Chapter LXX
1766-1768.
Bland's Inquiry--Duties imposed by Parliament--Death of Fauquier--Succeeded by Blair--Baptists persecuted--Blair's Letter.
IN the year 1766 there was published at Williamsburg "An Inquiry into the Rights of the British Colonies," from the pen of Richard Bland.[549:A] In discussing the question, "Whether the colonies are represented in the British Parliament?" he traces the English constitution to its Saxon origin, when every freeholder was a member of the Wittenagemote or Parliament. This appears from the statutes 1st Henry the Fifth, and 8th Henry the Sixth, limiting the elective franchise, that is, depriving many of the right of representation in parliament. How could they have been thus deprived, if, as was contended, all the people of England were still virtually represented? He acknowledged that a very large portion of the people of Great Britain were not entitled to representation, and were, nevertheless, bound to obey the laws of the realm, but then the obligation of these laws does not arise from their being virtually represented. The American colonies, excepting the few planted in the eighteenth century, were founded by private adventurers, who established themselves, without any expense to the nation, in this uncultivated and almost uninhabited country, so that they stand on a different foot from the Roman or any ancient colonies. Men have a natural right to quit their own country and retire to another, and set up there an independent government for themselves. But if they have this so absolute a right, they must have the lesser right to remove, by compact with their sovereign, to a new country, and to form a civil establishment upon the terms of the compact. The first Virginia charter was granted to Raleigh by Queen Elizabeth, in 1584, and by it the new country was granted to him, his heirs and assigns, in perpetual sovereignty, as fully as the crown could grant, with full power of legislation and the establishment of a government. The country was to be united to the realm of England in perfect league and amity; was to be within the allegiance of the crown, and to be held by homage and the payment of one-fifth of all gold and silver ore. In the thirty-first year of Elizabeth's reign, Raleigh assigned the plantation of Virginia to a company, who afterwards associating other adventurers with them, procured new charters from James the First, in whom Raleigh's rights became vested upon his attainder. The charter of James was of the same character with that of Elizabeth, with an express clause of exemption forever from all taxation or impost upon their imports or exports. Under this charter, and the auspices of the company, the colony of Virginia was settled, after struggling through immense difficulties, and without receiving the least aid from the British government. In 1621 a government was established, consisting of a governor, council, and house of burgesses, elected by the freeholders. In 1624 James the First dissolved the company, and assumed the control of the colony, which, upon his demise, devolved upon Charles the First, who, in 1625, asserted his royal claim of authority over it. To quiet the dissatisfaction of the colonists at the loss of their chartered rights, the privy council afterwards, in the year 1634, communicated the king's assurance that "all their estates and trade, freedom and privileges, should be enjoyed by them in as extensive a manner as they enjoyed them before the recalling of the company's patent." Moreover, Charles the First, in 1644, assured the Virginians that they should always be immediately dependent upon the crown. After the king's death Virginia displayed her loyalty by resisting the parliamentary forces sent out to reduce the colony, and by exacting the most honorable terms of surrender. Here the author of "the Inquiry," although exceedingly well informed in general as to the history of the colony, falls into the common error that Charles the Second was proclaimed in Virginia some time before he was restored to the throne in England.
Thus Virginia was, as to her internal affairs, a distinct, independent state, but united with the parent state by the closest league and amity, and under the same allegiance. If the crown had indeed no prerogative to form such a compact, then the royal engagements wherein "the freedom and other benefits of the British constitution" were secured to them, could not be made good: and a people who are liable to taxation without representation, cannot be held to enjoy "the freedom and benefits of the British constitution." Even in the arbitrary reign of Charles the First, when it was thought necessary to establish a permanent revenue for the support of the government in Virginia, the king did not apply to the British parliament, but to the assembly of Virginia, and sent over an act under the great seal, by which it was enacted, "By the king's most excellent majesty, by and with the consent of the general assembly," etc. After the restoration, indeed, the colonies lost the freedom of trade which they had before enjoyed, and the navigation act of 25th Charles the Second not only circumscribed the trade of the colonies with foreign nations within very narrow limits, but imposed duties on goods manufactured in the colonies and exported from one to another. The right to impose these duties was disputed by Virginia; and her agents, in April, 1676, procured from Charles the Second a declaration, under his privy seal, that "taxes ought not to be laid upon the inhabitants and proprietors of the colony but by the common consent of the general assembly, except such impositions as the parliament should lay on the commodities imported into England from the colony." But if no protest had been made against the navigation act, that forbearance could in no way justify an additional act of injustice. If the people of the colonies had in patience endured the oppressions of the English commercial restrictions, could that endurance afford any ground for new oppressions in the shape of direct taxes? If the people of England and of the colonies stood, as was contended, on the same foot, being both equally and alike subjects of the British government, why was the trade of the colonies subject to restrictions not imposed on the mother country? If parliament had a right to lay taxes of every kind on the colonies, the commerce of the colonies ought to be as free as that of England, "otherwise it will be loading them with burdens, at the same time that they are deprived of strength to sustain them; it will be forcing them to make bricks without straw." When colonies are deprived of their natural rights, resistance is at once justifiable; but when deprived of their civil rights, when great oppressions are imposed upon them, their remedy is "to lay their complaints at the foot of the throne, and to suffer patiently rather than disturb the public peace, which nothing but a denial of justice can excuse them in breaking." But a colony "treated with injury and violence is become an alien. They were not sent out to be slaves, but to be the equals of those that remain behind." It was a great error in the supporters of the British ministry to count upon the sectional jealousies and clashing interests of the colonies. Their real interests were the same, and they would not allow minor differences to divide them, when union was become necessary to maintain in a constitutional way their rights. How was England to prevent this union? Was it by quartering armed soldiers in their families? by depriving the colonists of legal trials in the courts of common law? or by harassing them by tax-gatherers, and prerogative judges, and inquisitorial courts? A petty people united in the cause of liberty is capable of glorious actions--such as adorn the annals of Switzerland and Holland.
The news of the repeal of the stamp act was joyfully welcomed in America, but the joy was premature; for, simultaneously with the repeal, parliament had declared that "it had, and of right ought to have, power to bind the colonies in all cases whatsoever." Townshend,[552:A] afterwards chancellor of the exchequer, brought into parliament a bill to levy duties in the colonies on glass, paper, painters' colors, and tea, and it became a law. The duties were external, and did not exceed in amount twenty thousand pounds; but the colonies suspected the mildness of the measure to be only a lure to inveigle them into the net. The new act was to take effect in November, 1767. The flame of resistance, smothered for awhile by the repeal of the stamp act, now burst forth afresh: associations were everywhere organized to defeat the duties; altercations between the people and the king's officers grew frequent; the passions of the conflicting parties were exasperated. Two British regiments and some armed vessels arrived at Boston.
In Virginia, the assembly, encountering no opposition from the mild and patriotic Blair, remonstrated loudly against the new oppressions. Opposition to the arbitrary measures of the British administration broke forth in England, and in London the fury of civil discord shook the pillars of the government.
Francis Fauquier, lieutenant-governor, died early in 1768, at the age of sixty-five years, ten of which he had passed in Virginia. He brought with him the frivolous tastes and dissipated habits of a man of fashion and a courtier; he was addicted to gaming, and by his example diffused a rage for play. He was generous and elegant, an accomplished scholar, and, in Mr. Jefferson's opinion, the ablest of the governors of Virginia. A county is named after him. His death devolved the duties of government upon John Blair, president of the council. He was a nephew of Commissary Blair, whom he had succeeded in the council. He had long represented Williamsburg in the house of burgesses, having been a member as early as 1736. During the trying period of his presidency, his vigilance and discretion were displayed in protecting the frontier from Indian invasion.[553:A]
In 1714 some English emigrant Baptists settled in southeast Virginia, and in 1743 another party settled in the northwest; but the most important accession came from New England, about the period of "the New Light stir." Those who had left the established church were called Separates, the rest Regulars. Their preachers, not unfrequently illiterate, were characterized by an impassioned manner, vehement gesticulation, and a singular tone of voice. The hearers often gave way to tears, trembling, screams, and acclamations. The number of converts increased rapidly in some counties. The preachers were imprisoned and maltreated by magistrates and mobs; but persecution stimulated their zeal and redoubled their influence: they sang hymns while on the way to the prison, and addressed crowds congregated before the windows of the jails. At this time Deputy-Governor Blair addressed the following letter to the king's attorney in Spotsylvania:--
"SIR:--I lately received a letter, signed by a good number of worthy gentlemen, who are not here, complaining of the Baptists; the particulars of their misbehavior are not told, any further than their running into private houses and making dissensions. Mr. Craig and Mr. Benjamin Waller are now with me, and deny the charge; they tell me they are willing to take the oaths as others have: I told them I had consulted the attorney-general, who is of opinion that the general court only have a right to grant licenses, and therefore I referred them to the court; but on their application to the attorney-general,[554:A] they brought me his letter, advising me to write to you that their petition was a matter of right, and that you may not molest these conscientious people, so long as they behave themselves in a manner becoming pious Christians and in obedience to the laws, till the court, when they intend to apply for license, and when the gentlemen who complain may make their objections and be heard. The act of toleration (it being found by experience that persecuting dissenters increases their numbers) has given them a right to apply in a proper manner for licensed houses for the worship of God, according to their consciences, and I persuade myself the gentlemen will quietly overlook their meetings till the court. I am told they administer the sacrament of the Lord's Supper near the manner we do, and differ in nothing from our church but in that of baptism and their renewing the ancient discipline, by which they have reformed some sinners and brought them to be truly penitent; nay, if a man of theirs is idle and neglects to labor and provide for his family as he ought, he incurs their censures, which have had good effects. If this be their behavior, it were to be wished we had some of it among us; but at least I hope all may remain quiet till the court." This letter was dated at Williamsburg, July the 16th, 1768.
The persecution of the Baptists commenced in Chesterfield, in 1770, and in no county was it carried farther. According to tradition, Colonel Archibald Cary, of Ampthill, was the arch-persecutor. In few counties have the Baptists been more numerous than in Chesterfield.
While many of the preachers were men of exemplary character, yet by the facility of admission into their pulpits impostors sometimes brought scandal upon the name of religion. Schisms, too, interrupted the harmony of their associations. Nevertheless, by the striking earnestness and the pious example of many of them, the Baptists gained ground rapidly in Virginia. In their efforts to avail themselves of the toleration act, they found Patrick Henry ever ready to step forward in their behalf, and he remained through life their unwavering friend. They still cherish his memory with grateful affection.
The Baptists, having suffered persecution under the establishment, were, of all others, the most inimical to it, and the most active in its subversion.[555:A]
FOOTNOTES:
[549:A] The title-page is as follows: "An Inquiry into the Rights of the British Colonies, intended as an Answer to 'The Regulations lately made concerning the Colonies, and the Taxes imposed upon them, considered.' In a Letter addressed to the Author of that Pamphlet, by Richard Bland, of Virginia. Dedit omnibus Deus pro virili portione sapientiam, ut et inaudita investigare possent et audita perpendere. Lactantius." Williamsburg: printed by Alexander Purdie & Co., MDCCLXVI.
[552:A] 1767.
[553:A] Hugh Blair Grigsby's Discourse on Convention of 1776, pp. 69, 70; Old Churches, i. 160.
[554:A] John Randolph.
[555:A] Semple's Hist. of Va. Baptists, 16, 24; Hawks, 120.
Chapter LXXI
1768-1771.
Botetourt, Governor--Resolutions against the encroachments of Parliament--Assembly dissolved--Non-importation Agreement--The Moderates--Assembly called--Botetourt's Address--Association-- Death of Botetourt--His Character--William Nelson, President-- Great Fresh--American Episcopate--Assembly opposes it-- Controversy--Methodists.
IN November, 1768, Norborne Berkeley, Baron de Botetourt, arrived in Virginia as governor-in-chief. The season was delightful, with its tinted foliage, serene sky, and bracing air. Botetourt, just relieved from the confinement of a sea-voyage, was charmed with his new place of abode; the palace appeared commodious; the grounds well planted and watered. While his new residence was fitting up for him he daily enjoyed the hospitalities of the people. He found that while they would never willingly submit to be taxed by the mother country, yet they were ardently desirous of giving assistance, as formerly, upon requisition. In the mean time the duties complained of were collected without any resistance whatever. Botetourt, solicitous to gratify the Virginians, pledged "his life and fortune" to extend the boundary of the State on the west to the Tennessee River, on the parallel of thirty-six and a half degrees. This boundary, Andrew Lewis and Thomas Walker wrote, would give some room to extend the settlements for ten or twelve years.[556:A]
On the 11th day of May, 1769, when the assembly was convened, the governor rode from the palace to the capitol in a state-coach drawn by six milk-white horses, a present from George the Third, and the insignia of royalty were displayed with unusual pomp. The pageant, supposed to be intended to dazzle, served rather to offend. On that day and the following he entertained fifty-two guests at dinner.
When, in Massachusetts, the custom-house officers had demanded[557:A] from the courts writs of assistance for enforcing the revenue act, the eloquent James Otis had resisted the application in a speech which gave a mighty impulse to the popular sentiment. The same question was now argued before Botetourt and the council, forming the general court, and he concurred in declaring them illegal. During this session, Mr. Jefferson made an unsuccessful effort for the enactment of a law authorizing owners to manumit their slaves.
In February, parliament, refusing to consider a redress of American grievances, had advised his majesty to take vigorous measures against Massachusetts, and to make inquisition there for treason, and, if sufficient ground should appear, to transport the accused to England for trial before a special commission; and George the Third, a king of exemplary character, but obstinate temper, heartily concurred in those views. Upon receiving intelligence of this fact, the burgesses of Virginia again[557:B] passed resolutions unanimously, vindicating the rights of the colonies, claiming the sole right to levy taxes, and asserting the right of bringing about a concert of the colonies in defence against the encroachments of parliament; exposing the injustice and tyranny of applying to America an obsolete act of the reign of Henry the Eighth, warning the king of the dangers that would ensue if any American should be transported to England for trial, and finally ordering the resolutions to be communicated to the legislatures of the other colonies, and requesting their concurrence. Even the merchants of peaceable Pennsylvania approved these resolutions; Delaware adopted them word for word; and the colonies south of Virginia eventually imitated her example. An address was also prepared to be laid before the king. Botetourt took alarm at what he termed, in his correspondence with the government, "the abominable measure," and having convoked the assembly, addressed them thus: "Mr. Speaker and Gentlemen of the house of burgesses,--I have heard of your resolves, and augur ill of their effects. You have made it my duty to dissolve you, and you are dissolved accordingly."
The burgesses immediately repaired in a body to the Raleigh, and unanimously adopted a non-importation agreement, drawn by George Mason, and presented by George Washington. The resolutions included one not to import, or purchase any imported slaves, after the first day of November, until the objectionable acts of parliament should be repealed. Mr. Mason, not yet a member of the assembly, was not present at this meeting. The moderate party in the assembly, while they had opposed measures which appeared to them injudicious and premature, nevertheless avowed themselves as firmly riveted to the main principle in dispute. Their views, they averred, had been made public in the several memorials to government; and from the position so assumed they were resolved never to recede. They had not, indeed, expected that parliament would ever explicitly acknowledge itself in the wrong; but it had been their hope that the dispute would have been left to rest upon reciprocal protestations, and finally have died away. The late measures of the British government had extinguished such delusive hopes. That government claimed the right of subjecting America to every act of parliament as being part of the British dominions; and at the same time that Americans should be liable to punishment under an act of Henry the Eighth, made to punish offences committed out of the realm. The deportation of Americans for trial, depriving them of the right of trial by a jury of the vicinage, appeared to be fraught with worse mischiefs than the stamp act, in as much as life is more precious than property.[558:A]
On the 9th of May, 1769, the king had, in his speech to parliament, re-echoed their determination to enforce the laws in every part of his dominions. Nevertheless, on the thirteenth the Earl of Hillsborough, secretary of state for the colonies, wrote to Botetourt, assuring him that it was not the intention of ministers to propose any further taxes, and that they intended to propose a repeal of the duties on glass, paper, and paints, not on the question of right, but upon the ground that those duties had been imposed contrary to the true principles of commerce. Botetourt, calling the assembly together, communicated these assurances, adding: "It is my firm opinion that the plan I have stated to you will certainly take place, and that it will never be departed from; and so determined am I to abide by it, that I will be content to be declared infamous, if I do not to the last hour of my life, at all times, in all places, and upon all occasions, exert every power with which I am, or ever shall be, legally invested, in order to obtain and maintain for the continent of America, that satisfaction which I have been authorized to promise this day by the confidential servant of our gracious sovereign, who, to my certain knowledge, rates his honor so high that he would rather part with his crown than preserve it by deceit." The council, in reply, advised the repeal of the existing parliamentary taxes; the burgesses expressed their gratitude for "information sanctified by the royal word," and considered the king's influence as pledged "toward protecting the happiness of all his people." Botetourt, pleased with the address, wished them "freedom and happiness till time should be no more." William Lee regarded this as mere bombastic rant. During this year appeared a pamphlet, asserting the rights of the colonies, entitled "The Monitor's Letters," by Arthur Lee.
Lord North succeeded the Duke of Grafton as prime minister, in January, 1770, and in the ensuing March all the duties on the American imports were repealed, except that on tea. Lord North, at the same time, however, avowed the absolute determination of the government not to yield the right of taxing the colonies.
The first association appears not to have been adhered to, and the English merchants declared that the exports to Virginia of the prohibited articles were never greater.
On the 22d day of June, 1770, a second association was entered into at Williamsburg, by the burgesses and the merchants of the colony appointing committees, to be chosen by the associators of each county, to enforce the non-importation agreement; resolving to promote industry and frugality; enumerating the articles not to be imported or purchased after a certain day, specially mentioning slaves and wine; engaging not to advance the price of goods, wares, and merchandise; binding themselves not to import or purchase any article which should be taxed by parliament for the purpose of raising a revenue in America.
The estimable Botetourt died in October, 1770, in his fifty-third year, and after an administration of two years. Promoted to the peerage in 1764, he had succeeded Sir Jeffrey Amherst as governor-in-chief in 1768, and was the first of that title since Lord Culpepper, who had condescended to come over to the colony. On his arrival it was his purpose to reduce the Virginians to submission, either by persuasion or by force; but when he became better acquainted with the people he changed his views, and entreated the ministry to repeal the offensive acts. Such a promise was, indeed, held out to him; but finding himself deceived, he demanded his recall, and died shortly afterwards of a bilious fever, exacerbated by chagrin and disappointment. He was a patron of learning and the arts, giving out of his own purse silver and gold medals as prizes to the students of William and Mary College. His death was deeply lamented by the colony, and the assembly erected a statue in honor of him, which is still standing, somewhat mutilated, in front of the college. At his death the administration devolved upon William Nelson, president of the council.
In May, 1771, a great fresh occurred in Virginia, the James in three days rising twenty feet higher than ever was known before. The low grounds were inundated, standing crops destroyed, corn, fences, chattels, merchandise, cattle, and houses carried off, and ships forced from their moorings. Many of the inhabitants, masters and slaves, in endeavoring to rescue property, or to escape from danger, were drowned. Houses were seen drifting down the current, and people clinging to them, uttering fruitless cries for succor. Fertile fields were covered with a thick deposit of sand; islands were torn to pieces, bars accumulated, the channel diverted, and the face of nature altered. At Turkey Island, on the James River, there is a monument bearing the following inscription: "The foundations of this pillar were laid in the calamitous year 1771, when all the great rivers of this country were swept by inundations never before experienced, which changed the face of nature and left traces of their violence that will remain for ages." One hundred and fifty persons were drowned by this rise in the rivers.
The assembly met in July, 1771. About this time the question of an American episcopate was agitated; and in some of the Northern colonies the measure was warmly contended for in the public papers. New York and New Jersey desired to secure the co-operation of Virginia in petitioning the king on this subject, and deputed the Rev. Dr. Cooper, President of King's College, New York, and the Rev. Mr. McKean, deputies to visit the South in this behalf; and at their urgent solicitation, Commissary Horrocks, himself aspiring to the mitre, as was supposed, called a convocation of the clergy to take the matter into consideration. Only a few attended; but after some vacillation they determined to join in the petition to the crown, the Rev. John Camm taking the lead in this proceeding. Four of the clergy in attendance, Henley and Gwatkin, professors in the College of William and Mary, and Hewitt and Bland, entered a protest against the scheme of introducing a bishop, as endangering the very existence of the British empire in America. The assembly having expressed its disapprobation of the project, and it being urged but by few, and resisted by some of the clergy, it fell to the ground; and the thanks of the house were presented, through Richard Henry Lee and Richard Bland, to the protesting clergymen for their "wise and well-timed opposition." Churchmen naturally sided with the English government, and the bench of bishops were arrayed in opposition to the rights of the colonies. The protest of the four ministers gave rise to a controversy between them and the United Episcopal Conventions of New York and New Jersey; and a war of pamphlets and newspapers ensued in the Northern and Middle States; and the stamp act itself, according to some writers, did not evoke more bitter denunciations, nor more violent threats, than the project of an episcopate: New England was in a flame against it. It was believed, that if bishops should be sent over they would unite with the governors in opposition to the rights of America. The laity of the Episcopal Church in America were, excepting a small minority, opposed to the measure. Neither the people of Virginia, nor any of the American colonies, were at any time willing to receive a bishop appointed by the English government. Among the advocates of the scheme the Rev. Jonathan Boucher took a prominent part, and he sustained it ably from the pulpit. He held that the refusal of Virginia to consent to the appointment of a bishop, was "to unchurch the church;" and his views on this subject were re-echoed by Lowth, Bishop of Oxford, in an anniversary sermon delivered before the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. On this point of ecclesiastical government the members of the establishment in Virginia appear to have been looked upon as themselves dissenters. In one sense they were so; but their repugnance was to prelacy, not to the episcopate; a prelatical bishop was in their minds associated with ideas of expense beyond their means, and of opposition to the principles of civil liberty. Boucher, in a sermon that he preached in this year at St. Mary's Church, in Caroline County, of which he was then rector, says of the dissenters in Virginia: "I might almost as well pretend to count the gnats that buzz around us in a summer's evening."
The scheme of sending over a bishop had been entertained more than a hundred years before; and Dean Swift at one time entertained hopes of being made Bishop of Virginia, with power, as is said, to ordain priests and deacons for all the colonies, and to parcel them out into deaneries, parishes, chapels, etc., and to recommend and present thereto. The favorite sermons of many of the Virginia clergy were Sterne's.[562:A]
During this year died the Rev. James Horrocks, President of the College and Commissary. He had been at the head of William and Mary since the death of Rev. William Yates, in 1764. Mr. Horrocks was succeeded in both places by the Rev. John Camm.
John Murray, Earl of Dunmore, was transferred[562:B] from the government of New York to that of Virginia. The town of Fincastle, the title of one of his sons, in Botetourt County, was now incorporated. The Honorable William Nelson, president, died in this year. About this time the Methodists appeared in Virginia; they still avowed that attachment to the Church of England which Wesley and Whitefield both, in the early years of their career, had uniformly professed. Although they allowed laymen to preach, the communion was received by them at the hands of the clergy only; and they even affirmed that "whosoever left the church left the Methodists." They, therefore, now were visited with a share of the odium which fell upon the established church.
