USA > Virginia > History of the colony and ancient dominion of Virginia > Part 42
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When the main army was set in motion Washington requested to be put in advance, and Forbes, profiting by Braddock's fatal error, complied with his wish. Washington was called to head- quarters, attended the councils of war, and, in compliance with the general's desire, drew up a line of march and order of battle. Forbes' army consisted of twelve hundred Highlanders, three hundred and fifty Royal Americans, twenty-seven hundred pro- vincials from Pennsylvania, sixteen hundred from Virginia, two or three hundred from Maryland, and two companies from North Carolina, making in all, including the wagoners, between six and seven thousand men. This army was five months in reaching the Ohio. The main body left Raystown on the 8th of October,
* See in Bland Papers, i. 9, Robert Munford's letter, dated at the Camp near Fort Cumberland. He was father of the translator of Homer, and grandfather to George W. Munford, Esq., Secretary of the Commonwealth.
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1758, and reached the camp at Loyal Hanna early in November. The troops were worn out with fatigue and exposure; winter had set in, and more than fifty miles of rugged country yet inter- vened between them and Fort Du Quesne. A council of war declared it unadvisable to proceed further in that campaign. Just at this conjuncture, three prisoners were brought in, and they gave such a report of the feeble state of the garrison at the fort, that it was determined to push forward at once. Washington, with his provincials, opened the way. The French, reduced to five hundred men, and deserted by the Indians, set fire to the fort, and retired down the Ohio. Forbes took possession of the post on the next day, (November 25th, 1758.) The works were repaired, and the fort was now named Fort Pitt. An important city, called after the same illustrious statesman, has been reared near the spot. General Forbes, whose health had been declining during the campaign, died shortly afterwards at Phila- delphia. He was a native of Scotland, and was educated as a physician; was an estimable and brave man, and of fine military talents.
Burnaby, who visited Virginia about this time, in describing Williamsburg, mentions the governor's palace as the only tolera- bly good public building. The streets being unpaved are dusty, the soil being sandy. The miniature capital had the rare advan- tage of being free from mosquitoes; and it was, all things consi- dered, a pleasant place of residence. During the session of the assembly and of the general court, it was crowded with the gentry of the country. On these occasions there were balls, and other amusements; but as soon as the public business was dis- patched the visitors returned to their homes, and Williamsburg appeared to be deserted. Lightning-rods were now generally used in Virginia, and proved efficacious. At Spotswood's iron mines, on the banks of the Rappahannock, there were smelted, annually, upwards of six hundred tons of metal. Coal mines had been opened with good success on the James River near the falls. Not a tenth of the land in Virginia was cultivated; yet, besides tobacco, she produced considerable quantities of fruit, cattle, and grain. The bacon was held to be superior in flavor to any in the world; but the mutton and beef inferior to that of
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Great Britain. The horses were fleet and beautiful; and the breed was improved by frequent importations from England. Delicious fruits abounded, and in the early spring the eye of the traveller was charmed with the appearance of the orchards in full blossom. There were fifty-two counties and seventy-seven parishes, and on the pages of the statute-book forty-four towns; but one-half of these had not more than five houses, and the other half, for the most part, were inconsiderable villages. The exports of tobacco were between fifty and sixty thousand hogs- heads, each weighing eight hundred or a thousand pounds. Their other exports were, to the Madeiras and the West Indies, cider, pork, lumber, and grain; to Great Britain, bar-iron, indigo, and a little ginseng. The only domestic manufacture of any conse- quence was Virginia cloth, which was commonly worn. There were between sixty and seventy clergymen, "men in general of sober and exemplary lives." Burnaby describes the Virginians as in- dolent, easy, good-natured, fond of society, and much given to convivial pleasures. They were devoid of enterprise and incapa- ble of enduring fatigue. Their authority over their slaves ren- dered them vain, imperious, and destitute of refinement. Ne- groes and Indians they looked upon as scarcely of the human species; so that in case of violence, or even murder committed upon them, it was almost impossible to bring them to justice. Such was Burnaby's report on this subject. During the reign of James the Second, John Page, in a religious work composed by him, thought it necessary to combat, in an elaborate argument, the opinion that a master had the power of life and death over his slave.
