Voices; Birth-Marks; The Man and the Elephant Part 17

He found the Burgesses in session with their rifles handy. While they were discussing the North Compromise, one of the members accompanied by two private citizens, examining the magazine, were wounded by guns set at the direction of the Governor.

A committee of the House appointed to examine the magazine, reported: "Several kegs of powder have been placed under the floor and preparations made to blow it up." In the discussion of this report, it came out that Lord Dunmore had declared his intention to free and arm the slaves against the colonists. Thereupon a Bill was pa.s.sed placing a duty of five pounds on each imported slave. The last official act of the Governor was to veto this measure.

The Burgesses refused to treat with Lord North without the concurrence of the other colonies, and adjourned.

The Governor, frightened because of the excitement and open opposition to him, on June 7th, with his family, took refuge aboard the Fowey, a British man-of-war anch.o.r.ed at York.

On July 17th, the Third Virginia Convention a.s.sembled at Richmond and continued in session until August 26th. Its acts heretofore had been of the nature of resolutions; but as Dunmore had deserted his post, threatening to attack the colony and as the royal government no longer existed; the convention a.s.sumed the functions of a legislative body and established a provisional government.

Preparations were made to organize Virginia for defense; laws were enacted to raise revenue and to elect delegates to the next annual convention. Patrick Henry, colonel of the First Regiment, was made commander of the Virginia forces; and delegates to the Continental Congress were elected.

The Baptists asked that their ministers be allowed to address troops of their own denomination. Their pet.i.tion was granted, "for the ease of such scrupulous consciences."

The convention vested the executive power of the colony in a Committee of Safety with Edmund Pendleton as president, whose duties (inter alia) were to commission military officers, direct military movements and issue treasury warrants. Its first aggressive act was to resist the fugitive Governor; who shortly after his flight began bombarding the sh.o.r.es of the Chesapeake.

In September one of his ships was blown ash.o.r.e in a storm and burned by the incensed inhabitants of Hampton. Several weeks later he led an a.s.sault against the town; but was driven off by the villagers, reinforced by the Culpepper minute men.

A body of marines, landing at Norfolk, seized the equipment of a newspaper office and carried it aboard the Fowey. It was on this press Lord Dunmore printed his proclamation of November 7th, declaring all colonists traitors who did not rally to his standard and offering freedom to "all indentured servants, negroes or others, apprenticed to rebels."

On January 1, 1776, he set fire to Norfolk and while it was burning sailed into the bay. From then, until midsummer he sailed along the sh.o.r.es of the Chesapeake, devastating small villages and plantations. On July 9th, he landed upon and fortified Guinn's Island. Attacked by General Andrew Lewis, he abandoned his fort, fled to New York, and shortly afterwards sailed for England.

The Fourth Virginia Convention met at Richmond on December 1, 1775; but after organizing, no longer in fear of Lord Dunmore, adjourned to meet at Williamsburg.

The session was consumed in preparation for war. A committee of five was appointed in each county to try those charged as enemies of the colonist cause; a court of admiralty was established; laws were enacted regulating commerce and provision made for increasing the militia, which as enrolled was merged into the Continental Army.

The chief theme of discussion, not only of the convention but of all Virginians, was how formally to shift the government from a royal colony to an independent government and retain status as belligerents. It was finally agreed that the colonies in convention should declare their independence and organize as independent commonwealths.

The Fifth and last convention met at Williamsburg on May 6, 1776, with Edmund Pendleton again as president.

On May 15th, it pa.s.sed a resolution instructing their delegates in the Continental Congress to propose to that body to "declare the United Colonies free and independent states." The next day the British flag on the capitol was hauled down and the American flag subst.i.tuted; while soldiers and civilians cheered and cannon roared.

A Bill of Rights and State Const.i.tution, prepared by George Mason, was adopted on June 12th; and on June 29th, the Commonwealth of Virginia came into being.

Under the state const.i.tution, the legislative department was divided into a House of Delegates and a Senate; eligibles were to be freeholders elected by freeholders. The executive department was to be presided over by a governor, to be elected annually by the House and Senate. Patrick Henry was chosen as first governor and Edmund Randolph attorney general.

Henry qualified as governor on July 5, 1776.

Richard Henry Lee, a member of the Continental Congress from Virginia, in compliance with instructions given him by the Virginia Convention, offered in Congress on June 7, 1776, the resolution: "That these United States are and ought to be free and independent states and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is and ought to be totally dissolved." His resolution, seconded by John Adams, after several days' discussion, was pa.s.sed.

In the absence of Mr. Lee, because of his wife's illness, Thomas Jefferson was made chairman of the committee; and it was thus he came to draft the Declaration of Independence, which after a few minor amendments, was adopted on July 4, 1776.

CHAPTER IX.-Chronicles.

The Committee of Safety in September, 1775, promoted Captain Archibald Campbell. He was commissioned Colonel of the Minute Men of Botetourt and Fincastle counties. From the date of this appointment his whole time was consumed by his military duties.

John Mason, the former bond servant, still remained with him; and made a most efficient and trustworthy foreman. While he was yet an indentured servant, he had been made a deacon of the Jackson River Meeting House; receiving more votes at the congregational meeting than a rich and respected planter.

He and Richard Cameron in the winter of 1773 had built for themselves a comfortable cabin of heavy hewn logs, near the plantation house; and on winter nights long after the Campbells were asleep; their windows glowed from a bright light-wood fire.

