Jefferson in the House of Burgesses of Virginia

THE year 1772, which was the first of Jefferson’s married life, I think he would have ever after pronounced the happiest of all his years. To most of us, perhaps, that first year, or, at least, some small part of it, is the most consciously happy time we ever know. It may well be so. The moment when two stand at the altar, a wedded pair, is the moment for which all their past moments were made, from which all their future moments date. The first months are a blissful pause in life’s toilsome journey ; for the old cares have ended in fruition, and the new cares are as yet nothing but delight. The chilly winter of desire is past; the tempest of the passions passes soon with well-attempered minds ; it is May-time then, the bright and sunny seedtime when no one thinks that the harvest can be other than glorious. Nature begins everything with a smile. The most bountiful harvest is not joyous and serene, like the May morning when the wheat is only a greener grass, and the trees have nothing for us but blossoms. We see many couples who have been harshly dealt with in the struggle for life ; they are sadly battered and worn ; and we meet others who have dealt harshly with one another, whose case is more deplorable. It is an affecting thought, that they, too, must once have looked hopefully upon life, must once have been pleasing in one another’s eyes, must once have had their Monticello to go home to, and to make lovely by their touch, — if it were only two tenement-rooms, adorned with pictures cut from the illustrated papers.

A lull in the political storm gave Jefferson a long interval of peace, the last he was to know for many a year. The General Court called him to Williamsburg, April 15th and October 15th, and detained him “eighteen days exclusive of Sundays,” each time ; but during most of the year he was on his mountain, laying out his grounds, planning parts of his house, watching his garden in that vigilant manner of his, superintending his widening farms, and keeping brief, exact record of whatever he did, observed, and learned. Snow three feet deep, as he records soon after reaching home with his bride, “ the deepest snow we have ever seen,” covered the county of Albemarle during the last days of January. It was not an inviting prospect for the Italians whom Philip Mazzei was about to start in the culture of the vine near by, and who were to furnish Jefferson with Italian gardeners. Virginia has a month of polar winter every third or fourth year, when the James and the Potomac are ice-bound, and the mountain counties are buried in snow. This happy winter chanced to be one such. But an early spring atones ; and we are relieved, on looking over the published leaves of the young husband’s Garden Book, to discover that on March 20th he “ sowed a patch of later peas.”

The broad summit of his mountain presented a busy scene as the season advanced. Men were levelling the summit down to that expanse of six acres which was to become so bright with lawn, garden, grove, and flowers. Others were cutting roads and paths through the woods, or making the drive around the great lawn. Jefferson, with his rule in his pocket and his case of instruments at hand, watched every operation with the eye of a curious philosopher, pausing often to make a calculation or record a hint. Like a true mathematician, he would take nothing for granted. Having wheelbarrows with one wheel and others with two wheels, he was bound to ascertain, with the certainty of arithmetic, which was the more advantageous. So he takes his position, watch in hand, pencil in pocket. He discovers that Julius Shard fills a two-wheeled barrow in three minutes, and wheels it thirty yards in a minute and a half. He observes, further, that the twowheeled barrow holds four times as much as the one-wheeled. With these facts before him, he puts the case in a form which Professor Small himself would have approved : “ Suppose the 4 loads put in in the same time, viz. 3 minutes ; 4 trips will take 4 X 1½ = 6', which added to 3' filling is = 9', to fill and carry the same earth which was filled and carried in the twowheeled barrow in 4½'.” This seems conclusive against the one - wheeled vehicle ; but as that form of barrow has held its own against all rivals for another century, we must conclude that Mr. Jefferson’s one-wheeled barrow was not a fair representative of its order. He was evidently much attached to the two-wheeled specimen.

Every operation was scanned and tested. He observed that a four-horse wagon made ten trips a day up the mountain, and brought nearly five cords of wood. He counted the number of rails that could be drawn up the steepest part of the mountain, and found it was twenty-eight. “ A coach and six,” he records, “ will turn in eighty feet.” He meant to allow room enough for the grandees of Virginia who might visit him to turn homeward. For his own part, he had not yet set up a vehicle more imposing than the two-wheeled chaise in which he had attempted to bring home his bride. We learn from the same source, that the grounds were to be enclosed by a picket fence, every other picket long, and that the short pickets were to have four nails each, and the long ones five. No scrap of knowledge came amiss to the young housekeeper. “ Mrs. Wythe,” he records, " puts one tenth very rich superfine Malmsey to a dry Madeira, and makes a fine wine. This item, doubtless, he brought home from Williamsburg for his wife, with Mrs. Wythe’s compliments ; for the lady of the mountain kept her housekeeping book, and was noted for her skill in household arts. Her books of accounts, written in a neat, ladylike hand, still exist.

What an experimenter he was with his garden! He tried almost every valuable nut, vegetable, grain, bulb, shrub, tree, and grass the world knows, — almonds, bitter almonds, soft-shelled almonds, olives (fifteen hundred olivestones at once), Alpine strawberries, French chestnuts, and all the rare kinds of more familiar fruits and vegetables. His new neighbor, Mazzei, filled his garden with the fine melons, vines, and nuts of Italy, which it was one of Jefferson’s clearest delights to spread over Virginia, Maryland, the Carolinas, and Georgia. He watched the operations of the Italian vineyard planters with the closest attention, and put down in his Garden Book a curiously minute account of their method of laying out a vineyard and planting vines. The coming of this little Italian colony, with the intelligent Mazzei at their head, and the prospect which it opened of Albemarle, already called the “garden of Virginia,” becoming its vineyard also, was an immense addition to the interest and attractiveness of Monticello. If Jefferson loved his home more than most men, it must be owned that few men have ever had such a home to love.

It is the wife who is the soul of a house. It is she who makes, who constitutes, who is the home. The wife of Jefferson comes down to us as she was in this brightest year of her existence, a beautiful woman, her countenance brilliant with color and expression, with luxuriant auburn hair, somewhat tall, and of a very graceful figure, though too slight for the wear and tear of this troublesome world. Nothing but good has been recorded of her, and her carefully kept household books still speak her praise. Tradition reports that she possessed an attraction for her husband most rare in that age among ladies, — an educated mind and a taste for the higher literature. Her love of music, her skill in playing the harpsichord, and her voice in singing. all harmonized with his tastes and habits, recalling that sister so early lost. A Virginian lady of that period could scarcely escape acquiring the homely, invaluable wisdom that comes of dealing with the common duties of a household. She might not be so accomplished as the mother of Washington, who was one of the best judges of a horse in her county, and perfectly capable of conducting a plantation ; but a woman could not be quite a fool who had to think and contrive for a great family of grown-up children.

