III. 1774. son also was then at Williamsburg, a man of strong CHAP. and true affections; learned in constitutional law; a profound reasoner; honest and fearless in council; May. shunning ambition and public life, from desponding 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 deliberate 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 resolve, which bound only the members themselves, 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. This was the last regular public act of a colonial May. CHAP. assembly in the Old Dominion. The morning after III. its adoption, Dunmore dissolved the House. The 1774 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. On the afternoon of Sunday the twenty-ninth, the 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. As they collectively numbered but twenty-five, 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 capital 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 III. own internal regulation, an annual congress of all CHAP. the colonies for the perpetual assertion of common rights, were the policy of Virginia. When the report May. of her measures reached England, the king's ministers were startled by their significance; and 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 like electricity 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. 1774 CHAPTER IV. MASSACHUSETTS APPOINTS THE TIME AND PLACE FOR A IV. June JUNE, 1774. CHAP. ON the first day of June, Hutchinson embarked for England; and as the clocks in the Boston belfries 1774 finished striking twelve, the blockade of the harbor 1. began. 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 IV. June 1. children at his board. The sailor roamed the streets CHAP. listlessly without hope of employment. The law was executed with a rigor that went beyond the inten- 1774. tions 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 wharf to wharf, though but of lumber, or bricks, or lime, was strictly forbidden. The boats between Boston and Charleston 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 offering in wagons by a circuit of thirty miles. The warehouses of the thrifty merchants were at once made valueless; the costly wharves, 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 cheering voices of prosperous commerce, was now 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 or more touching words were addressed to the sufferers than from Norfolk, which was the largest place of trade in that "well-watered and extensive dominion," and which, from its deep channel and nearness to |