FOOTNOTES:
[556:A] Bancroft, vi. 228.
[557:A] 1769.
[557:B] May 16th.
[558:A] Letter of R. C. Nicholas to Arthur Lee, S. Lit. Messenger, 1858, p. 184.
[562:A] Old Churches, i. 25.
[562:B] 1772.
LXXII. THE REV. DEVEREUX JARRATT
THE REV. DEVEREUX JARRATT was born in the County of New Kent, Virginia, in January, 1733, of obscure parentage. His grandfather, an Englishman, had served during the civil wars under Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, and hence probably was derived the Christian name of the grandson. His grandmother was a native of Ireland. His father was a carpenter, and from the manner in which he and his family lived, some idea may be formed of the condition of the common people in that day. Their food consisted of the produce of the soil, except a little sugar, which was used only on rare occasions. Their clothes were all of maternal manufacture, except hats and shoes, and these last were worn only in the winter. They not only used no tea or coffee themselves, but they knew no family that did use them. Meat and bread and milk constituted the diet of that class. They looked upon the gentry as a superior caste. Jarratt, in his autobiography, describing his early days, says: "For my part, I was quite shy of them, and kept off at an humble distance. A periwig in those days was a distinguishing badge of gentle-folk, and when I saw a man riding the road near our house with a wig on, it would so alarm my fears and give me such a disagreeable feeling, that I dare say I would run off as for my life." He lived to see society reduced to the opposite, and, in his opinion, worse extreme of republican levelling, insubordination, and irreverence. His early education was confined to reading, writing, and elementary arithmetic, some short prayers, and the church catechism. Upon his father's death, Robert, the eldest son, inherited the land, and Devereux's share of the personal property was twenty-five pounds, Virginia currency, which he was to receive when he should reach the age of twenty-one. The relative value of money was four times greater then than it was fifty years afterwards. A good horse could be bought for five pounds, and a good cow and calf for a pistole, or three dollars and sixty cents. At eight or nine years of age young Jarratt was sent to school, and so continued, with great interruptions, for three or four years. By this time he had learned to read the Bible indifferently, to write a sorry hand, and had acquired some knowledge of arithmetic, and this closed his educational curriculum. Being placed now under the guardianship of his elder brother, his employments for some years were threefold: 1st, taking care of and training race-horses; 2d, taking care of gamecocks and preparing them for a match and main; 3d, ploughing, harrowing, and other plantation work. At the age of seventeen he undertook the business of a carpenter, under another brother, who often had recourse to "hard words and severe blows," which he "did not at all relish;" but he continued to labor in this way until about 1750. During the five or six years while he lived with his brothers, he never heard or saw anything of a religious nature, nor did he go to the parish church once a year. The parish minister was a poor preacher, very near-sighted, and, reading his sermons closely, he kept his eyes fixed on the paper, and so near that what he said "seemed rather addressed to the cushion than to the congregation." This parson was rarely observed to stand erect and face the audience, except when he denounced some individual in the congregation with whom he happened to have a quarrel. Cards, dancing, racing, etc., were then the favorite pastimes, and young Jarratt participated in them as far as his leisure and circumstances would permit, and this as well on Sundays as on other days. Not being content with his stock of learning, and skill in arithmetic being the chief desideratum among the common people, he borrowed a book, and while his plough-horse was grazing at noon applied himself to that study, and made rapid progress. He felt conscious at this time that the plough and the axe were not his element; and his skill in the division of crops, in the rule of three, and in practice, soon became so widely known that he was, unexpectedly, when at the age of nineteen, invited to set up a school in Albemarle County, one hundred miles distant from New Kent. His baggage appears to have constituted no considerable impediment to his journey, for he says: "I think I carried the whole on my back except one shirt." His entire wardrobe at this time consisted of a pair of coarse breeches, one or two Oznaburg shirts, a pair of shoes and stockings, an old felt hat, and a bear-skin coat, the first garment of that kind that had ever been made for him. To improve the gentility of his appearance he put on a cast-off wig, which he procured from a servant. On setting out for Albemarle, young Jarratt had not a farthing of money, and never had been master of as much as five shillings cash. The income of the school scarce afforded him clothing of the coarsest kind, but he gained the confidence of his employer, who was an overseer for a lowland gentleman, so far, that he trusted him with "as much checks as made him two new shirts." Albemarle was then a frontier county; there was no minister or public worship within many miles, and the Sabbath was spent in sports and amusements. Here he met with Whitefield's Eight Sermons, delivered at Glasgow, the first book of sermons that he ever saw. Jarratt went next to live with a wealthy gentleman, whose wife was a pious Presbyterian, spoken of as a New Light. It was while he was under Presbyterian influences that his conversion took place. When upwards of twenty-five years old he commenced the study of Latin under Alexander Martin, sent from Princeton College, a private tutor in the family of a gentleman in Cumberland. Martin was afterwards governor of North Carolina. Mr. Jarratt intended to become a Presbyterian minister, but in 1762 changed his mind, and began to prepare to take orders in the established church. Upon a further acquaintance with the subject his prejudices against that church and its liturgy were removed, and he came to be of opinion that the Prayer Book contained, at the least, as good a system of doctrine and public worship as the Presbyterian; the doctrinal articles he considered the same, in substance, in both churches, and the different modes of worship he held to be not essential. His mind hung in equilibrium between the Church of England and the Presbyterian Church as regarded their theory, and balancing the secular advantages, he decided in favor of the established church, mainly because "he saw the Presbyterian ministers dependent on annual subscriptions--a mode of support very precarious in itself, and which subjects the minister to the caprice of so many people, and tends to bind his hands and hinder his usefulness." To this he adds: "The general prejudice of the people at that time against dissenters and in favor of the church, gave me a full persuasion that I could do more good in the church than anywhere else." The fact is, however, that at that time the popular feeling was growing less friendly to the clergy of the established church and more friendly to dissenters. Embarking for England, in October, 1762, and being ordained deacon by the Bishop of London, and priest by the Bishop of Chester, he preached several times in London, and was "suspected of being a Methodist." While in that city he heard Whitefield and Wesley. He returned to Virginia in July. Shortly afterwards he was received as minister of Bath Parish, in Dinwiddie, he being then in his thirty-first year. He found his people as ignorant of true religion as if they had never frequented a church or heard a sermon. As regarded other Episcopal clergymen, he did not know of one in Virginia like-minded with himself. He was indeed opposed and reproached by them as a fanatic, a dissenter, a Presbyterian. His preaching, although at first unacceptable, proved, ere long, effective, and crowded congregations attended his ministrations. The interest extending widely beyond his parish, he spent part of his time in itinerant preaching, going several hundred miles and in every direction. The clergy in general being unwilling to open their churches for him, and they being not large enough to contain the crowds which he attracted, he was in the habit of preaching in the open air, under trees, arbors, or booths, and he had the advantage of a voice which was audible to his large congregations. The clergy frequently threatened him with writs and prosecutions for the violation of canonical order, but he retorted upon them successfully, and maintained his ground. At length he met with sympathy and co-operation from the Rev. Mr. McRoberts, and an intimacy continued between them for many years. But as Mr. Jarratt, who was at first in effect a Presbyterian, became a minister of the established church, so eventually, many years afterwards, during the revolutionary war, his friend and coadjutor, Mr. McRoberts, became a Presbyterian minister. Their friendship remained uninterrupted.
About the year 1769 the increase of the number of Baptists produced some divisions among Mr. Jarratt's people. The Methodists appearing in Virginia about the same time, and professing to be virtually members of the Church of England, Mr. Jarratt (in order to resist the encroachments of the Baptists) co-operated with them in building up their societies; but he found reason subsequently to repent of this step, and although often styled a Methodist himself, yet he finally broke off entirely from that denomination.[567:A]
FOOTNOTES:
[567:A] Life of Rev. Devereux Jarratt, 5, 107. His sermons were published in several volumes.
Chapter LXXIII
1773-1774.
Duty on Tea--Dunmore, Governor--Proceedings of Assembly-- Private Meeting of Patriots--Committees of Correspondence-- Washington--Dunmore visits the Frontier.
IN the year 1770, all the duties on articles imported into America having been repealed, save that on tea, the American merchants refused to import that commodity from England. Consequently a large stock of it was accumulated in the warehouses of the East India Company; and the government in 1773 authorized the company to ship it to America free from any export duty. The light import duty payable in America being far less than that from which it was exempted in England, it was taken for granted that it would sell more readily in the colony than before it had been made a subject of taxation. It was, indeed, by some looked upon as now rather a question of commerce than of taxation; the main object of the British government appears to have been to put an end to the trade between the colonies and Holland, (a trade contraband according to the letter of the law, but the law had been practically long obsolete,) and to give to the East India Company a monopoly of the colonial markets. But it was in general regarded in America as a test question of revenue.
The tea-ships arrived in America, and measures were taken to prevent the landing of the tea; at Boston several cargoes were thrown overboard in the night of December the eighteenth, into the sea, by a party of men disguised as Indians, acting under the advice of Samuel Adams, and other leading patriots. Other colonies either compelled the masters of the tea-ships to return with their cargoes, or excluded them from sale; and thus not a chest of it was sold for the benefit of the company. Tea had hitherto been imported by Pennsylvania, New York, and Massachusetts into the colonies to the value of three hundred thousand pounds annually from Holland and her dependencies. In Virginia the use of this beverage was now generally abandoned.[569:A]
Intelligence of the occurrences at Boston having reached England, parliament ordered the port of that town to be closed on the fourth day of June; and other strong measures were adopted in order to reduce Massachusetts to submission. The colonies, like the captives in the cave of Polyphemus, were conscious of being involved in a common danger; and that if one should fall a victim, the destruction of the rest would be only a question of time.
When John Murray, Earl of Dunmore, the newly-appointed governor of Virginia, reached Williamsburg, early in 1772, he found that he had already incurred suspicion on account of the appointment of Captain Foy as his clerk, or private secretary, with a salary of five hundred pounds, to be derived from new-created fees. Foy had distinguished himself at the battle of Minden, and had been afterwards governor of New Hampshire. Dunmore summoned the assembly which met in February; and his apparent haughtiness at the first rather heightened the prejudice against him. He, however, relinquished the objectionable fees, and thus conciliated so good a feeling that the assembly expressed their gratitude in warm and affectionate terms. Some important acts were passed during this session, including several for the promotion of internal improvement--for improving the navigation of the Potomac; for making a road from the Warm Spring to Jenning's Gap; for clearing the Matapony; for circumventing the falls of James River by a canal from Westham; and for cutting a canal across from Archer's Hope Creek to Queen's Creek, through Williamsburg, to connect the James River with the York. The Counties of Berkley and Dunmore were carved out from Frederick.[569:B]
The assembly was prorogued to the tenth of June. Dunmore, notwithstanding his recent complaisance, evinced his distaste for assemblies by proroguing them from time to time, until at length a forgery of the paper-currency of the colony compelled him to call the legislature together again, by proclamation, March 4th, 1773--the thirteenth year of the reign of George the Third. His lordship's measures in apprehending the counterfeiters had been more energetic than legal, and the assembly, not diverted by their care for the treasury from a regard to personal rights, requested that his proceedings might not be drawn into a precedent.
The horizon was again darkened by gathering clouds. A British armed revenue vessel having been burnt in Narraganset Bay, an act of parliament was passed making such offences punishable by death, and authorizing the accused to be transported to England for trial. Virginia had already, in 1709, remonstrated against this last measure. The conservatives, the statu quo party in the assembly, as usual, differed with the movement party as to the proper measure to be adopted. Patrick Henry, Mr. Jefferson, Richard Henry Lee, Francis L. Lee, Dabney Carr, and perhaps one or two others were at this gloomy period in the habit of meeting together in the evening in a private room of the Raleigh, to consult on the state of affairs. In conformity with their agreement, Dabney Carr, on the twelfth of March, moved a series of resolutions, recommending a committee of correspondence, and instructing them to inquire in regard to the newly-constituted court in Rhode Island. Richard Henry Lee and Patrick Henry made speeches of memorable eloquence on this occasion. Mr. Lee was the author of the plan of intercolonial committees of correspondence; and Virginia was the first colony that adopted it. The resolutions passed without opposition, and Dunmore immediately dissolved the house. These resolutions "struck a greater panic into the ministers" than anything that had taken place since the passage of the stamp act.[570:A]
The committee of correspondence appointed were Peyton Randolph, Robert C. Nicholas, Richard Bland, Richard Henry Lee, Benjamin Harrison, Edmund Pendleton, Patrick Henry, Dudley Digges, Dabney Carr, Archibald Cary, and Thomas Jefferson. On the day after the dissolution, this committee addressed a circular to the other colonies. Robert Carter Nicholas published, during this year, a pamphlet in defence of colonial rights.
Dabney Carr, although young, was, according to Mr. Jefferson, a formidable rival at the bar to Patrick Henry, and promised to become a distinguished statesman; but he died shortly after, in the thirtieth year of his age, greatly lamented. The judge of the same name was his son. Washington was a member of this assembly, and supported the patriotic measures, perhaps, however, as yet little dreaming that the colonies were on the verge of revolution and war. He was still on friendly terms with Governor Dunmore, who appreciated his abilities and character. He, indeed, intended about this time, in compliance with the governor's invitation, to accompany him in a tour of observation to the western frontier of Virginia, where both of them had an interest in lands; but this was prevented by the illness and death of Miss Custis, the daughter of Mrs. Washington by a former marriage.
Dunmore visited the frontier and remained some time at Pittsburg, and endeavored, by the help of Dr. Conolly, to extend the bounds of Virginia in that quarter; and this was attributed to a design to foment a quarrel between Virginia and Pennsylvania; but the suspicion was probably without sufficient foundation.
FOOTNOTES:
[569:A] Some of the loyal ladies adhered to the use of it. The wife of Bernard Moore, of Chelsea, in King William, daughter of a British governor, Spotswood, according to family tradition, continued to sip her tea in her closet after it was banished from the table.
[569:B] The name of Dunmore was, in 1777, changed to Shenandoah.
[570:A] MS. letter of William Lee, dated at London, January 1st, 1774.
Chapter LXXIV
1774.
Lady Dunmore and Children--Gayety of Williamsburg--Boston Port Bill--Fast-day appointed--Governor dissolves the Assembly-- Resolutions of Burgesses--Convention called--The Raleigh-- Mason's Opinion of Henry--Patriotic Measures--Convention-- Jefferson's "Summary View."
LATE in April there arrived at the palace in Williamsburg, the Right Honorable the Countess of Dunmore, with George, Lord Fincastle, the Honorable Alexander and John Murray, and the Ladies Catherine, Augusta, and Susan Murray, accompanied by Captain Foy and his lady. On this occasion there was an illumination, and the people with acclamations welcomed her ladyship and family to Virginia. The three sons of Lord Dunmore were students in the College of William and Mary in that year.
When the assembly met in May, Williamsburg presented a scene of unwonted gayety, and a court-herald published a code of etiquette for the regulation of the society of the little metropolis. Washington, arriving there on the sixteenth, dined with Lord Dunmore. At the beginning of the session the burgesses made an address congratulating the governor on the arrival of his lady, and the members agreed to give a ball in her honor on the twenty-seventh; but the sky was again suddenly overcast by intelligence of the act of parliament shutting up the port of Boston. The assembly made an indignant protest against this act, and,[572:A] imitating the example of the Puritans in the civil wars of England, set apart the first of June, appointed for closing the port, as a day of fasting, prayer, and humiliation, in which the Divine interposition was to be implored to protect the rights of the colonies, and avert the horrors of civil war, and to unite the people of America in the common cause.
On the next day Dunmore, summoning the burgesses to attend him in the council chamber, dissolved them in the following words: "Mr. Speaker and Gentlemen of the house of burgesses, I have in my hand a paper published by order of your house, conceived in such terms as reflect highly upon his majesty and the parliament of Great Britain, which makes it necessary for me to dissolve you, and you are dissolved accordingly."
The burgesses repaired immediately to the Raleigh,[573:A] and in the room called "the Apollo" adopted resolutions against the use of tea and other East India commodities, and recommended the annual convening of a congress. In this measure, as in the appointment of committees of correspondence, Virginia took the lead. North Carolina promptly followed her example. Notwithstanding the untoward turn of events, Washington dined with the governor on the twenty-fifth, and passed the evening with him, rode with him to his farm, and breakfasted there on the following day, and attended the ball given on the twenty-seventh in honor of Lady Dunmore.
Further news being received from Boston, the members who remained in Williamsburg held a meeting on the twenty-ninth, at which Peyton Randolph presided, and they issued a circular, recommending a meeting of deputies in a convention to assemble there on the first of August.
A dissolution of the assembly had been expected, but it had been supposed that it would be deferred until the public business should be despatched--toward the latter part of June. Consultations and measures for the preservation of the public rights and liberties were conducted and matured very privately, and by very few members, of whom Patrick Henry was the leader. George Mason, who arrived in Williamsburg in the latter part of May, says, in a letter to a friend: "At the request of the gentlemen concerned, I have spent an evening with them upon the subject, where I had an opportunity of conversing with Mr. Henry and knowing his sentiments, as well as hearing him speak in the house since on different occasions. He is by far the most powerful speaker I ever heard. Every word he says not only engages, but commands the attention, and your passions are no longer your own when he addresses them. But his eloquence is the least part of his merit. He is, in my opinion, the first man upon this continent as well in abilities as public virtues, and had he lived in Rome about the time of the first Punic war, when the Roman people had arrived at their meridian glory, and their virtue not tarnished, Mr. Henry's talents must have put him at the head of that glorious commonwealth."
Mr. Mason found the minds of all at Williamsburg entirely absorbed in the news from Massachusetts. The burgesses, at their own expense, sent to their counties copies of the resolution adopted against the Boston port bill, in order that it should be ratified by the people. Mr. Mason, as other members probably did, directed that his elder children should attend church on the day of fasting, humiliation, and prayer, in mourning. The first of June was observed as set apart by the house of burgesses. The same day being the time fixed for the discontinuance of the use of tea, the ladies, before that day, sealed up their stock, with a determination not to use it until the duty should be repealed, and resolutions of sympathy and encouragement, and contributions of money and provisions, were sent from Virginia for the relief of "our distressed fellow-subjects of Boston."
In the midst of these excitements John Page, of Rosewell, was elected president of the Society for the Advancement of Useful Knowledge.
In the latter part of June, Washington presided as moderator at a meeting held in his own county, Fairfax, and he was made chairman of a committee appointed to draught resolutions on the alarming state of public affairs, to be reported at a future meeting. He about this time warmly supported the patriotic measures, in a correspondence with his neighbor and friend, Bryan Fairfax, who adhered to the Anglican side in the dispute. On the twenty-fourth of August he wrote to him: "I could wish, I own, that the dispute had been left to posterity to determine; but the crisis is arrived when we must assert our rights, or submit to every imposition that can be heaped upon us, till custom and use will make us as tame and abject slaves as the blacks we rule over with such arbitrary sway."
The Fairfax committee framed resolutions, intimating that a persistence of the government in its measures of coercion would result of necessity only in a resort to the arbitrament of arms. These resolutions were adopted by a county meeting held on the eighteenth of July, and Washington was elected a delegate to the convention which was about to convene. This body met on the first day of August, (although Dunmore had issued writs for a new assembly,) its object being to consider the state and condition of the colony, and to appoint delegates to congress. A new and more thorough non-importation association was organized. Peyton Randolph, Richard Henry Lee, Washington, Henry, Bland, Benjamin Harrison, Jr., of Berkley, and Pendleton, were appointed[575:A] delegates to congress. Patrick Henry and Richard Henry Lee were listened to with delight, and Washington said, "I will raise one thousand men, subsist them at my own expense, and march myself at their head for the relief of Boston."[575:B]
Mr. Jefferson was elected a member of this convention, but was prevented from attending by the state of his health. In the interval before the meeting he prepared instructions for the Virginia delegates in congress, in which he assumed the ground that the British parliament had no right whatever to exercise any authority over the colony of Virginia. These instructions being communicated through the president of the convention, Peyton Randolph, were generally read and approved of by many, though considered too bold for the present. But they printed them in a pamphlet, under the title of "A Summary View of the Rights of British America."[575:C] The following excerpts are taken from it: "History has informed us that bodies of men as well as individuals are susceptible of the spirit of tyranny." "Scarcely have our minds been able to emerge from the astonishment into which one stroke of parliamentary thunder has involved us before another more heavy and more alarming is fallen on us." "The great principles of right and wrong are legible to every reader; to pursue them requires not the aid of many counsellors. The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest; only aim to do your duty, and mankind will give you credit where you fail. No longer persevere in sacrificing the rights of one part of the empire to the inordinate desires of another, but deal out to all equal and impartial right. Let no act be passed by any one legislature which may infringe on the rights and liberties of another." "Accept of every commercial preference it is in our power to give for such things as we can raise for their use, or they make for ours. But let them not think to exclude us from going to other markets to dispose of those commodities which they cannot use, or to supply those wants which they cannot supply."
On the subject of slavery Mr. Jefferson used the following language: "The abolition of domestic slavery is the great object of desire in these colonies, where it was unhappily introduced in their infant state. But previous to the enfranchisement of the slaves we have, it is necessary to exclude all further importations from Africa, yet our repeated attempts to effect this, by prohibitions, and by imposing duties which might amount to a prohibition, have been hitherto defeated by his majesty's negative; thus preferring the immediate advantage of a few British corsairs to the lasting interests of the American States and to the rights of human nature deeply wounded by this infamous practice."
In consonance with these opinions, the convention adopted the following resolution: "After the first day of November next we will neither ourselves import, nor purchase any slave or slaves imported by any other person, either from Africa, the West Indies, or any other place."
Mr. Jefferson's pamphlet displays a thorough knowledge of the history and constitutional rights of the colony; it breathes a fiery spirit of defiance and revolution, and the rhythmical splendor of elevated declamation in some of its passages is hardly inferior to Junius. If some of its statements and views are extravagant or erroneous, yet it is bold, acute, comprehensive, luminous, and impressive. This pamphlet, it is said, found its way to England, was taken hold of by the opposition, interpolated a little by Edmund Burke, so as to make it answer opposition purposes, and in that form it ran through several editions.
FOOTNOTES:
[572:A] May twenty-fourth.
[573:A] The Raleigh tavern, a wooden house, is upwards of a hundred years old. There was formerly a bust of Sir Walter Raleigh in front of the house. The ball-room in the Raleigh was styled "The Apollo." There was a tavern in London called "The Apollo" in 1690.
[575:A] August eleventh.
[575:B] Life and Works of John Adams, ii. 360.
[575:C] To be found in Amer. Archives, published by Congress, fourth series, i. 690, and in the Congress edition of Mr. Jefferson's works. See also Memoir and Correspondence of Jefferson, 100, 116.
Chapter LXXV
Richard Henry Lee--Congress at Philadelphia--Henry--Proceedings of Congress--Washington--Military Spirit in Virginia.