I see this elegant figure moving about with her husband among the improvements of the mountain-top, visiting with him the spot where negroes were “ grubbing up ” roots and trees for the family burying-ground, or standing by his side as he counted the wheelbarrow - loads and watched the wall-building. During the winter, perhaps, she may have been alive to the inconveniences of living five hundred and eighty feet in the air ; but in the summer she must have warmly approved her husband’s choice, if it were only that it lifted them above the mosquitoes and all disagreeable insects. If she cast her eyes in one direction, she saw their mount sloping down a mile and a half to the river Rivanna, and she could see, half a mile beyond the river, the blackened ruins of the house in which her husband was born. On another side, the mountain fell off into the valley in an almost precipitous descent. From one face of the summit there is nothing between the spectator and the ocean, two hundred miles distant, and yet not so far that it is not felt in the afternoon breeze of the hot summer days. From another, there is a vast expanse billowy with mountains, one peak clearly visible forty miles off, and the line of the Blue Ridge marked against the horizon a hundred miles away. Three miles yonder lies the village of Charlottesville ; and here is a region of waving wheatfields and farms, with the river winding among them. From one point, nothing breaks the view for forty-seven miles, and then it ends in a solitary peak precisely resembling the great Pyramid of Egypt. A lady less susceptible than she could have forgiven the height of the little mount for the wide world of loveliness which it disclosed.

As the summer advanced, she leaned perhaps more heavily upon her husband’s strong arm than before, and less frequently rode down into the valley. Their first child was born in the autumn, — that Martha Jefferson who contributed most and longest to the solace of her father’s life. Here was a new tie binding him to his home, and it was wound about his heart at the very period when the events occurred that were to summon him away, and detain him many times and long.

From the breezy height of Monticello we must repair to a spot not less enchanting, — Newport, the Emerald Isle of North America. Readers are familiar with the ocean drive, that winds about among the rocks, and by the beaches, and past Lily Pond, until it turns the Point at the ocean end of the island, and winds round past Fort Adams, where the band plays ; then by the pretty harbor, alive with yachts and skimming sail-boats ; and “so home.” Brenton’s Point is the ancient and proper name of that turning - place, where the carriages stop for their occupants to look out for Point Judith and Block Island, and admire the tumbling waves that foam over the reefs near the shore, and where children get out to explore the aquarium disclosed to view at low tide, and gather star-fish, wet and squirming, inadmissible to a well - regulated vehicle. In March, 1772, it was a bleak and desolate place, without sign of human habitation. But even at that early period there was much life upon the waters ; for Newport had an important commerce with the African coast, and Providence, thirty miles off, at the head of Narragansett Bay, though inferior to Newport in wealth and population, was a thriving town. Those were the days when the best Christians saw nothing wrong in buying negroes and golddust on the coast of Africa with New England rum, and selling the negroes to the West Indies for molasses, and taking the molasses home to be converted into more rum for another voyage. Newport had the cream of this sweet commerce for many a year, as well as a legitimate trade with the mother-country.

But this was not all the business that enriched Newport and Providence. It was not to protect lawful commerce that British men-of-war cruised continually in Narragansett Bay, and lay at anchor off Brenton’s Point. England was at peace with all the world ; the pirates had been driven from these waters ; but in March, 1772, when Jefferson was sowing his later peas at Monticello, two British men-of-war approached the Point, one of some magnitude, called the Beaver, and the other, a schooner of eight guns, named the Gaspee. The larger of these vessels kept on her course, and vanishes from this history. The Gaspee dropped her anchor, furled her sails, and remained, about where the Light Ship now rides uneasily on the waves.

Need I remind the reader with what rigor England applied the “protective system ” at that time ? A colonist could catch a beaver and take off its skin, but a British law forbade his making that skin into a hat. English hatters were protected. A Pennsylvanian might dig a piece of iron out of his native hills, and even smelt away its impurities, but he was obliged to send it to England to be made into steel and a scythe. British cutlers must be protected. A Virginian could raise as much tobacco as he chose; but though England were glutted with tobacco, he could not export a hogshead of it to another country. He must send it all to England, whence British merchants would distribute it over the world. A Newport merchant might discover excellent fabrics and commodities in Holland or France, but he must buy his return cargo in English ports of English dealers. A Carolinian could not sell a pound of his indigo to France, where so much of it was used. The commerce of the Colonies, and their internal trade as well, were restricted and hampered in every way, with the single object, and that object avowed, of compelling the colonists to pour the net product of their toil and enterprise into British coffers. The colonists complied not unwillingly, because they loved their country, that is, the British Empire, and because they felt that, in return for all this, England was bound to defend them against the world.

But the protective system includes, as an invariable accompaniment, the illicit trader and the smuggler ; and it will not be one of the least advantages of the universal freedom of trade, which we have been approaching for a century past, and may reach a century hence, that those bad vocations will cease to be exercised. Seldom have they been so flourishing as in the waters about Newport, from the peace of 1763 to the war of 1775. The French War had given a wonderful development to the business. A colonial governor had the power to grant a flag of truce, and an enterprising Newporter could apply for one under pretext of going to the French West Indies to effect an exchange of prisoners. It is mentioned as a proof of the incorruptible honor of Governor Fauquier of Virginia, — gambler as he was,—that he refused an offer of two hundred pounds sterling for a flag. Other governors were not so scrupulous ; as the governor of Rhode Island, who alone was elected by the people of his Province, had, it is said, no scruples at all, but granted flags to all applicants at a certain price. Give a Yankee captain, in time of war, a schooner full of “ fish and notions,” a flag of truce to the enemy, and a free range of the seas ; what does he want more ? He is trading with peace advantages, and gets war prices.

Considering the circumstances, we cannot be surprised at the bad account given of the Rhode-Islanders by Archdeacon Burnaby, who visited them toward the close of the French War. A cunning, deceitful people, he calls them, who “ live almost entirely by unfair and illicit trading,” and their “ magistrates are partial and corrupt.” The English traveller adds this remark : “ Were the governor to interpose his authority, were he to refuse to grant flags of truce, or not to wink at abuses, he would at the expiration of the year be excluded from his office, the only thing perhaps which he has to subsist upon.” But, then, according to this Tory Archdeacon, the people themselves had little to subsist upon except the illicit trade ; for the enemy, in the course of the war, had captured one hundred and thirty of their vessels ; and their own privateers, of which they kept a great number at sea, had had ill luck. Nevertheless, he says, they would, out of their population of thirtyfive thousand souls, maintain a regiment of provincial troops, which made the taxation burdensome. Besides, their paper money was in a woful condition, as it required twenty-five hundred pounds in Rhode Island paper to buy one golden guinea.

The war being at an end in 1763, nothing more could be done in the flag-of-truce way, and a part of this demoralized energy and capital was employed in evading the revenue laws. One glance at the map will remind the reader that the waters about Rhode Island furnish every facility for any kind of illicit trade that can be carried on in small, swift vessels.

