XXXI. June 21 The flame, also, had spread into Georgia, beyond the CHAPTER power of Governor Wright to quench it. The powder magazine at Savannah was despoiled of its stores. A 1775. meeting at Savannah appointed a Council of Safety, of May 11 which William Cawin was president. A new Provincial Convention met, and Georgia, hitherto "the defective July 4. link in the American chain," adopted the American Association, and appointed as delegates to the Continental Congress, Lyman Hall, already there from St. John's Parish, Archibald Bullock, Dr. Jones, John Houston, and the Rev. Dr. Zubly, a Swiss by birth, minister of the Presbyterian church at Savannah. A powder ship which had arrived at the mouth of the river was seized, and a part of its contents forwarded to the camp before Boston. Sir James Wright issued proclamations, but his power was gone. Stuart, the agent for the Southern Indians. sought safety at St. Augustine. Lord North's conciliatory proposition, recommended to the attention of Congress by the Assemblies of Pennsyl vania, New Jersey, and Virginia, had been referred to a committee, and with it an informal paper, handed to a member of Congress by a gentleman, who said it had been drawn up, at the minister's desire, by an official of the British treasury, and that he had received it from Lord North himself. This paper strongly urged the acceptance of Lord North's proposition as being the best which, in the present temper of the British nation, the ministry could propose. The committee, however, after some delay, made a report, which Congress accepted and July 31 ordered to be published, in which the unsatisfactory char. acter and unsafe vagueness of the ministerial offer were elaborately exposed. Having ordered funds to be forwarded to Massachusetts and New York for the payment and support of the troops, Congress took a short recess CHAPTER The domineering spirit of the British ministry and nation on the one hand, the ardor of resistance to the 1775. exercise by the mother country of the taxing power on the other, brought to a focus by the attempt to coerce Massachusetts, and kindled into a blaze by the Lexing ton fight, had precipitated a contest, the length, the sacrifices, the labors, the costs of which none at that time at all foresaw. The ministry hoped to awe the colonies into speedy submission. The colonial leaders, looking only at the bright side of their prospects, flattered themselves that one or two campaigns would finish the war, and, whether the connection with Great Britain continued or not, would secure on a firm foundation the rights of the colonies. This confidence, as appeared by the result, was somewhat excessive; yet, deficient as the colonists were in arms, money, and military organization, the nature of their country and the character of the population placed almost insuperable obstacles in the way of their subjection by force. The settlements extended for a thousand miles along the Atlantic, and from a hundred to two hundred miles inland. This extensive territory, for the most part rugged, intersected by swamps and rivers, covered with woods, and highly defensible, was inhabited by an agricultural population, not collected in towns and cities, but scattered in farms and plantations, nowhere presenting any vital points of attack. The only towns of any considerable size were Boston, Newport, New York, Philadelphia, Norfolk, and Charleston; and of these, the three largest scarcely contained twenty thousand inhabitants each, while neither of the others reached half that number. It was not difficult for the British troops to obtain possession of these towns. It was easy, also, to march through, and even to reduce to temporary subjection those portions of the XXXI. southern colonies in which slaves were numerous, and CHAPTER where the level surface and ease of water communication facilitated military movements. Fortunately for Amer- 1775 ica, the first collision had occurred with the yeomanry of New England, freeholders who fought for their farms and firesides, simple in their habits, inured to toil, but intelligent, not without education, and full of the spirit and energy of freemen. A similar yeomanry, though less homogeneous, less intelligent, and less energetic, formed, in the middle colonies, the bulk of the inhabitants. Even in the south, except in the tide-water counties, where cultivation was carried on by slaves, the population, though still less intelligent and less energetic, yet partook, to a great degree, of the same general character. Such a population, in such a country, if tolerably united, it was next to impossible to subdue by force. In the midst of these commotions, far off in the western woods, by some of these same hardy yeomen an embryo state began to be formed. Richard Henderson, a North Carolina lawyer and speculator, elevated from very humble life by his own energy and talent, had been induced, by reports of the fertile region on the banks of the Lower Kentucky, to purchase from the Cherokees, Marcu for a few wagon loads of goods, the tract between the rivers Kentucky and Cumberland. Others joined him in the proprietorship; and the adventurous Boone, who had been present at the treaty, was soon afterward sent to mark out a road and to commence a settlement. Though he encountered several parties of hostile Indians, Boone persevered in the enterprise, and built a palisadoed fort Apr or "station" at Boonesborough, the first permanent English lodgment within the limits of the present state of Kentucky. Harrod, an equally bold backwoodsman, founded Harrodsburg about the same time. CHAPTER Regardless of a proclamation issued Ly Dunmore pre vious to his flight from Williamsburg, denouncing Hen. 1775. derson's purchase as illegal and void, and offering the March 17. western lands for sale under authority of the crown, delegates from Boonesborough, Harrodsburg, and two other May 23. settlements presently met at Boonesborough, and organized themselves as the Assembly of TRANSYLVANIA. Henderson presided on behalf of the proprietaries. A compact was entered into between the proprietaries and the settlers. Courts and a militia were organized, and laws were enacted-among other purposes, for preserving game, and punishing profane swearing and Sabbath breaking. Sept. 25. The proprietaries of Transylvania presently held a meeting at Oxford, in Granville county, North Carolina, and appointed James Hogg as a delegate to the Continental Congress at Philadelphia. Hogg proceeded thithOct. 22. er; but, though he was favorably received by several of the members, the claim of Virginia to that country, as being within her charter, proved an obstacle to the recognition of the new colony. About the same time, a not less adventurous party set out from Connecticut to colonize the banks of the Lower Mississippi. After eleven years' solicitation in England, greatly broken in mind and body, General Lyman, agent of the "Military Adventurers," as they called themselves, had at last obtained a grant in the province of West Florida. He proceeded to Natchez, laid out a number of townships in that vicinity, and was presently followed by four hundred families from Con1776. necticut, who descended, in the space of six weeks, from the head of the Ohio. The state of feeling in Connecticut heightened the disposition of these Loyalist emigrants to seek homes elsewhere. They were destined, however, to great sufferings. CHAPTER XXXII. THIRTEEN UNITED COLONIES. CAMP BEFORE BOSTON. ON the reassembly of the Continental Congress, the CHAPTER Georgia delegates having taken their seats, the style was assumed of THE THIRTEEN UNITED COLONIES. XXXII. 1775. One of the first subjects to be considered was the Sept. 5. alarming scarcity of ammunition and military stores. Washington had found, in the camp before Boston, scarcely nine rounds of powder to a man. Active op erations were completely paralyzed by this deficiency. A council of war, called to consider the expediency of Sept. 8. an attack on Boston, advised against it. Besides measures entered into by the public at large with great zeal for promoting the discovery of lead mines and the manufacture of saltpeter, a secret committee of Congress was instituted to import powder and lead from Sept. 18, the West Indies. The non-importation agreement was also suspended in favor of all vessels bringing powder and warlike stores. Some of the powder seized by the South Carolinians was presently forwarded to Washing ton's camp. Dr. Church, the head of the hospital department, was detected, soon after his appointment, in a secret correspondence with Gage. Its extent or object did not clearly appear; but as Church was known to be very much involved in his pecuniary circumstances, the worst was 598627 |