jurisdiction of Virginia. The remains of Major Grant's men were buried by Gen. Forbes in one common tomb, the whole army assisting at the solemn ceremony. Gen. Forbes returned to Philadelphia, where he died in a few weeks, and Washington soon directed his course to Williamsburg, as a member of the General Assembly from Frederick county. The capture of Duquesne restored quiet and general joy throughout the colony. The war was soon prosecuted at the North with vigor. In the succeeding summer of 1759, Niagara and Crown Point fell into the possession of the British crown, and on the 18th of September, Quebec surrendered to the brave and gallant Wolfe. The treaty of Fontainbleau, in November, 1762, put an end to the war. CHAPTER VII. FROM THE TERMINATION OF THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR TO THE SURRENDER OF CORNWALLIS. Encroachments of Britain upon the American colonies.-Spirited conduct of Virginia thereon.-Patrick Henry's resolution on the right to tax America. Death of Governor Fauquier-Arrival of Lord Bottetourt.-Continued aggressions of the mother country. Death of Bottetourt.-Lord Dunmore governor.-Dunmore's war. Battle of Point Pleasant-Speech of Logan-End of the Indian war.-Meeting of the Continental Congress.-Dunmore removes the gunpowder of the colony from the magazine at Williamsburg. Patrick Henry marches down at the head of a body of volunteers and forces the Receiver-general to make compensation.-Battle of Lexington.-Dunmore flees on board the Fowey man-of-war.-Termination of the Royal government in Virginia. Meeting of the Virginia Convention.-Dunmore, with the British fleet, attacks Hampton.-Affair in Princess Anne.-Defeat of the enemy at Great Bridge.-Norfolk burnt. Delegates in Congress instructed by the General Convention of Virginia to propose the Declaration of Independence.-A Constitution for the State Government adopted.-Patrick Henry governor. Joyous reception in Virginia of the news of the Declaration of Independence. Dunmore driven from Gwynn's Island.-First meeting of the Legislature under the State Constitution.Indian war. Col. Christian makes peace with the Creek and Cherokee nations.Revision of the State laws. Glance at the war at the north. Col. Rogers Clark takes Kaskaskias and Fort St. Vincent.-Illinois erected into a county.-Virginia cedes her Western Territory to the United States.-Sir Henry Clinton appointed Commander-in-chief of the British army. He transfers the seat of the war to the south. Sir George Collier, with a British fleet, enters Hampton Roads.Fort Nelson abandoned. The enemy take possession of Portsmouth, and burn Suffolk. They embark for New York. The reduction of Virginia determined on by the enemy. Gen. Leslie invades Virginia, and lands at Portsmouth. The government prepares to resist the enemy. Leslie leaves Virginia. Battle of the Cowpens.-Arnold invades Virginia, lands at Westover, and marches to Richmond.-He returns to Westover, and arrives at Portsmouth.-Washington forms plan to cut off his retreat.-Clinton detaches Gen. Philips to the assistance of Arnold. Defenceless situation of Virginia. Philips takes possession of Petersburg, and commits depredations in the vicinity. Death of Gen. Philips. - Cornwallis enters Petersburg.Tarleton's expedition to Charlotteville. Various movements of the two armies.Cornwallis concentrates his army at York and Gloucester.-Surrender of Corn wallis. a "QUESTIONS touching the power of the British Parliament to interfere with the concerns of the colonies had arisen more than once before the war, and during its continuance the delicate question arose, of the proportions which the several colonies should pay for the common defence. The British ministry proposed that deputies should meet and determine the amount necessary, and draw on the British treasury, which in turn should be reimbursed by an equal tax on all the colonies, to be laid by Parliament; but the colonies were afraid to let the lion put his paw in their pockets, even to take back his own; and this being no time to raise difficulties, the colonial legislatures were left to their own discretion in voting supplies, which they did with a liberality so disproportioned to their ability, as to excite the praise, and in some instances to induce a reimbursement on the part of the mother country. Virginia had always resisted any interference on the part of Parliament, especially in the navigation acts, and asserted as early as 1624, that she only had the undoubted right 'to lay taxes and impositions, and none other,' and afterwards refused to let any member of the council of Governor Berkeley, in the height of his popularity, assist them in determining the amount of the public levy. Again in 1676, even stronger language was used and acquiesced in by the king, to whom it was immediately addressed. "The slight taxes imposed for the regulation of commerce, and the support of a post-office, were borne by the colonies without a murmur, being considered only a fair compensation for a benefit received. In March, 1764, the ministers declared it 'expedient to raise a revenue on stamps in America, to be paid into the king's exchequer.' The discussion of this was postponed until the next year in Parliament, but commenced immediately in America, and the proposition was met by every form of respectful petition and indignant remonstrance; which were, however, equally unavailing, and the stamp act passed in 1765. The passage of this act excited universal and indignant hostility throughout the colonies, which was displayed