told. After the adjournment of the House of Burgesses, he prepared to carry on offensive operations against the colonists by all the means he possessed, and in this purpose he seemed to be prompted more by a spirit of vengeance, that by any hope of reducing the country to submission. Having established his head-quarters at Norfolk, with the small naval force under his command he greatly annoyed the inhabitants who were settled on the bays and rivers, by a predatory warfare; and in November, he proclaimed martial law throughout the colony, and executed his long-threatened plan of giving freedom to all slaves who could bear arms and would flock to his standard. But these measures, though partially annoying, had the effect of irritating and rousing the people, rather than in breaking their spirit. The whole powers of legislation now devolved on the Convention, while the executive functions were performed by a "committee of safety:" and after many petty enterprises and skirmishes, attended with various success, and finally setting fire to Norfolk, he was compelled again to take refuge to his ships, and, ere the middle of the following year, the country was rid of him, together with such of the tories and negroes, who had resorted to his standard, as escaped the ravages of war and the small pox.

77

CHAPTER IV.

Declaration by Congress of the causes of taking up arms. The manifestos of Congress. Mr. Jefferson's share in those papers. Is reelected to Congress. His previous views on Independence. Progress of Public Sentiment. Proceedings of the Virginia Convention. Declaration of Independence moved in Congress. Mr. Jefferson prepares the draught. When adopted and signed. Its character. He retires from Congress. Elected to the General Assembly of Virginia. Abolition of entails-Primogeniture. Their effects considered. Church establishment in Virginia. Its gradual abolition. Entire freedom of religion. Its consequences.

1775-1779.

It was on the twenty-first day of June, 1775, that Mr. Jefferson, then thirty-two years of age, took his seat in that august body, on whose prudence and firmness hung the political destinies of British America. They had been in session from the 10th of May preceding, in which time they had formed the plan of a confederacy,* under the name of The United Colonies of North America, for their mutual defence and common welfare, to take effect, when ratified by the Provincial Assemblies, and to continue until their grievances were redressed. They had also decided on raising an army; on creating a paper currency; and had appointed Colonel George Washington Commander-inChief of the confederate forces.

Mr. Jefferson's reputation, as a writer, had already preceded him in this body, and, in five days after he had joined it, we find him one of an important committee appointed to prepare a declaration of the causes of taking up arms.

This committee was nominated on the 24th of June; and the first report they made not being approved, Mr. Jeffer*See Appendix A.

()

son and Mr. Dickinson were added to the committee. A second address was drawn by Mr. Jefferson, but it being too bold for Mr. Dickinson, who still hoped for a reconciliation with Great Britain, and who was greatly respected both for his integrity and talents, he was requested to alter the paper to his taste. This he did, by preparing a new one, adopting, however, the concluding part of Mr. Jefferson's draught. It was accepted by the house; and the part furnished by Mr. Jefferson is here given, as a specimen of his sentiments and diction at that time.

"We are reduced to the alternative of choosing an unconditional submission to the tyranny of irritable ministers, or resistance by force. The latter is our choice. We have counted the cost of this contest, and find nothing so dreadful as voluntary slavery. Honour, justice and humanity forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us. We cannot endure the infamy and guilt of resigning succeeding generations to the wretchedness which inevitably awaits them, if we basely entail hereditary bondage upon them.

"Our cause is just. Our union is perfect-our internal resources are great, and, if necessary, foreign assistance is undoubtably attainable. We gratefully acknowledge, as signal instances of the divine favour towards us, that his providence would not permit us to be called into this severe controversy, until we were grown up to our present strength, had been previously exercised in warlike operations, and possessed of the means of defending ourselves. With hearts fortified with these animating reflections, we most solemnly, before God and the world, declare, that, exerting the utmost energy of those powers which our beneficent Creator hath graciously bestowed upon us, the arms we have been compelled by our enemies to assume, we will, in defiance of every hazard, with unabated firmness and perseverance, employ for the preservation of our liberties: being with one mind, resolved to die freemen rather than to live slaves.

"Lest this declaration should disquiet the minds of our friends and fellow-subjects in any part of the empire, we assure them,

that we mean not to dissolve that union which has so long and so happily subsisted between us, and which we sincerely wish to see restored. Necessity has not yet driven us into that desperate measure, or induced us to excite any other nation to war against them. We have not raised armies, with ambitious designs of separating from Great Britain, and establishing independent states. We fight not for glory, or for conquest. We exhibit to mankind the remarkable spectacle of a people attacked by unprovoked enemies, without any imputation, or even suspicion of offence. They boast of their privileges and civilization, and yet proffer no milder conditions than servitude or death.

"In our own native land, in defence of the freedom that is our birth-right, and which we ever enjoyed until the late violation of it; for the protection of our property, acquired solely by the honest industry of our forefathers and ourselves, against violence actually offered, we have taken up arms. We shall lay them down when hostilities shall cease on the part of the aggressors, and all danger of their being renewed shall be removed, and not before.

"With an humble confidence in the mercies of the supreme and impartial judge and ruler of the universe, we most devoutly implore his divine goodness to conduct us happily through this great conflict, to dispose our adversaries to reconciliation on reasonable terms, and thereby to relieve the empire from the calamities of civil war."*

From more than one anecdote related in Mr. Jefferson's autobiographical sketch, the pride of authorship relative to the several public addresses which emanated from that body, mingled itself with their grave and momentous deliberations. Mr. Jefferson, on the authority of one of his colleagues, had attributed the address to the people of Great Britain, which issued from

⚫ It is not unworthy of notice that the above extract, adopted from Mr. Jefferson's draught, is precisely that part of Mr. Dickinson's paper which annalists have commonly quoted. It probably owes this distinction not wholly to its intrinsic superiority, but in part also to its harmonizing better with the issue of the contest.

Congress the year before, to Governor W. Livingston, and had told that gentleman he regarded it as "the production of the finest pen in America." But this coming to the ears of Mr. Jay, its author, he was at some pains to set Mr. Jefferson right in the matter, and to assert his claims to the paternity. So far as Mr. Jefferson shared in this feeling, it had frequent and ample cause of gratification. On the 22nd of July, he was placed on a committee with Dr. Franklin, Mr. Adams, and Richard Henry Lee, to consider and report on Lord North's resolutions; and as the answer of the Virginia Assembly, of which he was known to be the author, met their views, he was selected by the committee to prepare the report.

The grounds taken in this paper are nearly the same as those assumed in the answer of the Virginia Assembly to Lord Dunmore. The diction, however, is altogether different, and manifestly improved. This reply to what the adherents of the British ministry had affected to style "the olive branch of Lord North," was regarded in England as the ultimatum of the American Congress. It asserts that the colonies have the sole privilege of granting or withholding their own money, and that this involves the right of determining its amount, and of inquiring into its application, lest it should be wasted on the venal, or perverted to purposes dangerous to themselves: that consequently, to propose to them to surrender this right, is to ask them to put it in the power of Parliament to render their gifts ruinous in proportion as they are liberal: that all history shows the efficacy of this privilege of giving or withholding money in checking lawless prerogative, and in obtaining a redress of grievances: they showed that the propositions were insidious, in tending to detach some of the colonies from the rest; as well as unreasonable, in inviting them to purchase the favour of Parliament, without telling them the price: that while they are offered permanent relief from one form of taxation only, by perpetually subjecting themselves to another: that the practice of Parliament itself, in granting supplies only from year to year, shows that it does not regard a perpetual grant of revenue as the best security for the good dispositions of those who receive it: that