RICHARD HENRY LEE was born at Stratford, on the Potomac, January 20th, 1732, his father being Thomas Lee, and his mother, Hannah, daughter of Colonel Ludwell, of Greenspring, near Jamestown. Richard, second son of Richard Lee, was of the council, and an adherent of Sir William Berkley; and Thomas Lee, third son, was some time president of the council. He was one of the majority of that body who persecuted the dissenters. Richard Henry Lee's maternal relations were conspicuous for their wealth, influence, and public stations. Colonel Ludwell, the father of Mrs. Lee, was of the council, as also was a son of his. Her grandfather was a collector of the customs, (having succeeded in that office Giles Bland, who was executed during Bacon's rebellion,) and afterwards governor of North Carolina. The Ludwells were staunch supporters of Sir William Berkley and the Stuart dynasty. Richard Henry Lee's mother, one of the high-toned aristocracy of the colony, confined her care chiefly to her daughters and her eldest son, and left her younger sons pretty much to shift for themselves. After a course of private tuition in his father's house, Richard Henry was sent to Wakefield Academy, Yorkshire, England, where he distinguished himself by his proficiency in his studies, particularly in the Latin and Greek. Having completed his course at this school, he travelled through England, and visited London. He returned when about nineteen years of age to his native country, two years after his father's death, which occurred in 1750. Young Lee's patrimony rendering it unnecessary for him to devote himself to a profession, he now passed a life of ease, but not of idleness; for he indulged his taste for letters, and diligently stored his mind with knowledge. In 1755, being chosen captain of a company of volunteers raised in Westmoreland, he marched with them to Alexandria, and offered their services to General Braddock; but the offer was declined. In his twenty-fifth year Mr. Lee was appointed a justice of the peace, and shortly afterwards elected a burgess for his county. Naturally diffident, and finding himself surrounded by able men, for one or two sessions he took no part in the debates. One of his early efforts was in support of a resolution "to lay so heavy a tax on the importation of slaves as effectually to put an end to that iniquitous and disgraceful traffick within the colony of Virginia." On this question he argued against the institution of slavery as a portentous evil, moral and political.[578:A] When the defalcations of Treasurer Robinson came to be suspected, Mr. Lee insisted with firmness, in the face of a proud and embittered opposition, on an investigation of the treasury. In November, 1764, when the stamp act was first heard of in America, Mr. Lee, at the instance of a friend, wrote to England, making application for a collector's office under that act. He alleged that at that time neither he, nor, as he believed, his countrymen, had duly reflected on the real nature of that act. Observing soon, however, the growing dissatisfaction with that measure, and bestowing more deliberate reflection upon it, he became convinced of its pernicious character, and of the impropriety of his application; and from that time he became one of the most strenuous opponents of the stamp act. In the year 1766 he brought to the consideration of the assembly the act of parliament claiming a right to tax America; and he draughted the address to the king, and the memorial to the commons. His accomplishments, learning, courtesy, patriotism, republican principles, decision of character and eloquence, commanded the attention of the legislature. Although a member at the time of the introduction of Henry's resolutions, in 1765, Mr. Lee happened not to be present at the discussion; but he heartily concurred in their adoption. Shortly afterwards he organized an association in furtherance of them in Westmoreland. He vigorously opposed the act laying a duty on tea, and that for quartering British troops in the colonies. He was now residing at Chantilly, his seat on the Potomac, a few miles below Stratford, in Westmoreland. The house at Chantilly is no longer standing. On the 25th of July, 1768, in a letter to John Dickinson, of Pennsylvania, Mr. Lee suggested "that not only select committees should be appointed by all the colonies, but that a private correspondence should be conducted between the lovers of liberty in every province." In the year 1773 the Virginia assembly, at the suggestion of Mr. Lee, appointed the first committee of intercolonial correspondence, consisting of six members, of whom he was one.
Washington was joined at Mount Vernon by Henry and Pendleton, and they proceeded together to Philadelphia. Here the old Continental Congress, consisting of fifty-five delegates, representing all the colonies except Georgia, assembled on the 5th day of September, 1774.[579:A]
Upon the motion of Mr. Lynch, of South Carolina, Peyton Randolph, of Virginia, was unanimously elected president, and Charles Thomson, secretary. At the opening of the session, on the second day, the prolonged silence was at length broken by Patrick Henry. Reciting the grievances of the colonies, he declared that all government was dissolved, and that they were reduced to a state of nature; that the congress which he was addressing was the first in a perpetual series of congresses. A few sentences roughly jotted down in John Adams' diary[579:B] are all that survive of this celebrated speech.
Patrick Henry and Richard Henry Lee towered supereminent in debate; yet it soon came to be remarked that in composition and the routine of actual business they were surpassed by many.[579:C] But "the egotism of human nature will seldom allow us to credit a man for one excellence, without detracting from him in other respects; if he has genius, we imagine he has not common sense; if he is a poet, we suppose that he is not a logician."[580:A] It has been seen that George Mason considered Henry "the first man on this continent in ability as in public virtues." A great man only can adequately appreciate a great man. Henry was capable of being no less efficient in the committee-room than on the floor of debate.[580:B] There was no test of intellectual excellence too severe for him. The state-papers of Richard Henry Lee are sufficient proofs of his capacity.
The proceedings were conducted in secret session. Intelligence which was received from Boston riveted more closely the union of the North and South; minor differences were lost sight of in view of the portentous common danger. The congress made a declaration of rights. Dickinson composed the petition to the king, and the address to the inhabitants of Quebec; Jay an address to the people of Great Britain; and Richard Henry Lee a memorial to the inhabitants of the British colonies. The congress, after a session of fifty-one days, adjourned in October.
Mr. Henry, on his return home, being asked, "Who is the greatest man in congress?" replied, "If you speak of eloquence, Mr. Rutledge, of South Carolina, is by far the greatest orator; but if you speak of solid information and sound judgment, Colonel Washington is unquestionably the greatest man on that floor." John Adams, the eloquent and indomitable advocate of independence, mentions Lee, Henry, and Hooper as the orators of that body. Washington, in a letter addressed to Captain Mackenzie, who had formerly served under him, and was now among the British troops at Boston, gave it as his opinion, that it was neither the wish nor the interest of Massachusetts, nor of any of the colonies, to set up for independence; yet they never would submit to the loss of their constitutional rights. The same opinion was avowed by Jefferson, Franklin, and other leading men; yet there was undoubtedly then, and long had been, a strong undercurrent, a heavy ground-swell in the direction of independence, it being evident that England would never restore the colonies to their condition previous to 1763. A declaration of war is usually preceded by a hypothetical denial of hostile designs: it is the lull whose mysterious silence heralds in the approaching storm.
Patrick Henry stood foremost among the statesmen of Virginia, from the beginning of the contest, in favor of independence; he was on this point ten years in advance of them;[581:A] standing out in bold relief the prominent and pre-eminent figure on the canvas. Samuel Adams, in Massachusetts, was a patriot of the same stamp.
The danger of an outbreak of hostilities between the people of Boston and the British troops growing daily more imminent, the spirit of warlike preparation, by a sort of contagion, pervaded the colonies. It had long been a custom in Virginia to form independent military companies; and several of these now solicited Colonel Washington to review them and take command; and he consented; and in the apprehension of war, all eyes involuntarily turned to him as the first military character in the colony. At Mount Vernon he occasionally saw his former companions in arms, Dr. James Craik, and Captain Hugh Mercer, also a physician, both natives of Scotland, and with them talked over the recollections of former years, and discussed the prospects of the future. Washington was visited during the year also by General Charles Lee and Major Horatio Gates, natives of England, who had distinguished themselves in the British army, and destined to become conspicuous in the American war of revolution. They had recently purchased estates in Berkley County, Virginia.
FOOTNOTES:
[578:A] Life of Richard Henry Lee, 17.
[579:A] Carpenter's Hall, instituted in 1721 by the Company of Carpenters, is in a court a little back from Chestnut Street. There is in the Hall the following inscription: "Within these walls Henry, Hancock, and Adams inspired the delegates of the colonies with nerve and sinew for the toils of war resulting in our national independence." Two high-backed arm-chairs are preserved, marked "Continental Congress, 1774."
[579:B] See his Life and Works, ii. 366.
[579:C] Wirt's Life of Patrick Henry.
[580:A] Lord Brougham.
[580:B] Grigsby's Va. Convention of 1776, p. 150.
[581:A] Grigsby's Va. Convention of 1776, p. 148.
Chapter LXXVI
1774.
Indian Hostilities--Battle of Point Pleasant--General Andrew Lewis--Death of Colonel Charles Lewis--Cornstalk--Indignation against Dunmore--General Lewis and his Brothers.
IN April, 1774, some extraordinary hostilities occurred between the Indians and the whites on the frontier of Virginia. On which side these outrages commenced was a matter of dispute, but the whites appear to have been probably the aggressors. An Indian war being apprehended, Dunmore appointed General Andrew Lewis, of Botetourt County, then a member of the assembly, to the command of the southern division of the forces raised in Botetourt, Augusta, and the adjoining counties east of the Blue Ridge, while his lordship in person took command of those levied in the northern counties, Frederick, Dunmore, and those adjacent. According to the plan of campaign, as arranged at Williamsburg, Lewis was to march down the valley of the Kanawha[582:A] to Point Pleasant, where that river empties into the Ohio, there to be joined by the governor, who was to march by way of Fort Pitt, and thence descend the Ohio.
Late in August the Virginia Gazette announced news from the frontier that Lord Dunmore was to march in a few days for the mouth of New River, where he was to be joined by Lewis.
Early in September the troops under his command made their rendezvous at Camp Union,[582:B] now Lewisburg, in the County of Greenbrier. They consisted of two regiments, under Colonel William Fleming, of Botetourt, and Colonel Charles Lewis, of Augusta, comprising about four hundred men. At Camp Union they were joined by a company under Colonel Field, of Culpepper, one from Bedford, under Colonel Buford, and two from the Holston settlement, (now Washington County,) under Captains Shelby and Harbert. These were part of the forces to be led on by Colonel Christian, who was to join the troops at Point Pleasant as soon as his regiment should be completed.
On the eleventh of September General Lewis, with eleven hundred men, commenced his march through the wilderness, piloted by Captain Matthew Arbuckle; flour, ammunition, and camp equipage being transported on pack-horses and bullocks driven in the rear of the little army. After a march of one hundred and sixty miles, they reached, on the thirtieth of September, Point Pleasant, at the junction of the Great Kanawha with the beautiful Ohio. "This promontory was elevated considerably above the high-water mark, and afforded an extensive and variegated prospect of the surrounding country. Here were seen hills, mountains, valleys, cliffs, plains, and promontories, all covered with gigantic forests, the growth of centuries, standing in their native grandeur and integrity, unsubdued, unmutilated by the hand of man, wearing the livery of the season, and raising aloft in mid-air their venerable trunks and branches as if to defy the lightning of the sky and the fury of the whirlwind. This widely-extended prospect, though rudely magnificent and picturesque, wanted, nevertheless, some of those softer features which might embellish and beautify, or, if the expression were permitted, might civilize the savage wilderness of some of nature's noblest efforts. Here were to be seen no villages nor hamlets, not a farm-house nor cottage, no fields nor meadows with their appropriate furniture, shocks of corn, nor herds of domestic animals. In its widest range the eye would in vain seek to discover a cultivated spot of earth on which to repose. Here were no marks of industry, nor of the exercise of those arts which minister to the comfort and convenience of man; here nature had for ages on ages held undisputed empire. In the deep and dismal solitude of these woodlands the lone wanderer would have been startled by the barking of the watch-dog, or the shrill clarion of a chanticleer. Here the whistling of the plough-boy, or the milk-maid's song, sounds elsewhere heard with pleasing emotions, would have been incongruous and out of place."[583:A]
Dunmore, who had marched across the country to the Shawnee towns, failing to join Lewis, runners were sent out by him toward Fort Pitt in quest of his lordship. October the sixth the Williamsburg Gazette announced advices from the frontier that the Earl of Dunmore had concluded a treaty of peace with the Delaware Indians. And before the return of the runners despatched from Point Pleasant, an express from the governor reached Point Pleasant on Sunday, the nineteenth of October, ordering General Lewis to march for the Chilicothe towns and there join him. Preparations were immediately made for crossing the Ohio.
In the mean time the Indians, headed by Cornstalk, had determined to cross the Ohio, some miles above Point Pleasant, and to march down during the night, so as to surprise the camp at daybreak. "Accordingly, on the evening of the ninth of October, soon after dark, they began to cross the river on rafts previously prepared. To ferry so many men over this wide river and on these clumsy transports must have required considerable time. But before morning they were all on the eastern bank, ready to proceed. Their route now lay down the margin of the river, through an extensive bottom. On this bottom was a heavy growth of timber, with a foliage so dense as in many places to intercept, in a great measure, the light of the moon and the stars. Beneath lay many trunks of fallen trees, strewed in different directions, and in various stages of decay. The whole surface of the ground was covered with a luxuriant growth of weeds, interspersed with entangling vines and creepers, and in some places with close-set thickets of spice-wood or other undergrowth. A journey through this in the night must have been tedious, tiresome, dark, and dreary. The Indians, however, entered on it promptly, and persevered until break of day, when, about a mile distant from the camp, one of those unforeseen incidents occurred which so often totally defeat or greatly mar the best concerted military enterprises."[584:A]
Two soldiers setting out very early from the camp on a hunting excursion, proceeded up the bank of the Ohio, and when they had gone about two miles they came suddenly upon a large body of Indians, who had crossed the river the evening before, and were now just rising from their encampment and preparing for battle. Espying the hunters they fired and killed one of them; the other escaping unhurt, ran back to the camp, where he arrived just before sunrise, and reported that "he had seen about five acres of ground covered with Indians as thick as they could stand one beside another." It was Cornstalk at the head of an army of Delawares, Mingoes, Cayugas, Iowas, Wyandots, and Shawnees, and but for the hunter's intelligence they would have surprised the camp. In a few moments two other men came in and confirmed the report, and then General Lewis lit his pipe, and sent forward the first division under his brother, Colonel Charles Lewis, and the second under Colonel Fleming; the first marching to the right at some distance from the Ohio, the bottom being a mile wide there; the second marching to the left along the bank of the river. General Andrew Lewis remained with the reserve to defend the camp. Colonel Lewis's division had not advanced along the river bottom quite half a mile from the camp when he was vigorously attacked in front, a little after sunrise, by the enemy, numbering between eight hundred and a thousand. Fleming's division was likewise attacked on the bank of the river. In a short time Colonel Charles Lewis was mortally wounded; this gallant and estimable officer, when struck by the bullet, fell at the foot of a tree, when he was, against his own wish, carried back to his tent by Captain Morrow and a private, and he died in a few hours, deeply lamented. Colonel Fleming also was severely wounded, two balls passing through his arm and one through his breast. After cheering on the officers and soldiers, he retired to the camp. The Augusta troops, upon the fall of their leader, Colonel Lewis, and several of the men, gave way, and retreated toward the camp, but being met by a re-enforcement of about two hundred and fifty, under Colonel Field, they rallied and drove back the enemy, and at this juncture this officer was killed. His place was taken by Captain Shelby. At length the Indians formed a line behind logs and trees, at right angles to the Ohio, through the woods to Crooked Creek, which empties into the Great Kanawha a little above its mouth. The engagement now became general, and was obstinately sustained in the bush-fighting manner on both sides. The Virginia troops being hemmed in between the two rivers, with the Indians in front, General Lewis employed the troops from the more eastern part of the colony (who were less experienced in Indian fighting) in throwing up a breastwork of the boughs and trunks of trees, across the delta between the Kanawha and Ohio. About twelve o'clock the Indian fire began to slacken, and the enemy slowly and reluctantly gave way, being driven back less than two miles during six or seven hours. A desultory fire was still kept up from behind trees, and the whites as they pressed on the savages were repeatedly ambuscaded. At length General Lewis detached three companies, commanded by Captains Shelby, Matthews, and Stuart, with orders to move secretly along the banks of the Kanawha and Crooked Creek, so as to gain the enemy's rear. This manoeuvre being successfully executed, the Indians, as some report, at four o'clock P.M., fled; according to other accounts, the firing continued until sunset. During the night they recrossed the Ohio. The loss of the Virginians in this action has been variously estimated at from forty to seventy-five killed and one hundred and forty wounded--a large proportion of the number of the troops actually engaged, who did not exceed five hundred and fifty, as one hundred of General Lewis's men, including his best marksmen, were absent in the woods hunting, and knew nothing of the battle until it was all over. Among the killed were Colonel Charles Lewis, Colonel Field, who had served in Braddock's war, Captains Buford, Morrow, Murray, Ward, Cundiff, Wilson, and McClenachan, Lieutenants Allen, Goldsby, and Dillon. Of the officers present at the battle of Point Pleasant many became afterwards distinguished men.[586:A]
The loss of the savages was never ascertained; the bodies of thirty-three slain were found, but many had been thrown into the Ohio during the engagement. The number of the Indian army was not known certainly, but it comprised the flower of the northern confederated tribes, led on by Red Hawk, a Delaware chief; Scoppathus, a Mingo; Chiyawee, a Wyandot; Logan, a Cayuga; and Ellinipsico, and his father, Cornstalk, Shawnees. But some say that Logan was not present in the battle. The Shawnees were a formidable tribe, who had played a prominent part on many a bloody field. Cornstalk displayed great skill and courage at Point Pleasant. It is said that on the day before the battle he had proposed to his people to send messengers to General Lewis to see whether a treaty of peace could be effected, but his followers rejected the proposal. During the battle, when one of his warriors evinced a want of firmness, he slew him with one blow of his tomahawk; and during the day his sonorous voice was heard amid the din of arms exclaiming, in his native tongue, "Be strong, be strong."
On the morning after the battle General Lewis buried his dead. They were interred without the pomp of war, but the cheeks of hardy mountaineers were bedewed with tears at the fate of their brave comrades. "The dead bodies of the Indians who fell in battle were left to decay on the ground where they expired, or to be devoured by birds or beasts of prey. The mountain eagle, lord of the feathered race, while from his lofty cairn with piercing eye he surveyed the varied realms around and far beneath, would not fail to descry the sumptuous feast prepared for his use. Here he might whet his beak, and feast, and fatten, and exult. Over these the gaunt wolf, grim tyrant of the forest, might prolong his midnight revelry and howl their funeral dirge. While far remote in the deepest gloom of the wilderness, whither they had fled for safety, the surviving warriors might wail their fate, or chant a requiem to their departed spirits."[587:A]
General Lewis, after caring for the wounded, erected a small fort at Point Pleasant, and leaving a garrison there, marched to overtake Dunmore, who, with a thousand men, lay entrenched at Camp Charlotte, called after the queen, near the Shawnee town, (Chilicothe,) on the banks of the Scioto. The Indians having sued to him for peace, his lordship determined to make a treaty with them, and sent orders to Lewis to halt, or, according to others, to return to Point Pleasant. Lewis, suspecting the governor's good faith, and finding himself threatened by a superior force of Indians, who hovered in his rear, disregarded the order, and advanced to within three miles of his camp. His lordship, accompanied by the Indian chief, White Eyes, visited the camp of Lewis, who (as some report) with difficulty restrained his men from killing the governor and his Indian companion. Lewis, to his great chagrin, received orders to return home with his troops, and he obeyed reluctantly, as it seemed a golden opportunity to give the savage enemy a fatal blow.
General Andrew Lewis lived on the Roanoke, in the County of Botetourt. He was a native of Ireland, being one of five sons of John Lewis, who slew the Irish lord, settled Augusta County, founded the town of Staunton, and furnished several sons to fight the battles of their country. He was the son of Andrew Lewis and Mary Calhoun, his wife, and was born in Donegal County, Ireland, (1678,) and died in Virginia, (1762,) aged eighty-four: a brave man, and a firm friend of liberty. All his sons were born in Ireland except Charles, the youngest. Andrew Lewis was twice wounded at Fort Necessity; was appointed by Washington major of his regiment during the French and Indian war, and no officer more fully enjoyed his confidence. Major Lewis commanded the Sandy Creek expedition in 1756, and was made prisoner at Grant's defeat, where he exhibited signal prudence and bravery. His fortitude while a prisoner was equal to his courage in battle, and commanded the respect of the French officers. He was upwards of six feet in stature, of uncommon activity and strength, and of a form of exact symmetry. His countenance was stern and invincible, his deportment reserved and distant. When he was a commissioner on behalf of Virginia at the treaty of Fort Stanwix, in New York, in 1768, the governor of that colony remarked of him, that "the earth seemed to tremble under him as he walked along." At the commencement of the revolutionary war Washington considered him the foremost military man in America, and the one most worthy of the post of commander-in-chief of the American army. And it was to the country beyond the mountains that Washington looked as a place of refuge, in case he should be overpowered in the struggle, and there, defended by mountains and mountaineers, he hoped to defy the enemy. The statue of General Andrew Lewis is one of those to be placed on the monument in the capitol square, in Richmond.[589:A]
Dunmore remaining after the departure of Lewis, concluded a treaty with the Indians. Upon this occasion Cornstalk, in a long speech, charged the whites with having provoked the war, his tones of thunder resounding over a camp of twelve acres. The truth is that during the years which elapsed between Bouquet's treaty of 1764 and open war in 1774, a period of nominal peace was one of frequent actual collision and hostilities, and more lives were sacrificed on the frontier by the murderous Indians than during the whole of the year 1774, including the battle of Point Pleasant.[589:B]
FOOTNOTES:
[582:A] Or "River of the Woods," as the word signifies, or New River, as it was also sometimes called.
[582:B] Styled by Stuart, in his "Memoir of Indian Wars," Fort Savannah.
[583:A] Memoir of Battle of Point Pleasant, by Samuel L. Campbell, M.D.
[584:A] Dr. Campbell's Memoir of the Battle of Point Pleasant.
[586:A] There may be mentioned General Isaac Shelby, a native of Maryland, who distinguished himself at King's Mountain, and was subsequently the first governor of Kentucky; General William Campbell, the hero of King's Mountain, and Colonel John Campbell, who distinguished himself at Long Island; General Evan Shelby, who became an eminent citizen of Tennessee; Colonel William Fleming, a revolutionary patriot; Colonel John Stewart, of Greenbrier; Colonel William McKee, of Kentucky; Colonel John Steele, governor of the Mississippi Territory, and General George Matthews, who distinguished himself at Brandywine, Germantown, and Guilford, and was governor of Georgia, and United States senator from that State.--Howe's Hist. Collections of Va., 363.
[587:A] Dr. Campbell's Memoir of Battle of Point Pleasant.
[589:A] Thomas Lewis, eldest son of John Lewis, owing to a defective vision, was not actively engaged in the Indian wars. He was a man of learning, and representative of Augusta in the house of burgesses, and voted for Henry's resolutions of 1765; was a member of the conventions of 1776 and 1788. He married a Miss Strother, of Stafford. The second son, Samuel, died without issue. Andrew commanded at Point Pleasant. William, of the Sweet Springs, was distinguished in the frontier wars, and was an officer in the revolutionary army. He married first, Anne Montgomery, of Delaware, secondly, a Miss Thomson, a relative of the poet of "The Seasons." The fifth son, Colonel Charles Lewis, fell at Point Pleasant.
