Part 8 (1/2)

Was.h.i.+ngton was now entering heart and soul into the great controversy.

He was chosen as a delegate from the county to the colony meeting at Williamsburg on the first of August, 1773.

The Virginia delegates a.s.sembled at the capital as planned. Was.h.i.+ngton presented the resolution adopted by his county and made a fervid address in its support. It is said he declared himself ready to raise a thousand men at his own expense, and march at their head to the relief of Boston. It is safe to say that if Was.h.i.+ngton and Patrick Henry could have lived through to 1861, there would have been no Civil War, or even if the Spirit of Was.h.i.+ngton and Henry could have lived in the hearts of the people.

The Virginia convention adopted resolutions based on the Fairfax resolution, and Was.h.i.+ngton with six others, destined to become famous in American history, were appointed delegates to the General Congress, that was to meet in Philadelphia.

The high-handed measures against Boston had ruined that town. The rich became poor and the poor were at the verge of starvation, but there was no outcry. The silent misery and calm determination were a puzzle to the General who could not subdue such opposition with cannon. The people went in crowds to hear their speakers placidly arguing the conditions. There was no excuse to order the people to disperse, so that Gage found it necessary to have a law pa.s.sed that the people should not a.s.semble to discuss government affairs. But the whole problem had now taken on a larger form. On September 5, 1774, delegates from all the colonies, excepting Georgia, met in Carpenter's Hall, Philadelphia.

Patrick Henry and Edmund Pendleton came on to Mount Vernon, and from there the three giants of moral rights and human liberty rode on together to the meeting, affecting so deeply the eternal meaning of America.

When the question arose in the meeting concerning the voting of delegates, some colonies having more than others, Patrick Henry, with his fiery zeal, declared any idea of sectional distinctions or local interests to be absurd.

”All America,” he cried, ”is thrown into one ma.s.s. Where are your landmarks--your boundaries of colonies? They are all thrown down. The distinction between Virginians, Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers, and New Englanders, are no more. I am not a Virginian but an American.”

What a great pity that eighty-six years later, the patriotism of Patrick Henry could not have been felt, and the one great horror of American history would then never have occurred.

II. THE BUSINESS OF GETTING READY

The first General a.s.sembly in the history of the New World came together in great solemnity. They felt that it should be opened by some religious service, and yet, they feared to introduce religious antagonism, for it was a period when religious controversies were often more extreme and bitter than any political controversies.

Then Samuel Adams of reverend fame arose and said, ”I shall willingly join in prayer with any gentleman of piety and virtue, whatever might be his cloth, provided he is a friend of his country.”

Samuel Adams was a very rigorous Congregationalist, but religion with him had no claims that did not include justice and patriotism. He nominated the Reverend Mr. d.u.c.h.e of Philadelphia, who was an Episcopalian, to open the session with prayer.

The reverend d.u.c.h.e appeared in his canonicals attended by his clerk.

He read the morning service of the Episcopal church. The Psalter for that day of the month, the seventh, included the thirty-fifth Psalm.

The central idea of the Psalm was that of the a.s.sembly.

”Plead my cause, O Lord, with them that strive with me; fight against them that fight against me. Take hold of s.h.i.+eld and buckler, and stand up for my help. Draw out, also, the spear, and stop the way of them that persecute me.”

It is said that when the a.s.sembly was organized and ready for the introduction of their momentous business, that a long, deep, death-like silence fell upon them. Every one hesitated to begin. The sense of inaction was becoming oppressive when Patrick Henry arose.

Such a great occasion was suitable to his eloquence and when he sat down amidst the murmurs of astonishment and the shouts of applause, he was conceded to be the greatest orator in America.

This history-making convention had fifty-one delegates and it remained in session fifty-one days. The meetings were held in secret, and it is now unknown the part that Was.h.i.+ngton took in it, but, when Patrick Henry returned home, he was asked who was the most powerful councillor in the convention, and he unhesitatingly said, ”Was.h.i.+ngton.”

That Was.h.i.+ngton foresaw the course of events may be readily gathered from a letter he wrote at this time to a very close friend, Captain Robert Mackenzie, who had severely criticised the colonies from the British point of view. Like too many who are now charged with the destiny of the great American republic by their votes, Mackenzie could reason only on the visible results, and could not give any attention to the causes of the events. He had no spiritual valuation. He could reason only from material interests. Was.h.i.+ngton closed a very emphatic and radical letter to him with the warning and prophecy, ”and give me leave to add, as my opinion, that more blood will be spilled on this occasion, if the ministry are determined to push matters to extremity, than history has ever yet furnished instances of in the annals of North America.”

England had been what might be termed good to the Southern colonies.

As for harsh measures, the worst from a political point of view was in dissolving the Virginia legislatures. The Southern Colonies were under the business management of descendants from the royalist cavaliers who had been driven from England by the forefathers of the descendants making up the colonies of New England. There was thus an inherited tradition of antagonism, which many well-meaning patriots a.s.sume as their basis of justice and judgment. Political welfare must be estimated from present conditions. Avengers of the ancient wrong want to punish history rather than make history. They a.s.sume that it is better to begin with what was than with what is. But in the common need, all such differences were forgotten. The differences were remembered only by the great grand-children of the revolutionary heroes.

The Northern Colonies and the Southern Colonies were, true enough, antagonistic in their origin, entirely opposite in the social differences between the severe Puritan and the aristocratic Cavalier, and worse than all, they were antagonistic in their religion, the North being many kinds of dissenters, and the South, in its governing cla.s.ses, being Episcopalian. Their social, religious and material interests never had been the same, and they had little in common even in the French and Indian wars. This outline contrast is given to show how the question, especially for the South, was not material profit or of opposition to oppression from force, but was the expression of an American Ideal uniting all minds, as a meaning for the equal rights of all in our humanity. It shows that there is an ideal of human rights that has the allegiance of human hearts above all considerations of flattery, or coertion, or for any of the thousands of considerations that may cause an individual judgment or fix the will. There may be amazing differences in personal and party interests, but there can be none, even in the varieties of intelligence or conditions, when it comes to the rights to freedom in the views of genuine Americans. Only partisans attack the motives of persons who are trying to advance human liberty and peace according to the duties and rights of civilization. By such signs shall ye know them and beware. They are not Americans and their moral deformity is the peril of America. The real idealist lives the vision of moral order, not only for his group, but for all the world. The moral law for each and all is our idealism of the universe.

III. MANY MEN OF MANY MINDS

England could not manage its American colonial interests because the government had no ideal of the colonies beyond that of a commercial business, and the colonies could not handle the interests of England in America because each colony was a separate organization having political interests together in common only in the British Parliament.