Repeal of the Stamp Act. Lord Botetourt.

Thomas Jefferson. Dissolution of the Assembly.

The Apollo Room. onies were so lucidly set forth in their declaration, that the people lacked no sure guide in their future course.'

That

The Stamp Act was repealed in 1766, and Virginia, rejoicing with hope like her sister colonies, sent an address of thanks to the king and Parliament, and voted a statue to his majesty as a token of her gratitude and love." Like her sister colonies, she was doomed to disappointment, and her sincere loyalty was speedily transformed into open rebellion. From the repeal of the Stamp Act until the close of the Revolution, Virginia wrought hand in hand with the other colonies in efforts to obtain justice and maintain popular liberty. Governor Fauquier died early in 1768, and was succeeded by Lord Botetourt. gentleman bore to his people assurances that the king and Parliament were sincerely desirous of doing justice to the colonies, and that all the obnoxious acts would be speedily repealed. These assurances, and the excellent character and conduct of the governor, allayed the excitement in Virginia for a while, and her people looked forward to seasons of prosperity and repose. Their dream was of short duration. Soon the intelligence came that the engine of oppression was again at work, and new schemes for harassing the colonies were maturing. Virginia was much excited when its Legislature for 1769 convened. Among its members was Thomas Jefferson, of Albemarle county, a young lawyer of eminent abili ties, liberality of views, and boldness of character. His first act in the Assembly evinced his appreciation of freedom; he proposed a law which should give the masters of slaves unrestricted right to emancipate them. This motion did not succeed, but it drew the attention of the Assembly to his talents, and he was employed in preparing the counter-resolutions, and addresses of the House of Burgesses, a in opposition to those of the Lords a May, 1769. and Commons, then just received. In these resolutions Virginia displayed a manifest disposition to consider the cause of Massachusetts a common one. The governor, on being informed of their proceedings, as in duty bound, and conformable to his oath, dissolved them. The next day they met in the Apollo room of the Raleigh tavern; formed themselves into a voluntary convention; drew

ious proceedings and to allay excitement. He was esteemed by all parties; and, as we

2 See page 472, volume i.

3 The room used for public meetings is in the rear building of the old Raleigh tavern at Williamsburg, and up to the day of my visit it had remained unaltered. Carpenters were then at work remodeling its style, for the purpose of making it a ball-room ; and now, I suppose, that apartment, hallowed by so many associations connected with our war for independence, has scarcely an original feature left. Had my visit been deferred a day longer, the style of the room could never have been portrayed. Neat wainscoting of Virginia pine ornamented the sides below and partly between the windows, and over the fire-place, which was spacious. This view is from the entrance door from the front portion of the building. On the left were two large windows; on the right were two windows and a door; and on each side of the fire-place was a door opening into small passage ways, from the exterior. Through the door on the left is seen a flight of stairs leading to the dormitory. The walls were whitewashed, and the wood-work painted a lead color. In this room the leading patriots of Virginia, including Washington, held many secret caucuses, and planned many schemes for the overthrow of royal rule in the colonies. The sound of the hammer and saw engaged in the work of change seemed to me like actual desecration; for the Raleigh tavern, and the Apollo room are to Virginia, relatively, what Faneuil Hall is to Massachusetts. 4 Jefferson's Memoirs, i., 4.

Death of Botetourt.

Lord Dunmore.

His Character.

Committees of Vigilance and Correspondence

have seen, his death, which occurred in 1771, was considered a public calamity, and mourned as a public bereavement.

Botetourt was succeeded by John Murray, earl of Dunmore, who was the last royal governor of Virginia. He had succeeded Sir Henry Moore as Governor of New York, in

1770, and on the death of Botetourt, was transferred to Virginia. During his delay in leav ing New York, the government was administered by William Nelson, president of the council of the colony, and father of one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Dunmore did not arrive in Virginia until the summer of 1772. A knowledge of his character, which preceded him, made the Virginians uneasy. He was a

Sunmere

SEAL AND SIGNATURE OF DUNMORE.!

ple.

In March, 1773, the House of Burgesses received copies of an address and resolutions from the Massachusetts Assembly, in which the grievances of that colony.

Scotch nobleman; descended from an ancient family; full of aristocratic ideas; deficient in sound judgment and that common sense which is were set forth; and they expressed their concurrence and sympathy with their brethren in New England. Jefferson, Henry, Richard Henry Lee, and Peyton Randolph, the speaker, urged immediate and bold action, and through their efforts a committee of vigilance was appointeda to obtain the most clear and authentic intelligence of all such acts of Parliament or ministry as might affect the rights of the colonies. This committee was also authorized to open a correspondence and communication with the other colonies."

a March 10, 1773.

