USA > Virginia > Virginia, a history of the people > Part 29
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THE HEART OF THE REBELLION.
fighting ; the College students were mingling with the throng in their "academic dress ;" and his serene Ex- cellency, in his fine coach drawn by six milk-white horses, goes to open the House of Burgesses, after which he will sternly dissolve them. It is a scene full of gayety and abandon ; but under it is a volcano. Never was Wil- liamsburg more brilliant than on the eve of the explo- sion. We shall see the last supreme fête when the cour- teous Burgesses invite his Excellency's amiable family to attend a great assembly in their honor, though he has ordered them to leave the Capitol and the die is cast.
All these lights and shadows of the past concentrated at Williamsburg, where the King's-men were going to show whether they would or would not espouse the Revolution. As to that there had been misgivings. Men like Otis and Adams looked confidently, they de- clared, for decisive action to "that ancient colony of whose disinterested virtue this province has had ample experience." But the general sentiment was scarcely so flattering. There had been a wide-spread impression that the Virginians were monarchists and aristocrats who could not be relied upon in a struggle against the Crown. The action of the representatives of the people had fol- lowed. They had declared that Virginians only had the right to make laws for Virginia. The whole coun- try rose to support the defiance; and Massachusetts was now to have another experience of the disinterested virtue of the ancient colony. Virginia in 1774 will resolve that an attack on Massachusetts is an attack on Virginia; and will recommend a General Congress which at her call will declare the American Colonies in- dependent of Great Britain.
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VI.
THE STEPPING-STONES OF REVOLUTION.
FOR about ten years after the Stamp Act agitation all Virginia was in turmoil. Great events were felt to be near and the air was sultry with the heat of the com- ing storm.
The English Parliament had recoiled before the deter- mined opposition to the Stamp Act, and repealed it; but in 1767 a new duty was laid on glass, paper, and tea, to take effect in the autumn. Thereat rose new commotions, altercations with the King's officers, and so much hot blood that suddenly two English regiments appeared at Boston. Since the Americans would not listen to reason, they were to be argued with through the muzzles of musketry and cannon. But the new Eng- lish logic had no more effect than the old. The hearts of the people, north and south, grew ever hotter. In Vir- ginia the old affection for England became weaker and weaker. There and everywhere memorials, representa- tions, protests, the reverse of humble, continued to darken the air and give due notice of what was coming.
In the next year (1768), died his Excellency Francis Fauquier, a man of ability, of elegant manners, a de- lightful companion, a free-thinker, and furious card- player at his Palace or on his visits to the manor-houses of the planters, who greatly liked him for his genial manners and character. John Blair, President of the Council, replaced him for the time ; and in the autumn (1768), came Norborne Berkeley, Lord Botetourt, the most popular, perhaps, of all the royal Governors of Virginia.
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THE STEPPING-STONES OF REVOLUTION. 401
Lord Botetourt went to open the Burgesses (May 1769), in a coach presented to him by King George III. It was drawn by six white horses, and the insignia of royalty were seen everywhere. On that day and the next he entertained fifty-two gentlemen at dinner in the Palace ; but under all these festivities and cordial bows and smiles was the heart-burning of the time. Five days afterwards the Burgesses proceeded to business. In February Parliament had advised the King to trans- port persons guilty of treason to England for trial. At this the Virginians took fire. The Burgesses passed resolutions declaring the transportation of Americans an act of tyranny ; that the proceeding would be dan- gerous ; that the Colonies alone had the right to tax themselves ; and that these resolves should be trans- mitted to the other Colonies for their approval. Cordial Governor Botetourt was thus met in the very beginning by resolute opposition. There was nothing for him to do but dissolve the refractory Burgesses, and he did so ; but that only added fuel to the flame. There was no thought of stopping now ; the current swept all before it. The Burgesses met in the Apollo Room of the Ra- leigh Tavern, and repeated their protest in a more prac- tical manner. They reaffirmed their resolutions against . the transportation of Americans for trial; and unani- mously adopted an agreement, drawn by George Mason and presented by George Washington, not to import or purchase any English commodities, or any slaves until their rights were redressed. This paper was soon fly- ing through the length and breadth of the country for signatures.
