the chancel to the novel sight of the governor's seat, high canopied
and richly upholstered in crimson and gilt. The high-backed chair is
railed off from the "common folk," and the name Alexander Spotswood
in gold lettering runs around the top of the canopy. At once you
realize that this was indeed the court church of the vice-regal court
at Williamsburg, and that you are in old Colonial Virginia. The lines
"He rode with Spotswood and Spotswood men," the knights of the "Golden
Horse Shoe," run through the brain, and the knightly figure of Raleigh,
the chivalric founder of the colony, and brave John Smith and a score
of others, heroes of that elder day, come from out the shadowy past,
and hover about one. You look at the quaint old pulpit, on the left
of the church, with its high-sounding board, and then glance down at
the pew on your right, which bears the name of George Washington, and
opposite the plate on the pew reads Thomas Jefferson, and next are
James Madison and the seven signers of the Declaration of Independance,
and Peyton Randolph and Patrick Henry and the doughty members of the
house of burgesses who worshiped here, and whose liberty-loving
spirits fired the world with their brave protests against tyranny. When
you read these names, suddenly the church seems full of the men who
bore them, and you are surrounded by that goodly company of heroes who
made Virginia and America, the cradle of liberty. The magic spell is
upon you. You turn cold and burning hot with high enthusiasm and the
glory of the vision. You are roused from your trance by the pleasant
voice of the young minister, Mr. John Wing, who is saying: "Now we will
go down into the crypt."
There are treasures in the crypt indeed. We follow in a dazed fashion,
and are shown the Jamestown communion service; the communion silver
bearing the coat-of-arms of King George III; the ancient communion
silver of the College of William and Mary; the Colonial prayer book,
with the prayer for the president pasted over the prayer for King
George III; a parish register of 1662, the pre-Revolutionary Bible;
coins found while excavating in the church, and brass head-tack letters
and figures by which some of the graves in the aisles and chancel
were identified. We are told that the date of parish was 1632, first
brick church, 1674-83; present church 1710-15. Precious and deeply
interesting, but I imagined that I could hear the tread of that
"knightly company" upstairs, who let neither silver nor gold nor the
glitter of the vice-regal court at Williamsburg seduce them from their
love of liberty, nor dull their hatred of tyranny in its slightest
exercise. Ah! there were giants in those days among those Virginia
pioneers, in whose veins ran the hot blood of the cavalier, who loved
truth and hated a lie, who loved life and despised danger, and feared
not death nor "king nor kaiser," descendants of the valiant Jamestown
colonists to whom Nathaniel Bacon cried one hundred years before: "Come
on, my hearts of gold!"
The tombstones in the aisle and chancel of the church include the tombs
of two Colonial governors--Francis Fauquier and Edmund Jennings--and
the graves of the great-grandfather, the grandfather and grandmother
of Mrs. Martha Washington. After reading the quaint inscription on
the marble mural tablet in memory of Colonel Daniel Parke and the
inscriptions on the bronze mural tablets memorial to Virginia churchmen
and patriots, we climb to "Lord Dunmore's gallery," where, tradition
says, the boys of William and Mary College used to be locked in for
their soul's edification until service was over, and where we sat in
Thomas Jefferson's accustomed place, from whence he looked down upon
the heads of the members of the house of burgesses and the Colonial
vestrymen of distinguished memory. Is it any wonder that in such
environment the boy's dreamy aspirations crystallized into the high
resolve of becoming a patriot and statesman? For in those stormy days
preceding the Revolution this little Bruton parish church was a very
Pantheon of living heroes.
Fiske, the New England historian, says that "the five men who more than
any others have shaped the future of American history were Washington,
Jefferson, Madison, Marshall and Hamilton." All but Hamilton were
Virginians and worshipers at Bruton church, and two of them were
students of the College of William and Mary. Distinction unrivaled for
the state, the church, the college.
And now we walk into the church yard, under venerable trees, among
crumbling grave stones and see the Pocahontas baptismal font and the
tombs of the Custis children and Colonial Governor Knott.
