University of Virginia Library

II. PART II

REVOLUTION AND REORGANIZATION

CHAPTER I

MILITARY ACTIVITIES—DUNMORE'S WAR—
INDIAN TROUBLES

After Lord Dunmore abandoned Williamsburg on June 6,
1775, his authority was at first narrowed down to the compass
of the man-of-war Fowey, in which he took refuge. When
the Fowey was relieved by the frigates Mercury and Mars, he
transferred his authority to the decks of those vessels. At
first he had only the sailors and mariners of those two frigates
under his control, but he was afterwards re-enforced from St.
Augustine in Florida by about 160 men of the Fourteenth
Regiment of the line. He made Gosport, a village on the
Elizabeth River opposite Norfolk, his headquarters, and left
undisturbed, he finally gathered about him a small and motley
company of recruits, mostly Scotch clerks and runaway negroes.

These were re-enforced from time to time until he had
about 800 men in his service, and his fleet consisted of the two
ships of war, the Otter and the King Fisher (the Mercury
and the Mars having left the colony), three merchantmen, one
of which was the William, on which Dunmore made his residence,
and a number of armed barges and tenders.

But how to maintain these forces became the question with
him, and the county committees along the Chesapeake, by
their rigid enforcement of the Continental Association, soon reduced
him to the condition of a blockade. He was compelled,
therefore, to send out foraging parties, and the first open violence
occurred through the predatory proceedings of a certain
Captain Squires of the Sloop-of-war Otter, who, in the month
of August, cruised in Hampton Roads and Chesapeake Bay,

plundering plantations and carrying off slaves. On September
2, 1775, while engaged in this kind of work, one of his tenders
was driven on shore near Hampton by a storm. The incensed
inhabitants appropriated the guns and supplies and burned
the tender, but did not injure or detain the crew. Thereupon
Lord Dunmore sent several times and demanded the return
of the stores, which was refused. In the meantime, James
Innis, usher in the College and captain of the Williamsburg
Volunteers, was sent down from Williamsburg with 100 men
to defend the town. Later the town was defended by a company
of regulars under Col. George Nicholas.

In the latter part of October, Squires appeared near Hampton
with several tenders, he in one himself, as the depth of the
water would not permit his taking one of the sloops of war.
One of the tenders going too near the town and not suspecting
any deadly work, was suddenly fired upon from one of the
windows of a house, and two of her men were killed and two
were wounded. This was the first bloodshed. Indications
pointing to a renewal of the attack next day, Col. Woodford
was sent down with Captain John Green's company of riflemen
from Culpeper, and he arrived just in time to take part in
the repulse of the second attempt upon the town. Hostilities
at Norfolk were begun by Dunmore in the latter part of September,
1775. Hitherto, he had contented himself with remaining
on his ship in the harbor, where his presence caused some
irritation. Now one morning he landed some grenadiers and
mariners and surprised a printing establishment owned by
John Holt, who in his paper had been abusing Capt. Squires
and would not desist when requested. The Norfolk militia
made no fight, and Norfolk was greatly blamed by the authorities
in Williamsburg, where some 1300 or 1400 volunteers had
collected.[1]

Loyalists complained in their letters that the provincials
were breathing threatenings against the town, and in anticipation

of its destruction a third of the people left, some who
were royalists for England and some who were revolutionists
for the interior.

The shedding of blood at Hampton determined Dunmore to
more active hostilities, and hearing that some provincial troops
had taken a stand at Great Bridge, on the south branch of
the Elizabeth River, twelve miles due south of the town, he embarked
his little corps consisting of about 150 grenadiers and
twenty or thirty loyalists from Norfolk and moved by water
up to within 4 miles of the bridge, only to find no one there.
He, therefore, turned east along the edge of a large forest to
Kempsville, where he had learned some 200 or 300 of the local
militia were encamped.

On his approach the militiamen fired a volley and wounded
a man, whereupon the regulars charged and soon put the Virginians
to flight. The British pursued them for a mile, killed
a few, drove others into a creek where they were drowned,
and took some prisoners, including Col. Joseph Hutchins,
the commander. Greatly elated, Dunmore, on Nov. 14, 1776,
issued his proclamation (dated a week before) declaring martial
law and proclaiming freedom to the negroes, occupied the
Great Bridge, which secured the greatest part of two counties
to supply him with provisions, and ordered a regiment to be
raised, called the "Queen's Own Loyal Regiment," consisting
of a Lieutenant-Colonel, Commandant, Major and ten companies.
Of this regiment he commissioned Jacob Ellegood,
of Princess Anne County, as the Lieutenant-Colonel, and John
Saunders, of the same county, as Major.

It is curious to see how history repeats itself. Dunmore's
offer of freedom to the slaves was a war measure and contemplated
the same result as Lincoln did in 1861, viz.: the
breaking up of the opposing army by the menace of massacre
and of destruction at home. Thus Dunmore wrote[2] on November
30, to General Howe in New York: "I immediately upon
this (the victory at Kempsville) issued the enclosed proclamation,

which has had a wonderful effect, as there are no less
than 300 who have taken and signed the enclosed oath. The
blacks are also flocking from all quarters, which I hope will
oblige the rebels to disperse, to take care of their families
and property."

For some short time after these proceedings Dunmore
continued on the tide of prosperity. He kept the Virginians
in hot water by sending his tenders up the James River and
to other parts of the country, and by this means captured
over four score pieces of ordnance and a number of his active
enemies. But retribution overtook him very soon. The Committee
of Safety was provoked at last into taking adequate
measures to drive Dunmore from his position at Norfolk.
Edmund Pendleton, the chairman, was practically the directing
head of this body, and as such was the most powerful man
in Virginia during the latter part of 1775.

Ever since June recruits from different counties had been
gathering in Williamsburg. The convention which assembled
July 17 found the governor not only absent from his post, but
threatening war upon the colony. In a purely defensive spirit,
ordinances were passed embodying three regiments of one
thousand men each, and, in addition, five companies, aggregating
425 men, to be posted along the western borders to
guard against any attack of the Indians. Patrick Henry was
made commander-in-chief and colonel of the first regiment;
Thomas Nelson, Jr., colonel of the second; and William Woodford,
colonel of the third; but Nelson declined the appointment,
and the number of regiments was reduced to two, and
Williamsburg was made the rendezvous of the troops.

The call of the convention brought to Williamsburg a large
body of volunteers, more than were necessary to fill the two
regiments. The men came together in various uniforms, or
without uniforms, and mostly armed with their own fowling
pieces. The company from Culpeper county were dressed in
green hunting shirts, with the words of Patrick Henry, "Liberty
or Death" in large white letters on their breasts, bucktails

in their hats, and scalping knives and tomahawks in their belts.
Their flag displayed the significant device of a coiled rattlesnake
with the motto "Don't tread on me."

Patrick Henry arrived September 23, 1775, and chose for
his encampment the field back of William and Mary College,
and having formed the men in two regiments, the officers commenced
drilling them in company and regiment tactics. The
Committee had appointed William Christian lieutenant-colonel
and Francis Eppes major to the first regiment, and Charles
Scott lieutenant-colonel and Alexander Spotswood major to
the second regiment.

With these forces at hand to maintain its authority, the
Committee of Safety decided to send troops against Dunmore,
and on October 24, 1775, the second regiment, commanded
by Woodford and the Culpeper battalion of minute men,
commanded by Capt. John Green, were selected for the purpose.

In making this selection the Committee slighted Col.
Henry, who was not only colonel of the First Regiment, but
commanding officer of the Virginia forces. Pendleton, the
chairman, had opposed Henry at many times, beginning with
the Stamp Act; and mingled with this political antagonism
there was a genuine doubt of Henry's ability as a soldier, a
doubt in which Washington himself shared. Woodford, on
the other hand, was a fellow countryman and an intimate friend
of Pendleton, and had some military experience which Henry
did not have.

Early in November, Col. Woodford marched with so much
of his regiment as he was able to provide with arms, numbering
with the minute men about 700 soldiers, and being prevented
by some of Dunmore's ships from crossing with all
his troops the river at Jamestown, crossed the major part of
them higher up at Sandy Point. Here he learned through a
messenger from Capt. Willis Riddick, commanding the militia
at Suffolk, of a design of Lord Dunmore to attack that place
and destroy the provisions collected there. This call reached

General William Woodford

him on the night of November 20, and early next morning he
detached Lt. Col. Charles Scott to make a forced march with
215 men to the help of the place, he himself following as
promptly as possible with the rest of the troops, now including
a detachment of the first regiment. He reached Suffolk
in time to relieve it from the threatened attack, and continuing
his march found the forces of Lord Dunmore entrenched at
the Great Bridge. Here on December 9 his Lordship, deceived
as to Woodford's strength by a servant of Major Marshall,
who had feigned desertion, gave battle with some 200 regulars
and 300 negroes and Tories.

The British grenadiers bravely charged across the Bridge
and were mowed down by the unerring bullets of the "Shirt
Men," as the British called the Virginians. More than half
the regulars were killed, and seventeen covered with wounds
were taken prisoners. Every officer was either killed or
wounded. On the side of the Virginians not a man was lost
and only one received a slight wound. The fight was a Bunker
Hill on a smaller scale, with results far more favourable to the
Americans.[3]

Lord Dunmore fell back to Norfolk, and Col. Robert Howe
having joined Woodford with a regiment of North Carolina
troops, his Lordship deemed it most expedient to retire to his
ships, leaving the negroes he had induced to take up arms to
shift for themselves. How our ancestors looked upon Dunmore's
attempt to rouse the negroes is shown by their actions
at this time. No death punishment was visited upon either
Tory or slave, but such Tories as were captured in actual arms
were sent to various places of confinement, each coupled with
a pair of handcuffs to a black fellow soldier.

The "Victorious Rebels," now numbering about 1275 men[4]

entered Norfolk on December 14, 1775, about 10 o'clock at
night, and the next morning Col. Howe assumed chief command,
by virtue of the precedence in time of his commission.
A proclamation was issued offering pardon to all persons who
would take the oath of allegiance to the Commonwealth.

It is surprising that even after these events the character of
a real war was not recognized by either side, the defensive attitude
being still kept up by the Americans. Captain James
Barron, of Hampton, cut off the supplies to Dunmore's fleet
at Norfolk by arming and equipping a fast pilot boat which
put a stop to his foraging expeditions. In this condition of
things the arrival of the frigate Liverpool, mounting 28 guns,
and a brig laden with arms and ammunition and 400 men
brought things to a crisis. On December 24, Henry Bellew,
captain of the Liverpool, sent in a flag of truce to make known
his want of fresh provisions, and asking to be furnished therewith,
as had been customary upon the arrival of one of his majesty's
ships. Howe and Woodford did not want to provoke
Bellew, and so, while refusing a general supply, complimented
Bellew with fresh provisions for his own table. This naturally
increased the irritation of the British soldiers, and on the first
of January, 1776, they opened up a heavy cannonade against
the town from the Liverpool, the Otter, the King Fisher, and
the Dunmore, and under its cover several parties of mariners
and sailors were landed and set fire to the houses on the
wharves.

The fires begun by balls or landing parties spread with
great rapidity, chiefly through the agency of provincial troops.
The destruction caused by the ships was confined to the
water's edge, but the provincial troops involved the whole
place in the catastrophe. On January 2, when the firing had
ceased, the riflemen continued the work of destruction, and it
was not till the 3rd day that Woodford interfered and put a
stop to the rapine, but by that time more than two-thirds of
Norfolk was in ashes. In February, 1776, the remainder was
destroyed by order of the Convention. Norfolk had an ill

reputation on account of its Tory population, and Howe gave
expression to the general idea of the army that its destruction
would be beneficial to the public. It was a place the enemy
could reach at any time, inhabited by a population wholly given
up to trade and without devotion to the American cause. Nevertheless,
the blame of its destruction was put upon the British,
and not without some justification, as the British took the
initiative, which the Americans would not have done.

Any way viewed, however, it was a melancholy event. Norfolk
was the richest and most flourishing town in the colony. In
two years, from 1773 to 1775, the rents of the houses increased
from £8,000 to £10,000 a year. Its population exceeded 6,000
and many of the merchants were possessed of affluent fortunes.
The actual loss has been estimated at more than £300,000
sterling and the mass of distress attendant upon so
many people being driven from their homes was beyond calculation.[5]

The bombardment of Norfolk was a very foolish act of
Lord Dunmore, since he deprived his sovereign of an open
seaport and a center of British influence. When the fleet, which
he had urged and prayed for, at last arrived, Norfolk, instead
of presenting a useful and convenience base for operations,
was a mere heap of ruins, and held out few inducements for
occupation.

From this time till 1st of June, 1776, Dunmore continued
on his fleet before Norfolk. Occasional brushes occurred
between the Virginia troops and landing parties from the
ships. Early in February the Virginia troops abandoned Norfolk,
after sending away the few people still living there, burning
all the remaining houses, and demolishing Dunmore's entrenchments.
Detachments were quartered at Kempsville,
Great Bridge and Suffolk, points more accessible than Norfolk,
and easier to provision. Shortly afterwards the frigate
Roebuck arrived with some re-enforcements and enabled Dunmore

to take possession of the village of Portsmouth, across
the Elizabeth River from Norfolk. Portsmouth now became
his base from which he sent out along the Chesapeake Bay tenders
and ships, which took a number of American vessels
as prizes and occasionally made raids on the plantations along
the rivers.[6]

But Dunmore did not have his whole way in these expeditions.
A tender was attacked in the Rappahannock by sailboats
manned by people in the neighborhood and escaped
with difficulty. James Barron intercepted a boat dispatched
by Lord Dunmore to Maryland to convey to Governor Eden
of that state letters addressed to him by the British secretary
of state. These letters imported a valuable warning, for they
gave information of an intended attack on the Southern States
by a heavy armament of ships and men, about to sail at the
time of writing.[7]

In the meantime things were not going on very smoothly
in military and official circles at Williamsburg. While Woodford
was by his victory at Great Bridge the hero of the hour,
Henry was compelled to remain at Williamsburg with duties
that amounted to little more than posting his men at different
points liable to attack on the James and York Rivers. What
increased the awkwardness of his situation was Woodford's
refusal to report to him directly and his decision to report
directly to the Committee of Safety. On Henry's appeal to
that body it attempted to compromise matters by passing a
resolution directing Woodford to report to Col. Henry at all
proper times, but to receive orders from the Convention or
Committee when either was sitting, otherwise from Col. Henry.
This resolution seems to have been accepted by Colonel Henry
as a settlement of the matter, though not satisfactory to him;
and as Colonel Woodford was now acting under Col. Howe,
of North Carolina, who was immediately under the Convention
or Committee, the resolution did not make much of a concession.

Col. Henry was kept inactive at Williamsburg and Howe
and Woodford were at the head of all the active services performed.
When the Convention determined to offer six regiments
to the continental establishment, while the first and
second Virginia were included with their colonels in the six,
Congress passed Henry over to appoint Robert Howe and
Andrew Lewis brigadier-generals. Wounded by this distrust,
proceedings largely from jealousy no doubt, Henry resigned
his commission and retired to private life. His action
produced a commotion in camp and all the troops put on mourning,
and in an address delivered to him the troops applauded
the "spirited resentment" which he had manifested to the
"most glaring indignity."

By his resignation, Henry was deprived of the opportunity
of proving his military capacity, but most of the officers
of the American army were technically ignorant, and, as Dr.
Eckenrode aptly says,[8] there seems no reason why a man "so
audacious, determined and masterful as Patrick Henry should
not have been a successful brigade commander. Politics and
war have much in common." It is doubtful, however, whether
his resignation was not a fortunate event. By leaving the
army he played a great part in founding the Commonwealth
of Virginia, and if his enemies calculated by their opposition
upon destroying him, they soon found out that he was more influential
out of the army than in it.

In March, Charles Lee, Major-General in the Continental
service, was appointed by Congress to take command of the
situation in the South. He laid a strong hand upon the
Tories in Portsmouth and Princess Anne County. From the
former, which was Dunmore's base, he removed all the inhabitants
and demolished the houses of the leading merchants,
Andrew Sproule, Neill Jameson, John Goodrich and others,
and at his advice the Convention of Virginia ordered all persons
in Princess Anne and Norfolk Counties to retire into
the interior at least 30 miles from the enemy, but subsequently

limited their resolution to the immediate neighborhood on the
protest of the friends of government in those counties. On
May 20, Lee fought a skirmish from the shore at Norfolk with
the ships, and a few days later Dunmore, finding his position
in the Elizabeth River no longer tenable, sailed away with
his whole flotilla of 103 sail, and entrenched himself at
Gwynn's Island, in Chesapeake Bay.

While General Lee was busy at Charleston in repelling
the attack of Sir Peter Parker, Brigadier-General Andrew
Lewis and Col. Adam Stephen undertook to settle matters with
Dunmore. Fire rafts, row-galleys, and floating batteries were
constructed, and Capt. Barron dealt Dunmore a severe blow
by capturing 218 Highlanders who had put into Chesapeake
Bay with the hope of finding employment with Dunmore. On
July 8, General Lewis reached the camp before Gwynn's Island,
and opened a cannonade on Dunmore's fleet, stationed
within easy range. The Dunmore and Otter were so severely
injured that they slipped their cables and hauled off, followed
by all the rest of the motley shipping. On the next morning,
some of Lewis' soldiers effecting a landing on the island,
a panic seized Dunmore's men, so that they precipitately evacuated
the place, leaving behind many valuable stores. By
the smallpox and other malignant disorders which had raged
on board the ships during their stay at Norfolk and Gwynn's
Island, and by the destructive effect of hostile shots, more than
500 men were destroyed, and the island was covered with dying
men and recent graves.

The news of the defeat of Sir Henry Clinton and Sir Peter
Parker at Charleston spread through Virginia about the same
time as did the news of the discomfiture of Lord Dunmore at
Gwynn's Island. On Saturday, July 13, 1776, Col. Landon Carter,
from his seat on the Rappahannock, wrote[9] in his Diary:
"The report from our Courthouse is that Gen. Lee has beat
Clinton in South Carolina a prodigious battle, drove the army
all away and killed General Clinton, that our Gloster batteries

and forces drove Dunmore and all his fleet from Gwynn's Island,
sunk six ships, took two and disabled the men-of-war
so much they were obliged to go away." "14, Sunday, July,
1776. This night at 9 all Tappahannock illuminated, and as
low down as at Clements' house, where Ritchie lives."

Driven from Gwynn's Island, Dunmore tried to land on
St. George's Island in Maryland, but was prevented from doing
so by the militia. He plundered and burned several plantation
houses along the Potomac and again attacked St.
George's Island with no better fortune. Not being able to
find a safe place for further operations, he dropped down the
bay with all his fleet and, dispatching the remnant of his followers
to Florida and the West Indies, sailed to New York,
from which place after a short sojourn he sailed to England.
In 1786 he was appointed governor of Bermuda, and in 1809 he
died.

Apparently no language has been thought by American
historians too harsh in depicting the character of Lord Dunmore.
He has been denounced as a robber, plunderer, and
instigator of a servile massacre, and in this character he has
come down to our own day. But it is probably time to reconsider
this verdict. Dunmore, as a matter of fact, did not approve
the action of the government in England in continuing to
lay taxes on America, and eagerly tried to effect an accommodation
between the Colony and the Mother Country. It should
also be remembered in his favor that when some prominent
Americans, like Benjamin Franklin, tried to divest Virginia
of her western territory, Dunmore boldly stood up against
the authorities in England in behalf of the colony and for a
year or more was very much liked for his affable and agreeable
manner in his intercourse with the people. After he returned
to England, his home and his pocketbook were open to the
Virginia loyalists—Randolph, Grymes, Brockenbrough, Beverley,
Wormeley, Corbin, Hubard, and others—who were execrated
like himself, but who for the sake of their convictions
abandoned everything they had to the malice of their enemies.

With the adoption of a state constitution on June 29, 1776,
the direction of matters passed from the Conservatives, led by
Edmund Pendleton, chairman of the Committee of Safety, to
the Progressives, led by Patrick Henry, who represented the
real spirit of revolutionary Virginia. He was triumphantly
vindicated from the slights of the Committee of Safety by his
election over Thomas Nelson, Sr., who had long held the office
of Secretary of State, and was now supported in his opposition
by Pendleton and the other Conservatives.[10] Nevertheless, such
was the spirit of conciliation apparent at all times in Virginia,
and such was the respect had for Pendleton that he
was elected Speaker in October of the new house of delegates.
This was illustrative of Mr. Jefferson's statement in his autobiography:—"Unanimity
was maintained in Virginia by the
bolder spirits slackening their pace on different measures that
the less ardent might keep up, and they on their part differing
nothing in principle, quickened their gait, so that by the harmony
of the bold with the cautious we advanced with our
constituents in undivided mass, and with fewer examples of
separation in Virginia than perhaps existed in any other
part of the Union."

This balance of parties appears to have been kept up all
through the Revolution. At the succeeding session, Jefferson
of the Progressives, nominated for speaker George Wythe,
who had started as a Conservative but was now a marked Progressive.
He was elected. Wythe, however, was succeeded
by Benjamin Harrison, a Conservative, who defeated Jefferson
for the speakership by fifty-one to twenty-three votes.
During the absence of Harrison, at the March session in 1781,
Richard Henry Lee, who had been a Progressive but was now

Benjamin Harrison

rather conservative in his views, occupied the chair. In 1783,
John Tyler, a Progressive, who had already served two years
as speaker, was nominated for re-election by Patrick Henry,
and by a vote of 61 to 20, defeated R. H. Lee, who was nominated
by the Conservative, John Page. Then, in 1785, John
Tyler suffered defeat at the hands of Benjamin Harrison, of
the Conservative wing. There was this sort of alternation
in the gubernatorial office as well. Henry served for three
years and was succeeded by Thomas Jefferson, another Progressive,
who served for two. He was succeeded by a Conservative,
General Thomas Nelson, Jr., who served for about five
months, and he by Benjamin Harrison, another Conservative,
who served three years.

Throughout the Revolution the military activities of the
State were varied and important. After Dunmore's war there
was no invasion of the State during Patrick Henry's administration,
except towards its close, but military operations on
the frontiers were continuous.

The first few days after Henry's election saw Dunmore
driven from Gwynn's Island, and on July 22 Henry and his
council ordered Col. Charles Lewis, with his battalion of minute
men, to march against the Cherokees, and on August 1,
upon hearing of their depredations in the Clinch Valley increased
the force and made Col. William Christian commander.
The rising of these savages was part of the plan concocted
by the British government early in 1776 to crush the Southern
States. While Sir Peter Parker and his fleet, conveying
a strong force under Sir Henry Clinton, were to attack the
seaboard, and the Highlanders of North Carolina were to
take up arms, all the Western Indians were to be employed
by John Stuart, Superintendent of Indian Affairs in the Southern
District of America, in an attack on the frontier settlements.
When Parker appeared before Charleston, the Indians,
true to their engagement, upon being informed of the
arrival of the ships, took the warpath and invaded the frontier
from Georgia to the head of the Holston in Virginia.

Col. Christian appointed the Great Island in the Holston,
or Heaton's Station, as the place of rendezvous for his troops
and marched thence with an army composed of 1600 Virginians
and three or four hundred North Carolinians. He
found the Indians massed on the other side of the French
Broad—3000 strong, and the conditions gave promise of a
severe battle. But the Indians did not hazard an engagement
and when Col. Christian crossed the river near what is now
known as Buckingham's Island, he found, to his surprise, that
the Indians had suddenly determined to retreat to the fastnesses
of their mountains.

To punish their unprovoked attack upon the settlements
Colonel Christian destroyed several of their towns and laid
waste their corn fields, sparing those Indians only who had
been peacefully inclined. Forces sent out by Georgia, South
Carolina and North Carolina met with similar success and
the Indians were glad enough to sue for peace. Their request
was granted by Col. Christian and a convention was entered
into, but not to take effect till a treaty should be made by representatives
from the whole tribe, who were invited to meet commissioners
from Virginia in May following, at Heaton's Station.
After this Col. Christian marched his troops back to
this point, where most of them were disbanded, and the remainder
were put into winter quarters in a new fort erected and
called "Fort Patrick Henry," which was believed to be within
the bounds of Virginia.

On May 23, 1777, Col. William Christian, Col. William
Preston and Major Evan Shelby, who had been appointed
commissioners to treat with the Cherokees, arranged the terms
of a treaty by which a new line was run between the white people
of Virginia and the Cherokees, which was to be west of that
run by Donelson. It commenced at the Great Island in the
Holston and ran thence in a straight line to "a high point on
Cumberland mountain, between three and five miles below or
westward of the great gap which leads to the settlements of
Kentucky."[11]

One of the chiefs called "Dragging Canoe," would not accede
to the treaty and with 400 other Indians preserved a hostile
attitude, causing Governor Henry and his council to issue
orders for the destruction of their towns. Three hundred militia
were ordered to that service from the neighborhood of Fort
Pitt, but on the advice of George Morgan, Superintendent of
Indian Affairs, and Col. John Neville, the expedition was abandoned
for fear of starting up a general Indian war.

Although there were no attacks from the sea, during Governor
Henry's term, there were frequent reports of the movements
of the British Navy which caused apprehension. In
August, 1777, the British fleet appeared off the Virginia Coast
with Howe's army aboard. Sixty-four companies of militia
were immediately called out and placed under the command of
General Thomas Nelson, Jr. Among the troops that took the
field was a company comprised of the students at William and
Mary College, commanded by Rev. James Madison, President
of the College. Granville Smith was first lieutenant. While
the destination of the fleet was in doubt, the Governor took
every precaution to protect the coast and ordered the arrest
and removal from the threatened portions of the state, of all
persons suspected of disaffection to the American cause. This
was approved by the next Assembly, but was considered such
a stretch of authority that a special act was passed to indemnify
the Governor and Council therefor.

Hostilities in the Southwest was succeeded by hostilities
in the West and Northwest. While a fugitive on board the
Fowey, in 1775 Lord Dunmore had concocted a scheme with
Major John Connolly, by which, with the consent of General
Gage in Boston, he was by liberal presents to unite the Ohio
Indians and the loyalists in the section about Fort Pitt in an
expedition to Alexandria, where he was to be met by Lord Dunmore
and his Ships of War. The capture of Connolly at
Hagerstown in Maryland ruined the plan, and for two years
afterwards the frontier in that direction was the scene of a

contest between British and Virginia agents for enlisting the
friendship and assistance of the Indians.

