War (14 page)

In one of history’s ironies, Peyton Randolph, the man who had been willing to pay five hundred guineas for a single vote to defeat Henry’s fifth Crown-defying Stamp Act resolve nine years before, was subsequently
chosen to be president of the first Continental Congress. Over time, the virtue of “moderation” had become to him less and less a practical answer to Crown encroachments.

And it was Henry who made real for the other delegates and for the rest of the colonies the enormity of their peril and the unique position in which they found themselves. On the first day, after all the delegates had presented their instructions, he spoke to a hushed congress:

“I go upon the supposition that government is at an end. All distinctions are thrown down. All America is thrown into one mass.…The distinctions between Virginians, Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers, and New Englanders, are no more. I am not a Virginian, but an American!”

This was an expression of what many Crown ministers had known for a long time, and hoped in vain that no one in North America would ever grasp. It was an identification of the fact that America was indeed another kingdom, another country, and that its inhabitants were no longer Britons.

Few of the men who opposed Crown policies and impositions could imagine, let alone welcome, a complete political break with Britain. Many who could imagine it viewed the prospect with horror. John Randolph was one of these, asserting that the animosity engendered by dubious Parliamentary legislation did not justify violence, separation or independence. The preservation of the Empire was of paramount importance. Independence would lead, if not to military strife with the mother country, then to anarchy within each former colony or strife between some or all of them, if they were not first conquered by France or Spain.

Still others devoted their imagination to a closer, more intimate political union of the colonies and Britain, as did delegate Joseph Galloway of Pennsylvania, speaker of its legislature. At the Philadelphia congress he proposed that a central, elective colonial legislature could work with Parliament, headed by a president-general appointed by the king.

The “grand council” of legislators would be “inferior” to Parliament but exercise veto power over Parliamentary acts and even originate legislation for Crown approval. It would embody a mandated share of genuine power with Parliament and act under a special colonial constitution that complemented the British constitution. If the colonies could not be literally or even virtually represented in Parliament — he certainly agreed with many “intemperate” radicals on those points — Galloway’s answer was simple: Create a truly representative government that was nearly Parliament’s equal in legislative authority.

The idea of governing the colonies in such a fashion was questioned by many delegates, most notably by Patrick Henry, who, having observed corruption of his own General Assembly, argued that while such a “grand council” would insulate the colonies from direct Parliamentary influence, such an association would surely infect it as well and create new opportunities for oppressive skullduggery of a greater magnitude. Bribery and subornation of the grand council by Parliament and the king’s ministers were guaranteed by the connection. A royally appointed president-general who served at the king’s pleasure — and served the king’s purposes — was by itself a malodorous aspect of the scheme. Where would his allegiance sit: With St. James’s Palace, or with the colonies?

But, without even admitting that likelihood, many at the congress dismissed such a scheme as mere “virtual” independence, as contemptibly specious a notion as “virtual” representation in Parliament. Others saw in Galloway’s plan of union salvation of themselves and of the Empire.

Galloway’s plan was narrowly rejected as untenable. Instead, the congress adopted the Suffolk Resolves, brought hastily to Philadelphia by courier Paul Revere from Massachusetts. These were more in the spirit of Henry’s position. They declared the Coercive Acts unconstitutional, called for the citizens of Massachusetts to form their own government, advised all the colonies to form and arm their militias, and endorsed stringent trade sanctions against Britain. On October 14 the congress issued its own Declaration and set of resolves. These ten resolves condemned the Coercive Acts as well as the Quebec Act, all the legislation passed by Parliament since 1763, asserted the right to life, liberty and property, and the right to self-government without Crown interference.

On October 18 the congress created a continental association, modeled on the Virginia Association. When it adjourned on October 22, the congress resolved to meet again in May of 1775 if by that time the Crown had not acted to address American grievances. The Declaration and resolves were sent to London. The delegates packed their bags and journeyed home to await a reply.