Washington, after furnishing a detachment from his regiment as a garrison for Fort Pitt, then considered as within the juris- diction of Virginia, marched back to Winchester. Thence he proceeded to Williamsburg to take his seat in the assembly, having been elected by the County of Frederick. He resigned his military commission in December, after having been engaged in the service for more than five years. His health had been impaired, and domestic affairs demanded his attention. On the 6th day of January, 1759, he was married to Martha, widow of
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John Parke Custis, and daughter of John Dandridge, a lady in whom were united wealth, beauty, and an amiable temper.
By an order of the assembly, Speaker Robinson was directed to return their thanks to Colonel Washington, on behalf of the colony, for the distinguished military services which he had ren- dered to the country. As soon as he took his seat in the house, the speaker performed this duty in such glowing terms as quite overwhelmed him. Washington rose to express his acknowledg- ments for the honor, but was so disconcerted as to be unable to articulate a word distinctly. He blushed and faltered for a moment, when the speaker relieved him from his embarrassment by saying, "Sit down, Mr. Washington, your modesty equals your valor, and that surpasses the power of any language that I possess."
Captain Stobo, a hostage in the hands of the French, was de- tained for years at Quebec, enduring frequently the hardships of actual imprisonment, and for a time being under condemnation of death. At length he was released from this apprehension and from close confinement, and in May, 1759, in company of several others, effected his escape. Eluding the enemy by prudence and gallantry, he and his associates made their way to Louisburg. Here Stobo was gladly welcomed, and he joined General Wolfe, to whom his information proved serviceable; and he appears to have been present at the capture of Quebec. Shortly afterwards he returned to Virginia, (November, 1759.) The assembly granted him a thousand pounds, requested the governor to pro- mote him, and presented their thanks to him for his fidelity, for- titude, and courage, by Mr. R. C. Nicholas, Mr. Richard Bland, and Mr. George Washington. Stobo returned to England, where his memoirs were published. In 1760 he was made a captain in Amherst's Regiment, then serving in America; and he held that position in 1765.
Van Braam, who had been kept prisoner at Montreal, was not released until the surrender of that city to the British in the ensuing year. He returned to Williamsburg shortly afterwards. In 1770 he obtained his share of the Virginia bounty lands; and in 1777 was made major in the Royal Americans, then in the West Indies.
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During this year (1759) Rev. Andrew Burnaby visited Mount Vernon, of which he remarks: "This place is the property of Co- Ionel Washington, and truly deserving of its owner. The house is most beautifully situated upon a very high hill on the banks of the Potomac, and commands a noble prospect of water, of cliffs, of woods, and plantations. The river is near two miles broad though two hundred from the mouth; and divides the dominions of Virginia from Maryland."
Burnaby, in his Travels, describes the condition of the Ger- mans on the Shenandoah as follows: "I could not but reflect with pleasure on the situation of these people, and think, if there is such a thing as happiness in this life, that they enjoy it. Far from the bustle of the world, they live in the most delightful cli- mate and richest soil imaginable; they are everywhere surrounded with beautiful prospects and sylvan scenes, lofty mountains, transparent streams, falls of water, rich valleys, and majestic woods; the whole, interspersed with an infinite variety of flower- ing shrubs, constitute the landscape surrounding them; they are subject to few diseases; are generally robust, and live in perfect liberty; they are ignorant of want, and acquainted with but few vices; their inexperience of the elegancies of life precludes any regret that they possess not the means of enjoying them; but they possess what many princes would give their dominions for- health, content, and tranquillity of mind."
In the year 1761 died the Rev. Thomas Dawson, President of the College of William and Mary; he was succeeded by the Rev. William Yates. During the same year died the Rev. Samuel Davies .* He accepted the presidency of the College of New Jersey in 1759, and died on the 4th of February, 1761. In this year was incorporated the town of Staunton, in Augusta County, and in the following year Romney, in the County of Hampshire.
During the tragic scenes of the French and Indian war, the
* John Rodgers Davies, his third son, was at Princeton College at the same time with Mr. Madison, and leaving it, at the commencement of the revolu- tionary war, became an officer in the army, and as such enjoyed the esteem of Washington. He is said to have been engaged in the auditor's office at Rich- mond. He removed to Sussex County, and died there.
