development following the Stamp Act, Williamsburg, either through the
men born and raised in the place, or educated at its famous college
of William and Mary, had an imperishable connection. It was Richard
Bland, an alumnus of the college, who first announced, in a pamphlet
entitled _An Enquiry into the Rights of the British Colonies_, the
startling doctrine that America was no part of the kingdom of England,
and had never been united with it except by the common tie of the
crown. Dabney Carr, another alumnus of the college, was the patron of
the resolutions in 1773 for appointment of intercolonial committees of
correspondence,--the first step taken towards united action on the part
of the colonies. Then it was Peyton Randolph, born in Williamsburg and
educated at its college, who when the first Congress came together in
1774, offered himself as the conspicuous mark of British resentment in
consenting to act as first President of the Continental Congress. In
1776, it was another alumnus of the college, Thomas Jefferson, who,
in the language of Ezra Stiles, President of Yale, “poured the soul
of the continent into the monumental act of Independence.” In 1786,
John Tyler, Sr., born in the country near Williamsburg, and another
alumnus, carried through the Virginia Legislature the proposition for
a convention of the States at Annapolis. In 1787, Edmund Randolph,
a native of Williamsburg and an alumnus of the college, opened
the proceedings of the convention at Philadelphia by submitting
“the Virginia plan” of a constitution which gave direction to its
proceedings.
[Illustration: JOHN TYLER, SR.]
A sketch of Williamsburg, however, would not be complete without some
details of the famous Convention which met in the city on May 6, 1776.
Edmund Pendleton of Caroline County was elected President, and John
Tazewell of Williamsburg, Secretary. On the day after the Convention
met they fixed on the 13th to go into the Committee of the Whole to
consider the state of the Colony. Colonel Archibald Cary, an alumnus of
William and Mary College, presided over this committee. The question
of independence was introduced at once, and was debated on that and
the next day, and the committee rose and reported the following
resolutions, drawn by Edmund Pendleton, which were _unanimously_ agreed
to by the Convention, 112 members being present:
“Forasmuch as all the endeavors of the United Colonies, by the most
decent representations and petitions to the King and Parliament of
Great Britain, to restore peace and security to America under the
British government, and a reunion with that people upon just and
liberal terms, instead of a redress of grievances, have produced,
from an imperious and vindictive adminstration increased insult,
oppression, and a vigorous attempt to effect our total destruction.
By a late act all these Colonies are declared to be in rebellion,
and out of the protection of the British Crown; our people, when
captivated, compelled to join in the murder and plunder of their
relations and countrymen; and all former rapine and oppression of
Americans declared legal and just. Fleets and armies are raised
and the aid of foreign troops engaged to assist these destructive
purposes. The King’s representative in this Colony hath not only
withheld all the powers of government from operating for our
safety, but, having retired on board an armed ship, is carrying on
a piratical and savage war against us, tempting our slaves by every
artifice to resort to him, and training and employing them against
their masters. In this state of extreme danger we have no alternative
left but an abject submission to the will of those overbearing
tyrants, or a total separation from the Crown and Government of
Great Britain, uniting and exerting the strength of all America for
defence and forming alliances with foreign powers for commerce and
aid in war: Wherefore, appealing to the Searcher of Hearts for the
sincerity of former declarations, expressing a desire to preserve
the connection with that nation, and that we are driven from that
inclination by their wicked councils, and the eternal laws of self
preservation;
“Resolved unanimously, that the delegates appointed to represent
this Colony in General Congress, be instructed to propose to that
respectable body to declare the United Colonies FREE AND INDEPENDENT
STATES, absolved from all allegiance to or dependence upon the Crown
or Parliament of Great Britain, and that they give the assent of this
Colony to such declaration, and to whatever measures may be thought
proper and necessary by the Congress for forming foreign alliances,
and a confederation of the Colonies, at such time, and in the manner,
as to them shall seem best; Provided, that the power of forming
government for, and the regulations of the internal concerns of, each
Colony be left to the respective Colonial Legislatures.
“Resolved unanimously, that a committee be appointed to prepare a
declaration of Rights, and such a plan of government as will be
most likely to maintain peace and order in this Colony, and secure
substantial and equal liberty to the people.”
