Page:The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur).djvu/30

2 dense forests, had presented to its settlers a stern struggle with nature. The grandsires of the men of this day had been forest clearers, woodsmen who had hewn down a wilderness of primeval pines over two hundred feet in height. Their sons had grown tall and sinewy like the trees they felled.

New Hampshire lay on the Canadian frontier and the French and Indian War had swept it. Its exposed settlements were constantly menaced by the Indians, and, during the wars with England, subject to descents from Canada. In those early days the sons of New Hampshire held back the red men from the less exposed colonies, themselves coming face to face with that treacherous warfare of the forests. This life of woodsman, mountaineer, and Indian fighter had produced a generation of physical giants. Intellectually these men had been well-nigh as vigorously exercised. The colonial settlement had been fraught with bitterest disputes over grants and regrants from England, and the surveying of those woodlands was made in the heat of contention. New Hampshire sent its delegates to the first Continental Congress, and two signatures stand for this state on that charter of American liberty, the Declaration of Independence. Two delegates represented her in the Federal Congress, and, ninth of the states in ratifying the Constitution, New Hampshire in a critical hour insured the success of the Union. Two New Hampshire regiments were at the battle of Bunker Hill. The battle of Bennington, that turned the scale of the war, was won by New Hampshire and Vermont troops under General