attacks, if not to reduce the colony to obedience." He accordingly raised the king's flag, proclaimed martial law, required every person capable of bearing arms to resort to his standard under penalty of forfeiture of life and property, and declared freedom to "all indented servants, negroes, or others, appertaining to rebels," if they would "join for the reducing the colony to a proper sense of its duty." "I hope," said he, "it will oblige the rebels to disperse to take care of their families and property." The men to whose passions he appealed were either convicts, bound to labor in expiation of misdeeds, or Africans, some of them freshly imported. They formed the majority of the population on tide-water, and on the lonely plantations dwelt in clusters around the homes of their owners. Dunmore further sent for the small detachment of regulars stationed in Illinois and the North-west; authorized John Connolly to raise a regiment in the backwoods of Virginia and Pennsylvania; commissioned Mackee, a deputy superintendent, to raise one of western savages; and directed them all to march to Alexandria. For himself he undertook to "raise one regiment of white people, to be called the Queen's Own Loyal Virginia; the other of negroes, to be called Lord Dunmore's Ethiopian."

Connolly was arrested in Maryland in November, and the movements at the West were prevented. The general congress promptly invited Virginia to institute a government of her own. A thrill of indignation effaced all differences of party. William Campbell and Gibson stood ready to march from Fincastle and West Augusta with rifle companies of "as fine men as ever were seen." In the valley of the Blue Ridge the congregations of Germans, quickened by the preaching of Muhlenberg, were eager to take up arms.

The Virginians could plead, and did plead, that "their assemblies had repeatedly attempted to prevent the horrid traffic in slaves, and had been frustrated by the cruelty and covetousness of English merchants, who prevailed on the king to repeal their merciful acts." Had Dunmore been undisputed master of the country when he attempted to enroll the negroes, a social revolution might have ensued. An appeal to them from a fugitive governor could leave no permanent trace.

Norfolk, almost entirely deserted by native Virginians, became the refuge of the factors of Glasgow merchants, who were imbodied as its loyal militia.

The committee of safety at Williamsburg, informed of these transactions, sent a regiment and about two hundred minute-men, under the command of Colonel Woodford, to defend the inhabitants of the low country. With the minutemen, John Marshall, afterward chief justice of the United States, served as a lieutenant. They came down on the south side of the Elizabeth river. Informed of their approach, Dunmore, collecting volunteers and what regular troops he could muster, took a well-chosen position on the north side of the Great Bridge, on a piece of firm ground accessible only by a long causeway over a marsh. The Virginians threw up a breastwork at the south end of the same causeway. After some delay, Dunmore was so rash as to risk an attempt to surprise them. On the eighth of December, after dark, he sent about two hundred regulars, composed of all that had arrived of the fourteenth regiment, and of officers, sailors, and gunners from the ships, mixed with townsmen of Norfolk. After the break of day and before sunrise, Leslie planted two fieldpieces between the bridge and the causeway, and gave orders for the attack; but, at the first discharge of the cannon, the bravest of the Virginians rushed to the trenches. The advance party of regulars, about one hundred and twenty in number, led by Fordyce, a captain in the fourteenth, were met on the causeway by a well-directed fire; while Stevens, with a party of the Culpepper minute-men, posted on an eminence about a hundred yards to the left, took them in flank. They wavered; Fordyce, with a courage which was the admiration of all beholders, rallied them and led them on, till, struck with many rifle-balls, he fell dead within a few steps of the breastwork. The regulars then retreated, after a struggle of about fourteen minutes, losing over sixty in killed and wounded. Fordyce was buried by the Virginians with the honors due to his gallantry.

In the following night Leslie abandoned the fort and retreated to Norfolk. Nothing could exceed the consternation of its Scotch inhabitants: rich factors, with their wives and children, leaving their large property behind in midwinter,

crowded on board ships, scantily provided with even the necessaries of life. Poor people and runaway negroes were huddled together, without comfort or even pure air.

On the fourteenth, Robert Howe, from North Carolina, assumed the command and took possession of Norfolk. Just one week later the Liverpool ship-of-war and the brig Maria were piloted into the harbor. They brought the three thousand stand of arms, with which Dunmore had promised to imbody negroes and Indians enough to reduce Virginia. Martin of North Carolina obtained a third part of them.

The governor sent a flag of truce on shore to inquire if he and the fleet might be supplied with fresh provisions, and was answered in the negative. Showing his instructions to Belew, the captain of the Liverpool, the two concurred in opinion that Norfolk was "a town in actual rebellion, accessible to the king's ships;" and they prepared to carry out the king's instructions for such "a case."