On June 11, 1776, a committee, at the head of which was Thomas
Jefferson, was appointed by Congress in Philadelphia to prepare a
“Declaration of Independence”; and on July 1st, R. H. Lee’s resolution
of independence was adopted, and on July 4th the immortal Declaration
by Thomas Jefferson. Nor was this all that Virginia did. It having
been determined to procure a Declaration of Rights and a written
constitution for the State, the Convention, on May 15th, appointed
a committee of thirty-one, at the head of which was Archibald Cary,
to do the work. Many projects were submitted, but the Declaration
of Rights and the State constitution prepared by the master-hand of
George Mason, “swallowed up all the rest.” The former document, adopted
June 12, 1776, contained all that was valuable in Magna Charta and
the Bill of Rights of 1689, and much more; for it stands without a
rival as a summary of the rights of man and also of the principles of
free government. The latter document,--the constitution,--adopted on
June 29, 1776, unlike the similar constitutions established by South
Carolina and other colonies, declared the connection with Great Britain
“totally dissolved,” furnishing in this way the first example in this
country of a written constitution of a free and independent State.
Thus, in the language of John Adams of Massachusetts, Virginia “has
the glory with posterity of beginning with the resolutions against the
Stamp Act, and of concluding with the acts of the Convention of May,
1776, the great American Revolution”; and Williamsburg was the scene of
these great proceedings in the annals of the world.
[Illustration: MARY CARY, WASHINGTON’S EARLY LOVE.]
Williamsburg lost its metropolitan honors in 1779, when Richmond became
the capital of Virginia. The effect was disastrous, and its population
decreased from two thousand in 1776 to twelve hundred in 1795. Many of
the houses became tenantless, and the population of the place never
rose above sixteen hundred in after years.
But the old city still retained its college, which, despite many
vicissitudes, continued to maintain its influence in the Union. Indeed,
William and Mary College holds a unique position in the history of
the United States. In its antecedents, it is the oldest of American
colleges; in actual operation, it is second only to Harvard. It is the
only college that received its charter direct from the Crown under the
seal of the Privy Council in England. It was the first college to have
a full faculty of professors. It was the first to abandon the Oxford
curriculum and adopt the “elective system,” which it did in 1779.
It was the first to adopt the “honor system,” which discountenances
the custom prevailing at some colleges even now of spying and
informing on students. It was the first college in America to widen
its curriculum into the scope of a university by establishing chairs
of law and medicine, in addition to the classics and the sciences.
It was the first to establish schools of modern languages, history,
political economy and constitutional and political law. It was the
first to establish, in the Phi Beta Kappa Society, an intercollegiate
fraternity, having for its object purely literary improvement; and it
was the first to award strictly collegiate prizes, as manifested in the
gold medals donated by Lord Botetourt in 1771.
Of the seven Presidents born in Virginia, three--Thomas Jefferson,
James Monroe and John Tyler--were educated at William and Mary. To
these men is to be ascribed the annexation of Louisiana, Florida,
Texas and most of the Western territory, thus trebling the original
area of the Union. Four out of five judges contributed by Virginia
to the Supreme Bench of the United States were educated at William
and Mary. The most illustrious commander of the Federal armies down
to 1861, General Winfield Scott, was a William and Mary man. Of
twenty-seven Senators from Virginia (1789-1861), sixteen, and of the
four Speakers of the House of Representatives from Virginia, three, of
three ministers plenipotentiary to England, two, and of six ministers
to France, four, were alumni; and John James Beckly, first Librarian of
Congress and first Clerk of the House of Representatives, was a William
and Mary man.
Of forty-three members of the Supreme Court of Virginia, down to 1861,
twenty-one, and of thirty-three governors of Virginia, fifteen, were
alumni. Out of a numerical total of seventy-six judges and governors
of Virginia, William and Mary contributed thirty-six; Princeton, two;
Hampden-Sidney, two; University of Virginia, three; Dickinson College,
one; University of Pennsylvania, one; College of South Carolina, one;
Randolph-Macon, one; Yale, one; Washington College, Pennsylvania, one;
European colleges, five, and the rest obtained their education at
private schools.