We are shown the home of George Wythe, the signer of the Declaration,
the teacher of Jefferson, Monroe and Marshall. Great teacher of greater
pupils! Inspirer of high thoughts and immortal deeds! One of the
students at William and Mary, Jefferson, wrote the declaration, three
were presidents, and another, John Marshall, was Chief Justice of the
United States. The headquarters of Washington, the site of the first
theater in America, 1732, the Ancient Palace green on the right hand of
which is the fictional home of Audrey, and several ancient colonial
homes are pointed out to us. If any vestige remains of the old Raleigh
tavern, whose "Apollo" room was famous as the gathering place of the
burgesses, who, after their dismissal in 1769 asked an agreement not to
use or import any article upon which a tax is laid--it was not shown to
us.
The old powder horn or powder magazine, a curious hexagonal building,
has been admirably restored and stands as a reminder of that dramatic
scene in Virginia history in 1775 when, after Lord Dunmore had removed
the powder from the magazine into one of the vessels in the James,
fearing an uprising of the colonists, Patrick Henry, with an armed
force from Hanover, stalked into the governor's presence and demanded
the return of the powder or its equivalent in money. Lord Dunmore,
looking into those dauntless eyes, beholds the dauntless soul of the
"Firebrand of the Revolution" behind them, and yields at once and pays
down £330 sterling. Patrick Henry, with splendid audacity, seizes a
pen and signs the receipt, "Patrick Henry, Jr." making himself alone
responsible for this act of high treason, and then, that there may be
no doubt as to his signature, he has it attested by two distinguished
gentlemen. What heroic daring! What impassioned love of liberty! While
Peyton, Randolph and Richard Henry Lee counsel caution, Patrick Henry
acts and becomes the inspired genius of the revolution, fusing the
disunited and hesitating colonies into a nation by the white heat of
his burning passion for freedom.
First in importance of all the historic places in Williamsburg is
the venerable college of William and Mary. Founded in 1693, next to
Harvard the oldest college in the United States, it soon became the
"intellectual center of the colony of Chesapeake Bay," the alma mater
of the patriots who fought for the life of the young republic and of
the statesmen who formed its constitution and guided its course in its
infant years. It has furnished to our country fifteen senators and
seventy representatives in congress; thirty-seven judges, and Chief
Justice Marshall; seventeen governors of states and three presidents
of the United States--Jefferson, Monroe and Tyler. James Blair, a
Scotchman, was its first president and remained so for fifty years.
The ivy-clad buildings of the old college nestle among ancient trees
on a wide campus, and so venerable is the look of the place that the
new hall seems a modern intruder, though of quiet and well-mannered
architecture. The quiet air of scholarly seclusion reminds one of
Oxford. It was commencement day, and we found the buildings decorated
with white and yellow, the college colors. The chapel, with its
oil paintings of presidents, donors and patriots, and the library
with its rare volumes and priceless old documents and portraits and
engravings, are full of interest. A marble statue of one of the old
governors--Botetourt, I believe--stands in the silence of the centuries
in front of the old college.
"Yas'm ris de place, de house er buggesses, dey call it, 'cause de big
bugs of ole Virginny sot dere er making laws. 'Fo de Lawd, marm, dey
wuz big bugs; quality folks, quality folks." And John Randolph, our
colored coachman, waved his hand with a proud air of ownership, as if
he were displaying lofty halls with mahogany stairs and marble pillars,
instead of the mortar and brick foundation, in its bare outline, of the
old capitol, or House of Burgesses.
"Walk right in, suh. Bring de ladies dis way, boss," John Randolph
urged, in a tone of lordly hospitality. "Right hyah is the charmber
(room) whar Marse Patrick Henry made dat great speech agin de king--old
Marse King George--or bossin' uv de colonies. He wuz er standing on dis
very spot, and he lif' up his voice like a lion and he sez, sez he--"
"What did he say?" as the old man paused.
Striking a dramatic attitude, the gray-haired old Virginia darky rolled
out in sonorous voice, with impassioned gesture:
"Tarquin and Caesar had each his Brutus, Charles the First his Cromwell
and George the Third--" "Treason! treason!" said the speaker of the
house. "May profit by their example. If that be treason, make the most
of it."