For eight years —1764 to 1772 — there had been war in Narragansett Bay, between Rhode Island and the king of Great Britain. The king began it. An offensive armed schooner, the St. John, was stationed in the bay in 1764, for the sole purpose of interfering with the maritime pursuits of the Rhode-Islanders. This St. John had the insolence to make a prize of a brig which had brought in an unlawful cargo. Retaliation : the people seized a shore battery and fired into the St. John. Royal ships impressed unwary seamen. On one occasion, the Maidstone, man-of-war, boarded a brig just from the African coast, and impressed her whole crew, who had expected that very night to be at home. Retaliation : a crowd of Newporters seized one of the Maidstone’s boats at the Long Wharf, dragged her up Broad Street to the Parade, and burnt her in front of that handsome State House which still stands. Again, in 1769, the sloop-ofwar Liberty, besides making herself generally odious through the sleepless vigilance of her commander, Lieutenant Reid, once stopped and brought in an innocent vessel, and then fired at the captain s boat when he came seeking redress. Retaliation : a resolute company of Newporters boarded her, cut her cables, let her drift ashore, hard and fast; and then, when night fell, a party set her on fire, and she was burned to the water’s edge ! This was war.

In 1772 it fell to the little Gaspee, of eight guns, Lieutenant Dudingston commanding, to continue the strife. This lieutenant was not long in making himself an object of passionate disgust to a seafaring people. Lying there, off Brenton’s Point, right at the entrance of the bay, in the very highway leading both to Newport and Providence, he adopted the system of boarding everything that floated, — packets, market - boats, ferry - boats, coasting schooners, Indiamen, Londoners, homeward-bound, outward-bound, — everything ! The expedient was simple and obvious, but it was all too effectual. And, to make his conduct the more offensive, he sent any contraband property that he seized to Boston for adjudication.

At that time the deputy-governor of Rhode Island Plantation, Darius Sessions by name, lived at Providence, and the governor, Joseph Wanton, lived at Newport. Darius Sessions wrote to Joseph Wanton a letter of ludicrous gravity, relating the aggressions of “ a schooner ” upon “ our navigation ” ; affecting not to know “ who he is, and by what authority he assumes such a conduct ” ; and requesting his Honor to inquire into the matter. The deputy contrived to make a pointed allusion to the sloop Liberty, burnt at Newport some time before. “It is suspected,” said Mr. Sessions, “ that he has no legal authority to justify his conduct ; and his commission, if he has any, is some antiquated paper, more of a fiction than anything else, .... no other than the commission the famous Reid had, who lost his sloop at Newport, or something else, of no Validity.” The governor, in the same strain of affected ignorance, addressed a note of inquiry to the odious lieutenant, who replied, not in the most conciliatory tone, that he “ had done nothing but what was his duty.” Much correspondence followed. The governor wrote to the admiral at Boston, and the admiral replied with the hauteur that might be expected ; both referred the matter to the Earl of Hillsborough ; and the affair drew to great length and complexity. But, in the mean time, Lieutenant Dudingston continued to “ disturb the navigation ” of Narragansett Bay, and seized whatever rum or other commodity had not contributed its quota to the king’s strong box.

June 10, 1772, at noon, the regular packet plying between Newport and Providence left Newport for Providence without notifying Lieutenant Dudingston. The Gaspee gave chase ; chased the packet up the bay twenty-three miles, and then ran hard aground on Narragansett Point, seven miles below Providence. The packet reached her berth about sunset. Her captain related his adventure and described the situation of the hated Gaspee to Mr. John Brown, the most substantial merchant of the place. In common with the whole Colony, Mr. Brown believed the proceedings of Lieutenant Dudingston to be illegal. Deputy-Governor Darius Sessions had consulted Chief Justice Hopkins upon the subject, and the Chief Justice had officially pronounced them lawless. No commander of a vessel, the Chief Justice maintained, had any right to exert authority in the Colony without previously applying to the governor, showing his warrant for so doing, and being regularly sworn in.

Mr. Brown, like most men who live near the sea, carried the tide in his mind, as farmers at work in a distant field observe without thinking of it their taskmaster, the sun. The Gaspee cannot get off Namquit Point before three in the morning, thought the merchant. The case of the Liberty, perhaps, flashed across his mind. The Gaspee had run herself ashore ! What an opportunity to free the waters of Rhode Island from this worse than a pirate !

He spoke to one of the captains in his service, who hurried away as if on a joyful errand. A few minutes later, the beating of a drum in the main street of Providence summoned the people to doors and windows ; and the drummer, in the manner of a towncrier, lifted up his voice and proclaimed the situation of the Gaspee, and invited all men disposed to lend a hand to her destruction to repair to Sabin’s tavern as soon ns it was dark. At half past nine, eight of the largest boats belonging to the town, with muffled oars and filled with armed men, each boat commanded by a sea-captain, dropped away from Fenner’s Wharf. It was no mob that manned the boats. The best men of the town took part in this expedition, and all men’s hearts went with it ; unless it might be some lone representative of the collector of the customs, — the only officer in Rhode Island not elected by the people. John Brown, the prime mover, who was in one of the boats, besides being the chief merchant of the Colony, was of the family that afterwards founded and gave its name to Brown University.

All on board the Gaspee slept, except one sailor, who kept the watch. At midnight the watch was changed, when Bartholomew Cheever came on deck in his turn. At a quarter to one he descried in the darkness — the night was very dark — a line of boats silently approaching the vessel. He reported the ominous circumstance to the lieutenant, who hurried on deck in his nightshirt, and soon saw the boats himself. “ Hail them,” said the officer, “ and tell them to stand off at their peril.” The sailor obeyed. No answer. Again he shouted, “ Who comes there ? ” No answer. The lieutenant himself then took his station at the side of the vessel, a pistol in one hand and a cutlass in the other. He hailed the boats twice. From one of them came at length an angry reply, which may be softened into, “ I am the sheriff of the county of Kent, damn you ! I have got a warrant to apprehend you, damn you ! So surrender, damn you ! ” Which was a fiction, uttered by one of the captains commanding. “ Call all hands,” said the lieutenant to Cheever, who obeyed ; and the men, in the course of a few seconds, began to tumble up. But those few seconds were fatal to the Gaspee.

For, at the instant of Lieutenant Dudingston’s appearance at the side of his vessel, one of the men in the boats said to a comrade, “ Reach me your gun, and I can kill that fellow.” Just as the lieutenant had given the order to call all hands he fell to the deck dangerously wounded in the arm and groin, bleeding profusely. He had not yet been helped to the cabin before the assailants boarded, drove the men below, and were masters of the vessel. The Providence men followed the crew into the hold, tied every man’s hands behind him, and prepared to set them ashore.

A young medical student, while busy below tying the hands of the unresisting crew, was called to the deck by a voice familiar to all the party. “What is the matter, Mr. Brown ?” asked the student. “ Don’t call names,” was the reply, “but go immediately into the cabin. There is one wounded and will bleed to death.” Upon examining the wound the student feared the great artery was cut, and began to pull and tug at the collar of his own shirt to tear a bandage. The wounded man showed that he was worthy of better work than chasing packet-boats and groping after hidden rum, by saying, “Pray, sir, don’t tear your clothes ; there is linen in that trunk.” And after his wound was dressed, he begged the young surgeon to accept a gold stock-buckle as a mark of his gratitude ; and, this being refused, he pressed upon him a silver one, which the student accepted and wore to old age. The crew were landed in two parties, two miles apart, and the lieutenant was carried to a house near the shore. The schooner was then set on fire.