[589:B] Lyman C. Draper, in Va. Hist. Register.
Chapter LXXVII
Logan--Kenton--Girty--Dunmore's ambiguous Conduct--His grandson, Murray.
LOGAN, the Cayuga chief, assented to the treaty, but, still indignant at the murder of his family, refused to attend with the other chiefs at the camp, and sent his speech in a wampum-belt by an interpreter: "I appeal to any white man to say, if ever he entered Logan's cabin hungry and he gave him not meat; if ever he came cold and naked, and he clothed him not? During the course of the last long and bloody war Logan remained idle in his cabin, an advocate for peace. Such was my love for the whites that my countrymen pointed as they passed, and said, 'Logan is the friend of white men.' I have even thought to have lived with you, but for the injuries of one man. Colonel Cresap, the last spring, in cold blood, and unprovoked, murdered all the relations of Logan, not sparing even my women and children. There runs not a drop of my blood in the veins of any living creature. This called on me for revenge. I have sought it: I have killed many: I have fully glutted my vengeance. For my country I rejoice at the beams of peace. But do not harbor a thought that mine is the joy of fear. Logan never felt fear. He will not turn on his heel to save his life. Who is there to mourn for Logan? Not one." Tah-gah-jute, or Logan, so named after James Logan, the secretary of Pennsylvania, was the son of Shikellamy, a celebrated Cayuga chief, who dwelt at Shamokin, on the picturesque banks of the Susquehanna. When Logan grew to man's estate, living in the vicinity of the white settlers, he appears, about the year 1767, to have found the means of his livelihood in hunting deer, dressing their skins, and selling them. When the daughter of a neighboring gentleman was just beginning to walk, her mother one day happening to say that she was sorry that she could not get a pair of shoes for her, Logan, who stood by, said nothing then, but soon after requested that the little girl might be allowed to go and spend the day at his cabin, which stood on a sequestered spot near a beautiful spring (yet known as "Logan's Spring.") The mother's heart was at the first a little disconcerted at the singular proposal; but such was her confidence in the Indian that she consented. The day wore away; the sun had gone down behind the mountains in parting splendor, and evening was folding her thoughtful wing,--and the little one had not yet returned. Just at this moment the Indian was seen descending the path with his charge, and quickly she was in her mother's arms, and pointing proudly to a beautiful pair of moccasins on her tiny feet, the product of Logan's skilful manufacture.
Not long afterwards he removed to the far West, and he was remembered by an old pioneer as "the best specimen of humanity, white or red, that he had ever seen."[591:A] In 1772 the Rev. Mr. Heckwelder, Moravian missionary, met with Logan on the Beaver River, and took him to be an Indian of extraordinary capacity. He exclaimed against the whites for the introduction of ardent spirits among his people, and regretted that they had so few gentlemen among their neighbors; and declared his intention to settle on the Ohio, where he might live forever in peace with the whites; but confessed that he himself was too fond of the firewater. In the following year Heckwelder visited Logan's settlement, below the Big Beaver, and was kindly entertained by such members of his family as were at home. About the same time another missionary, the Rev. Dr. David McClure, met with Logan at Fort Pitt. "Tah-gah-jute, or 'Short-dress,' for such was his Indian name, stood several inches more than six feet in height; he was straight as an arrow; lithe, athletic, and symmetrical in figure; firm, resolute, and commanding in feature; but the brave, open, manly countenance he possessed in his earlier years was now changed for one of martial ferocity." He spoke the English language with fluency and correctness. The victim of intemperance, pointing to his breast, he exclaimed to the missionary, "I feel bad here. Wherever I go the evil Manethoes pursue me;" and he earnestly enquired, "What shall I do?" Logan's family were massacred by a party of whites in the spring of 1774, perhaps under the pretext of retaliation for some Indian murders. But the charge against Cresap appears to have been unfounded. Logan's family being on a visit to a family of the name of Great-house, were murdered by them and their associates, under circumstances of extraordinary cowardice and brutality. The mistake is one into which Logan might, in view of some recent transactions that had happened under the command of Captain Cresap, naturally fall, and which does not at all impair the force of his speech. Mr. Jefferson meeting with a copy of it at Governor Dunmore's, in Williamsburg, transcribed it in his pocket-book, and afterwards immortalized it in his "Notes on Virginia." He gave implicit confidence to its authenticity. Doddridge is of the same opinion. Jacob, in his Life of Cresap,[592:A] insinuates that the speech was a counterfeit, and declares that Cresap was as humane as brave, and had no participation in the massacre. General George Rogers Clarke, who was well acquainted with Logan and Cresap both, vouches for the substantial truth of Mr. Jefferson's story of Logan. Devoting himself to the work of revenge, he, with others, butchered men, women, and children; knives, tomahawks, and axes were left in the breasts which had been cleft asunder; females were stripped, and outraged, too horrible to mention; brains of infants beaten out and the dead bodies left a prey to the beasts of the forest. The family of a settler on the north fork of the Holston was massacred, and a war-club was left in the house, and attached to it the following note, which had been previously, at Logan's dictation, written for him by one Robinson, a prisoner:--
"CAPTAIN CRESAP:
"What did you kill my people on Yellow Creek for? The white people killed my kin at Conestoga a great while ago, and I thought nothing of that. But you killed my kin again on Yellow Creek, and took my cousin prisoner. Then I thought I must kill too; and I have been three times to war since; but the Indians are not angry--only myself.
"CAPTAIN JOHN LOGAN.
"July 21st, 1774."
Thirty scalps it was known that he took in these murderous raids, but he joined not in open battle.
Simon Kenton, a native of Fauquier County, a voyager of the woods, was employed by Dunmore as a spy (together with Simon Girty) during this campaign, in the course of which he traversed the country around Fort Pitt, and a large part of the present State of Ohio. His history is full of daring adventure, cruel sufferings, and extraordinary turns of fortune. He was eight times made to run the Indian gauntlet; three times bound to the stake. He was with Clarke in his expedition against Vincennes and Kaskaskia; and with Wayne in the campaign of 1794. He died in Ohio, in poverty and neglect, his once giant frame bowed down with age.[593:A] Girty, after playing for a time the spy on both sides in the revolutionary contest, became at length an adherent of the enemy, and proved, toward his countrymen, a cruel and barbarous miscreant, in whom every sentiment of humanity appears to have been extinct. Kenton and Girty are both good subjects for a novelist.
Suspicions were not wanting in the minds of many Virginians, especially the inhabitants of the west, that the frontier had been embroiled in the Indian war by Dunmore's machinations; and that his ultimate object was to secure an alliance with the savages to aid England in the expected contest with the colonies; and these suspicions were strengthened by his equivocal conduct during the campaign. He was also accused of fomenting, with the same sinister views, the boundary altercations between Pennsylvania and Virginia on the northwestern frontier. These charges and suspicions do not appear to be sustained by sufficient proof. It is probable that in these proceedings his lordship was prompted rather by motives of personal interest than of political manoeuvre. His agent, Dr. Conolly, was locating large tracts of land on the borders of the Ohio.
By the Quebec Act of 1774 Great Britain, with a view of holding the colonies in check, established the Roman Catholic religion in Canada, and enlarged its bounds so as to comprise all the territory northwest of the Ohio to the head of Lake Superior and the Mississippi. This attempt to extend the jurisdiction of Canada to the Ohio was especially offensive to Virginia. Richard Henry Lee, in congress, denounced it as the worst of all the acts complained of. In Virginia, Dunmore's avarice getting the better of his loyalty, he espoused her claims to western lands, and became a partner in enormous purchases in Southern Illinois. In 1773 Thomas and Cuthbert Bullet, his agents, made surveys of lands at the falls of the Ohio; and a part of Louisville and of towns opposite to Cincinnati are yet held under his warrant.
Murray, a grandson of the Earl of Dunmore, and page to Queen Victoria, visited the United States partly, it was said, for the purpose of making enquiry relative to western lands, the title of which was derived from his grandfather. Young Murray visited some of the old seats on the James, and makes mention of them in his entertaining "Travels in the United States."
The assembly, upon the return of Dunmore to Williamsburg, gave him a vote of thanks for his good conduct of the war--a compliment which it was afterwards doubted whether he had merited. His motives in that campaign were, to say the least, somewhat mysterious. There is a curious coincidence in several points between the administration of Dunmore and that of Berkley, one hundred years before.
FOOTNOTES:
[591:A] Tah-gah-jute, or Logan, and Captain Michael Cresap: a Discourse by Brantz Mayer. (Balt., 1851.)
[592:A] Kercheval's Hist. of Valley of Va.
[593:A] McClung's Sketches of Western Adventure, 92.
LXXVIII. DANIEL BOONE
THIS famous explorer, a native of Pennsylvania, removed at an early age to North Carolina, and remained there till his fortieth year. In the year 1769 he left his home on the sequestered Yadkin, to wander through the wilderness in quest of the country of Kentucky, and to become the archetype of the race of pioneers. In this exploration of the unknown regions of Western Virginia, he was accompanied by five companions. Reaching Red River early in June, they beheld from an eminence the beautiful region of Kentucky. A pioneer named Finley is supposed by some to have been the first explorer of the interior of Kentucky, and it is said that he visited it alone; it is difficult to determine a matter of this kind, and the first exploration has been attributed to others. According to McClung,[595:A] it was Finley's glowing picture of the country, on his return home, in 1767, that allured Boone to venture into the wilderness. Kentucky, it appears, was not inhabited by the Indians, they having not a wigwam there; but the Southern and Northwestern Indians resorted there, as on a neutral ground, to hunt, and often came into collision and engaged in conflicts, which, according to some, gave it the name of Kentucky, or "the dark and bloody ground;" but the true signification of the word is a matter of doubt. Boone and his companions encamping, began to hunt and to reconnoitre the country. Innumerable buffaloes browned on the leaves of the cane, or pastured on the herbage of the plains, or lingered on the border of the salt-lick. In December, Boone and a comrade, John Stuart, rambling in the magnificence of forests yet unscarred by the axe, were surprised by a party of Indians and captured. Boone met the catastrophe with a mien of stoical indifference. A week after the capture the party encamped in the evening in a thick cane-brake, and having built a large fire, lay down to rest. About midnight, Boone gently awaking his companion, they effected their escape, traversing the forest by the uncertain light of the stars, and by observing the mossy side of the trees. Returning to their camp they found it plundered and deserted; and the fate of its occupants could not be doubted. A brother of Boone, with another hardy adventurer, shortly after overtook the two forlorn survivors. It was not long before Stuart was slain by the savages and scalped, and the companion of Boone's brother devoured by wolves. The two brothers remained in a wilderness untrod by the white man, surrounded by perils, and far from the reach of succor. With unshaken fortitude they continued to hunt, and erected a rude cabin to shelter them from the storms of winter. When threatened by the approach of savages, they lay during the night concealed in swamps. In May, 1770, Boone's brother returned home for horses and ammunition, leaving him alone, without bread, salt, or sugar, or even a horse or a dog. Daniel Boone, in one of his solitary excursions made at this time, wandered during the whole day through a region whose native charms dispelled every gloomy thought. Just at the close of day, when the gales were lulled, not a breath of air stirring the leaves, he gained the summit of a commanding ridge, and, looking around, with delight beheld the ample regions mapped out beneath. On one hand he saw the beautiful Ohio delineating the western boundary of Kentucky; while at a distance the mountains lifted their peaks to the clouds. All nature was still. He kindled a fire near a fountain of sweet water, and feasted on the loin of a buck killed a few hours before. As night folded her mysterious wings he heard the distant yells of savages; but, worn out with fatigue, he fell asleep, and did not awake until the morning beams were glancing through the forest glades, and the birds warbling their matin songs. No populous city, with all its excitements and attractions, could have pleased him half so much as the charms of nature in Kentucky. Rejoined by his brother, in the summer of 1770, he explored the valley of the Cumberland River. In 1771 Daniel Boone, after an absence of three years, returned to his home on the Yadkin; sold such of his possessions as he could not carry with him, and started with his family to return and settle in Kentucky. Some cows, horses, and household utensils formed his baggage. His wife and children were mounted on horseback, their neighbors regarding them as doomed to certain destruction. On the route he was re-enforced by five families, and forty armed men at Powell's Valley. In October the young men who had charge of the pack-horses and cattle in the rear, were surprised by Indians, and of seven only one escaped; six were slain, and among them Boone's oldest son. This occurred near the gap of the Cumberland Mountains, whose dark gorges, rocky cliffs, and hoary summits strike the mind of the beholder with awe. The Indians were repulsed with heavy loss; but the whites retired forty miles to the settlement on the Clinch River, where Boone with his family remained for some time. Virginia in vain demanded of the Cherokees the surrender of the offenders. One of Boone's party, in retaliation, afterwards slew an Indian at a horse-race on the frontier, in spite of the interposition of the by-standers. In 1774, at the request of Governor Dunmore, Boone, leaving his family on the banks of the Clinch, went to assist in conveying a party of surveyors to the falls of the Ohio. He was next employed in the command of three garrisons during the campaign against the Shawnees. In March of the ensuing year, at the solicitation of some gentlemen of North Carolina, Boone, at the treaty of Watauga, purchased from the Cherokees of North Carolina the lands claimed by them, lying between the Kentucky River and the Tennessee. But Kentucky being within the chartered limits of Virginia, she[597:A] declared this treaty null and void, and proclaimed her own title. The North Carolina grantees, however, received in compensation a liberal grant of lands on Green River. Boone also undertook to mark out a road from the settlements to the wilderness of Kentucky; during this work several of his men were killed by the savages. In 1775 he erected a fort at Boonsborough, near the Kentucky River, and he removed his family there, and his wife and daughter were supposed to be the first white women that ever stood upon the banks of the Kentucky River; and Boonsborough was long an outpost of civilization.
The remainder of Boone's career, full of stirring adventure, belongs rather to the early history of Kentucky. When the settlements around him began to grow too thick for his taste, he removed farther westward. This extraordinary man, who could neither read nor write, in 1792 dictated a brief account of his life to some youthful writer, whose attempt to enhance the interest of the narrative by rhetorical embellishments afforded no little satisfaction to the unsophisticated old voyager of the woods, and nothing pleased him better than to sit and listen to the reading of it. He would listen attentively, rub his hands together, smile complacently and ejaculate, "All true, every word true! not a lie in it." Solitary hunting, as it had been the charm of his earlier years, afforded him the solace of his old age; and when too old to walk through the woods, he would ride to the edge of the salt-licks and lie there in ambush for the sake of getting a shot at the deer. He was in person rough and robust; his countenance homely but kind; his manner cold, grave, taciturn; his conversation simple and unobtrusive; he never speaking of himself but when questioned. He was withal brave, humane, prudent, and modest.[598:A] He died in 1820, aged nearly ninety years.
FOOTNOTES:
[595:A] Sketches of Western Adventure.
[597:A] See Journal of Convention of '76.
[598:A] McClung's Sketches of Western Adventure, 92.
Chapter LXXIX
1775.
Lord Dunmore--Second Convention--St. John's Church--Henry's Resolutions--His Speech--Measures adopted.
In the beginning of 1775 the people of Virginia were in a state of anxious suspense, expecting an outbreak of civil war. Dunmore remained in gloomy solicitude in his palace, tenacious of authority, but fearful of resisting the popular will. Intelligence was now continually received of commotions among the people; resolutions, essays, and speeches added new fuel to the excitement.
The second Virginia convention assembled at Richmond, on Monday, the twentieth day of March. St. John's Church, in which the sessions were held, stands on Richmond Hill, commanding a panorama of Richmond, (then a few straggling houses,) hills, and fields, and woods, and the James, with its rocks and islands, flashing rapids and murmuring falls, and poetic mists. The convention approved of the proceedings of congress, and of the conduct of the Virginia delegates. Resolutions were adopted thanking the assembly of Jamaica[599:A] for their petition and memorial to the king in behalf of the colonies; and expressing Virginia's ardent wish for "a speedy return of those halcyon days when they lived a free and happy people." The too abject tone of these resolutions aroused the patriotic indignation of Patrick Henry, and he introduced resolutions for putting the colony immediately into a state of defence against the encroachments of Great Britain, and for embodying, arming, and disciplining a force of well-regulated militia for that purpose. They were supported by Henry, the mover, Jefferson, the Lees, Pages, Mason, and others; but many of the members recoiled with horror from this startling measure; and it was strenuously resisted by Bland, Harrison, Pendleton, Nicholas, and Wythe, who held such a step premature, until the result of the last petition to the king should be more fully known. They still flattered themselves with the hope that the breach might yet be repaired in some way, either by the influence of the opposition in England, of the manufacturing interests, or the relenting of the king. They urged that Virginia was unmilitary, unprovided for war, weak, and defenceless, and insisted that desperate measures should not be resorted to, until hope herself had fled. Henry replied: "What has there been in the conduct of the British ministry for the last ten years to justify hope? Are fleets and armies necessary to a work of love and reconciliation? These are the implements of subjugation sent over to rivet upon us the chains which the British ministry have been so long forging. And what have we to oppose to them? Shall we try argument? We have been trying that for the last ten years. Have we anything new to offer? Shall we resort to entreaty and supplication? We have petitioned--we have remonstrated--we have supplicated; and we have been spurned from the foot of the throne. In vain may we indulge the fond hope of reconciliation. There is no longer room for hope. If we wish to be free we must fight! I repeat it, sir, we must fight! An appeal to arms, and to the God of hosts, is all that is left us!
"They tell me that we are weak; but shall we gather strength by irresolution? We are not weak. Three millions of people armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us. We shall not fight alone. A just God presides over the destinies of nations, and will raise up friends for us. The battle is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery. The war is inevitable--and let it come! let it come!
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death."
Henry's voice, calm in his exordium, rose gradually to a higher and yet higher pitch, until the very walls of the church seemed to rock and tremble, as if conscious of the tremendous vibrations. The listeners, forgetful of order and of themselves, leaned forward in their seats, magnetized by the voice and look of the speaker, whose pale face and glaring eye assumed an appearance of preternatural emotion. His last exclamation, "Give me liberty, or give me death," sounded like the shout of the warrior in the tempest of battle.[601:A] When Mr. Henry sat down every eye remained still fixed on him, entranced and spell-bound.[601:B]
Richard Henry Lee supported Mr. Henry in a masterly review of the resources of the colonies and their means of resistance, exhorting the convention to remember that "the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, and that he is thrice armed whose cause is just." "But," says Wirt, "his melody was lost amid the agitations of that ocean which the master-spirit of the storm had lifted up on high." It would, however, be a wide mistake to believe that a melodious voice was Mr. Lee's highest qualification as a speaker. Plain, solid, common sense was the distinguishing characteristic of his mind as it was of Mr. Henry's.
The overweening caution of those who opposed Henry's resolutions perhaps served the purpose of the breaks in a train of railroad cars--while they endeavored to retard the movement, they made it eventually safer. The resolutions were carried, and a committee was appointed to prepare a plan of defence.[601:C]
In conformity with a plan reported by the committee, the convention unanimously determined on the establishment of a well-regulated militia, by forming in every county one or more volunteer companies and troops of horse, to be in constant training and ready to act at a moment's warning, and hence called "minute-men." Mr. Nicholas, hitherto an extreme conservative, now proposed to raise an army of ten thousand regulars; the proposition evinced his enthusiasm in the cause; but the kind of force which he recommended still displayed his distrust in means of defence resting immediately on the body of the people. Measures were adopted by the convention to promote the raising of wool, cotton, flax, and hemp, and to encourage domestic manufactures of gunpowder, salt, iron, and steel; and the members agreed to make use of home-made fabrics, and recommended the practice to the people. The former delegates to congress were re-elected, with the substitution of Mr. Jefferson in lieu of Peyton Randolph, in case of his non-attendance. Mr. Randolph, being speaker of the house of burgesses, did not attend that congress, and Mr. Jefferson accordingly took his place.
FOOTNOTES:
[599:A] Jamaica and New York were acquired by conquest.
[601:A] Randall's Life of Jefferson, i. 101.
[601:B] The expression, "after all, we must fight," had been used four months before by Joseph Hawley, of Massachusetts, in a letter to John Adams, which he showed to Patrick Henry while they were together in the first congress. Henry, upon reading the words, raised his hand, and with an oath exclaimed, "I am of that man's mind."
[601:C] The committee consisted of Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee, Robert C. Nicholas, Benjamin Harrison, Lemuel Riddick, George Washington, Adam Stephen, Andrew Lewis, William Christian, Edmund Pendleton, Thomas Jefferson, and Isaac Zane.
LXXX. JEFFERSON
THOMAS JEFFERSON was born at Shadwell, in the County of Albemarle, on the 2d day of April, 1743.[603:A] According to family tradition his paternal ancestors, among the early settlers of Virginia, came from near Mount Snowden, in Wales, and one of them was a member of the first house of burgesses that met in 1619. The grandfather of Thomas lived at Osborne's, in Chesterfield. Peter, (father of Thomas,) a land surveyor, settled at Shadwell, where he had taken up a tract of land, including Monticello. Shadwell was called after the parish in London in which his wife was born. He was born in February, 1708, and married, in 1738, Jane, daughter of Isham Randolph, of Dungeness, in Goochland. "The Randolphs," says Mr. Jefferson, "trace their pedigree far back in England and Scotland, to which let every one ascribe the faith and merit he chooses." Peter Jefferson's early education had been neglected, but being a man of strong parts he read much, and so improved himself that he was chosen,[604:A] with Joshua Fry, professor of mathematics in William and Mary College, to continue the boundary line between Virginia and North Carolina, and was afterwards employed, with Mr. Fry, to make a map of the colony. This was the first regular map of Virginia ever made, that of Captain Smith, although remarkably well delineated, considering the circumstances under which it was made, being, of necessity, in large part conjectural.
Peter Jefferson was one of the first persons who settled in Goochland, since known as Albemarle, about the year 1737. That county was formed in 1744 out of a part of Goochland, which had been carved out of Henrico in 1727.
Thomas Jefferson's earliest recollection was of his being handed up and carried on a pillow on horseback by a servant when his father was removing, in 1745, from Shadwell to Tuckahoe. Peter Jefferson was a man of extraordinary physical strength; he could "head up," that is raise up from their sides to an upright position, at once, two hogsheads of tobacco weighing near a thousand pounds each. He was a favorite with the Indians, and they often made his house a stopping-place, and in this way Thomas imbibed an uncommon interest in that people.