Galloway rode back to his farm in Pennsylvania to pout. Later, he volunteered to assist General Howe in governing Philadelphia when that general occupied the city. In 1778 he joined the growing number of American loyalists in England, and became their spokesman. He nurtured a special animus for Samuel Adams, the intransigent radical of Boston, whom he blamed, in an unintended compliment, for the defeat of his plan of union
by intriguing with factions at the congress. “He eats little, drinks little, sleeps little, thinks much, and is most decisive and indefatigable in the pursuit of his objects.”

The Declaration and resolves of the First Continental Congress were to be the last major appeal to reason that Americans would make.

* * *

In the meantime, Governor Dunmore completed a successful campaign to pacify the Indians. He saw no action himself. That was seen by General Andrew Lewis, of Botetourt County and a veteran of the French and Indian War, whose column of Virginia militia, over 1,000 strong, was supposed to have rendezvoused on September 30 with the Governor and his column of equal strength at Point Pleasant in the Ohio territory, at the juncture of the Ohio and Kanawha rivers. Lewis arrived there on schedule, after a grueling march through unmapped wilderness, and encamped to await Dunmore, who took the wagon roads cleared by Braddock nearly two decades before to Fort Pitt. There Dunmore met with some apprehensive Delawares and concluded a minor treaty with them. Impressed with his own obvious gift for peace-making, he decided to march further west to an Indian town called Chillicothe to parley with its natives. He sent orders to Lewis a hundred miles down river to join him there.

While Lewis’s militia was preparing to obey, it was attacked on October 10 by Cornstalk and an army, “five acres” shoulder to shoulder of them, of Shawnees, Mingos, Iowas, Delawares, Wyandots, and Cayugas. After a fierce all-day battle, Lewis sent Cornstalk fleeing across the Ohio River with what was left of his warriors. The Virginians lost 75 men in the battle, including Lewis’s brother, Colonel Charles Lewis.

The general then marched with part of his force to join Dunmore at Chillicothe, only to receive word from Dunmore to return to Point Pleasant and await orders. He marched on, however, with the bitter certainty that had His Excellency kept to the original plan, their combined armies could have dealt Cornstalk and his allies an even greater blow. When he faced the Governor, he tactfully proposed that this could still be done. Dunmore instead ordered him and his militia back home and his troops mustered out. Lewis contained his anger and obeyed. Dunmore remained near Chillicothe on the Scioto River for two more months, concocting treaties, he thought, with as much skill as any Indian commissioner, moved by expectations of
lavish Crown gratitude in the form of exclusive land patents and other royal rewards.

But when he returned to Williamsburg in early December, he encountered a number of surprises. His wife, Charlotte, after whom he had named his camp at Chillicothe, had given birth to their ninth child, a daughter, christened at his insistence Virginia in a transparent ploy to win public affection. Also, a special quorum of the House and Council voted him mere thanks for his conduct in the west, instead of showering him with praises of heroism. He must have realized then that it had been a mistake to send General Lewis home so soon, for that veteran had forwarded to Williamsburg a truer account of the campaign than the Governor would have liked.

Finally, a letter from Lord Dartmouth had arrived in his absence expressing the king’s extreme displeasure with the campaign. The Secretary explained that his action was not only a violation of past treaties and of His Majesty’s good word, but an intrusion into Canadian territory where the Governor had no authority, as well. Stung by this unexpected chastisement, the Governor wrote letters to Dartmouth and the king detailing his accomplishments in the west and expressing surprise that the Crown would frown not only upon actions he had taken to protect and benefit this most important of His Majesty’s dominions, but his initiative to resolve the matter of western Pennsylvania, one that had been festering ever since the late war.

With his wisdom questioned and his political influence in jeopardy, the Governor’s mind was in too fey a state to be bothered by a report from a Council member that, as a consequence of the August convention, new companies of militia were being raised throughout the colony, and by the news that Virginians had held their own “tea party” in Yorktown, having on November 2 boarded the recently arrived merchantman
Virginia
and tossed from it two half-chests of tea, purchased by a Williamsburg merchant, into the York River.