At last, however, in the Spring of 1777, Hamilton, the
governor of Detroit so far prevailed as to induce the Indians
to make a general attack on the settlements. Two hundred
warriors entered Kentucky and besieged the forts at Harrodsburg,
Boonesborough and at Logan's Statue. They withdrew
from the first two places and were driven from the last by Col.
John Bowman, with two companies of 100 men from Virginia.

Governor Henry was not indifferent to the dangers. Apprehending
an attack he sent warnings to the different county
lieutenants to hold their militia in readiness and magazines
were drected to be erected in Ohio, Yohogania and Monongalia
Counties, and ammunition was forwarded.

In June, 1777, the Council gave Col. John Todd 250 men
for the defense of the Kentucky settlements against the
western and northwestern Indians, and four or five companies
were raised in the counties of Augusta, Botetourt
and Greenbrier for the protection of the settlements east
of the Ohio. When these companies arrived at Fort Randolph,
situated where the famous battle of Point Pleasant
was fought, they found Cornstalk and Elinipsico, his
son, there. Provoked at the murder of one of their
companions by the Indians concealed in the weeds on the
banks of the river, the company of Capt. Hall from
Rockbridge shot both the Indian chiefs. Cornstalk had been
faithful to the stipulations of the treaty with Dunmore, and
having done all he could to dissuade his own tribe from confederating
with the western tribes against the Americans, had
visited the camp to inform the Americans of the condition of
affairs. But Capt. Hall's men were in no mood to discriminate,
and Cornstalk and his son fell victims to unreasoning
anger.

A few days after this outrage, General Hand, who had
been appointed by Congress to embody a large force of militia
and attack the Indians, arrived at the fort without supplies

and having failed to raise any force in Pennsylvania. The Virginians,
having been enlisted as a part of his force, being thus
left with neither provisions nor support, had to abandon the
expedition and return to their homes.[12]

Governor Henry was very indignant at the murder of
Cornstalk and his son, but he did not allow his feelings to delay
the steps required to protect the settlers from the certain
wrath of the Indians. He threw 50 men into Fort Randolph,
which in May, 1778, was besieged by a force of more than 200
Indians. The place was successfully defended, and the Indians
abandoning the attack upon the Fort, made a raid into Greenbrier
County and penetrated to the vicinity of Lewisburg.
They were repulsed by a force led by Capt. John Stuart and
Col. Samuel Lewis and driven from the county. Higher up
the savages broke into the beautiful Wyoming Valley of Pennsylvania
and perpetrated the brutal massacre, which has become
celebrated in prose and verse.

Upon the failure of General Hand to organize the expedition,
General McIntosh, of Georgia, an experienced Indian
fighter, was put by Congress in command of the proposed attack
upon the Indians. Governor Henry aided General McIntosh
by placing the militia of the counties nearest to Pittsburg
at his disposal. He prepared to attack Detroit, but this
was laid aside on the advice of Governor Henry in favor of
an attack on the hostile tribes nearest our frontiers, but little
result was had from General McIntosh's movements. A fort,
called Fort Laurens, was planted on the Tuscarawas River
and garrisoned by 150 Virginians under Col. John Gibson.
During the next year Fort Laurens was abandoned and the
plans of Congress proved fruitless, though not because of
any lack of aid from Governor Henry.

CHAPTER II

MILITARY ACTIVITIES—CLARK'S CONQUEST OF
THE NORTHWEST AND THE INVASIONS OF
COLLIER, LESLIE, ARNOLD AND PHILLIPS

Had Governor Henry's administration been distinguished
by no other incident than the campaign of George Rogers
Clark, sent out by him in the year 1778, it would have proved
the absurdity of the charge brought against it recently of "a
mediocre administration!" Upon this episode alone volume
after volume has been written and its brilliant success was
in striking contrast with the failure of the congressional plans
detailed. When we consider the boldness of the conception,
the small force employed, the audacity of the enterprise, the
brilliancy of its execution, and the vast consequences which
resulted from it, this expedition may well challenge all history
for a parallel.[13]

Clark, who suggested the enterprise, had only the safety of
Kentucky from Indian incursions at heart, but Governor
Henry, in sending it out, had greater objects in view, the accomplishment
of which changed the history of the United
States and made it possible for them to extend across the continent.

The British occupation of this country, which was taken
from the French during the French and Indian War, was secured
by a chain of forts reaching from Detroit, at the mouth
of Lake Huron, to Kaskaskia, very near where the river of that

George Rogers Clark

name enters into the Mississippi. These forts were the centers
from which the influences went forth that incited the
savages to numerous raids upon Kentucky. Clark sent two
young hunters as spies, who reported the Indians gone to war
and only small garrisons left in the forts, most of the soldiers
having been withdrawn to defend Detroit from the attack
threatened by Congress. The French population they found
rather friendly to the United States, though the British were
constantly endeavoring to influence their minds in a hostile
way.

With this information[14] Clark set out for Williamsburg in
the fall of 1777, having for his main object the settlement of his
accounts in reference to the Kentucky militia. The capture
of Burgoyne, however, suggested to his mind on his arrival at
Williamsburg that the moment was a favorable one to attack
the British Posts in the Illinois country, and he imparted his
ideas to a few leading spirits in Virginia—George Wythe,
George Mason and Thomas Jefferson. These gentlemen highly
approved of the scheme and communicated with Governor
Henry on the subject. Henry eagerly seized upon the suggestion,
and with the aid of the gentlemen named, got through
the Legislature a bill to empower the Governor, with the advice
of his Council, to employ such number of the militia as he
should judge necessary to act with any troops on "an expedition
that may be undertaken against any of our western enemies."
Following this, on January 2, 1778, the Governor communicated
information of the proposed measure to his Council,
who authorized him to issue his warrant upon the treasurer
for £1200, payable to Col. George Rogers Clark, as commander
of the expedition, and to draw up the necessary instructions.

The instructions which were drawn by Henry were masterly
in conception and showed the whole purpose of the expedition,
but they were kept secret and another paper was also
given by Governor Henry to Clark to be used in recruiting his

army. This authorized him to raise seven companies of militia
in any county in the Commonwealth, which were to proceed
to Kentucky and then obey such orders and directions as Clark
should give them.

In collecting his recruits, Clark found strong opposition in
the country around Pittsburg, where the inhabitants were divided
between Virginia and Pennsylvania, and instead of
seven companies he was only enabled to enlist four, commanded
by Capt. John Montgomery, Capt. Joseph Bowman, Capt.
Leonard Helm and Capt. William Harrod. With a part of these
he went down the Ohio from Pittsburg to the Falls, where he
completed his quota of four companies, and then dropped down
to the mouth of the Tennessee. Here he captured a boat load
of hunters, who were only eight days from Kaskaskia. From
these he learned all he desired about the post.

On July 4, 1778, Clark and his men arrived within a few
miles of Kaskaskia, and that night, under the guidance of a
soldier from the garrison, whom they had captured, they entered
the fort by a gate left open on the river side, surprising
and making prisoner the Commander, Mr. Rocheblave.
The French inhabitants soon came over to the American side,
and among them was Pierre Gibault, a French priest, who
proved to be of the greatest value to them. Meantime, Joseph
Bowman, with 30 men went against the other Illinois towns.
Prairie du Rocher, St. Phillipe, and Cohokia were each surprised
in turn and reduced to submission.

Clark next directed his arms against St. Vincent, now
Vincennes, on the Wabash river, but he was saved the trouble
of an attack by the French priest referred to above, who won
over the inhabitants to Clark's side. After this success, Clark
turned his attention to the Indians, who were greatly impressed
with his unexpected victories, and thirteen tribes sued
for peace.

The time for which his little body of men had enlisted was
about to expire, but by liberal promises and presents, Clark
prevailed upon about one hundred to remain with him for

eight months longer, and he filled the places of those returning
with French recruits as far as possible. He stationed Capt.
Bowman at Cohokia, and Capt Helm at St. Vincent, each with
a small corps, and with the returning force he sent Rocheblave
a prisoner to Williamsburg in charge of Capt. John Montgomery,
and letters from him and Capt. Helm, informing the
Governor of his success, and of the taking of the oath of allegiance
to Virginia by the inhabitants of the captured towns.

The letters reached Williamsburg November 16, 1778, and
the Governor the same day communicated their contents to the
Assembly and the Virginia delegates in Congress.

The Assembly voted a resolution of thanks[15] to Col. Clark
and his men, and passed an act establishing the County of Illinois,
to embrace the territory between the Ohio and the Mississippi,
and the governor was given power to select a county
lieutenant for said county, having authority to appoint as
many deputy commandants, militia officers, and commissaries
as he should think proper. The Governor and his Council were
also authorized to raise 500 men to protect the county and to
supply the inhabitants of the territory with goods and other
necessaries by opening up a trade with New Orleans or in any
other way.

On December 12, 1778, Governor Henry appointed Col. John
Todd, of Kentucky, lieutenant of the new county, Lieutenant
Col. John Montgomery superintendent of the recruiting of
five new companies, Capt. Isaac Shelby to procure the necessary
boats to transport the troops down the Cherokee or Tennessee
river, and James Buchanan to provide the provisions
needed for them. The instructions which accompanied these
appointments were drawn by Governor Henry and are of
marked ability and statesmanship.

In the meantime, Clark's situation became very critical.
Hamilton, the British governor of the territory, marched
against him with a force estimated at from five to eight hundred
men, mostly Indians from the Six Nations, and recaptured

St. Vincent, on December 17, 1778. Instead of pushing
on when he might have recaptured Kaskaskia, Hamilton went
into winter quarters at St. Vincent, determining to open the
campaign in the spring with a sufficient force of Indians to
drive Clark from the country and to destroy all the settlements
west of the Alleghanies. In the meanwhile, he retained only
eighty men about him, dismissing his Indian allies to make war
upon the frontiers and to block up the Ohio.

Clark was informed of these matters by a Spanish merchant,
Col. Francis Vigo, who had visited St. Vincent at the
instance of Clark, and with true genius he determined upon
attacking Hamilton while his Indians were away. He had
not heard a word from Virginia, and could not rely upon re-enforcements
from that quarter. He, therefore, determined to
move with all the forces he could raise of his own troops and
a few militia, amounting in all to 170 men. About fifty of these
he put on board a galley, mounted with several cannons, and
provided with ammunition and provisions, and directed them
to proceed by water and meet him at about ten leagues from
St. Vincent.

On February 5, 1779, he left Kaskaskia and began his desperate
march of 170 miles or more through a wilderness of ice
and water, incurring unexampled hardships from cold and
want of provisions. It took eighteen days to accomplish the
trip, but at last, about one o'clock on February 23, Clark and
his men appeared before St. Vincent, unsuspected and undetected.
No resistance was made by the inhabitants of the
town, and the fort, after sustaining a constant fire of 24
hours, surrendered. On the 25th Clark sent a force up the
Wabash to intercept a party in charge of stores which Hamilton
was expecting. They captured 40 men and with them
seven boatloads of provisions. On the 27th the galley, which
had failed to meet them at the expected point, finally arrived,
bearing William Morris, a messenger sent by Governor Clark
to Williamsburg and who returned with dispatches from Governor

Henry and information of the action of the Assembly on
hearing of Clark's past success.

Clark sullied his victory by putting a party of Indians to
death who visited the fort under the belief that the British
had still control. But his action had its excuse in retaliation
for the savage barbarities committed by the Indians generally.

Clark released most of the English soldiers, but sent Hamilton
and twenty-five others, seven officers and eighteen privates,
in the charge of a guard, as prisoners to Williamsburg.
When they arrived there Henry's term of three years had expired
and the new governor, Thomas Jefferson, ordered
Hamilton and two of his associates to be confined in the State
Prison, which is still standing. This was done because of their
activity in stirring up the Indians to war and because of the
belief entertained by Virginians generally that Hamilton offered
to the Indians rewards for scalps. The governor ordered
fetters to be put upon them, thus treating them as common
criminals. The British authorities at New York strongly protested
and Washington being consulted thought the policy
adopted by Jefferson a doubtful one. So Hamilton and the
other two unfortunates were after some delay relieved of
their fetters, and in the course of a few months were exchanged.
Hamilton himself vigorously denied that he was guilty of
offering rewards for scalps.

Whether we consider the hardships endured, the courage
displayed, or the results obtained by this conquest of the
West, Clark deserves a conspicuous and honorable place in
history. When peace was negotiated, France intrigued with
Great Britain to limit the western boundary of the United
States to the Ohio. But the Mississippi and the Wabash were
held by Virginia soldiers, and so the boundary of the United
States became not the Ohio but the Mississippi and the lakes.
This vast addition was only an extension of that pioneer work
which Virginia had been doing since its settlement, and which
under Virginia presidents, Jefferson, Monroe and Tyler, was

to stretch the empire of republics from ocean to ocean and from
the lakes to the Gulf of Mexico.

Clark, however, was far from the ideal of a Washington,
whose head could not be turned by success, or of a Lee whose
noble majesty of mind could not be degraded by defeat or disappointment.
Neither Washington nor Lee would have approved
the deception employed by Clark on his soldiers in
leading them on to the fateful campaign. Then in addressing
Lt. Col. Hamilton, the British commander, at St. Vincent as
mere "Mr.," Clark showed a spirit not at all becoming a
successful general. Congress and Virginia neglected his just
demands for advances made by him in the course of the war,
but this was no excuse for taking to strong drink and abusing
his native state, as he appears to have done.

During the last few weeks of Governor Henry's administration
the period of invasion opened. Admiral Sir George
Collier with a fleet carrying 2000 troops under General Matthew
entered Hampton Roads on the ninth of May, 1779. The
fleet was composed in part of light armed vessels, capable of
running up the shallow creeks and rivers. Leaving his flagship,
Raisonable, of 64 guns, in the Roads on account of her
great draught, he proceeded with the rest up the Elizabeth
River, and opened operations against Fort Nelson, which had
been one of the fortifications established by the Legislature for
internal defence and security, and was situated about two miles
from Portsmouth on the north bank of the Elizabeth River.
It was garrisoned by 150 men, commanded by Major Thomas
Matthews.

No defence was practicable as the British, while bombarding
it from the water with their ships, proceeded to attack it
by a land force in the rear. Major Matthews, informed of their
intention, speedily executed a retreat, leaving his colors flying
over the fort and spiking up all his guns except one, a brass
field piece which he removed. Closely pursued, he managed to
save himself by putting the Dismal Swamp between his troops
and the pursuers. Fort Nelson had not been fortified on the

land side, but it would not have made any difference if it
had been.

Portsmouth was occupied by the British, and from this
point they sent out raiding parties in various directions. A
militia force of 200 men had gathered at Suffolk, but it dispersed
at the approach of a superior body of red coats, who
set fire to the town which was both an important depot of
supplies and a terminus to a foreign trade kept open by Virginia
war vessels, by way of the Blackwater River, the
Chowan River, Albemarle Sound and Ocracoke inlet. The
British remained 24 days in Virginia at Portsmouth, where
there was a marine yard, which Collier pronounced the best in
the States. This he destroyed with many ships on the stocks.
In evacuating Fort Nelson, Major Matthews had destroyed the
larger Virginia vessels off Portsmouth and sent the smaller
ones for safety up the Southern Branch. These now fell victims
to the British light armed vessels, and an immense quantity
of naval and military stores, merchandise and provisions
of all kinds was taken or destroyed. The whole number of
vessels taken and destroyed during the brief interval the
King's ships were in Virginia was one hundred and thirty-seven,
and the loss incurred thereby and through supplies
of all kinds destroyed amounted to a million pounds sterling.[16]

The Gazette of that day and oral tradition have preserved
the memory of particular acts of brutality on the part of the
British, but these were largely due, no doubt, to soldiers acting
without authority. Collier, in his narrative, tells us that
his men had positive orders "to do no wanton act of cruelty,
nor burn houses, nor in any shape molest innocent people,"
and there is an interesting instance of his humanity. A house
was burned near Cheriton in Northampton County and several
other houses set on fire and plundered by Tories from New
York engaged in privateering. Admiral Collier, informed of
the outrages, sent an apologetic letter ashore and accompanied
it with a ship's load of salt for the use of the unhappy sufferers,

that article being very scarce and much coveted in those days.
This courtesy was so much appreciated that several gentlemen
in the county sent Collier a present of eight lambs, which the
commander, instead of saving for his own table, turned over
to the sick men of his command.

Suggestive of a similar episode during the war for Southern
Independence was another affair. Upon the arrival of
Collier's fleet, four negroes fled from their master, William
Armistead, of "Hesse," in Matthews Co., then a part of Gloucester
Co., to the protection of the British. Whereupon permission
was granted by Governor Henry and his council to Capt.
Peter Bernard, representing Mr. Armistead, to go with a flag
of truce on board of his Majesty's ship and request the return
of the negroes as private property. But Collier refused the
request, replying that while "the business of his Majesty's
ships in Virginia was neither to entice negroes on board or
to detain them if they were found there," yet "his Majesty's
colors in all places afford an asylum to the distressed and
protection on supplication."[17]

In view of the fact that his Majesty had obstinately turned
a deaf ear to the repeated protests of the Virginians against
the slave trade, the remarks of Collier doubtless did not bring
conviction of their sincerity either to Patrick Henry or his
council, but the words of the British commander sound better
than the answer returned on a similar occasion by the Federal
Commander, Gen. B. F. Butler, in 1861.

In that year three slaves belonging to Col. Charles K. Mallory,
of Hampton, fled from Sewell Point, where they had been
put to work on the fortifications, to the protection of the Federals
at Point Comfort. Major John B. Cary, then in command
of the Virginia militia at Hampton, went under flag of truce
to reclaim them. But General Butler declared the negroes
"contraband of war," and refused to give them up. For this

reply he was much applauded in the North, as establishing a
new rule of international law.[18]

To meet this destructive invasion, the Legislature of Virginia,
which had assembled at Williamsburg on the 3rd of
May, detained the 2000 troops which were on the point of
marching under General Gustavus Scott to the aid of the
Southern Continental army, and on May 14, Governor Henry
issued a proclamation requiring the county lieutenants and
other military officers, especially those on the navigable
waters, to hold their respective militia in readiness to oppose
the attempts of the enemy, wherever they might be made. But
on the 20th of May, in obedience to the recommendation of
Congress and General Washington, the Legislature performed
the astonishing act of self abnegation of ordering the 2,000 recruits
to march to South Carolina, together with Bland's
and Baylor's regiments of horse. The defence of the State
devolved on Gen. Thomas Nelson and the militia, and an act
was passed by the Legislature authorizing the governor and
his council of state to cause a body of cavalry to be raised to
serve during the present invasion. Before, however, any
military measures could be made effective, the enemy had come
and gone.

Thomas Jefferson became governor June 1, 1779, and was
confronted with the demands of the war, which the British
government had instituted against the Southern States. For
more than a year the State was free from invasion, and during
that time no one could have been more active than Jefferson
in using efforts to strengthen the Southern army and furnish
it with supplies. But the interval was a depressing one.
General Lincoln, with all his troops, was captured in Charleston
on May 12, 1780, which was a particular heavy blow to the
state as more than half the continental troops were Virginians.
A few days later, on May 29, 1780, 400 Virginia continentals,
under Col. Buford, who had arrived too late to enter the invested

place, were attacked by Tarleton and destroyed. Virginia
had already lost heavily in prisoners at the capture of
Fort Washington in November, 1776, and at Germantown in
October, 1777, when the Ninth Virginia Regiment and part of
the Sixth were made prisoners.

In August, 1780, occurred the defeat of his successor,
Horatio Gates, at Camden, in which the Virginia militia under
the gallant General Edward Stevens were routed and dispersed.
Not long after, Sumter was defeated by Tarleton and
for a time the British armies were in the ascendant throughout
Georgia and South Carolina. It was under these depressing
conditions that early in September intelligence was brought to
General Gates by spies and deserters that Lord Cornwallis
intended immediately to embark his main force at Georgetown
for Cape Fear and had persuaded Sir Henry Clinton to
send a force to take possession of Portsmouth, in Virginia,
and establish there a strong post. Intelligence of this was
communicated by General Gates and Governor Jefferson to
Congress and to General Washington, but no assistance was
sent by either to Virginia.

Lord Cornwallis divided his army into two columns—one
under Col. Ferguson to march northward along the frontiers
to collect loyalist support, and the main body under himself
to proceed through the Waxhaws on a parallel course. About
the time he reached Charlotte, North Carolina, a British fleet
appeared in Chesapeake Bay carrying 3,000 troops under
General Leslie.[19] On October 20, 800 troops were landed in
the neighborhood of Portsmouth, and some more at the bay
side of Princess Anne. On the 23rd 1,000 infantry were put
on shore at Newport News and immediately took possession of
Hampton. Soon, however, they concentrated their force at
Portsmouth, where they began to fortify themselves. Their
highest post was Suffolk, and to prevent the approach of any
enemy, they occupied the narrow and defensible path between
Nansemond River and the Dismal Swamp. The purpose of

the expedition was to establish a post in Virginia which might
put a stop to the recruits and supplies sent to the aid of the
Southern army.

There can be no question that Governor Jefferson did all
that was in his power to meet the pressing danger. Virginia
had poured thousands of men into the Southern and the Northern
armies, and she had still plenty left. But she had only a
few guns to put in their hands, as most had been sent out of
the State. It would have been useless to keep the whole militia
in the field without arms, so Jefferson called upon Congress
for arms, and sought to oppose General Leslie with as large
a body of troops as he could equip with the scanty supply of
guns remaining in the State. He directed General Nelson to
make every exertion to collect the militia of the lower counties
and secure at least the important pass of the Great Bridge.
Five hundred men raised by General Lawson, who were about
to march to South Carolina, were detained to resist this new
attack at home, and the brave General Edward Stevens, with a
detachment of the Southern army, made ready to march to
the support of the state.

But after a stay in Virginia of exactly a month, Leslie on
November 22, embarked his army on his fleet and sailed for
South Carolina, and joined Lord Cornwallis.

This change of policy was due to the wonderful news which
had come from the South of the battle at King's Mountain,
fought on October 7, 1780, when the hardy backwoodsmen of
Tennessee, North Carolina and Virginia, under the chief command
of Col, William Campbell, of Montgomery County, Virginia,
won a great victory, destroying or capturing the whole
detachment of the army of Lord Cornwallis under the command
of Colonel Ferguson. This victory caused Cornwallis to
abandon his attack on North Carolina for the present and fall
back from Charlotte to Wynnsborough, near Camden in South
Carolina.

During his stay in Virginia Leslie was much more successful
than Collier and Matthew had been in preventing wanton

and unnecessary devastation. The greatest injury resulting
from this invasion was the loss of a large quantity of cattle
collected in the lower counties for the use of the Southern
army, and seized by the enemy immediately after their debarkation.
It expedited rather than retarded the re-enforcements
intended for Gates, which with other troops had been
collected by Muhlenberg at the head of Pagan Creek, and by
Nelson, on the north side of James River.[20]

However, only a short interval prevailed before another
invasion took place. On the last day of 1780, Mr. Jefferson
received intelligence that 27 ships, under the command of
Benedict Arnold, had entered Chesapeake Bay, and were
starting up towards the mouth of James River. As promptly
as possible the governor dispatched Brigadier-General Nelson
to the lower country, and the militia, the public stores, and
public arms were placed at his disposal. Arnold sailed up
the river and stopped at Burwell's Bay. Resuming his course
he was next reported as at Jamestown, and his object was
supposed to be Williamsburg. Then he proceeded as far as
Westover, and that either Petersburg or Richmond was the
intended point of attack now became sufficiently evident.
Baron Steuben, who was on the south side, organizing the new
recruits for the Southern army, thought that Petersburg
would be the point of attack, but he was not long in finding
that he was mistaken.

Landing his army of 1,500 infantry and 120 cavalry at
Westover on January 4, Arnold drew up his men and took the
road to Richmond, to which the capital of the state had been
moved the year before on account of the exposed condition of
Williamsburg. Richmond was then a hamlet of a few hundred
people, and was nothing suggestive of the splendid city which
now crowns the hills overhanging the James. Mr. Jefferson
had no time to get the militia together, but even given time he
would have had difficulty in arming a force sufficient to cope
with these well-armed British soldiers, so stripped was the

state of all military equipment from the the efforts to supply
the Southern and Northern armies. He did all that any
prudent man could do under the circumstances. As a precautionary
measure he had ordered all the arms and stores to
be transferred to the foundry and laboratory about six miles
above Richmond, near Westham, and he now gave orders that
they should be conveyed directly across the river both from
Richmond and Westham. To Westham he himself repaired
to superintend the operations, and late in the night rode to
Tuckahoe farther up the river. Returning on the morning
of the 5th to Britton's, opposite to Westham, and finding that
the arms had been left heaped on the bank, he had them removed
to a greater distance and proceeded to Manchester
(now South Richmond), whence the enemy and their busy
movements in Richmond were now in full view.

They had left Westover at two o'clock the preceding day,
encamping for the night at Four Mile Creek, and had arrived
at one o'clock on the fifth at Richmond, whence Arnold detached
Lieutenant-Colonel Simcoe, with a regiment of infantry
and fifty cavalrymen to the foundry near Westham, which
they burnt, together with the boring mill and magazine, and
two other houses. The same party advanced to Westham, but
finding nothing there, returned to Richmond. Here Arnold,
probably not quite the eager plunderer he has been represented,
had waited to learn the answer of Governor Jefferson, then at
Chetwood's, Baron Steuben's headquarters, to a proposal
sent by him not to burn the town if Jefferson would consent to
permit the British vessels to come up the river unmolested and
take away the tobacco deposited there. Jefferson rejected this
proposition without hesitation, and on the 6th Arnold burnt
all the stores, public and private, which he could reach.

Having done all the damage he could, he proceeded to return
to his fleet at Westover, and encamped that evening at
Four Mile Creek. The 7th and 8th he passed at Westover and
Berkeley, the homes respectively of the late Col. William Byrd
and of Speaker Benjamin Harrison, the latter place known in

the war for Southern Independence as Harrison's Landing, to
which McClellan retired after the battle of Malvern Hill.

In the meantime the militia was assembling from all quarters.
Two hundred, drawn from Richmond and the surrounding
territory, under the command of Col. John Nicholas, attacked
Arnold's pickets on the 5th inst. and drove them in, but
were of course too few to venture a battle. One hundred and
fifty assembled at Charles City Court House, about ten miles
from Westover, where on January 8th they were surprised
and dispersed by Simcoe's cavalry. Two or three hundred
militia under General Smallwood had better luck with some
of Arnold's vessels which had sailed up the Appomattox river.
Having possession of one or two four pounders they compelled
the ships to fall hastily down the river to the main fleet at
Westover. Baron Steuben had 800 men and General Gibson
a thousand on the south side of the James.

