The inscription on this plague reads:

"To perpetuate the memory of BENJAMIN EATON who served in the Continental Army as a member of the body guard of General Washington. 1780-1783 'Conquor or Die'"

Benjamin Eaton was a member of George Washington's body guard.

From the Albany Gazette
A VOICE OF '76.

The Newburgh Gazette brings us the
folowing eloquent letter from the last of
the LIFE GUARDS OF GENERAL WASHINGTON. "Let the freemen of
America heed the honest warning of this venerable patriot. Let all who are able
to enlist for the war adopt the advice of this aged veteran and enrol themselves as the Life Guards of the Country.
To the descendants of revolutionary soldiers:
An old soldier of the Continental Army
asks for the last time to speak to his
countrymen. During the suffering service
of the revolution, I was in sixteen
engagements, and was one of the little
band who volunteered under Sullivan to
to destroy the "Six Nations of Indians."--
I was one of that small company selected
as the Life Guard of George Washington--
but two of us are now living. I
was at the tough siege of Yorktown, at
Valley Forge, Monmouth, and in thir-
teen other hard battles, and saw Corn-
wallis surrender to our old General. My
service ceased only with the war. After
all this hardship and suffering, in the
street when I go out out in my old age to see
the happiness I helped to give you, I am
pointed at as a British Tory. I have said nothing when
I have been told so, but have silently
thought that my old General would nev-
er have picked out a Tory to form one of
his Life Guard, nor would a tory have
suffered what I have suffered for you.--
This abuse has been shamefully heaped
upon one of your old soldiers because he
is what he was when the war broke out,
and what Washington told us we must
always be when he shook hands with us
as we were going home. I was a Whig
in the Revolution, have been one ever
since, and am one now. As a Whig I
enlisted for the whole war, was in favor,
with the other Whigs, of Thomas Jeffer-
son, was in favor of the last war, and to
be consistent in my last vote, must give
it to Gen. Harrison. He is a brave man,
and was never known wherever he has
been, to take a penny from his neighbor
or the government that was not fairly
his. We have trod over the same ground
fighting for Liberty. His father (he was
one of us in the Revolution) signed our
Independence roll, and when we all went
out together to fight for it, and proved it
was true.
It appears to me that this cannot be
the same government that our old soldiers
helped Washington to put up here. We
fought to have a government as different
from any in Europe as we could make it.
Well, we done it, and until lately things
have gone on smoothly and Europe was
beginning to get ashamed of the way
she made slaves of her subjects by making
them work and toil for seven poor cents
a day with a Standing Army over them
to force them to it. But our President
now tells the people that things have gone
wrong since the Old War and that there
are twenty-three miserable governments
in Europe where the Kings wear crowns,
the rich people, and the poor people rags
that we must fashion after them if we
want to be happy and prosperous. We
had English laws here once and they
were the best in Europe, but we couldn't
stand them and we put them under our
feet. We used to work for a mere noth-
in then, and we cannot do it again.--
Working for a few cents a day may do
for slaves but not for freemen whose
liberty cost more blood than liberty ever
cost before; why, the very first thing
that started the old war was the Standing
Army the king kept quartered on us: we
told him we wanted no soldiers over us
in time of peace, but he refused to mind
us and I saw Lord Cornwallis surrender
up a part of them to honest George
Washington. Our President now propo-
ses to have a standing force-- what for
--Beware.
Jefferson never asked for armed men
to re-elect him or elavate his successor.
Madison asked for them only in the time
of the late war, and warned the people
when he left his office to be careful about
keeping soldiers in time of peace. Our
streets are filled with idle men who were
active laborers once when employment
was to be had. The men of enterprise
who once employed them have been ru-
ined by the government. And now these
honest but unemployed laborers are told
by the government that when they go to
work again they must do it for a few
cents a day--that labor must be as cheap
here as it is among the slaves of Cuba,
or the slaves of Europe. Ambition and
ignorance on the part of our Government
have shut up our shops and stores,scut-
tled our ships, filled our streets with idle-
ness and bankruptcy, and given no en-
couragement to the farmer as he looks
at his grain. Are not these things so?
You know they are and I have no motive
in saying what may be false-- I am too
far advanced for anything else
but death --it will soon be here. My lit-
tle pension, I thank you for it, will soon
stop and I go home with the rest of the
Life Guards. There is but one remedy
only for the safety of the country I have
served. Put other men to stand at the
tiller and round the cables, and you will
soon be back, on the old Constitutional
track. Gen. Harrison is honest, he nev-
er deceived you and he never lost a bat-
tle, and the people wont let him lose this.
Accept my advice and you all have my
blessing-- my advice is that all of you
become the Life Guards of the country,
and my blessing is that your old age may
have less fears for liberty than mine."
"BENJAMIN EATON"
"One of the two surviving life guards of
George Washington."
"Newburgh, N.Y. August 28, 1840"