History of the Colony and Ancient Dominion of Virginia Part 60

[698:B] August sixteenth.

[698:C] September first.

[699:A] October sixth.

[700:A] Dodsley's Annual Register for 1781.

CHAPTER XCV.

1780.

Arthur Lee--Deane--Franklin--Madison.

IN the year 1780 Arthur Lee returned to America after a long absence. He was born in Westmoreland County, Virginia, on the 20th of December, 1740, being the youngest of five brothers, all of whom became eminent.

After pa.s.sing some time at Eton he entered the University of Edinburgh, where he took the degree of doctor of medicine about 1765. The other students from Virginia there at the same time were Field, Blair, Bankhead, and Gilmer--the earliest pioneers in this profession in the colony, at a time when the apothecary, physician, and surgeon were united in the same person, and when quackery enjoyed full license.

Arthur Lee's extreme aversion to slavery and to negroes, and the lamentable state of dependence to which he foresaw that his own country would be doomed for many years, made him dread to return; and he even thought of settling in England, which he looked upon as "the Eden of the world, the land of liberty and independence." Yet he was conscious of such a want of confidence in himself as unfitted him for taking up his abode and embarking in a profession in a land of strangers.[701:A]

Gladly quitting Scotland, which he disliked extremely, Dr. Lee travelled through Europe, and then returned to Virginia, and commenced the practice of physic at Williamsburg. Here he could not fail to view with interest the stirring events of the day; and although successful in his medical practice, the bent of his genius induced him to return to London for the purpose of studying the law in the Temple, and fitting himself for taking a part in public affairs. At this time he became the intimate friend of Sir William Jones. In London he a.s.sociated himself with Wilkes, and other opponents of the government, and prevailed on them to favor the cause of the colonies. In 1768 Dr. Lee was appointed political agent of Ma.s.sachusetts. In 1769 he wrote the Monitor's Letters, and for some years was a frequent writer in the _Public Advertiser_, over the signature of Junius America.n.u.s; and he held an amicable discussion with Junius on American matters.[702:A] That writer remarked of him: "My American namesake is plainly a man of abilities." His writings procured for him the friends.h.i.+p of Burke, Dr. Price, and other leading men. He became acquainted with the celebrated Dr. Samuel Johnson. In 1770 Arthur Lee was admitted to the bar, and he enjoyed a lucrative practice for some years. In the spring of 1774 he set out on a tour through France and Italy; and while at Paris published an "Appeal to the People of Great Britain." During the same year he succeeded Dr. Franklin as agent of Ma.s.sachusetts; and in the following he was agent for Virginia. The secret committee of congress appointed him their London correspondent; and through the French amba.s.sador there he obtained early a.s.surances of aid from France to the colonies. In August he presented the second pet.i.tion of congress to the king. He was afterwards made commissioner to France in conjunction with Deane and Franklin; and he joined them at Paris in December, 1776, and a.s.sisted in making the treaty of alliance.

Discord ensuing between Dr. Lee and the other commissioners, involved them, especially Lee and Deane, in a controversy, which engendered an inveterate hostility, and gave rise to factions in congress, in which the French minister, Gerard, became implicated, and which endangered the cause of independence. Deane, who, in the guise of a merchant, conducted the public business, was subtle and unscrupulous. Mr. Lee had exposed the peculations of some of the agents employed in conducting the commercial details of the public business; and this interference gave rise to many aspersions upon him, which were encouraged by the countenance which congress appeared to lend Deane and those a.s.sociated with him. Deane, at length, recalled by congress in November, 1777, reached America in the following summer, and gave an account of his transactions to congress, making an artful defence against Arthur Lee's accusations. Deane published virulent attacks upon him and Richard Henry Lee, and they retorted with indignant severity.

Congress coming to no determination in the matter, Deane appealed to the public, in December, in an address to the "Free and Virtuous Citizens of America." In 1780 he repaired to Paris to adjust his accounts, but never did so; and after refusing ten thousand dollars offered him by congress to cover his expenses, he fell into pecuniary straits, became alienated from his country, (if he had been true before, which was doubted,) writing home letters representing the American cause as desperate, and favoring immediate accommodation with the enemy. These letters were intercepted by the enemy and published, and his real character was now made manifest. Mr. Jay, who had been his friend and supporter, hearing this at Madrid, took down his portrait and burnt it. Deane appears afterwards to have a.s.sociated with the traitor Arnold. Deane died in extreme poverty at Deal, England, (1789.) He certainly rendered the colonies great service at one time,[703:A] and found a strong party in congress in his support, including men of both sections and of high character. Mr. Paca, of Maryland, and Mr. Drayton, of South Carolina, protested against the further continuance of Dr. Lee in the place of commissioner in France and Spain. Dr. Lee's dissensions with Dr.

