Читать книгу Life and Remarkable Adventures of Israel R. Potter - Israel Potter - Страница 8

Table of Contents

IN the foregoing pages we have attempted a simple narrative of the life and extraordinary adventures of one of the few survivors who fought and bled for American Independence. There is not probably another now living who took an equally active part in the Revolutionary war, whose life has been marked with more extraordinary events, and who has drank deeper of the cup of adversity, than the aged veteran with whose History we now beg liberty to present the American public. Doomed by the fate of War to be early separated from kindred and friends, and to be conveyed by a foreign foe a prisoner of war from his native land, to a far distant country, where after having for 48 years experienced almost every hardship and deprivation of which adverse fortune is productive, providence appears at length to have so far interfered in his behalf, as to provide means whereby he has been enabled at an advanced age once more to visit and inhale the pure air of his native land. At the age of Seventy-Nine, an age in which it cannot be expected that the lamp of human life can long remain unextinguished, he has arrived among us, in a state of penury and want, to seek in common with his countrymen the enjoyment of a few of the blessings produced by American valour, in her memorable conflict with the mother country and in which he took a distinguished part.

As it yet remains doubtful whether (in consequence of his long absence) he will be so fortunate as to be included in that number to whom Government has granted pensions for their Revolutionary services, it is to obtain if possible a humble pittance as a remuneration, in part, for the unprecedented privations and sufferings of which he has been the unfortunate subject, that he is now induced to present the public with the following concise and simple narration of the most extraordinary incidents of his life.