When the sun rose nothing remained of her but a black and smoking hulk. The assailants rowed home at leisure in broad daylight, reaching Providence in time for breakfast. So little concealment was there, that, in the course of the morning, a young man appeared in the most public place in Providence with Lieutenant. Dudingston’s goldlaced hat upon his head, and related to a great circle of admiring bystanders how and where he had got it in the schooner’s cabin ; he was induced to retire with his trophy; but every American in Providence knew who had done the deed, who suggested it, and what part in it each of the leading persons had borne.

Darius Sessions’s parents must have been devoid of a sense of the ludicrous, else he had not been blessed with such a name ; but Darius himself was a humorist. In the morning he received the “news” of this transaction. Whereupon he rode down to the scene, attended by some gentlemen of the town, to inquire into it. He found the thing had really happened ! Here was the smoking hulk. In yonder house lay the wounded officer. The crew were roaming at large, subsisting on the country. He visited the lieutenant, and begged to know how he could be of service to him. That truly gallant officer replied that, for his own part, he wanted nothing; he hardly expected to survive ; but he asked to have his men attended to, and sent to the admiral in Boston. The deputy took sundry depositions, provided for the crew, and returned home to exercise his talent for grave burlesque in a letter to the governor. “A very disagreeable affair,” said he, “has lately happened within this part of the Colony.” He related the disagreeable affair. Then he remarked : “The dangerous tendency of this transaction is too obvious to pass it over with the least appearance of neglect.” He did not underline the word “ appearance,” it was not necessary. He concluded his epistle thus : “It is the prevailing opinion of the gentlemen in this quarter, that a proclamation with a large reward be issued for apprehending the persons who have thus offended. You will please consult the gentlemen your way ; and, in the mean time, I will endeavor to collect the sentiments of the members of the Assembly, and other principal gentlemen by name, and send the same to your Honor, as soon as may be.”

Governor Wanton acted upon this hint. A proclamation was very promptly issued, offering a reward of a hundred pounds to any one who should discover the perpetrators. Strange to say, the proclamation was of no effect. Not a creature in Rhode Island disclosed what many hundreds of men, women, and children must have personally known. Lieutenant Dudingston recovered his health, was recommended for promotion, and, it is to be hoped, obtained it. Other cruisers replaced the burnt Gaspee. Narragansett Bay was as blue and bright as before, its islands as richly verdured, and all things went their usual train.

No one can understand the importance of this affair, unless he bears in mind that the great controversy of which it was one trifling outbreak was a controversy between the colonists and ONE MAN. That one man was the king, — poor, dull, proud, ignorant, moody George III.,—the costliest king a country was ever cursed with. He cost, in fact, J 800,000,000, besides his board, and the loss of thirteen Colonies ; for it was he, that one blind, unteachable dunce, who severed the empire.

Of course there are always men enough to flatter the foibles of a king. The American Tories exulted in the destruction of the Gaspee. If this does not wake the British lion, wrote Governor Hutchinson of Massachusetts, no one will ever tremble at his roar again! “So daring an insult!” By men, too, who are perfectly well known, and yet not one arrested ! The royal animal has been asleep these four or five years past; as if these turbulent colonists could be ruled by soft words, and milk-white steeds drawing great lords in gorgeous coaches ! a gracious king sees with what result. A king’s lieutenant wounded and turned out of his vessel ! Governor Hutchinson had the honor of conversing with Admiral Montagu on the subject, and he rejoiced to hear the admiral state that, in his opinion, Lord Sandwich would “never leave pursuing the Colony until it was disfranchised.” Governor Hutchinson’s own opinion, as recorded for the perusal of the home government, was this : “ If the late affair at Rhode Island is passed over without a full inquiry and due resentment, our liberty people will think they may with impunity commit any acts of violence, be they ever so atrocious, and the friends to government will despond and give up all hopes of being able to withstand the faction.”

The home government needed no prompting. The lion was awake. The “law servants of the crown” pronounced the act of the Rhode-Islanders high treason, levying war against the king. Five royal commissioners — the governor of Rhode Island, the chief justices of New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts, and a judge of the Boston Vice-admiralty Court — were appointed to go to Rhode Island and investigate the full business. General Gage, commanding the troops at Boston, was ordered to hold himself in readiness to assist the commissioners, if they should need assistance. Governor Wanton received this information from. England about the first of October in a long despatch from Lord Dartmouth ; and the material parts of this document found their way into the newspapers ! Secrecy would have been desirable, if the governor had meant to execute the king’s commands ; but important matters will get into the papers in times of public commotion, if the pigeon-hole is not well looked to. There was one paragraph in Lord Dartmouth’s despatch which arrested every intelligent mind in the Colonies, and kindled every patriotic heart. Jefferson read it at Monticello with feelings inexpressible. Dabney Carr read it in his cabin full of children, and, I doubt not, rode swiftly to his brotherin-law, Jefferson, to talk it over : —

“ It is his Majesty’s intention, in consequence of the advice of his Privy Council, that the persons concerned in the burning of the Gaspee schooner, and in the other violences which attended that daring insult, SHOULD BE BROUGHT TO ENGLAND TO BE TRIED ; and I am therefore to signify to you his Majesty’s pleasure ” that the prisoners, together with the witnesses on both sides, shall be delivered to the custody of Admiral Montagu, and sent in a king’s ship to England !

The commissioners arrived at Newport. They offered a reward of a thousand pounds sterling to any one who would reveal or betray the ringleaders, and five hundred pounds for the detection of any other person concerned. Before entering upon their duties they all swore and subscribed the three great oaths, so pertinent to the occasion. First, they swore they did not believe in the doctrine of transubstantiation, and that they regarded the invocation of the Virgin Mary and the sacrifice of the mass as superstitious and idolatrous. Secondly, they swore that they considered George III. the true king of Great Britain, and rejected the Pretender, who called himself James III. Thirdly, they swore that from their hearts they abhorred, detested, and abjured, as impious and heretical, the damnable doctrine and position, that the Pope could depose a king by pronouncing him excommunicate. These three tremendous oaths, drawn out to great length, having been duly sworn, recorded, and signed, the commissioners proceeded to business. It was in the Newport State House, in that large room into which summer visitors peep, and admire the quaint carpentry of other days, that these solemn things were done.

The commissioners summoned witnesses, took depositions, adjourned, met again, sat long and often, made up a voluminous Report, and discovered nothing ! Not one man was so much as arrested ! Every witness that knew anything about the matter stayed at home and sent an excuse. Some had causes coming on at court. One had “ a swelling in the hand.” Another was seventy-four years of age. Sabin, at whose tavern the assailants had met, and where they had spent an hour and a half in casting bullets and sharpening cutlasses, sent the following, which may serve as a sample : —

“ Gentlemen : I now address you on account of a summons I received from you, requiring my attendance at the Council Chamber in Newport on Wednesday, 20th instant.

