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"many a bonnie rebel." The upland country was numerously peopled by men who felt no grievances, and were blindly devoted to the king. And yet the planters, loving their civil rights more than security and ease, refused to take counsel of their interests or their danger. "Boston," said they, "is but the first victim at the altar of tyranny." Reduced to the dilemma either to hold their liberties as tenants at will of the British house of commons, or to prepare for resistance, their choice was never in doubt. "The whole continent," they said, "must be animated with one great soul, and all Americans must resolve to stand by one another even unto death. Should they fail, the constitution of the mother country itself would lose its excellence." They knew the imminent ruin which they risked; but they "remembered that the happiness of many generations and many millions depended on their spirit and constancy."

1774.

May.

The burgesses of Virginia sat as usual in May. The extension of the province to the west and north-west was their great ambition, which the governor, greedy of large masses of land, and of fees for conniving at the acquisitions of others, selfishly seconded, in flagrant disregard of his instructions. To Lady Dunmore, who had just arrived, the assembly voted a congratulatory address, and its members joined to give her a ball. The feeling of loyalty was still predominant; the thought of revolution was not harbored; but they none the less held it their duty to resist the systematic plan of parliamentary despotism; and, without waiting for an appeal from Boston, they resolved on its deliverance. First among them as an orator stood Patrick Henry, whose words had power to kindle in his hearers passions like his own. But eloquence was his least merit: he was revered as the ideal of a patriot of Rome in its austerest age. The approach of danger quickened his sagacity, and his language gained the boldness of prophecy. He was borne up by the strong support of Richard Henry Lee and Washington. It chanced that George Mason also was then at Williamsburg, a man of strong and true affections; learned in constitutional law; a profound reasoner; honest and fearless in council; shunning ambition and public life, from sorrow at

the death of his wife, for whom he never ceased to mourn; but earnestly mindful of his country, as became one whose chastened spirit looked beyond the interests of the moment. After deliberation with these associates, Jefferson prepared the measure that was to declare irrevocably the policy of Virginia; and its house of burgesses, on the twenty-fourth, on motion of Robert Carter Nicholas, adopted the concerted resolution, which was in itself a solemn invocation of God as the witness of their purpose to rescue their liberties even at the risk of being compelled to defend them with arms. It recommended to their fellow-citizens that the day on which the Boston port act was to take effect should be set apart as a day of fasting and prayer, devoutly to implore the divine interposition for averting the dreadful calamity which threatened destruction to their civil rights, and the evils of a civil war; and to give to the American people one heart and one mind firmly to oppose, by all just and proper means, every injury to American rights." The

May.

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resolve, which bound only the members themselves, 1774. was distributed by express through their respective counties as a general invitation to the people. Especially Washington sent the notice to his constituents; and Mason charged his little household of sons and daughters to keep the day strictly, and attend church clad in mourning.

On the morning which followed the adoption of this measure, Dunmore dissolved the house. The burgesses immediately repaired to the Raleigh tavern, about one hundred paces from the capitol; and with Peyton Randolph, their late speaker, in the chair, voted that the attack on Massachusetts was an attack on all the colonies, to be opposed by the united wisdom of all. In conformity with this declaration, they advised for future time an annual continental congress. They named Peyton Randolph, with others, a committee of correspondence to invite a general concurrence in this design. As yet social relations were not embittered. Washington, of whom Dunmore sought information respecting western affairs, continued his visits at the governor's house; the ball in honor of Lady Dunmore was well attended. Not till the offices of courtesy and of

patriotism were fulfilled, did most of the burgesses return home, leaving their committee on duty.

May.

On the afternoon of Sunday the twenty-ninth, the 1774. letters from Boston reached Williamsburg. So important did they appear that the next morning, at ten o'clock, the committee, having called to their aid Washington and all other burgesses who were still in town, inaugurated a revolution. Being but twenty-five in number, they refused to assume the responsibility of definite measures of resistance; but, as the province was without a legislature, they summoned a convention of delegates to be elected by the several counties, and to meet at the capitol on the first day of the ensuing August.

