strike a blow

“I ask'd him if he meant to strike the iron while it was hot, and get on to Hydra, and strike a blow there, telling him at the same time that I was going to the Naval Islands on business and should tell all I had seen.”

Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N.

“I sort of had this feeeling for some time that you just wanted to strike a blow for freedom and this was a great sense of pride to be able to sit down and at the same time become part of an organized effort.”

Oral History Interview with John Lewis, November 20, 1973. Interview A-0073. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007)

“Realistically Jackson determined to stay close to the line of Lee's advance from Thoroughfare Gap, ready to cooperate on Lee's arrival, to retreat if Lee were delayed, and, meantime, to strike a blow should the Federals give him an opening.”

Simon & Schuster: LEE’S LIEUTENANTS

“It would appear that when the County Delegate had sent over five good men to strike a blow in Vermissa, he had demanded that in return three Vermissa men should be secretly selected and sent across to kill William Hales of Stake Royal, one of the best known and most popular mine owners in the Gilmerton district, a man who was believed not to have an enemy in the world; for he was in all ways a model employer.”

Fictionaut: Chennai

“May have been lethal dose concocted by Sage, hoping to do in O’Callaghan, marry Ruth and the money, and strike a blow for Lenin, Love, and Liberty.””

The Nursing Home Murder

“Had he remained longer in slavery -- had he fretted under bonds until the ripening of manhood and its passions, until the drear agony of slave-wife and slave-children had been piled upon his already bitter experiences -- then, not only would his own history have had another termination, but the drama of American slavery would have been essentially varied; for I cannot resist the belief, that the boy who learned to read and write as he did, who taught his fellow slaves these precious acquirements as he did, who plotted for their mutual escape as he did, would, when a man at bay, strike a blow which would make slavery reel and stagger.”

My Bondage and My Freedom. Part I.--Life as a Slave. Part II.--Life as a Freeman

“Harold and his West-Saxons had saved them, but they would not strike a blow back again.”

William the Conqueror