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/
persecutions of the dissenting Presbyterians, whose aid was so
necessary in defending the frontiers, were essentially lessened. They were indebted to the confusion and dangers of the times for a freedom in matters of religion which was denied them in a period of tranquillity. Their ministers now enjoyed the privilege of preaching where they pleased, and were no longer restrained by the Virginia intolerant construction of the toleration act. The Baptists began to multiply their number in Virginia, and their new enthusiasm became the object of persecution. But events were about to turn the tide of popular prejudice, and direct it against the clergy of the established church, and to give to the dis- senters a stronger foothold and a higher vantage ground. Those ministers of the establishment who had been vainly endeavoring to repress the progress of dissent by ridicule, detraction, and in- sult, some of them combining with and leading on a mob of "lewd fellows of the baser sort" in these persecuting indignities, now began to find it necessary to defend themselves against the rising storm of public indignation.
CHAPTER LXV.
1763.
The Parsons' Cause-Patrick Henry's Speech.
IN the year 1763 occurred the famous "Parsons' Cause," in which the genius of Patrick Henry first shone forth. The emolu- ments of the clergy of the established church for a long time had consisted of sixteen thousand pounds of tobacco, contributed by each parish. The tobacco trop of 1755 failing, in conse- quence of a drought, and the exigencies of the colony being greatly augmented by the French and Indian war, the assembly passed an act, to endure for ten months, authorizing all debts due in tobacco to be paid either in kind or in money, at the rate of sixteen shillings and eight pence for every hundred pounds of tobacco. This was equivalent to two pence per pound, and hence the act was styled by the clergy the "Two Penny Act." As the price of tobacco now rose to six pence per pound, the reduc- tion amounted to sixty-six and two-thirds per cent. At two
pence the salary of a minister clergy was about one hundred and thirty-three pounds; at six pence, about four hundred pounds. Yet the act must have operated in relief of the indebted clergy equally with other debtors, and many of the ministers were in debt. It was by no means the intention of the assembly to abridge the maintenance of the clergy, or to bear harder upon them than upon all other public creditors; and as they, under the new act, in fact, received in general a larger salary than they had received in any year since it was first regulated by law, they, above all men, ought to have been content with it in a year of so much distress .* The taxes were enormous, and fell most heavily upon planters of limited means; and the tobacco-crop was greatly fallen off. The Rev. James Maury, in whose behalf the suit was
* Colonel Richard Bland's Letter to the Clergy.
(507)
.
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afterwards brought, had himself at the time expressly approved of the Two Penny Act, and said: "In my own case, who am en- titled to upwards of seventeen thousand weight of tobacco per annum, the difference amounts to a considerable sum. However, each individual must expect to share in the misfortunes of the community to which he belongs."* The law was universal in its operation, embracing private debts, public, county, and parish levies, and the fees of all civil officers. Its effect upon the clergy was to reduce their salary to a moderate amount in money, far less, indeed, than the sixteen thousand pounds which they were ordinarily entitled to, yet still rather more than what they had usually received. The act did not contain the usual clause, by which acts altering previous acts approved by the crown were suspended until they should receive the royal sanction, since it might require the entire ten months, the term of its operation, to learn the determination of the crown. The king had a few years before expressly refused to allow the assembly to dispense with the suspending clause in any such act. The regal authority was thus apparently abnegated; necessity discarding forms, and the safety of the people being the supreme law. Up to the time of the Revolution the king freely exercised his authority in vetoing acts of the assembly when they had been approved by large majorities of the house of burgesses and of the council. The practice was to print all the acts at the close of each session, and when an act was negatived by the king, that fact was writ- ten against the act with a pen.f
No open resistance was offered to the Two Penny Act; but the greater number of clergy petitioned the house of burgesses to grant them a more liberal provision for their maintenance. Their petition set forth: "That the salary appointed by law for the clergy is so scanty that it is with difficulty they support them- selves and families, and can by no means make any provision for their widows and children, who are generally left to the charity of their friends; that the small encouragement given to clergy-
* Memoirs of Huguenot Family, 402.
