An Address to the Rev. Dr. Alison - 27
You next proceed to relate the Feats of the Provincials and Volunteers, in destroying the Indian Towns, and their Corn; and to give an Account, such as it is, of that noble and heroic Action of destroying the Indians at Conestogo and Lancaster. Let us have it in your own Words, for I think there is something curious in them; "They (the Volunteers) say you, returned enraged to find that an Indian Town of about 20 or 30 Personsâ–ª had now informed their Friends against whom our Men had marched, and who were perfidiously playing the same Pranks as they did last War; they marched to their Town and cut off some of them, others fled to a Borough called Lancaster, and there they came and cut them off. This the Quakers have painted as a Massacre and most horrid Murder, tho' it was no more but what our People suffered on all Occasions." In this Representation of the Murders at Conestogo and Lancaster, you have asserted several of the grossest Falsehoods, misrepresented several Circumstances, and omitted the most essential and material Facts:—For, give me Leave to ask you, what Foundation have you for asserting, that these miserable Victims to the Rage of Enthusiasm, ever gave the least Information to the Enemy of the Volunteers design; You, or those whose barbarous Murders you palliate and justify, have taken great Pains to procure some Proof of it, but in vain. Had you succeeded, you would no doubt have laid them before the Government, to show that they were Enemies, or at least that they adhered to the Enemies. But Nothing of this kind has been done; and therefore the whole Province must be convinced, that all your Accusations against them are founded in Policy, not in Truth. They were indeed invented after the Fact done, to palliate a Deed