On January 10, 1781, Arnold embarked all his forces, and
that night landed his troops at Hood's. Here he was attacked
by two hundred and fifty militiamen under Col. George Rogers
Clark, who, at the time of Arnold's invasion, happened to be
at Richmond, preparing for a grand enterprise against Detroit.
Under the sudden fire of the Virginians, who then
prudently beat a retreat, seventeen British soldiers were
killed and thirteen were wounded.

Arnold renewed his retreat, and on January 20, reached
Portsmouth, intending to establish there a permanent camp.
On the way he seized some stores at Cobham, Smithfield, and
Mackay's Mills. With some added forces, separated from
him in a storm between New York and Cape Henry, his army
now amounted to 2,000 men.

It was well that Arnold made haste, for by this short time
the militia embodied amounted to about 4,000, and a battle in
the open might have been fatal to him. The Virginians, however,
were badly equipped, and lacking bayonets and cannon,
were not fit to attack an army of 2,000 behind entrenchments,
so they were divided into three cantonments, one under

General Weeden at Fredericksburg, for the protection of the
important works there,[21] and two others, one under General
Nelson, at and near Williamsburg, and a third at Cabin Point,
under General Steuben, to prevent any further incursions of
the kind from which the state had just suffered. Mr. Jefferson
was eager to capture Arnold and offered 5,000 guineas to any
of the men of General Muhlenberg's corps, who would accomplish
the work. But Arnold knew his danger and kept close
quarters, never stirring beyond them unless with a strong
guard.

The real situation of Virginia is strongly depicted in the
letters of Governor Jefferson. "The fatal want of arms," he
wrote to the President of Congress, on the 8th of February,
"puts it out of our power to bring a greater force into the field
than will barely suffice to restrain the adventures of the pitiful
body of men the enemy have at Portsmouth. Should they be
reinforced, the country will be perfectly open to them by land
as well as by water." "I have been knocking at the door of
Congress," he wrote to a friend on the 17th of the same
month, "for aids of all kinds, but especially of arms, ever since
the middle of summer. The Speaker, Harrison, is gone to be
heard on that subject.[22] Justice, indeed, requires that we
should be aided powerfully. Yet, if they would only repay us
the arms we have lent them, we should give the enemy trouble,
though abandoned to ourselves." On the same day, he addressed
the Commander in Chief, nearly in the same words,

"Arms and a naval force," he observed, "are the only means
of salvation for Virginia."

These protests had some effect. Washington was not unobservant
of affairs in his native state. He had a holy hatred
of Arnold and he organized a land and naval expedition to
effect his capture, if possible. Washington made arrangements
to send to Virginia 1,200 Continental soldiers under LaFayette
and persuaded Destouches, the French admiral at
Newport, to try to blockade Arnold by sea. In pursuance of
this, DeTilly was sent to Chesapeake Bay with a small squadron,
but finding himself by reason of the shallow water unable
to reach Portsmouth, he returned to Newport. Then the
whole French fleet sailed for Virginia, but this expedition
failed too of its object, for the English fleet under Arbuthnot
intercepted the French ships near the entrance of the Chesapeake,
and on March 16, 1781, forced them to a naval action, in
which the material advantage remained with the British. So
Destouches returned to Newport without accomplishing anything.
LaFayette, in the meantime, leaving his troops at
Annapolis, whence they were to proceed down the bay in
French frigates, which he supposed Destouches would send
up, set out in advance with some officers and made his way to
Williamsburg, and on the 19th crossed the James to Suffolk,
and made a reconnoisance of Arnold's position.[23]

Returning to join his troops LaFayette learned of Destouches'
retirement and proceeded to march northward with
his detachment. But at the head of the Elk he received new
and important instructions from General Washington. It
had been ascertained that Clinton had dispatched General
Phillips to take command in the Chesapeake, whose force combined
with Arnold's would number something over 3,000 men.
As this indicated an intention on the part of the enemy to
prosecute operations in Virginia on a large scale, General
Washington ordered him to carry out the former resolve of
marching to the South. LaFayette accordingly faced about

and marched to Baltimore, where he borrowed £2,000 from the
merchants to clothe his troops. These men were chiefly from
New England regiments, who had no relish for a Southern
campaign and showed a mutinous disposition. Many desertions
occurred and LaFayette had to resort to extreme measures.
He hung one and made the rest a speech in which he
shamed them well for their unpatriotic behavior. This had a
good effect and the Yankees turned over a new leaf and gave
no more trouble. "All desertion ceased and not one of my men
would leave me." Leaving his artillery to follow, he made
forced marches by way of Alexandria, Fredericksburg and
Bowling Green, and arrived with his troops at Richmond on
the evening of the 29th of April, 1781.

In the meantime, with his army numbering 2,000 men,
General Phillips arrived from New York and took command
at Portsmouth, much to the relief of the British soldiers who
did not like to be commanded by the traitor Arnold. With
this addition the British forces now became a formidable
army of invasion and until LaFayette arrived there was nothing
to oppose them but a brave and exhausted militia. Phillips
determined on offensive movements, and after still further
strengthening the fortifications at Portsmouth until April 18,
he embarked 2,500 men and commenced ascending the James
River. Two of his divisions landed near Williamsburg, one
entering the city April 20th, and the other, under the dashing
Simcoe, proceeding to Yorktown, where they captured a few
guns. Returning thence this detachment repaired to the State
shipyard on the Chickahominy, where they burnt the stores
and some shipping found there. They re-embarked on the 22nd.,
and two days later Phillips' army landed at City Point, anciently
Charles City, an old settlement established at the mouth
of the Appomattox by Sir Thomas Dale about Christmas, 1613.
On the next day Phillips advanced to Petersburg.

This place was defended by Baron Steuben with a thousand
raw militia, he having sent the regular force training
under his command to the relief of General Greene, who had

succeeded General Gates in command of the Southern army.
Although much inferior in numbers, Steuben's troops greatly
surprised the British. For two hours they contested the
ground on almost even terms, and then slowly retired beyond
the Appomattox, destroying the bridge over which they passed
to prevent pursuit.

Phillips entered Petersburg and destroyed a large quantity
of tobacco and other stores. On the 27th he marched with one
division to Chesterfield Court House, where he burnt the barracks
and stores there. Arnold was dispatched with the other
division to Osborne's, where he destroyed much tobacco, and
shortly afterwards he performed his most brilliant exploit of
destroying the marine force of the State, which had been concentrated
at a point on the river a short distance above
Osborne's.

Near a place called Warwick on James River, not far from
Richmond, Phillips and Arnold united their forces on April
30, 1781, and marched to Manchester, where another considerable
amount of tobacco was destroyed. They would probably
have paid Richmond a second visit, had they not been informed
of the arrival of LaFayette with his small body of Continental
troops the day before. So returning to Warwick, they made
havoc of the tobacco and fine mills at that place and the rope
yard and the tan yard full of hides and bark. Arnold here
crossed the river with 600 British regulars for the purpose of
reconnoitering, but being charged by a patrol of sixteen horsemen
under Major Nelson, they supposed the whole American
army was upon them and fled to their boats. Ill-armed and
untrained militia had often fled before inferior forces of
British veterans, but the laugh was on the British this time by
a reverse of the experience.

From Warwick the whole of the British armament proceeded
to Bermuda Hundred opposite to City Point, at the confluence
of the Appomattox with the James, and then fell down
towards Williamsburg. But when they had reached Burwell's
Ferry and when doubtless most people of the upper James

were congratulating themselves, that they had seen the last
of this British invasion, the whole fleet turned about and came
up the river again. On May 7, the vessels came to anchor
before Brandon, where six days' provisions having been
handed out to every man, the army was landed and began a
second march to Petersburg, which they reached on May 9th,
ten days after LaFayette reached Richmond. This officer, re-enforced
by the militia but not strong enough to attack the
British, took up his position at Wilton, seven miles below
Richmond, where he watched with great eagerness the development
of the British plan of operations.

The disheartening reverse movement of the British under
Phillips had the following explanation: A boat arrived from
Portsmouth conveying information of Lord Cornwallis' march
from the South and bearing instructions for Phillips to wait
for him at Petersburg.

It is not intended to go into the history of the war in the
South. Gates, as we have seen, had been dreadfully defeated
by Cornwallis at Camden, August 16, 1780, and later he had
been succeeded by Nathanael Greene, of Rhode Island, on December
2, 1780. The Americans had gained victories at King's
Mountain (October 7, 1780), and at Cowpens (January 17,
1781), but Greene had not been strong enough to meet Cornwallis
with full forces in the field, so Cornwallis had pursued
him to the Virginia line, and disappointed in not forcing him
to a battle, had returned southward to Hillsborough.

Later he began his march to Wilmington, near the sea coast.
Greene, re-enforced by Virginia militia, followed and sought
a battle with him on March 15, 1781, at Guildford Court House,
where the issue was hotly contested, for though the honors of
the battle fell to Cornwallis, the material benefits fell to
Greene. Cornwallis continued his march to Wilmington and
Greene followed as far as Ramsay's Mills, where the American
commander came to his celebrated determination to turn his
back on Virginia, leave it uncovered, and carry the war into
South Carolina.

His reason for the step, assigned to General Washington,
was that it would compel Cornwallis to follow him, and thus
free North Carolina from invasion, or else sacrifice all his
posts in the interior of South Carolina and Georgia. From
every standpoint this seemed a great military error. Greene
left a hitherto unsubjugated state to recover states more or
less exhausted. He left the center to defend the outskirts.
The conquest of Virginia would have cut the Union in two
and have prevented any assistance reaching the three Southern
states, and had Virginia and the other Southern states
been conquered the Northern states would have soon experienced
a similar misfortune. His action might be compared to
that of General Hood in 1864, when he left Sherman to make
his march to the sea without opposition, while he went north to
recover Tennessee. Both Hood and Greene suffered defeat,
and the only difference was that Hood lost also the campaign,
and Greene gained it. It is probable that but for the aid of
Sumter and Marion, Greene's experience might have easily
been Hood's. Greene's army combined with that of LaFayette
would have made things in Virginia pretty warm for Lord
Cornwallis, and Washington might not have been forced to
abandon his plan of capturing New York and to come to Virginia.
It is possible that two British armies might have been
captured instead of one.

The march of Greene to the South was followed by the
march of Lord Cornwallis in the opposite direction, northward
into Virginia. This was not an element in the original
plan of operations contemplated by Cornwallis and the British
commander-in-chief, Sir Henry Clinton. Writing to Lord
George Germaine of his move to Virginia Cornwallis explained
it by saying that, in his opinion, "until Virginia was reduced
we could not hold the more southern provinces and that after
its reduction they would fall without much difficulty." That
solid operations might be adopted in that quarter, he was induced
to believe, he said, from dispatches of the commander-in-chief,
the substance of which then transmitted to him was that

General Phillips had been detached to the Chesapeake and put
under his orders.

Assuming thus the entire responsibility, and conscious
that he would have at least received the approval of the home
ministry, with whom he was a favorite, Cornwallis marched
from Wilmington on the 25th of April, 1781, and on the 20th
of May arrived at Petersburg, Virginia, where a junction was
effected with the force there commanded lately by General
Phillips, and now by Arnold, next in command, Phillips having
unfortunately fallen a victim to a fever a few days before.[24]

CHAPTER III

MILITARY ACTIVITIES

III. Proposed Expedition Against Detroit and War with Indians
on Western Border—Cornwallis in Virginia

In the meantime, while eastern Virginia was being invaded,
stirring scenes were enacted in the region beyond the Ohio.
After completing his capture of Vincennes, February 24, 1779,
Clark turned his mind to the capture of Detroit, near Lake
Huron, which was the capital of British power in the Northwest
Territory. This he thought himself able to effect, with
the recruits expected from Virginia, but not more than half
the number counted on by Clark arrived, and he felt compelled
by this fact and a fresh outbreak of the Indians on the Ohio
to postpone his cherished expedition.

Though abandoned, the influence of the preparation for the
expedition proved of great significance. Threatenings from
Vincennes caused the British officials at Detroit to give up
their plan for the recapture of that post. A similar campaign
of regulars and Indians against Fort Pitt was likewise abandoned.
The British were too busy strengthening their different
posts to think of harassing the American settlers on the
Ohio.

Instead, therefore, of leading a force against Detroit, Clark
went up to the mouth of the Ohio, where, in accordance with instructions
of Governor Jefferson, he constructed a fort, which
he called Fort Jefferson. The idea of a post at this place for
facilitating intercourse with the Spanish at New Orleans had
occurred to Patrick Henry, and Jefferson's reasons for endorsing
the project at this time were that the fort would

facilitate trade with Illinois and be near enough to furnish
supplies to that territory, and that this fort, together with
others to be established on the Ohio, would furnish a chain of
defense for the western frontier and at the same time protect
the trade with New Orleans.

On April 14, Clark set out from Louisville for the purpose
of building this fort, which he finally located five miles below
the mouth of the Ohio on the Iron Banks. Settlers were attracted
to the locality through the present of 400 acres to each
family. About this time Spain declared war against Great
Britain, whereupon the British authorities organized a
thorough-going attack on the Illinois territory and the Spanish
posts in Louisiana. Colonel Clark hastened to the defense
and the British were repulsed both at Cohokia and St. Louis,
the latter a Spanish settlement.

The main body of the attacking force retreated rapidly in
two divisions, one by the Mississippi, and the other directly
across the country to Mackinac. Clark sent at once a force
of 350 regular troops, aided by French volunteers from the
Illinois posts, and Spaniards from St. Louis, under Col. John
Montgomery against the Sauk and Foxes. Montgomery proceeded
up the Mississippi and Illinois in boats as far as Peoria,
from which they marched to the Indian villages on Rock River.
After burning the towns Montgomery returned to his boats
and the march back of 400 miles was accomplished after much
suffering.

In the meantime scouting parties of Delawares and Shawnees
were harassing the settlements in Kentucky, and early
in May, 1780, Col. Henry Bird, with 150 whites and 1,000 Indians
from Detroit, attacked Ruddle's and Martin's Stations,
two small stockaded posts on the Licking. Resistance was
hopeless against the British cannon and Bird set out for Detroit
with much plunder and 100 prisoners. Many of the
women and children, unable to bear the strain of the march,
were killed by the Indians on the way to Detroit. Clark began
at once the organization of a retaliatory expedition, and, closing

the land office, he proceeded to enlist volunteers from the
crowd who wanted an assignment of land. In spite of some
discontent the call for volunteers was promptly met and 1,000
men were soon under arms. He was joined at the mouth of
the Licking by Colonel Harrod, with 200 men and by Col. Benjamin
Logan, second in command, who lead his regiment from
Boonesborough and adjacent towns in Kentucky to the same
place. The soldiers took four days to march some seventy
miles to the old Indian town of Chilicothe, where the crops
and town were burnt. The army then pushed on to Piqua, a
few miles distant on the Big Miami, where a battle ensued in
which the Indians were defeated. After the destruction of
Piqua with its corn fields, Clark returned to the mouth of the
Licking and disbanded his army. There he learned that, during
his absence, Fort Jefferson had been attacked by a force of
Chickasaw and Choctaw Indians, lead by Colbert, a Scotchman.
There were only a few men in the fort at the time, commanded
by Capt. Robert George, but they fought desperately
and after six days the Indians withdrew.

The letters of Governor Jefferson at the time show the
interest which he took in the conquest of the West, and his instructions
to Clark and others are splendid proofs of his
mastery of the situation.[25] With a full appreciation of the
significance of the capture of Detroit, he proceeded, notwithstanding
the many difficulties by which he was surrounded, to
make provision for a renewal of the attack upon the seat of
British power in the Northwest. Full instructions were drawn
up by him under which Clark was to advance with 2,000 men
into the hostile territory at the earliest practicable moment
after the opening of navigation in 1781. The Western army
was to be composed of the Illinois Regiment, Crockett's battalion,
Major Slaughter's corps and detachments from the
militia of the counties of Fayette, Lincoln, Jefferson, Ohio,
Monongalia, Hampshire, Berkeley, Frederick and Greenbrier.

Next to Clark was the brave Colonel Gibson. The different
bodies of troops were to rendezvous at the Falls of the Ohio by
March 15, 1781. Clark proceeded to Richmond to consult with
Jefferson over the matter, and while there took part in the
defense of the State against the invasion of Benedict Arnold.
Washington cordially responded to the appeal of Jefferson
and ordered Colonel Brodhead at Fort Pitt to give the enterprise
every possible assistance, by furnishing upon Clark's
order the supplies asked for and a detachment of continental
troops, including a company of artillery as large as could be
spared. On January 22, 1781, Jefferson, with the advice of his
council, made Clark a Brigadier-General of the "forces to be
embodied on an expedition west of the Ohio."

This action completed an effective military organization in
the West. In the preceding November, the Legislature of
Virginia divided Kentucky into three counties—Fayette, Jefferson
and Lincoln. John Todd, Jr., was appointed county
lieutenant of Fayette County, with Daniel Boone for his
lieutenant colonel; John Floyd was made county lieutenant
in Jefferson County; and Benjamin Logan in Lincoln County.
Clark was put over the three as supervising officer.

Clark set out for Fort Pitt to take charge of the expedition,
but all sorts of difficulties arose. The militia of Berkeley,
Frederick, Greenbrier and Hampshire counties showed decided
opposition to the draft, and an attempt to collect provisions
and men in the last county resulted in an armed
mutiny. Lest an attempt at enforcement of his orders should
lead to general disobedience, Jefferson issued a call for volunteers,
but many did not respond. Moreover, the men constituting
the regiment of regular troops under Colonel
Crockett, suffered for want of suitable clothing and were
without shoes. Brodhead, at Fort Pitt, was opposed to parting
with any of the Continental troops, and Clark, despairing
of accomplishing his designs in the face of so many difficulties,
set out in August, 1781, for Louisville with only 400 men. This
number was little more than adequate to guard the boats which

contained supplies for fully 2,000 men. He experienced another
set back when a body of 107 Pennsylvania volunteers
under Col. Archibald Lochry, who were descending the Ohio
to join him, were attacked by the Indians and were either
killed or made prisoners.

Under these conditions, by order of the Assembly, the
expedition against Detroit was again postponed; but Clark's
activities had served at least as a defense to the frontiers.
Rumors of his expedition against Detroit put the British and
their allies on the defensive and served as a protection to the
settlements.

More success attended the efforts of Col. Arthur Campbell
in the Southwest. In January, 1781, he led an expedition into
the country of the Cherokees, who were preparing for fresh
hostilities. Their towns were destroyed, their fields ravaged,
several of their warriors were slain, and many others taken
prisoners. The two Carolinas inflicted similar blows on their
turbulent neighbors, and a peace necessary on both sides was
the consequence.

At the beginning of the year 1781 Virginia took the initial
step of devolving upon the United States the responsibility
for preserving order and peace in the territory acquired by
her across the Ohio.

Besides Virginia, Connecticut, Massachusetts and New
York put forth claims to the Western territory. Maryland,
thereupon, declared her unwillingness to sign the Articles of
Confederation without a surrender to the United States on the
part of Virginia and the other three of their claims to the
Western country. She contended that whatever was gained
by the war was in the nature of "a common estate to be granted
out on terms beneficial to all of the United States." Other
states took sides with Maryland, and on September 6, 1780,
Congress, through resolutions, expressed the hope that those
states which had claims to the Western country would make a
liberal surrender in favor of peace and Federal union.

Now, as a matter of fact, Virginia was the only one that

had any substance in her claim. She had conquered the country
and had it in actual possession by a line of forts commanded
by Virginia troops. The claims of Connecticut, Massachusetts
and New York were about as shadowy as they could
be; and when therefore Virginia agreed on January 2, 1781, to
yield all her right, title and claim to the lands northwest of the
Ohio, she made a real sacrifice in the interest of peace and
union. The claims of Massachusetts and Connecticut were
mere charter claims without actual possession, and the claims
of New York were based on old Indian treaties, which were of
no real importance. As to Maryland, her plea for the Union
was one originating only in jealousy of her neighbor, Virginia.
Maryland had done nothing to acquire the Northwest territory,
and by withholding her signature from the Articles of
Confederation she acted, to say the least, in no very patriotic
manner. And even if her course led to a "national sovereignty,"
so much commended by John Fiske, Herbert Adams,
and other writers, it was only incidental to the real motive
which governed her and she deserved no great credit for it.

As early as July 9, 1778, Virginia had ratified the Articles
of Confederation, which proposed the first written form of
government for the new nation, and later the General Assembly
offered to furnish land, free of cost, out of the territory
acquired by Clark to the Continental troops of such of the
Confederated States as had no lands appropriated to that
purpose.

Governor Jefferson heartily endorsed the resolutions surrendering
the Northwest Territory to the Union and was probably
the instigator of the measure. From the very first he had
stood by Clark in his plan of extending Virginia sovereignty
to the far West, and his eager patriotism sympathized with its
alienation to Congress for the common benefit of a Union
which his hopeful nature idealized.

Taking up the events in Eastern Virginia again, when
Cornwallis entered the state he found for his antagonist the
youthful LaFayette. He belonged to a noble family in France,

and was born in 1757, so that at this time he was 24 years of
age. In 1776, when 19 years of age, he was stationed on
duty at Metz as an officer in the French army, and it was
there that he first understood the merits of the American
struggle. His curiosity was deeply excited by what he heard,
and the idea of a people fighting for liberty had a strong
influence upon his imagination. He determined to go to
America and offer his services to the people who to him seemed
to be enlisted in a noble cause. On his intention becoming
known to the French Government, his departure was prohibited,
but, after failing in one attempt, he succeeded in quiting
France in the disguise of a courier, and with De Kalb
and other foreign officers he sailed to this country from the
Spanish port of Passage, in April, 1777. Congress made him
a Major-General and soon he became a warm friend of General
Washington. At Brandywine he fought his first engagement,
in 1777, and was wounded. He shared in the hardships of the
army at Valley Forge in the winter of 1778, and fought at
Monmouth and in Rhode Island in the same year.

In 1779 he returned to France, where his influence was
exerted to obtain the first French reenforcements for America,
under Rochambeau, and in 1780 he came again to the United
States. He was placed by Washington at the head of a select
body of troops, known as the Corps of Light Infantry. With
these troops he appeared as we have seen in Virginia and was
in Richmond at the time Cornwallis reached Petersburg.

The British had a formidable army comprising, inclusive
of the garrison at Portsmouth, 7,000 trained troops. To this
body LaFayette could only oppose the 900 men of the Light
Infantry and about 2,100 men of the militia, that being the
whole number that Governor Jefferson could fully arm until
the arrival of 1,100 stand of arms belonging to the state, from
Rhode Island. Very few days elapsed between the arrival
of Lord Cornwallis in Petersburg and the commencement of
his offensive operations. He crossed James River at Westover,
employing nearly three days in the transportation.

Three regiments under Leslie had just arrived from New
York; one of these joined Cornwallis and the other two were
ordered to Portsmouth, of which the defense was entrusted
to General Leslie. Arnold returned to New York, whence he
not long after led an expedition to devastate his native state
of Rhode Island. The object with Lord Cornwallis was to
bring LaFayette to an action and as LaFayette, with his much
inferior force, did not care for this, there occurred in Virginia
between LaFayette and Cornwallis a race similar to that which
occurred between Greene and Cornwallis in South and North
Carolina.

When Cornwallis crossed the James, LaFayette retired
from his position below Richmond across the Chickahominy
and advanced towards Fredericksburg to form a junction with
General Wayne, who had received orders from Congress many
weeks back to reenforce the Southern Army with his Pennsylvania
contingent, and now by order of General Greene was
placed under LaFayette in Virginia.

Twenty miles east of LaFayette, marched the British. On
the 27th they encamped near White Oak Swamp, and on the
28th they were at Bottom's Bridge on the Chickahominy. On
the 29th they reached New Castle on the Pamunky, and on the
30th they arrived at Hanover Court House. At Page's, the
present Hanover Town, and Aylett's Warehouse, a large
quantity of tobacco was destroyed. Cornwallis then pushed
on to the North Anna, encamped in the vicinity of Hanover
Junction on the 1st of June, and threw Tarleton and Simcoe
with their cavalry forward to ascertain LaFayette's position.

LaFayette had retreated rapidly and could not be overtaken.
On the 27th he encamped at Winston's Bridge on the
Chickahominy, twenty miles west of Bottom's Bridge, and
eight miles north of Richmond. From Winston's Bridge he
turned on the 28th to the left and marched to Dandridge's,
where Gold Mine Creek runs into the South Anna. On June
2, he was at Mattapony church in Spottsylvania County, and
on the 3rd he reached Corbin's Bridge on the Po in that county,

where he wrote to Morgan to move the Burgoyne prisoners
from the Shenandoah Valley into Maryland as soon as possible
as Cornwallis might attempt their rescue. Not long
before these prisoners had been removed from Charlottesville
to Winchester.

On the 4th, continuing his march through Spottsylvania,
LaFayette crossed the Rapidan at the well-known Ely's Ford,
twenty miles from Fredericksburg, and here Wayne was heard
from, marching down from the North to the Potomac. The
union was effected on the 10th of June, about twelve miles
south of Raccoon Ford, on the Rapidan.

Wayne's forces, organized since its mutiny in January,
consisted of three regiments, in all 1,000 men, commanded by
the brave and experienced Colonels Richard Butler, Walter
Stewart and Richard Humpton. Nine officers and 90 men,
with 6 field pieces from Proctor's Fourth Continental Artillery
completed the detachment. Like the troops of LaFayette, they
came to Virginia very unwillingly. Certain leaders among
them went so far as to manifest the old dangerous spirit of
insubordination, which called for and received prompt and
effective treatment. A drumhead court martial was held in
camp and seven of their number tried and executed.

