CHAPTER XX.

IN VIRGINIA AGAIN.

Ir took the delegates eight days to perform the journey from Philadelphia to Richmond. August 9, in the midst of the morning session, four of them, as the Journal records, "Patrick Henry, Edmund Pendleton, Benjamin Harrison, and Thomas Jefferson, Esquires, appeared in convention, and took their seats; and the gentlemen appointed to represent their counties, in their necessary absence, retired." At once the four gentlemen were added to the important committee of the moment, and resumed legislative duty. On the 11th arrived another delegate, R. H. Lee, who took his seat. And this was the last of the arrivals; for George Washington was on other duty, and was not expected home that summer.

It was a great day in the Convention, this 11th of August, meagre as the record is. Again the Convention was to elect seven members to represent, the colony in the next Congress, which was to meet in September. First, three of the last delegation, no longer eligible, General Washington, Colonel Patrick Henry, and Edmund Pendleton, the last named being in infirm health, were solemnly thanked by the chairman, on behalf of the Convention, for their services in the Congress. The new soldier and the old lawyer becomingly responded; and then the chairman was "desired to transmit the thanks of this convention, by letter, to His Excellency General Washington." These high courtesies performed, the balloting began. The result showed that Virginia was well pleased with the youngest of her representatives: Peyton Randolph, eighty-nine; R. H. Lee, eighty-eight; Thomas Jefferson, eighty-five; Benjamin Harrison, eighty-three; Thomas Nelson, sixty-six; Richard Bland, sixty one; George Wythe, fifty-eight. Thus the delegate, who, a few months before, had been sent to the Congress to fill a brief vacancy,

stood now third in the list; above Nelson, one of the richest men in Virginia; above Harrison, the favorite representative of the planting interest; above Wythe, his instructor in the law; above Bland, long regarded as the ablest political writer in Virginia, now venera

ble in years.

Virginia, we observe, stood by her faithful servants. The fatal notion of rotation in office had not yet been evolved. The delegates who could no longer serve were publicly applauded; those who could were re-elected with a near approach to unanimity, except in the case of Mr. Bland, whose age and infirmities rendered him incapable of efficient service. His re-election was probably only another form of honorable dismission. Calumnious reports had been circulated of late, casting doubt upon the sincerity of his attachment to the great cause. The Convention, promptly yielding to his demand for an investigation, had "considered it their duty to bear to the world their testimony, that the said Richard Bland had manifested himself the friend of his country, and uniformly stood forth an able asserter of her rights and liberties." Copies of this vindication were ordered to be sent to the Congress, and to Arthur Lee, the London agent of the Province, in whose suspicious mind the slanders had probably originated. The re-election was an additional testimony which touched the old man's heart. The next morning he rose in the Convention to decline the honor conferred upon him. This fresh instance of the approval of the Convention, he said, was enough for an old man, almost deprived of sight, whose highest ambition had ever been to receive, when he should retire from public life," the plaudit of his country;" and he begged the Convention to appoint "some more fit and able person to supply his place." The Convention declared that their thanks were due to Richard Bland for his able and faithful service, and that they were induced to accept his resignation only by consideration for his advanced age. The old man then rose, and remained standing, while the chairman pronounced the thanks of the Convention in fit, impressive words. A community is not apt to be ill served that treats its servants in this spirit.

Impatient for his home, Jefferson obtained leave of absence on the fifth day of his attendance in the Convention; but, before he left Richmond, he gave his voice and vote for a measure which proved to be the beginning of a revolution in Virginia, of which he

was

was to be the soul and director. Dissenters from the Established Church had, as yet, neither rights nor recognition, and in ordinary times both would have been denied them; but at such a time as this, when the fundamental rights of man become living truths in all but the dullest minds, enthusiasm lifts men above the trivialities of sectarian difference, and enables them to lay aside sectarian arrogance. August 16, 1775, an address from the Baptists was presented to the Convention. Of this, the most numerous body of dissenters in the colony, Rev. John Clay, father of the renowned Kentuckian, was then an active member; and doubtless his name appended to the document. Differ as we may, said the Baptists of Virginia in this petition, we are nevertheless members of the same community, a community now menaced with oppression and devastation; and "6 we have considered what part it will be proper for us to take in the unhappy contest." The result of their deliberations was: 1, That, "in some cases, it is lawful to go to war;" and, 2, This was one of the cases. Consequently many of their numbers had enlisted, and many more desired to enlist, who "had an earnest desire their ministers should preach to them during the campaign." Their petition was, that four Baptist ministers should be allowed to preach to Baptist soldiers, "without molestation or abuse." The Convention passed a resolution which both granted the request and conceded the principle:

"Resolved, That it be an instruction to the commanding officers of regiments or troops to be raised, that they permit dissenting clergymen to celebrate divine worship, and to preach to the soldiers, or exhort, from time to time, as the various operations of the military service may permit, for the ease of such scrupulous consciences as may not choose to attend divine service as celebrated by the chaplain."