They were about to adopt other resolutions equally unsubmissive to royal rule, when their proceedings were cut short by Dunmore, who dissolved the Assembly. The committee of correspondence met, however, the next day, and dispatched a circular letter containing the resolutions to the speakers of the several Colonial Assemblies. The General Court

1 These are copied from the third volume of the Documentary History of New York, edited by Dr. E. B. O'Callaghan.

The committee consisted of Peyton Randolph, Robert Carter Nicholas, Richard Bland, Richard Henry Lee, Benjamin Harrison, Edmund Pendleton, Patrick Henry, Dudley Digges, Dabney Carr, Archibald Carey, and Thomas Jefferson. This committee was formed at a caucus held in a private room in the Raleigh tavern, the evening before it was proposed in the House. The caucus consisted of Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee, Francis Lightfoot Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Dabney Carr (his brother-in-law), and two or three others. Strong resolutions were drawn up, and it was proposed that Mr. Jefferson should submit them to the House. Desirous of bringing into notice the brilliant talents of Mr. Carr, Mr. Jefferson proposed that he should submit them. It was agreed to, and the next day Mr. Carr moved the adoption of the resolutions. They were carried, and the above committee of correspondence was appointed. Virginia and Massachusetts have disputed for the honor of originating committees of correspondence. It will be seen by referring to page 494, volume i., that the address of the people of Massachusetts, in which their grievances and their rights were stated, and which called out the action of the Virginia Burgesses when their committee of correspondence was formed, contained a recommendation to appoint such committees in the several towns in that province. In Massachusetts, this recommendation was made some six weeks before the action on the subject took place in the Virginia Legislature. Massachusetts was the first to suggest committees of correspondence within its own domain; Virginia was the first to appoint a committee for national correspondence. And yet each colony seems actually to have originated the idea; for, according to Peyton Randolph, the messengers from the respective Legislatures, bearing the resolutions of each, passed each other on the way.-See Jefferson's letter to Samuel A. Wells, 1819, in the appendix to his Memoirs, page 100.

Fast day in Virginia.

Assembly Dissolved by Dunmore.

Meeting at the Raleigh.

The Proceedings of Massachusetts responded by the appointment of a committee of fifteen, instructing them to urge the other colonies to take similar action. The New England colonies, and Pennsylvania and Maryland, did so, and thus was formed the first sound link of our confederacy. The Boston Port Bill,' which was to go into effect on the first of June, 1774, had excited the greatest sympathy for the people of Boston throughout the colonies, and on the twenty-fourth of May the Virginia Assembly adopted strong resolutions of condolence, and

appointed the first of June to be observed as a fast. Dunmore was highly offended, officially, and the next day dissolved them by a verbal proclamation. The delegates, eighty-nine in number (of whom Washington was one), immediately assembled in the Apollo room of the Raleigh tavern, organized themselves into a voluntary convention, and prepared an address to their constituents, in which they declared that an attack upon one colony was an attack upon all. They recommended several important measures. Among other propositions was one for a General Congress, a proposition which was made by Massachusetts six days afterward, and being immediately sent forth, was heartily concurred in by all the other colonies except Georgia. Twentyfive of the delegates remained at Williamsburg to engage in the religious services of the appointed fast-day. While awaiting its arrival, a they received an account of a a May 29. town meeting in Boston, at which the inhabitants of the colonies were invited to enter into a general non-importation agreement. The twenty-five delegates did not feel authorized to act in a matter of so much gravity, and therefore only recommended, by a circular, that the Burgesses should meet again in convention at Williamsburg on the first of August.b Pursuant to this recommendation, all the Burgesses who met at the Raleigh were present on that day. They adopted resolutions to import no more slaves, nor British goods, nor tea; and, if colonial grievances were not speedily redressed, to export no more tobacco to England, and not to deal with any merchants who should refuse to sign the agreement. They recommended the cultivation of such articles of husbandry, instead of tobacco, as might form a proper basis for manufactures of all sorts; and also particularly recommended the improvement of the breed of sheep, the multiplying of them, and the killing of as few as possible. On the 5th of August they chose seven delegates to represent Virginia in the Continental Congress, appointed to meet on the fifth of September follow

> 1774.

1 See page 503, volume i.

Dunmore's speech on that occasion was very brief. The following is a copy: "Mr. Speaker, and gentlemen of the House of Burgesses,-I have in my hand a paper published by order of your House, conceived in such terms as reflects highly upon his Majesty and the Parliament of Great Britain, which makes it necessary to dissolve you, and you are dissolved accordingly."

