it be recommended to the several provincial assemblies, or conventions, and councils, or committees of safety, to arrest and secure every person in their respective colonies, whose going at large may, in their opinion, endanger the safety of the colony, or the liberties of America.
[198] Though governor Tryon was not particularly named, he apprehended himself a principal person pointed at in this resolve. This awakened his fears to such a degree, that he left the seat of government, and went on board the Halifax packet; from whence he wrote the mayor of the city, that he was there ready to execute any such business, as the circumstances of the times would permit. But the indifference as to the residence, or even the conduct of a plantation governor, was now become so general among the inhabitants of America, that he soon found his command in New York was at an end. After this he put himself at the head of a body of loyalists, and annoyed the inhabitants of New York and New Jersey, and wherever else he could penetrate, with the assistance of some British troops that occasionally joined them.
The governors of the several colonies, as if hurried by a consciousness of their own guilt, flying like fugitives to screen themselves from the resentment of the people, on board the king’s ships, appear as if they had been composed of similar characters to those described by a writer of the history of such as were appointed to office in the more early settlement of the American colonies. He said,
it unfortunately happened for our American provinces, that a government in any of our colonies in those parts, was scarcely looked upon in any other light than that of a hospital, where the favorites [199] of the ministry might lie, till they had recovered their broken fortunes, and oftentimes they served as an asylum from their creditors.*
The neighbouring government of New Jersey was for some time equally embarrassed with that of New York. They felt the effects of the impressions made by governor Franklin, in favor of the measures of administration; but not so generally as to preclude many of the inhabitants from uniting with the other colonies, in vigorous steps to preserve their civil freedom. Governor Franklin had, among many other expressions which discovered his opinions, observed in a letter to Mr. secretary Conway,
it gives me great pleasure, that I have been able through all the late disturbances, to preserve the tranquillity 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