[Illustration: CHIEF JUSTICE MARSHALL]
The society of Williamsburg has had its attractions from the earliest
times. The Rev. Hugh Jones, Chaplain of Governor Spotswood and
Professor of Mathematics in the college, thus wrote of the town in 1722:
“At the Capitol, at publick times, may be seen a great number of
handsome, well dress’d, compleat Gentlemen. And at the Governor’s
House upon Birth Nights, and at Balls and Assemblies, I have seen as
fine an Appearance, as good Divertion, and as splendid Entertainments
in Governor Spotswood’s time, as I have seen any where else.
“These buildings here described are justly reputed the best in all
English America, and are exceeded by few of their Kind in England.
“In every part of this Town are excellent Springs of good Water, or
else may be made good Wells; and the Ground falling on both Sides
conveys the Water and Rain by small Channels into the Creeks; but to
make the main Street exactly level, the Assembly gave a considerable
Sum, which was expended in removing Earth in some places, and
building a Bridge over a low Channel; so that it is now a pleasant,
long, dry Walk, broad, and almost level from the College to the
Capitol. Williamsburg is now incorporated and made a Market Town,
and governed by a Mayor and Aldermen; and it is well stocked with
rich Stores, of all Sorts of Goods, and well furnished with the best
Provisions and Liquors.
“Here dwell several good Families, and more reside here in their own
Houses at publick times. They live in the same neat Manner, dress
after the same Modes, and behave themselves exactly as the Gentry in
London; most Families of any note having a Coach, Chariot, Berlin or
Chaise.
“The Number of Artificers is here daily augmented; as are the
convenient Ordinaries or Inns for the Accomdation of Strangers.
“The Servants here, as in other parts of the country, are English,
Scotch, Irish, or Negroes.
“The Town is laid out regularly in Lots or square Portions,
sufficient each for a House and Garden; so that they don’t build
contiguous, whereby may be prevented the spreading Danger of Fire;
and thus also afford a free Passage of Air, which is very grateful in
violent hot Weather.
“Here, as in other Parts, they build with Bricks, but most commonly
with Timber lined with Cieling, and cased with feather-edged Plank,
painted with white Lead and Oil, covered with Shingles of Cedar,
etc., tarred over at first, with a Passage generally through the
Middle of the House for an Air-Draught in Summer.
“Thus their Houses are lasting, dry, and warm in Winter, and cool in
Summer; especially if there be Windows enough to draw the Air.
“Thus they dwell comfortably, genteely, pleasantly, and plentifully
in this delightful, healthful, and (I hope) thriving City of
Williamsburg.”
At the theatre in Williamsburg, built about 1716, the first
professional comedies and tragedies in America were played by Charles
Stagg, who was assisted by actors and musicians from England. He died
in 1735, and, for several years after, the building, which stood on
what is known as the Tucker lot, was used for amateur theatricals, in
which the students of the college figured as the actors. About 1745
the building was surrendered to the city for a city hall. In 1751,
“The New Theatre” near the Capitol was built by a company of comedians
from New York, and in 1752, the Hallam Company, professional players
from the theatre in Goodmanfields, near London, made their appearance
in Williamsburg. This was a great event in the Colonial life. It was
at this time that Lewis Hallam made his début, at the age of twelve,
on the boards. This prince of the theatre, who for a long period had
no rival in America, having on this occasion but a single sentence to
recite, broke down in the middle, and rushed in tears from the stage.
In 1771, the celebrated Miss Hallam visited Williamsburg. She had
“starred” it in Maryland, where all the swains of that Colony had paid
her tribute in poetry and where Peale had painted her portrait. An
extract from a letter of Colonel Hudson Muse, of Virginia, will recall
the glory of her début at “The New Theatre” in Williamsburg.
[Illustration: GEORGE WYTHE.]
“In a few days after I got to Virginia I set out to Williamsburg
where I was detained for eleven days, though I spent the time very
agreeably at the plays every night, and really must join Mr. Ennalls
and Mr. Bassett in thinking Miss Hallam superfine. But must confess
her luster was much sullied by the number of beauties that appeared
at that court. The house was crowded every night, and the gentlemen
who have generally attended that place agree there was treble the
number of fine ladyes that was ever seen in town before.--For my
part I think it would be impossible for a man to have fixed upon a
partner for life, the choice was too general to have fixed on one.”