“ Now, gentlemen, I beg to acquaint you what renders me incapable of attending. In the first place, I am an insolvent debtor ; and, therefore, my person would be subject to an arrest by some one or other of my creditors ; and my health has been on the decline for these two months past, and it would be dangerous should I leave my house.

“And, further, were I to attend, I could give no information relative to the assembling, arming, training, and leading on the people concerned in destroying the schooner Gaspee.

“On the 9th day of June last, at night, I was employed at my house, attending company ; who were John Andrew, Esq., judge of the Court of Viceadmiralty, John Cole, Esq., Mr. Hitchcock, and George Brown, who supped at my house, and stayed there until two of the clock in the morning following ; and I have not any knowledge relative to the matter on which I am summoned.” ¹

And so said they all, namely, George Brown, Mr. Hitchcock, Judge Andrews, and John Cole, Esq. ; none of whom could attend the honorable commissioners, though they found time to write excuses protesting the densest ignorance of the whole affair. In a word, the investigation was an absolute nullity and farce. Those five commissioners, with all the aid the king could give them, with his fleet, his army, and his thousand pounds, could not, after five months’ trying, discover what every boy in the streets knew, and what they themselves knew, as mere men. The publicity given to Lord Dartmouth’s despatch would alone have defeated its object, even if the commissioners had been in earnest.

The affair might have ended here. But the King’s friends were now in the ascendency in Parliament, and they must needs invest this folly with the importance and permanence of law. An act was passed for the better protection of the navy and its appurtenances, which made it a capital offence to destroy any object belonging to a king’s vessel. The act was so worded, that a man who should cut a button from a drunken marine’s coat or knock in the head of a royal beef-barrel was to be presumed a traitor to the king, and could be sent for trial to any county in England!

It were difficult to exaggerate the interest which this affair excited throughout the Colonies. The audacious gallantry of the Providence men was the first theme of admiration ; and before that had become an exhausted topic, rumors of coming vengeance from England renewed the public interest in it. Lord Dartmouth’s despatch, the arrival of the commissioners, and their solemn sessions at Newport, still kept all minds attentive. The absurd failure of the royal commission does not seem to have allayed the popular resentment. Finally, the act of Parliament fixing the Rhode Island precedent into imperial law convinced all but the most reluctant that the king was resolved upon forcing the controversy to an armed issue. Students familiar with the period receive the impression that it was the burning of the Gaspee, more than the throwing overboard of the tea, that led to the Boston Port Bill, and so precipitated the Revolution.

One evening in the early part of March, 1772, six or seven gentlemen sat about a table in a private room of the Raleigh Tavern at Williamsburg, Virginia. They were all members of the House of Burgesses,— Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee, his brother Francis Lightfoot Lee, Thomas Jefferson, his brother-in-law Dabney Carr, and one or two others. Rhode Island had been for weeks upon every tongue. It was not yet known that the scenes enacting in the Newport State House were comedy instead of tragedy. Paragraphs of fearful import circulated in the newspapers from Colony to Colony. It looked, for a time, as though poor little Rhode Island was about to be extirpated ; for Admiral Montagu was going there with a fleet, General Gage with an army ; the Inquisition had already been set up; and every man whom it chose to arrest was to be sent three thousand miles away for trial. Rhode Island was the least of the Colonies, and it seemed as if, for that reason, she had been first marked for vengeance. But the lawless court then sitting at Newport an infuriate Ministry could transfer to Williamsburg, and order fleets and armies to Virginia to execute its decrees ! At such a crisis, what does it become the most powerful of the Colonies to do on behalf of the weakest ?

This was the question which those gentlemen were discussing at the Raleigh Tavern that night. They were of the younger members of the House, and they had met by themselves, because they feared their elders would hesitate to act with the requisite promptness and spirit. Their object was to hit upon a course which should be moderate enough for the Tories, while being decided enough for the Whigs. Virginia, they all felt, must stand by Rhode Island. The Colonies must make common cause. But it was requisite to proceed with moderation.

We shall never appreciate what it cost some of the Virginians to fall into line with the Northern Colonies on these occasions. The ideal of New England, as we plainly see in all the memorials of the first century, was Israel ; but Virginia’s beloved and honored model was England : and both were equally cramped by the inadequacy of their pattern. When the coast of British North America was divided, it was the northern half that should have been called Virginia, and the southern half New England ; for it was in the southern half that another England was to be attempted. There the Church of England was to be established ; there primogeniture and entail were to perpetuate county families ; there the laborer was to be ignorant, poor, and hopeless ; there the government was to be an imitation of King, Lords, and Commons ; there the king was to be the source of honor ; there that inexplicable, complex, omnipotent influence, the social tone, was to be English, only English, and that exceedingly. For a century or more it was Virginia’s favorite vanity to differ from New England in just that very particular which the present crisis called upon her to disregard.

In 1674, when the agents of Virginia were in London trying to get their rights secured by a charter, they were opposed on the ground of New England’s recent adherence to Cromwell. The agents replied : No disobedience of New England ought to cause apprehension of the same on the part of Virginia ; for the people of New England “ steer a quite contrary course ” from us Virginians. They endeavor, as much as they can, to “ sever themselves from the crown ” ; whereas our “ chief desire is to be assured of our perpetual, immediate dependence thereon.” They discover antimonarchical principles ; they love a republican form of government, which is something distinct and independent from the policy of England. But we “ are and ever have been heartily affectionate and loyal to the monarchy of England ”; and the government of Virginia is “constituted, as we humbly conceive, in imitation of it.” They have obtained power of choosing their own governor. We, on the contrary, “ would not have that power, but desire our governor may be from time to time appointed by the king.” “The New-Englanders imagine great felicity in their form of government, civil and ecclesiastical, under which they were trained up to disobedience to the crown and Church of England ; but the Virginians would think themselves very unhappy to be obliged to accept of and live under a government so constituted.”

Every Virginian heart would have responded to these sentiments. But, with all this loyalty to the king, there was a deeper attachment to what they called the Rights of Englishmen, and especially to that fundamental right, without which no other has validity, the right of self-taxation. The Province for a century and a half was never suffered long to forget that great right and the means of preserving it. The people had a special drill and training in Magna Charta. Old men long remembered and told their descendants that all was chaos in Virginia for the first fourteen years ; until the first House of Burgesses convened at Jamestown, — their “darling assembly,” as one of the old historians styles it. During fifty-three years more it was the first object of Virginians to secure this right of self-government by a royal charter. Curiously enough, the first king who recognized their parliament was the monarch who lost his head by trying to govern England without one. Young Charles I. wrote them a letter scolding them for founding their Colony upon tobacco-smoke, and advising them to turn their attention to potash, staves, iron, and salt; but he offered them three shillings a pound for their whole crop of tobacco, and told them to convene an Assembly to consider and decide upon the proposition. To the moment of that king’s decapitation, Virginia sided with the Commonwealth men, as England herself did. Once, in 1654, the tobacco lords in the burgesses disfranchised all their constituents, except those who possessed a certain quantity of land. The act was repealed two years after, and for reasons which Jefferson himself might have dictated, and which, doubtless, his ancestors approved. It was unreasonable and unnatural, said the preamble to the repealing act, that men who contributed to the support of government and the defence of the country should be deprived of their chartered and natural rights by the very servants whom they had chosen to watch over their interests.