Peter Jefferson dying in 1757, left a widow (who survived till 1776) with six daughters and two sons, of whom Thomas, then fourteen years of age, was the elder. He inherited the lands on which he was born, and where he lived. When five years of age, he was placed at school at Tuckahoe, and when nine, upon the return of the family to Shadwell, at a Latin school, where he continued until his father's death. His teacher, the Rev. William Douglas, a native of Scotland, taught him the rudiments of Latin, Greek, and French. At his father's death he was put under the care of the Rev. James Maury, of Huguenot descent, a good classical scholar and thorough teacher, with whom he continued for two years at the parsonage, fourteen miles from Shadwell.[605:A] The student found recreation without in hunting on Peter's Mountain, within doors in playing on the violin. In the spring of 1760 he went to William and Mary College, and remained there for two years. Dr. William Small, a Scotchman, was then professor of mathematics there: a man of engaging manners, large views, and profound science. He shortly afterwards filled, for a time, the chair of ethics, rhetoric, and belles lettres. He formed a strong attachment to young Jefferson, and made him the daily companion of his leisure hours, and it was his conversation that first gave him a bent toward scientific pursuits. Small returned, in 1762, to Europe. Before his departure he had procured for Jefferson, from George Wythe, a reception as a student of law under his direction, and had also introduced him to the acquaintance of Governor Fauquier. At his table Jefferson met Dr. Small and Mr. Wythe, and from their conversation derived no little instruction. It was in 1765 that, while a law-student, he heard the "bloody debate" on Henry's resolutions. In May of the following year he made a northern trip, in a one-horse chair, by way of Annapolis, where he found the people rejoicing at the repeal of the stamp act. At Philadelphia he was inoculated for the small-pox by Dr. Shippen. At New York Mr. Jefferson became acquainted with Elbridge Gerry.
Jefferson, now twenty-four years old, entered upon the practice of the law in the general court, and continued in it until the Revolution closed the courts of justice. He was not fitted for the office of advocate, owing to a defective voice, and he never spoke more than a few sentences at a time.[606:A] In 1769 he became a member of the assembly, and so continued, patriotic, active, and ardent, until the meetings were suspended by the war. He made an unsuccessful effort in that body for the emancipation of the slaves in Virginia. January the 1st, 1772, he married Martha, widow of Bathurst Skelton, and youngest daughter of John Wayles, born in Lancaster, England, a lawyer, who lived at "The Forest," in Charles City County. She was then twenty-three years old.[606:B] In 1773 Mr. Jefferson contributed to the formation of committees of correspondence between the colonial legislatures. In the year following he was elected member of the convention which met in August. Unable to attend, owing to sickness, he communicated his views in the form of written instructions, for the Virginia delegates in Congress.
FOOTNOTES:
[603:A] Randall's Life of Jefferson gives the following extract from Colonel Peter Jefferson's Book of Common Prayer:--
BIRTHS.
Jane Jefferson 1740, June 27. Mary 1741, October 1. Thomas 1743, April 2. Elizabeth 1744, November 4. Martha 1746, May 29. Peterfield 1748, October 16. Ason 1750, March 9. Lucy 1752, October 10. Anna Scott Randolph 1755, October 1.
MARRIAGES.
Jane Jefferson Mary 1760, June 24. Thomas 1772, January 1. Elizabeth Martha 1765, June 20. Peterfield Ason Lucy 1769, September 12. Anna Scott Randolph 1788, October.
DEATHS.
Jane Jefferson 1765, October 1. Mary Thomas Elizabeth 1773, January 1. Martha Peterfield 1748, November 29. Ason 1750, March 9. Lucy Anna Scott Randolph
[604:A] 1749.
[605:A] Where now stands the mansion of the late William F. Gordon.
[606:A] Randall's Jefferson, i. 50.
[606:B] Her father, who had married three times, dying in May, 1773, left issue three daughters, one of whom married Francis Eppes, (father of John W. Eppes, who married Maria, daughter of Thomas Jefferson,) and the other, Fulwar Skipwith, afterwards American consul in France. The portion that fell to Martha was encumbered with a debt, which ultimately, by the depreciation of paper money, resulted in a heavy loss.--Randall's Jefferson, and Memoirs and Corr. of Jefferson, i. 1, 3.
Chapter LXXXI
1775.
Dunmore's Proclamation--Removal of Powder--Disturbances at Williamsburg--Military Movements--Volunteers at Fredericksburg-- Governor and Council--Hanover Volunteers and Henry--He extorts compensation for Powder--Dunmore's Proclamation--Henry's popularity.
ON the twenty-eighth of March Dunmore issued a proclamation, by command, as he said, of the king, for the prevention of the appointment of deputies from Virginia to the congress which was to assemble in May. And in compliance with instructions received from England, the governor ordered Captain Collins, with a party of marines and sailors from the Magdalen, lying at Burwell's Ferry, to remove the powder from the magazine at Williamsburg, and it was carried on board of that vessel secretly, between three and four o'clock A.M., of Thursday, April the twentieth, the day following the collision at Lexington and Concord. It had been rumored some days before in Williamsburg that Lord Dunmore had taken the locks off from most of the guns in the magazine, and that he intended to remove the powder. The people of the town were alarmed, and the volunteers for several nights kept guard over the magazine; at length growing negligent, and disbelieving the report, on Thursday night the guard was discharged at an early hour. Thus Collins with his party, who had been secreted in the palace, seized the powder without opposition. Dunmore, anticipating the resentment of the people, armed his servants and some Shawnee hostages, and muskets were laid on the floor, loaded and primed, and the captains of the ships of war lying at York were ordered to have in readiness an armed force for the defence of the palace. As soon as these proceedings became known, the Williamsburg volunteers flew to arms, and were with difficulty restrained by Peyton Randolph and Robert C. Nicholas from assaulting the palace and seizing the governor. The authorities of the town, in accordance with a resolution of a meeting of the people, solicited the governor to restore the powder immediately, urging among other reasons which demanded it, the apprehension of a servile war, instigated by "wicked and designing men." Dunmore, in his reply, pretended that he had removed the powder from the magazine as being an insecure place in case of such an insurrection;[608:A] declared that it should be returned as soon as it should appear that the precaution was unnecessary; that in case of an insurrection he would, upon his honor, return it in half an hour; but he expressed his surprise that the people were under arms, and said that he should not deem it prudent to put powder into their hands under such circumstances. The reply was considered evasive and false. When he had first heard that the people were in arms, he swore, "by the living God," that if any violence should be offered to him, or to the officers who had acted under his directions, he would proclaim freedom to the slaves, and lay the town in ashes. Some of the citizens, in consequence of this threat, sent their wives and children into the country.
The citizens of Williamsburg resolved unanimously to continue their contributions for the relief of the inhabitants of Boston. Intelligence of these occurrences at the capital soon spread through the country. More than six hundred volunteers met at Fredericksburg by the twenty-seventh of April, and were ready to march to Williamsburg. Gloucester and Henrico demanded the restitution of the powder, the Gloucester men threatening, in case of refusal, to seize the governor. Bedford offered a premium for the manufacture of gunpowder; the independent company of Dumfries and the Albemarle volunteers were ready for action. Dunmore renewed his threats, and was confident, as he wrote to Lord Dartmouth, the English minister, that "with a small re-enforcement of troops and arms he could raise such a body of Indians, negroes, and others as would reduce the refractory people of this colony to obedience."[608:B]
Three citizens, deputed by the troops assembled at Fredericksburg, repaired to Williamsburg for the purpose of ascertaining the real state of affairs, and to offer military assistance if desired. Peyton Randolph, in behalf of the corporation, in replying to the committee, stated that: "Besides what has been said in his public answer, the governor has given private assurances to several gentlemen that the powder shall be returned to the magazine, though he has not condescended to fix the day for its return. So far as we can judge, from a comparison of all circumstances, the governor considers his honor at stake; he thinks that he acted for the best, and will not be compelled to what, we have abundant reason to believe, he would cheerfully do, if left to himself." "If we then may be permitted to advise, it is our opinion and most earnest request, that matters may be quieted for the present at least; we are firmly persuaded that perfect tranquillity will be speedily restored. By pursuing this course we foresee no hazard, or even inconvenience that can ensue. Whereas we are apprehensive, and this we think upon good grounds, that violent measures may produce effects which God only knows the consequence of."[609:A]
Upon this reply being reported to the volunteers at Fredericksburg, styled "The friends of constitutional liberty in America," they declared that it was dictated by fear, and resolved to march at all events to Williamsburg, under command of Captain Hugh Mercer, who was eager to redress the indignity which Virginia had suffered at the hands of the governor.
At this juncture Peyton Randolph happened to reach the house of Edmund Pendleton, one of his colleagues, on his route to Philadelphia, where the congress was about to meet. These two eminent men sent to Fredericksburg, on Saturday, the twenty-ninth, a letter advising that further action should be deferred until the congress should adopt a plan of resistance. Mercer, who had written to Washington for advice, received a reply to the same effect. One hundred and two deputies were appointed a council to consider this advice, and after a long and animated discussion it was assented to by a majority of one vote only.[609:B]
The military, consisting of fourteen companies of light-horse, for several days were encamped in the fields near the town, armed and equipped, and they acquiesced reluctantly in the determination not to march at once to the capital. The Virginians were at the same time arming in other parts of the country to re-enforce, whenever necessary, those who had first taken up arms; troops were collected at the Bowling Green, and others on their march from Frederick, Berkley, Dunmore, and other counties, were arrested, by information that the affair of the gunpowder was about to be accommodated. The council of one hundred and two, before adjourning, adopted an address pledging themselves to re-assemble whenever necessary, and by force of arms to defend the laws, liberties, and rights of Virginia, or any sister colony, from unjust and wicked invasion. This address was read at the head of each company, and it concluded with the significant words, "God save the liberties of America!"
The council at this time consisted of President Nelson, Commissary Camm, Ralph Wormley, Colonel G. Corbin, G. Corbin, Jr., William Byrd, and John Page. Being summoned to hold a meeting, they assembled as usual in the council chamber, but Dunmore requested their attendance at the palace. He excused his removal of the powder as owing to his fear that the volunteers might have been tempted to seize upon the magazine; he complained that his life had been exposed to danger in the recent disturbances, and he recommended the issuing of a proclamation. John Page, the youngest member, boldly advised the governor to give up the powder and arms, as the measure necessary to restore public tranquillity. Dunmore, enraged, struck the table with his fist, exclaiming, "Mr. Page, I am astonished at you." The other councillors remained silent. Page, although he had been made a member of the council by Dunmore, had, nevertheless, opposed his nomination of John Randolph as one of the board of visiters of the college, declaring "that as he had been rejected on a former occasion as not possessing the disposition and character, moral and religious, which the charter and statutes of the college required, he ought not again to be nominated, till it could be proved that he had abandoned his former principles and practices, which no one could venture to say he had." Mr. Page had then proposed Nathaniel Burwell in the place of the governor's nominee, and he was elected, the governor alone dissenting. This proceeding gave great offence to Dunmore and his secretary, Foy. Foy showed his resentment so offensively, that, says Page, "I was obliged to call him to account for it, and he, like a brave and candid man, made full reparation to me and my my friend, James Innes."
In Hanover the committee of safety for the county, and the members of the Independent Company, at the call of Patrick Henry, met at New Castle on the second day of May, and were addressed by him with such effect that they resolved either to recover the powder or make a reprisal for it.[611:A]
Burk[611:B] says: "The affair of the powder was decided before the battle of Lexington was ever talked of in Virginia." But as it appears that the express from Massachusetts reached Petersburg on Sunday, the first of May,[611:C] it is probable that Henry had already heard the news. Captain Meredith resigned in Henry's favor, and he was invested with the command, Meredith accepting the place of lieutenant. Having received orders from the committee consonant with his own suggestions, Captain Henry marched at once toward Williamsburg. Ensign Parke Goodall, with sixteen men, was detached into King and Queen County to Laneville, (on the Matapony,) the seat of Richard Corbin, the king's deputy receiver-general, to demand the estimated value of the powder, and in case of his refusal to make him a prisoner. The detachment reached Laneville about midnight, and a guard was stationed around the house. At daybreak Mrs. Corbin assured Goodall that the king's money was never kept there, but at Williamsburg, and that Colonel Corbin was then in that town. Henry had started from Hanovertown with only his own company, but the news of his march being speedily spread abroad, companies started up on all sides, and were in motion to join his standard, to the number, it was believed, of several, some say five thousand men. The colony was governed by county committees. Lady Dunmore, with her children, retired in dismay to the Fowey, lying at Yorktown. Even the patriots at Williamsburg were alarmed at the approach of this tornado; message after message was despatched, and Captain Henry was implored to desist from entering Williamsburg. The messengers were detained, and he marched on. The scene resembled that presented by Bacon marching against Berkley a hundred years before. Dunmore, in the mean time, issued a proclamation calling upon the people to resist Henry, and planted cannon at his palace, and ordered up a detachment of marines from the Fowey. Before daybreak on the fourth of May, Captain Montague, of that ship, landed the detachment, and addressed a note to President Nelson, saying that he had received certain information that Lord Dunmore was threatened with an attack to be made at daybreak on that morning at the palace, and requesting him to endeavor to prevent any assault upon the marines, as in case of it he should be compelled to fire upon the town of York.
Henry, with one hundred and fifty men, halted at Doncastle's Ordinary, (sixteen miles from Williamsburg,) where Goodall had been ordered to rejoin him. In the meanwhile the authorities of the town were concerting measures to prevent the threatened collision. Dunmore denounced Henry as a rebel and the author of all the disturbances, and poured out a tirade of profane threats and abuse. Nevertheless, at his instance, Carter Braxton, son-in-law to Colonel Corbin, repaired to Henry's headquarters on the third, and interposed his efforts to prevent matters from coming to extremities. Finding that Henry would not disband without receiving the powder or its equivalent, he returned to Williamsburg, and procured from Colonel Corbin, the deputy receiver-general, a bill of exchange for the amount demanded, and delivering it to Henry at sunrise of Wednesday the fourth, succeeded in warding off the impending blow.[612:A] In this pacific course Mr. Braxton coincided with the moderate councils of the leading men at Williamsburg.
Yorktown and Williamsburg being in commotion at the landing of the marines, and an attack upon the public treasury being apprehended, Henry wrote to Nicholas, the treasurer, offering the services of his force to remove the public treasury to any place in the colony which might be deemed a safer place of deposite than Williamsburg. The treasurer replied that he did not apprehend any necessity for such a guard, and that the people of Williamsburg "were perfectly quiet;" which, however, could hardly have been the case, because at that time more than a hundred citizens patroled the streets and guarded the treasury.[613:A]
Henry, having attained the object of his march, returned with his volunteers to Hanover. The committee presented their thanks to the party for their good conduct, and also to the numerous volunteers who were marching to lend their co-operation.
Parke Goodall was a member of the convention of 1788, and afterwards kept a tavern called the "Indian Queen," in the City of Richmond.[613:B]
The contest between Henry and Dunmore concerning the powder, is like that between Colonel Hutchinson and Lord Newark on a similar occasion in 1642, at Nottingham, as related by Mrs. Hutchinson in her charming memoirs of her husband--[613:C]the most beautiful monument ever erected by female affection.
Two days after Henry had received compensation for the powder, Dunmore issued a proclamation denouncing "a certain Patrick Henry, Jr., of Hanover," and a number of deluded followers, charging them with having unlawfully taken up arms, and by letters excited the people in divers parts of the country to join them in these outrageous and rebellious practices, extorting £330 from the king's receiver-general, and forbidding all persons to aid or abet "the said Patrick Henry, Jr.," or his confederates. The members of the council, with the exception of John Page, sided with the governor, and advised the issuing of the proclamation, and afterwards published an address, in which they expressed their "detestation and abhorrence for that licentious and ungovernable spirit that had gone forth and misled the once happy people of this country." The council now shared the public odium with Dunmore. There was a rumor that he intended to have Henry arrested on his way to the congress at Philadelphia; and it is also said that the governor denounced Henry as a coward for not having accompanied Randolph and Pendleton. Dunmore, writing to the ministry, described Henry as "a man of desperate circumstances, one who had been very active in encouraging disobedience and exciting a spirit of revolt among the people for many years past."[614:A] So in Massachusetts Samuel Adams, the model patriot of New England, was denounced by the British governor there. Henry set out for the congress May the eleventh, and was escorted in triumph by his admiring countrymen as far as Hooe's Ferry, on the Potomac, and was repeatedly stopped on the way to receive addresses full of thanks and applause.
FOOTNOTES:
[608:A] There had been an alarm of one from Surrey County.
[608:B] Bancroft, vii. 277.
[609:A] Letter dated at Williamsburg April 27th, 1775, to Mann Page, Jr., Lewis Willis, and Benjamin Grymes, in S. Lit. Mess., 1858, 26.
[609:B] Burk's Hist. of Va., iii. 406.
[611:A] Wirt's Henry, 137; Burk's Hist. of Va., iv. 13. This volume is a continuation of Burk by Skelton Jones and Louis Hue Girardin, mainly by the latter, who enjoyed the advantage of Mr. Jefferson's assistance.
[611:B] Vol. iii. 416.
[611:C] Lossing's Field-Book of the Revolution, ii. 584. Wirt says that the news reached Virginia before the assembling of the volunteers at Fredericksburg.
[612:A] The following is a copy of the receipt:--
"DONCASTLE'S ORDINARY, New Kent, May 4th, 1775.
"Received from the Hon. Richard Corbin, Esq., his majesty's receiver-general, £330, as a compensation for the gunpowder lately taken out of the public magazine by the governor's order, which money I promise to convey to the Virginia delegates at the general congress, to be, under their direction, laid out in gunpowder for the colony's use, and to be stored as they shall direct, until the next colony convention or general assembly, unless it shall be necessary in the mean time to use the same in the defence of the colony. It is agreed that in case the next convention shall determine that any part of the said money ought to be returned to his majesty's said receiver-general, that the same shall be done accordingly.
"PATRICK HENRY, JR.
"Test: SAMUEL MEREDITH, PARKE GOODALL."
[613:A] Burk, iv. 15.
[613:B] Richmond in By-gone Days, by Samuel Mordecai, 173.
[613:C] Page 102.
[614:A] Bancroft, vii. 335.
Chapter LXXXII
1775.
Mecklenburg Declaration.
THAT there was a Declaration of Independence made at Charlotte, by citizens of the County of Mecklenburg, North Carolina, on the 20th of May, 1775, is the commonly received opinion in that State, and has been often stated in print.[615:A] The closer scrutiny to which this declaration has been of late years subjected[615:B] appears to invalidate its authenticity. The patriotism, intelligence, and courage of the Scotch-Irish inhabitants of Mecklenburg--the Alexanders, Brevard, Polk, Balch, and others, are universally acknowledged; and that they "acted" independence as early as May, 1775, is admitted. But that they then made an absolute declaration of independence, (supposing them competent to do so,) does not appear to be substantiated by sufficient evidence. The original manuscript, it is alleged, was preserved by the secretary of the convention till the year 1800, when it was destroyed, with his dwelling-house, by fire.[615:C] It is said, however, that he had previously taken care to give copies of it to two or three persons; and mention is made of one of these transcripts as early as 1793. But they do not appear to have been any further multiplied. That a declaration of independence, made more than a year before that of July, 1776, should have been preserved by the secretary so long, and yet have remained unpublished and so little known, is extraordinary. It is remarkable, too, that such a paper should appear without date of time on the face of it. The meeting reported to have been held at Charlotte, on the twentieth of May, is styled "the convention;" but that of the thirty-first of the same kind, was simply a meeting of the committee of the county, and was so called at the time. It is asserted that the immediate exciting cause of the resolutions, or alleged declaration of the twentieth, was, that on that day a messenger arrived in hot haste with intelligence of the battle of Lexington. But it appears[616:A] that this intelligence reached Savannah, in Georgia, on the tenth; and it would appear hardly probable that it should have reached Charlotte ten days later.
Upon comparing one of the manuscript copies with the one published in Martin's History of North Carolina, there appears to be a remarkable difference between them. To explain this, it has, indeed, been conjectured, that Martin's copy contains the resolutions as at first draughted by Dr. Brevard, the author of them, and that the other contains them in their amended form. But the Martin copy, instead of being a rough draught, appears to be more formal and complete than the other. The Martin copy expresses the resolution in the present tense; the other in the imperfect, bearing upon its face the appearance of having been made up at a subsequent time by an effort of recollection.
The document styled a declaration, whatever may have been its origin, or terms, remained long in obscurity, public attention having been first drawn to it, in 1819, by the Raleigh Register, at the instance of Colonel Thomas Polk. But a declaration, to effect its object, must be published far and wide.
The Mecklenburg committee met at Charlotte on the thirtieth of May, and passed a series of resolutions, (making no reference whatever to a previous declaration of independence;) suspending the former civil constitution, and organizing a provisional republican government. The eighteenth resolution is in these words: "That these resolves be in full force and virtue, until instructions from the provincial congress regulating the jurisprudence of the province shall provide otherwise, or the legislative body of Great Britain resign its unjust and arbitrary pretentions with respect to America:" thus explicitly recognizing the right of eminent domain as belonging to Great Britain. It is not to be credited that the Mecklenburg patriots made an absolute declaration of independence on the twentieth, and in ten days thereafter acknowledged the sovereignty of Great Britain. These admirable resolutions of the thirtieth were published in the Mercury, a North Carolina newspaper, (and others,) and a copy of it was transmitted by Governor Tryon to the British minister, and denounced as the boldest of all, "most traitorously declaring the entire dissolution of the laws and constitution, and setting up a system of rule and regulation subversive of his majesty's government." The alleged declaration of the twentieth, brief and absolute, was published in no newspaper, and was not denounced by the governor; while the resolutions of the thirty-first, recognizing the sovereignty of Great Britain, were so published and denounced. Mecklenburg, in North Carolina, was, nevertheless, then unquestionably in a condition of actual self-government and virtual independence; and the names of Brevard, the master-spirit of the Charlotte Convention, (afterwards a patriot-martyr,) and of his compatriots, stand on the page of history in characters of recorded honor which need no adventitious lustre.[617:A]
FOOTNOTES:
[615:A] Its authenticity was admitted in the former edition of this work.
[615:B] Especially by Mr. Grigsby, in his Discourse on the Virginia Convention of '76, p. 20.
[615:C] Foote's Sketches of North Carolina, 205.
[616:A] Bancroft, vii. 337.
[617:A] Grigsby's Convention of Va. of '76; Martin's Hist. of N. C., ii. 372; Foote's Sketches of N. C.; Hawks' Lecture, in Revolut. Hist. of N. C. President Swain, in a lecture before the Historical Society of the University of North Carolina, referring to this subject, evidently considers the resolutions of the thirtieth of May as the Mecklenburg Declaration. (Revolut. Hist. of N. C., 101.) Mr. Bancroft takes the same view.
Chapter LXXXIII
1775.
Congress--Dunmore offers the Olive Branch--New Commotions-- Dunmore retires--Courts closed--Correspondence between Dunmore and Assembly--Washington, Commander-in-chief--Proceedings at Williamsburg--Proceedings in Congress--Washington at Cambridge-- Lady Dunmore.
THE second congress assembled on the 10th day of May, 1775, in the State House, Chestnut Street, Philadelphia. Peyton Randolph was again elected president, but finding it necessary to return to Virginia to perform the duties of speaker, was succeeded by the well-tried patriot, John Hancock. Many of the leading members, including Washington, still hoped for reconciliation with the mother country, and few as yet avowed themselves in favor of independence. But while the congress were pacific in theory, they were revolutionary in action. A second petition to the king was adopted; but, at the same time, a federal union was organized, and the executive power vested in a council of twelve. Measures were taken for enlisting troops, erecting forts, providing military stores, and issuing a paper currency. Massachusetts was advised to form an internal government for herself. Washington was chairman of the military committees, and the regulations of the army and defensive measures were mostly devised by him.