On the retreat, LaFayette received a most important addition
to his number through Lieut.-Col. John Fenton Mercer,
who had served with distinction in the Northern Army, and
brought with him a troop of dragoons mounted and equipped
at their own expense, who served the valuable purpose of
observation. The need of such a body was strikingly manifested
after their arrival. Just before they came, LaFayette
was overtaken on the north side of Pamunkey River by a detachment
of the British light troops under Tarleton. He supposed
that the main body of the pursuing army was upon him,
and, with presentiments necessarily of a gloomy nature, he
drew up his little army in order of battle. The arrival of
Colonel Mercer soon enabled him to discover the true state of

things. Not a moment was lost, and LaFayette pushed on with
additional vigor and celerity.[26]

When Cornwallis reached the North Anna in the County of
Hanover, seeing that his pursuit was unavailing, he suddenly
altered his plan of operations. As he could not force a battle
he determined to do all the damage he could, and in the execution
of this design he sent out two considerable detachments
from his army. One of these amounted to 500 men, part of
the Queen's Rangers, Infantry and Cavalry, and part of
Yagers, placed under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Simcoe,
an officer of great activity and singular fitness for
strategem or surprise. The other detachment was placed
under the dashing Lieutenant-Colonel Tarleton, and consisted
of 180 cavalry of the Legion, and 70 mounted infantry of the
Third Regiment, headed by Captain Champagne.

The former of these commands was sent to the Point of
Fork, where the Fluvanna enters the James. At this place a
state arsenal had been established and military stores collected
for the aid of the Southern army in the Carolinas.
Baron Steuben had the protection of this important post, with
about 600 new levies, originally intended for the Southern
army. To this rendezvous the militia under General Lawson,
amounting to the same number almost, had been directed to
march.

Tarleton, on the other hand, received orders to surprise,
take or disperse the members of the General Assembly, then
convening at Charlottesville, and to seize on the person of
Governor Jefferson, who resided in the neighborhood. After
destroying all military stores and other resources likely to
enable the Americans to pursue the existing struggle, he was
to join Simcoe and assist his intended operations.

This double movement left Steuben's situation unusually
perilous. The want of cavalry rendered it a matter of extreme
difficulty to the Baron to obtain the correct information respecting

the British, but he became apprised of Tarleton's
rapid advance, and imagining himself the immediate object of
it, he lost no time in transporting his stores to the south side
of the Fluvanna, and followed them with the whole division
under his command.

Simcoe's main object was thus frustrated, but by advantageously
displaying his force on the heights opposite to
Steuben, and by making numerous fires, he induced the Baron
to believe that the whole British army was upon him. Retreating,
therefore, precipitately during the night, the Baron never
stopped until he had gone thirty miles from the Point of Fork,
abandoning to the British such stores as could not be removed.

The advance of Lieutenant-Colonel Tarleton on Charlottesville
was no less rapid than the movements of Simcoe. He took
the road to Louisa Court House on June 3rd and by 11 o'clock
at night he reached its neighborhood, where he stopped only
three hours. Resuming his march at 2 in the morning and
moving onward with his usual celerity, he soon captured twelve
wagons laden with clothing for the Southern army, which he
immediately burnt. Further on near Charlottesville, he
captured a number of gentlemen who had taken refuge in the
county from the lower country. The capture of these gentlemen
and the time required in parolling a part and placing the
rest under an escort entailed a delay, which, with another circumstance,
rendered his incursion of inconsiderable effect.

That circumstance was this: A private gentleman, John
Jouett, happened to be at the Cuckoo Tavern in Louisa when
the detachment under Tarleton passed along the main road.
Acquainted with every path and by-road, in that part of the
country, and mounted on a very fleet horse, Jouett hastened to
Charlottesville by a disused and shorter route, and made
known the approach of the British several hours before they
actually arrived. The speaker of the Assembly, Benjamin
Harrison, was dining with Mr. Jefferson at the time, and
warned by Jouett of the impending danger, he hastened to
Charlottesville and called the Assembly together, who

promptly met and adjourned to meet at Staunton, in the
County of Augusta, on the 7th of June. Most of the members,
hastening away, eluded Tarleton's grasp, but a few fell into
his hands, as well as some officers and soldiers, whom a laudable
desire to remove or otherwise secure the public stores
made unmindful of their personal safety.

Elated with his prospects, Tarleton, before reaching Charlottesville,
had detached McLeod to Monticello, the well-known
seat of Mr. Jefferson. Mr. Jefferson no longer was to be considered
as the governor of the State, since his constitutional
term of office had expired on June 1. He managed to move
his family in time, and McLeod after remaining about eighteen
hours, retired and rejoined Tarleton. Tarleton had given
strict orders that nothing at Monticello should be injured and
McLeod seems to have carried them out to the letter.[27]

It is too bad that this honorable regard for private property
was not persisted in by the British. Everywhere else
great excesses were committed and by an estimate made at
this time the State of Virginia lost through devastation of the
British during the six months previous to their surrender at
Yorktown property amounting in value to £3,000,000 sterling.
30,000 slaves were also lost during the British invasion, of
whom 27,000 are said to have died of smallpox and camp
fever. And yet these losses were nothing compared to the
depredations suffered by Virginia at a later time at the hands
of the troops of the United States in the war for Southern
independence.

Tarleton, rejoined by McLeod, recrossed the Rivanna and
proceeded towards the Point of Fork in compliance with his
instructions to rejoin Cornwallis and Simcoe. "Elk Hill,"
where his lordship was encamped, was one of the estates of Mr.
Jefferson, and during the four days of his stay he carried away
practically all the stock, growing crops of corn and tobacco,
and burned the fences and all the barns so as to leave it an
absolute waste.

On the other hand, the Marquis de LaFayette, having effected
his junction with General Wayne, lost no time in advancing
towards James River so as to throw himself between Lord
Cornwallis and Albermarle Old Court House, where great
quantities of supplies were stored. Reaching Mechunk Creek,
thirteen miles east of Charlottesville, he entrenched himself
in an impregnable position behind it, commanding the direct
route from the British camp to the Old Court House.

Here LaFayette was reenforced by 600 mountain riflemen
from Augusta and adjacent counties, under the command of
General William Campbell, of King's Mountain fame.

Interest centered now on the enemy's next move. The increasing
numbers of LaFayette's army appears to have impressed
Cornwallis with the danger of making any further
detachments, and it remained to be seen whether Cornwallis
would advance upon and engage LaFayette, or whether he
would turn back towards the coast.

All doubt upon these points was solved on the 15th when
Cornwallis broke camp at "Elk Hill," and faced eastward towards
Richmond. Here finally was a retrograde march by the
enemy, a favorable turn apparently for affairs in Virginia.
The American troops and people alike regarded it with relief
and satisfaction, and naturally construed the movement into
an admission on the part of Cornwallis that he had been disappointed
in failing to destroy all the magazines or finding a
loyal element in Virginia ready to support the king's authority
when established. The growing proportion of LaFayette's
forces was also supposed to have moderated his inclinations,
but, of course, Cornwallis had not suffered any defeat and he
still retained a decided superiority over his opponent in numbers
and equipment. Doubtless he supposed he had done all
the damage that was prudent at this time, and that it was the
part of wisdom now to retire to some station convenient on the
coast, where he might arrange further plans with the commander-in-chief,
Sir Henry Clinton, in New York. As he

moved eastward, Tarleton and Simcoe with their respective
detachments covered the flanks and rear of the army.

LaFayette followed, hanging upon Cornwallis' rear, but at
a safe distance, for his forces were still weak in quality compared
to the British regulars, and he could do little more than
watch and skirmish. His strength increased hourly, however,
as fresh accessions of riflemen swelled his numbers.

On the 16th of June, Lord Cornwallis entered Richmond
where his troops were allowed a few days repose. At this time
LaFayette was encamped on Allen's Creek, in Goochland
County, at a distance of only twenty-two miles from the main
hostile army. On the 17th, his camp was once more at Dandridge's
on the South Anna, in Hanover County, northwest of
Richmond, with detachments and patrols well thrown out towards
the enemy. One of these parties, 400 strong, under
Muhlenberg, tempted Tarleton who was posted at Meadow
Bridge on the Chickahominy, and on the 18th he made a forced
march to surprise them. Hearing of this, LaFayette dispatched
Wayne with the Pennsylvania troops and light infantry
to intercept him, but Tarleton missed Muhlenberg, who
retreated in time, and Wayne missed Tarleton, who had also
turned back.

On the 19th General Steuben with about 450 Virginia eighteen
months men joined LaFayette, increasing the American
force to 2,000 continental and 3,200 militia and riflemen. In
point of numbers, however, and efficiency, LaFayette was still
inferior to the British.

After a short halt in Richmond, on the 20th of June, Cornwallis
resumed his retrograde march moving directly towards
Williamsburg, his action having the appearance of neither
haste nor fear. LaFayette, who changed his camp every day,
continued to follow, his advance entering the town twenty
hours after the enemy had left.

It had now been a month since the arrival of Lord Cornwallis
in Petersburg. The immediate and obvious result was

almost wholly in his favor, and such had been the aspect of
things during the invasions of Leslie, Arnold and Phillips.

It was Mr. Jefferson's fortune to fill the executive office in
Virginia during the most perilous and disastrous period of the
Revolutionary War. In Continental affairs, north and south,
things appeared to be at the last ebb. There was a small northern
army under Washington and a small southern army under
Greene, and while the former was largely dependent upon supplies
from Virginia, the latter was dependent on her not only
for supplies but for recruits. The result was that practically
everything was sent out of the state men, cannon, powder,
bayonets and all other military equipment. This was done at
Washington's request and with his approval. Men drafted
for the regular regiments and considerable detachments of
militia were sent to the south, while hundreds of wagons conveying
provisions went the same way. While such exertions
were made to assist other states and to defend our eastern
borders, Virginia had also to oppose a powerful enemy on her
western frontier. The English and Indians by threats of attack
paralyzed the energies of the western counties.

Thus the state exhausted by her efforts to assist her sister
states, almost stripped of arms, without money, harassed on
on all sides with formidable invasions, became dissatisfied and
discouraged. It is natural that some people not informed
of the facts should hold Mr. Jefferson accountable. He
could not be blind to this, and at an early date expressed his
determination to decline a re-election when his second year
was out.

When Cornwallis invaded the state and forced the Legislature
to flee from Richmond to Charlottesville, and from Charlottesville
to Staunton, this discontent, and anxiety, it may be
said, to find a victim, took shape in a resolution of the House of
Delegates, offered by George Nicholas and adopted on June
12, 1781, that "an inquiry be made into the conduct of the
Executive of this State for the last twelve months." Some

talk was had of appointing Washington dictator, but this was
dropped, in face of the violent opposition which developed.

Mr. Jefferson would not offer for re-election and demanded
an inquiry, so in November of the next session, the House appointed
a committee consisting of John Banister, John Tyler,
George Nicholas, Turner Southall and Haynes Morgan, to
report to the House any charge against Mr. Jefferson, if any
could be found, and although Mr. George Nicholas, as has been
seen, was a member, the committee unanimously reported that
the rumors in question were "groundless," and thereupon on
December 19, 1781, the sincere thanks of the Senate and House,
constituting the General Assembly, were voted Mr. Jefferson
for his "impartial, upright and attentive administration of
the powers of the executive while in office."

John Tyler, a member of the committee, was made speaker
December 1, 1781, and when the committee reported, he voiced
the thanks of the Assembly to Mr. Jefferson, from the speaker's
chair, in a "warm and affectionate manner."[28]

As to Mr. Nicholas, he not only failed to press any charges,
but afterwards made a full retraction, and became one of the
stanchest and most efficient of Mr. Jefferson's band of devoted
personal and political friends.

In after years, the enemies of Mr. Jefferson were very fond
of recalling his resignation at this time as evidence of his
inefficiency or incapacity, making many ugly additions to the
story; but history affords many instances of popular clamor
demanding a victim in similar circumstances. Probably one
of the severest misfortunes which befell the South in the war
for Southern Independence was the removal of Gen. Joseph E.
Johnston from command of the army opposed to Sherman.
This was done reluctantly by President Davis to satisfy a
senseless public clamor which threatened serious consequences.

During 1780, the depression was so great in continental
affairs that there were many criticisms of Washington, and
some looked around for a successor.

The matter of Mr. Jefferson's resignation would not be
considered further except for a criticism of Dr. H. J. Eckenrode,
in his Virginia in the Revolution. This criticism, unlike
those of so many who have given no real study to the matter, is
worthy of special notice, because Dr. Eckenrode is a scholar
and thinker, who clothes himself with an air of fairness that
gives weight to his language. Thus he admits that Mr. Jefferson
had an exceptionally difficult position to fill and rejects
with contempt the malicious charge brought by Goldwin Smith
of a lack of bravery on the part of Jefferson. He recognizes
the geographical weakness of the state, which enabled an
enemy having a superior naval force to strike almost anywhere
by means of the great rivers and navigable creeks which
penetrated the country. He recognizes the difficulty of having
to contend with a currency which about this time had dreadfully
depreciated, and he even says that "few more conscientious
and industrious executives than Jefferson ever lived."
Nevertheless he proceeds to charge, what is not exactly in
harmony with these admissions, that "Jefferson did not do all
that an able and tactful man might have done to prepare for
invasion." His grounds for this decision appear to be as follows:

1. Mr. Jefferson should have pleaded with the Legislature
for a "stronger policy" and caused them to remedy the
confusion which reigned in all the departments, but Dr. Eckenrode
gives himself the answer to this complaint. "Perhaps
the evils were too great to be remedied," and he further says
that "it would have been a great, perhaps an impossible task
to provide an adequate defense for the state." Now why
should Jefferson have attempted to do something which Dr.
Eckenrode regards as "perhaps impossible?" The lack of
system prevailed in all the other states and in continental matters
as much as it did in Virginia. It was unfair to put on

Jefferson the blame of constitutional and legislative defects
for which he was in nowise responsible.

2. The next objection of Dr. Eckenrode seems to consist
in Jefferson's not providing "a small well-trained force" for
the defense of the state in preference to the militia. Calling
out the militia for short terms was not only a very expensive
mode of providing defense, but a very precarious and unsatisfactory
one. That was true, but the answer to this is evident.
The treasury being raided by all sorts of demands, was always
in a depleted condition, and no adequate force could have been
kept up, without the willingness of the legislature to provide
the means. The accessibility of the state to invasion would
have required a very large force to have been of any protection
whatever against such sudden attacks as were made by
the British. The only real defense would have been a superior
naval force which would have prevented the ubiquity of attack
that the rivers and creeks of the Commonwealth rendered
possible. This geographical weakness of the state to provide
against sudden inroads was as much admitted[29] by Gen.
Thomas Nelson when governor as by Jefferson. If Jefferson
abdicated his duty as an executive, as Dr. Eckenrode seems
to think, it is very evident that he had in mind the treasury,
which was the special duty of the legislature, not the governor,
to keep intact. Moreover, policy had to be considered. Hatred
of a standing army and faith in the militia amounted with the
people of Virginia to principles inherited from past experience
with governmental tyranny. They long prevailed in the politics
of the State.

3. As to the next objection of Dr. Eckenrode that Jefferson
"lacked the quality of assuming responsibility in a crisis"
and in fact was not autocratic enough, it may be answered
that Jefferson had taken an oath to support the constitution,
and this constitution associated with him in the administration
of affairs both the council and the legislature. Now I do not
suppose that Dr. Eckenrode would have wished Mr. Jefferson

to play Napoleon, but he fails to make clear to any degree
how far he wanted Mr. Jefferson to go in ignoring these factors
in the government. Jefferson himself justified an assumption
of power when a mere form was considered, and
his administration shows that he did repeatedly assume authority
when such was the case. Indeed, it is rather amusing
to see him condemned by Dr. Eckenrode for not exceeding his
power as governor and by Federalistic writers, like Henry
Adams, for exceeding his powers as president.

4. Finally Dr. Eckenrode claims that in the great danger
threatening the state under invasion, Jefferson should have
stopped sending supplies and men to the Southern army and
saved them for the state of which he was governor. But
the answer to this is that in acting as he did he obeyed the
wishes of the commander-in-chief, General Washington. Governor
Jefferson understood perfectly the danger to which his
own state was exposed, but what was he to do when the Commander-in-chief
of the army made imperative his duty of
providing for Greene's battalions?

In a letter to Governor Jefferson, dated February 6, 1781,
Washington wrote:

And in a letter to Baron Steuben, then in military command
in Virginia, dated February 20, 1781, Washington used
the following language:

These letters were written while Arnold was in Virginia with
his army entrenched at Portsmouth.

It is to be observed that General Washington based his
habitual advice to the Virginia Executive on two grounds.
One was that "the common cause" demanded every sacrifice
ahead of any special interests, and the second was that
after all the immediate safety and policy of Virginia required
her to spend her last effort "to keep the weight of the war at a
distance from her."

The comparative feebleness of the states to the south of
Virginia doubtless gave rise to Washington's belief that without
aid from somewhere they could be made subject permanently
to the British, but the actual subjugation of Virginia,
so strong and united, was a consequence only remotely to be
considered. Mere incursions, or invasions by the British,

marching about from one place to another without actually
securing what they had taken possession of, never could result
in a conquest of the "Old Dominion."[30]

At the session at Staunton, General Thomas Nelson, Jr.,
was elected governor of the State. He had all along under
Henry and Jefferson practically the control of the militia,
and his elevation to the governorship did not make much
material change in his authority. Obedient, however, to the
voices of complaint he exercised without stint the power
vested not in him alone, but in him and his council, of impressing
provisions and equipment for the French and American
armies, who soon arrived to besiege the British at Yorktown.
But though he appears to have been successful, it was often
regrettably at the price of the liberty of the citizen and the
encouragement of a host of pillagers in the shape of "many
continental officers, soldiers, commissaries, quartermasters,
and other persons," making a pretense of authority.[31] Indeed,
despite his disinterested and patriotic purposes, it was probably
a fortunate thing that General Nelson's ill health compelled
his resignation only a few months after his election;
otherwise he might have been overwhelmed with the resentments
of the people.

How far others were affected by Nelson's disregard for
the law was shown by the actions of General Wayne and his
Pennsylvania troops, who were almost as bad as the British
in plundering private property and taking to themselves supplies
intended for the Virginia militia. Nelson was compelled

to address a letter to LaFayette bitterly complaining of this
piratical conduct.[32]

But to return to the American army which we left several
pages back following Cornwallis and his army down the Williamsburg
Peninsula, LaFayette's army at this date was
composed of about 4,500 men, divided as follows: the continental
soldiers, 1,550 men, consisting of the New England light
infantry under Muhlenberg and the Pennsylvania line under
Wayne; three Virginia brigades, commanded by General
Edward Stevens, 650 men, Gen. Thomas Lawson, 750 men,
Gen. William Campbell, 780 men; and a Virginia continental
regiment of 18 months men commanded at the time by
Col. Christian Febiger, but generally by Lieutenant-Colonel
Thomas Gaskins, 425 men. The artillery detachment from the
Second and Fourth Continental Regiment was 200 strong, with
8 or 10 guns. The regular cavalry was represented by only
about 120 horsemen, including volunteer dragoons.

The retirement of Cornwallis was marked by a skirmish
which occurred at Spencer's Ordinary, near Williamsburg, on
the 26th of June. On the day before, Simcoe's rangers had
been collecting cattle and burning stores in the country and
LaFayette dispatched some 50 of the light infantry on horseback
behind as many dragoons to cut him off from Williamsburg,
where Cornwallis had arrived on June 25th. A brief
hand to hand cavalry skirmish ensued, in which the loss on
each side was about 30.

During the 10 days of his stay in Williamsburg Cornwallis
did not appear improved in his conduct. If we may believe St.
George Tucker, a lieutenant-colonel of militia and a resident of
the city, "pestilence and famine took root and poverty brought
up the rear. The British plundered the houses and scattered
smallpox everywhere they went." Lord Cornwallis turned
Mr. Madison, the president of the College and his family out of
their house, and forbade them to get water from their own

well, but happily the College afforded them a dwelling until
his lordship departed.[33]

To add to the catalogue of mortifications, the British constrained
all the inhabitants of the town to take paroles which,
because it made the takers subject to the penalties of treason,
had been found by experience to have a weakening effect upon
the allegiance of the citizens. Jefferson during his term of
office as governor had found it necessary to meet this policy
of the British by a proclamation that such paroles had no
binding effect upon the people and would not be respected
by him.

July 4, 1781, Cornwallis left Williamsburg and proceeded
to Portsmouth by way of Jamestown. On the way to the latter
place, he was attacked by the Americans under LaFayette at
the "Church on the Main," near Green Spring but the assailants
were driven back with considerable loss. Afterwards,
Cornwallis, under orders from Sir Henry Clinton at New
York, transported his troops from Portsmouth by water to
Yorktown and threw up intrenchments. Here he fell a victim
to the strategy of General Washington and the combined power
of America and France. LaFayette, who commanded the
American troops in Virginia, watched him at a safe distance,
and on September 6, his army, reinforced by 3,000 men, under
General St. Simon from the French fleet under Count de
Grasse, lay in small detachments encamped on the road from
Green Spring to the "half-way house," six miles from Yorktown.
General Washington's army was at the head of the
Chesapeake Bay, preparing to move by water, and the commander-in-chief
and General Rochambeau were on the way by
land, in advance of their troops.

September 15, Colonel St. George Tucker wrote as follows:

September 22, the army of General Washington arrived at
Jamestown and camped on the banks of the river. September
27 they marched through the city of Williamsburg, and Dr.
James Thacher, a surgeon, gave this account of his impressions
of the place:

After camping for the night three-quarters of a mile east
of Williamsburg, (near Fort Magruder), the combined armies
took up their march, Sept. 28th to Yorktown, and about noon
the heads of the columns reached their respective stations.
The French corps consisting of about 7000 men, extending
from the banks of the river on the west of Yorktown to Beaverdam
Creek, began the investment. The next day the American
army completed the investment by occupying the space
between the east side of Beaverdam Creek and the banks of the
river below the town. On the west side of the river opposite to
Yorktown 3000 men were stationed under the command of
General de Choisy.

Gen. Nelson was present at the siege with 3500 Virginia
militia.

On October 19, occurred the surrender of the British,
which practically terminated hostilities in America. Succeeding
this the larger part of the American troops were returned
to New York, and the remainder sent to reinforce General
Greene in the South. These included the Pennsylvania troops
under Wayne who disgraced themselves by another mutiny
after reaching South Carolina. Most of the French marched
to Williamsburg, where they encamped at the Rock Spring,
north of the city, the headquarters of the Count de Rochambeau
being in the city at the Wythe house, previously the headquarters
of General Washington. A large French garrison
remained at Yorktown to protect the stores there, and when the
French army departed in the summer of 1782 their place was
taken by Virginia militia.

Governor Nelson, who had been in bad health a long time,
resigned his office on November 29, 1781, and was succeeded
by Benjamin Harrison, of Berkeley, in Charles City County;

but before this time the feeling of dissatisfaction in the state
against Nelson's enforcement of the act allowing impressments
made itself heard. On November 23rd, the inhabitants
of the County of Frederick presented a petition to the House
complaining of the oppressiveness of the present mode of
impress and praying for the repeal of the act.

This was followed on December 10th, after the resignation
of Nelson, by a petition and remonstrance from the people of
Prince William County "against the action of the late governor
in assuming a dispensing power over the laws, disregarding
their necessary and proper restraints and authorizing impresses,
without the authority of the Council." The revulsion
was so great that while the legislature passed an act
indemnifying Nelson, they repealed the laws on impress and
embargo, and refused to re-enact the law permitting the governor
to send the militia out of the State.

The disgust felt in Virginia with Congress was profound.
Had not Virginia fed the French and Northern armies in Virginia
they would have starved, and the same thing was true of
Greene's army. Writing to General Greene, January 21, 1782,
Governor Harrison said: "It has been a matter of wonder
and indignant surprise to me that Congress and its ministers
have not taken the same measures for supplying your army
that they have taken in every State to the northward, that is
by contract. With us they depend on the State for everything,
though they know it can only be obtained by force; they even
refuse to give us credit for what they have obtained but insist
on our full quota being paid into the treasury. It is this kind
of partial conduct which is the cause of your distresses, and
they will in the end, if not amended, be attended with ruin
to both you and us." In another letter of the same date addressed
to the President of Congress, Harrison wrote: "I
hope the Honorable Congress will excuse me for requesting
their attention to their officers and men now in this State, not
one of which has ever received for the support of himself or
his Department but what has come from this State."[37]

Hostilities with the Indians continued in the West. Bryan's
Station in Kentucky was attacked and several men were killed
and much stock destroyed. One hundred and eighty-two men
of Lincoln and Fayette Counties, commanded by Colonel John
Todd and Lt. Col. Stephen Trigg, followed them and a battle
ensued August 19, 1782, at the Blue Licks with the Shawanese,
supposed to number 600. The whites were completely defeated
with a loss of seventy-five men, including their two gallant
leaders, and many other officers of approved valor and experience.
This ill success spread dismay throughout all the frontiers,
but confidence was restored when a week later Col.
Benjamin Logan, with 500 men from Lincoln County, marched
to the battle ground and found the enemy departed.

In the East Harrison's hopes of speedily filling Virginia's
quota in the Continental army suffered a great disappointment.
Despite dissatisfaction with Congress, the exhaustion
resulting from the war and the feeling of confidence after the
surrender at Yorktown that the war had practically ceased,
the Virginia legislature proceeded by legislative act to fill its
continental quota of troops with 3,000 men, who were to be
induced to enlist for two years or the war by the usual bounty
of $750 and 300 acres of land, the highest offered in any of
the States. Governor Harrison wrote cheerfully to Greene
that he had every reason to believe that the movement for
enlistments would prove a success. But some of the old Continental
veterans, whose terms had expired, appeared about
this time in the State in such a ragged condition that they resembled
more scarecrows than men. Their appearance was
a melancholy criticism on Congress which had the care of
them in the field. Harrison wrote that the clothes of 24 veterans
were so tattered that they could have been put in one
small bag. Men shrunk from volunteering with such wrecks of
war before them, but fortunately soon after, in December, 1782,
came the news of the signing of the provisional articles of a
treaty of peace at Paris November 30, 1782, and on April 23,
1783, the Continental Army was furloughed and allowed to
go home.

On September 3, 1783, the definitive treaty of peace was
formally signed.

Before this time Governor Harrison on April 23, 1783, in
pursuance of a declaration of the Continental Congress, issued
a proclamation for the cessation of hostilities within the State.
He communicated his proclamation to the mayors of the different
towns, and on May 1, 1783, American Independence was
duly celebrated in the City of Williamsburg, where it had its
birth with the adoption of Patrick Henry's resolutions against
the Stamp Act, May 30, 1765:

Governor Benjamin Harrison to the Mayor of Williamsburg

It gives me pleasure to have it in my power to congratulate
you on the important event of a general peace and
American independence as announced in the inclosed proclamation
of Congress, & I have to request that you will cause
the said proclamation, together with the one issued by me
for the strict observance of it, publicly read in your city.

I am, sir,

(On the inside of this letter is written in another hand the
"Order of the Procession on the Great Day," as below.)