Mr. Campbell, curious to know why they kept such late hours, several times stealthily peeped in and found that they were either reading from an old sheep-bound Bible, which Mason had brought with him from England, or some book borrowed from Mr. McDonald or the schoolmaster.

Little John Calvin Campbell, after his supper, habitually went to the cabin and Mason read aloud to him or told stories of some patriarch or martyr; and by this influence helped to mold the boy's character yet more into that sweet, serious nature, which was its hereditary trend.

While Logan had been a visitor at the plantation, he and Mason became great friends. Mason made a list of three hundred common words and Logan gave him the Mingo word corresponding to each; he also gave him a number of lessons in idiomatic construction. These words he quickly committed to memory; and at every opportunity increased his vocabulary; until now he and John Calvin were the best interpreters in the county.

Pa.s.sing Indians continued to make the Campbell plantation their stopping place and thus he made the acquaintance of many; treating all of them with such uniform kindness, that they upon their return spoke of him as their white brother.

In the early summer of 1775 it was rumored throughout the colonies that Lord Dunmore's agent, Connelley, and Sir John Stewart had been sent to the Ohio tribes and Col. Guy Johnson had been sent to western New York to organize and perfect alliances between the British and the Indians.

It obviously being advisable to offset this influence, the colonial government organized three departments, in charge of commissioners, to win the Indians; or failing in that, to induce them to remain neutral.

The Virginia Committee of Safety, acting in conjunction with the commissioners sent agents into the Indian country; and Col. John Morgan was named as chief of the colonial agents.

Colonel Campbell was ordered to send a fit man into the Ohio River country for that purpose. At a loss, just whom to send, he asked the schoolmaster and Donald McDonald for suggestions and when both without hesitancy named Mason; he was surprised that he had not thought of him.

Mason was called before the county executive committee, a local subdivision of the Colonial Committee of Safety, composed of Colonel Campbell, Captain Fairfax, Jeremiah Tyler, Samuel Preston and James Speed, and asked to undertake the mission.

He expressed a willingness to go not as a soldier but as a missionary, and requested that he be licensed for such service by the Valley Presbytery, instead of the committee. This was arranged.

Several days later, carrying nothing but his sheep-bound Bible, a change of clothing, blanket, hunting knife, frying pan and a small bag of parched corn, he accompanied Colonel Morgan to Pittsburgh. Several days later they traveled down the river in a canoe and arranged a council with several chiefs from the Scioto, Muskingum and Miami River valleys.

The British agents, who had preceded them, by presents of arms and rum, had made allies of most of the Indians; who even now were organizing for a raid upon the white settlements.

When their council met, two British agents were in attendance; and though there were sixteen chiefs present, none favored the cause of the colonies; four, Cornstalk, White Eyes, Red Hawk and Logan voted in favor of neutrality; the other twelve favored active co-operation with the British. These four had sufficient influence to procure a ten-day armistice.

As soon as the council adjourned Cornstalk and Red Hawk, accompanied by a Shauanese warrior, traveled by canoe to Fort Randolph at the mouth of Kanawha, where they held a conference with Captain Arbuckle and warned him of the pending danger.

Cornstalk, who had been defeated by General Lewis near the site of the fort, convinced that the Long Knives would win the struggle; knowing that the Indians were not strong enough to fight the colonists after peace; was anxious that they remain neutral. He told the officers of the fort that of all the chiefs of that section only six favored neutrality; and that he and Red Hawk had come to confer with him, hoping that something might be done to prevent hostilities.

Arbuckle, keeping the three Indians as prisoners, as also Cornstalk's son, who came to visit his father, sent word to the Shauanese that if they murdered any Americans he would shoot his prisoners.

While they were held, two soldiers hunting at some distance from the fort were fired upon by Indians; one was killed, the other escaped. When the soldiers of the fort learned of this, over the protest of their officers they killed the prisoners.

Cornstalk met death like a stoic; but his son, hearing the soldiers approaching, was greatly frightened. The father counseled: "My son, do not give place to fear. If the Great Spirit has sent you here to be killed, submit to his will. Die like a man."

When the council reconvened the Indians were wildly incensed; twenty-two chiefs were present and all but one, White Eyes, voted for war.

Buckoulongas presiding, first addressed the council, saying:

"Friends, listen! A great nation is divided. The sons, the Long Knives, fight their father, the British. The father has called on his Indian children to help him punish his white children. We should do what Lord Dunmore asks. He stood between us and destruction after the battle of Point Pleasant, when the Long Knives wished to burn our villages and murder our women and children.

"I took time to consider whether I should receive the hatchet of my father to a.s.sist him. At first I thought it a family quarrel in which I was not interested. At length it appeared to me that the father was right and his white sons should be punished.

"The father has promised to arm and provision us and to treat us as his children, so we shall never want. But we have a greater cause for war.

The Long Knives have broken their treaty with us. They steal our property; they murder without provocation; even those of us who would be their friends, who when they seek the shelter of their forts in peace and for council and to do them a service are set upon and murdered. Look at the murders committed by them upon the kindred of our friend and their friend also; who were living in peace on the banks of the Ohio.

Did they not kill them without provocation and in cold blood? Will they be any better? No. Even Logan, who so many times has spoken for them, is forced to remain silent; he cannot plead their cause.