Shortly after the affair of the gunpowder, the public agitations were again quieted upon the reception of Lord North's conciliatory proposition, commonly called the "Olive Branch;" and Dunmore convened the burgesses, and Lady Dunmore and her family returned (to the great satisfaction of the people) from the Fowey, where they had taken refuge during these disturbances, to the palace. The assembly meeting on the first day of June, the governor presented Lord North's proposition. The council's answer was satisfactory; but before the burgesses could reply, a new explosion occurred. Upon Henry's recent approach toward Williamsburg some of the inhabitants, to the great offence of the graver citizens, had taken possession of a few of the guns remaining in the magazine. On the night of June the fifth a number of persons having assembled there to furnish themselves with arms, some of them were wounded by spring-guns placed there by order of the governor. Besides this, some barrels of powder were found buried in the magazine, to be used, it was suspected, as a mine when occasion should offer. Early on the next morning Lord Dunmore, with his family, escaped from Williamsburg to return no more, and took shelter on board of the Fowey, leaving behind him a message to the house, ascribing his departure to apprehensions of personal danger, and declaring his willingness to co-operate with the assembly in the public business. That body, by a deputation, requested him to return to the palace, assuring him that they would unite in whatever measures might be necessary for the protection of him and his family. Dunmore in reply complained of the inimical spirit of the burgesses toward him, of the countenance which they had given to the disorderly proceedings of the people, of his majesty's magazine having been broken open and rifled in the presence of members of the house; he further said that while some endeavors had been made by the committee of the house to prevail upon the people to restore the arms, no steps had been taken to bring the offenders to justice; that a body of men had assembled at Williamsburg for the purpose of attacking the king's troops, and that guards had been mounted under false pretences. He exhorted them to return to their constitutional duty; to open the courts of justice; to disband the independent companies; and to put an end to the persecutions of his majesty's loyal subjects.
The governor at the same time communicated papers containing terms upon which a reconciliation might take place--placing his return upon the condition of their acceptance of the "Olive Branch." The assembly in their reply, composed by Mr. Jefferson, declared that next to the preservation of liberty, a reconciliation would be the greatest of all human blessings; but that they could not consent to the proposed terms. Leaving the determination of these disputes to the wisdom of congress, for themselves they avowed that they had exhausted every means for obtaining redress; they had remonstrated to parliament, and parliament had only added new oppressions to the old; they had wearied the king with petitions which he had not deigned to answer; they had appealed to the native honor and justice of the British nation, but their efforts in favor of the colonies had as yet proved ineffectual. Nothing remained but to commit their cause to the even-handed justice of Him who doeth no wrong, "earnestly beseeching him to illuminate the counsels and prosper the endeavors of those to whom America hath confided her hopes, that through their wise direction we may again see re-united the blessings of liberty and property, and the most permanent harmony with Great Britain."
The courts of justice upon Dunmore's flight had been closed, the general court refusing to transact business, under the pretext that the fees of officers could not be legally taxed without an act of assembly--the real ground being, it is said, the desire of bringing about an independent meeting of that body, and of protecting debtors against suits, principally foreign.
In another correspondence with the governor, the assembly requested him to give an order for the return of the arms; but this he refused to do, alleging that they belonged to the king. They also complained of being compelled to communicate with his excellency on board of one of his majesty's armed ships, and at the distance of twelve miles from their usual place of meeting. His lordship laid the whole responsibility of these inconveniences upon the disorders that had driven him from the seat of government, and required the house to attend him on board the Fowey for the purpose of obtaining his signature to bills. Some of the burgesses were disposed to acquiesce in the proposed arrangement; but it was rejected upon a member's relating Æsop's fable of the sick lion and the fox. The assembly declared the governor's message a high breach of the rights and privileges of the house; they advised the people of Virginia to prepare for the preservation of their property, their rights, and their liberties. It was also resolved unanimously that "we do and will bear faith and true allegiance to our most gracious sovereign George the Third, our only lawful and rightful king; and that we will at all times, to the utmost of our power, and at the risk of our lives and property, maintain and defend his government in this colony, as founded on the established laws and principles of the constitution." They furthermore unanimously declared their earnest desire to preserve and strengthen the bands of amity with their fellow-subjects of Great Britain.
On the fourteenth day of June, George Washington, upon the nomination of Mr. Thomas Johnson, of Maryland, was unanimously elected by the congress, commander-in-chief of the armies of the United Colonies. John Adams, of Massachusetts, the eloquent and indomitable advocate of independence, had, on a previous occasion, recommended him for the post, as "a gentleman, whose skill and experience as an officer, whose independent fortune, great talents, and excellent universal character, would command the approbation of all America, and unite the cordial exertions of all the colonies better than any other person in the union." Mr. Adams had discovered that the preference of the Southern members for Washington was very strong. The pay of the commander-in-chief of the continental army was fixed at the sum of five hundred dollars a month. Washington, impressed with a profound sense of the arduous responsibility of the trust, while he gratefully accepted it, declared at the same time that he did not think himself equal to it. He declined all compensation for his services, and made known his intention to keep an account of his expenses, which he should rely on congress to discharge. A fac-simile copy of his account, published in recent times, attests the fidelity with which he performed this engagement. It is remarkable that while the Southern members in general preferred him, among those, who at the first suggestion of his name by Mr. Adams, were opposed to his appointment, were several of the Virginia delegates, and Mr. Pendleton, in particular, was absolutely against it; but upon further conference and reflection all objection was withdrawn. Four major-generals were appointed, Ward of Massachusetts, Charles Lee, an Englishman, Schuyler, of New York, and Putnam, of Connecticut. In compliance with General Washington's request, his old comrade, Major Horatio Gates, then on his estate in Virginia, was appointed adjutant-general. Washington was likewise warmly in favor of the appointment of General Charles Lee; yet not without misgivings as to his violent temper.
The Shawnee hostages had disappeared at the time with the governor; and George Washington, Thomas Walker, James Wood, Andrew Lewis, John Walker, and Adam Stephen were appointed commissioners to ratify a treaty with that tribe. It was determined that Lord Dunmore had voluntarily abdicated the post of governor, and that the president of the council should discharge the duties. The abdication was, no doubt, as "voluntary" as that of James the Second. The burgesses adjourned to the twelfth of October, and were summoned to meet in convention on the seventeenth of July.[622:A] It was on this occasion that Richard Henry Lee, standing on the 17th of June, 1775, with two other burgesses, in the portico of the capitol, inscribed with his pencil, on a pillar, these lines,--
"When shall we three meet again, In thunder, lightning, and in rain? When the hurlyburly's done, When the battle's lost and won."
On the twenty-fourth the arms were removed from the palace, and lodged in the magazine of which Dr. Bland had the charge. Among those engaged in removing them were Theodorick Bland, Jr., Richard Kidder Meade, Benjamin Harrison, of Berkley, George Nicholas, Harrison Randolph, and James Monroe.
On the twenty-sixth of June Mr. Jefferson was added to a committee of congress appointed to draw up a declaration of the grounds of taking up arms. He prepared one, but it proving too strong for Mr. Dickinson, of Pennsylvania, he was indulged in preparing a far tamer statement, which was accepted by congress. Yet disgust at its humility was general, and Mr. Dickinson's delight at its passage was the only circumstance which reconciled them to it. The vote being passed, although farther observation on it was out of order, Dickinson could not refrain from rising and expressing his satisfaction, and concluded by saying: "There is but one word, Mr. President, in the paper which I disapprove, and that is the word congress." On which Benjamin Harrison rose and said: "There is but one word, Mr. President, of which I approve, and that is the word congress."
The commander-in-chief received his commission from the president of congress on the twentieth of June, and on the following day set out for Boston on horseback, accompanied by General Lee, General Schuyler, and an escort of Philadelphia cavalry. They had proceeded about twenty miles, when they were met by an express bringing intelligence of the battle of Bunker's Hill. Amid cheers and the thunder of cannon he reached the headquarters of the army at Cambridge, on the second of July, and on the third assumed the command. The future was full of difficulty and of danger; but he confided in that Divine Providence which wisely orders human affairs.
Late in June the Magdalen sailed from York with Lady Dunmore, and the rest of the governor's family, bound for England. The Magdalen was convoyed down the York and across the bay, by the Fowey. This oft-mentioned old twenty-gun man-of-war was shortly afterwards relieved by the Mercury, and sailed with Captain Foy on board for Boston.
Dunmore issued a proclamation commanding all subjects on their allegiance, to repair to his standard.
FOOTNOTES:
[622:A] Williamsburg invited the assistance of an additional volunteer force to guard the town.
Chapter LXXXIV
1775.
Dunmore at Portsmouth--Convention--Committee of Safety-- Carrington, Read, Cabell--Henry, Colonel and Commander-in-chief --George Mason--Miscellaneous Affairs--Death of Peyton Randolph --The Randolphs of Virginia.
DUNMORE'S domestics now abandoned the palace and removed to Porto Bello, his country-seat, about six miles below Williamsburg. The fugitive governor took up his station at Portsmouth.
On Monday, July the 17th, 1775, the convention met at Richmond. Measures were taken for raising two regiments of regular troops for one year, and two companies for the protection of the western frontier, and to divide the colony into sixteen districts, and to exercise the militia as minute-men, so as to be ready for service at a moment's warning. At the instance of Richard Bland an inquiry was made into certain charges reflecting on his patriotism; and his innocence was triumphantly vindicated. Although he had resisted extreme measures, yet when the crisis came, and the rupture took place, he was behind none in patriotic ardor and devotion to the common cause. A minister was implicated in propagating the charges against him.
A committee of safety was organized to take charge of the executive duties of the colony; it consisted of eleven gentlemen: Edmund Pendleton, George Mason, John Page, Richard Bland, Thomas Ludwell Lee, Paul Carrington, Dudley Digges, William Cabell, Carter Braxton, James Mercer, and John Tabb.
Paul Carrington, the ancestor of those bearing that name in Virginia, and his wife, of the Heningham family, emigrated from Ireland to Barbadoes. He died early in the eighteenth century, and left a widow and numerous children. The youngest, George, about the year 1727, came to Virginia with the family of Joseph Mayo, a Barbadoes merchant, who settled at Powhatan, the former seat of the chief of that name, and young Carrington lived with him in the capacity of storekeeper. About 1732 he married Anne, daughter of William Mayo, of Goochland, brother of Joseph, and went to reside on Willis's Creek, in what is now Cumberland County. Paul Carrington, eldest child of this marriage, married, in 1755, Margaret, daughter of Colonel Clement Read, of Bushy Forest, clerk of the court of Lunenburg, now Charlotte. Young Carrington, having attained a practical knowledge of the law in the clerk's office, soon acquired an extensive practice. He was a burgess from Charlotte in 1765, and appears to have voted against Henry's resolutions. He continued to be a member of the house down to the time of the Revolution; was a member of the association of 1670, and in 1774 of the first convention; and also of those of 1775 and 1776. In the latter he voted for the resolution instructing the delegates in congress to propose independence, and was a member of the committee which reported the bill of rights and the constitution. He was subsequently a judge of the general court and of the court of appeals, and a member of the convention of 1788. Three of his sons served in the army of Revolution: George, lieutenant in Lee's legion; Paul, who was at the battles of Guilford and Greenspring; and Clement, who was wounded in the battle of Eutaw Springs. Paul Carrington, member of the committee of safety, was upwards of six feet in stature, his features prominent, with bright blue eyes, and sandy hair. His seat was Mulberry Hill, on the banks of the Staunton.[625:A] He died at the age of eighty-five, having survived all the early Virginia patriots of the revolutionary era.
Edward Carrington, his younger brother, was a valued officer during the revolutionary war, and quartermaster-general for the Southern army under Greene.
Colonel Clement Read, father of Mrs. Paul Carrington, was born in Virginia, (1707,) his ancestors having, as is supposed, come over shortly after the Restoration, being probably of the Cromwellian party. Early bereft of his father, he was educated at William and Mary under the guardianship of John Robinson, of Spotsylvania, president of the council. In 1730 Mr. Read was married to Mary, only daughter of William Hill, an officer in the British navy, second son of the Marquis of Lansdowne. This William Hill had married the only daughter of Governor Jennings, and resided in what was then Isle of Wight County, now Brunswick.
Colonel Isaac Read, eldest son of Clement Read, was a member of the conventions of 1774 and 1775, co-operating with Henry and Jefferson. He received in June, 1776, a commission as lieutenant-colonel of the Fourth Virginia Regiment, but died not long after at Philadelphia, owing to exposure in the public service. Thomas Read, younger brother of Isaac, was a supporter of the views of Henry and Jefferson, and a member of the convention of 1776.[626:A] An accomplished gentleman, he retained the costume and manners of a former day.
Dr. William Cabell, head of the family of that name in Virginia, emigrated from Wiltshire, England, about 1720, and settled in what is now Nelson County. He had been a surgeon in the English navy; was a man of letters and science; in his profession well-skilled and successful; sagacious in business; of a humorous fancy; and fond of wild sports. He died in 1774 at an advanced age, leaving one daughter and four sons; of these, Joseph Cabell was a burgess in 1769 and 1770, and member of the convention in 1775. John Cabell was a member of the same, and of the convention of 1776. Nicholas Cabell served under La Fayette, and was also in political life. William Cabell, the eldest brother, was wise in council, energetic and fearless in action, and widely influential in his own region. He was fond of rural sports, and an expert horseman. His face was of the Roman cast. Tall, of a fine person, and commanding presence, he exhibited the dignified simplicity of the Virginia gentleman of the old school. He was a tobacco-planter, and his extensive and well-ordered plantations, besides the labors of agriculture, presented a scene of industry, where the various handicrafts were carried on by his own blacksmiths, carpenters, weavers, and shoemakers. Colonel Cabell was systematic in business, and of generous hospitality. He was a member of the assembly in 1769, and a signer of the association. He voted, in 1775, against Henry's resolutions, preferring the scheme of a regular army presented by Colonel Nicholas.[627:A] Colonel Samuel J. Cabell, who was at the commencement of the Revolution a student of college, left it, and joined the first armed corps raised in Virginia, and soon attained the rank of lieutenant-colonel in the continental army. He was made a prisoner at the surrender of Charleston in 1780, and so remained till the close of the war. He was afterwards a member of congress, and died at his seat in Nelson County, in 1818, aged 61.
Patrick Henry was elected, in August, colonel of the first regiment and commander of all the forces raised and to be raised for the defence of the colony. William Woodford, of Caroline County, who had served meritoriously in the French and Indian war, was appointed to the command of the second regiment. A strong effort was made to elect Colonel Hugh Mercer, of Fredericksburg, to the command of the first regiment, and on the first ballot he received a plurality of one vote; but the question being narrowed down between him and Mr. Henry, the latter was elected.
The expense of the late Indian war was estimated at £150,000; Virginia's quota of the charge of the continental army £150,000; the charge of the two new regiments, and the minute-men, and other items of public expenditure, made a sum of upwards of £500,000. George Wythe was elected member of congress in the place of Washington, appointed commander-in-chief. When the delegates were chosen for the ensuing congress, Mr. Mason would have been elected but that he declared that he could not possibly attend. Upon the resignation of the aged Colonel Richard Bland, a day or two thereafter, a party headed by Colonel Henry, Mr. Jefferson, and Colonel Paul Carrington, appeared determined to elect Colonel Mason at all events. In consequence of this, just before the ballot was taken, he found himself constrained to make known the grounds of his refusal; "in doing which," he says, "I felt myself more distressed than ever I was in my life, especially when I saw tears run down the president's (Randolph's) cheeks." The cause of Mr. Mason's declining to serve was the recent death of his wife, leaving a large family of children. Mr. Mason nominated Colonel Francis Lightfoot Lee, who was elected. Mr. Mason was, nevertheless, as has been seen, made a member of the committee of safety, which service was even more inconvenient to him than that of delegate to congress. But upon his begging permission to resign, he was answered by a unanimous "no." The staff officers of the First Regiment, under Colonel Henry, were Lieutenant-Colonel Christian and Major Eppes; and in the Second Regiment, under Colonel Woodford, Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Scott and Major Alexander Spotswood. The convention passed ordinances for raising money and imposing taxes, for furnishing arms and the procuring of saltpetre, lead, and sulphur, and for encouraging the manufacture of gunpowder; for regulating the elections of delegates; and for establishing a general test of fidelity to the country. The Maryland Convention not concurring in the resolution prohibiting the export of provisions, it was rescinded, and the ports were consequently kept open till the tenth of September. The merchants, natives of Great Britain, mostly Scotch, resident in Virginia, petitioned the convention to prescribe some rule of conduct in their business during the present crisis of affairs, and were allowed to remain neutral. The committee of safety met for the first time toward the end of August. At the beginning of the session of the convention, resolutions were passed by way of recommendations for the people; but afterwards ordinances were enacted on all matters of importance with the formalities of a bill, passing through three readings.
In September Colonel Henry selected an encampment in the rear of the College of William and Mary. The recruits, regular and minute-men, poured rapidly into Williamsburg. In October Matthew Phripp, a Virginian, in whom important trusts had been confided, proving a traitor, went on board of one of Dunmore's vessels. Phripp's son likewise deserted. Virginia contrived to import some powder at this juncture. The people became dissatisfied at the scarcity of salt, the importation of which was prohibited by the articles of association; but it would hardly have been possible to import it then, even if allowed by law, Virginia not having one armed vessel to protect her trade. Some persons began to manufacture it by evaporating sea-water in pans. The non-importation afforded a new incentive to industry and invention, threw the people upon their own resources, and taught them self-denial, and how to live within themselves. They made less tobacco, and applied themselves more to domestic manufactures.
On the 22d of this month, 1775, died suddenly of an apoplexy, at Philadelphia, the able and virtuous Peyton Randolph, president of congress, aged fifty-two years, descended from a family long noted in Virginia for its wealth, talents, and influence; he was the second son of Sir John Randolph, and Susan Beverley, his wife. Peyton Randolph, being bred to the law, was, in 1748, appointed king's attorney for the colony, being then but twenty-four years of age. He succeeded Speaker Robinson in the chair of the house of burgesses in 1766, and continued to preside over that body until it was superseded by the conventions. He was made, in 1773, a member of the committee of correspondence, and was at its head. In March, 1774, he was unanimously chosen president of the first convention of Virginia. In August he was appointed by the convention one of the delegates to the congress which assembled at Philadelphia in September, and was unanimously elected president of it. In person he was tall and stately; in manner grave and of senatorial dignity; at home generous and hospitable. As a lawyer sound and accurate; in public life of excellent judgment, large experience, and incorruptible integrity.[629:A] He lies buried in the chapel of William and Mary.
The progenitor of the Randolphs was William of Warwickshire, or as some say, of Yorkshire, England, who came over to Virginia probably between 1665 and 1675, poor, it is said. He accumulated a large estate, and became a member of the house of burgesses and of the council. He appears to have been intimate with the first Colonel William Byrd, and well acquainted with Lady Berkley. He settled at Turkey Island on the James River. He married Mary Isham, of Bermuda Hundred, who was descended from an ancient family in Northamptonshire. Several of their sons were men of distinction: William was member of the council, and treasurer; Isham a member of the house of burgesses from Goochland, (1740,) and adjutant-general; Richard was burgess for Henrico, and succeeded his brother as treasurer. Sir John, sixth son of the first William, was clerk, speaker, treasurer, and attorney-general. He died in March, 1737, aged forty-four, and lies buried in the chapel of William and Mary.[630:A] Peter, son of the second William Randolph, was clerk, and attorney-general. Peyton, son of Sir John, was attorney-general, speaker of the house of burgesses, and president of the first congress. John, brother of Peyton, was attorney-general, a votary of pleasure; of brilliant talents; he sided with Dunmore, withdrew from Virginia with him, and died in London, in January, 1784, aged fifty-six. He lies buried in the chapel of William and Mary. Thomas Mann Randolph, great grandson of the first William, was member of the Virginia convention of 1775, from Goochland. Beverley Randolph was member of assembly from Cumberland during the Revolution, and Governor of the State of Virginia. Edmund Randolph, (son of John, the attorney-general,) said to have been disinherited by his father for refusing to adhere to the royal cause, was aid-de-camp to General Washington, member of the convention of 1776, judge of the admiralty court, member of the congress of the confederation, and of the general convention that framed the constitution of the United States, and of the Virginia convention that ratified it, Governor of Virginia, Attorney-General of the United States, and Secretary of State. Robert Randolph, son of Peter, Richard Randolph, grandson of Peter, and David Meade Randolph, sons of the second Richard, were cavalry officers in the war of the Revolution. David Meade Randolph was United States Marshal for Virginia. John Randolph, of Roanoke, the orator, was grandson of the first Richard. Thomas Mann Randolph, Jr., was member of the legislature of Virginia, and of congress, and Governor of Virginia. Richard Bland, of the old congress, Thomas Jefferson, Theodorick Bland, Jr., Richard Henry Lee, Arthur Lee, and Francis Lightfoot Lee, William Stith, the historian, and Thomas Marshall, father of the chief justice, were all descended from William Randolph, of Turkey Island.
Jane Bolling, great granddaughter of Pocahontas, married Richard Randolph, of Curles. John Randolph, Sr., the seventh child of that marriage, married Frances Bland, and John Randolph, of Roanoke, the orator, was one of the children of this union.
The members of the numerous family of the Randolphs in several instances adopted the names of their seats for the purpose of distinction, as Thomas of Tuckahoe, Isham of Dungeness, Richard of Curles, John of Roanoke. The following were seats of the Randolphs on the James River: Tuckahoe, Chatsworth, Wilton, Varina, Curles, Bremo, and Turkey Island.
FOOTNOTES:
[625:A] Foote's Sketches of Va., second series, 575; Grigsby's Convention of '76.
[626:A] Foote's Sketches, second series, 573; Grigsby's Convention of '76.
[627:A] Va. Hist. Reg., iii. 44 and 107; Grigsby's Convention of '76.
[629:A] Grigsby's Convention of Va. of '76.
[630:A] A small work on gardening, printed at Petersburg, in 1807, is attributed to him.
Chapter LXXXV
1775.
Dunmore's War--Captain Squires--Woodford sent against Dunmore-- Woodford and Henry--Affairs at Great Bridge--Battle of Great Bridge--Howe assumes Command--Indignity offered Henry-- Committee of Safety--Pendleton--Howe occupies Norfolk.
