<​December 21​> citizens already twice driven and deprived of Liberty; could not penetrate their adamantine hearts. The instead of sending us aid; issued a proclamation for our Extermination and banishment, ordered out the forces of the , placed them under the command of , who to execute these exterminating orders, marched several thousand troops into our Settlements in , where, unrestrained by fear of law or justice, and urged on by the highest authority of the , they laid waste our fields of corn, shot down our cattle and Hogs for sport, burned our dwellings, inhumanly butchered some 18 or 20 defenceless citizens, dragged from their hiding places little children and placing the muzzles of their guns to their heads, shot them with the most horrid oaths and imprecations. An aged hero and patriot of the Revolution, who served under General Washington, while in the act of pleading for quarters was cruelly murdered and hewed in pieces with an old corn cutter, and in addition to all these savage acts of barbarity, they forcibly dragged virtuous and [HC 6:127] inoffensive females from their dwellings, bound them upon benches used for public worship, where they in great numbers ravished them in the most brutal manner. Some fifty or sixty of the citizens were thrust into prisons and dungeons where, bound in chains, they were fed on human flesh, while their families and some fifteen thousand others, were, at the point of the bayonet forcibly expelled from the . In the mean time to pay the expences of these horrid outrages, they confiscated our property, and robbed us of all our possessions. Before our final expulsion, with a faint and lingering hope we petitioned the State Legislature then in Session. Unwilling to believe that the virtue and patriotism of the venerable fathers of the Revolution had fled from the bosoms of their illustrious descendants. Unwilling to believe that American citizens could appeal in vain for a restoration of liberty cruelly wrested from them by cruel tyrants. But in the language of our noble ancestors “our repeated Petitions were only answered by repeated injuries.” The Legislature instead of hearing the cries of 15,000 suffering, bleeding, unoffending citizens, sanctioned and sealed the unconstitutional acts of the and his troops, by appropriating 200,000 dollars to defray the expences of exterminating us from the — No friendly arm was stretched out to protect us. The last ray of hope for redress in that was now entirely extinguished— We saw no other alternative but to bow down our necks and wear the cruel yoke of oppression, and quietly and submissively suffer ourselves to be banished as exiles from our possessions, our property and our sacred homes, or otherwise see our wives and children coldly butchered and murdered by tyrants in power.