In the month of February 1776 the English Parliament had passed a law authorizing George III to treat all Americans captured in arms at sea as "traitors, pirates and felons." This circumstance more than any other made me the declared enemy of Great Britain. Never before had history furnished an example of a people so arrogant as to claim sovereignty of the seas! Never before had it revealed premeditated cruelty such as that which anticipates the crime. From the beginning of the war in America the exchange of prisoners from the ground forces had been arranged between General Washington and the English generals. Despite all her pride Great Britain had been obliged to respect these arrangements and to consider as prisoners of war all the Americans who were captured while in the army; but it was not the same for service at sea. To be taken with arms in hand against England on her pretended empire of the ocean was an unforgivable crime according to the published annals of her Parliament. If at the time of this act of Parliament the strength of the English navy had been compared with that of the American navy, a relationship of a hundred to one would have been found. Noble sons of liberty, may this be the basis of your glorious renown. May your enemies remember forever how their cruelties were exercised in vain! That far from abating your courage, they forced you, with your tremendous acts of heroism, to sustain the American flag on the oceans that the author of nature created free. Cruelty and fear have always been companions. Only fear has prevented England from giving to the world, for a second time on the occasion of this war, the revolting spectacle of the horrors that ravaged Scotland in 1745. How great would have been the satisfaction of this people, as ferocious as they are vindictive, if they could have hanged until half dead the Americans captured at sea, then cut open their breasts with a knife, and thrown their beating hearts into the flames! If they did not dare attempt this, they did throw a number of American citizens into English prisons where they were kept for five full years, suffered from cold, hunger, and beating, and endured all kinds of outrages. Some of these unfortunate men were sold on the coast of Africa and others were transported to India. The firmness with which these patriot martyrs sustained all these reverses is unexampled. They preferred persecution to saving themselves by serving in the English navy.

Captain John Paul Jones

Yankee Doodle

Father and I went down to camp,
Along with Captain Gooding;
And there we saw the men and boys,
As thick as hasty pudding.

Yankee doodle, keep it up,
Yankee doodle dandy;
Mind the music and the step,
And with the girls be handy.

There was Captain Washington
Upon a slapping stallion,
A-giving orders to his men,
I guess there was a million.

And then the feathers on his hat,
They looked so' tarnal fin-a,
I wanted pockily to get
To give to my Jemima.

And then we saw a swamping gun,
Large as a log of maple;
Upon a deuced little cart,
A load for father's cattle.

And every time they shoot it off,
It takes a horn of powder;
It makes a noise like father's gun,
Only a nation louder.

I went as nigh to one myself,
As' Siah's underpinning;
And father went as nigh agin,
I thought the deuce was in him.

We saw a little barrel, too,
The heads were made of leather;
They knocked upon it with little clubs,
And called the folks together.

And there they'd fife away like fun,
And play on cornstalk fiddles,
And some had ribbons red as blood,
All bound around their middles.

The troopers, too, would gallop up
And fire right in our faces;
It scared me almost to death
To see them run such races.

Uncle Sam came there to change
Some pancakes and some onions,
For' lasses cake to carry home
To give his wife and young ones.

But I can't tell half I see
They kept up such a smother;
So I took my hat off, made a bow,
And scampered home to mother.

Cousin Simon grew so bold,
I thought he would have cocked it;
It scared me so I streaked it off,
And hung by father's pocket.

And there I saw a pumpkin shell,
As big as mother's basin;
And every time they touched it off,
They scampered like the nation.

Yankee doodle, keep it up,
Yankee doodle dandy;
Mind the music and the step,
And with the girls be handy.