Franklin resulted in bitter enmity. Dr. Lee charged Franklin with vanity, inflated by French flattery, with overweening and dictatorial arrogance, with connivance at fraud and corruption, and with being under French influence. William Lee and Richard Henry sympathized warmly with Arthur in these disputes. John Adams sided with the Lees. Arthur Lee, in 1780, resigning his post, returned to America, and prepared to vindicate himself before congress, but that body expressed their full confidence in his patriotism. In 1781 he was elected to the a.s.sembly of Virginia, and returned to congress, where he continued to represent the State for several years. He was a pure, earnest, incorruptible patriot, love of country being his ruling pa.s.sion. Of a jealous disposition, and melancholy, discontented temperament; of polite manners and strong pa.s.sions. He was well skilled in Greek, Latin, French, Spanish, and Italian. He never married. He meditated writing a history of the American Revolution. In a letter to General Was.h.i.+ngton, dated at Berlin, in June, 1777, he says: "It is my intention to write a history of this civil contention. The share you have had in it will form an interesting and important part. It will be in your power to preserve a variety of materials, papers, and anecdotes for such a work. May I venture to hope that you may think me so far worthy of your confidence as to preserve them for me? Dubious parts of history can be cleared only by such doc.u.ments, and we shall want every authentic record to vouch against the forgeries which will be offered to the world."[704:A]

William Lee, brother of Arthur, was born in Virginia, about the year 1737. Sent to London as Virginia's agent before the Revolution, he took up his residence there. Being a zealous whig, he was elected, in 1773, one of the sheriffs of London. At the commencement of the Revolution he retired to France, and afterwards was appointed by congress their commissioner at Vienna and Berlin. An able man, and an ardent and inflexible patriot, by communicating important intelligence, and by his diplomatic agency, he rendered invaluable services to his country. As a writer he was little inferior to Arthur.

During the year 1780 James Madison took his seat in congress. He was born in March, 1751, O. S., in the County of Caroline, Virginia, on the Rappahannock River, near Port Royal, the son of James Madison, of Orange County, and Nelly Conway, his wife. At the age of twelve young Madison was at school under Donald Robertson, a distinguished teacher in the neighborhood, and afterwards under the Rev. Thomas Martin, the parish minister, a private tutor in his father's family. He was next sent to the College of New Jersey, of which Dr. Witherspoon was then president.

Here Mr. Madison received the degree of bachelor of arts in the autumn of 1771. He had impaired his health at college by too close application; nevertheless, on his return home he pursued a systematic course of reading. Shortly after his return he signed resolutions of his county approving of Henry's proceedings in the affair of the gunpowder.

He became a member of the convention in May, 1776, and it was during this session that the body unanimously instructed the deputies of Virginia in congress to propose a declaration of independence. He did not enter into public debate during this session. At the next election he was defeated, his successful opponent being Colonel Charles Porter, who was subsequently his frequent colleague in the house of delegates.

Mr. Madison was at the ensuing session appointed a member of the council of state, and this place he held till 1779, when he was elected to congress. While he was of the council Patrick Henry and Mr. Jefferson were governors. Mr. Madison's knowledge of French, of which Governor Henry was ignorant, rendered him particularly serviceable in the frequent correspondence held with French officers: he wrote so much for Governor Henry that he was called "the governor's secretary." Mr.

Madison took his seat in congress in March, 1780, and continued a leading member until the fall of 1783, when his congressional term expired by limitation. Such was the commencement of the career of this man so ill.u.s.trious for his genius, his learning, and his virtue, and who was destined to pa.s.s through every eminent station, and to fill all with honor to himself and benefit to his country and the world. As a writer, a debater, a statesman, and a patriot, he was of the first order, and his name goes down to posterity one of the brightest of those that adorn the annals of the age in which he lived.[705:A]

FOOTNOTES:

[701:A] MS. letter of Arthur Lee, Edinburgh, March 20, 1765.

[702:A] See Woodfall's Junius, i. 102, where Arthur Lee is erroneously called Dr. _Charles_ Lee.

[703:A] Flanders' Lives of Chief Justices, art. JAY.

[704:A] Arthur Lee's Life, i. 88.

[705:A] The Life of Madison, by the Honorable William C. Rives, is a recent important addition to Virginia biography.

CHAPTER XCVI.

1780.

Logan--Leslie's Invasion--Removal of Convention Troops.

IN the fall of 1779 Logan, the Indian chief, had again resumed his onslaughts on the banks of the Holston. In June, 1780, when Captain Bird, of Detroit, long the headquarters of British and Indian barbarity, invaded Kentucky, Logan joined in the b.l.o.o.d.y raid. He was now about fifty-five years of age. Not long after this inroad, Logan, at an Indian council held at Detroit, while phrenzied by liquor, prostrated his wife by a sudden blow, and she fell apparently dead. Supposing that he had killed her, he fled to escape the penalty of blood. While travelling alone on horseback he was all at once overtaken, in the wilderness between Detroit and Sandusky, by a troop of Indians, with their squaws and children, in the midst of whom he recognized his relative Tod-hah-dohs. Imagining that the avenger was at hand, Logan frantically exclaimed that the whole party should fall by his weapons. Tod-hah-dohs perceiving the danger, and observing that Logan was well armed, felt the necessity of prompt action; and while Logan was leaping from his horse to execute his threat, Tod-hah-dohs levelled a shot-gun within a few feet of him and killed him on the spot. Tod-hah-dohs, or the Searcher, originally from Conestoga, and probably a son of Logan's sister who lived there, was better known as Captain Logan. He left children, (two of whom have been seen by Mr. Lyman C. Draper;) so that in spite of Logan's speech some of his blood, at least collaterally, still runs in human veins. Logan's wife recovered from the blow given her by her husband, and returned to her own people.[706:A]

On the 2d of October, 1780, Major Andre was executed as a spy.