Once more England drew back. The right to tax the Americans was still insisted upon, but the Act of 1767
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was repealed except as to tea (March, 1770). This duty was retained as an assertion of the right to tax, and Lord North, the new Premier, who had succeeded the Duke of Grafton, said frankly, "a total repeal cannot be thought of till America is prostrate at our feet." There seemed little likelihood that the Americans were going to assume that humble attitude ; but it now became plain that the smiling Premier who went to sleep while his opponents were denouncing him, had made up his mind to employ coercion.1
At this critical moment (October, 1770), Lord Bote- tourt died. He had become warmly attached to the Vir- ginians and had greatly endeared himself to them. When he was notified, by the Earl of Hillsborough, of the intended repeal of the Act of 1767, he said to the Assembly, "I will be content to be declared infamous if I do not to the last hour of my life, at all times and in all places and upon all occasions, exert every power
1 Baron North is not a popular historical personage in this country, but like George III. he was not as black as he is painted. He honestly believed in the right of Parliament to tax the Colonics and listened to the denunciations of Colonel Barre and others with serene good-humor. He often slept in his seat while the opposition thunder was rolling above his head, and revenged himself by bon-mots. Having closed his eyes one day an opponent exclaimed : "Even now, in the midst of these perils, the noble lord is asleep !" when North was heard to mutter with his customary humor, "I wish to God I were! " When Colonel Barre was making a long speech on the naval history of England, North requested a friend to wake him when the speaker " came near our own times." The friend woke him, when North asked, " Where are we ?" " At the Battle of La Hague, my lord." "Oh, my dear friend," said North, " You have waked me a century too soon." One day objec- tion was made to his application of the term "rebels " to the Ameri- cans. " Well," he said, with his unfailing wit, "then to please you I will call them the gentlemen in opposition on the other side of the water ; " the neatest of intimations that the opposition in Parliament were no better.
THE STEPPING-STONES OF REVOLUTION. 403
with which I am or ever shall be legally invested, in order to obtain and maintain for the continent of America that satisfaction which I have been authorized to prom- ise." He wished them, he said, "freedom and happi- ness till time should be no more; " but he did not live to witness the great struggle for that freedom. His death is said to have been hastened by chagrin at the course of his government; and the Virginians, who sin- cerely lamented him, named a county after him and erected a statue to his memory. It was placed in front of William and Mary College, and as his friend the Duke of Beaufort asked permission to " erect a monu- ment near the place where he was buried," it is probable that he was interred beneath the floor of the old chapel. He was succeeded by William Nelson, President of the Council, and he in turn (1772), by John Murray, Earl of Dunmore.
It was unfortunate for Lord Dunmore that he should have followed so cordial a person as Botetourt. Never was ruler more unpopular ; and even after making al . lowance for the hot passions of the time, the new Gov- ernor must have been an unprepossessing person. He was abrupt and imperious in manner, arbitrary, resolved to crush the spirit of rebellion, and not disposed to re- coil from any means in his power to accomplish that object. He brought with him, as private secretary, Captain Foy, who had fought bravely at Minden ; and this selection of a soldier as his confidential adviser and agent probably indicated a conviction that sooner or later there would be armed resistance in Virginia.
With spring of the next year (1773) came new ex- citement. Parliament reasserted in still stronger terms the right to transport accused persons to England for
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404 VIRGINIA: A HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE.
trial, and in Virginia the protest of 1769 was renewed. The Burgesses were in session and the spirit of resist- ance led to an important measure. Henry, Jefferson, Lee, and others were accustomed to meet in a private room at the Raleigh Tavern for consultation ; and at one of these meetings Richard Henry Lee proposed the appointment of a committee to obtain "the most early and authentic intelligence " of affairs in England, and to " maintain a correspondence and communication with our sister colonies." A similar plan had already been devised in Massachusetts for communication between the counties of that colony ; the scope of the Virginia plan was larger, since it looked to correspondence and consultation between all the Colonies. The resolutions were offered (March 12, 1773) by Dabney Carr, a young member of brilliant genius, who died soon after- wards. They were promptly passed, and the commit- tee appointed. It consisted of the most distinguished members of the Burgesses : Robert Carter Nicholas, Richard Bland, Richard Henry Lee, Benjamin Harri- son, Edmund Pendleton, Patrick Henry, Dudley Digges, Dabney Carr, Archibald Cary, and Thomas Jefferson. The Governor at once dissolved the Assembly, but the mischief was done. From that moment revolution was organized.
