HISTORY OF BROOKLYN. 367

mounted on an elegant white horse, richly caparisoned, bearing the staff and cap of liberty, from which was suspended an elegant blue silk shield, edged with red and black crape, the field covered with thirteen stars in gold, emblematic of the original American constellation. Major Ayerigg, the son of a sufferer in the sugar-house, and Captain Alexander Coffin, himself twice a sufferer in the prison-ships, acted as his aids. The long line which followed was composed of cavalry, artillery, infantry, the members of the Cincinnati; the clergy, the Tammany Society, in the full and imposing regalia of their order, surrounding the thirteen coffins filled with the remains of the prison-ship dead, to which one hundred and four Revolutionary veterans, beaded by the Hon. Samuel Osgood and the Hon. Henry Rutgers, acted as pall-bearers; the sailors, members of the Municipal, State, and General Governments, foreign diplomatists, societies, trades, Masons, etc. The central feature of the procession, however, was the “Grand National Pedestal,” as it was called, consisting of an oblong square stage, erected on a large truck-carriage, the margin of which represented an iron railing; below this dropped a deep festoon, which covered the wheels; on the stage was a pedestal representing black marble, eight feet long, six feet high, and four wide, the four panels of which bore the following inscriptions:

(Front.)
AMERICANS! REMEMBER THE BRITISH.
(Right side.)
YOUTH OF MY COUNTRY! MARTYRDOM PREFER TO SLAVERY.
(Left side.)
SIRES OF COLUMBIA! TRANSMIT TO POSTERITY THE CRUELTIES
PRACTISED ON BOARD THE BRITISH PRISON-SHIPS.
(Rear).
TYRANTS DREAD THE GATHERING STORM,—
WHILE FREEMEN, FREEMAN’S OBSEQUIES PERFORM.

From a staff on the top of the pedestal was displayed a superb blue silk flag, eighteen feet by twelve, emblazoned with the arms of the United States; the staff itself, eighteen feet high, being crowned by a globe, on which sat the American Bald Eagle, enveloped in a cloud of crape.