BROTHER JONATHAN
BY
AUTHOR OF
IN THE DAYS OF AUDUBON, IN THE BOYHOOD OF LINCOLN,
IN THE DAYS OF JEFFERSON, ETC.
Copyright, 1903
By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
Published September, 1903
The writer has heretofore produced in the vein offiction, after the manner of the Mühlbach interpretations,several books which were anecdotal narratives of the crisesin the lives of public men. While they were fiction, theylargely confided to the reader what was truth and whatthe conveyance of fiction for the sake of narrative form.It was the purpose of such a book to picture by folk-loreand local stories the early life of the man.
The folk-lore of a period usually interprets the manof the period in a very atmospheric way. Jonathan Trumbull,Washington’s “Brother Jonathan,” who had a partin helping to save the American army in nearly everycrisis of the Revolutionary War, and who gave the popularname to the nation, led a remarkable life, and cameto be held by Washington as “among the first of the patriots.”The book is a folk-lore narrative, with a threadof fiction, and seeks to picture a period that was decisivein American history, and the home and neighborhood ofone of the most delightful characters that America hasever known—the Roger de Coverley of colonial life andAmerican knighthood; very human, but very noble, always[vi]true; the fine old American gentleman—“BrotherJonathan.”
It has been said that a story of the life of JonathanTrumbull would furnish material for pen-pictures of themost heroic episodes of the Revolutionary War, and bringto light much secret history of the times when Lebanon,Conn., was in a sense the hidden capital of the politicaland military councils that influenced the greatest eventsof the American struggle for liberty. The view is inpart true, and a son of Governor Trumbull so felt thatforce of the situation that he painted the scenes of whichhe first gained a knowledge in his father’s farmhouse,beginning the work in that plain old home on the sandedfloor.
From Governor Trumbull’s war office, which is stillstanding at Lebanon, went the post-riders whose secretmessages determined some of the great events of the war.Thence went forth recruits for the army in times of peril,as from the forests; thence supplies for the army infamine, thence droves of cattle, through wilderness ways.