Notwithstanding this act on the part of the governor, the delegates did not omit to carry out arrangements which they had made for honoring Lady Dunmore with a ball on the 27th. Every mark of respect and attention was paid to Lord Dunmore and his lady on that occasion, as if nothing unpleasant had occurred. In fact, according to entries in Washington's Diary, the matter was not made personal at all, for on the day after the dissolution of the Assembly, although he was one of the foremost in expressions of sympathy for the people of Boston, he remarks, "Rode out with the governor to his farm, and breakfasted with him there."

3 When I visited Williamsburg in December, 1848, the front part of the old Raleigh tavern had been torn down, and a building in modern style was erected in its place. The old tavern was in the form of an L, one portion fronting the street, the other extending at right angles, in the rear. Both parts were precisely alike in external appearance, and as the rear building was yet standing and unaltered, I am able to give a restored view of the Raleigh, as it appeared during the Revolution. The leaden bust of Sir Walter Raleigh, which graced the front of the old inn, now ornaments the new building.

The latter colony could not have heard of the action of the former, and therefore the recommendation was as original with it as with Virginia.

Delegates to the Continental Congress. Expedition against the Indians. Dunmore's Schemes. Camp at the Great Kenawha

ing, in Philadelphia,' and then adjourned, each pledged to do all in his power to effect the results contemplated in their proceedings.

While these clouds of difficulty were gathering in the horizon of Virginia politics, and the colony was menaced with civil war, the Indians on the frontiers had commenced fierce hostilities, and were driving civilization back from its adventurous settlements west of the Blue Ridge. Although several times chastised, they were still bold. In 1764, Colonel Bouquet,' having dispersed the Indians besieging Detroit, passed into the Wyandot country, by the way of Sandusky Bay, and compelled the head men of the tribes to agree to a treaty of peace. The Shawnees and Delawares in the Ohio county still continued hostile. Bouquet, the same year, marched from Fort Pitt to the Muskingum, awed the Indians, procured the restoration of prisoners in their hands, and made a treaty of peace with them, and for several years they kept comparatively quiet, though exhibiting unmistakable signs of deadly nostility.

Early in 1774, the hatchet again fell with terrible fury upon the frontier settlements of Virginia, and its keenness was heightened by the encouragement which the savages received from a few white scoundrels, who hoped to gain personal advantage in the contest. The scheme which Governor Dunmore afterward entered into for banding these forest tribes against the colonists, has left upon his memory the suspicion that even thus early, in view of impending hostilities, he had tampered with them, through his agents, and made them bold. History gives no positive warrant for suspicions so damning, and we may charitably hope that his expedition against the Indians, in the summer of that year,a was undertaken with a sincere desire to save the colony from their cruel incursions. It is true, Dunmore was very tardy in his preparations, and his expedition did not march until the voice of his indignant people compelled him to go, and alert suspicion made him fearful of its consequences.

a 1774.

b 1774.

The chief rendezvous of the hostile Indians was on the Sciota, within the limits of the present Pickaway county, Ohio. There were three principal towns, and against these Dun more marched with a force of three thousand men, early in August.b The army proceeded in two divisions; one composing the left wing, under Colonel Andrew Lewis, the other led by Dunmore in person. The left wing struck the Great Kanawha, and followed that stream to the Ohio; the right wing passed the mountains of the Potomac gap, and reached the Ohio a little above Wheeling. The plan of the campaign was to form a junction before reaching the Indian villages. Lewis encamped on the site of Point Pleasant, at the mouth of the Great Kanawha, on the sixth of October. In expectation of the approach of Dunmore, he cast up no intrenchments. In this exposed situation, he was attacked on the morning of the tenth, by one thousand chosen warriors of the western confederacy under the celebrated Cornstalk, who came from the Pickaway Plains to confront Colonel Lewis before the other division should join him.' So stealthily had the

The following were the delegates appointed: Peyton Randolph, Richard Henry Lee, George Washington, Patrick Henry, Richard Bland, Benjamin Harrison, and Edmund Pendleton. These were all present at the opening of the Congress in Carpenter's Hall, and, as we have seen, Peyton Randolph was chosen the first president of that body.

Henry Bouquet was of French descent. He was appointed lieutenant colonel in the British army in 1756. He was active in his co-operations w th General Forbes, and was highly esteemed by Amherst. That officer sent him to the relief of Fort Pitt, with stores, in 1763. He was attacked on his way by a powerful body of Indians, whom he defeated. In 1764, as noticed in the text, he was successful in the Ohio county. The following year he was appointed a brigadier. He died at Pensacola, Florida, in February, 1766.