The public buildings in Williamsburg appear to have been the best in
British America at the time of their erection. Weld, in his _Travels_,
says that “the town in 1795 contained about 1200 people, and the
society in it is thought to be more extensive and more genteel at the
same time than any place of its size in America.” The city was then
the residence of the Rev. James Madison, President of the College,
who was the first to teach political economy at any American college;
of George Wythe, the teacher of both Marshall and Jefferson, and the
first American professor of law; of Charles Bellimi, the first American
professor of modern languages; of John Blair, Associate Justice of the
United States; of Peter Pelham, the musician, to whose solemn strains
on the organ the great Washington had often lent a willing ear as he
sat in the old brick church on Sundays; and of many other persons of
refinement and cultivation.
Williamsburg was the residence in 1841 of John Tyler, when he was
called to the Presidential chair by the death of Harrison.
[Illustration: JOHN TYLER, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.]
In 1861, it shared in all the excitement of the approaching Civil War.
The college contributed all its students and professors to the Southern
army, as the old city contributed all its able-bodied citizens. During
the war its churches and the college were occupied as hospitals by the
armies on both sides. Through the city passed the army of Johnston, on
its withdrawal from Yorktown; and within its streets burst the shells
of the Federals in the bloody battle of Williamsburg in 1862. Then
came the great army of McClellan--and so the scenes of direful war
changed and shifted, the place being sometimes in possession of the
Confederates and sometimes in possession of the Federals.
Peace came at last, and the war-worn city took up again the burden of
its destiny. The college, which had been burned by the Federal troops,
was rebuilt on the old walls, after the old Confederate soldiers
returned to their homes. In 1881, the centennial of the surrender of
Lord Cornwallis awakened new life. The Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad
ran its cars through the place for the first time, as it transferred
the multitudes to Yorktown, thirteen miles away. In 1888, the college,
which had been closed for several years, assumed new energies under the
patronage of the State Legislature. Then, in 1893, the bicentennial
year of the college charter, Congress, by an appropriation of money,
made amends in some measure for the injuries inflicted by war. Since
that time, the place has greatly improved. The “Ancient Capital” has
its face toward the future, while proudly conscious of the past. It is
often visited by travellers from Europe, and from the North, who never
fail to take away with them kind impressions of the neighborhood, and
who love to repeat in letters to newspapers and other periodicals the
interesting stories of its ancient and modern history.
[Illustration: SEAL OF WILLIAM AND MARY COLLEGE.]
FOOTNOTES:
[5] The tombstone of his daughter, Lucy Burwell, wife of Hon. Lewis
Burwell, describes him as “the valiant Capt. Robert Higginson, one of
the first commanders that subdued the country of Virginia from the
power of the heathen.”
[6] One of these papers, styled “Nathaniel Bacon, Esq., his Manifesto
concerning the present troubles in Virginia,” has words which ring
out very much like the celebrated language of Patrick Henry--“If this
be treason, make the most of it.” Bacon said: “If virtue be a sin,
if piety be guilt, if all the principles of morality and goodness be
perverted, we must confess that those who are now called ‘Rebels,’ may
be in danger of this high imputation; but if there be, as sure there
is, a just God to appeal to, if to plead the cause of the oppressed, if
sincerely to aim at his Majesty’s honor and the public good without any
reservation or by-interest, if to stand in the gap after so much blood
of our dear brethren bought and sold, if after the loss of a great part
of his Majesty’s Colony deserted and dispeopled, freely with our lives
and estates to endeavor to save the remainder--be treason, God Almighty
judge and let the guilty die.”
[Illustration]
WILMINGTON
“THE FREE TOWN ON THE CAPE FEAR”
BY JOSEPH BLOUNT CHESHIRE
North Carolina might be called the State without a city--_civitas sine
urbe_. It has never had a capital or a metropolis, except arbitrarily
and in name only. It has been a rural State, a State of planters and
farmers. Its eminent lawyers, and even its physicians and merchants,
have often been also its eminent farmers. The first president of the
State Agricultural Society was the Chief Justice of its Supreme Court.
The physical conditions of a country predetermine the lines of its
development. North Carolina’s interminable length of dangerous
coast-line repelled the earliest attempt at English settlement. Sir
Walter Raleigh’s expedition of 1585, coasting along its inhospitable
sands, divined their true character, and marked down upon the first
map that ominous name--_Promontorium Tremendum_--Cape Fear. And in
spite of all improvements in navigation they have remained a menace and
a terror. Hatteras and Cape Lookout and Cape Fear warned off commerce
and settlement.