in the forms of mourning and the cessation of business; the courts refused to sanction the act by sitting, and the bar by using the stamps. In the succeeding Virginia legislature, Patrick Henry introduced and carried, among others, the following resolution : "Resolved, That the General Assembly of this colony, together with his majesty, or substitute, have, in their representative capacity, the only exclusive right and power to lay taxes and impositions upon the inhabitants of this colony: and that every attempt to vest such power in any person or persons whatsoever, other than the General Assembly aforesaid, is illegal, unconstitutional, and unjust, and has a manifest tendency to destroy British as well as American freedom." "After the passage of Henry's resolutions, the governor dissolved the Assembly; but the people re-elected the friends, and excluded the opposers of the resolutions. The spirited conduct of Virginia fired the ardor of the other colonies; they passed similar resolutions, and a general Congress was proposed. The deputies of nine states met in New York on the 1st of October; they drafted a declaration of rights, a petition to the king, commons, and lords. The stamp act was repealed, and Virginia sent an address of thanks to the king and parliament." Francis Fauquier, Lieut. Governor of Virginia, died in 1767, and the government devolved on John Blair, until the arrival of Lord Bottetourt, the following year. "The joy of the colonies at the repeal of the stamp act was short-lived. British ministers imagined that they could cheat the colonies out of their opposition to taxation without representation, by laying an import duty instead of a direct tax; and accordingly, a duty was laid upon glass, tea, paper, and painter's colors; but this was equally against the spirit of the British constitution, and met with a warmer and more indignant resistance on the part of the colonies, who now began to believe they had little hope from the justice of parliament. The legislature of Virginia passed very spirited resolutions, which it ordered to be sent only to the king; upon the passage of which the governor dissolved it; and the members immediately met and entered unanimously into a nonimportation agreement. "The British ministers perceived their error, and determined to pause in their violence; to effect this object the governors were directed to inform the colonies, that his majesty's ministers did not intend to raise a revenue in America, and the duties objected to should be speedily repealed. These assurances, made to Virginia by Lord Bottetourt, a governor whom they highly respected, served, with his own good conduct, for a time to allay her suspicions of the ministry; but the course they pursued towards Massachusetts was more than sufficient to rekindle her jealousy. She passed a protest, declaring that partial remedies could not heal the present disorders, and renewed their non-importation agreement. In 1771 Bottetourt died, and Virginia erected a statue to his memory, which still stands in the town of Williamsburg. Wm. Nelson, then president of the council, occupied the chair of government until the arrival of Lord Dunmore, in 1772. The delay of Lord Dunmore in New York for some months after his appointment to the gubernatorial chair of Virginia, excited the prejudices of the colony, which his sending a man of some military distinction as a clerk, and raising a salary and fees for him out of the colony, were by no means calculated to dissipate. The first legislature that met compelled the governor to dispense with the emoluments of his secretary, Capt. Foy; and the next, after thanking him for his activity in apprehending some counterfeiters of the colony paper, strongly reproved him for dispensing with the usual forms and ceremonies with which the law has guarded the liberty of the citizen. The same legislature, having provided for the soundness and security of the currency, the punishment of the guilty, and required the governor to respect the law, turned their eyes to their sister colonies, and appointed a committee of correspondence* to * This committee were Peyton Randolph, Robert Carter Nicholas, Richard Bland, inquire into the various violations of their constitutional rights by the British ministry. While Virginia was employed in animating her sister states to resistance, her governor was employed in the ignoble occupation of fomenting jealousies and feuds between the province, which it should have been his duty to protect from such a calamity, and Pennsylvania, by raising difficult questions of boundary, and exciting the inhabitants of the disputed territory to forswear allegiance to the latter province; hoping thus, by affording a more immediately exciting question, to draw off the attention of these two important provinces from the encroachments of Great Britain. This scheme, as contemptible as it was iniquitous, wholly failed, through the good sense and magnanimity of the Virginia council. Lord North, full of his feeble and futile schemes of cheating the colonies out of their rights, took off the obnoxious duties with the exception of three pence per pound on tea; and, with the ridiculous idea that he might fix the principle upon the colonies by a precedent, which should strip it of all that was odious, offered a draw-back equal to the import duty. This induced the importation of tea into Boston harbor, which, being thrown overboard by some of the citizens, called down upon their city all the rigor of the celebrated Boston port bill. A