3 Stuart, in his Memoir of Indian Wars, and Withers, in his Chronicles of Border Warfare, express the opinion, and adduce strong corroborating evidence of its truth, that Dunmore arranged the expedition in such a way, that the whole Indian force should fall upon and annihilate Lewis's detachment, and thereby weaken the physical strength, and break down the spirit of the Virginians. It must be admitted that the fact of the great body of Indians leaving their towns and marching directly to attack Lewis, when Dunmore, with a force equally strong, was approaching in another direction, gives the color of probability to these suspicions. His subsequent conduct in inciting servile war in Virginia, shows that he was capable of so nefarious a scheme.

Battle at Mount Pleasant.

March to the Shawnee Towns.

Old Chillicothe.

Fort Gower

Indians approached, that within one hour after Lewis's scouts discovered those of the enemy a general battle was in progress.

ביי!

Colonel Charles Lewis, a brother of the general, with three hundred men, received the first assault. He and his aid, Hugh Allen, were mortally wounded, and so overwhelming in numbers and fierce in aspect were the assailants, that his line broke and gave way.' At this moment, a party under Colonel Fleming attacked the enerny's right, and, being sustained by a reserve under Colonel Field, the Indians were driven back. The battle continued with unabated fury until one o'clock in the afternoon, the Indians slowly retreating from tree to tree, while the gigantic Cornstalk encouraged them with the words, "Be strong! Be strong!" The peculiarity of the ground, it being upon a point at the junction of two rivers, made every retreat of the enemy advantageous to the Virginians, because as their line extended from river to river, forming the base of an equilateral triangle, it was lengthened, and consequently weakened. The belligerents rested within rifle shot of each other, and kept up a desultory fire until sunset. The battle was a desperate one, and neither party could fairly claim the victory. The Virginians lost one half of their commissioned officers, and fifty-two privates were killed. The Indians lost, in killed and wounded, about two hundred and thirty. During the night they retreated, but Lewis did not think it prudent to pursue them. Captain William Russell was left in command of a sufficient garrison at Point Pleasant until late in the summer of 1775, when further hostilities with the Indians seemed improbable.

On the day after the battle, Colonel Lewis received orders from Dunmore to hasten on toward the Shawnee towns, on the Sciota, and join him at a point eighty miles distant.

DARBY PLAINS

لے

Dunmore was ignorant of the battle, and the weakened condition of Lewis's division. But the latter did not hesitate. Leaving a small garrison at Point Pleasant, he pressed onward, through an unbroken wilderness to the banks of Congo Creek, in Pickaway township, within striking distance of the Shawnee or Shawanese towns. The principal village of the Indians stood upon the site of the present borough of Westfall, on the west bank of the Sciota, and was called Old Chillicothe, there being other towns of the same name. When Colonel Lewis arrived, he found Dunmore and his party in the neighborhood. The governor had descended the Ohio to the mouth of the Great Hockhocking, where he built a redoubt or block-house, and called it Fort Gower. From this point he marched up that

SCIOTO A

له

THE SHAWNEE TOWNS.3

4

1 From a "Song of Lament," written at the time, I quote the following stanzas, which are more remarkable for pathos than poetry:

"Colonel Lewis and some noble captains,

Did down to death like Uriah go,

Alas! their heads wound up in napkins,
Upon the banks of the Ohio.

Kings lamented their mighty fallen

Upon the mountains of Gilboa,

2 Howison's History of Virginia, ii., 15.

And now we mourn for brave Hugh Allen,

Far from the banks of the Ohic.

Oh bless the mighty King of Heaven
For all his wondrous works below,
Who hath to us the victory given
Upon the banks of the Ohio."

When

This little map shows a portion of the Pickaway Plains upon which the towns of the Shawnees were built. These plains are on the east side of the Sciota, and contain the richest body of land in Ohio. first cultivated by the whites, the soil was a black vegetable mold, the result of long ages of decomposition, and for many years one hundred bushels of corn, or fifty bushels of wheat to the acre, was an average yield. This region was for many generations the principal rendezvous of Indian chiefs in council, in the Ohio country, and here many victims, brought from the frontier settlements, endured the torments of savage cruelty. See Howe's Historical Collections of Ohio, page 403.

EXPLANATION OF THE MAP.-a a, the ancient works at Circleville; b, Logan's cabin near; c, Old Chillieothe; d, Black Mountain; e, Cornstalk's town; f, Squaw's town; g, Council-house; h, the point where Dunmore and Colonel Lewis met; i, the camp of Colonel Lewis; j, Camp Lewis; m, High Lands.

This was in Athens township. Dunmore was a great admirer of Earl Gower, and in honor of that nooleman he named this, the first fort he ever erected.