The Committees of Correspondence were going to combine all the elements of resistance. Hitherto the American colonies had been detached communities. The men of the North and the men of the South, separated by hundreds of miles, without steam or electricity, were practically strangers, and knew not whether they could depend on each other. Boston might be bombarded, or Williamsburg in flames, and neither might know
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JEFFERSON, THE "APOSTLE OF DEMOCRACY.", 405
what was the fate of the other. The action of one colony might embarrass the rest ; their counsels might clash and they might be crushed in detail. Now this danger had passed. The thirteen provinces were a unit. Through the Committees, which were promptly appointed everywhere, the leaders consulted, matured their plans, and agreed upon their course of action. A portentous power had suddenly thrust itself into the quarrel ; and William Lee wrote from London that this inter-colonial consultation had " struck a greater panic into the ministers " than all that had taken place since the days of the Stamp Act. That estimate of the importance of the plan was just. A great machine had been put in motion, and was hewing out the pathway to revolution. Thenceforward the American colonies would no longer engage here and there in desultory and useless skirmishing, but advance in solid column, shoulder to shoulder, to the decisive struggle.
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JEFFERSON, THE " APOSTLE OF DEMOCRACY."
THE country was now upon the threshold of revolu- tion. For ten years the minds of the Americans had been growing hotter ; the black cloud had become blacker ; the lightning had begun to flicker ; the tem- pest was coming.
The Virginia leaders were an illustrious group. They were nearly without exception descendants of the refu- gees who had come over after the execution of Charles I .; and their memory is still cherished with peculiar veneration in Virginia. Among these were Archibald
406 . VIRGINIA: A HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE.
Cary of Ampthill, called " Old Iron," a man of low stature, grim, irascible, with piercing eyes, who, when Henry was spoken of as dictator, sent him word that " the day of his appointment should be the day of his death, for he should find his (Cary's) dagger in his heart before the sunset of that day ; " Richard Bland, an old man nearly blind and wearing a bandage over his eyes, the author of the famous " Enquiry into the Rights of the American Colonies," and called the Vir- ginia Antiquary ; Thomas Nelson, of a family distin- guished for patriotism and integrity, tall, blue - eyed, and full of courtesy, who was to sign the Declaration, command in the field, and become Governor of Vir- ginia ; John Page, the pious churchman, to become a member of the Committee of Safety, and also Governor of Virginia ; Benjamin Harrison, also one of the " Sign- ers," large of person, suffering from gout, but full of pleasantry and good humor ; Peyton and Edmund Randolph, resolute patriots, the one to become presi- dent of the First Congress, and the other Governor of Virginia and the first Attorney-General and Secretary of State of the United States ; George Wythe, the able lawyer; Robert Carter Nicholas, the excellent financier ; and many more. Above these rose a smaller group who became the great landmarks of the time, each of whom was connected with some notable event or change in the current of thought and action. These were Henry, Jefferson, Lee, Pendleton, and Mason.