Beverley Robinson, a son of the Honorable John Robinson, of Virginia, president of the colony, removed to New York, and married Susanna, daughter of Frederick Philipse, Esq., who owned a vast landed estate on the Hudson. When the Revolution commenced, Beverley Robinson desired to remain in retirement, being opposed to the measures of the ministry, and to the separation of the colonies from the mother country. The importunity of friends induced him to enter the military service of the crown, and he became colonel of the Loyal American Regiment. He was implicated in Arnold's treason, and accompanied Andre in the Vulture.

Andre, when captured, was taken to Colonel Robinson's house, which had been confiscated, and then occupied by Was.h.i.+ngton. Robinson was sent by Sir Henry Clinton as a witness in behalf of Andre.

Prince William Henry, afterwards William the Fourth, was a guest of Colonel Robinson, in New York, during the revolutionary war. Several of his descendants, and those of Captain Roger Morris, have attained distinction. Among them Sir Frederick Philipse Robinson, son of Colonel Beverley Robinson, was an officer of rank under Wellington, and saw hard service in the Peninsular war, and was dangerously wounded at the siege of St. Sebastians. In the war of 1812 he led the British in the attack on Plattsburg, under Prevost.[707:A]

On the twentieth of October, a British fleet, in accordance with intelligence which had been communicated by spies and deserters, made its appearance in the Chesapeake. General Leslie was at the head of the troops aboard. Having landed, they began to fortify Portsmouth. Their highest post was Suffolk, and they occupied the line between Nansemond River and the Dismal Swamp. A person of suspicious appearance, endeavoring to pa.s.s through the country from Portsmouth toward North Carolina, was apprehended; and upon its being proposed to search him he readily consented, but at the same time he was observed to put his hand into his pocket and carry something toward his mouth, as if it were a quid of tobacco. Upon examination it proved to be a letter, written on silk-paper, and rolled up in gold-beaters' skin, and nicely tied at each end, so as to be no larger than a goose-quill. The letter was as follows:--

"To LORD CORNWALLIS:--

"MY LORD,--I have been here near a week, establis.h.i.+ng a post.

I wrote to you to Charleston, and by another messenger by land. I cannot hear with certainty where you are. I wait your orders. The bearer is to be handsomely rewarded if he brings me any note or mark from your lords.h.i.+p.

A. L.

"Portsmouth, Virginia, November 4, 1780."

It was a source of mortification to Governor Jefferson and other patriots that the State was unable to defend herself for want of arms.

In compliance with the call of the executive, General Nelson made an effort to collect the militia of the lower counties, and to secure at least the pa.s.s at the Great Bridge; but his exertions were ineffectual, as the alarmed inhabitants made it their first business to secure their families and property from danger. General Lawson, who had at this time raised a corps of five hundred volunteers to march to the aid of South Carolina, was called on to aid in defending his own State, and General Stevens was preparing to march with a detachment of the Southern army to her aid when[708:A] Leslie sailed for South Carolina to re-enforce Cornwallis. Leslie during his stay had abstained entirely from depredation and violence. Many negroes who had gone over to him were left behind, either from choice or from want of s.h.i.+p-room. The chief injury resulting from this invasion was the loss of cattle collected for the use of the Southern army. Another consequence of it was the removal of the troops of convention from the neighborhood of Charlottesville.

They marched early in October, and crossing the Blue Ridge proceeded along the valley to Winchester, where they were quartered in barracks.

Some of the men occupied a church, and about sixty were confined in jail, probably to prevent desertion. The troops were thence removed to Fredericktown, Maryland, and afterwards to Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The German troops of convention remained longer in Albemarle: they were removed early in 1781, and quartered at Winchester, and the Warm Springs, in Berkley.

The a.s.sembly of Virginia was preparing, in the winter of this year, to weather, as well as possible, the storm which was gathering against her; but without Northern a.s.sistance she was hardly able to cope with the enemy. She wanted clothes, arms, ammunition, tents, and other warlike stores. Ten millions of paper dollars were issued from necessity, but it was evident that it would be as transient, as a dream at the present, and pernicious in its consequences; yet without it no resistance could be made to the enemy.

FOOTNOTES:

[706:A] Brantz Mayer's Discourse on Logan and Cresap, 66.

[707:A] Sabine's Loyalists, 562.

[708:A] November fifteenth.

CHAPTER XCVII.