In spite of John Randolph's oratory, Rothermel's painting came before
me, and I could see the Virginia cavaliers gazing at the speaker
with startled, breathless look, while the colonial dames with their
powdered hair and stiff brocade leaned eagerly forward in the gallery
to catch each note of the immortal voice; and in the doorway stood
Thomas Jefferson, the slim young student of William and Mary College,
electrified by the fiery eloquence, "such as I had never heard from any
other man," he said: "he appeared to me to speak as Homer wrote."
"But why didn't you say 'Give me liberty or give me death,' Uncle
John?" asked the young interrogation point of the party.
"'Cause Marse Patrick never said dem words here, chile. He spoke 'em
in old St. John's Church up in Richmond ten year arterwards. I gin
you his Williamsburg speech, his fust great speech." And the darky
orator and historian smiled with that superior wisdom which we had
seen illumminate the dark Italian features of Antonio Griffenreid, the
famous sexton of old St. John's as he enlightened the ignorance of a
party of sightseers.--_Atlanta Constitution._
SONG OF THE REVOLUTION.
We love the men and women, too,
Who fought and worked and brought us through
Our glorious revolution;
Hard was the struggle, brave the fight,
That won for them the sovereign right
To frame a Constitution.
CHORUS.
This Constitution made us free
In this proud land of liberty--
The best in all creation--
And we'll stand by it while we live;
Whatever we may have we'll give
For its perpetuation.
Our Country is the fairest one
Kissed by the ever rolling sun--
We glory in our nation;
And we will see that it shall be
The happy land of liberty,
Through time's continuation.
_--Francis H. Orme._
This song has been adopted as a State song by the Daughters of
the American Revolution of Georgia, and as a national song by the
Continental Congress 1906.
A TRUE STORY OF THE REVOLUTION.
BY MRS. M. S. D'VAUGHN.
_Archibald Bullock Chapter, D. A. R., Montezuma, Ga._
This is a story of how a woman's wit and tact saved her husband's life
from the hands of the Tories, in the dark days of the Revolution.
It was in South Carolina, the British General, Cornwallis, had
ordered any American sympathizer caught, to be hung or shot at sight.
Numberless outrages had been done and the feeling was intensely bitter
against the Tories, or Royalists, as they called themselves. Especially
so was it in the section of the country where lived Elizabeth Robert.
Her husband was fighting with Marion, the "Swamp Fox," in another part
of the state and the only protector for herself and two young children
was a faithful slave called "Daddy Cyrus." Here on her plantation
Elizabeth spent her days living quietly enough. However, she was no
idler, but rather a most thrifty housewife and her muscadine wine
excelled any other and was known far and wide for its delicious flavor.
Now, John Robert grew restless, as the days passed and no word came
from his wife, so obtaining leave of absence from General Marion, he
quietly slipped through the lines, and by a devious route, appeared one
dark night at the door of his home. But some foreign eye had noted the
unusual happiness and excitement in the "big house" as it was called,
and in a short while it was surrounded, and Capt. John was a prisoner
in the hands of the Tories. Mary, with tears, pleaded for her husband's
life, but to no purpose, and dawn was to see his dead body hanging from
the limb of a huge oak near by. Tears availing nothing, Elizabeth's
quick brain began to teem with plans for John's escape.
Slipping down to "Daddy Cyrus'" cabin, she told him of her plan of
rescue, then back to her house she ran, her absence not having been
noted. Then bringing all her womanly beauty, graciousness and charm
to bear upon the Tories, she inticed them into the dining room,
leaving her husband tightly bound to the tree where he was to meet his
death,--and then from her mahogany sideboard, she served to them her
famous muscadine wine. Drink after drink, she offered them, while her
smiles and gay repartee allured them. More--more--and yet more, until
their befuddled wits were completely gone.
Then faithful old "Daddy Cyrus" waiting, watching, guarding, with
his sharp knife, cut the bonds of his "Young Marster," and into the
darkness Capt. John was gone back to his comrades with a hurried kiss
from the lips of his wife who had saved him.
The Tories were persuaded that the wine was the cause of their hazy
belief of the capture of Capt. John Robert, and no harm was done to
Elizabeth.
GEORGIA.
Poem composed by Mrs. C. M. O'Hara and read before David Meriwether
Chapter, Greenville, Ga., Georgia day, 1911.