Henry has been spoken of. He was the leader of the leaders. Jefferson said of him that he "spoke as Homer wrote," and that he "gave the first impulse to the ball of the Revolution ; " but the impulse once given, others directed it in its course, tracing out for it the path
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JEFFERSON, THE "APOSTLE OF DEMOCRACY." 407
which it was to follow. Among these latter Thomas Jefferson was the foremost. His father was Peter Jef- ferson of " Shadwell," in Albemarle, and here Jefferson was born in April, 1743. At seventeen he was sent to William and Mary College ; afterwards studied and began the practice of law ; when he was about thirty married a young lady of Charles City with a beautiful face and a considerable estate ; and following his bent entered ardently into politics. We have the portrait of him as a young man. He was tall, and his figure was " angular and far from beautiful," his face sunburnt, his eyes gray, and his hair sand-colored. His disposition was gay and mercurial, and he was an excellent per- former on the violin ; a squire of dames, and a partici- pant in all the gayeties of the little Capital. Of this early period of his life his letters to John Page from Williamsburg, present a vivid picture. They give an account of his love mishaps with Miss Rebecca Bur- well,1 a young lady of the Capital, whom he styles " Be- linda," and are in vivid contrast with the popular idea of the gray politician and President. He was not, how- ever, an idler, and acquired a fondness for belles lettres, more especially for the Italian poets and the rhapsodies of Ossian. His religious doubts seem to have already begun, and have been attributed to his association, at this time, with Governor Fauquier, who was a con- firmed free-thinker. The statement is probably true, and he never shook off the sinister influence. Long afterwards he and his friend Jolin Page would discuss
1 The Burwells were an old and worthy family of York and Gloucester. Of Lewis Burwell, Lieutenant-Governor in 1750, it was said that he " had embraced almost every branch of human knowl- edge in the circle of his studies."
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408 VIRGINIA: A HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE.
Christianity in the observatory at " Rosewell ;" but his pious host could make no impression upon him.
Entering the Burgesses at twenty-six, Jefferson soon became a man of mark. He scarcely ever addressed the House, but was, from the first, in consultation with the leaders who recognized his ability. It was seen that his temperament and views were those of the revolution- naire. Under the suave and composed manner was an inflexible resolution. He was by nature an iconoclast. His intellect was a machine, which rolled on pitilessly, crushing with its heavy wheels all old-world prejudices. His inexorable logic shrunk from nothing. While other thinkers, even the most advanced, recoiled from the con- sequences of the abstract principles which they advo- cated, Jefferson followed out his trains of reasoning to and beyond the bounds of treason. He was the great political free-thinker of his age, as he was a free-thinker on religious questions. He may be styled the American Voltaire, discarding faith as an absurdity, and resting his convictions on the chillest logic .. He had no respect for the existing state of things in Virginia. Not only the political fabric but the whole frame-work of society revolted him. He scoffed at the Planter class, to which he himself belonged; called them "cyphers of aristoc- racy " and denounced thiem as obstructionists ; and even laughed at the claims of his mother's family, the Ran- dolphs, to ancient pedigree, to which every one, he said, " might ascribe the faith and merit he chose." The flout was gratuitous, for the Randolphs were an old and honorable family, but Jefferson would not spare even his own blood.
To sum up the character of this remarkable man, he was a skeptic, a democrat, an overturner, and a rebuilder.
JEFFERSON, THE "APOSTLE OF DEMOCRACY." 409
From the first he is ready to undermine the very bases of authority ; soon he will announce their overthrow, and lay down the principles upon which the new fabric must rest. His " Summary View of the Rights of British America," written in 1774, is the germ of the Declaration. His opinions are already matured. The paper was sent to the Virginia Convention as the pro- posed basis of instructions to the delegates in Congress, and gives the exact measure of Jefferson's genius as a revolutionary leader. Its tone is bold, almost imperious. The young writer does not mince his words. His Maj- esty is informed that his officials are " worthless minis- terial dependents ; " that if the Americans suffered them- selves to be transported for trial they would be " cowards meriting the everlasting infamy now fixed on the authors of the Act." The King is notified that " Kings are the servants not the proprietors of the people, and that the whole art of government consists in the art of being honest." The tone of the paper indicates the marked change which had taken place in the attitude of the Americans toward England. It was a long way from "your Majesty's obedient humble servants " to these brusque phrases, and Jefferson's concluding words : "This, Sire, is our last, our determined resolution."
The paper was not adopted, but it was ordered to be published, and led to the selection of Jefferson to draft the Declaration of Independence.
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VIII.
LEE, MASON, AND PENDLETON.
THE three men who took the most conspicuous part in Virginia affairs after Henry and Jefferson, -if they could be said to come after them, - were Richard Henry Lee, George Mason, and Edmund Pendleton.
