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of this province, notwithstanding the endeavours of some to stimulate the populace to such acts as have disgraced the colonies.

      He kept up this tone of reproach, until he also was deprived by the people of his command; and New Jersey, by the authority of committees, seized all the money in the public treasury, and appropriated it to the pay of the troops raising for the common defence. They took every other prudent measure in their power, to place themselves in readiness for the critical moment.

      [200] Pennsylvania, though immediately under the eye of congress, had some peculiar difficulties to struggle with, from a proprietary government, from the partizans of the crown, and the great body of the quakers, most of them opposed to the American cause. But the people in general were guarded and vigilant, and far from neglecting the most necessary steps for general defence.

      In Virginia, Maryland, and the Carolinas, where they had the greatest number of African slaves, their embarrassments were accumulated, and the dangers which hung over them, peculiarly aggravated. From their long habit of filling their country with foreign slaves, they were threatened with a host of domestic enemies, from which the other colonies had nothing to fear. The Virginians had been disposed in general to treat their governor, lord Dunmore, and his family, with every mark of respect; and had not his intemperate zeal in the service of his master given universal disgust, he might have remained longer among them, and finally have left them in a much less disgraceful manner.

      However qualified this gentleman might have been to preside in any of the colonies, in more pacific seasons, he was little calculated for the times, when ability and moderation, energy and condescension, coolness in decision, and delicacy [201] in execution, were highly requisite to govern a people struggling with the poniard at their throat and the sword in their hand, against the potent invaders of their privileges and claims.

      He had the inhumanity early to intimate his designs if opposition ran high, to declare freedom to the blacks, and on any appearance of hostile resistance to the king’s authority, to arm them against their masters. Neither the house of burgesses, nor the people at large, were disposed to recede from their determinations in consequence of his threats, nor to submit to any authority that demanded implicit obedience, on pain of devastation and ruin. Irritated by opposition, too rash for consideration, too haughty for condescension, and fond of distinguishing himself in support of the parliamentary system, lord Dunmore dismantled the fort in Williamsburg, plundered the magazines, threatened to lay the city in ashes, and depopulate the country: As far as he was able, he executed his nefarious purposes.

      When his lordship found the resolution of the house of burgesses, of committees and conventions, was no where to be shaken, he immediately proclaimed emancipation to the blacks, and put arms into their hands. He excited disturbances in the back settlements, and encouraged the natives bordering on the southern colonies, [202] to rush from the wilderness, and make inroads on the frontiers. For this business, he employed as his agent one Connolly, a Scotch renegado, who travelled from Virginia to the Ohio, and from the Ohio to general Gage at Boston, with an account of his success, and a detail of his negociations. From general Gage he received a colonel’s commission, and was by him ordered to return to the savages, and encourage them, with the aid of some British settlers on the river Ohio, to penetrate the back country, and distress the borders of Virginia. But fortunately, Connolly was arrested in his career, and with his accomplices taken and imprisoned on his advance through Maryland; his papers were seized, and a full disclosure of the cruel designs of his employers sent forward to congress.

      By the indiscreet conduct of lord Dunmore, the ferments in Virginia daily increased. All respect towards the governor was lost, and his lady terrified by continual tumult left the palace, and took sanctuary on board one of the king’s ships. After much altercation and dispute, with every thing irritating on the one side, and no marks of submission on the other, his lordship left his seat, and with his family and a few loyalists retired on board the Fowey man of war, where his lady in great anxiety had resided many days.^* There he found some [203] of the most criminal of his partizans had resorted before he quitted the government; with these and some banditti that had taken shelter in a considerable number of vessels under his lordship’s command, and the assistance of a few run-away negroes, he carried on a kind of predatory war on the colony for several months. The burning of Norfolk, the best town in the territory of Virginia, completed his disgraceful campaign.^†

      The administration of lord William Campbell, and Mr. Martin, the governors of the two Carolinas, had no distinguished trait from that of most of the other colonial governors. They held up the supreme authority of parliament in the same high style of dignity, and announced the resentment of affronted majesty, and the severe punishment that would be inflicted on congresses, conventions and committees, and the miserable situation to which the people of America would be reduced, if they continued to adhere to the factious demagogues of party. With the same spirit and cruel policy that instigated lord Dunmore, they carried on their negociations with the Indians, and encouraged the insurrections of the negroes, until all harmony [204] and confidence were totally destroyed between themselves and the people, who supported their own measures for defence in the highest tone of freedom and independence. Both the governors of North and South Carolina soon began to be apprehensive of the effects of public resentment, and about this time thought it necessary for their own safety to repair on board the king’s ships, though their language and manners had not been equally rash and abusive with that of the governor of Virginia.

      Henry Laurens, Esq. was president of the provincial congress of South Carolina at this period; whose uniform virtue and independence of spirit, we shall see conspicuously displayed hereafter on many other trying occasions. It was not long after the present period, when he wrote to a friend and observed, that “he meant to finish his peregrinations in this world, by a journey through the United States; then to retire and learn to die.” But he had this important lesson to learn in the ordeal of affliction and disappointment, that he severely experienced in his public life and domestic sorrows, which he bore with that firmness and equanimity, which ever dignifies great and good characters.

      Sir Robert Eden, governor of Maryland, a man of social manners, jovial temper, and humane disposition, had been more disposed to [205] lenity and forbearance, than any of the great officers in the American department. But so high wrought was the opposition to British authority, and the jealousies entertained of all magistrates appointed by the crown, that it was not long after the departure of the neighbouring governors, before he was ordered by congress to quit his government, and repair to England. He was obliged to comply, though with much reluctance. He had been in danger of very rough usage before his departure, from general Lee, who had intercepted a confidential letter from lord George Germaine to governor Eden. Lee threatened to seize and confine him, but by the interference of the committee of safety, and some military officers at Annapolis, the order was not executed. They thought it wrong to consider him as responsible for the sentiments contained in the letters of his correspondents; and only desired Mr. Eden to give his word of honor, that he would not leave the province before the meeting of a general congress of that state; nor did they suffer him to be farther molested. He was permitted quietly to take leave of his friends and his province, after he had received the order of the continental congress for his departure; and in hopes of returning in more tranquil times, he left his property behind him, and sailed for England in the summer, one thousand seven hundred and seventy-six.^*

      [206] The influence of sir James Wright the governor of Georgia, prevented that state from acceding to the measure of a general congress, in one thousand seven hundred and seventy-four. Yet the people at large were equally disaffected, and soon after, in an address to his excellency, acknowledged themselves the only link in the great American chain, that had not publicly united with the other colonies in their opposition to the claims of parliament. They called a provincial congress, who resolved in the name of their constituents, that they would receive no merchandize whatever from Great Britain or Ireland after the seventh day of July, one thousand, seven hundred and seventy-five; that they fully approved and adopted the American declaration and bill of rights, published by the late continental congress; that they should now join with the other colonies, choose delegates to meet in general congress; and that they meant invariably to adhere to the public cause, and that they would no longer lie under the suspicion of being unconcerned

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