white men, with Dunmore's permission, destroyed an Indian village on the Muskingum.

To restrain the backwoodsmen and end the miseries which distracted the frontier, and to look after his own interests and his agents, Dunmore called out the militia of the South-west, and himself repaired to Pittsburg. In September he renewed peace with the Delawares and the Six Nations. Then, with about twelve hundred men, among whom was Daniel Morgan, with a company from the valley of Virginia, he descended the Ohio, and proceeded to the Shawnee towns, which he found deserted.

The summons from Dunmore, borne beyond the Blue Ridge, roused the settlers on the Greenbrier, the New river, and the Holston. The Watauga republicans, who never owned English rule and never required English protection, heard the cry of their brethren in distress; and a company of nearly fifty of them, under the command of Evan Shelby, with James Robertson and Valentine Sevier as sergeants, marched as volunteers. The name of every one of them is preserved and cherished. Leaving home in August, they crossed the New river, and joined the army of western Virginia at Camp Union, on the great levels of Greenbrier. From that place, now called Lewisburg, to the month of the Great Kanawha, the distance is about one hundred and sixty miles. At that time there was not even a trace over the rugged mountains; but the young woodsmen who formed the advance party moved expeditiously with their pack-horses and droves of cattle through the home of the wolf, the deer, and the panther. After a fortnight's struggle, they left behind them the last rocky masses of the hill-tops; and, passing between the gigantic growth of primeval forests, in which at that season the golden hue of the linden, the sugar-tree, and the hickory contrasted with the glistening green of the laurel, the crimson of the sumach, and the shadows of the sombre hemlock, they descended to the widening valley of Elk river. Halting only to build canoes and receive a second party, which raised their force to nearly eleven hundred men, they descended the Kanawha, and on the sixth of October encamped on Point Pleasant, near its junction with the Ohio. But no message reached them from Dunmore.

Of all the western Indians, the Shawnees were the fiercest. They made a boast of having killed ten times as many of the English as any other tribe. They stole through the forest with Mingoes and Delawares, to attack the army of southwestern Virginia. At daybreak, on the tenth, two young men, rambling up the Ohio in search of deer, fell on the Indians, who had crossed the river the evening before and were preparing for battle. One of the two was instantly shot down; the other bore the news to the camp. In two or three minutes after, Robertson and Sevier, of Shelby's company, came in and confirmed the account. Colonel Andrew Lewis, who had the command, instantly ordered out two divisions, each of one hundred and fifty men; the Augusta troops under his brother Charles Lewis, the Botetourt troops under Fleming. Just as the sun was rising, the Indians opened a heavy fire on both parties, wounding Charles Lewis mortally. Fleming was wounded thrice; and the Virginians must have given way but for successive re-enforcements from the camp, where Andrew Lewis himself lingered to the end of the action. "Be strong," cried Cornstalk, the chief of the red men; and he animated them by his example. Till the hour of noon the combatants fought from behind trees, never above twenty yards apart, often within six, and sometimes near enough to strike with the tomahawk. At length the Indians, under the protection of the close underwood and fallen trees, retreated, till they gained an advantageous line extending from the Ohio to the Kanawha. A desultory fire was kept up on both sides till after sunset, when, under the favor of night, the savages fled across the river. The victory cost forty-nine lives, and about eighty men were wounded.

This battle was the most bloody and best contested in the annals of forest warfare. The heroes of the day proved themselves worthy to found states. Among them were Isaac Shelby, the first governor of Kentucky; William Campbell; the brave George Matthews; Fleming; Andrew Moore, afterward a senator of the United States; Evan Shelby; James Robertson; Valentine Sevier; and Daniel Morgan. Their praise resounded not in the backwoods only, but through all Virginia.

Soon after the battle a re-enforcement of three hundred

troops arrived from Fincastle. Following orders tardily received from Dunmore, the army, leaving a garrison at Point Pleasant, dashed across the Ohio to defy new battles. After a march of eighty miles through an untrodden wilderness, on the twenty-fourth of October they encamped on the banks of Congo creek in Pickaway, near old Chillicothe. The disheartened Indians threw themselves on the mercy of the English; and at Camp Charlotte, which stood on the left bank of Sippo creek, about seven miles south-east of Circleville, Dunmore admitted them to a conference.