¡ Journals of the house of burgesses thus marked are in the possession of Mr. Grigsby.
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.
men is a reason why so few come into this colony from the two universities; and that so many, who are a disgrace to the minis- try, find opportunities to fill the parishes; that the raising the salary would prove of great service to the colony, as a decent subsistence would be a great encouragement to the youth to take orders, for want of which few gentlemen have hitherto thought it worth their while to bring up their children in the study of divinity; that they generally spent many years of their lives at great expense in study, when their patrimony is pretty well exhausted; and when in holy orders they cannot follow any se- cular employment for the advancement of their fortunes, and may on that account expect a more liberal provision."* Another re- lief act, similar to that of 1755, fixing the value of tobacco at eighteen shillings a hundred, was passed in 1758; upon a mere anticipation of another scanty crop .¿ Burk§ attributes the rise in the price of tobacco to the arts of an extravagant specula- tor; but he cites no authority for the statement, and the acts themselves expressly attribute the scarcity, in 1755, to "drought," and in 1757 to "unseasonableness of the weather."|| The crop did fall short, and the price rose extremely high; and conten- tion ensued between the planters and the clergy. The Rev. John Camm, rector of York Hampton Parish, assailed the "Two Penny Act" in a pamphlet of that title, which was replied to severally by Colonel Richard Bland and Colonel Landon Carter. An acrimonious controversy took place in the Virginia Gazette; but the cause of the clergy became at length so unpopular, that a printer could not be found in Virginia willing to publish Camm's rejoinder to Bland and Carter, styled the "Colonels Dismounted," and he was obliged to resort to Maryland for that purpose. The colonels retorted, and this angry dispute threw the colony into great excitement. At last the clergy appealed to the king in council. By an act of assembly passed as early as the year 1662, a salary of eighty pounds per annum was set-
* Colonel Bland's Letter to the Clergy, 6. + Hening, vii. 240.
į Ibid., vi. 568.
¿ Hist. of Va., iii. 302.
| See also A. H. Everett's Life of Patrick Henry, in Sparks' American Biog., (second series,) i. 230.
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tled upon every minister, "to be paid in the valuable commodi- ties of the country-if in tobacco, at twelve shillings the hundred; if in corn, at ten shillings the barrel." In 1696 the salary of the clergy was fixed at sixteen thousand pounds of tobacco, worth at that time about eighty pounds. This continued to be the amount of their stipends until 1731, when, the value of to- bacco being raised, they increased to about one hundred or one hundred and twenty pounds, exclusive of their glebes and other perquisites. In Virginia, besides the salaries of the clergy, the people had to bear parochial, county, and public levies, and fees of clerks, sheriffs, surveyors, and other officers, all of which were payable in tobacco, the paper currency of the colony having banished gold and silver from the colony .* The consequence of this state of things was that a failure in the crop involved the people in general distress; for by law if the salaries of the clergy and the fees of officers were not paid in tobacco by the tenth day of April, the property of delinquents was liable to be distrained, and if not replevied within five days, to be sold at auction. Were they to be exposed to cruel imposition and exactions; to have their estates seized and sacrificed, "for not complying with laws which Providence had made it impossible to comply with ? Com- mon sense, as well as common humanity, will tell you that they are not, and that it is impossible any instruction to a governor can be construed so contrary to the first principles of justice and equity, as to prevent his assent to a law for relieving a colony in a case of such general distress and calamity." Sherlock, Bishop of London, in his letter to the lords of trade and planta- tions, denounced the act of 1758, as binding the king's hands, and manifestly tending to draw the people of the plantations from their allegiance to the king. It was replied, on the other hand, that if the Virginians could ever entertain the thought of withdrawing from their dependency on England, nothing could be more apt to bring about such a result than the denying them the right to protect themselves from distress and calamity in so try- ing an emergency. In the year when this relief act was passed, many thousands of the colonists did not make one pound of to-
* Burnaby's Travels.
¡ Bland's Letter to the Clergy, 14.
