MIDDLETON: This from the same Captain Benjamin Martin whose fury was so famous during the Wilderness Campaign?
MARTIN: I was intemperate in my youth.
MIDDLETON: Temperance can be a convenient disguise for fear.
BURWELL: Mr. Middleton, I fought with Captain Martin under Washington in the French and Indian War. There’s not a man in this room, or anywhere, for that matter, to whom I would more willingly trust my life.
CROWD: Here!
MARTIN: There are alternatives to war. We take a case before the king. We plea with him.
BURWELL: Yes we tried that.
MARTIN: Oh then we try again and then again if necessary to avoid a war.
BURWELL: Benjamin, I was at Bunker Hill. The British advanced three times and we killed over seven hundred of them at point blank range and still they took the ground. That is the measure of their resolve. If your principles dictate independence, then war is the only way. It has come to that.
CROWD: Here!
MARTIN: I have seven children. My wife is dead. And who’s to care for them if I go to war?
BURWELL: Wars are not fought only by childless men.
MARTIN: Granted. But mark my words: this war will be fought not on the frontier or on some distant battlefield. But amongst us, among our homes. Our children will learn it with their own eyes. And the innocent will die with the rest of us. I will not fight. Because I will not fight, I will not cast a vote that will send others to fight in my stead.
BURWELL: And your principles?
MARTIN: I’m a parent. I don’t have the luxury of principles.