of sympathy, while the commercial activity of the city afforded a ready means of livelihood to the mercantile adventurer edu cated in a European seaport. Augus tus there found employment as super. cargo. In 1692, we hear of his taking passage for Hamburg, in a vessel which was captured by a French privateer and carried into St. Malo, when with other prisoners he was confined in a dungeon in the district, from which he managed to escape, making his way in safety to Rochelle, to be a second time smuggled out of his native country in a foreign vessel. This time he was taken to Denmark, when his route to America gave him the opportunity of seeing his father in England. His mother was no more, and his younger brother, Isaac, was dead from wounds received fighting for the Protestant hero, Wil liam, at the Battle of the Boyne.

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