Georgia, the baby of the original thirteen,
Not, however, youngest in importance, I ween,
Was born to the colonies in seventeen thirty-two,
To help those in prison their lives to renew.
What Oglethorpe planned for this child of his heart
Was that rum and slaves of it should not be a part,
But this wayward child would have her own way,
In spite of her mistakes she has made up to date,
Georgia is called of the South the Empire State.
She was the fifth of her sisters in secession to say,
"The Union she'd leave" when there was not fair play.
This child of famous men has sent her portion
From the "marshes of Glynn" to the Pacific Ocean.
Near Savannah, where Oglethorpe first planted his foot,
Ebenezer, the first orphanage, has taken firm root.
Another distinction, too, fair Georgia can claim
Is the first college for women, Wesleyan by name.
Towering intellects she reared in her Toombs and her Hills;
She can boast of her factories and her mills;
She has kept pace with her sisters in every movement
That tends to her children's uplift and improvement.
Now in heathen lands, across the deep waters,
Performing deeds of mercy are Georgia's sons and daughters.
FORTS OF GEORGIA.
MISS FRANCIS CLARKE.
_Prize Essay of Girls' High School, Atlanta, Georgia, for the loving
cup offered by Joseph Habersham Chapter, Daughters of the American
Revolution._
The forts of Georgia, though for the most part hurriedly and roughly
built for protection against Indian, Spaniards, Englishman, or Federal,
have nevertheless been the scenes of the bravest defenses, of the most
courageous deeds. In them probably more than anywhere else, the men of
Georgia have shown their hardy spirits and distressing trials. Never
has a Georgia fort been surrendered except from absolute necessity,
though its protectors were weak from starvation.
The first of the long list of five hundred forts that have been erected
in Georgia is Fort Charles, on the northeastern coast of Georgia. It
was built about 1562 by the direction of John Ribault, who with a party
of Huguenots had come from France with the approval of Admiral Coligny,
the Protestant leader at that time. Two years later the fort was
abandoned, and there is now no sign to point out the spot where it once
stood.
FORT ARGYLE.
Fort Argyle was the next fort on Georgia soil. It was built by
Oglethorpe in 1733 for the protection of his Savannah colony. Then
followed a wonderful series of forts, when you consider the few people
in Georgia at that time and the dangers of traveling on account of the
Indians. But Oglethorpe, braving all perils in the next four or five
years had established Forts Thunderbolt, near Savannah; St. Simon, on
St. Simon's Island; Frederick, at Frederica, on the same island; Fort
William and Fort Andrews, on Cumberland Island, besides several other
unimportant ones such as the fort on Jekyl Island and those along the
Altamaha. These forts, especially Fort William and Fort Andrews,
served as a great protection from the Indians and the Spaniards; but as
time went on, the Spaniards ceased invading the country, the Indians
were forced westward, and the forts fell into disuse. Indeed by the
opening of the Revolution, scarcely a vestige remained of these once
important forts.
For some years preceding the Revolution the white settlers on the
frontier had much trouble with the Indians, and they began to build
forts inland to the westward. In 1774, at Sherrill's Fort, about
three hundred men, women and children were massacred. These dreadful
massacres continued all during the Revolution at the instigation of
the British, and added to the many other troubles of the Georgians the
expense of keeping up these frontier forts.
At the opening of the Revolution, though the forts were in sad repair,
nevertheless there was a great rush of the Royalists and of the
Rebels to get possession of them. The Royalists were at first the
more successful. Augusta with Forts Grierson and Cornwallis, Savannah
with Forts Argyle and Halifax, Fort Barrington on the Altamaha, and
the recently erected Fort Morris south of Sunbury, were all soon in
the hands of the British. These positions were all strong and well
fortified. The Rebels were not nearly so fortunate. The forts they held
were mostly ruins. Fort McIntosh on the Satilla River was the first of
their possessions to be beseiged by the British. Captain Richard Winn
held the fort with all his powers of endurance against Colonel Fuser,
but, with his reinforcements cut off, he was soon obliged to surrender.
PROCEED AGAINST AUGUSTA.