Thus began religious equality in Virginia.

Jefferson lingered another day in the Convention; perhaps to witness the election of a new chairman, R. C. Nicholas, in the place of Peyton Randolph, whom ill-health had compelled to withdraw; perhaps to cast his vote in favor of his brother-in-law, Francis Eppes, for the office of major of the First Regiment, of which Patrick Henry was colonel; perhaps to assist in the election of the great

committee of safety, a body of eleven men, the ruling power in Virginia from the adjournment of the Convention till Dunmore was expelled, and a new order of things instituted. The four personages of the Convention, who are designated in the brief record as "Mr. Richard Henry Lee, Mr. Henry, Mr. Harrison, and Mr. Jefferson," were appointed to count the ballots on this high occasion. Jefferson's old friend, John Page, styled still "the Honorable," from his having been one of Dunmore's Council, - was elected a member of the controlling committee. I wonder if, at that stirring time, Jefferson and "dear Page" ever found time to recall the happy, miserable days, when, both being crossed in love, Jefferson sought solace in Ossian and old Coke, and dear Page went home to his baronial hall, and paid successful court to another; which Jefferson would not believe till he heard it from Page's own lips, well knowing, that, for his own part, he had done with love forever!

Jefferson, at least, still played the violin. A violinist now of fifteen years' standing, extremely fond of music, an indefatigable practiser, and inheriting a touch of singular delicacy, he had become a superior performer. For journeys he had one of those minute. violins formerly called kits, with a tiny case, which could be packed in a portmanteau, or even carried in a large pocket. Wealthy Virginians were late risers in those easy-going, luxurious times but he was always an early riser; and he found his kit a precious resource in the long mornings while he was waiting, at country-houses, for the family to come down to breakfast. At night, too, he and his kit could whisper together without disturbing the occupants of adjacent rooms. If the absorbing political events of the period had much interrupted his playing, he now owed to them the acquisition of the finest violin, perhaps, in the colonies, upon which he had fixed covetous eyes years before.

To say that this instrument belonged to John Randolph conveys no information; because there are so many John Randolphs of note in Virginia history, that the name has lost its designating power. We are obliged to say John Randolph, the king's attorney-general, son of Sir John, and brother of Peyton Randolph, speaker. This precious violin, brought from a foreign land by its proprietor, could not in ordinary times have become the object of vulgar sale; but the attorney-general, feeling doubtless that the best fiddle should properly belong to the best fiddler, had entered into a compact, four years

before, by which the instrument should fall to Jefferson's possession after his own death. An agreement was drawn up in legal form, signed and sealed by the parties, attested by seven of their friends, most of whom were young members of the bar, George Wythe and Patrick Henry among them, and duly recorded in the minutes of the General Court, to this effect: :

"It is AGREED between John Randolph and Thomas Jefferson, that, in case the said John shall survive the said Thomas, the executors of the said Thomas shall deliver to the said John 80 pounds sterling of the books of the said Thomas, to be chosen by the said John; and, in case the said Thomas should survive the said John, that the executors of the said John shall deliver to the said Thomas the violin which the said John brought with him into Virginia, together with all his music composed for the violin." *

To the merry attestors of this unique document the transaction may have seemed a joke; but to Jefferson himself it was so serious, that he provided for the fulfilment of the compact in his will, and bequeathed a hundred pounds to "the said John" besides.

This paper was drawn in the piping times of peace, when, as yet, Jefferson was "Tom" to his familiars, and Patrick Henry was master of the Christmas revels; the whole party unknown beyond their native Province. But now the times were out of joint. John Randolph, like most men who held places under the crown, sided with the king so far as to think it his duty to leave the country, and, before leaving, sold his exquisite violin to Jefferson for thirteen pounds. This important bargain was concluded on this last day of his attendance in the Convention, and he carried the instrument home with him to Monticello, where it remained a precious possession for fifty-one years.

Short, indeed, was the vacation he now enjoyed, though it was longer than he meant it to be. August 19, he reached Monticello; Congress was to meet at Philadelphia September 5; leaving him ten days to stay on his mountain-top, where he had a house. enlarging, a family of thirty-four whites and eighty-three blacks to think for, half a dozen farms to superintend, and a highly

* Abbreviated from 1 Randall, 131.