Before the council was brought to a close the Shawnees agreed to deliver up their prisoners without reserve; to restore all horses and other property which they had carried off; to hunt no more on the Kentucky side of the Ohio; to molest no boats on the river; to regulate their trade by the king's instructions, and to deliver up hostages. Virginia has left on record her judgment, that Dunmore's conduct in this campaign was "truly noble, wise, and spirited." The results inured exclusively to the benefit of America. The Indians desired peace; the rancor of the white people changed to confidence. The royal governor of Virginia and the Virginian army in the valley of the Scioto nullified the act of parliament which extended the province of Quebec to the Ohio, and in the name of the king of Great Britain triumphantly maintained for Virginia the western and northwestern jurisdiction which she claimed as her chartered right.

The western Virginians, halting at Fort Gower, on the north of the Ohio, on the fifth of November, took their part in considering the grievances of their country. They were "blessed with the talents" to bear all hardships of the woods; to pass weeks comfortably without bread or salt; to sleep under the open sky; to march farther in a day than any men in the world; and to use the rifle with a precision that to all but themselves was a miracle. Professing zeal for the honor of America, and especially of Virginia, they held themselves bound to publish their sentiments; they promised continued allegiance to the king, if he would but reign over them as a brave and free people." "But," said they, "as attachment to the real interests and just rights of America outweigh

every other consideration, we resolve that we will exert every power within us for the defence of American liberty, when regularly called forth by the unanimous voice of our countrymen."

On the ninth, the general committee of South Carolina summoned a convention of the inhabitants of their colony by representation. In the apportionment of representatives, Charleston, on the proposal of Charles Pinckney, obtained thirty, keeping up the inequality which began in the committee; at the desire of "the country gentlemen," six were allowed to each of nineteen parishes, which lay along the sea and in the lowlands; while all the upland territory was divided into four very large districts, to each of which ten only were conceded. This is the origin of the unequal distribution of political power which long prevailed in South Carolina; of one hundred and eighty-four representatives, the low country elected all but forty.

On the twenty-first, the Maryland convention was reassembled, and unanimously approved the proceedings of congress. It most earnestly recommended that all former differences about religion or politics, the feuds of so many generations between Catholics and Protestants, between the friends and the foes of the proprietary government, be forever buried in oblivion; it conjured every man, by his duty to God, his country, and his posterity, to unite in defence of their common rights and liberties; and it promised, to the utmost of its power, to support Massachusetts against the attempt to carry the late act of parliament into execution by force.

CHAPTER VI.

THE FOURTEENTH PARLIAMENT OF GREAT BRITAIN.

OCTOBER 1774-JANUARY 20, 1775.

"It is the united voice of America to preserve their freedom, or lose their lives in defence of it. Their resolutions are not the effect of inconsiderate rashness, but the sound result of sober inquiry and deliberation. The true spirit of liberty was never so universally diffused through all ranks and orders of people in any country on the face of the earth as it now is through all North America. If the late acts of parliament are not to be repealed, the wisest step for both countries is to separate, and not to spend their blood and treasure in destroying each other. It is barely possible that Great Britain may depopulate North America; she never can conquer the inhabitants." So wrote Joseph Warren, and his words were the mirror of the passions of his countrymen. But the king never once harbored the thought of concession, and "left the choice of war or peace" to depend on the obedience of Massachusetts.

At the elections to parliament the question was represented as though Massachusetts refused to pay a very moderate indemnity for property destroyed by a mob, and resisted an evident improvement in its administrative system from a deliberate conspiracy with other colonies to dissolve the connection with the mother country. Many of the members who were purchasing seats expected to reimburse themselves by selling their votes to the government.

Lord Varney, who had hitherto gratuitously brought Edmund Burke into parliament, had fallen into debt, and sold his borough for the most he could get. Burke coquetted