DUNMORE in the meanwhile had rallied a band of tories, runaway negroes, and British soldiers, and collected a naval force, and was carrying on a petty warfare. Captain Squires, of his majesty's sloop Otter, during the summer cruised in the James and York, plundering the inhabitants and carrying off slaves. Early in September a tender laden with stores, being driven ashore near Hampton, Squires (who happened to be in her) and most of the crew escaped. The sloop was burnt by the inhabitants. Squires in retaliation threatening Hampton, Major Innes, with a hundred men, was sent down from Williamsburg to defend it. Squires in the latter part of October appeared near Hampton with several vessels, and threatened to land and burn the town. It was defended by a company of regulars under Captain George Nicholas, a company of minute-men, and some militia. Upon Squires attempting to land a skirmish ensued, and the enemy was driven off with some loss. Squires' party returning on the next day, burnt down a house belonging to a Mr. Cooper. Intelligence of this affair having reached Williamsburg, a company of riflemen was sent to Hampton, and Colonel Woodford was despatched to take command there. Upon their arrival on the next morning, Squires began to fire upon the town, but was again compelled to retire. These petty hostilities were the subject of humorous remark in the Virginia Gazette.[632:A]
Dunmore, on the 7th of November, 1775, proclaimed martial-law, summoned all persons capable of bearing arms to his standard, on penalty of being proclaimed traitors, and offered freedom to all servants and slaves who should join him. He had now the ascendency in the country around Norfolk, which abounded in tories. The committee of safety despatched Woodford with his regiment and two hundred minute-men, amounting in all to eight hundred men, with orders to cross the James River at Sandy Point and go in pursuit of Dunmore. Colonel Henry had been desirous to be employed in this service, and, it was said, solicited it, but the committee of safety refused, and amid such exciting events he found himself, eager as he was for action, and ardent and impetuous as was his nature, still compelled to sit down inactive in Williamsburg, where he had been quartered since September. At length after the lapse of nearly another month of tedious inaction, during which he received no regular communications from Colonel Woodford, Colonel Henry wrote to him thus: "Not hearing of any despatch from you for a long time, I can no longer forbear sending to know your situation and what has occurred?" Woodford on the next day replied from the Great Bridge, near Norfolk, and said: "When joined I shall always esteem myself immediately under your command, and will obey accordingly, but when sent to command a separate and distinct corps, under the immediate instructions of the committee of safety, whenever that body, or the honorable convention is sitting, I look upon it as my indispensable duty to address my intelligence to them as the supreme power in this colony." Thus Colonel Henry's chagrin at not being permitted to march himself against Dunmore was aggravated by Colonel Woodford's declining, while detached, to acknowledge his superiority in command. Woodford, upon approaching Dunmore, found that he had entrenched himself on the north side of the Elizabeth River, at the Great Bridge, about twenty miles from Norfolk. Judge Marshall says that it was necessary for the Provincials to cross it in order to reach Norfolk, but Thomas Ludwell Lee, writing at the time, says that there were other ways by which to pass to Norfolk. "Our army has been for some time arrested in its march to Norfolk by a redoubt, or stockade, or hog-pen, as they call it here, by way of derision, at the end of this bridge. Though, by the way, this hog-pen seems filled with a parcel of wild boars, which we appear not overfond to meddle with." Some of the more eager patriots were apprehensive that Woodford would be amused at that post until Dunmore should finish his fortifications at Norfolk, where he was now entrenching and mounting cannon, some hundreds of negroes being employed in the work. Added to this the advanced season of the year and the hourly expectation of the enemy's receiving a re-enforcement from St. Augustine, as was known by intercepted intelligence, made a bold movement necessary, "while we walk too cautiously in the road of prudence."
Dunmore's power on land was confined to the counties of Norfolk and Princess Anne; his recent course had united the colony with few exceptions against him, and if the ministry had ransacked the whole world for the person of all others the best fitted to ruin their cause, they could not have found a fitter agent than Lord Dunmore. He had just now proclaimed liberty to the slaves, and declared martial-law.
It was believed that one frigate could capture the whole of his fleet, and other vessels laden with the floating property of tories, of enormous value. John Page wished earnestly for a few armed vessels to keep possession of the rivers, the arteries of commerce, at the least the upper parts of them. While five thousand men could not defend so exposed a coast against the depredations of Dunmore's fleet, yet five hundred in armed vessels could easily take the fleet. But a majority of the committee of safety and of the convention, held it in vain for Virginia then to attempt any thing by water.[634:A]
Dunmore had erected a small fort on an oasis surrounded by a morass, not far from the Dismal Swamp, accessible on either side only by a long causeway. Woodford encamped within cannon-shot of this post, in mud and mire, in a village at the southern end of the causeway, across which he threw up a breast-work, but being destitute of artillery he did not attack the fort. After a few days Dunmore, hearing by a servant lad, who had deserted from Woodford's camp, that his force did not exceed three hundred men, mustered his whole strength and despatched them in the night to the fort, with orders to force the breast-works early next morning, or die in the attempt. On the 9th of December, 1775, a little before sunrise, Captain Fordyce, at the head of sixty grenadiers, who six abreast led the column, advanced along the causeway. Colonel Bullet first discovered the enemy, and the alarm being given in Woodford's camp, a small guard at the breast-works began the fire, others hastened from their tents, and regardless of order, kept up a fire on the head of the column. Fordyce, though received so warmly in front, and flanked by a party posted on a rising ground to his right, rallied his men, and marched up within twenty yards of the breast-work, when he fell pierced with bullets. His followers now retreated, and at this juncture Colonel Woodford arrived, and directed a pursuit of the enemy, who were galled by a handful of riflemen under Colonel Stephen, but found protection under cover of the guns of the fort. Woodford declined attempting to storm the works, although strongly urged to it by the bold and ardent Bullet and the enthusiastic wishes of the troops.
In the battle of the Great Bridge every grenadier was killed, and the enemy's killed and wounded amounted to about one hundred. Four officers were killed, one wounded and made prisoner. The affair has been styled "a Bunker Hill in miniature:" but there the loss was very heavy on both sides; whereas here Woodford's troops suffered no loss.
John Marshall, afterwards chief justice, was in this expedition.[635:A] Richard Kidder Meade, father of Bishop Meade, was also present at the affair of the Great Bridge. This was the first scene of revolutionary bloodshed in Virginia. On the night following this action the royalists evacuated the fort, and Dunmore took refuge on board of his fleet. Colonel Howe, with five or six hundred North Carolina troops, now joined Woodford, and assumed command at the Great Bridge, with the consent of Woodford, who yielded to the seniority of his commission. Colonel Henry now saw the colonel of the second Virginia regiment, who had refused to acknowledge his command, submitting himself to an officer of no higher rank, and of another colony. He found himself, although invested with the title of commander-in-chief, yet virtually superseded and reduced to the mere shadow of a name. To nullify his superiority of command the committee had only to detach his subordinate officers.
On the thirteenth of December a member of the convention wrote to Colonel Woodford: "I have talked with Colonel Henry about this matter; he thinks he has been ill-treated, and insists the officers under his command shall submit to his orders:" and again, "A commander or general, I suppose, will be sent us by the congress, as it is expected our troops will be upon continental pay." Mr. Pendleton, chairman of the committee, in a letter dated December the twenty-fourth, and addressed to Colonel Woodford, said: "The field-officers to each regiment will be named here and recommended to congress; in case our army is taken into continental pay, they will send commissions. A general officer will be chosen there, I doubt not, and sent us; with that matter I hope we shall not intermeddle, lest it should be thought propriety requires our calling, or rather recommending, our present officer to that station." It appears that Colonel Henry had not owed his military appointment to those members of the committee of safety who conducted the correspondence.[636:A] Mr. Pendleton looked upon the appointment of Henry as an "unlucky step." Pendleton and Woodford were both of the County of Caroline.
Late in December, Colonel Henry insisting upon a determination of the question thus raised between him and Colonel Woodford, the committee passed the following resolution:--
"Resolved, Unanimously, that Colonel Woodford, although acting upon a separate and detached command, ought to correspond with Colonel Henry, and make returns to him at proper times of the state and condition of the forces under his command, and also that he is subject to his orders when the convention or the committee of safety is not sitting; but that while either of these bodies is sitting he is to receive his orders from one of them."
This decision virtually annulled the power of Henry as commander-in-chief. The clause of the ordinance of convention which authorized the committee to direct military movements is the following:--
"And whereas it may be necessary for the public security that the forces to be raised by virtue of this ordinance should, as occasion may require, be marched to different parts of the colony, and that the officers should be subject to a proper control,--
"Be it ordained by the authority aforesaid, That the officers and soldiers under such command shall, in all things not otherwise particularly provided for by this ordinance and the articles established for their regulation, be under the control and subject to the order of the general committee of safety."[637:A]
It could hardly be said of Woodford and his men that they were marched to a different part of the colony; he and Colonel Henry were still in the same quarter of Virginia, and not far apart. For so numerous a body as the convention, or even the committee of safety, to assume all the functions of the commander-in-chief, was incompatible with the unity, secrecy, and promptitude demanded in the conduct of war. If not, of what advantage was the appointment of a commander-in-chief at all? If the committee, by such a construction of their powers, could virtually annul the authority of the commander-in-chief, he, whose powers were at the least as ample as theirs, might, by a like construction, have repudiated their authority. The conduct of the committee toward Colonel Henry was strongly censured by the people as well as the troops, and they imputed it to personal envy.[637:B] Those, however, who approved of the committee's course, attributed it to a want of confidence in Colonel Henry, as deficient in military experience.[638:A] Other mortifications were in store for the man of the people.
Shortly after the battle of the Great Bridge the Provincials, under Howe, took possession of Norfolk, encamped there in the "Town Camp."
FOOTNOTES:
[632:A] John Banister proposing to turn his saw-mill at Petersburg into a powder-mill, the convention ordered saltpetre and sulphur to be sent there for him. Richard Bland advised that saltpetre should be made at Appomattox warehouses, (Petersburg,) fearing that supineness possessed all ranks, and offering to contribute toward that useful work.
[634:A] Lee Papers, S. Lit. Messr., 1858, p. 254.
[635:A] An account of his visit to Yorktown shortly after the battle, and his courtship, by John Eston Cooke, is to be found in Historical Magazine for June, 1859.
[636:A] Wirt's Life of Patrick Henry, 171.
[637:A] Journal of the Convention of 1775.
[637:B] Wirt's Henry, 178.
[638:A] And perhaps as unduly familiar with the men under his command. As an instance of this it is said that he was seen among them with his coat off--a grave charge indeed!
Chapter LXXXVI
1775.
Manufacture of Gunpowder--Norfolk burnt--Dunmore's conduct-- Henry resigns--Indignation of troops--Troops at Williamsburg-- General Orders.
ON Christmas day, 1775, Benjamin Harrison, Jr., having leave of absence from the convention for three days, at the Lower Ferry, on Chickahominy River, was conferring with Jacob Rubsamen, in his broken English, in regard to the manufacture of saltpetre; he having been sent on by the Virginia delegates in congress to superintend the manufacture of gunpowder. Mr. Harrison's father and himself were disposed to "be dabbling in the saltpetre way." Rubsamen afterwards manufactured much saltpetre and powder in Virginia, and was involved in no little trouble in the work, and in getting paid for it.
On the twenty-eighth of December Edmund Pendleton writes to Richard Henry Lee: "If the house of Bourbon mean to join us it will be soon, lest the progress of the enemy should make our connection less valuable by the destruction of our commercial cities."
Dunmore's fleet being distressed for provisions, upon the arrival of the Liverpool man-of-war from England, a flag was sent on shore to enquire whether the inhabitants would supply his majesty's ship? It was answered in the negative; and the ships in the harbor being continually annoyed by a fire from the quarter of the town lying next the water, Dunmore determined to dislodge the assailants. Previous notice having been given to the inhabitants, January the 1st, 1776, a party of sailors and marines landed, and set fire to the nearest houses. The party was covered by a cannonade from the Liverpool frigate, two sloops-of-war, and the governor's armed ship, the Dunmore. A few were killed and wounded on both sides.
A printer's press had been removed from Norfolk some time before this on board the governor's ship, and according to his bulletin published after this affair, it was only intended to destroy that part of the town next the water. But the provincials, strongly prejudiced against the place as a harbor for tories, made no attempts to arrest the flames. After four-fifths of the town were destroyed, Colonel Howe, who had waited on the convention to urge the necessity of completing the destruction, returned with orders to that effect, which were immediately carried into execution. Thus fell the most populous and flourishing town in Virginia. Its rental amounted to $44,000, and the total loss was estimated at $1,300,000. It is said that alone of all the civil and military leaders of the colony, General Andrew Lewis opposed the order for burning Norfolk.
In February, the North Carolina provincials defeated the royalists at Moore's Creek Bridge. This well-timed and vigorous blow intimidated the tories, and animated the patriots with new ardor.
Dunmore continued to carry on a predatory warfare on the rivers, burning houses and plundering plantations, and had now rendered himself the object of general execration.
During February John Page wrote to Richard Henry Lee: "I have been always of your opinion with respect to our present commander-in-chief. All orders do pass through him, and we really wish to be in perfect harmony with him." The convention of Virginia having raised six additional regiments, solicited congress to take the Virginia troops on continental establishment. That body, doubtless misled by the intrigues of the same cabal which had already virtually deprived Colonel Henry of his command, resolved to take the six new regiments, passing by the first two, so as to exclude Colonel Henry from the chief command, to which he was best entitled. The convention of Virginia, however, interposing at this point, remonstrated against the degradation of the officers of their first choice, and earnestly requested congress, should it adhere to the determination of taking only six regiments into continental pay, to allow the two first raised to stand first in the new arrangement. This request was nominally agreed to, but at the same time when a commission of colonel was forwarded to him, commissions of brigadier-general were forwarded to Colonel Howe and Colonel Andrew Lewis. A commission, dated at Philadelphia, February the 13th, 1776, appointing Colonel Henry to the command of the first Virginia regiment taken upon the continental establishment, was forwarded by congress to the committee of safety.
Colonel Henry felt himself compelled by every sentiment of self-respect to refuse it, and immediately resigned that which he held from the state. The troops encamped at Williamsburg, upon hearing of his resignation, went into mourning, and being under arms, waited on him at his lodgings on the last day of February. In their address they deplored his withdrawal from the army, but applauded his just resentment at "a glaring indignity." Colonel Henry in replying said: "This kind testimony of your regard to me would have been an ample reward for services much greater than those I have had the power to perform." "I leave the service, but I leave my heart with you. May God bless you, and give you success and safety, and make you the glorious instrument of saving our country." In the evening they assembled tumultuously, and unwilling to serve under any other commander, demanded their discharge. Colonel Henry felt himself obliged to defer his departure a while, and he, who was in the following year accused of a desire to make himself dictator, now visited the barracks, and employed his eloquence in allaying these alarming commotions.
Washington, in a letter to Joseph Reed, dated March the seventh, wrote: "I think my countrymen made a capital mistake when they took Henry out of the senate to place him in the field, and pity it is that he does not see this, and remove every difficulty by a voluntary resignation." Mr. Reed, in his reply, dated at Philadelphia, said to Washington: "We have some accounts from Virginia that Colonel Henry has resigned in disgust at not being made a general officer; but it rather gives satisfaction than otherwise, as his abilities seem better calculated for the senate than the field." In the same letter Mr. Reed wrote: "It is said the Virginians are so alarmed with the idea of independence that they have sent Mr. Braxton on purpose to turn the vote of that colony, if any question on that subject should come before congress." Mr. Reed himself had entertained strong misgivings on the question of independence.
During this month Colonel Henry was addressed by ninety officers at Kemp's Landing, at Suffolk, in Colonel Woodford's camp, and at Williamsburg. In this address they said: "We join with the general voice of the people, and think it our duty to make this public declaration of our high respect for your distinguished merit. To your vigilance and judgment as a senator this united continent bears ample testimony, while she prosecutes her steady opposition to those destructive ministerial measures which your eloquence first pointed out and taught to resent, and your resolution led forward to resist." "We have the fullest confidence in your abilities and the rectitude of your views; and however willing the envious may be to undermine an established reputation, we trust the day will come when justice shall prevail, and thereby secure you an honorable and happy return to the glorious employment of conducting our councils and hazarding your life in the defence of your country." The imputation of envy was aimed at the committee of safety as a body, or what is more probable, at some individual or individuals of it, who were believed to be the secret authors of that series of indignities which had driven Colonel Henry from military life.[642:A] The people regarded the indignities shown to their favorite as an effort to pinion the eagle, whose adventurous wing had launched into the storm and cuffed the tempestuous clouds, while others sat crouching in their conservative nests, mute and thunderstruck.
In the mean time the troops remained quartered at Williamsburg.[642:B] In a general order issued in March the soldiers were called upon to devote themselves to their duty, to exert themselves in learning the necessary discipline, to respect the persons and property of their fellow-citizens; and the officers were exhorted to fit themselves and the men for the high trust of defending the property and liberty of their country.
FOOTNOTES:
[642:A] Wirt's Life of Patrick Henry, 206.
[642:B] GENERAL ORDERS.--Williamsburg, Headquarters, March 19th, 1776.
March 23. "The officers are desired to examine strictly into their respective companies that no gaming be carried on of any kind whatsoever. When there is any leisure time from their duties of the camp, every one will be improving himself in the military service, and not pass over in idleness, or business of a worse tendency, the peaceable and precious hours now on hand. The officers will in every respect attend to the morals of their men, and endeavor to train the youths under their particular care, as well in a moral as in a military way of life."
March 27. "The grand squad to turn out at three o'clock on the parade, if the weather will permit; the awkward squad to turn out at seven o'clock in the forenoon, likewise at three in the afternoon, and to exercise for two hours each time, under the direction of a commissioned officer, sergeant, and corporal, who are accountable for any neglect of duty in management of that squad; those captains who have any awkward men, or men without arms, are to apply to the commanding officer for an order for such arms in the magazine as will do to exercise with, and to be answerable for their return when called for. Captain Cabell's company to draw ammunition to-day for the trial of their rifles to-morrow, between the hours of eight and ten in the forenoon. The men are to provide a target to-day."
R. O. "All the gentlemen cadets[642:C] are desired to attend the parade constantly; likewise a list of their names, to be given in to the colonel to-morrow forenoon, specifying the time of their entering, and with what captain. The colonel has thought proper to appoint Matthew Snook as fife-major, and William Croker as drum-major; and they are to be obeyed as such, and are to practice the young fifers and drummers between the hours of ten and eleven o'clock every day, and take care that they perform their several duties with as much exactness as possible. The officers and cadets are to give in their names as is directed in the foregoing orders. A regimental court-martial to sit at twelve o'clock, for the trial of John Hogins, of Captain Massie's company. Captain Johnston, president. Members, Lieutenant Hobson, Lieutenant Burton, Ensign Stokes, Ensign Armistead. Officer for the day, to-morrow, Captain Cabell. Officers for the guard to-morrow, Lieutenant Jones, Lieutenant Garland, Ensign Catlett. Captain Ruffin to find one cadet and fourteen privates." Extracted from MS. Orderly Book, obligingly lent me by Mr. John M. West, of Petersburg.
[642:C] A cadet was a young man serving in the ranks without pay, in the hope of obtaining a commission.
Chapter LXXXVII
1776.
Patrick Henry, Delegate to Convention--Convention at Williamsburg--Pendleton, President--Corbin's Petition-- Wormley's Petition--Nelson's Letter urging Independence-- Braxton's Pamphlet--Delegates in Congress instructed to propose Independence--Declaration of Rights--Constitution-- Patrick Henry, Governor--George Mason--Miscellaneous.
IMMEDIATELY upon his return to Hanover, Mr. Henry was elected a delegate to the convention which was soon to meet. In a letter, dated April twentieth, Richard Henry Lee exhorted him to propose a separation from Great Britain.[644:A]
The convention met on the 6th of May, 1776, at Williamsburg. Edmund Pendleton was nominated by Richard Bland, for the post of president, and the nomination was seconded by Archibald Cary; Thomas Ludwell Lee was nominated by Thomas Johnson, of Louisa, and seconded by Bartholomew Dandridge. Mr. Lee's nomination, made by Mr. Henry's warm supporters, indicates the dissatisfaction felt toward Mr. Pendleton. The last mentioned gentleman, who was admirably qualified for the place, was elected; by what vote is not known. In his address he reminded the convention that the administration of justice, and almost all the powers of government, had now been suspended for nearly two years; and he called on them to reflect whether they could in that situation longer sustain the struggle in which they were engaged. Having suggested certain subjects for their consideration, he exhorted them to be composed, unanimous, and diligent.
John Goodrich, Jr., a suspected person, was confined, by order of the convention, to his room, in Williamsburg, under guard. The court of commissioners for Gloucester having found John Wilkie guilty of giving intelligence to the enemy, his estate was confiscated, and Sir John Peyton, Baronet, appointed commissioner to put the proceeds into the treasury. John Tayloe Corbin presented a petition setting forth that in October, 1775, a time when all America, as well in congress as in conventions, was avowing loyalty to the king, he wrote a letter to Charles Neilson, Esq., of Urbanna, who was going to Norfolk, in consequence of which he had been arrested by military warrant, and was now confined in the guard-house. The convention ordered that for the present he should be confined to his room in Williamsburg, under guard. Shortly after he was ordered to be confined to the region between the Matapony and the Pamunkey in Caroline, and give bond in the penalty of ten thousand pounds.
Ralph Wormley, in a petition, apologised for a letter which he had written to Lord Dunmore, communicating his opinions on the state of affairs, and which had excited the indignation of the country against him; declared that he had ever disclaimed parliament's right of taxation over this continent, but that it was his misfortune to differ in sentiments from the mode adopted to obtain a renunciation of that unconstitutional claim, praying to be released from confinement, submitting to the mercy of his country, and promising in future to conduct himself in conformity with the ordinances of the convention. He was ordered to confine himself to Berkley County, and that part of his father's estate which lay in Frederick, and to give a bond with a penalty of ten thousand pounds.
On the eighth Thomas Nelson, Jr., addressed a letter to a member of the convention, in which he says: "Since our conversation, yesterday, my thoughts have been sorely employed on the great question, whether independence ought, or ought not, to be immediately declared? Having weighed the arguments on both sides, I am clearly of opinion that we must, as we value the liberties of America, or even her existence, without a moment's delay, declare for independence. If my reasons appear weak, you will excuse them for the disinterestedness of the author, as I may venture to affirm that no man on this continent will sacrifice more than myself by the separation." He combats the objection that the sentiments of France and Spain should be ascertained previously; because there was reason to hope that their sentiments would be favorable, and because at any rate, in the perilous situation of the colonies, the hazard must be ventured on. France could not fail to understand that the breaking up of the English monopoly of the American trade would enure to her own benefit. The fear that France might be diverted from an alliance by an offer of partition from Great Britain, appeared chimerical, and contrary to the settled policy of the court of Louis the Sixteenth. In any case delay in declaring independence would be ruinous, as without it the soldiers, disheartened, would abandon their colors. Mr. Nelson in conclusion adds: "I can assure you, sir, that the spirit of the people, (except a very few in these lower parts, whose little blood has been sucked out by mosquitoes,) cry out for this declaration. The military in particular, men and officers, are outrageous on the subject; and a man of your excellent discernment need not be told how dangerous it would be in our present circumstances to dally with the spirit, or disappoint the expectations of the bulk of the people."