A long series of events could be adduced to show that the fundamental rights of citizens were familiar and dear to Virginians from 1621 onward to the time of the Stamp Act. Every doctrine of the Revolutionary period can be found, expressed with force and intelligence, in the public papers of the Province a century before the meeting of the first Congress. Despite that sentimental loyalty of theirs, the yeomen of Virginia were distinctly aware that their Colony had been “deduced,” not at the king’s expense, and defended, not by the king’s troops, and supported, not by the king’s treasure; and that, in founding a Colony which cost the king nothing and yielded him a revenue of a hundred and fifty thousand pounds a year, they had certainly not lost any of the rights of Englishmen.

Sentiment, however, is a potent influence, particularly when it is allied with vanity. It is hard for men to profess opinions to which the stigma of vulgarity has been affixed ; and, in Virginia, loyalty to Church and king was regarded as the trait of a gentleman. And, ridiculous as it seems, those twelve councillors whom the governor recommended and the king appointed — the only Virginians who could, with any show of legality, claim precedence of the rest — were held in extravagant respect. There was a large circle of families with whom the object of ambition was to see one of their members appointed to a seat in the Council Chamber. Sentiment, vanity, interest, tradition, habit, united to bind the heads of great families in close array around the viceregal throne. The excellent Botecourt, too, had now been replaced by the rash, ignorant, and reckless Lord Dunmore, with his cormorant factotum extorting illegal fees, and a numerous family of sons and daughters, who were striving to introduce into society at Williamsburg rules of precedence similar to those which prevailed in European courts. Fool as he was, he had his courtiers and his votaries. “ The palace ” was still a social force as well as a political one.

Our young burgesses, therefore, who were closeted at the Raleigh Tavern, could recommend nothing very bold or decisive. Besides, they came of a race whose words are apt to be moderate and few, when their intent is most serious and unchangeable ; not inclined to threaten until they are ready with the stroke.

Two years and a half before, the Massachusetts Assembly had appointed a Committee of Correspondence, of five members, to communicate with their agent and others in England, and with the speakers of the several colonial legislatures, upon subjects of common concern ; and, once or twice, circular letters had been sent by the blouse to the speakers of the various assemblies. Acting upon this hint (though without thinking of it at the time), the young gentlemen determined to propose to their House to establish a Standing Committee of eleven members, for the sole purpose of getting and transmitting to sister Colonies the earliest intelligence of such acts of the administration and of Parliament as related to America ; to instruct this committee to inquire at once into the affair at Rhode Island ; and to invite each of the other colonial legislatures to appoint a similar committee. This measure was to be urged as a means of “ quieting the minds of his Majesty’s faithful subjects in this Colony,” which had been “ much disturbed by various rumors and reports of proceedings tending to deprive them of their ancient legal and constitutional rights.”

The resolutions having been drawn, Jefferson was asked to offer them to the House the next morning. He preferred to assign this task to his brother-in-law, Dabney Carr, a new member, as yet unheard in the House, but endowed, as Jefferson believed, with eminent talents for debate. Mr. Carr consenting, the company broke up, Carr and Jefferson going to their lodgings together. As they walked homeward, they conversed upon the utility and probable effects of such Committees of Correspondence, and they agreed in thinking that the measure must lead, and that speedily, to a CONGRESS OF DEPUTIES from all the Colonies, for the purpose of presenting a united front to these strange aggressions, and of concerting the best methods of opposition. If either of them had ever heard of the Massachusetts committee of 1770, they had forgotten it. That committee’s chief object had been correspondence with agents in London. No system of interchanging news and ideas had resulted from its appointment. They felt then, and always felt, that theirs was an original measure.

The next morning Dabney Carr rose to address the House for the first time. A general favorite, every one wished him success ; and he spoke to men alarmed at the events transpiring in Rhode Island. The resolutions were read. He supported them in a speech which tradition reports to have been a happy blending of boldness, prudence, and courtesy. How harmless the measure suggested! what more proper than for legislative bodies to procure prompt, exact information! He reconciled nearly every mind to the wisdom and propriety of the scheme ; and when he sat down, the faces of the little parliament beamed with generous joy as in the triumph of a friend. Forty-three years after, Jefferson told a son of the young speaker how well he remembered the pleasure which shone in the countenances of the Assembly at the conclusion of the speech, and the buzz of applauding remark that followed it. The resolutions were carried with a near approach to unanimity. The members of the committee were Peyton Randolph, R. C. Nicholas, Richard Bland, R. H. Lee, Benjamin Harrison, Edmund Pendleton, Patrick Henry, Dudley Digges, Dabney Carr, Archibald Cary, and Thomas Jefferson.

The session ended on the day following, but the committee remained long enough to prepare and despatch a circular letter to the colonial assemblies, explaining the object of their appointment, and requesting each of them to designate a similar committee with whom they could regularly communicate. What a part these committees played in the times that followed need not be told. Every county, every village, came to have its committee, the power of which increased as the public alarm increased. No power is so terrible as the organ of a public terror. Some of the innumerable committees, American and French, that sprang into being through that meeting in the Raleigh Tavern, abused their power; but the Committees of Correspondence— forerunner and cause of the Continental Congress — secured the independence of the Colonies. The author of the scheme lived to see its success in one Revolution, and its fearful abuse in another.

The sympathy of the most powerful — or, at least, the most imposing and famous — of the Colonies with the smallest and weakest touched every generous heart in America, and led the way to that predominance of Virginia which made her by and by the “ mother of Presidents.” The Assembly of Massachusetts hailed with warm applause the wise and firm conduct of Virginia at all times, and especially in thus making the cause of Rhode Island her own. The Rhode Island Legislature, in one of its resolves, spoke of “ the glorious Assembly of Virginia.” The young burgesses had every reason to be satisfied with the results of their measure.

The session being ended, Jefferson and Carr resumed their professional duties. If they rode homeward together, as is probable, Jefferson was obliged to return soon to the April term of the General Court at Williamsburg ; and his brother-in-law had causes to plead in the county court held at Charlottesville, the village that lay within sight of Monticello. Dabney Carr, then eight years married, had, as I have said, his little house full of little children. The sixth was born about the time of his coming from his first session, flushed with the triumph of his maiden speech. He was compelled to leave home again before his wife was strong enough to sit up. Her spirits sank at the thought of his leaving her, and she was oppressed with forebodings of evil. He took his leave of her, and mounted his horse for his journey to Charlottesville. When she heard his horse’s steps upon the road under her window, she raised herself feebly in bed to catch one last look at him, but she could only get high enough to see his hat, as it swayed to the motion of the horse. Soon after reaching Charlottesville he was seized with a malignant type of typhoid fever, the course of which was so rapid that he could not be moved even so far as Monticello, and he died before Jefferson heard that he was in danger.