Jared Hunt returned with the Governor, as well, spent another night in Williamsburg before continuing on to Hampton, and was oblivious to his host’s new crises. The extraordinary Customsman had thoroughly enjoyed the diversion, and during his martial sojourn had even discussed with the Governor various means of enforcing Crown authority. He could hardly wait to return to Hampton to compose a letter to the Earl in which he would describe these ideas and his time with his lordship.

In the event that matters could not be settled peacefully, he proposed to
the Governor that men loyal to the Crown — who were numerous — be recruited to form a squadron of cavalry that could strike anywhere on short notice. Throughout his travels, he had observed the fine quality of Virginian horse stock, which could be drafted or bought for that purpose. He also informed the Governor that the Hampton Customs office was expecting to receive soon a sloop, the
Basilisk
, that had been seized in Maryland in an Admiralty tax judgment, and since converted into an eight-gun sloop-of-war. It could patrol the rivers around Chesapeake Bay more easily than the navy’s larger warships.

The Governor had thought these excellent ideas, and promised to allow Hunt some role in their implementation, if the need arose.

* * *

The
Anacreon
, after an uneventful voyage, reached Falmouth in Cornwall in mid-September, at about the time Lord Dunmore was halfway along his march to Fort Pitt, Cornstalk was assembling his five acres of warriors, and the first Continental Congress was debating the Suffolk Resolves. From there Hugh Kenrick took a series of coastal packets to Poole and Danvers in Dorset. He did not venture to his family’s home at Danvers — too likely his uncle the Earl was in residence before he left for London and Parliament, which was scheduled to sit again in late November — but called on the Brunes. Robert Brune, Reverdy’s father, said his daughter had spent a while with him and her mother, but many weeks ago had gone up to London to stay with her brother and his wife.

After a day’s rest with his parents-in-law, Hugh took another coastal packet from Poole to Dover, and from there a coach to London.

It rained all the way from Dover to London. The city’s normal, irregular canopy of smoke had merged with one of rain clouds. The city was darker, as a consequence, but somehow cleaner, the rain washing the soot and grime from the air directly into the ground. During the coach ride, he wondered if the drought in Virginia had finally given way to rain. Then it struck him somehow that it was incongruous to think of London and Virginia in the same thought.

And he wondered what the convention in Williamsburg had accomplished. What was likely done and said there, he thought, as the coach neared Charing Cross and Westminster, would clash violently with what he knew was done and said in the Parliamentary buildings on the Thames.
That, too, was an incongruity. In the city he knew so intimately, he felt like a stranger visiting it for the first time.

From the coach inn he took a hackney to Chelsea. At last he reached Cricklegate, his parents’ home up river on the Thames. After another joyful reunion with his surprised parents and sister Alice, he later stated the purpose of his visit to his father in the latter’s study. “I am here to salvage my country’s honor, and to reclaim my wife.”

Garnet Kenrick smiled sadly. “I wish you well with Reverdy, Hugh,” he said. “Your mother and I both wish we could help you in that regard.” He did not elaborate. Reverdy had always mystified him and Effney Kenrick; they could not penetrate her attraction to a man they both suspected she should be repelled by. Then he frowned. “Your country’s honor? Which country, Hugh? This one? God knows, its honor lately has been begging for salvation.”

“America, father. I can’t decide if its honor needs salvaging or recognition. Or if I am truly an American.” Hugh stood at the study window and gazed out at the Thames that was barely visible through an ashen fog. After a moment he turned to ask, “Would it be possible for me to speak in the Commons in your stead? Could that be arranged?” New elections for the Commons were to be held for a new Parliament, as required by the Septennial Act. His father could merely reelect himself. The nature of the borough permitted him to do that.

The Baron nodded, intrigued by the proposal. “Of course. I shall merely retire and elect you the new member for Swansditch, that is all.” He paused to sip his coffee. “But, what would you say there, Hugh, other than what I have struggled to say there?”

Hugh shrugged. “
Laissez-faire
, father. Leave us alone.”