draft of this bill reached the Virginia legislature while in session; an animated protest, and a dissolution of the assembly by the governor, of course followed. On the following day the members convened in the Raleigh tavern, and, in an able and manly paper, expressed to their constituents and their government those sentiments and opinions which they had not been allowed to express in a legislative form. This meeting recommended a cessation of trade with the East India Company, a Congress of deputies from all the colonies, 'declaring their opinion, that an attack upon one of the colonies was an attack upon all British America,' and a convention of the people of Virginia. The sentiments of the people accorded with those of their late delegates; they elected members who met in convention at Williamsburg, on the 1st of August, 1774. This convention went into a detailed view of their rights and grievances, discussed measures of redress for the latter, and declared their determination never to relinquish the former; they appointed deputies to attend a general Congress, and they instructed them how to proceed. The Congress met in Philadelphia, on the 4th of September, 1774. While Virginia was engaged in her efforts for the general good, she was not without her peculiar troubles at home. The Indians had been for some time waging a horrid war upon the frontiers, when the indignation of the people at length compelled the reluctant governor to take up arms, and march to suppress the very savages he was thought to have encouraged and excited to hostility by his intrigues. Richard Henry Lee, Benjamin Harrison, Edmund Pendleton, Patrick Henry, Dudley Digges, Dabney Carr, Archibald Carey, and Thomas Jefferson. "Lord Dunmore marched the army in two divisions: the one under Col. Andrew Lewis he sent to the junction of the Great Kanawha with the Ohio, while he himself marched to a higher point on the latter river, with pretended purpose of destroying the Indian towns and joining Lewis at Point Pleasant; but it was believed with the real* object of sending the whole Indian force to annihilate Lewis' detachment, and thereby weaken the power and break down the spirit of Virginia. If such was his object he was signally defeated through the gallantry of the detachment, which met and defeated the superior numbers of the enemy at Point Pleasant, after an exceeding hard-fought day, and the loss of nearly all its officers. The day after the victory, an express arrived from Dunmore with orders for the detachment to join him at a distance of 80 miles, through an enemy's country, without any conceivable object but the destruction of the corps. As these orders were given without a knowledge of the victory, Col. Lewis was proceeding to the destruction of the Shawanese villages, when he was informed the governor had made peace. "When the treaty was commenced, Cornstalk, the celebrated Shawanese chieftain, made a speech, in which he charged upon the whites the cause of the war, in consequence, principally, of the murder of Logan's family. Logan was a Mingo chief. For magnanimity in war, and greatness of soul in peace, few, if any, in any nation, ever surpassed Logan.' 'His form was striking and manly, his countenance calm and noble, and he spoke the English language with fluency and correctness.' Logan did not make his appearance among the Indian deputies. He disdained to be seen among the suppliants. But, lest the sincerity of a treaty should be disturbed, from which so distinguished a chief absented himself, he sent, by Gen. John Gibson,t the following speech, to be delivered to Lord Dunmore.' ""I appeal to any white man to say, if ever he entered Logan's cabin hungry, and he gave him not meat: if ever he came cold and naked, and he clothed him not. During the course of the last long and bloody war, Logan remained idle in his cabin, an advocate for peace. Such was my love for the whites, that my countrymen pointed, as they passed, and said, Logan is the friend of white men.' I had even thought to have lived with you, but for the injuries of one man. Colonel Cresap, the last spring, in cold blood, and unprovoked, murdered all the relations of Logan, not even sparing my women and children. There runs not a drop of my blood in the veins of any living creature. This called on me for revenge. I have sought it: I have killed many: I have fully glutted my vengeance: for my country I rejoice at the beams of peace. But do not harbor a thought that mine is the joy of fear. Logan never felt fear. He will not turn on his heel to save his life. Who is there to mourn for Logan ?-Not one." The affairs between Britain and her American colonies were now verging to a crisis. The hostile attitude of the latter, soon occasioned orders to be issued to their governors to remove the military stores out of their reach. Accordingly, on the 20th of April, 1775, Dunmore secretly removed the gunpowder from the * See Memoir of Indian wars, &c., by the late Col. Stuart of Greenbrier, presented to the Virginia Historical and Philosophical Society by Charles A. Stuart, of Augusta county, and the Chronicles of Border Warfare, by Alexander C. Withers, for a strong corroboration of these suspicions. † The authenticity of this speech has been much questioned. The reader will find the deposition of Gen. Gibson in the American Pioneer, which gives full and satisfactory confirmation of its genuineness. ‡ Various evidence is given, in the Pioneer, that it was Capt. Michael Cresap, not Col. Cresap, who murdered the Indians on the Ohio. |