The news of this desolating stroke came near depriving his children of a mother. She lost her reason for a time ; during which she could see only the moving phantom of a HAT, as she had seen her husband’s when he passed her window. When reason returned, and for many weeks after, still that maddening Hat would not vanish from her sight.² It was long before she could bend her mind to the new duties which the event devolved upon her.

In this sudden desolation of her young life, her brother was literally a tower of refuge to her ; for he took her, and all her helpless brood, home to Monticello ; which thenceforth became their home, as he their father. He reared and educated all those six children — three sons and three daughters - with the same care, tenderness, and liberality as his own. He nurtured their infancy ; he directed their studies ; he guided their entrance into active life ; two of the sons pursuing with distinguished success his own profession. Nor did he ever, during the long series of years when he had offices to give away, quarter one of them, or one of their children, upon the public. When he reached home, he found that his friend had been buried at Shadwell. Mindful of the romantic agreement of their youth, that, whichever died first, should bury the other under the giant oak on Monticello, beneath which they had read and talked during long summer days, he caused the remains to be removed, and mused over an inscription proper for the tombstone. He wrote one, which recorded the usual brief outline of a human life, and ended it with these words : “ To his virtue, good sense, learning, and friendship this stone is dedicated by Thomas Jefferson, who, of all men living, loved him most.” He thought of these lines to accompany the inscription, from the Excursion by Mallet: —

These melancholy duties done, there remained for Jefferson a vast increase to the joy of his home ; the play and prattle of six affectionate children, their opening intelligence, their abundant love, their six countenances speaking welcome when he returned, and luring him while away. He had the instinct of the parent and of the tutor, and both unusually strong; so strong that his own family could not have sufficed for their gratification. Science will one day tell us why the children of such a pair should have had so slight, so precarious a hold upon life. At present we have to be content with the miserable fact. Their first child, Martha, inherited a constitution sufficiently robust ; their second lived but five months ; and their third only seventeen days ; their fourth child was Mary, who grew to womanhood ; their fifth lived five months ; and their sixth two years. All of them were girls, except the one that lived seventeen days. The youngest, who survived two years, seemed all spirit. She listened to music with rapture, and had an organization so finely attuned, that a false note brought tears to her eyes. But Jefferson was blest in this, that his mountain-top, at every period of his long life, was alive and merry with a swarm of children besides his own.

We know so little of Mrs. Jefferson, that the least thing which concerns her has interest. Three glimpses of their home life are afforded in the memorials of these happy years. In one record we see her leaching “the little Carrs ” the beginnings of knowledge along with her own child. In another the dense veil of a hundred years is lifted for a moment, and we hear her blaming her husband for some generous deed of his which had met with an ungrateful return. “ But,” she immediately added, in a gush of admiring affection, “it was always so with him ; he is so good himself, that he cannot understand how bad other people may be.” In another, we witness a short domestic scene in which appear three characters, father, mother, and child. For some trifling fault the child had undergone a trifling punishment. Some time after, being again in disgrace, her mother reminded her of the painful circumstance. The too sensitive Martha, deeply wounded at what seemed a taunt, turned away with a swelling heart and eyes filled with tears ; but, before she had gone beyond hearing, she heard her father say to her mother in the low tone of affectionate remonstrance, “ My dear, a fault in so young a child once punished should be forgotten.” The child never forgot the passion of grateful love that filled her heart as these words caught her ear.³

The year 1773 wore away. The next year was the one decisive of the controversy between the Colonies and the king. When the year 1774 opened, Thomas Jefferson was a thriving young lawyer, not known even by name beyond his native Province ; when it closed, he was a person of note among the patriots of America, and had won the honor of being proscribed by name in England.

The spring found him as usual in his seat in the House of Burgesses. As, in 1773, the eyes of the continent were fixed upon Narragansett Bay, so now, in 1774, every mind was intent upon Boston Harbor. The wrath of a misguided king was kindled against the Bostonians. They had not equalled the Rhode-Islanders in audacity; they had not burnt a king’s vessel, nor wounded a king’s lieutenant ; but a few of them had taken the liberty of throwing some chests of tea into the harbor. The Ministry, instructed by their failure in Rhode Island, made no attempt to discover the doers of this deed. They offered no reward, and appointed no commissioners. They held the whole population guilty, and closed the port ; which, in an instant, suspended the business of the town, and deprived it of the means of subsistence. So do some unskilful schoolmasters, when they cannot detect a culprit, “ keep in ” the whole school, and put every boy upon bread and water.

Once more Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, the two Lees, and a few other choice spirits met to consider what part it became Virginia to take in this new crisis. Expedients appeared to be exhausted ; at least, all appeals to the powers on the other side of the ocean had proved fruitless. The young Whigs in conference concluded that the next thing in order was to rouse the people of Virginia to a more vivid sense of the deadly peril of their liberty. The Boston Port Bill was to go into operation on the 1st of June. They determined to get the House, if they could, to appoint that day as one of public fasting and humiliation, to be observed by services in all the parish churches. Between the end of the session and the day designated there would be time for members to go to their counties and inspire the clergy with the feeling proper to the occasion. “ We cooked up a resolution,” Jefferson records, “ somewhat modernizing the Puritan phrases, appointing the first day of June for a day of fasting, humiliation, and prayer, to implore Heaven to avert from us the evils of civil war, to inspire us with firmness in support of our rights, and to turn the hearts of the king and Parliament to moderation and justice.”

Jefferson never invited failure by neglecting obvious precautions or disregarding the small proprieties. He was aware that if this resolution and its pious preamble were offered by himself or by his merry friend Patrick Henry, or by any of the younger Whigs, the incongruity would not escape remark. The head of the bar, Mr. Nicholas, a grave, religious gentleman, was asked to offer it to the Burgesses. He complied with the request, and the resolution passed without opposition.

Rash Dunmore dissolved the House. The members, as in Lord Botecourt’s time, assembled the next morning in the Apollo. Momentous meeting ! They did a few quiet things, in their usual quiet, courteous way ; but two of them were things that proved decisive, irreversible, revolutionary. They agreed to buy no more tea ! They instructed the Committee of Correspondence to propose an ANNUAL CONGRESS of deputies from all the Colonies. They agreed to meet on the 1st of August at Williamsburg to elect the Virginia members of that congress. They declared that an attack on the rights of one Colony was an attack on all. Then they broke up, and hurried home to rouse the clergy to make the very utmost of the opportunity about to be afforded them on the Fast day.

The Fast was universally observed, and its effect, as Jefferson thought, was most salutary. The people, he says, met at their parish churches with anxiety and alarm in their faces ; for no solemnity of the kind had been held in nineteen years, not since the days of terror after Braddock’s defeat. The minister of his own parish was Charles Clay (cousin of Henry Clay), a man fully alive to the occasion, whose fervid oratory was heard all through the Revolutionary period, nerving the people to dare and endure. “ The cause of liberty is the cause of God ! ” he once exclaimed in the course of a sermon on a Fast day. “ Cursed be he,” was another of his sentences, “ who keepeth back his sword from blood in this war ! ” “ The effect of the day,” wrote Jefferson many years after, thinking, doubtless, of what he had heard and seen in Albemarle, “ was like a shock of electricity, arousing every man, and placing him erect and solidly on his centre.”