The eloquent words of the late Mr. George Davis, of Wilmington, applied
to Cape Fear, are descriptive of the general character of the North
Carolina coast:
“Looking then to the Cape for the idea and reason of its name, we
find that it is the southernmost point of Smith’s Island, a naked,
bleak elbow of sand jutting far out into the ocean. Immediately in
its front are the Frying Pan Shoals, pushing out still farther,
twenty miles to sea. Together they stand for warning and for woe;
and together they catch the long majestic roll of the Atlantic as
it sweeps through a thousand miles of grandeur and power from the
Arctic towards the Gulf. It is the play-ground of billows and of
tempests, the kingdom of silence and awe, disturbed by no sound but
the sea-gull’s shriek and the breakers’ roar. Its whole aspect is
suggestive, not of repose and beauty, but of desolation and terror.
Imagination cannot adorn it. Romance cannot hallow it. Local pride
cannot soften it. There it stands to-day, bleak and threatening and
pitiless, as it stood three hundred years ago, when Grenville and
White came near unto death upon its sands. And there it will stand,
bleak and threatening and pitiless, until the earth and the sea shall
give up their dead. And as its nature, so its name, is now, always
has been, and always will be, the ‘Cape of Fear.’”
But the broad sounds and rivers and fertile lands which lay behind
these barriers of sand and storm invited immigration, and soon after
the middle of the seventeenth century settlers began to pour in by
different routes. From Virginia they crowded across into the northern
and eastern sections. The Swiss and the Palatines came into the Neuse,
and by the middle of the eighteenth century the Highland Scotch were
swarming up the Cape Fear, while the Scotch-Irish from Pennsylvania
spread over the country on both sides of the Yadkin, and westward to
the Catawba, where they were mingled with the Germans, who also came
mostly by way of Pennsylvania. Coming into the country by different
routes, separated from each other by the unsettled wilderness, finding
no centre of power or of influence within the Province to draw them
together, each of these sections lived in a measure to itself, and
communicated with the outside world through those routes of travel
by which each had first entered the country. The Albemarle section
traded with Virginia, Cape Fear with Barbadoes and Charleston. The
Scotch-Irish of the Piedmont country were better acquainted with their
brethren in Pennsylvania, and in nearer sympathy with them, than
with the Scotch on the upper Cape Fear and lower Yadkin. The little
settlement of Maryland Churchmen in Rowan kept up communication with
their kinsfolk in St. Mary’s County at the mouth of the Potomac,
and their Lutheran neighbors sent back to Hanover for teachers and
ministers, and had their services in the German tongue until well on in
the nineteenth century.
Not only was there no metropolis--for the first fifty years there
were no towns. The Palatines and Swiss at the confluence of the Neuse
and the Trent laid out the little town of Newbern, and the Moravians,
soon after 1750, began their town of Salem, but nowhere else in the
Province was a town made the basis of the settlement. The Anglo-Saxon
self-reliance and freedom never showed itself more self-reliant and
free than in the unconscious daring which spread over thousands of
square miles of savage wilderness with never a centre of strength or of
succor provided against a time of danger.
[Illustration: RESIDENCE OF JAMES SPRUNT.
FORMERLY THE RESIDENCE OF GOVERNOR DUDLEY.]
Fifty years after the beginning of its permanent settlements, its first
town, Bath, had only a dozen small houses, and its second, Newbern, was
just founded. Edenton dates from 1716; Beaufort from 1723; Brunswick
from 1725, though not incorporated until 1745; and Wilmington from 1730
or 1735. At the end of one hundred years of settlement, North Carolina
had only these six villages, and it is doubtful if the most populous
had as many as six hundred inhabitants, though there was a population
of over fifty thousand in the Province.
Bath, incorporated in 1705, was never more than the inconsiderable
village which it is to-day. The first town to become of any importance
was Edenton, looking southward from a gentle elevation at the head of
a beautiful little bay on the north side of the upper end of Albemarle
Sound. Over against this bay the broad mouths of the Chowan and the
Roanoke brought her the trade of the back country, and down the sound
and across the shifting bars at Ocracoke and New Inlet a little fleet
of schooners and brigs began to carry on trade coastwise and with the
West Indies, and presently across the ocean.