Of these, twelve
or thirteen were entirely destroyed.
Six hundred dwellings were burned, and sixteen hundred persons slain
or carried into captivity. There was not a house standing between
Stonington and Providence. It was as destructive as a war would now be
to Massachusetts which should send twenty thousand able-bodied men to
the grave, and render twenty thousand families houseless, and for the
most part destitute. Had all the events of the Revolution been crowded
into twelve months, the conflict would have been less terrible than was
the war with Philip. His operations menaced and endangered the
existence of the colony. There was a probability that the taunting
threat of John Monoco, the leader of the party which burned Groton,
that he would burn Chelmsford, Concord, Watertown, Cambridge,
Charlestown, Roxbury and Boston, might even be executed. Hardly
anything else remained of the Massachusetts colony on which the power
and vengeance of Philip could fall. Points of the interior, to be
sure, were garrisoned, but for the most part it was an unbroken forest,
or marked only by heaps of smouldering ruins.
And here may we well pause and reflect, that however we or posterity
may judge the Indian policy of our ancestors, the scenes through
which they passed were not calculated to mitigate the horrors of war,
or in the hour of triumph to awaken emotions of pity for the fallen.
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