All that summer, Boston, suffering, impoverished Boston, lay upon every heart. Each Province, county, city, town, neighborhood, sent its contribution to supply the needs of the people, suddenly deprived of their occupation. The port being closed on the 1st of June, the day of the year when the stock of food in a country reaches its lowest point, the farmers could not at first be as liberal as they wished, but they did what they could. Windham (Conn.) began the work of relief. Before the month of June ended Windham sent in, with a cordial letter of applause and sympathy, “ a small flock of sheep, which at this season are not so good as we could wish, but are the best we had.” Two hundred and fifty-eight was Windham’s notion of the number of sheep that go to “ a small flock.” Groton (Mass.) sent forty bushels of grain ; Wrentham, one load of grain ; Pepperill, forty bushels ; Charlemont, two barrels of flour ; Farmington, between three and four hundred bushels of rye and corn ; and fertile Wethersfield, nearly eight hundred bushels of grain, with promise of more after harvest.

New Jersey soon wrote to say that she, too, was making contributions, and would be glad to know which would be most acceptable to a suffering sister, cash or produce. Cash, replied Boston, if perfectly convenient. North Carolina promptly sent two sloop-loads of provisions. The Marblehead fishermen were so liberal as to forward “ two hundred and twenty-four quintals of good eating fish, one barrel and three quarters of good olive oil, and thirtynine pounds five shillings and three pence in cash.” South Carolina’s first gift was one hundred casks of rice. “ Baltimore town ” contributed three thousand bushels of corn, twenty barrels of rye-flour, two barrels of pork, and twenty barrels of bread. Virginia, — there seemed to be no end to Virginia’s gifts ! A cargo of corn was her first offering ; Alexandria followed soon with a present of three hundred and fifty pounds in money ; and the several counties kept forwarding cargoes and large consignments of corn, all through the autumn and winter. In all, Virginia contributed about ten thousand bushels of what one forwarder styled, in his letter, “donation grain,” besides several sums of money from villages and individuals, “ Hold out long enough,” wrote a gentleman in the South, “ and Boston will become the granary of America.”

As the cool season approached the agricultural towns became more liberal. Lebanon drove in “three hundred and seventy-six fat sheep ” ; Norwich, two hundred and ninety-one; Groton, one hundred and twenty; Brooklyn, one hundred and twentyfive ; East Haddam, “ a drove of sheep and cattle.” The Maryland counties were extremely liberal ; each sent its thousand or two thousand bushels of corn. From cold and remote Quebec came “ a small quantity of wheat ” ; from Montreal, a hundred pounds sterling. What droves of sheep kept streaming into Boston, when the temperature favored driving ! From every little mountain town in New Hampshire and Vermont came sheep, fifty, sixty - five, one hundred, in a flock. Hartford sent off, after harvest, seven hundred and thirty-eight bushels of rye and one hundred and eleven bushels of corn, its “ small but free gratuity.” Berwick, with apologies for the smallness of its gift, sent six oxen and twenty-six sheep. Many towns and some Provinces, which out of the summer’s scarcity had contributed liberally, contributed a second time from the autumn’s fat abundance. Groton did so, and Marblehead, New Jersey, and Baltimore.

Individual donations swelled the tide of benefaction. Samuel Moody treated himself to a gift of five guineas. Philadelphia raised two thousand pounds, and forwarded it, part in provisions, part in iron, part in money. Providence voted one hundred and twentyfive pounds. Newport contributed a thousand dollars. New York sent a New-Year’s gift of one thousand and sixty-two pounds, with notice of more to come. Clubs, fire companies, and other organizations forwarded sums of money during the winter. Charleston, in South Carolina, alleviated the winter’s cold with three hundred and seventy - eight tierces of rice. The church in Salem, just after their “ meeting-house ” was burnt, and a powerful member had drawn off a number of their body, contrived to send twentyfour pounds sixteen shillings and eight pence, “ wishing it had been ten times more.” Little Rutland could only spare “four quarters of beef” weight five hundred and ninety-three pounds. Springfield gave twenty-five pigs, worth “ three pounds eighteen shillings one penny, lawful money.” Wells, in Maine, contributed twentyfive cords of wood; Falmouth, fiftyseven cords ; Cape Elizabeth, fortyeight cords. Portsmouth, in New Hampshire, voted two hundred pounds. From Delaware came nine hundred dollars. In the spring arrived another thousand pounds from New York. Farmers, who had nothing else to give, carted firewood, some twelve miles, some sixteen. Dominica gave three bags of cocoa. Even from London— from the “Constitutional Society” there — came a hundred pounds ; from another society, called The Supporters of Civil Rights, came five hundred pounds ; and four smaller sums were received from individuals in England, — fifteen pounds, twenty pounds, ten pounds, four guineas. Augustine Washington, in Virginia, was asked whether he could sell a quantity of hoes and axes which Boston mechanics, thrown out of employment by the Port Bill, had turned to and made. The Committee of Relief set large numbers of the mechanics at work making bricks, nails, fabrics, implements, and invited contributions of materials. And so the work went on, even after the siege of the town was begun by the Continental troops ; Georgia sending sixty - three casks of rice as late as June, 1776.

The letters which accompanied the gifts, and the answers of the Boston Committee, — for every gift was specially acknowledged in an epistle of high courtesy and considerable length, — would fill a volume of some magnitude. They have been printed by the Massachusetts Historical Society, to which the public is indebted for the preservation and accessibility of a great number of most precious memorials of the past. No relic of that period contains so much of its spirit as this mass of correspondence.

Jefferson, on his mountain-top that summer, was busy both with hands and brain. He was striving to get a more commodious house over the heads of his double brood ; making bricks, cutting timber, sending to England for sixteen pairs of sashes, and a small box of glass to mend with. His new Italian gardeners gave him as much work ns he gave them ; such an enthusiast in their lovely art was he. Nor was he yet, nor was he ever, weaned from his violin. Alberti, a great performer on the instrument, who had come to Virginia with a troupe of actors, and settled there as a teacher of music, he had lured to Monticello. Under him he practised three hours a day, until the absorbing events of these times drew him off.

This summer, especially, his head was busier than his hands. June and July would soon pass, and then the Burgesses were to meet at Williamsburg, in convention, to elect deputies to the Congress which was to assemble at Philadelphia in September. Those deputies, when elected, would require formal, exact instructions. What did Virginia desire her deputies to do or attempt in Philadelphia ? It was a grave question. It was a difficult question. The situation being unique, there were no precedents to guide ; and how necessary to the limited mind of man are precedents ! Jefferson brooded over this problem, and, before starting for Williamsburg, at the end of July, he prepared a draft of such instructions as he desired should be given to the representatives of Virginia in the General Congress. It was but a rough draft, with gaps in it for names and dates, which he could not procure at home. Such as it was, however, it made him famous on one side of the ocean, and proscribed on the other.

James Parton.