On New Year's day, 1776, the Kingfisher was stationed at the upper end of Norfolk; a little below her the Otter; Belew, in the Liverpool, anchored near the middle of the town; and next him lay Dunmore; the rest of the fleet was moored in the harbor. Between three and four in the afternoon a severe fire was begun from about sixty pieces of cannon. When night was coming on, Dunmore ordered out several boats to burn warehouses on the wharfs, and hailed to Belew to set fire to a large brig which lay in the dock. The vessels of the fleet emulated each other in sending boats on shore to spread the flames along the river; and, as the buildings were chiefly of pine wood, the conflagration, driven by the wind, spread with amazing rapidity. Mothers with little ones in their arms were seen by the glare, running to get out of the range of cannon-balls. Several times the British attempted to land with artillery, but were driven back. The cannonade, with but one short pause, was kept up till two the next morning. The flames raged for three days, till four fifths of the houses were reduced to ashes and heaps of ruins.

In this manner the royal governor burned the best of the towns in England's oldest and most loyal colony, to which Elizabeth had given a name, Raleigh devoted his fortune, and

Shakespeare and Bacon and Herbert foreshadowed greatness; a colony whose people had established the national church, and were proud that their ancestors, in the day of the British commonwealth, had been faithful to the line of kings.

"I hope," said Washington, as he learned the fate of the rich emporium of Virginia, "I hope this and the threatened devastation of other places will unite the whole country in one indissoluble band against a nation which seems lost to every sense of virtue, and those feelings which distinguish a civilized people from the most barbarous savages." When the Virginia convention, which had been in session from the first of December, heard of the burning of Norfolk, the two regiments already in service were increased, and seven more were ordered to be raised. Of one of these Hugh Mercer was elected colonel; the command of another was given to the Lutheran minister, Peter Muhlenberg, who left the pulpit to form out of his several congregations one of the most perfect battalions in the army.

The demand of a world-wide commerce broke forth from Virginia. On motion of Archibald Cary, her convention, on the twentieth of January 1776, instructed her delegates in favor of opening the ports of the colonies to all persons willing to trade with them, Great Britain, Ireland, and the British West Indies excepted. That this recommendation should have been left, after ten months of war, to be proposed by a provincial convention, is another evidence of the all but invincible attachment of the colonies to England. The progress of the war brought to America independence in all but the name; she had her treasury, her army, the rudiments of a navy, incipient foreign relations, and a striving after free trade with the world. She must be self-dependent, whether she would be so or not; through no other way would the king allow her to hope for rest.

In the army round Boston, Washington for more than two months scarcely emerged from one difficulty before he was plunged into another. His best dependence for powder and flints, and in part for artillery, was on prizes made under the pine-tree flag by the brave Manly and others of New England. The men who enlisted for the coming year were desired to bring their own arms; those whose time expired were com

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pelled to part with theirs at a valuation; for blankets the general appealed to the families of New England, asking at least one from each household; the nearer villages, in their townmeetings, encouraged the supply of wood to the camp by voting a bounty from the town treasuries.

The enlistments for the new army went on slowly, for the New England men were disinclined to engagements which would take them far from home, on wages to be paid irregularly and tardily and in a constantly depreciating currency. For want of funds to answer the accounts of the commissary and quartermaster, the troops were forced to submit to a reduced allowance.

Connecticut soldiers, whose enlistment expired early in December, hastened home so soon as they became free; but others of their colony were ready to take their places. At the call of the colonial governments, three thousand men from the militia of Massachusetts and two thousand from New Hampshire had repaired to the camp with celerity, and cheerfully braved "the want of wood, barracks, and blankets." The fortifications were extended to Lechmere's Point, and every possible landing-place for a sallying party from Boston was secured by intrenchments.

On the first day of January 1776, the tri-colored American banner, not yet spangled with stars, but showing thirteen stripes of alternate red and white in the field, and the united red and white crosses of Saint George and Saint Andrew on a blue ground in the corner, was unfurled over the new continental army round Boston.

On that day free negroes stood in the ranks by the side of white men. The first general order of Ward had required a return, among other things, of "the complexion" of the soldiers; and black men, like others, were retained in the service after the troops were adopted by the continent. We have seen Edward Rutledge defeated in his attempt to compel their discharge; in October, the conference at the camp, with Franklin, Harrison, and Lynch, thought it proper to exclude them from the new enlistment; but Washington, at the crisis of his distress, finding that they were very much dissatisfied at being discarded, reversed the decision, and