Order of the Procession on the Great Day, Thursday,
May 1st.

1st Two attendants, in front, supporting two staffs, decorated
with Ribbons, &c, &c.

2d The Herald mounted on a Gelding neatly Caparisoned.

3d Two Attendants, as at first.

4th Sergeant bearing the mace.

5th Mayor, Recorder, with Charter.

6th Clerk, Behind, carry the Plan of the City.

7th Aldermen, two and two.

8th Common Council, in the same order.

9th The Citizens in the same order.

The Citizens to be convened on Thursday at 1 o'clock at
the Court House by a Bell man.

After the convention of the citizens they are to make proclamation
at the C. House, after which the Bells at the Church,
College & Capitol are to ring in peal.

From the Ct House the Citizens are to proceed to the College,
and make proclamation at that place, from whence they
are to proceed to the Capitol and make proclamation there;
and from thence Proceed to the Raleigh & pass the rest of
the Day.

CHAPTER IV

CONTRIBUTIONS OF VIRGINIA TO THE AMERICAN
REVOLUTION

To what extent did Virginia contribute to the success of
the American Revolution?

(1) The Officers.

To have contributed Washington to the cause of independence
was almost glory enough for one state, but besides the
commander-in-chief of the American army, three of the major-generals
appointed by Congress claimed Virginia as their
residence, though only one of the three can be considered in
any way identified with the state. Charles Lee and Horatio
Gates, formerly British army officers, lived in Berkeley County,
Virginia, in that part now Jefferson County, West Virginia,
and Adam Stephen, the third major-general, lived in the same
neighborhood. All three fell into discredit. Lee was dismissed
for his conduct at Monmouth; Gates was suspended
after his defeat at Camden; and Stephen, the only native, a
brave officer, was cashiered for drunkenness at the battle of
Germantown. The fault was a venial one, and General
Stephen, who had served gallantly, retained the respect of his
countrymen, who made him a member of the Convention of
1788, and conferred upon him other trusted positions.

The honor roll of the state is found not in its major-generals
but in its brigadier generals and colonels. Of the former
were Daniel Morgan, who lead the first body of Southern
troops to join Washington before Boston, fought his way into
Quebec to be captured through the failure of the supporting

column, twice turned the tide at Saratoga, and finally after a
tardy promotion to the grade of brigadier, routed the dread
Tarleton at Cowpens in one of the most brilliant engagements
of the war; Peter Muhlenberg, who lead a German regiment
from the valley of Virginia to the relief of Charleston,
in 1776, commanded a brigade at Brandywine, Germantown,
Monmouth, Stony Point, and Yorktown; Hugh Mercer, whose
brigade formed the attacking column at Trenton and at Princeton,
and who died of his wounds a few days later, lamented
by the entire army; George Weedon, who commanded a brigade
at Brandywine and Germantown; William Woodford,
who commanded the Virginia militia at the Great Bridge,
where he scored a remarkable success and led a Virginia brigade
at Brandywine, Germantown and Monmouth; Charles
Scott, who commanded a Virginia regiment at Trenton and
Stony Point, and was the last to leave the field at Monmouth,
when Charles Lee retreated; Edward Stevens, whose regiment
checked the British advance at Brandywine, who served
with distinction at Germantown, and commanded the Virginia
militia at Guildford Court House, where he contested the battle
with the British regulars; Robert Lawson, who shared with
Stevens the glory of the obstinate fight of the Virginia militia
at Guilford Court House and afterwards distinguished himself
in opposing Cornwallis in Virginia; William Campbell,
who commanded a corps of 400 Virginians at King's Mountain,
was chosen by the other officers as chief, and led in that attack
on Colonel Ferguson and his Tory army; George Rogers
Clark, whose conquest of the Northwest and ability as an Indian
fighter secured to him the reputation of being one of the
most remarkable men of the Revolution; and Governor
Thomas Nelson, Jr., who commanded a part of the Virginia
militia during most of the Revolution and all of it in arms in
the Yorktown campaign, when he was governor. Besides
serving as brigadier generals in the Virginia line, Stevens
and Lawson served as colonels in the continental line, and
later received commissions from Virginia as brigadiers of
militia.[38]

In like distinction, though of lower rank, were Colonel
Henry Lee, otherwise "Light Horse Harry," whose "legion"
rendered brilliant services North and South, and to whom
General Greene wrote: "No man in the progress of the campaign
had equal merit with yourself nor is there one so represented."[39] Next to Henry Lee in the effectiveness of his service
was Col. William Washington, who had a hand to hand fight
with Col. Tarleton and was finally taken prisoner at Eutaw
Springs. Then mention should be made of Theodoric Bland
and George Baylor, who served as colonels of cavalry, and
of Colonel Charles Harrison, who was commander of the first
continental artillery. No other state could present such a
galaxy of brilliant officers.

Besides these officers in the army, Virginia led in giving
to the Union the most brilliant and successful admiral of
the navy, John Paul Jones, who though born in Scotland,
claimed Virginia as his home and received from the Governor a
land grant as a citizen; and Richard Dale, first lieutenant of
the Bon Homme Richard, and afterwards a commodore.
Among the officers of the Virginia navy who distinguished
themselves were James Barron, Richard Barron, his brother,
Captain Joseph Meredith, who commanded the privateer
LaFayette, and William Cunningham, first lieutenant of the
brig Liberty, which Paulin says "saw more service than any
other State or Continental vessel of the Revolution, being in
the employ of Virginia from 1775 to 1787."[40] James Barron
performed a signal service in April, 1776, when he captured
a boat with dispatches from Lord Dartmouth, which discovered
the whole plan of British operations under Sir Henry Clinton
and Sir Peter Parker against Charleston.

John Paul Jones

(2) Soldiers.

(a) Extent of the services performed:

The Virginia troops fought over a wider area and further
from home than those of any other state. They served in every
part of the country from Quebec to Savannah and from Boston
to Kaskaskia and Vincennes. The only Northern troops that
crossed the North Carolina line during the war was a contingent
of Pennsylvanians under Wayne and St. Clair. They
had mutinied in the North, and they mutinied in the South.

(b) Military Service—The Army.

In the two branches of the army in which the Americans
had naturally greater opportunities than the British, the rifle
service and cavalry, Virginia was more prominent than any
other state. Morgan's riflemen were the first Continental troops
to go to the assistance of General Washington before Boston.
Later, these riflemen, under their captain, Daniel Morgan,
led the advance of Arnold's army through the wilderness of
Maine to the siege of Quebec. The riflemen of Virginia largely
determined the results of the battles of Saratoga, Cowpens,
and Guildford Court House, and the victory of King's Mountain
was one which they shared with their brethren of North
Carolina and South Carolina. The commanding officer there
was Colonel William Campbell, of Virginia.

The plan pursued by Morgan in the use of his riflemen consisted
in throwing forward a line of expert marksmen and with
the rest assailing the flanks of the enemy. This was the plan
afterwards adopted in the South by General Greene, who was
an excellent officer, but inferior in genius and dash to Morgan.
Nor must we forget the heroic achievements on the frontier of
the riflemen of Virginia under the lead of Christian, Clark,
Todd, Bowman, Logan and Montgomery.

In respect to the cavalry, Virginia was no less pre-eminent.
Congress established in 1777 four cavalry regiments, of which
two were from Virginia, commanded by Colonels Theodoric
Bland and George Baylor. This arm of the service, which
Morgan denominated the "eyes of the infantry," performed
a useful part in the campaign in the Jerseys and Pennsylvania

in 1778. During the campaign of the previous year many of
the disasters befalling the American troops were attributed
to this deficiency in the army. The Virginia regiments were
known as "the Virginia horse," and were lauded by Mr. J.
Fenimore Cooper in his novel, The Spy. At the battle of
Brandywine Washington's bodyguard was composed of a
company of Bland's cavalry commanded by Captain Henry
Lee, afterwards known as "Light Horse Harry." Subsequently
Major Lee's command was detached from the regiment
of Colonel Theodoric Bland and made into a separate partisan
corps. The corps consisted of three companies of cavalry, and
in 1779 it was increased by the addition of a body of infantry,
and the whole became known as "Lee's Legion."

The use of cavalry was even more extensive in the Southern
campaigns towards the end of the war. The remains of
Bland's and Baylor's troopers were ordered South in 1779,
and about 100 in number came under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel
William Washington.

Not long afterwards, Colonel Lee and his legion was
marched to the South, and in the fighting under Greene, the Virginia
cavalry shared with the Virginia riflemen in achieving
much of the best results of the Southern war. The battle of
King's Mountain was one in which the most perfect display
was made of the features in which the Americans had the advantage
of the British. As cavalry the Americans performed
the feat of cutting Ferguson off from Cornwallis, and as dismounted
riflemen of capturing or destroying all of Ferguson's
command. At the Cowpens the cavalry performed a valuable
service and in the long race between Cornwallis and Greene to
Virginia the legion of Henry Lee had the honor to be stationed
in the rear of Greene's army, and in the immediate front of
the enemy. In this position they drove back the dragoons of
Tarleton and enabled Greene to gain without loss the friendly
shores of the Dan and the protection of Virginia. So in the
battle of Guildford Court House, Eutaw Springs and other
battles in South Carolina, the Virginia cavalry and riflemen

were ever active and efficient. In Virginia we have seen how
valuable Major John Fenton Mercer's small body of horse
was to LaFayette's army.

In respect to the infantry, the heroism of the Virginians
was displayed both North and South. In the battles of Trenton,
Princeton, Germantown and Monmouth, Virginia troops
bore the brunt of the fighting. Notable was the Third Virginia
Regiment, commanded successively by Colonels Hugh Mercer,
George Weedon and Thomas Marshall. September 16, 1776,
three companies of the Second Virginia, commanded by Col.
Leitch, led in the attack on Harlaem Heights, and of the eight
companies of the Light Infantry which constituted the assaulting
column at Stony Point, July 15, 1779, five companies were
Virginians. The capture of Paulus Hook by Major Henry
Lee was one of the most brilliant events of the war.

The state militia, though generally poorly equipped, performed
many brilliant exploits. In Virginia the engagements
at the Great Bridge and Gwynn's Island were marked by much
gallant fighting. In the South, though at Camden the Virginia
militia fled before the British veterans in the disastrous battle
of that name, the disgrace of their flight was thoroughly wiped
out by their subsequent noble behavior.[41] At the battle of the
Cowpens, the Virginia militia under Captains Tate and Triplett,
distinguished themselves for their intrepidity, and at the
battle of Guildford Court House, under Generals Stevens and
Lawson, they disputed the ground inch by inch with two of
the best regiments of British regulars, commanded by Webster,
the most daring officer in the British army. Unlike the
militia at Bunker Hill, they stood in the open without the protection
of breast works.

Virginia furnished one-third at least of the garrison at
Charleston, which surrendered; one-third of the army under
Gates at Camden; the leader (Col. Campbell), and one-third
of the conquerors at King's Mountain; the commander (Gen.

Morgan), and one-third of the army at the Cowpens; one-half
of the army at Guilford Court House; and one-third the continental
troops who liberated Carolina at the battle of Eutaw
Springs. No wonder that Colonel Harry Lee, with pardonable
pride, called Virginia the "fountain of Southern resistance."
"The great re-enforcements," wrote Cornwallis to Germain,
"sent by Virginia to Gen. Greene while Arnold was in the
Chesapeake, are convincing proofs that small expeditions do
not frighten that powerful province." And on the third day
after the battle of Guildford Court House Greene wrote to
Washington: "Virginia has given me every support I could
wish." In a letter to General Greene dated August 30, 1782,
Governor Benjamin Harrison wrote: "No country in the
Union has been more prodigal of its blood and money than
Virginia nor has any one had more men in the field till the
fall of Charles Town, or endeavor'd more both before and
since to keep their Battalions full, all the Acts of Assembly on
the Subject except May last prove it. A great number have
been raised by most extravagant Bounties, that have marched
and countermarched thro' this country till most of them have
been lost either by Death or Desertion, the latter chiefly occasion'd
by the want of cloths, which is not in the States power
to procure, their ports being all shut up and Trade at an end;
had the other States done by us as we did by them when in
similar circumstances, I trust no complaints would have been
heard."[42]

(c) Military Service—The Navy.

With the exception of New Jersey and Delaware, each of
the thirteen original states during the Revolution owned one
or more armed vessels. Massachusetts, Connecticut, Pennsylvania,
Virginia and South Carolina had the largest fleets.
Virginia had more ships than any of the states. She had at
one period of the war as many as 73 vessels, including frigates,
brigantines, schooners, sloops, galleys, armed pilot boats and
barges. They were as a rule poorly manned and equipped,

but they were of much service to the American cause. They
not only kept Chesapeake Bay clear of New York privateering
vessels, manned by Tories, but were useful in making
prizes of British merchantmen and in exporting tobacco and
other produce and exchanging their cargoes in the West Indies
for arms and military stores. The navy was under the control
of a Board of Naval Commissioners, consisting of five persons,
and no member of the Board could sit in the Legislature or
hold a military office. Thomas Whiting, of Hampton, served
as first commissioner of the Board, until 1779, when it was
abolished and the duties of the Board devolved on the Army
Board. When the Army Board was abolished in 1780 a commissioner
assumed the duties for the Navy.

Vessels were chiefly built at the Nansemond, Chickahominy,
South Quay and Gosport Navy Yards. "No other state
owned so much land, property and manufacturings devoted
to naval purposes as Virginia."[43] Before the Revolution the
British had established a marine yard at Portsmouth, and
named it for Gosport, England, and this yard Virginia came
into possession of at the beginning of the Revolution. It
was destroyed, as we have seen, in Collier's invasion during
Governor Henry's administration. At Warwick, on the James,
a few miles below Richmond, the state created and operated
a rope walk and a foundry. James Maxwell was superintendent
of the shipyards and the building and repairing of naval
vessels. The first commodore of the Virginia navy was John
Henry Boucher, who had served as lieutenant in the Maryland
navy. In March, 1776, Virginia called him to the command
of her Potomac fleet. He served a few months and
resigned, and was succeeded by Walter Brooke, who served
from April, 1777, until September, 1778. Brooke's successor,
James Barron, was not appointed until July, 1780. He was
commodore until the end of the war. There were about 600
men employed in the Naval Service.

When Collier made his raid in Virginia in 1779, he not

only destroyed the shipyard at Gosport, but burnt 137 vessels
of all kinds. Then came the invasions of Arnold and
Phillips, during 1781. Twelve vessels composed the state
fleet and one-half dozen or more privateers were taken into
the service of the state. On April 22nd, the British destroyed
the navy yard on the Chickahominy, including a number of
naval craft and the warehouses, and on April 27th, at Osborne's
up James River, they destroyed all that was left of the State
Navy except the armed brig Liberty.[44] Undismayed the Virginia
legislature, however, ordered other vessels to be built.

(d) Number of Soldiers.

It is frequently claimed that New England furnished more
troops than all the other states combined, and that Massachusetts
sent to the front more than double the number furnished
by any other state. By merely adding up the yearly returns
of the Continental army as given by General Knox in his report
prepared for Congress in 1790, when he was Secretary of
War, Massachusetts historians have figured out that their
state furnished a total of 67,907 men to the Continental line,
and Virginia 26,672.[45]

A careful analysis of Knox's figures will show that they
are of very little value in estimating the military weight of
any state during the Revolution. The 16,444 men credited to
Massachusetts in 1775 were not regularly organized continentals
but militia on continental pay, whose term expired in December
of that year. The 13,372 men credited to the same state
for 1776, likewise included militia on continental pay, whose
term expired at the end of the year. Then the continentals
credited to Massachusetts in 1781, 3,732 men, were enlisted for
only four months. After the surrender at Yorktown there
was no further fighting in the North and the Northern army
was furloughed and sent home in April, 1783, therefore, the

Massachusetts continentals for the years 1782 and 1783 may
be properly ignored in any estimate of her fighting force. The
troops for these years numbered 4,423 for 1782, and 4,370 for
1783, or 8,793 for the two years.

Here then is a deduction of fully 42,341 to be made from
the Massachusetts total of continental troops if Knox's estimates
are to have any serious weight at all. This then leaves
25,566 men who actually took part in the fighting line. The
state of Virginia had a total of 1,833 men during 1782 and 1783,
which subtracted from the total according to Knox of 26,672,
leaves her 24,839, but a portion of her troops, about 1,000 men,
in 1782 and 1783 saw serious fighting with Greene in South
Carolina and Georgia.

Moreover, Virginia should be given credit of at least one
year for the continental troops, taken prisoners by the British
at Fort Washington, Germantown and Charleston, about 2,500
in number. Had they not been captured they would have appeared
in Knox's report as an addition to the figures for Virginia.

But even the figures for Massachusetts reduced as above
cannot be accepted as any true estimate of her military contributions.
Thus, on February 10, 1776, Washington wrote:
"So far from having an army of 20,000 men all armed, I have
here less than half that number, including sick, furloughed, and
on command, and those neither armed nor clothed as they
should be." Here then less than 10,000 New Englanders comprised
Washington's army, but Knox credited the New England
states with furnishing 23,579 men for the year 1776.
When the seat of war was transferred to the Hudson, many
of the New England troops accompanied Washington and
served during a part of the campaign in New Jersey. In the
fall of 1776, their number amounted to about 9,500,[46] but very
few of them would consent to re-enlist when their terms expired.
Washington was reduced to great straits, and in a
letter to the president of Congress, dated December 24th,

1776, he said: "By the departure of these regiments I have
been left with five from Virginia, Smallwood's from Maryland,
a small part of Rawling's (Maryland and Virginia Rifles),
Hand's from Pennsylvania, a part of Ward's from Connecticut,
and the German battalion, amounting in the whole at this
time to some 1,400 to 1,500 effective men." The Virginians
constituted the large majority of these troops and without
them the American cause would have gone under. The gaps
in the ranks had not been filled as late as April 13, 1777, when
John Taylor, of Carolina, wrote his uncle-in-law, Edmund Pendleton,
from Princeton, that the army consisted of not more
than 2,000 men, "scattered over the whole Jerseys," that the
Northern troops were mostly "foreigners, really mercenaries,
having no attachment to the country," that "desertions from
our army are to the last degree alarming, some companies
having lost thirty odd men; of these many go to the enemy."

After 1776 the policy of Congress was to enlist the troops
for three years or the war. Virginia conformed to the wish of
Congress and New England did not. In those colonies, the
continental troops were enlisted for short terms—1, 3, 6
and 9 months, so that in New England the same troops were
often enlisted three and even four times during the same year,
and therefore were counted several times in the year. The
eternal ebb and flow of men from New England, who went and
came every day, rendered it impossible to have either a regiment
or a company from these states complete. This is shown
by an "Abstract of Musterrolls" by Deputy Muster-Master,
William Bradford, Jr., preserved in the Pennsylvania Historical
Society, according to which the regiments of New England
in July, 1778, were very meagerly represented. In that month
Massachusetts had, as a matter of fact, only 2,642 men in
Washington's army, compared with the 4,891 soldiers reported
from Virginia.[47] The comparison of the figures in Knox's
report with the actual returns at any time is almost ridiculous.

Thus by a return of the whole army under Washington's
immediate command, made on the 3rd of June, 1780, there did
not appear to be present and fit for duty more than 3,760
men rank and file. These consisted mainly of the troops from
the North—the troops from Virginia, Maryland and Delaware
(though not all of them) having been sent South—but Knox
credits the Northern States with contributing upwards of
16,149 soldiers during the year.

Besides this quota of regiments supplied by the State,
other commands, raised mostly or wholly in Virginia, served
in the Continental army, but being Congressional forces pure
and simple are not accredited to the State. Such were Nathaniel
Gist's, Grayson's, and Thruston's regiments of infantry,
Moses Rawlings' rifle companies, Harrison's artillery,
Bland's and Baylor's dragoons and Lee's and Armand's legions.
Of these commands Gist's regiment is given in Saffell
as from Virginia and Rawlings' rifle companies and Harrison's
artillery as made up of Marylanders in part as well as
of Virginians. Pay rolls of Bland's dragoons are printed in
Boogher's "Gleanings of Virginia History" and Saffell furnishes
the names of the officers of Lee's legion. A roll of
Armand's legion is printed, apparently in full, in the documents
appended to the Journal of the House, of delegates of
Virginia for 1833-4. Some of the names of Baylor's dragoons
have been recovered, but not a full list. Pay rolls of all these
Continental commands are probably in existence in Washington
and will likely be published some day, when it will be possible
to know with a reasonable degree of accuracy the number
of men furnished by Virginia to the Continental line. These
commands amounted to at least 1,000 men and if counted among
the Virginia continentals for five years would add about 5,000
to Knox's figures for Virginia. In addition to all this, Georgia
and other States were allowed to recruit their continental regiments
on the soil of the Old Dominion.[48]

But General Knox's report is not only valueless because

of its faults of commission, but because of its faults of omission
also. His report was made seven years after the ending
of the war, and it fails to give the details on which his summaries
are based. Then Knox fails to credit Virginia with any
continental troops for the year 1775, although Morgan's detachment
of riflemen, which served with such exceptional gallantry,
was not a militia command.

It is thus seen that there is great probability that Virginia
furnished many more men to the Continental army than Massachusetts.

In the face of the returns in the field contrasted with the
figures in Knox's report, one wonders where the American
troops were. Many of them either served a very short time,
or deserted, or never showed up at all.[49] In 1781, the returns
made by Clinton claimed that "the American levies in the
King's service were more in number than the whole of the
enlisted troops in the service of Congress."[50] Joseph Galloway
testified to the hundreds of deserters from the American
army that, under his own eye, enlisted in the British army.[51]
The troops of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New England
mutinied at different times, but the Virginia troops as a body
proved loyal and faithful throughout.

But if Knox's report is of no value in giving any true idea
of the contributions of the states for the Continental service,
it becomes a travesty when it deals with the returns of the
militia. Indeed Knox states by way of excuse that "in some
years of the greatest exertions of the Southern states there
are no returns whatever of the militia employed." The estimates
therefore are very full for New England and very meager
for the South, his total for Virginia being 26,000. He
gives no return whatever of militia of Virginia for the year
1776, when it is known a considerable body, amounting altogether
to perhaps five thousand, were in the field during the

course of the year, fighting Lord Dunmore and the Indians
in the West. In Burk's History of Virginia,[52] it is stated that,
when in 1781, Cornwallis threatened to invade Virginia 20,000
militia were placed at the disposal of the governor, though
for a lack of guns and ammunition the governor could only
arm about 5,000 at a time. It is probable that the whole 20,000
saw some few days, weeks or months of service, and often the
same men were drafted and saw service more than once during
the course of the year. Thus we know that in Isle of
Wight County one-half of the militia was in service within
the county for the first three months, and afterwards one-third
part until about the 20th of November, 1781.[53] . Indeed there is
a further authority in the Council Journal, which shows that
nearly all the counties were called upon to furnish their contingents.

According to the volumes published by the Secretary of
the Commonwealth of Massachusetts under the title of Massachusetts
Soldiers and Sailors in the Revolutionary War, hundreds
of the Massachusetts militia served from one to thirty
days in reply to some sudden alarm.

The year 1780 perhaps saw as many militia under arms as
the year 1781, and it is probable instead of 26,000 militia in the
field, the state had during the war nearly three times that number,
certainly over 70,000 men. Some of these, as they served
regular campaigns in connection with the regular army, of
6 months had more right to be considered Continental troops
than the motley army of New England before Boston in 1775
and 1776.[54]

Knox makes the militia of Massachusetts number about 25,000
men, and if we add to this figure 42,341 so called Continentals
of 1775, 1776, 1781, 1782 and 1783, the sum total becomes

67,341, which is not greatly different from the number
claimed for Virginia. The concentration of population in
towns ought to have made it much easier to call out the
strength of that Province than in Virginia, where the population
was scattered over an area many times greater than
Massachusetts.

3. Supplies and Credit.

Mr. Jefferson in a letter to Governor Henry on the subject
of the "convention prisoners," spoke of Virginia before the
Revolution as "the grain colony, whose surplus of bread used
to feed the West Indies and Eastern States and fill the colony
with hard money."[55] For the same period he estimated the
value of wheat and Indian corn exported from the colony at
about one-half the value of the tobacco crop, 800,000 bushels
of wheat and 600,000 of Indian corn.[56]

It was owing to the inability of New England to supply
them with flour that the Saratoga prisoners, over 4,000 men,
were marched to Charlottesville in the dead of winter. Then,
in his testimony before the Committee of the House of Commons,
Joseph Galloway said that "Washington's army at
Valley Forge in 1778 was principally supplied with provisions
from Virginia and North Carolina by way of Chesapeake
Bay."[57] Smollett, in his Continuation of Hume's History of
England, declared[58] "that tobacco, Virginia's staple crop, was
the chief foundation of the credit of these states in Europe,"
and he mentions the immense importance of the trade of the
Chesapeake Bay with the West Indies, through which powder
and supplies of all kinds were obtained.[59] It appears that the
object of the fleet of Sir George Collier, who, with General
Matthew, invaded Virginia in 1779, was to cut off this trade and

shut up the Chesapeake Bay, "by which Washington's army
was constantly supplied provisions." But Clinton, who was
in tight quarters in New York, could not spare the troops for
long; so after a brief stay in Virginia, the expedition returned
to the place it went from, but, as we have seen, it did a vast
deal of damage. Sir George Collier lodged a protest with
Sir Henry Clinton that, in withdrawing the troops, he gave up
"the very best chance of starving Washington's army and
putting a stop to the war."[60] To cripple, if not to reduce Virginia,
became the cardinal object of the subsequent expeditions
of Leslie, Arnold and Phillips. The importance of
Virginia in furnishing supplies to Greene's army was testified
to by Washington, Jefferson, Greene, Sir Henry Clinton and
Lord Cornwallis. During the calamitous year of 1780, when
most of the states were very delinquent, Virginia overpaid
her quota by $4,081,368.[61] One of the most valuable aids to
the war was James Hunter's iron works at Fredericksburg.
James Mercer, one of the most influential and trusted citizens
of the town and State, said[62] in a letter addressed to the governor,
in April, 1781: "I am sure I need not tell you that it is
from Mr. Hunter's Works that every Camp Kettle has been
supplied for the continental and all other troops employed in
this State & to the Southward this year past—that all the anchors
for this State & Maryland & some for the continent
have been procured from the same works; that, without the
assistance of the Bar Iron made there, even the planters hereabout
& to the Southward of this place, wou'd not be able to
make Bread to eat."

