crowded on board ships, scantily provided with even the necessaries of life. Poor people and runaway negroes were huddled together, without comfort or even pure air.

On the fourteenth, Robert Howe, from North Carolina, assumed the command and took possession of Norfolk. Just one week later the Liverpool ship-of-war and the brig Maria were piloted into the harbor. They brought the three thousand stand of arms, with which Dunmore had promised to imbody negroes and Indians enough to reduce Virginia. Martin of North Carolina obtained a third part of them.

The governor sent a flag of truce on shore to inquire if he and the fleet might be supplied with fresh provisions, and was answered in the negative. Showing his instructions to Belew, the captain of the Liverpool, the two concurred in opinion that Norfolk was "a town in actual rebellion, accessible to the king's ships;" and they prepared to carry out the king's instructions for such "a case."

non.

On New Year's day, 1776, the Kingfisher was stationed at the upper end of Norfolk; a little below her the Otter; Belew, in the Liverpool, anchored near the middle of the town; and next him lay Dunmore; the rest of the fleet was moored in the harbor. Between three and four in the afternoon a severe fire was begun from about sixty pieces of canWhen night was coming on, Dunmore ordered out several boats to burn warehouses on the wharfs, and hailed to Belew to set fire to a large brig which lay in the dock. The vessels of the fleet emulated each other in sending boats on shore to spread the flames along the river; and, as the buildings were chiefly of pine wood, the conflagration, driven by the wind, spread with amazing rapidity. Mothers with little ones in their arms were seen by the glare, running to get out of the range of cannon-balls. Several times the British attempted to land with artillery, but were driven back. The cannonade, with but one short pause, was kept up till two the next morning. The flames raged for three days, till four fifths of the houses were reduced to ashes and heaps of ruins.

In this manner the royal governor burned the best of the towns in England's oldest and most loyal colony, to which Elizabeth had given a name, Raleigh devoted his fortune, and

Shakespeare and Bacon and Herbert foreshadowed greatness; a colony whose people had established the national church, and were proud that their ancestors, in the day of the British commonwealth, had been faithful to the line of kings.

"I hope," said Washington, as he learned the fate of the rich emporium of Virginia, "I hope this and the threatened devastation of other places will unite the whole country in one indissoluble band against a nation which seems lost to every sense of virtue, and those feelings which distinguish a civilized people from the most barbarous savages." When the Virginia convention, which had been in session from the first of December, heard of the burning of Norfolk, the two regiments already in service were increased, and seven more were ordered to be raised. Of one of these Hugh Mercer was elected colonel; the command of another was given to the Lutheran minister, Peter Muhlenberg, who left the pulpit to form out of his several congregations one of the most perfect battalions in the army.

The demand of a world-wide commerce broke forth from Virginia. On motion of Archibald Cary, her convention, on the twentieth of January 1776, instructed her delegates in favor of opening the ports of the colonies to all persons willing to trade with them, Great Britain, Ireland, and the British West Indies excepted. That this recommendation should have been left, after ten months of war, to be proposed by a provincial convention, is another evidence of the all but invincible attachment of the colonies to England. The progress of the war brought to America independence in all but the name; she had her treasury, her army, the rudiments of a navy, incipient foreign relations, and a striving after free trade with the world. She must be self-dependent, whether she would be so or not; through no other way would the king allow her to hope for rest.

In the army round Boston, Washington for more than two months scarcely emerged from one difficulty before he was plunged into another. His best dependence for powder and flints, and in part for artillery, was on prizes made under the pine-tree flag by the brave Manly and others of New England. The men who enlisted for the coming year were desired to bring their own arms; those whose time expired were com

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pelled to part with theirs at a valuation; for blankets the general appealed to the families of New England, asking at least one from each household; the nearer villages, in their townmeetings, encouraged the supply of wood to the camp by voting a bounty from the town treasuries.

The enlistments for the new army went on slowly, for the New England men were disinclined to engagements which would take them far from home, on wages to be paid irregularly and tardily and in a constantly depreciating currency. For want of funds to answer the accounts of the commissary and quartermaster, the troops were forced to submit to a reduced allowance.

Connecticut soldiers, whose enlistment expired early in December, hastened home so soon as they became free; but others of their colony were ready to take their places. At the call of the colonial governments, three thousand men from the militia of Massachusetts and two thousand from New Hamp shire had repaired to the camp with celerity, and cheerfully braved "the want of wood, barracks, and blankets." The fortifications were extended to Lechmere's Point, and every possible landing-place for a sallying party from Boston was secured by intrenchments.