The rescue of freedom even at the cost of a civil war, a domestic convention of the people for their own internal regulation, an annual congress of all the colonies for the perpetual assertion of common rights, were the policy of Virginia. When the report of her measures reached England, the startled ministers called to mind how often she had been the model for other colonies. Her influence continued undiminished; and her system was promptly adopted by the people of North Carolina.

"Lord North had no expectation that we should be thus sustained," said Samuel Adams; "he trusted that Boston would be left to fall alone." But the love of liberty in America did not flash on the surface; it penetrated the mass with magnetic energy. The port act had been received on the tenth of May; and in three weeks, less time than was taken by the unanimous. British parliament for its enactment, the continent, as "one great commonwealth," made the cause of Boston its own.

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CHAPTER IV.

MASSACHUSETTS APPOINTS THE TIME AND PLACE FOR A GENERAL CONGRESS.

1774.

JUNE, 1774.

On the first day of June, Hutchinson embarked for England; and, as the clocks in the Boston belfries finished striking twelve, the blockade of the harbor began. June 1. The inhabitants of the town were chiefly traders, shipwrights, and sailors; and, since no anchor could be weighed, no sail unfurled, no vessel so much as launched from the stocks, their cheerful industry was at an end. No more are they to lay the keel of the fleet merchantman, or shape the rib symmetrically for its frame, or strengthen the graceful hull by knees of oak, or rig the well-proportioned masts, or bend the sails to the yards. The king of that country has changed the busy workshops into scenes of compulsory idleness; and the most skilful naval artisans in the world, with the keenest eye for forms of beauty and speed, are forced by act of parliament to fold their hands. Want scowled on the laborer, as he sat with his wife and children at his board. The sailor roamed the streets listlessly without hope of employment. The law was executed with a rigor that went beyond the intentions of its authors. Not a scow could be manned by oars to bring an ox or a sheep or a bundle of hay from the islands. All water carriage from pier to pier, though but of lumber or bricks or lime, was forbidden. The boats that plied between Boston and Charlestown could not ferry a parcel of goods across Charles River; the fishermen of Marblehead, when from their hard pursuit they bestowed quintals of dried fish on the poor of Boston, were obliged to transport their offer

1774.

June.

ing in wagons by a circuit of thirty miles. The warehouses of the thrifty merchants were at once made valueless; the costly wharfs, which extended far into the channel, and were so lately covered with the produce of the tropics and with English fabrics, were become solitary places; the harbor, which had resounded incessantly with the lively voices of prosperous commerce, was disturbed by no sounds but from British vessels of war.

At Philadelphia, the bells of the churches were muffled and tolled; the ships in port hoisted their colors at half mast; and nine tenths of the houses, except those of the Friends, were shut during the memorable first of June. In Virginia, the population thronged the churches; Washington attended the service, and strictly kept the fast. No firmer words were addressed to the sufferers than from Norfolk, which was the largest place of trade in that "wellwatered and extensive dominion," and which, from its deep channel and nearness to the ocean, lay most exposed to ships-of-war. "Our hearts are warmed with affection for you," such was its message; "we address the Almighty Ruler to support you in your afflictions.

Be assured we

consider you as suffering in the common cause, and look upon ourselves as bound by the most sacred ties to support you."

Jefferson, from the foot of the Blue Ridge of the Alleghanies, condemned the act, which in a moment reduced an ancient and wealthy town from opulence to want, and, without a hearing and without discrimination, sacrificed property of the value of millions to revenge, not repay, the loss of a few thousands. "If the pulse of the people beat calmly under such an experiment by the new and till now unheard of executive power of a British parliament,” said the young statesman, "another and another will be tried, till the measure of despotism be filled up.”

At that time, the king was so eager to give effect to the law which subverted the charter of Massachusetts, that, acting upon information confessedly insufficient, he, with Dartmouth, made out for that province a complete list of councillors, called mandamus councillors from their ap

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