pressed the impassioned gratitude of the people. To Jasper was offered a lieutenant's commission, which he modestly declined, accepting only a sword.

South Carolina, by her president and the common voice, spontaneously decreed that the post on Sullivan's Island should, for all future time, be known as Fort Moultrie; her assembly crowned her victorious sons with applause. The tidings leaped from colony to colony on their way to the North, and the continental congress voted their thanks to Lee, Moultrie, Thomson, and the officers and men under their command. But, at the time of that vote, congress was no more the representative of dependent colonies; the victory at Fort Moultrie was the bright morning star that harbingered American independence.

CHAPTER XXVI.

VIRGINIA PROCLAIMS THE RIGHTS OF MAN AND PROPOSES INDEPENDENCE.

MAY-JUNE 1776.

Ox the sixth of May forty-five members of the house of burgesses of Virginia met at the capitol in Williamsburg pursuant to their adjournment; but, as they were of the opinion that the ancient constitution had been subverted by the king and parliament of Great Britain, they dissolved themselves unanimously, and thus the last vestige of the king's authority passed away.

The delegates of Virginia who on the same morning met in convention were a constituent and an executive body. Not less than one hundred and thirty in number, they represented the oldest of the colonies, whose institutions had been fashioned after the model recommended by Bacon, and whose inhabitants for nearly a hundred and seventy years had maintained the church of England as the establishment of the dominion, and had been heartily loyal to their kings.

Its people, having in their origin a perceptible but never an exclusive influence of the cavaliers, had sprung mainly from adventurers, who were not fugitives for conscience' sake, or sufferers from persecution. The population had been recruited by successive infusions of Scotch-Irish Presbyterians; Huguenots, and the descendants of Huguenots; men who had been so attached to Cromwell or to the republic that they preferred to emigrate on the return of Charles II.; Baptists and other dissenters; and in the valley of Virginia there was a very large German population.

The territory for which the convention was to act comprised the great bay of the Chesapeake, with its central and southern tributaries; the beautiful valleys on the head-springs of the Roanoke and along the Shenandoah; the country beyond the mountains, including the sources of the Monongahela and the Cumberland rivers and extending indefinitely to the Tennessee and beyond it. Nor that only: Virginia insisted that its jurisdiction stretched without bounds over all the country west and north-west of a line two hundred miles north of Old Point Comfort, not granted to others by royal charters; and there was no one to dispute a large part of this claim except the province of Quebec under an act of parliament which the continental congress had annulled. For all this vast territory -rich in soil, precious minerals, healing springs, forests, convenient marts for foreign commerce, and great pathways to the West, more fertile, more spacious than all Greece, Italy, and Great Britain, than any region which had ever proposed to establish republican liberty—a constitution was to be framed.

The movement proceeded from the heart of Virginia herself, and represented the magnanimity of her whole people. The Ancient Dominion had with entire unanimity approved the change of dynasty of 1688; with equal unanimity had, even more readily than the English, accepted the house of Hanover, and had been one of the most loyal parts of the empire of the Georges. Driven to the choice between holding their constitutional rights on sufferance or creating a government by the people, Virginia, with a unity of spirit, asked no questions about ancestry or creed, nearness to the sea or to the mountains. When it moved, it moved altogether. The story of the war commemorates the courage not of the men of the interior alone; among the "inexorable families," Dunmore especially reported from the low country the Lees, and the family of Cary of Hampton, of whom even the sisters, married to a Fairfax and a Nicholas, cheered on their connections to unrelenting opposition. Virginia rose with as much unanimity as Connecticut or Massachusetts, and with a more commanding resolution.

The purpose for which the convention was assembled appears from the words of the county of Buckingham to Charles

Patterson and John Cabell, its delegates: "We instruct you to cause a total and final separation from Great Britain to take place as soon as possible; and a constitution to be established, with a full representation, and free and frequent elections; the most free, happy, and permanent government that human wisdom can contrive and the perfection of man maintain."

The county of Augusta represented the necessity of making the confederacy of the united colonies most perfect, independent, and lasting; an equal, free, and liberal government, that might bear the test of all future ages. The inhabitants of Transylvania were anxious to concur with their brethren of the united colonies in every measure for the recovery of their rights and liberties.

The inhabitants on the rivers Watauga and Holston set forth that "they were deeply impressed with a sense of the distresses of their American brethren, and would, when called upon, with their lives and fortunes, lend them every assistance in their power; they begged to be considered as a part of the colony, and would readily embrace every opportunity of obeying any commands from the convention."

To that body were chosen more than one hundred and thirty of the ablest men of Virginia. Among them were no rash enthusiasts for liberty; no lovers of revolution for the sake of change; they were the choice of the freeholders of Virginia, and the majority were men of independent fortune, or even opulence. It was afterward remembered that of this grave assembly the members were for the most part men of large stature and robust frames, and that a very great proportion of them lived to exceeding old age. They were now to decide whether Virginia demanded independence, and would establish a commonwealth; and to move like a pillar of fire in front of the whole country.

When the delegates had assembled and appointed a clerk, Richard Bland recommended Edmund Pendleton for president, and was seconded by Archibald Cary; while Thomas Johnson of Louisa, and Bartholomew Dandridge, proposed Thomas Ludwell Lee. For a moment there was something like an array of parties, but it instantly subsided; Virginia showed her greatness by her moderation, and gave new evidence that

the revolution sprung from necessity, by placing in the chair Pendleton, the most cautious and conservative among her patriots. After his election, he wrote to a friend: "Of all others, I own I prefer the true English constitution, which consists of a proper combination of the principles of honor, virtue, and fear."

On the fifteenth Archibald Cary, from a committee of the whole, reported resolutions which had been drafted by Pendleton, offered by Nelson, and enforced by Henry. They were then twice read at the clerk's table, and, one hundred and twelve members being present, were unanimously agreed to. The preamble enumerated their chief grievances; among others, that the king's representative in the colony was training and employing slaves against their masters; and they say: "We have no alternative left but an abject submission or a total separation;" therefore they went on to decree "that their delegates in congress be instructed to propose to that body to declare the united colonies free and independent states, absolved from all allegiance or dependence upon the crown or parliament of Great Britain; and that they give the assent of this colony to such declaration, and to measures for forming foreign alliances and a confederation of the colonies: provided that the power of forming government for, and the regulation of the internal concerns of, each colony be left to the respective colonial legislatures."

This resolution was received out of doors with chimes of bells and the noise of artillery; and the British flag, which had thus far kept its place on the state-house, was struck, to be raised no more.

In the following days a committee of thirty-two was appointed to prepare a declaration of rights and a plan of government. Among the members were Archibald Cary; Patrick Henry; the aged Richard Bland; Edmund Randolph, son of the attorney-general, who was then a refugee in England; Nicholas; James Madison, the youthful delegate from Orange county; but the one who at that moment held most sway over the mind of the convention was George Mason, the successor of Washington in the representation of Fairfax county. He was a devoted member of the church of England; and, by his