Richard Henry Lee belonged to a distinguished family of the "Northern Neck," between the Rappahannock and Potomac. He was born at "Stratford," in West- moreland, in January 1732; and was thus nearly of the exact age of Washington. All the traditions of his family were Cavalier. He was a descendant of the Richard Lee who had plotted with Berkeley to set up the flag of Charles II. in Virginia ; and his ancestors had been noted, in all generations, for their royalist sen- timents. To look to such a family for a leader against the Crown seemed hopeless, and yet Richard Henry Lee was to prove as much of an extremist as Patrick Henry. He was educated in England, and from his early man- hood took part in public affairs. As early as 1768 he conceived the scheme of the "Committees of Corre- spondence," and in 1773 procured its adoption in the House of Burgesses. His fame as the mover of the Declaration of Independence was yet to come.
Lee was at this time forty-two years old, graceful in person, extremely cordial in his manners, and so elegant a speaker that he was said to have practiced his gestures before a mirror. He was called the " Gentleman of the Silver Hand," and wore a black bandage on one hand to hide a wound which he had received while shooting
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swans on the Potomac. He lived at " Chantilly," in Westmoreland, and enjoyed the regard and respect of the entire community ; a quiet gentleman full of suave courtesy, who seemed anything but a revolutionist. And yet of all the great leaders of Virginia at that time, none was readier to go all lengths in resisting the Crown.
George Mason, the author of the Virginia Bill of Rights, was one of the greatest men of a great period. He was born in Stafford in 1726, and was the descen- dant of an officer of the army of Charles II. He was large in person, athletic, with a swarthy complexion, and black eyes, whose expression was described as " half sad, half severe." He was a man of reserved address, but his wit was biting. When an opponent in poli- tics said that the people of Fairfax knew that " Colonel Mason's mind was failing him from age," he retorted with mordant sarcasm, that his friend had one consola- tion : " when his mind failed him no one would ever dis- cover it !" He lived the life of a planter at " Gunston Hall," on the Potomac, wrapped up in his "dear little family," reading the best English books, and averse to public position, though he had served in the Burgesses, and was recognized as a man of the first ability. His views and the great elements of his character were well known to the leaders. Mason was an American of Americans, and clung to his right with all the vehe- mence of his strong nature. At the outburst of the great struggle he wrote : "If I can only live to see the Ameri- can Union firmly fixed, and free governments established in our western world, and can leave to my children but a crust of bread and liberty, I shall die satisfied, and say with the Psalmist, ' Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace.'" In the Revolution he wrote, "I will
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risque the last penny of my fortune and the last drop of my blood upon the issne ; " and in his will he enjoined his sons " never to let the motive of private interest or ambition induce them to betray, nor the terrors of pov- erty and disgrace, or the fear of danger or death, deter them from asserting the liberty of their country, and en- deavoring to transmit to their posterity those sacred rights to which themselves were born." It was the spirit of the Virginians in all generations, now facing the new times as it had faced the old.
Mason was called upon to draft the Virginia Bill of Rights and Constitution, and did so. The former is the most remarkable paper of the epoch, and was the foun- dation of the great American assertion of right. Jeffer- son went to it for the phrases and expressions of the Declaration, and it remains the original chart by which free governments must steer their course in all coming time. The writer lays down the fundamental principle, that all men are " by nature equally free and independ- ent, and have certain inherent rights of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot by any compact deprive or divest their posterity." And these rights are named : they are " the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing prop- erty, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety." All power, he says, is " vested in and consequently de- rived from the people;" and " magistrates are their trust- ees and servants, and at all times amenable to them." Government is instituted for the common benefit of all, and when it is found inadequate or hostile, " a majority of the community has the right to alter or abolish it." All men having " sufficient evidence of permanent com- mon interest with, and attachment to, the community *
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should have the right of suffrage. The freedom of the press is " one of the great bulwarks of liberty and can never be restrained but by despotic governments." The natural defense of a state is " a well-regulated militia ; " standing armies are " dangerous to liberty ; " and " in all cases the military should be under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power." Religion is "the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it can be directed only by reason and con- viction, not by force or violence ; and therefore all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion ac- cording to the dictates of conscience." Lastly, the blessing of liberty can only be preserved by "a firm ad- herence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue, and by frequent recurrence to fundamental principles."
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