Another of the institutions of Fredericksburg was the Gun
Factory, authorized by an ordinance of the convention, in
1772, and conducted by Colonel Fielding Lewis and Major
Charles Dick. The same gentleman, James Mercer, said in the
same letter in which he mentioned Mr. Hunter's Iron Works:

"As to the town itself I need not inform you that the public
manufactory of arms is here—that without it, all our arms,
however so little injured wou'd be useless to us; besides the
number of new muskets & bayonets made there, renders that an
object worthy our preserving & the Enemy's destruction—To
this, however, I may add that there is not one spot in the State
so generally useful in our military operations—full one-third
of all new lines rendezvous here; all the troops from North
to South & South to North must pass through this town, where
wagons are repaired, horses shoed and many other &c, which
they cou'd not proceed on without. The troops get provisions
here to the next Stage & no place is so convenient to a very
extensive & productive Country for the reception of Grain
& other Articles of Provision."

The statement of the Board of Commissioners appointed to
fund the debt of the United States when Hamilton was secretary
of the treasury, shows that Virginia's claim for her advances
to the Continent during the entire war was $28,431,145.18.[63] It appears that owing to the loss of vouchers and
books due to the British invasions, the commissioners allowed
only $19,085,981.51. On the other hand Massachusetts who
had lost very few papers was allowed $17,964,613.03, but as
the Federal Government during the war had advanced to Virginia
$869,000.51, and to Massachusetts $2,277,146.98, their
net contributions were respectively for Virginia $18,216,981.00
and for Massachusetts $15,687,466.05, so that Virginia's net
contribution exceeded that of Massachusetts by $2,529,514.95.
And yet, according to the report of the commissioners, Virginia
was made a debtor state to the amount of $100,879, while
Massachusetts was made a creditor state to the amount of
$1,248,801. One of the largest items in the Massachusetts claim
was $2,000,000 for the abortive expedition against the British
at Castine.

What the basis of the report was is shown in a letter of
Col. William Davies, the Virginia agent. During the war

Virginia and Massachusetts were equally rated, and each required
to contribute one-sixth of the whole expense, but under
the Act of Congress, passed in 1790, population as of the census
of that year was taken as the measure and the quotient for Virginia
became 4- 266/294 and the quotient for Massachusetts
became 7- 105/294. This difference was made through the
great increase, since the peace in 1783, in the population of
Virginia. There was a great immigration into the Valley of
Virginia, Kentucky and West Virginia. Now had the old rate
of equality been taken things would have appeared quite differently.
Virginia would have appeared as a creditor state
and Massachusetts as a debtor state.[64] The Federal Government
would have owed Virginia nearly $4,000,000, and Massachusetts
would have owed the Federal Government nearly six
million.

CHAPTER V

THE REVOLUTION—REFORMS IN THE LAW

As Virginia led in the movements preceding the Revolution
and contributed far more to the success of the American cause
than any other state, so she led the way in the political and
social reforms which characterized that interesting period.
The colossal work of the convention of the people, which met
at Williamsburg, May 5, 1776, was without parallel. The principles
of the Revolution found a marvelous expression in the
words traced by the pen of George Mason in the Declaration of
Rights, adopted June 12, 1776, and the Constitution, adopted
June 29, 1776. The only serious amendment made to the
Declaration of Rights was that urged by the youthful James
Madison, of Orange, substituting "religious liberty" for "toleration."
The constitution, whose first draft proceeded also
from Mason's pen, had quite a number of amendments in the
Convention itself, but the essential body of the paper remained
as it stood in the original draft by its author.

These celebrated papers were copied by every other colony,
and where departure was made from their terms, it was generally
for the worse. They were universally taken as a pattern,
and their influence was distinctly traced in the provisions of
the Federal Constitution.

As regards the Virginia Declaration of Rights, it not only
contained all that was valuable in Magna Charta in 1215, the
Petition of Rights in 1628 written by Sir Edward Coke, and
the Bill of Rights in 1689, written by the great Lord Somers,
but it constituted also the most complete statement of the
principles of government. Thus its first and second sections
expressed the idea of the Democracy which lay at the bottom
of the whole Revolution, the first declaring "the equal rights

of all men, by nature, to freedom and independence" and their
inalienable claim to the "enjoyment of life, liberty, property
and happiness;" and the second, declaring that "all power is
vested in, and consequently derived from the people; that
magistrates are their trustees and servants, and at all times
amenable to them." While these sections really stated nothing
that had not been tacitly recognized ever since the dethronement
of James II by people of English descent everywhere,
the old form, depicting the King as "the fountain of authority"
had been kept up in all legal and political literature in
England and America. Now for the first time, fact and form
were brought together in official papers. Rights began with
nature, and not as concessions of the monarch, and the people,
not the King, became the open and acknowledged source of
authority.

The truths stated in the subsequent parts of the Declaration
of Rights were only corollaries of these two first sections.
That government ought to be instituted for the common benefit,
protection and security of the people, nation, and community;
that no man, or set of men, are entitled to exclusive
privileges; that the legislative, executive and judiciary powers
of the state should be kept separate and distinct; that
office-holders should not hold positions indefinitely; that elections,
the suffrage, the press, and religion should be free;
that general warrants should be prohibited; that in all criminal
prosecutions a man hath a right to demand the cause and
nature of his accusation and to be confronted with his accusers
and witnesses, and call for a speedy trial by an impartial jury
of the vicinage; that an excessive bail ought not to be required,
nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments
be inflicted, and that in controversies respecting property
the ancient trial by jury is preferable to any other—these
are mere declarations that flow from the recognition of the
ruling power of Democracy.

As to the Constitution, it was wholly unlike those of South
Carolina and New Hampshire, which, though earlier in date,

were expressly declared to be temporary and intended only
to endure until the difficulties with Great Britain were settled.
It discarded the rule of the Mother Country entirely,
and was the first written constitution for a free and independent
state in any part of the world.

In some essential particulars, it followed the unwritten constitution
of colonial days. Thus the governor, with the advice
of the Privy Council, appointed all justices of the peace for the
counties and filled all vacancies occurring in their numbers,
such appointments being made upon the recommendation of
the respective county courts. After the same example, the
House of Delegates like the House of Burgesses was composed
of two citizens from every county, and the qualifications for
the exercise of the suffrage remained the same as of old. While
the colonial council, acting as a senate, had had theoretically
the right to originate laws, it seldom did so, and so the constitution
now put in express language what had been all along
practically the rule. It was required that all laws should
originate in the House of Delegates, to be approved or rejected
by the new senate or to be amended with the consent of the
House, and the Constitution manifested its jealousy of money
bills by providing that, in no instance, should such a bill be altered
by the Senate, but wholly approved or rejected.

The changes in the government were more numerous than
the parts retained. The Council, which in colonial days had
acted in three functions—legislative, executive and judicial
—was now confined to one, the executive, and it was provided
that it should consist of eight members to be chosen by joint
ballot of both houses of the Assembly. Two members were
to be removed by the ballot of both Houses at the end of every
three years, and be ineligible for the next three years.

In place of the Council sitting in its legislative capacity, a
body called the Senate was provided for. It was to consist
of twenty-four members, of whom thirteen should constitute
a quorum to proceed to business. A peculiar feature of its
composition, which was afterwards practically embodied in

the Constitution of the United States, was its division into
classes so arranged that six of the members would go out
every year and six new members be elected. Then, instead
of a governor appointed by the King during his pleasure, a
chief magistrate was to be chosen annually by joint ballot of
both houses, and continue in office no longer than three years
successively; but similar to the old practice, he was required
to exercise the executive power with the advice of his Council
of State.

As to the judiciary, instead of the colonial system of county
courts and a General Court, by which was meant the Council
sitting as a Supreme Court, a system of county courts made
up of the justices as of old, an Admiralty Court, a General
Court, a Chancery Court, and a Supreme Court, was authorized.

Two objections presented themselves at the threshold of the
adoption of the constitution, one having relation to the authority
of the convention, and the other to the authority of
a written constitution. The first objection, which proceeded
especially from Mr. Jefferson, was probably dictated by the
thought that the constitution was not democratic enough, and
that by denying the authority of the convention, further reforms
might be made in its character. He had objections to the
suffrage, which he deemed too restricted, to the equality of the
counties in sending representatives, to the make up of the Senate,
which he deemed too much like that of the House of Delegates,
to the commingling of the powers of the government—
legislative, executive and judicial—in contravention of its own
requirement that these departments should be separate and
distinct.[65]

Now while the proposed corrections were doubtless sound
and were eventually recognized, Mr. Jefferson's objection to
the authority of the Convention were by no means conclusive.
In his Notes on Virginia Mr. Jefferson bases his criticism in
this respect on the assumed fact that the idea of independence

had not been open to the mass of the people in April, 1776, when
the members of the Convention which prepared the constitution
had been elected. He states that the electors at that time
were not thinking of independence or of a permanent republic,
and did not mean to vest in these representatives powers of
establishing them, or any authority at all other than that of ordinary
legislation; but, as we have seen, this is far from a
statement of the fact. The instructions in the counties nearly
everywhere were for cutting loose from Great Britain and
setting up an independent republic. Mr. Jefferson's objections,
therefore, to the validity of the constitution went for
naught, and though not faultless, the constitution remained
the fundamental law of the state for 54 years. When we consider
the novelty of the experiment and the time in which it
was formed, the constitution embodied a measure of liberty
that spoke eloquently of the self-control, calmness and wisdom
of its framers. There was doubtless only one American,
Thomas Jefferson, 100 years ahead of his contemporaries, and
the constitution with his advanced views incorporated at this
time, even if such a thing was possible, would not have suited
the age or conditions.

The other question, the authority of the state constitution
as the fundamental law, was not apparently thoroughly understood
by the legislators who accomplished the work. The
Convention itself, meeting as the House of Delegates in the
General Assembly with the Senate, in the fall of the same year,
passed several acts in contradiction of their own labors, and
a similar course was pursued sometimes by succeeding legislatures.
Men had not entirely divested themselves of their old
ideas, and, as in England Parliament was omnipotent, there
was a disposition with some people to ascribe a similar character
to the legislature.

From his argument against the Convention as constituted,
it is clearly inferable that Jefferson regarded the constitution
prepared by an authorized convention as unalterable except by
a similar authority. In a draft of a constitution prepared in

1783 he expressly provided that "the General Assembly shall
not have power to infringe this constitution."

The part played by the courts of the state in asserting
this supremacy is not to be construed, as is often done, into
a claim of paramount authority of the courts over the legislative
body, but as a vindication of their right to independence
as guaranteed by that instrument. Under the constitution the
Legislative, Executive and Judiciary were to be separate and
distinct, and no one of the three had the right to interfere
with the other two in the distinct field of their service. Each
had the right to judge of the constitutionality of its own action,
and in giving their opinion, the intention of the judges
was only to assert that the constitution was supreme and that
the judiciary would not lend its enforcing power where, in their
opinion, a violation of the constitution resulted. These were
the views set forth by the judges of Virginia in Commonwealth
v. Caton (1782), in the Case of the Judges (1788), and in
Kamper v. Hawkins (1792). These decisions settled the right
of the courts to construe for themselves the constitutionality
of a law, and the general acceptance of the principle in the
Union at large dates from Chief Justice Marshall's decision
in Marbury v. Madison (1802), in rendering which it is reasonable
to suppose that he was influenced by the previous action
of the Virginia courts, which must have come under his
observation, it being doubtful if he ever heard of the cases
cited from other states.

To adapt the laws of the Commonwealth to the spirit of the
new constitution occupied the attention of the Legislature from
its first session in October, 1776, and it was fortunate that
just at this time a seat in that body was occupied by a man
to whom democracy was a religion, and who in the general
range of his abilities was the greatest man of his age in America.
He was a thorough product of advanced thought in Virginia,
and, as a student of a Virginia college at a time when
Francis Fauquier, a devotee of the sciences, was governor, and
Dr. William Small, an associate of Erasmus Darwin and James

Watt, was professor of mathematics and natural philosophy,
he absorbed the free spirit of enquiry that floated about
him in Williamsburg, and ultimately became its noblest
expression.

Both Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson were born
leaders of men, and each was pre-eminent in his field. It had
been the part of Henry to stir the people up with his oratory
and arouse resistance to arbitrary power. His wonderful
eloquence and lovable personality had made him the master
spirit of America during all the preliminary stages of the
Revolution, and though he did not lose his popularity and importance
in after days, it is possibly true that he ceased to be
the dramatic figure of his earlier life. The new conditions
required a line of talents of a different order from that in
which Patrick Henry excelled. These talents Jefferson possessed.
Henry was the exponent of an enormous epoch in the
history of the world, but Jefferson's influence was an all-pervading
and persistent stream of reform pouring through the
centuries. With his wonderful ability of impressing others he
created the Americanism of not only his time but of all future
times, and though nearly a century has passed since his death,
his influence is incomparably still the greatest vital force in
American affairs.

He took his seat in the Virginia House of Delegates October
7, 1776. Four days later he began his great important work.
On the 11th of October he was designated on various committees
and as soon as the committees were organized he obtained
leave to bring in a bill to establish courts of justice throughout
the Commonwealth. This bill on being referred to the committee
was divided into five distinct bills. Three of these,
creating a Court of Appeals, a Chancery Court and a Court
of Assize, or "General Court," were introduced by Jefferson
November 25, 1776, and the other two, creating the Court of
Admiralty and County Courts on December 4, 1776. The
Admiralty bill was promptly passed, but the other bills were
not passed until a session or two later.

The next day, October 12th, he obtained leave to bring in a
bill to enable tenants in tail to convey their lands in fee simple,
and on October 14th, he obtained leave to bring in a bill for
the removal of the seat of government from Williamsburg to
Richmond, and another for the naturalization of foreigners.
All these bills were passed into law either at this session or
subsequently, despite the objections of Edmund Pendleton
and Robert Carter Nicholas, who represented the conservative
party. The passage of the bill in regard to entails destroyed
at one blow the pretensions to any class system in Virginia
through the continuance of property and influence in any one
family.

The bill for the revision of the laws was passed on the 24th
of October, 1776, and on the 5th of November, he was appointed
the head of a committee, appointed for the purpose, consisting
of himself, Edmund Pendleton, George Wythe, George
Mason and Thomas Ludwell Lee. The two last not being lawyers
withdrew from the task and the three remaining gentlemen
proceeded to their work with zeal.

Early in the year 1777 the committee met and distributed
their task. With great propriety they determined to retain
the Common Law as the basis of their reform and to bring into
their revision only such alterations as would supply the place
of all prior British and Virginia statutes. Strange to say, Mr.
Pendleton, having once embarked in reform, was in favor of
going further than even Mr. Jefferson. He argued strongly
in favor of codifying the whole common law. Probably this
would have been the best thing to do, but Mr. Jefferson and Mr.
Wythe thought that to sweep away at once the whole existing
system of law, with a thousand judicial decisions made upon
it, was a work of too great labor and delicacy to be entered on
at this time. The revisers divided the work among them, and
by the 18th of June, 1779, they presented to the Legislature the
result of their labors in a volume of 90 pages, containing 126
bills. Some of the bills were adopted in a short time, but the
greater part of the work was not taken up until 1785, when,

under the management of James Madison, most of the bills
were passed with little alteration.

The majority of Mr. Jefferson's supporters came from the
Piedmont and western part of the state, and numbered among
them, besides Madison, such men as George Mason, Zachariah
Johnston and Alexander White. Probably the most important
of his supporters from the east was John Tyler, of
Charles City County, who was Speaker of the House of Delegates
from 1781 to 1786.

Among the original appointed standing committees of the
House was one on religion, in which Mr. Jefferson had likewise
a seat. The different religious sects were represented in
it, but the established church, the Episcopalian, had a decided
majority, not only in the committee but in the House. Jefferson
headed a determined minority, struggling for the principles
of religious freedom expressed in the Declaration of
Rights. The first settlers of this country were emigrants from
England and of the English church, and the first break in uniformity
was that of some non-conformists in the counties of
Nansemond, Norfolk and Princess Anne about 1642. Severe
laws were enacted against them, and somewhat later in the
century the same treatment was awarded the poor Quakers flying
from persecution in New England and the Mother Country.
With the passage of the Toleration Act in England and
its adoption in Virginia, these severe laws passed away, and
after 1705 the preachers representing the different sects were
permitted on license obtained to preach in the colony; so there
was really little for the different sects in Virginia other than
the Established Church to complain of, except being taxed in
support of that church. The Quakers in a memorial addressed
to the Legislature in 1737 frankly confessed themselves as
pleased with the treatment which they experienced, and the
Presbyterians appeared to have no grievance except such as
stated, paying taxes to another church. The Baptists, however,
would not conform to the requirement of obtaining a
license, and consequently many of their preachers were arrested

and experienced much suffering in the cold and comfortless
prisons of the times. Not long before the Revolution the
Methodists, as a branch of the Episcopal church, had made
Virginia the center of their activities, and it was the belief
of Mr. Jefferson that two-thirds or at any rate a majority, of
the people, were dissenters from the dominant faith.

This compulsion of these dissenters to pay taxes towards
the maintenance of teachers of what they deemed religious
error was grievously felt during the regal government and
without hope of relief. The first republican legislature, which
met in 1776, was crowded with petitions to abolish the spiritual
tryanny, the Baptists being the most active and persistent in
urging complaints. The petitions were referred to the Committee
of the whole House on the state of the country, and a
desperate contest resulted. The progressives, headed by Mr.
Jefferson, wanted to do away with the church establishment
entirely and place all the sects upon an equal footing, but the
majority of the Legislature had apparently a different idea of
the meaning of the religious liberty clause in the Declaration
of Rights. They were rather inclined to think that after freeing
the other sects from having to take out licenses and pay taxes,
thus easing tender consciences, the Establishment should be
kept up, and it did not enter into their views to approve the
total overthrow of the Church.[66] The repealing bill, therefore,
while sweeping away all parliamentary acts punishing religious
opinions or forbearing to repair to church or exercising
any mode of worship, and all colonial laws imposing taxes on
dissenters, only suspended the act of 1748 for paying salaries
to the Episcopal ministers, and in the bill as passed was inserted
an express reservation of the question whether a general
assessment should not be established by law on everyone
to the support of the pastor of his choice.[67]

A number of brief suspensions of the Act of 1748 occurred

between this and the year 1779, when the committee of revisers
made their report. Among the bills reported was Jefferson's
bill for religious freedom, which cut away in the most thorough
going manner all connection between state and church. The
project of a common state support for all churches appears to
have been offered as a kind of saving proposition, and at the
same time George Mason brought forward a compromise
scheme to preserve the property of the colonial church to the
Anglicans without establishment. The only result of a long
debate was the final repeal of the old act of 1748 providing
salaries for ministers.[68]

Nothing further was done regarding religious matters
until after the peace of 1783. Then the church question was
revived and debated with much vehemence.

Many persons grew alarmed at the spirit of free thinking
or skepticism in the state, and at the spring session of the
assembly (1784) Mr. Henry presented the question of laying
a tax on property for the general support of religion and apportioning
the proceeds among the various churches. At the
fall session of the assembly, a resolution approving the assessment
passed the House of Delegates and a bill levying such a
tax was introduced and debated. Mr. Henry was opposed by
James Madison and George Nicholas, but his influence was so
overwhelming that the bill would doubtless have become a law
had he not been drawn out of the House into the Governorship
again. Thus Madison succeeded in postponing final action
until the meeting of the next Assembly in October, 1785, on
the avowed ground of submitting the question to the people.
In the interim, at the solicitation of his principal colleagues,
he prepared a draft of a remonstrance for popular circulation.
It was drawn up with consummate ability, and at the next
session the remonstrancers far outnumbered the petitioners.
The assessment bill was overwhelmed, and in its place Jefferson's
bill for religious freedom was taken up by Madison and
it passed the House of Delegates by a large majority (74 to 20).

This wonderful bill gave a final interpretation to the meaning
of the words regarding religious freedom enunciated by Mason
in the Declaration of Rights. It was a second Declaration of
Independence, differing only from the first as a hymn of praise
or hallelujah differs from a war song.

This act placed Virginia again in the front, for all the other
states still imposed religious tests upon all the civil office holders,
this being especially the case in New England. Even in
Rhode Island, Roman Catholics were not permitted to hold
office. Virginia was not only the first state in America to take
its stand for equality and freedom of religion to all people of
all faiths—Christians, Jews, Mohammedans, etc., but the first
state in all the world to do so. Mason proclaimed the doctrine
and Jefferson explained it. The statute was translated into
French and Italian and widely read and commented upon in
Europe.

The victory thus happily won was ungenerously followed
up by the Dissenters in Virginia. The persecuted became the
persecutors. A law favored by Patrick Henry, and against
which there would appear now no reasonable objection, incorporated
the Protestant Episcopal church. This was repealed,
and although it had been repeatedly affirmed by legislative
resolve that the parsonages and glebe lands of the Protestant
Episcopal church should be guaranteed to it, in 1802 they were
confiscated by the state and sold at public auction.

Not long before this time Virginia established her claim
to another great priority. She was the first state in the world
to treat the slave trade as a crime by imposing a penalty for
engaging in it. This was done by an act drawn by the same
great statesman, and passed by the General Assembly of Virginia
in 1778. The revisers went further and in reporting a
digest of the existing laws on slavery they prepared an amendment
to be offered when the bill should be taken up, providing
for the emancipation of all slaves born after the passing of the
act. Circumstances prevented this amendment from being
offered, but an act was passed in 1782 permitting owners to

emancipate their slaves, under which more negroes obtained
their freedom than were freed by the law in Massachusetts or
Pennsylvania.

Four other subjects may be mentioned as enlisting the constructive
statesmanship of Thomas Jefferson. The first of
these was the right of expatriation. Natural allegiance was
esteemed by the common law of England to be perpetuable and
inalienable, but the doctrine declared by Jefferson in his famous
statute (reported in 1779 but passed in 1786), was that
expatriation was a part of the natural liberty of mankind.
Any citizen of Virginia was given permission to acquire a new
allegiance, and to the immigrant a promise of citizenship was
held out on application. Again Virginia led the world.

The second subject involved the matter of descent of lands.
The statute in this connection drawn by Jefferson was enacted
into law in October, 1785, and it took effect from the first of
January, 1787. This statute wholly abrogated the common
law canons of descent and substituted therefor an entirely new
system applicable to every possible case that could happen.
The analogies by which it was governed were new, and yet so
clear was the framer's conception of his own scheme and so
lucid his language that no serious controversy as to its meaning
arose for forty years, and the question then raised having
been settled, none of consequence has since been suggested,
although one or two sections incorporated by others several
years afterward have been the subject of repeated litigation.
Under the old colonial law of inheritance, which is the English
law, the eldest son succeeded to his father's estate, but under
this excellent work of Mr. Jefferson the law of affection was
closely followed. Thus the general principle of succession was
first of all that the land of the decedent was to go equally to
his children, if any, or their descendants, and in absence of
children or descendants of the decedent, then to his father and
if there be no father, then to his mother, brothers and sisters,
and their descendants, or such of them as there be, and in the
absence of mother, brother, or sister, or descendants, then the

inheritance should be divided into two moieties, one to go to
the paternal and the other to the maternal kindred in a given
course stated at large. In 1922 a more just conception of the
rights of women caused the first change after many years, and
it was enacted that the mother and her line should have parity
with the father and his line.

The third subject was that of crimes and their punishments.
Mr. Jefferson drew a bill in which the death penalty was
limited to the cases of murder and treason, a gigantic change
in ameliorating the bloody penal code of the day. Labor on the
public works was generally substituted in the place of capital
punishment. It was brought forward by Mr. Madison in 1785
and lost by a single vote, owing, it is believed, to the principle
of retaliation which it contained, and which had been inserted
by Messrs. Wythe and Pendleton against the wishes of Mr.
Jefferson. Possibly, too, the public mind was not ready for
the mitigation in the scale of punishments. In 1796, the subject
was resumed, and Mr. George Keith Taylor introduced a
bill containing in substance the work of the revisers and without
the objectionable feature of retaliation. It differed also
in the respect that it substituted solitary confinement and
labor in place of labor on the public works. Experiments elsewhere
had now prepared the public mind in Virginia for the
spirit of Jefferson's bill and the one proposed by Mr. Taylor
became a law.

The fourth subject was the important one of education.
The statute in regard to William and Mary College fell within
Pendleton's part of the revision, but as its charter brought
it also within Jefferson's and as it was deemed expedient to
determine a general plan of education for the state, Jefferson
was requested by his colleagues to undertake the work. He
accordingly prepared three educational bills, one providing
for elementary schools and academies, and entitled "For the
more general diffusion of knowledge;" the second intended to
create a university by changes in the work at William and
Mary College, and entitled "To amend the charter of the College

of William and Mary and substitute more certain revenues
for its support;" and the last for establishing a public library.
By the first two bills the different gradations of instruction
were corollated and a program worked out which furnishes the
real ideal of the public school system of the United States. It
borrowed nothing from the plan of the colonial schools anywhere,
nor did it remotely resemble the colonial schools of
Massachusetts. Those schools formed no real system, had
no central authority, and as the children had to pay for tuition
they were not free schools in the sense contemplated by the
bills of Mr. Jefferson. Moreover, the object was totally different.
The purpose of Mr. Jefferson was to make the children
of the Commonwealth useful citizens, but the purpose of the
schools in Massachusetts, where only members of the church
could be teachers, was to maintain and uphold the autocracy of
the Congregational church.

The bill converting William and Mary College into a university,
substituted, as its title implied, more certain revenues
for its support, changed the number of visitors from 18 to 5,
and instead of the "president and six professors" of the
charter, it provided for eight professors, one of whom should
also be president. These educational bills after being reported
from the committee on revision lay on the table until
the year 1796, when the bill providing for elementary schools
was taken up and passed, but as the introduction of the system
was left to the county justices by a provision that was not in
the original bill, it did not commence in a single county.

Jefferson's bill for amending the charter of William and
Mary was never considered by the Legislature, but he was
chosen a member of the board of visitors in the college and
effected in 1779 during his stay at Williamsburg as governor,
changes correspondent to those embraced in his bill. In connection
with President Madison of the college he induced the
visitors on December 4, 1779, to abolish the grammar school
and the two divinity schools, and in their places introduce
schools of modern languages, of municipal law, and of

medicine. By this arrangement the college was made a university,
the first to be organized in the United States. The
honor and elective principles were introduced, and it became
also the first institution in the United States to have chairs
of modern languages and of law, while its chair of medicine
was only second in time to that of the chair in the college at
Philadelphia. The faculty in 1779 was composed of "James
Madison, D. D., president and professor of natural philosophy
and mathematics; George Wythe, LL. D., professor of law
and police; James McClurg, professor of anatomy and medicine;
and Robert Andrews, A. M., professor of moral philosophy,
the law of nature and nations, and of the fine arts; and
Charles Bellini, professor of modern languages."