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bacco, and if all of it raised in the colony had been divided among the tithables, "they would not have had two hundred pounds a man to pay the taxes, for the support of the war, their levies and other public dues, and to provide a scanty subsistence for themselves and families;" and "the general assembly were obliged to issue money from the public funds to keep the people from starving." The act had been denounced as treasonable; but were the legislature to sit with folded arms, silent and inac- tive, amid the miseries of the people? "This would have been treason indeed,-treason against the state,-against the clemency of the royal majesty." Many landlords and civil officers were members of the assembly in 1758, and their fees and rents were payable in tobacco; nevertheless, they cheerfully promoted the enactment of a measure by which they were to suffer great losses. The royal prerogative in the hands of a benign sovereign could only be exerted for "the good of the people, and not for their destruction." "When, therefore, the governor and council (to whom this power is in part delegated) find, from the uncertainty and variableness of human affairs, that any accident happens which general instructions can by no means provide for, or which, by a rigid construction of them, would destroy a people so far distant from the royal presence, before they can apply to the throne for relief, it is their duty as good magistrates to exer- cise this power as the exigency of the state requires; and though they should deviate from the strict letter of an instruction, or, perhaps in a small degree from the fixed rule of the constitution, yet such a deviation cannot possibly be treason, when it is in- tended to produce the most salutary end-the preservation of the people."
The Rev. Andrew Burnaby, who passed some months in Vir- ginia about the time of this dispute, travelling through the colony and conversing freely with all ranks of people, expresses him- self on the subject in the following manner: "Upon the whole, however, as on the one hand I disapprove of the proceedings of the assembly in this affair, so on the other I cannot approve of the steps which were taken by the clergy; that violence of tem- per, that disrespectful behavior toward the governor, that un- worthy treatment of their commissary, and, to mention nothing
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else, that confusion of proceeding in the convention,* of which some, though not the majority, as has been invidiously repre- sented, were guilty; these things were surely unbecoming the sacred character they are invested with, and the moderation of those persons who ought in all things to imitate the conduct of their Divine Master. If instead of flying out in invectives against the legislature, of accusing the governor of having given up the cause of religion by passing the bill, when, in fact, had he re- jected it, he would never have been able to have got any supplies during the course of the war, though ever so much wanted; if instead of charging the commissaryt with want of zeal, for having exhorted them to moderate measures, they had followed the pru- dent counsels of that excellent man, and had acted with more temper and moderation, they might, I am persuaded, in a very short time have obtained any redress they could reasonably have desired. The people in general were extremely well affected toward the clergy."#
The following paper exhibits the view maintained by Richard Henry Lee on this mooted topic :-
" Reasons and Objections to Mr. Camm's Appeal.
"OBJECTED, on the part of Mr. Camm: That the law of 1758, as it tended to suspend the act of 1748, which had obtained the royal approbation, and as it was contrary to his majesty's instruc- tions to his governor, was void ab initio, and was so declared by his majesty's order of disapprobation of 10th of August, 1759.
"ANSWER .- Whatever might be allowed to be the effect of these objections, and however they might affect those who made the law, it would be very hard that they should subject to a heavy penalty two innocent subjects,§ who have been guilty of no offence but that of obeying a law passed regularly in appearance through the several branches of the legislature of the colony while it had
* The record of this convention of the clergy, which is probably in the archives of the See of London, would be extremely interesting at the present day. + Robinson.
į Travels through the Middle Settlements in North America in the year 1759 and 1760, with Observations upon the state of the Colonies, by the Rev. Andrew Burnaby, A. M., Vicar of Greenwich. Second edition. London, 1775.
¿ The collectors.
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the force of a law upon the spot. It would be to punish them for a mistake of the assembly. But the objections do not prove either that the law was a nullity from the beginning by its tending to suspend the act of 1748, or by being assented to by the governor, contrary to his majesty's instructions to him, or that it became void by relation, ab initio, from any retrospective declarations of his majesty. As to the law in question tending to suspend the act of 1748, which had received the royal appro- bation, a power given by the crown to make laws implies a power to suspend or even repeal former laws which are become inconvenient or mischievous, as the law of 1748 was; otherwise a country at the distance of three thousand miles might be subject to great calamities, before relief could be obtained, for which reason such power is lodged in the legislature of the country.
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