On the first day of January 1776, the tri-colored American banner, not yet spangled with stars, but showing thirteen stripes of alternate red and white in the field, and the united red and white crosses of Saint George and Saint Andrew on a blue ground in the corner, was unfurled over the new continental army round Boston.

On that day free negroes stood in the ranks by the side of white men. The first general order of Ward had required a return, among other things, of "the complexion' of the soldiers; and black men, like others, were retained in the service after the troops were adopted by the continent. We have seen Edward Rutledge defeated in his attempt to compel their discharge; in October, the conference at the camp, with Franklin, Harrison, and Lynch, thought it proper to exclude them from the new enlistment; but Washington, at the crisis of his distress, finding that they were very much dissatisfied at being discarded, reversed the decision, and

asked the approval of congress. That body appointed Wythe, Samuel Adams, and Wilson to deliberate on the question; and, on their report, it was decided "that the free negroes, who had served faithfully in the army at Cambridge might be re-enlisted therein, but no others." The right of free negroes to take part in the defence of the country having thus been partially admitted by the highest power, the limitation was lost sight of, and they served in the American armies during every period of the war.

The enlistments for the army of Washington were embarrassed by the want of funds; he could neither pay off the old army nor assure the punctual payment of the militia. In January 1776, he was left with but about ten thousand dollars, and this small sum was held as a reserve. The Massachusetts council was authorized to lend him fifty thousand pounds; and it was left to Massachusetts, with the aid of Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Hampshire, to keep up the numbers of the army while it remained on her soil.

The troops before Boston were a mixture of recruits and transient militia, requiring a constant renewal of elementary instruction. There was a dearth of bayonets, a want of at least two thousand muskets; the artillery was poor, and was chiefly a gathering from accidental sources. There was no sufficient store of powder; for members of congress, eager to give profitable occupation to ship-builders among their constituents reserved what little was obtained for the use of vessels which could not be prepared for sea before more ample stores would arrive; and Washington, anxious as he was "to keep above water in the esteem of mankind," was compelled to conceal his want from the public, from his friends, and even from most of his officers.

At the moment when he was left with not half so many serviceable troops as the army which he besieged, the chimneycorner heroes in congress, on the twenty-second of December 1775, after a long and most serious debate "authorized him to attack Boston, notwithstanding the town might thereby be destroyed."

Repelling the insinuation of inactivity, he answered the superior civil power: "It is not perhaps in the pages of his

tory to furnish a case like ours: to maintain a post within musket-shot of the enemy for six months together without powder, and at the same time to disband one army and recruit another within that distance of twenty odd British regiments, is more, probably, than ever was attempted."

On the ninth of February he wrote to the president of congress, in words of dignity and wisdom: "The purport of this letter will be directed to a single object. Through you I mean to lay it before congress, and at the same time that I beg their serious attention to the subject, to ask pardon for intruding an opinion, not only unasked, but repugnant to their resolves. The disadvantages attending the limited enlistment of troops are too apparent to those who are eyewitnesses of them to render any animadversions necessary; but to gentlemen at a distance whose attention is engrossed by a thousand important objects, the case may be otherwise. This cause precipitated the fate of the brave Montgomery and brought on the defeat which followed. That we were not at one time obliged to dispute these lines from the troops disbanding of themselves before the militia could be got in, proves that General Howe was either unacquainted with our situation or restrained by his instructions. Since the first of December we never have been able to act upon the offensive, and at times were not in a condition to defend; yet the cost of marching home one set of men and bringing in another amounts to near as much as the keeping up a respectable body of troops the whole time, ready for any emergency. To this may be added that you never can have a well-disciplined army. To make men well acquainted with the duties of a soldier, under proper discipline and subordination, requires time, and in this army, where there is so little distinction between the officers and soldiers, requires an uncommon degree of attention. To expect the same service from raw recruits as from veteran soldiers is to expect what never did, and perhaps never will, happen. Men familiarized to danger meet it without shrinking; troops unused to service apprehend danger where no danger is. Men of a day's standing grow careless of their arms, ammunition, and camp utensils, and lay us under fresh expense for every fresh set. To this may be added the seasoning which