This was a small faculty, but each of the members was a
host in himself. President Madison was a fine lecturer and
his talents were shown to their full advantage, when in 1784 he
was relieved of the duty of teaching mathematics and made
professor of moral philosophy, international law, etc., in addition
to natural philosophy, which he always retained. We are
told that he was the first to introduce into the college a regular
system of lectures on political economy; and in the department
of natural philosophy he excelled, his enthusiasm throwing a
peculiar charm over his lectures. There is reason to believe
that Adam Smith's great work, Inquiry into the Nature and
Sources of the Wealth of Nations, and Vattell's Law of Nations
were taught at William and Mary earlier than at any
other college in the United States. President Madison was indefatigable
in his lectures, and when in good health, is known
to have been engaged in his lecture-room from four to six
hours a day.

George Wythe, the professor of law had, like Madison,
been a student at the college, and for thirty-five years had held
the first place at the bar in the State. Mr. Jefferson called him
"the pride of the institution," and "one of the greatest men
of the age, always distinguished by the most spotless virtue."
He gave lectures regularly on municipal and constitutional

law, and in 1780 instituted a system of moot courts and moot
legislatures, by which he trained the forty young men under
his care in public speaking and parliamentary procedure.
He made use of the deserted capitol, at the east end of Williamsburg,
for this purpose, and he and the other professors
would sit as judges. Being elected, in 1789, sole chancellor of
Virginia, he resigned and moved, in 1791, to Richmond, and
was succeeded by St. George Tucker, a judge of the general
court, and whose "Commentaries on Blackstone" was the first
American text-book on the law.[69]

James McClurg, the professor of medicine, had also been
a student of the college, and had accomplished his medical
education at the University of Edinburgh and on the continent
of Europe. By his poem on "The Belles of Williamsburg," he
acquired a literary reputation in addition to his reputation as
a physician of eminence.

Robert Andrews, the professor of moral philosophy till
1784, and then the professor of mathematics, was a graduate
of the College of Philadelphia and very active and useful. His
mathematical ability was thought so considerable that he
served with President Madison on the commission to define
the boundary line of Virginia and Pennsylvania.[70]

Of the modern languages, French, Italian, Spanish and
German, were taught at William and Mary after 1779, and the
professor was Charles Bellini, an Italian, who in 1773 came to
Albemarle County, it is believed, with Philip Mazzei. His
abilities were favorably commented upon by Mr. Jefferson,
and the fact of his connection with the college so early as 1779
becomes more interesting when we learn that as late as 1814
George Ticknor could find in Cambridge, Massachusetts,
neither a good teacher of German, nor a German dictionary,
nor even a German book, either in town or college.

In 1788 Mr. Jefferson wrote as follows: "Williamsburg
is a remarkably healthy situation, reasonably cheap and affords

very genteel society. I know no place in the world, while
the present professors remain, where I would so soon place a
son."

In 1791 Judge John Coalter, who was then a student of law
under Judge Tucker, thus also expressed his opinion: "I
scarcely know a place more pleasing than Williamsburg, which
may justly receive the title (which Homer gives Greece), `the
land of lovely dames,' for here may be found beauty in perfection
and not only beauty, but sociability in the ladies."

William and Mary College represented in Colonial times
the government and the church, but the Revolution disestablished
religion in Virginia, and though Mr. Madison, the President,
was made in 1790 first bishop of the Episcopal church, the
college never again had an official connection with the Episcopal
Church, although the visitors, faculty and students were
principally Episcopalians.

As a fruit of the new life in Virginia a seminary was
formed in the County of Rockbridge, in October, 1782, by the
name of Liberty Hall Academy. Its first rector was William
Graham, and it was enacted that he and the trustees of the
academy should have perpetual succession and a common seal,
appoint all professors and masters, grant degrees, and give
bond and security for the faithful discharge of their offices.
This institution afterwards became Washington College, and
later Washington and Lee University.

Closely following Liberty Hall Academy another institution
of learning was incorporated in May, 1783, in the County
of Prince Edward by the name of the College of Hampden-Sidney.
Reverend John Blair Smith was its first president,
and its trustees were given the usual powers of conferring degrees
and appointing and removing its officers.

Similarly at the same session, William Fleming, William
Christian, Benjamin Logan, John May, Levi Todd and twenty
others in Kentucky were made a body corporate, by the name
of Trustees of Transylvania Seminary, and empowered to
exercise all the powers and privileges enjoyed by the visitors

and governors of other colleges or universities within the state,
and it was ordered that the first session of the trustees should
be held at John Crow's Station, in Lincoln County, on the
second Monday in November, 1784.

From this early action of the Virginia legislature sprang
one of Kentucky's most prominent institutions of learning,
which after an eventful history is still existing as Transylvania
College.

CHAPTER VI

THE CRITICAL PERIOD, 1783-1789

Thirteen states, free and independent, had come out of
the American Revolution, being recognized as such by Great
Britain in the treaty of peace. They had worked in concert
for nine years, but their co-operation had been feeble and
halting. The divergences between these states was so great
that it is safe to say that they would never have come together
in a common union had it not been for the British oppressions.
Each state required its citizens to take an oath of allegiance,
but in every case the oath did not recognize the Continental
Congress, or any union of states. The statute of Virginia reported
by the revisers, in 1779, and adopted that year, commanded
that "every person, by law required to give an assurance
of fidelity, shall, for that purpose, take an oath in this
form: `I do declare myself a citizen of the Commonwealth of
Virginia; I relinquish and renounce the character of subject
or citizen of any Prince or other state whatsoever, and abjure
all allegiance which may be claimed by such Prince or other
state; and I do swear to be faithful and true to the said Commonwealth
of Virginia, so long as I continue a citizen thereof.
So help me God.' "

The people of the different colonies had a common speech,
it is true, but in their ways of thinking, civil institutions, habits
of life, and religious beliefs, a sufficient difference prevailed,
even during the Revolution, to distinguish the presence of what
amounted to two nations, viz.: a North and a South. There can
be little doubt that had time, without outside pressure, decided
the question, there would gradually have been formed, under
the protection of the British Crown, two confederacies with

national instincts, one a Northern Confederacy and the other
a Southern Confederacy.

During the interval that elapsed between 1783 and 1790,
the question was in fact problematic whether the union of the
thirteen colonies would continue, or whether it would break
up in its fundamental elements, which were in reality but two.
There never was any probability, as nationalists surmised, of
a subdivision of the Union into little commonwealths or principalities
engaged in incessant wars with one another, and disunited
to the end of time. There were only two centers, and
gravitation of the states to one or the other was as certain as
anything could be in the realm of reason. The time came when
the people of the South and the people of the North were as
far apart from one another in wishes and feelings as any two
nations in the whole world.

For the moment, however, the ties created by tyrannical
British taxation and the common sufferings of the Revolutionary
war held the states and sections together, and this union
was aided by the nature of the Articles of Confederation, according
to which the states entered into a "firm league of
friendship" with each other, for the securing and perpetuation
of which the freemen of each state were entitled to all the privileges
and immunities of citizens of the other states. Mutual
extradition of criminals was established, and in every state full
faith and credit were to be given to the records, acts, and
judicial proceedings of every other state. Congress had the
sole right to determine on peace and war, of sending and receiving
ambassadors, of making treaties, of adjudicating all
disputes between the states, of managing Indian affairs, and
of regulating the value of coin and fixing the standard of
weights and measures. But there could be no mistake where
"Sovereignty, Freedom, and Independence" existed, for it
was expressly stated that they were retained by the states.
The union was declared to be a confederacy only, and the position
in which they left Congress was that merely of a deliberative
head. The powers also of Congress were very limited,

but had they been tenfold greater this would not have altered
the relations of the states to the Union, when its character was
so plainly declared in the Articles themselves.

For any harmonious working of this confederacy, however,
there was the necessity of curing at least two defects. The first
consisted of lack of power on the part of Congress to raise
money to pay the debts and carry out the general purposes of
the Union; and the second in the inability experienced of presenting
a solid front to foreign countries in regard to commerce.
Under the Articles of Confederation the states
possessed all powers of laying taxes, tariffs and commercial
regulations, and, though Congress had the power to make
treaties, none could be made except with the consent of nine
of the thirteen states.

A failure of many of the states to pay their quotas and
the rapid depreciation of the paper money had forced Congress
in the winter of 1781 to request of the states as an indispensable
necessity, a grant of a power to levy an impost of
5 per cent on all imports except wool and cotton cards and wire
for making them. This was done shortly before Benjamin
Harrison arrived at Philadelphia, February 11, 1781, as commissioner
from Virginia to seek assistance from Congress
against Arnold, who had entrenched himself at Portsmouth
after marauding the state. Seeing the necessity of the impost,
Colonel Harrison had repaired to the legislature at
Charlottesville and, being re-elected speaker of the House of
Delegates, May 28, 1781, had warmly exerted his influence to
secure the passage of an act in accordance with the wishes of
Congress. In this move he had an earnest coadjutor in John
Tyler, his colleague from Charles City County. The bill was
discussed in the committee of the whole, of which Mr. Tyler
was chairman, and receiving the important support of Mr.
Henry, was reported by Mr. Tyler to the House on June 9th,
and after its passage, carried by him to the Senate with the
request for their concurrence.[71] Most of the states took similar

action, some before and some after the action of Virginia, but
as Rhode Island and Georgia failed to do so, the Virginia legislature
at its next session suspended the act until all the states
should give their consent.

After the meeting of the Assembly in October, 1782, a feeling
of general security prevailed, and the party in the Legislature
averse to Federal authority headed by Richard Henry
Lee, succeeded in securing the repeal of the impost at the end
of the session.[72] Harrison, who was now governor, wrote to
Washington that "they (the repealers) were so very quick
that the mischief had been done before I knew that the subject
was under consideration, or they would probably have missed
their aim." The only vote given against the repeal was by
Dr. Arthur Lee,[73] who, though opposed to the grant, thought its
abrogation at that time highly inexpedient.

The preamble of the repealing act based the repeal upon
the statement "that the exercise of any power other than the
legislature to levy duties or taxes upon citizens of this state is
injurious to its sovereignty and may prove destructive of the
rights and liberty of the people." This declaration was a clear
announcement that Virginia viewed with great suspicion any
plan of general revenue under the control of Congress.

Thus the matter remained until the spring of 1783. Money
had to be raised in some way, and Congress renewed its
request on May 18th, submitting a carefully digested plan of
revenue prepared by Madison with the assistance of Jefferson.
The grant was to be limited to twenty-five years, and the
officers, though amendable to removal by Congress, were to be
appointed by the states. The report was enforced by Madison
in an earnest written appeal to the states. A forecast[74] by Mr.
Jefferson of the views of the members placed in favor of the
measure the Speaker (Tyler), Mr. Henry Tazewell, Gen.
Thomas Nelson, Jr., William Nelson, George Nicholas and

Archibald Stuart, and against the measure, Richard Henry
Lee, Dr. Arthur Lee, Mann Page, John Taylor of Caroline,
Charles Mynn Thruston and Alexander White. He was unable
to state the attitude of Patrick Henry, the most important
of all. However, when the legislature met, practical unanimity
must have prevailed, for on May 14, 1783, the Assembly
adopted a resolution "That an impost of 5 per cent on certain
things imported ought to be granted in order to discharge certain
obligations made by Congress under proper regulations."
As both Richard Henry Lee and Patrick Henry were on the
committee to bring in the bill to that effect, they were both
probably convinced of its necessity.

However, the measure thus approved at the beginning of
the session was defeated a little later by the very means taken
by Congress to ensure its success. Congress had requested
Alexander Hamilton to reply to the objections urged by the
Rhode Island legislature to the impost. This answer had
been drawn by him with great ability, but unfortunately he
had inserted into it the suggestion that Congress, by having
the power to contract debts binding upon the states, had the
constructive power to provide the means for their payment regardless
of the states. This claim, it is believed, not noticed at
first, was resented by most of the legislatures as destructive
of the reserved rights of the states, and they were unwilling
to invest additional powers in Congress, disposed to extend its
powers so dangerously by construction. Among those thus
affected by Hamilton's paper was Patrick Henry. Mr. Jefferson
wrote to Mr. Madison, June 17: "Mr. Henry had declared
in favor of the impost but when the question came on he was
utterly silent." The vote against it was so large that no
division was called for.[75] The Legislature at the same time
resolved to raise the duty called for by Congress with its
own officers and to apply the proceeds to the state's quota of
the continental debt, any deficiency to be made up from the
tax on land and slaves. Mr. Henry was one of the committee

to bring in a bill for this purpose and carried the measure
against Richard Henry Lee.

In the meantime, General Washington, on June 8th, from
his headquarters at Newburg, wrote his celebrated letter to the
governors of the different states on disbanding the army. In
this, which was intended as his legacy to the people whose
liberties had been saved by his sword, he pointed out the
weakness of the Confederacy and urged that Congress be
vested with the power to collect its revenue, thus endorsing
specially the plan proposed. His wonderful influence stopped
the current which was setting in towards a separation on sectional
lines. Everybody loved Washington, and when the
Legislature met in November following, it granted the coveted
power to Congress "without a dissenting voice."[76]

To get all of the states to consent to this grant of power
was another matter, and the requisitions of Congress were so
greatly neglected that it could not meet its public obligations.
Virginia was among the most prompt to respond to furnish
her quota of expenses, though she claimed that Congress was
indebted to her at least £1,000,000, which was not far from the
case. Had the original measure of responsibility in 1776 been
adhered to in 1792, the result would have turned out very differently
from what it did, as has already been noticed.

In the meantime, the question of regulating commerce with
foreign nations came up in the legislature. There were at
this time three parties in that body, one headed by Patrick
Henry, another by Richard Henry Lee, and the third by John
Tyler. Mr. Henry and Mr. Tyler were intimate friends, and
previous to the preliminary treaty of peace practically concurred
in all questions, supporting the national authority in
opposition to Richard Henry Lee and his brother, Dr. Arthur
Lee, who feared for States rights.

At the session in the spring of 1783, following the news of
the signing of the provisional articles of peace, Henry and
Lee measured swords in the contest for the speakership when

John Tyler was brought forward by Henry in opposition to
the forces of the latter and was elected by a vote of 61 to 20.
But this was followed by the immediate separation between the
two friends, Henry and Tyler, on nearly all the important
questions that engaged the attention of the Assembly. Mr.
Henry outshone even the Hamilton party in Congress in anxiety
to treat what was merely a provisional treaty as a permanent
one. He made common cause with Richard Henry Lee,
and on May 13th, the next day after the speaker's election,
introduced a bill to repeal the several acts of Assembly which
prohibited the importation of British goods and a bill almost
simultaneously to invite the Tories back to the state. This
action was opposed by Speaker Tyler, who in regard to the
first measure argued that to repeal the restraints on British
trade before the treaty was definitive would be to expel the
trade of every other nation, and drive away all competition
with the British. In this he was correct, as was afterward
proved.

In regard to the latter bill inviting the Tories back, Tyler's
reasonings savored rather of prejudice and were not so conclusive,
though the danger of introducing spies certainly
argued against hasty action. But Henry's eloquence overcame
all opposition, and of these bills the first was passed at
this session, and the second after much discussion was postponed
to the October session, then taken up and passed. A
similar policy of relaxation was pursued by Congress. They
disbanded the army, set free the British prisoners, and adopted
resolutions urging the states to fulfill the provisions of the
Provisional Treaty, especially in relation to the payment of the
British debts.

So the British government, fearing nothing from the
Americans, would consent to no alterations in the final form
of the treaty of peace, which when signed at Paris, on September
3, 1783, repeated the very terms of the Provisional Treaty
of the year before. In Philadelphia, it was freely charged
that "a British party" had come into existence, at the head of

which was Dr. Arthur Lee, John Adams and Henry Laurens.[77]

Among the alterations which had been hoped for was a
grant of free trade with the West India Islands and other
British colonies, but instead of free trade a royal proclamation
was issued July 2, 1783, interdicting the West India trade
to citizens and vessels of the United States. Arrogant in their
confidence, the English after the surrender of the British prisoners,
entirely omitted fulfilling the obligation resting upon
them by both the Provisional and Definitive Treaties, and they
would neither surrender the slaves which their armies had
carried off nor give up the posts on the frontiers of the United
States.

The Virginians were not pleased at the result, and when
the Assembly met in a joint session during the fall of 1783,
while passing the bill admitting the return of the refugees and
authorizing an impost act, in accordance with the recommendation
of Congress of April 8, 1783, resolved that Congress
should have the power, in case of all the other states consenting,
to prohibit the importation of products of the British
West India Islands into the United States in British vessels,
or "to adopt any other measure which might tend to counteract
the designs of Great Britain with regard to American
commerce."

"This," says Bancroft, "was the first in the series of
measures through which Virginia marshalled the United
States on the way to a better union."[78] "The British," wrote
Jefferson, "are doing us another good turn. They attempt,
without disguise, to possess themselves of the carriage of our
produce. This has raised a general indignation in America.
The states say, however, that their constitutions have provided
no means of counteracting it. They are therefore
beginning to vest Congress with the absolute power of regulating
our commerce."[79]

At this same session, the Virginia Legislature completed
its surrender of the Northwest Territory to the United States
by accepting the conditions which Congress had deemed necessary
before taking that territory over and receiving an actual
deed of conveyance.

When the General Assembly convened in May, 1784, John
Tyler was re-elected to the speaker's chair without opposition.
Mr. Henry arrived on the 14th of May and was in favor of
strenuously reinvigorating the Federal government. To enforce
the collection of unpaid balances due the Federal government,
he was on general principles in favour of a distress on
the property of delinquent states. These views he imparted
to James Madison, who, after a distinguished service in Congress,
now appeared in the Legislature, and a resolution to
that effect was offered and adopted.

The question of trade was met by a resolution which proposed
to vest Congress with power to prohibit, for any term
not exceeding fifteen years, the importation or exportation of
goods to or from Virginia, in vessels belonging to subjects of
any power with whom we had no commercial treaty; the
proviso being, that to all acts passed by Congress in pursuance
of the authority granted, the assent of nine states should be
necessary. This resolution[80] appears to have received the
unanimous concurrence of the House, and was in exact pursuance
and performance of a recommendation made by Congress
on April 30, 1784.

On the question of raising taxes, however, it appears that
Henry, notwithstanding his attitude as to employment of
arms to enforce the requisitions of Congress, shrank from the
adoption of measures which alone would have given any weight
to the recommendations of Virginia. Influenced by the distresses
of the state, Mr. Henry was in favor of postponing the
tax levies for this year, and though he was opposed by all the
influential members of the House, including Richard Henry
Lee, the Speaker, James Madison, John Page, Archibald

Stuart, and Henry Tazewell, who had secured a majority of
thirty against the bill in the committee of the whole, by sheer
force of his eloquence he reversed the vote on the floor of the
House after the bill was reported. This has been declared one
of Mr. Henry's greatest victories.

On another subject, almost as important as the revenue
and trade of the country, the men of talents in the House
divided more evenly. Messrs. Richard Henry Lee, James
Madison, Henry Tazewell, Wilson Cary Nicholas and Archibald
Stuart were in favor of the full performance of the treaty,
and that without inquiring whether or not a breach had
occurred first on the part of Great Britain. In this view
Washington and Jefferson, outside of the Assembly, were
understood as concurring. On the other hand Patrick Henry,
John Tyler, Spencer Roane, Carter Henry Harrison, Gen.
Thomas Matthews, French Strother and Edmund Ruffin, Jr.,
at the head of a majority in the Legislature, were against
carrying out its provisions until Great Britain had performed
her part of the bargain. Congress made treaties, but upon the
states devolved their execution, and it was expecting perhaps
too much to suppose that the latter would merely ratify the act
of Congress and have no will of their own. When the Legislature
met in May, 1784, the determination of the British to hold
the posts on the lakes was not known, but several citizens of
the state had visited New York to secure their captured property
and had been denied.

On a motion, therefore, in the Assembly June 7, 1784, to
repeal all the laws that prevented due compliance with the
stipulations of the treaty, the negative prevailed by a vote of
57 to 37.[81]

The treaty of peace had never been a favorite in Virginia.
It was considered that the people had been in a measure betrayed
by the negotiators, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams
and John Jay—especially, the latter two, who hated Frenchmen.
Contrary to the representations of the Virginia Assembly

and Congress too, the United States negotiators had
secretly signed a treaty with Great Britain apart from
France, and justified their action on the rather flimsy ground
that France was making secret overtures to Great Britain in
regard to the fisheries and the western boundary. It might be
answered that even supposing France was guilty of an immoral
act, that did not justify an immoral act on the part of
the Americans.[82] Such conduct was especially reprobated in
Virginia, which had seen the evidences of our ally's power on
our own soil in a manner too convincing to be easily forgotten.

The House accordingly appointed a committee to examine
into the truth of the complaints against the British, and on
June 14, 1784, the committee reported that the charge of a
breach of the treaty by them was correct, that slaves and other
property of citizens of the United States had been detained
and sent away. This report was considered in the Committee
of the Whole and resolutions were finally adopted June 23rd
by the Legislature instructing the Virginia delegates to inform
Congress "that the General Assembly had no inclination to
interfere with the power of making treaties with foreign nations,
which the Confederation hath wisely vested in Congress."
but it was conceived, "that a just regard to the
national honor and interest of the citizens of this Commonwealth,
obliges the Assembly to withhold their co-operation in
the complete fulfillment of the said treaty, until the success of
the aforesaid remonstrance is known, or Congress shall signify
their sentiments touching the premises." One of the provisions
of the treaty provided that "creditors on either side
shall meet with no lawful impediment to the recovery of the
full value, in sterling money, of all bona fide debts heretofore
contracted." It was resolved by the Legislature at this time
"that so soon as reparation is made for the aforesaid infraction,
or Congress shall adjudge it indispensably necessary,"
such acts of the Legislature passed during the late war as
prohibit the recovery of British debts, "ought to be repealed

and payment thereof made in such time and manner as is consistent
with the exhausted state of the Commonwealth."[83]

This session of the Legislature was memorable for its
affectionate address to George Washington, which thanked him
for his unremitted zeal and services in the cause of liberty, and
congratulated him on his return to his native state and to the
exalted pleasures of domestic life. A committee appointed
to consider what further measures might be necessary for perpetuating
the gratitude and veneration of his country, reported
in favor of a statue to be erected of the finest marble and best
workmanship. The report was approved and Mr. Madison
prepared the inscription which was to appear upon the
pedestal:

"The General Assembly of Virginia, having caused this
statue to be erected as a monument of affection and gratitude
to George Washington, who, uniting to the endowments of the
hero, the virtues of the patriot and exerting both in establishing
the liberties of his country, has rendered his name dear to
his fellow-citizens and given to the world an immortal example
of true glory."

This statue of Washington, executed by the celebrated
French artist Houdon, who was selected by Mr. Jefferson, the
United States Minister in Paris, stands as an inspiration today,
with the inscription proposed, in the lobby of the House
of Delegates.

The same success did not attend the bill granting the Secretary's
Land, in Northampton County (laid out in 1619) to
Thomas Paine, the famous author of "Common Sense," which
was offered by Mr. Henry and highly approved by Washington.
News got about that Paine was the author of a pamphlet,
"Public Good," denying the right of Virginia to the Western
country, and the bill was laid aside.

The next session began October 18, 1784, but it was not till
November 1st, that a quorum attended. On the 15th of November,

shortly after the commencement of business, General
Washington visited Richmond to press his plans of internal
improvement for the state. An act was passed to encourage
the navigation of the Potomac River from tidewater to the
highest place practicable on the north branch, and subscription
books for the purpose were opened in Richmond, Alexandria
and Winchester. Similarly the James River Company
was incorporated for clearing and extending the navigation
of James River from tidewater up to the highest parts practicable
on the main branch thereof, and books were opened for
subscription in Richmond, Norfolk, Botetourt Court House,
Lewisburg and Charles Irving's Store in Albemarle. This
legislation, like most of the important work of this Assembly,
was sponsored by the able representative from Orange, James
Madison, and through his agency was the broad program laid
of that whole system of internal improvements, which became
afterwards an object of policy in the state, though not always
consistently carried out.

On November 17, 1784, Mr. Henry was elected governor of
the commonwealth, "without competition or opposition," to
succeed Benjamin Harrison, whose three years expired at this
time. This unanimity was attributed to his vote on the refugees,
which had conciliated the Lee faction. Having already
served three years, he was by the constitution rendered incapable
of re-election till an interval of three years had
passed. In these three years of disability, Mr. Jefferson, General
Nelson and Benjamin Harrison had all three been elected.

LaFayette arrived on the 18th of the month and Speaker
Tyler appointed two committees, at the head of both of which
was Patrick Henry, to assure the two distinguished visitors,
Washington and LaFayette, of the veneration felt for their
characters by the people of the Commonwealth. As further evidence
of the honor in which they were held, an act was passed
giving to Washington fifty shares in the Potomac Company
and one hundred shares in the James River Company, and on
December 1, 1784, a resolution was unanimously agreed to,

authorizing the Governor and Council to carry out the resolution
adopted December 1, 1782, for making a marble bust of the
Marquis LaFayette to be executed in Paris and presented in
the name of the Commonwealth to that great city, as well as
to have another made bearing a similar inscription and to be
erected near the statue of General Washington in such public
place at the seat of government in Virginia as the Legislature
might hereafter decide. Both Washington and LaFayette
expressed themselves as greatly pleased with these testimonials
of honor, but Washington declined to take any advantage
of the gift made to him, and informed the governor,
Patrick Henry, that he would hold the shares only in trust for
some public object, to be afterwards designated. Later the
shares in the James River Company were applied by him to
the "better endowment of Liberty Hall Academy, at Lexington,
in Rockbridge County,"—an institution which afterwards
assumed the name of Washington College, and later of Washington
and Lee University; and the Potomac shares he set
apart by his will, as well as by a previous assignment, in aid
of a national university to be established in the District of
Columbia.