About this time there was published, at Philadelphia, a pamphlet, by Carter Braxton, entitled "An Address to the Convention of the Colony and Ancient Dominion of Virginia on the subject of Government." It was looked upon as expressing the views of "the little junto from whence it proceeded," and was denounced in a letter by Richard Henry Lee as exhibiting "confusion of ideas, aristocratic pride, contradictory reasoning with evident ill design."
On the fifteenth of May Archibald Cary reported, from the committee of the whole house, a preamble and resolutions which were unanimously adopted. The preamble recited how all the efforts of the colonies to bring about a reconciliation with Great Britain, consistently with the constitutional rights of America, had produced only additional insults and new acts of oppression; and it recapitulated these acts. The first resolution instructed the Virginia delegates in congress to propose to that body "to declare the United Colonies free and independent states;" the second ordered the appointment of a committee to prepare "a declaration of rights," and a plan of government. The preamble and resolutions were drawn up by Edmund Pendleton, offered in committee of the whole house by Thomas Nelson, Jr., and supported by the eloquence of Patrick Henry.[647:A] On the next day the resolutions were read to the troops quartered at Williamsburg, under command of General Andrew Lewis; a feu de joie was fired amid the acclamations of the people, and the union flag of the American States waved from the capitol, and in the evening Williamsburg was illuminated.
Patrick Henry in a letter, dated at Williamsburg, May twentieth, wrote to Richard Henry Lee: "The grand work of forming a constitution for Virginia is now before the convention, where your love of equal liberty and your skill in public counsels might so eminently serve the cause of your country. Perhaps I'm mistaken, but I fear too great a bias to aristocracy prevails among the opulent. I own myself a democratic on the plan of our admired friend, J. Adams, whose pamphlet I read with great pleasure. A performance from Philadelphia is just come here, ushered in, I'm told, by a colleague of yours, B----, and greatly recommended by him. I don't like it. Is the author a whig? One or two expressions in the book make me ask. I wish to divide you and have you here to animate, by your manly eloquence, the sometimes drooping spirits of our country, and in congress to be the ornament of your native country, and the vigilant, determined foe of tyranny. To give you colleagues of kindred sentiments is my wish. I doubt you have them not at present. A confidential account of the matter to Colonel Tom,[647:B] desiring him to use it according to his discretion, might greatly serve the public and vindicate Virginia from suspicions. Vigor, animation, and all the powers of mind and body must now be summoned and collected together into one grand effort. Moderation, falsely so called, hath nearly brought on us final ruin. And to see those who have so fatally advised us still guiding, or at least sharing our public councils, alarms me."[647:C]
There was an apprehension felt by some at this time lest England, in order to prevent France from assisting the colonies, should offer to divide them with her. Patrick Henry in the same letter wrote to Richard Henry Lee: "Ere this reaches you our resolution for separating from Britain will be handed you by Colonel Nelson. Your sentiments as to the necessary progress of this great affair correspond with mine. For may not France, ignorant of the great advantages to her commerce we intend to offer, and of the permanency of that separation which is to take place, be allured by the partition you mention? To anticipate, therefore, the efforts of the enemy by sending instantly American ambassadors to France, seems to me absolutely necessary. Delay may bring on us total ruin. But is not a confederacy of our states previously necessary?" His comprehensive eye glanced from the fisheries of the north to the Mississippi and western lands. "Notwithstanding solicitations from every great land company to the west, I've refused to join them. I think a general confiscation of royal and British property should be made. The fruits would be great, and the measure in its utmost latitude warranted by the late act of parliament."
In the convention a committee of thirty-four, Archibald Cary being chairman, were appointed to prepare a declaration of rights and a plan of government. The declaration was reported and adopted on the fifteenth of June, and the plan of government on the twenty-ninth, (five days in advance of the declaration of independence of the United Colonies,)--both by a unanimous vote. The declaration of rights and constitution were draughted by George Mason.
George Mason, first of the family in Virginia, had been a member of parliament in England, and, at the breaking out of the civil wars, had sided with King Charles the First, although, like Falkland, not wholly approving his course, organized a military corps, and fought on the royal side until the overthrow at Worcester. After this catastrophe he came over to Virginia and landed in Norfolk County, (1651,) and was soon followed by his family. He removed to Acohick Creek, on the Potomac. He commanded (1676) a volunteer force against the Indians, and in the same year represented the County of Stafford in the assembly, being a colleague of the author of "T. M.'s Account of Bacon's Rebellion," who was probably Thomas Matthews, son of Samuel Matthews, some time Governor of Virginia. The County of Stafford had been carved out of Westmoreland in the preceding year, and was so called by Colonel Mason in honor of his native county of Staffordshire, England. His eldest son, George, married Mary, daughter of Gerard Fowke, of Gunston Hall, in that English county. Their eldest son, George Mason, third of the name, also lived in Acohick, and lies buried there. George Mason, fourth in descent, and eldest son of George, last named, married a daughter of Stevens Thomson, of the Middle Temple, attorney-general of Virginia in the reign of Queen Anne. He resided at Doeg Neck, on the Potomac, then in Stafford, now in Fairfax, and was[649:A] lieutenant and chief commander of Stafford. He was drowned by the upsetting of a sail-boat in the Potomac. He left two sons and a daughter. One of the sons was George, author of the constitution of Virginia, and the other, Thomson Mason, a member of the house of burgesses, an eminent lawyer, and true patriot. He was elected one of the judges of the first general court. He suffered from the gout, and one of Governor Tazewell's earliest recollections is the having seen him carried into court when laboring under that disease. His son, Stevens Thomson Mason, was a member of the Virginia Convention of 1788, and United States Senator, and his son, Armistead Thomson Mason, was also a Senator of the United States from Virginia. George Mason, fifth of the name, was born at Doeg's Neck in 1726; he married Ann Eilbeck, of Charles County, Maryland, and built a new mansion on the high banks of the Potomac, and called it Gunston Hall.
George Mason was, in 1776, fifty years of age. His complexion was swarthy, his face grave, with a radiant dark eye, his raven hair sprinkled with gray; his aspect rather foreign; nearly six feet in stature, of a large athletic frame, and active step.[649:B] His presence was commanding, his bearing lofty. He was fond of hunting and angling. He was a systematic, wealthy, and prosperous planter; indifferent to the temptations of political ambition; devoting his leisure to study. Mr. Madison pronounced him the ablest man in debate that he had ever seen.
Although a warm adherent of the house of Hanover, and at the first averse to independence, yet he assumed the boldest position and maintained it. In the year 1766 he concluded a letter to the London merchants, on the repeal of the stamp act, thus: "These are the sentiments of a man who spends most of his time in retirement, and has seldom meddled in public affairs; who enjoys a moderate but independent fortune, and, content with the blessings of a private station, equally disregards the smiles and the frowns of the great." His pamphlet entitled "Extracts from the Virginia Charters, with some Remarks upon them," was considered a masterly exposition of the rights of the colonies.[650:A]
Of Mr. Mason's sons, George, the eldest, sixth of the name, was captain in the Virginia line of the Revolution, and inherited Gunston Hall. The fourth son was the late General John Mason, of Analostan Island, near Washington City. The Honorable James Murray Mason, United States Senator for Virginia, is a son of the last named.[650:B]
The preamble to the constitution, containing a recital of wrongs, was from the pen of Mr. Jefferson, who was at that time attending the session of congress at Philadelphia.[650:C] George Mason, the author of the first written constitution of a free commonwealth ever framed, was pre-eminent in an age[650:D] of great men for his extensive information, enlarged views, profound wisdom, and the pure simplicity of his republican principles.[650:E] As a speaker he was devoid of rhetorical grace, but earnest and impressive.
Immediately upon the adoption of the constitution, the salary of the governor was fixed at one thousand pounds per annum, and Patrick Henry, Jr., was elected the first republican Governor of Virginia, he receiving sixty votes, and Thomas Nelson, Sr., forty-five.
Mr. Henry received an address from the two regiments which he had recently commanded, congratulating him upon his "unsolicited promotion to the highest honors a grateful people can bestow," and they declared, as they had been once happy under his military command, they hoped for more extensive blessings from his civil administration.
The newly-appointed governor closed his reply by saying: "I trust the day will come when I shall make one of those that will hail you among the triumphant deliverers of America." The first council appointed under the new constitution consisted of John Page, Dudley Digges, John Tayloe, John Blair, Benjamin Harrison of Berkley, Bartholomew Dandridge, Thomas Nelson, Sr., and Charles Carter, of Shirley. Mr. Nelson declining the appointment on account of infirm old age, his place was supplied by Benjamin Harrison, of Brandon. It is a remarkable instance of the vicissitudes of fortune, that "a certain Patrick Henry, Jr.," against whom Governor Dunmore had so lately fulminated his angry proclamation, now came to be the occupant of the palace at Williamsburg as governor and commander-in-chief. Although the leaders of the conservative party looked at the contest with Great Britain in a very different light from that in which it was viewed by the movement and popular party, and although the animating motives of the two were so different, yet in the face of imminent common danger they conspired with extraordinary unanimity in the common cause. So the mainmast of a ship of the line, though composed of several pieces banded together, is stronger than if made of a single spar.[651:A]
FOOTNOTES:
[644:A] Convention of '76, p. 8, in note.
[647:A] These facts were stated by Edmund Randolph in his address at the funeral of Pendleton. (Grigsby's Convention of '76, p. 203.)
[647:B] Thomas Nelson, Jr.
[647:C] S. Lit. Messenger, 1842, p. 260.
[649:A] 1719.
[649:B] His portrait is preserved, and a copy of it is in the hall of the Historical Society in Richmond.
[650:A] Convention of '76, p. 157.
[650:B] Ibid., 156, in note.
[650:C] Journal of Convention of 1776; Wirt's Henry, 195; Grigsby's Convention of '76, p. 19.
[650:D] Patrick Henry in a letter to Richard Henry Lee, dated December 18th, 1777, quoted in Grigsby's Convention of 1776, p. 142, in note, states that there was opposition; but the vote appears unanimous on the journal. The persons who opposed it were known, but were so few they did not think fit to divide the house, or contradict the general voice. Ibid., 161, in note. The same persons subsequently opposed the confederation.
[650:E] His statue is to stand on the monument in Richmond.
[651:A] Extract from Orderly Book:--
"WILLIAMSBURG, May, 14th, 1776.
"Parole--Liberty.
"The many applications for furloughs make it necessary for Brigadier-General Lewis to mention in orders as improper in our critical situation, and hopes that no request of this kind for the future, until circumstances will admit, will be made.
"Officer for day to-morrow, Lieutenant-Colonel McClenahan. Officers for guard, Lieutenant Garland, Ensign Barksdale. For guard, 8 p. 1 s. 1 c."
"WILLIAMSBURG, May 17th, 1776.
"Parole--Convention.
"Let it not be forgot that this day is set apart for humiliation, fasting, and prayer: the troops to attend divine service."
Chapter LXXXVIII
1776.
Richard Henry Lee moves a Resolution for a Separation--Seconded by John Adams--Declaration of Independence--Jefferson--General Orders--Thomas Nelson, Jr., and the Nelsons--Benjamin Harrison, Jr., and the Harrisons--George Wythe.
ON the 7th day of June, 1776, a resolution in favor of a total and immediate separation from Great Britain was moved in congress by Richard Henry Lee, and seconded by John Adams. On the twenty-eighth a committee was appointed to prepare a declaration of independence, the members being Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and Robert R. Livingston. Richard Henry Lee being compelled, by the illness of Mrs. Lee, to leave congress on the day of the appointment of the committee, and to return to Virginia, his place was filled by Roger Sherman. The declaration, adopted on the 4th day of July, 1776, was composed, in committee, mainly by Mr. Jefferson, but much modified by congress. The Virginia delegates who subscribed it were George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Jr., of Berkley, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, and Carter Braxton.[652:A]
Thomas Nelson, Jr., eldest son of the Honorable William Nelson, some time president of the council of Virginia, was born at York, in December, 1738. His mother was of the family of Burwell. After having been under the tuition of the Rev. Mr. Yates, of Gloucester, he was sent at the age of fifteen to England, where he remained seven years, for the completion of his education. He enjoyed the superintending care of Dr. Porteus,[653:A] and was at the school of Dr. Newcome, at Hackney, at Eton in 1754, and at Cambridge. While on his voyage returning to Virginia he was elected (1774) a member of the house of burgesses, being then just twenty-one years of age.[653:B] He was a member of the conventions of 1774 and 1775, and displayed extraordinary boldness in opposing the British tyranny. He was afterwards appointed colonel of a Virginia regiment. In 1775 and 1776 he was a member of Congress. There is a fine portrait of him still preserved, taken, it is said, while he was a student at Eton, (by an artist named Chamberlin, London, 1754,) the only portrait of him for which he ever sat.[653:C]
The first of the Nelsons of Virginia was Thomas, son of Hugh and Sarah Nelson, of Penrith, Cumberland County, England. This Thomas Nelson was born in February, 1677, and died in October, 1745, aged sixty-eight. He married, first, a Miss Reid, secondly, a widow Tucker. Coming from a border county, he was styled "Scotch Tom." He was an importing merchant. Yorktown was in his day, and for a long time, the chief sea-port town of Virginia. Of his two sons, Thomas being long secretary of the council, was known as Secretary Nelson. Three of his sons were officers in the army of the Revolution.
William, the other son of the first Thomas Nelson, imported goods not only for Virginia, but at times for Baltimore, and even Philadelphia. Negroes were a principal subject of importation; merchants and planters of chief note, some of them leading men in the colony, and patrons of the church, engaged in it; and no odium appears to have been attached to a business in which British capital was so largely interested, which was so constantly encouraged and protected by the British government, and which had been so long an established feature of the colonial system, and so generally concurred in. John Newton, while personally engaged in the slave-trade on board of a Guinea ship, appears to have entertained at the time no scruples whatever on the subject of his employment. It is no matter of surprise that a Virginia consignee of slaves should have received them with a like indifference.
William Nelson married a Miss Burwell, a granddaughter of King Carter. Having been long president of the council, and at one time acting governor, he came to be known by the title of President Nelson. He died in November, 1772, aged sixty-one, leaving an ample estate. His sons were Thomas, Hugh, William, Nathaniel, and Robert. A daughter, Betsy, married, in 1769, Captain Thompson, of his majesty's ship Ripon, which brought over Lord Botetourt. The portion descending to Thomas, oldest son of President Nelson, and who had been associated in business with him, was estimated at forty thousand pounds.
Benjamin Harrison, Jr., of Berkley, was descended from ancestors who were among the early settlers of Virginia. Hermon Harrison came to Virginia in the second supply, as it was called. One of the name was governor of Bermuda. John Harrison was governor of Virginia in 1623. The common ancestor of the Harrisons of Berkley and of Brandon, was Benjamin Harrison, of Surrey. He lies buried in the yard of an old chapel near Cabin Point, in that county.[654:A]
It was long believed that the Harrisons of Virginia were lineally descended from Colonel John Harrison, the regicide and friend of Cromwell, and one of the noblest spirits in a heroic age. This tradition, however, appears to be erroneous. The first of the family in Virginia, of whom we have any particular record, was the Honorable Benjamin Harrison, of Surrey, who was born in that county in 1645, during the civil war in England. It is certain that he could not have been a son of Colonel Harrison, the regicide. He may have been a collateral relation.
The first Benjamin Harrison (of Surrey) had three sons, of whom Benjamin, the eldest, settled at Berkley. He married Elizabeth, daughter of Louis Burwell, of Gloucester; was a lawyer, and speaker of the house of burgesses. He died in April, 1710, aged thirty-seven, leaving an only son, Benjamin, and an only daughter, Elizabeth.
Benjamin Harrison, Jr., of Berkley, was educated at William and Mary; married a daughter of Robert Carter, of Corotoman;[655:A] and was for many years a burgess for his native county, Charles City. In 1764 he was one of the committee chosen to prepare an address to the king, a memorial to the lords, and a remonstrance to the commons, in opposition to the stamp act. Like Pendleton, Bland, and others, he opposed Henry's resolutions of the following year. He was a member of the committee of correspondence, and of all the conventions held before the organization of the republican government. He opposed Henry's resolutions for putting the colony in a posture of defence, but was appointed one of the committee chosen to carry them into effect. He was elected, in 1774, a delegate to the first congress, of which his brother-in-law, Peyton Randolph, (who married Elizabeth Harrison,) was president. In February, 1776, he remarked in that body: "We have hobbled on under a fatal attachment to Great Britain. I felt it as much as any man, but I feel a stronger for my country." As chairman of the committee of the whole house, Mr. Harrison, on the 10th of June, 1776, introduced the resolution declaring the independence of the colonies, and on the fourth day of July he reported the Declaration of Independence, of which he was a signer. He was six feet in stature, corpulent, and of a florid complexion. He was practical, energetic, frank, epicurean, gouty, good-humored, fearless, and patriotic.[656:A]
The sons of the first Benjamin Harrison, of Berkley, were Benjamin, signer of the Declaration; Charles, a general of the Revolution; Nathaniel, Henry, Collier, and Carter H. From the last-mentioned are descended the Harrisons of Cumberland. Benjamin Harrison, Jr., the signer, married a Miss Bassett. Their children were Benjamin, Carter, Bassett, member of congress, and William Henry, President of the United States. One daughter married a Mr. Richardson, a second married first William Randolph, of Wilton, and then Captain Richard Singleton; a third married David Copeland, and a fourth married John Minge, of Weyanoke, afterwards of Sandy Point. So far the Berkley branch of the Harrisons.
The second son of Benjamin Harrison, of Surrey, was Nathaniel. His eldest son was of the same name, and his only son was Honorable Benjamin Harrison, of Brandon, of the council at the same time with his relative and namesake of Berkley at the commencement of the Revolution. This Benjamin Harrison, of Brandon, was father of the late George Harrison, and of William B. Harrison, of Brandon.
George Wythe was born in 1726, in Elizabeth City County, Virginia, on the shore of the Chesapeake. From his maternal grandfather, Keith, a Quaker, he inherited a taste for letters. His ancestor, Thomas Wythe, was burgess for that county in 1718. The father of George was a prudent farmer of estimable character.[656:B] George, the second son, losing his father at an early age, enjoyed but limited advantages of school education, and his early tuition was principally directed by his mother; and it is related that he acquired a knowledge of the Latin classics from her instructions.[656:C] Mr. Jefferson mentions that while young Wythe was studying the Greek Testament, his mother held an English one to aid him in the translation. It has been since inferred, from an examination of his manuscripts, that this last was the only kind of assistance that he received from her in the Latin and Greek. He studied law under his uncle, John Lewis, of Prince George; but, upon the death of his elder brother and his mother, becoming master of a competent fortune, he fell into habits of idleness and dissipation. Like Swift, however, he was not one who, having wasted part of his life in indolence, was willing to throw away the remainder in despair; and in the society of Governor Fauquier and Professor Small he imbibed their love of learning; and at the age of thirty applied himself unremittedly to study. He became, eventually, distinguished by his attainments in classical literature; and he pursued other studies with a like success. But he often deplored the loss of so many early golden years. His learning, judgment, and industry soon raised him to eminence at the bar. A member of the house of burgesses as early as 1758, he continued in it until the Revolution. At its dawn Mr. Wythe, in common with Thomas Jefferson and Richard Bland, assumed the ground that the crown was the only connecting link between the colonies and the mother country. In 1764 Mr. Wythe was a member of a committee of the house of burgesses appointed to prepare a petition to the king, a memorial to the lords, and a remonstrance to the commons, on the subject of the stamp act. He prepared the remonstrance in conformity with his radical principles; but it was greatly modified by the assembly. In May, 1765, he, in common with Nicholas, Pendleton, Randolph, and Bland, opposed Henry's resolutions as premature. Mr. Wythe likewise voted (March, 1775,) against Henry's resolutions for putting the colony in a posture of defence; but he was in favor of the scheme of Colonel Nicholas for raising a large regular force. Early in 1775 Mr. Wythe joined a corps of volunteers as a private soldier; in August he was elected a member of congress. He was returned by the City of Williamsburg to the convention of that year; but being in attendance on congress his place was filled by Joseph Prentis. Mr. Wythe signed the Declaration of Independence, which he had strenuously supported in debate.[657:A] Mr. Wythe married first a Miss Lewis, and secondly a Miss Taliaferro.[658:A] He died childless. He is described as being distinguished for integrity, patriotism, and disinterestedness; temperance and regular habits gave him good health; engaging and modest manners endeared him to every one; his bow was one of most expressive courtesy. His elocution was easy, his language chaste, his arrangement lucid; his frequent classic quotations, smacking a little of pedantry; his style, which aimed at the antique, was deficient in elegance and rhythm. Learned, urbane, logical, he was not quick and ready, but solid and profound. He was of middle size, well-formed, his forehead ample, nose aquiline, eye dark gray, expression manly and engaging. His religious opinions were supposed to be skeptical; but the closing scene of his life is said to have been that of a sincere professor of the Christian faith.
FOOTNOTES:
[652:A] Extracts from Orderly Book:--
"SPRING FIELD, July 17th, 1776.
"General Lewis hopes that the reports of some of the officers gaming to excess is without foundation: he begs that the field-officers will make diligent enquiry into it, and if true, to arrest such officers, that a total stop may be put to so infamous practices.
"Officer for the day LIEUTENANT-COLONEL WEEDON."
"SPRING FIELD, July 24th, 1776.
"The Declaration of Independency is to be proclaimed to-morrow in the City of Williamsburg, by order of the council, when all the troops off duty are to attend."
"WILLIAMSBURG, July 26th, 1776.
"Parole--Stephen.
"A fatigue of one captain, two subalterns, two sergeants, and sixty rank and file, to be warned from the College Camp, to carry on the work intended to be thrown up on the road to Jamestown.
"Colonel Buckner will please to order a fatigue proportioned to his number of men, to work on the road from Burwell's Ferry to Williamsburg, at such a place as he shall judge proper to fortify. One company of the second regiment to take post to-morrow at Mr. Burwell's, to erect a work at the mouth of King's Creek. The rest of the second regiment to march to-morrow to Mr. Digges's, to fortify there."
[653:A] He afterwards sent, by Parson Bracken, a volume of his sermons, a present to young Nelson. The parson liked them so well that he preached them all before he delivered the book.
[653:B] Old Churches, of Va., i. 207.
[653:C] His statue is to stand on the monument in Richmond.
[654:A] The following is his epitaph:--
"Here lyeth the body of the HON. BENJAMIN HARRISON, ESQ., who did justice, loved mercy, and walked humbly with his God; was always loyal to his prince, and a great benefactor to his country. He was born in this parish the 20th day of September, 1645, and departed this life the 30th day of January, 1712-13."
[655:A] Two daughters of this union were killed at Berkley by the same flash of lightning: a third married a Randolph, of Wilton.
[656:A] Convention of 1776, p. 96; Allen's Biog. Dictionary.
[656:B] Grigsby's Convention of 1776, p. 125.
[656:C] Wirt's Patrick Henry, 65.
[657:A] Convention of '76, p. 122. On his return to Virginia toward the close of the session of the convention then sitting, he was appointed one of a committee to prepare devices for a seal of the commonwealth.
[658:A] Pronounced "Tolliver," originally an Italian name, Tagliaferro.