Soon, however, the opportunity of the patriots came. 1781 was the
beginning of the change in affairs. Having seized Fort Carr and Fort
Howe as the center of operations, the Americans proceeded against
Augusta. Colonel Grierson, who was in charge of the fort that bore
his name, soon surrendered here, but Colonel Brown was obstinate
and strong in his position at Fort Cornwallis. In the end, after an
eighteen days' siege, he, too, acknowledged himself beaten.
After varying vicissitudes, the British were finally forced to give up
all their strongholds, and thus the Revolutionary forts played their
part in history.
During the years that followed there would have been no necessity for
any forts in Georgia had it not been for the Indians, especially during
the war of 1812, in which the Indians were incited by the British to
give trouble. Until 1836 the forts in most general use against the
Indians were Forts Hawkins, Mims, Scott and Mitchell.
With the passing of the Indian troubles the Georgia forts were left
to absolute ruin, and, when in 1861 the Civil War burst upon the
country, there was great need to fortify the land against the enemy.
Accordingly, Fort Pulaski, on Cockspur Island, not far from Savannah,
was strongly fortified at the cost of $80,000, and Colonel Olmstead
with 350 men was placed in command. Receiving word from the enemy to
surrender the fort, he answered, "I am here to defend the fort, not to
surrender it"; but in 1862 the brave commander was obliged to surrender
his treasure.
DUPONT EXPEDITION.
Fort McAllister, though not so strong as Fort Pulaski, being only
an earthwork with sand parapets, was notwithstanding an equally
important position. Admiral DuPont in 1863 was sent to seize it, but
the expedition failed; in 1864, General Hazen's division of General
Sherman's army took this fort from Major George W. Anderson. In his
letter north, General Sherman praised Georgia's sons for their brave
resistance. The surrender of Fort McAllister led in a few days to the
surrender of Savannah and the quick ending of the war.
After the Civil War, forts were again neglected and even the new
forts began to decay. Throughout Georgia today are to be seen her
picturesque, ivy-grown forts, and these are a source of never-failing
interest to visitors.
[Illustration: RUINS OF THE OLD FORT AT FREDERICA ON ST. SIMON'S
ISLAND, GA.]
The only regular military post now in Georgia is the beautiful Fort
McPherson. This fort covering about two hundred and thirty-six acres,
is four miles from Atlanta. It was established by the United States
government in 1867 with the name of McPherson's Barracks; it has a
postoffice and telegraph station. It has never yet been called into
service. Let us hope that it will be many days before Fort McPherson
adds its historic story to those of Georgia's other forts.
JAMES EDWARD OGLETHORPE.
James Oglethorpe came of a very old family in England. His father, Sir
Theophilus, was a soldier under James II, and went into banishment
with him. Just before the abdication of James II, James Oglethorpe,
the seventh child and fourth son, was born. At sixteen he entered the
University at Oxford, when he was twenty-two, entered the British Army
as Ensign, and was soon made Lieutenant of the Queen's Life Guards.
His soldier life was spent largely on the continent. He became heir
to the estate in Surrey and was shortly after elected to the British
Parliament, of which body he remained a member for thirty-two years. He
was an active member of the House of Commons, a Deputy Governor of the
Royal African Society and a gentleman of high position and independent
means, and withal a man of genuine piety. He conceived the plan of
establishing a colony in America, which should be a refuge for poor
people.
The following description of Oglethorpe is by Rev. Thomas B. Gregory:
"February 12, 1733, Oglethorpe and his Colonists scaled the
Yamacraw bluffs on the Savannah River and began laying the
foundations of the State of Georgia.
The Empire State of the South had its origin in the noblest
impulses that swell the human heart. Its founder, the accomplished
and philanthropic Oglethorpe, witnessing about him in the old
world the inhumanity of man to man, seeing the prisons full of
impecunious debtors, and the highways thronged with the victims of
religious fanaticism and spite, resolved that he would find in the
new world an asylum for the unfortunate ones where they should be
no more oppressed by the rich or dragooned by the bigoted.
The colony started out beautifully. The men who had been pining in
English jails because they could not pay the exactions of their
hard-hearted creditors, and the Salzburgers and others, who, in
Austria and Germany, had been made to feel the terrors of religious
fanaticism, were glad to be free, and they were only too willing
to accept the founder's will that there would be no slavery in
Georgia. The institution got a foothold much later on, but it was
not the fault of the original colonists.