Among the other important bills of this session which became
laws were one giving James Rumsey for ten years exclusive
right of constructing and navigating boats against the
current of rapid rivers in the state, the beginning of steam
navigation in the United States; another already mentioned
for incorporating the Protestant Episcopal Church of Virginia;
and another, proposed by Mr. Madison, to prevent the
offenses against the law of nations known as filibustering—this
act being the first example of American legislation directed to
this end. "This measure," says Madison, "was warmly
patronized by Mr. Henry and most of the forensic speakers,
and no less warmly opposed by the Speaker and some others.
The opponents contended that such surrenders were unknown
to the law of nations and were contrary to our Declaration of
Rights." The bill passed by a majority of one—44 to 43—and

by its fourth section, Virginia led the way to making the principle
an accepted one in the international law of the world.
By this section, the Governor was formally required to transmit
copies of the act to the Governors of the colonies of such
nations as might be the subject of injury from disorderly
citizens of Virginia.

The question of the British debts came up for action again
at this session. No answer had been received from Congress
to the resolution passed at the previous session, but a marked
change in the mood of the country had ensued from the intervening
exchange of the ratifications of the treaty of peace.
General Washington's presence in Richmond had also a prevailing
influence. Mr. Henry was out of the way and Mr.
Tyler, "the other champion at the last session against the
treaty was half a proselyte." Monroe had written that the
British would hold the Western posts until the treaty was
complied with by the Americans, and Speaker Tyler replied
that, though smarting under the injustice, he would follow the
wishes of Congress.[84]

Consequently both houses of the Legislature adopted
resolutions that the Fourth Article of the Definitive Treaty
of Peace regarding debts due British subjects should be carried
out, and to this end a bill was introduced by Madison for
paying the debts in seven instalments without interest during
the war. Unfortunately in the discussion and vote on the bill
there was a disagreement between the Senate and the House,
necessitating a conference of the two houses.

In the conference, the House produced a proposition for
settlement, to which the Senate assented with some amendments,
considered in the House January 5, 1785. All the
amendments but one were accepted at last and the action of the
House was signified to the Senate by Mr. Henry Tazewell.

But the delays attending the measure had spun it out to the
day preceding the one fixed for a final adjournment. Several
of the members went over to Manchester in the evening with

an intention of returning the next morning, but the severity
of the night rendered their passage back impossible. The
members present voted to delay the adjournment, but the next
day presented the same obstructions in the river. Then the
House adjourned till the last day of March, 1785, and the bill
failed to become a law.

To conclude the history of this once famous subject, the
Assembly of Virginia, in December, 1787, passed an act repealing
all laws placing impediments in the way of British creditors,
but suspending its operation until England should surrender
the posts on the frontiers and return the slaves they had
taken from the Commonwealth or reimburse it to the amount
of their value. In this fashion the matter rested until 1788,
when the Federal Courts were open to the British creditors
and decided the suits in their favor. And then in 1794 Jay's
Treaty agreed to indemnify the British creditors for losses
incurred since the peace through legal impediments. As an
offset the British in 1796, after holding the forts on the frontier
for thirteen years, at last gave them up, and in 1802 the United
States appropriated $2,664,000 in payment of British creditors
for losses incurred.

The Virginians have been censured by Northern writers for
this unwillingness to pay their British creditors, but they
argued that these British debts were nothing like equal in
amount to the value of the slaves which the British stole during
the Revolution and never paid for, despite the terms of the
Treaty of Peace, which promised their return. In truth, there
has been much said by historical writers of the sanctity of
private debts, and the wonder is that not more has been said
of the sanctity of treaty obligations. One certainly is as important
as the other.

In the meantime, the question of the impost and the regulation
of trade occupied much of the attention of the people
of the United States. Connecticut, incensed at Rhode Island
for restricting her trade, passed an act making the consent of
only twelve states necessary to the operation of the impost

within her limits. Not long after, Mr. Tyler moved in the
Committee of the Whole House of the Virginia House of Delegates
a resolution of the same purport as that which received
the sanction of Connecticut. The proposition was supported
by Ex-Governor Harrison and opposed by Madison, but it received
the approval of the Committee of the Whole, and was
reported favorably December 13, 1784. But when a bill was
brought in in pursuance to the resolution and put to the vote,
it failed to receive the approval of the House.

The question of trade was considered in Congress, and
in March, 1785, Monroe made a report recommending "that
the Ninth Article of the Confederation should be amended
so as to confer upon Congress the exclusive right and power of
regulating the trade of the states, the proceeds of the duties
laid to accrue to the use of the state in which the same should
be payable and provided that every such act of Congress
should have the assent of nine states." Later on, as the three
more Southern states were unwilling to trust the Navigation
Acts to the voice of nine, or even of ten states, Monroe substituted
eleven states for his first proposal of nine.

The question was considered by the House of Delegates of
Virginia in the fall of 1785. The session opened with a hot
contest between John Tyler and Benjamin Harrison for the
speakership. The latter, now out of his governorship, wanted
his old place as speaker, then occupied by Mr. Tyler, and at
the election for the May House of Delegates the contest in
Charles City was felt as one for the speaker's chair itself.
Harrison, when governor had incurred much unpopularity in
Charles City and the neighboring counties because of his orders
to the militia of the counties to level the fortifications at
Yorktown. He, therefore, lost his election in his native county,
but having another estate in Surry he hastened thither and the
election occurring some three weeks after that in Charles City,
he managed by being elected from the County of Surry to carry
the contest for the Speakership to the floor of the House itself.
There he defeated Mr. Tyler by a majority of six, but his victory

shortly afterwards was nearly frustrated by an impeachment
of his election in the County of Surry in which the charge
of non-residence was brought against him in the House, decided
against him in the Committee of Privileges and Elections
by the casting vote of the chairman, and reversed in the House
by a very small majority. Harrison thus prevailed, but the
shock of his conflict with Mr. Tyler followed him for several
years after. In the election of the following year he was defeated
in Surry and also in Charles City, where he made a
second experiment, and it was not until the second year that he
succeeded in so far regaining the popular favor as to be reinstated
a representative for his native county.

After this matter of the speakership was settled, petitions
poured in from Norfolk, Portsmouth, Suffolk and Alexandria
denouncing British restrictions on trade and praying relief.
On the simple question of vesting Congress with the grant of
power the Committee of the Whole was practically unanimous
and a special committee, consisting of Messrs. Prentiss, Tyler,
Madison, Henry, Lee, Meriwether Smith, Braxton, Ronald,
Innis and Bullitt, reported on November 14, 1785, a measure
giving Congress power to regulate trade on consent of two-thirds
of the states, for a period which was finally determined
to be thirteen years. In this form the bill passed the House of
Delegates, November 30, 1785, but as fashioned it did not give
satisfaction, and the next day it was reconsidered and repealed.[85]

In the debates which ensued in the Committee of the Whole,
Colonel Harrison, the new speaker, expressed himself as opposed
to any grant to Congress of the power to regulate trade,
and in a letter to Washington expressed his decided conviction
that such a power would in time make the states south of the
Potomac little more than appendages of those north of it.[86]
Charles Mynn Thruston and Francis Corbin agreed with him
in opinion, the former considering it problematic whether it

would not be better to encourage the British than the eastern
marine. Carter Braxton and Meriwether Smith were of the
same views, though absent at the crisis of the question. Madison,
in reporting the debate, "thought them bitter and illiberal
against Congress and the northern states beyond example,"
but it is probable that after all they exhibited only a better
knowledge of the constitutional situation, as the "two nation
idea" was receiving an emphatic illustration at this very time.

The rescission of the original commercial propositions occurred
on December 1, and the same day they were laid on the
table and an alternative proposition, which had been kept in
reserve by the friends of the grant of power to Congress, was
introduced by John Tyler.

The history of this proposition takes us back some distance.
Commissioners had been appointed by the state of Virginia,
on Madison's motion, June 28, 1784, to meet and confer with
commissioners from the state of Maryland for the purpose of
agreeing upon measures to regulate the trade of the two states
in Potomac River and Chesapeake Bay. The charter of 1632
to Lord Baltimore defined the boundary between Maryland and
Virginia as the southern shore of the Potomac. This boundary
the constitution of Virginia confirmed, but reserved the right
to Virginia of the free navigation of the river conjointly with
Maryland. Almost simultaneously with the appointment of
these commissioners, an act was passed incorporating the Potomac
Company for improving the river's navigation and
opening communication with the western country. Washington
had cherished this project ever since 1754, and his interest
in the work on the river was very strong at all times. The commissioners
met at Alexandria in the latter part of March, 1785,
and were joined by General Washington, who showed George
Mason, one of the commissioners, a copy of a resolution of the
Virginia Assembly, not known to him before, giving the Virginia
commissioners, or any two of them, authority to unite
with the Maryland commissioners in inviting the state of Pennsylvania
to cooperate with them in providing convenient regulations

for the use of the Potomac River in connection with the
Ohio.[87]

On Washington's invitation the commission moved from
Alexandria to Mount Vernon, and here on March 28, 1785, they
settled the terms of a compact by which freedom of navigation
was granted by Virginia to Maryland over Virginia waters
and by Maryland to Virginia over Maryland waters. Light
houses, buoys, etc., on the Potomac and the bay were to be
maintained at the expense of both states, Virginia paying five
parts and Maryland three parts. A supplemental report to
be sent to the legislature of either state recommended the annual
appointment of commissioners who amicably meeting
should determine according to the exigencies of commerce on
common rates for both Maryland and Virginia.[88]

The compact and supplemental report came before the
Maryland legislature November 22, and that state, while ratifying
both, added a section inviting Pennsylvania and Delaware
into the same system of commercial policy. Pennsylvania
and Delaware accepted the invitation, and on February 20,
1786, Maryland named her commissioners to meet the commissioners
from the states of Pennsylvania and Delaware. But
this action came too late, for Virginia had already passed resolutions
of invitation to all the states.

Now it was not a part of the program of Madison and
Tyler that a partial uniformity of trade regulation should
be effected by agreement between groups of states, but they
wished the uniformity to prevail throughout the whole country
and to be under control of the national congress, so when
they perceived the hopelessness of expecting the Virginia Legislature
to concede to Congress more than a limited grant of
power to regulate trade they took up the proposition passed
by Maryland November 22, and formed it into a request to
all the states to appoint commissioners to meet and take into
consideration the trade of the United States. "Such a commission

it was hoped would recommend to the different state
legislatures to do what the Virginia legislature persisted in
refusing to do."

This was the purport of the resolution introduced by Mr.
Tyler on the 1st of December. On the 5th the resolutions of
the Maryland legislature was laid before the Assembly by the
governor, but leaving them and Mr. Tyler's motion suspended,
the Legislature went off into a long wrangle regarding British
restrictions on local trade. On the 27th a bill to approve and
ratify the compact agreed to at Mount Vernon was read the
second time and ordered to be committed to a committee, of
which Messrs. Madison, Tyler, Zane, Corbin, Braxton and
Sims were the members.

The close of the session approached and on January 16,
1786, the last division on that day showed only 80 members in
attendance, whereas on November 30th, 107 members had given
their names among the ayes and noes. The last day of the
session dawned on January 21, 1786, and nothing had been
done as to the commerce matter. Suddenly Mr. Tyler called
up his alternative bill for the political commercial convention,
and, glad of the opportunity, the House passed it by a large
majority, meeting, however, with the irreconcilable opposition
of Francis Corbin and Meriwether Smith. The same day it
passed the Senate, and became a law. The commissioners appointed
were the Attorney General of the State, Edmund Randolph,
James Madison, Dr. Walter Jones, St. George Tucker,
Meriwether Smith, George Mason, William Ronald and David
Ross. Mr. Tyler who moved the resolution, was not named a
commissioner, doubtless because of his election on December
20th to the Court of Admiralty in the room of Benjamin Waller,
resigned. A quorum of the Virginia deputies elected to
the proposed convention met in Richmond after adjournment
of the legislature, and proposed Annapolis as the place for
the meeting and September 14th as the date.

During this session the legislature transacted much
other business, some bad, some good. The state had gained

some reputation by paying its quota the year before, but by
postponing the collection of the taxes it made it doubtful
whether there would be a penny in the treasury to make payment
this year. On the other hand the legislature conferred
honor on itself by suppressing the "itch for paper money," as
Madison characterized it, and overwhelmingly defeated a bill
to repeal the act permitting the manumission of slaves, passed
in 1782.

Other important bills became laws—one giving permission
to Kentucky to call a convention for making it a state, another
for naturalizing the Marquis de LaFayette, another for securing
copyrights to authors of literary works, and another for
suppressing any attempt to erect and establish within the confines
of Virginia any government independent of the same.
This last bill, which is still preserved in the handwriting of
John Tyler, was directed against the efforts of Colonel Arthur
Campbell and others in Southwest Virginia to form a new
state within the limits and without the consent of Virginia.
Had the Assembly performed no other act than that of passing
the bill for religious freedom, extinguishing forever the ambitious
hope of making laws for the human mind, this session
would have stood illustrious in the annals of Virginia.

Of the delegates appointed to attend the convention at Annapolis,
Sept. 14, 1786, called by Virginia, Madison, Edmund
Randolph and Mr. Tucker of the commissioners were present.
By September 11th, Delaware, New Jersey, New York and
Pennsylvania were also represented. Maryland, North Carolina,
South Carolina, Connecticut and Georgia sent no delegates.
New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Massachusetts selected
delegates, but they did not deem it worth while to attend.
John Dickenson, of New Jersey, was elected president, but the
attendance was so slim that, under the leadership of Hamilton,
the convention decided to do nothing but merely to issue an address
calling for another delegation. In this address the extreme
expressions of Hamilton were modified by Randolph,
who was then at the height of his power in Virginia. It represented

that it was not enough to correct the constitution in its
commercial features, but that the revision should be extended
to the whole Federal system, and for this purpose the address
recommended another convention of delegates from the states
to meet in convention in the City of Philadelphia, on May 2,
1787.[89]

The convention dispersed and the initiative was once more
taken by Virginia. The Legislature met in Richmond on Monday,
October 16, 1786, but a quorum for business was not obtained
till a week later. On Monday, October 23, Joseph
Prentiss was elected Speaker, over Theodoric Bland. Mr.
Henry, not choosing to serve the full three years as governor,
let it be known that he would retire at the end of his second
year, and the Assembly on November 7, 1786, elected Edmund
Randolph, the attorney general, to take the office on November
30th following.

The most important measure adopted at this session was
an act pursuant to the recommendation of the convention at
Annapolis, which, after reciting the necessity of laying aside
every inferior consideration and concurring in such further
concessions and provisions as might be necessary to secure
the great objects for which the Union had been originally instituted,
authorized the appointment of seven commissioners by
a joint ballot of both houses, to assemble in convention at
Philadelphia, as recommended, and join with the delegates
from the other states in devising and discussing all such alterations
and further provisions as might be necessary to render
the Federal constitution adequate to the exigencies of
the Union. Under this provision, on December 4th, the following
delegates were selected: George Washington, Patrick
Henry, Edmund Randolph, John Blair, James Madison,
George Mason and George Wythe. Washington received the
unanimous vote. Thomas Nelson, Jr., Isaac Zane, Meriwether
Smith, Benjamin Harrison and John Page were put in nomination
and defeated. Mr. Henry declined the election for

various reasons, some of them of a private nature, but doubtless
chiefly to hold himself more free in his action on the work
at Philadelphia when submitted to the people of Virginia.
The vacancy decreed by Henry's declining to act was first
offered to General Nelson, and next to Richard Henry Lee,
and upon both of them declining, it was filled by Dr. James
McClurg, who till his removal to Richmond about this time
held the chair of medicine at William and Mary College.

The convention assembled at Philadelphia at the time specified
and the Virginians were easily the most important and
powerful men present. As a starting point for the debates our
delegates considered a plan of government, and they spent
three weeks while waiting for a quorum of delegates to reach
Philadelphia, in drawing one up. It contained the features
of Madison's ideas of government as outlined in his letters
to Randolph and Washington, but it was Randolph's hand that
actually drew up the resolutions, and as governor of the state
and a fluent and persuasive speaker, the distinction of presenting
them to the convention fell to him. This he did on May
29, 1787, when eight states had assembled. The work of the
convention was concluded on September 17, 1787. After the convention
got well on in its work the fact became generally recognized
that the first man in all the Assembly was James Madison.
William Pierce, a delegate from Georgia, described
him in the notes he took in the convention as "blending the
profound politician with the scholar" and as "evidently taking
the lead in the convention on every great question." "Mr.
Madison was about thirty-seven years of age, a gentleman of
great modesty—with a remarkably sweet temper—he is easy
and unreserved among his acquaintances and has a most
agreeable style of conversation."[90]

As representing ideals of a union of homogeneous elements,
Madison attained nearest a perfect vision. He looked beyond
state borders and saw a great future for the new American
Nation, but he never did understand the irreconcilable character

of the work which he had undertaken, and which only
extraordinary circumstances coming in aid of a sectional power
permitted to be realized. More conscious of the real conditions
were Madison's distinguished colleagues, Mason and Randolph,
who were so strongly opposed to some of the articles
of the constitution that they both refused to sign it. These articles
undoubtedly put authority in the hands of a sectional
majority and emphasized those distinctions between the North
and the South which could not be removed except by separation
or the conquest of one section by the other.

When submitted to the states the action of the convention
at Philadelphia gave rise to great agitation. The convention
that assembled in Richmond on June 2, 1788, to take the proposed
constitution into consideration easily surpassed in character
and talents any other of the ratifying bodies in any other
state whatsoever. Taken individually or collectively, its membership
bore favorable comparison with the picked delegates
of the Federal convention in Philadelphia the year before.
Randolph, Madison, Pendleton, Wythe, Nicholas, Corbin,
Henry Lee, Marshall and Innis represented the advocates
of the constitution, and Henry, Mason, Grayson, Harrison,
Tyler, Meriwether Smith and Monroe threw their immense
weight against it. Chancellor Pendleton was chosen president
of the Convention and Judge Tyler vice-president, and Chancellor
Wythe acted generally as chairman of the Committee of
the Whole. In this distribution of the membership in favor of
ratification and against it, there had been in a short interval
many changes. Edmund Randolph, in spite of his refusal to
sign the constitution, was in the State convention one of its
champions, and so was Francis Corbin, who in the State legislature
had been violent in opposing any grant of trade to Congress.

Henry, Mason, Grayson, Harrison, Tyler and Monroe, who
had been strong in favor of strengthening the Federal government,
were now opposed to the constitution without previous
amendments of a fundamental character. The cause of

this opposition lay in an incident which revealed in a most
striking manner the fundamental sectional differences of which
we have spoken, arousing in the minds of these gentlemen
a strong apprehension that in advocating a strong government
they would be only consenting to subjecting the South
to the tyranny of a Northern majority, who would use the
Union as an instrument merely for its own aggrandizement.

The history of this affair was as follows: During the
American Revolution, Spain had been anxious to secure both
sides of the Mississippi River so as to control its navigation.
On declaring war against Great Britain she had seized some
of the British posts, which enabled her to claim that she
owned both sides of the mouth of that great stream. The United
States opposed this claim and Madison wrote a great state
paper in October, 1780, in which he made clear that Spain's
possession of both banks of the mouth was neither an actual
nor an equitable bar to prevent the use of the river. Stress
was laid upon the authority of Vattell to show that an innocent
passage was due to all nations at peace, even for troops,
through a friendly state, and this applied equally to a water
passage. Later the South was so overrun by British military
successes that the armed neutrality of Europe under Catherine
II of Russia began to make itself feared, and serious beliefs
were entertained that the allied neutrals would force a
peace between the United States and Great Britain, upon the
basis of which each belligerent would keep such territory as
each actually held, the uti possidetis. This produced a change
in the views of the Virginia delegation, and the Assembly sent
them instructions passed January 2, 1781, to yield to Spain
"every further or other demand of the said navigation" which
was "necessary in the interest of a treaty" designed to aid in
securing the independence of the United States. Spain did
not accept the overture made by Congress pursuant to the
views of Virginia. No alliance was formed and the Mississippi
remained an open question.[91]

The treaty of peace with Great Britain in 1783 rendered the
Treaty of Alliance with Spain unnecessary, and Virginia returned
to her old position in favor of the free navigation of the
Mississippi, from which she had departed for profoundly patriotic
reasons. So when Don Diego Gardoqui presented his
credentials as minister from Spain July 2, 1785, the Virginia
delegation was no longer willing that a treaty should be negotiated
with any surrender of such vital nature. On August
25, 1785, Congress instructed Jay to adhere to the position
originally taken by the United States and on this point as set
forth in the instructions written by Madison in October, 1780,
but John Jay, the Secretary of Foreign Affairs, interested in
securing for the Eastern States an advantage to the fisheries
conducted negotiations with the Spanish minister upon a basis
of closing the river for tyenty-five or thirty years, and on
August 3, 1786, Jay laid his plan before Congress. He asked
Congress to change his instructions and permit Spain to use
the exclusive right to navigate the Mississippi for the time
mentioned.

This Congress considered in secret session, and on August
25, 1786, by a vote of seven Northern states against five Southern
states they changed Jay's instructions and revoked at the
same time the order to conclude no treaty until it was communicated
to Congress. Jay then proceeded to frame an article
in the proposed treaty in accordance with the instructions
of seven Northern states. There is strong evidence that the
Northern states had resolved amongst themselves to form a
separate confederacy unless they could force the project of
surrendering the Mississippi, the object being not only to
promote the fisheries but to stop the growth of the Southern
states towards the west. It is said that in all this intrigue
the plan of separation was more talked of in Massachusetts,
and is supposed to have originated there.

Monroe, who communicated the information to Governor
Henry in a letter[92] dated August 12, 1786, made a just comment

upon John Jay in the following words: "This is one of the
most extraordinary transactions I have ever known, a minister
negotiating expressly for the purpose of defeating the
object of his instructions and by a long train of intrigue seducing
the representatives of the states to concur in it." But
this kind of diplomacy was not new to Jay, as shown by the
scandalous way he acted in making the Treaty of Peace,
contrary to his instructions from Congress and the faith we
owed to France.

To the South the whole affair was a tremendous awakening.
That the Northern states for whom Virginia had done so
much should from a purely selfish purpose attempt to give
away the navigation of the Mississippi so valuable to her and
to the South, at the risk of losing the all important Western
country and dividing the Union, was a shock to her most patriotic
sensibilities. Even at this day, when the introduction
of railroads has brought the east and west together in a manner
never anticipated, the great river is still an invaluable
source of commerce for the states along its banks. Madison
reported to Washington, December 7, 1786, that "many of
our most Federal leading men are extremely silent after what
has already passed" and that "Mr. Henry, who has been
hitherto the champion of the Federal cause has become a cold
advocate and in the event of an actual sacrifice of the Mississippi
by Congress will unquestionably go over to the opposite
side."

Indeed the wonder is that the State convention met at all,
instead of meeting and dividing up merely upon the extent
of the powers to be vested in the Federal agent. It put the
majority of the people of Virginia undoubtedly against the
constitution, and it was only owing to the undue proportion
of delegates which the State constitution gave to the smaller
counties in favor of ratification over the populous counties that
were opposed to it that the constitution was approved. In the
midland and western counties where the radical spirit of the
Revolution had most prevailed, the strength of the opposition

was great, but in the small counties, where the conservative
influence had prevailed, the vote was generally in favor of the
constitution. In the State convention itself, where Madison
led the Federalists, Theodoric Bland reported the two parties
after a twelve days session almost equally divided, each side
boasting by turns of a majority. It was probably only through
the tact of Madison in explaining away the danger in reference
to the Mississippi that the ratification by 89 to 79 was
carried. He made the important disclosure to the Convention
of the actual state of affairs in Congress existing at the moment.
Seven states were not now disposed to surrender the
river. New Jersey had instructed her delegates not to surrender
it and Pennsylvania was of the same view. A few
days later he brought the matter to a close by saying: "Were
I at liberty, I would develop some circumstances that would
convince this house that this project will never be
revived in Congress and that therefore no danger is to be
apprehended."[93]

In asking for a modification of the Constitution, Henry
"made the fight of his life," and future events justified his
prognostications that the increase of power, though it might
build up a strong nation, would redound to the benefit of the
Northern majority. He first made a call for a convention to
adopt amendments. Defeated in that he proposed subsequent
amendments, in which Mr. Madison and the opposition acquiesced.
Moreover, the adoption of the constitution itself was
guarded by a preamble which it was argued operated as a
condition precedent. This ratification presented a saving to
the people of Virginia in favor of a rescission of the Constitution
"whenever the powers granted unto it should be perverted
to their injury or oppression." The guardians of states
rights were assured by Wilson Cary Nicholas that "no danger
could ever arise, for the constitution cannot be binding on
Virginia but with these conditions. They can exercise no
power that is not expressly granted them."

This was mere talk. To acquire more slaves and promote
a present advantage, the Southern states in the Convention
at Philadelphia had sacrificed one of the best guarantees of
power which they had. We have noted the terms of Monroe's
report in 1785, which required the consent of eleven states to
the passage of a commercial law. In the convention at Philadelphia
the committee of detail reported in favor of consent
of nine states. The Eastern states wanted a simple majority
and the Southern states of Georgia and South Carolina bargained
away their best guarantee in return for the votes of
New England in favor of the slave trade for twenty years.

The indignation of the Virginia representatives was intense
at this shameless combination. "Twenty years," cried
Madison, "will do all the mischief that can be apprehended
from the liberty to import slaves." Colonel George Mason
lamented that "some of our Eastern brethren have from a lust
of gain engaged in this nefarious traffic." And he said furthermore:
"The effect of a provision to pass commercial
laws by a simple majority would be to deliver the South bound
hand and foot to the Eastern states and enable them to exclaim
in the words of Cromwell on a certain occasion: `The Lord
hath delivered them into our hands.' " He went away, as we
have seen, without signing the constitution.

In the Virginia convention which followed, Madison was
compelled to defend the sections of the constitution in which
this bargain was expressed and showed to poor advantage.
Tyler expressed the desires of all the opponents of the constitution
in the convention when he said that "his earnest desire
was that it should be handed down to posterity that he opposed
this wicked clause." This action of the Federal convention
drew the line of demarcation between the sections more deeply
than ever. According to Dr. Dabney,[94] more than 125,000 negroes
were introduced, chiefly through northern vessels, into
the country between 1788 and 1808, whose descendants in 1860
must have verged on 1,000,000, and it was only a temporizing

policy that lay at the basis of another compromise, which increased
the representation of the South by permitting three-fifths
of the slaves to be counted in the electorate. This effected
no real security and a new principle was later introduced
in Congress of keeping up a balance of power by the admission
of a slave state pari passu with a free state. One wonders now
at the shortsightedness of the Southern people in supposing
that such protection could be made permanent.