RALLYING VIRGINIA’S MINUTE MEN
The evening after Rodney returned to Charlottesville, Angus rode over on a raw-boned steed that evidently had outlived his day for leaping fences and following the hounds.
“What d’ye think of him, Rod?”
“Why, he’s some horse, looks like a blooded one,” replied Rodney, speaking as favourably as he could, for he liked Angus and knew the boy had been a little envious of late. “Where did you get him?”
“He’s one Squire Herndon got down on the Pamunkey. Reckon I made a good trade, fer I found he was blind in one eye an’ the squire took him fer a bad debt an’ already had more hosses than he could feed.”
“You ought to trade him off and make a good thing.”
“Don’t reckon I want to trade right away. I ’low after plantin’ I’m goin’ to ride round a bit. Thar’s a heap o’ things a feller can learn by travellin’ around. You know that.”
“I suppose so. Tell you what, Angus; I’ve got to go to Williamsburg next week. Let’s go together. I’ve never been there. It’s the capital of the Old Dominion and, when the Burgesses are in session, one can see more of the aristocracy in Williamsburg than in any other place. Besides, the famous William and Mary College is there. You know many of our greatest men went there, the Byrds, the Lees and Randolphs, and Thomas Jefferson, he was a student there. I’ve heard that he would like to have a college right here in Charlottesville run according to a plan of his own. I’ll wager if he wants it he’ll get it if he lives. Yes, we’ll ride down there and have a fine time.”
“That we will fer sure, if we go. Reckon I can fix it. Think we can see Patrick Henry? I want to see him. They do say he can talk the birds right out o’ the trees.”
“You never heard anything like it. He isn’t much to look at, but when he speaks he can make the hair in the back of your neck stand out straight like the ruff of a cockerel in a fight.”
“I hear the fellers talkin’. They’d march right to Joppa if he’d lead ’em.”
“Don’t believe he’s much of a soldier, but he surely is an orator.”
Angus rode home whistling.
That evening Mrs. Allison received the following letter in which the reader may be interested, as was Rodney:
“Pryndale, Va., March 28th, 1775.
“Dear Aunt Harriet:––I threw away my crutches this morning, and tried to celebrate by dancing a jig. I’m sure I should have succeeded to my later sorrow but for Aunt Betty’s horrified look, whereupon I sat down to write you instead.
“Lawrence Enderwood thought Pryndale prosy and I had begun to believe him when lo, two highwaymen set upon us; a knight errant mounted on a splendid steed rides to the rescue; Firefly takes fright and runs away with a helpless maiden hanging by one foot to the stirrup, and both hands in the mane, expecting every moment to be dashed in pieces and actually thinking of every wicked thing she ever did; my, but it was an awful panorama! A snorting steed is heard in pursuit, the knight errant spurs him on and seizes the bridle of the running horse, rescues the hapless maiden, who has discovered that she is so wicked she wants to live, and then, mirabile dictu! the knight errant is discovered to be no less a personage than one Rodney Allison. Excuse me, Auntie, if I express the opinion that you’ve not brought him up right; he’s too shy and actually had to be urged to call on his old playmate. Seriously, I would have seen him before he fled, had I known he was there. Aunt Betty didn’t tell me. You don’t know what a shock it was to papa and me, the news Rodney brought of the death of Uncle David. I turned my face to the wall and cried, which as you may know I’m not in the habit of doing. Not till after he had left Pryndale did I realize what 178 I owed to him. He was much superior to any teacher I had in London and he was so patient and kindly with us, imps that we were.
“Since you left Pryndale things seem much changed and for the worse. Papa is all out of sorts with what he terms the disloyalty of the people. He insists we are being driven into a wicked war by a few hot-headed men together with those who are so ambitious they would sacrifice their country. I wish I knew the right of it. People who used to be friendly now look the other way. Only the other day Gobber’s urchins were playing by the road when I rode past their cabin and the dirty imps made faces and cried out, ‘Tory, I hate Tories.’
“Next month papa and I are going to Philadelphia and he may later sail for London. Somehow, it seems to me as if I weren’t coming back. I suppose being shut up in the house with my sprained ankle makes me spleeny. Write me in the Quaker city, won’t you, and address care of my uncle, Jacob Derwent. Now don’t forget.
“But I know I have tired you already, so here’s good-bye and my regards to Rodney, not forgetting Nat, splendid fellow.
“Your affectionate niece,
“Elizabeth Danesford.”
Rodney and Angus arrived at Williamsburg April 19th, the very day the Massachusetts minute men were hanging on the flanks of the running British like 179 so many angry hornets. The following day, the minute men of that part of Virginia were to be aroused by a similar cause, the attempt of the representatives of England to get possession of the colony’s powder.
It will be remembered that it was in the night that the British troops sneaked out of Boston to go after the powder stored at Concord. It was also in the night that the royal governor, Lord Dunmore, secretly removed the powder from the old arsenal in Williamsburg and put it aboard the British vessel Magdalen in the York River. The British in Boston didn’t get the powder, but Dunmore’s men did, only there were but fifteen half-barrels of it.
The population of Williamsburg at the time was only about two thousand, and it must be remembered that the country round about was not so thickly settled as Massachusetts, consequently the minute men couldn’t assemble so quickly; but there was buzzing enough in the morning when it was discovered what Lord Dunmore had done. The minute men of the town were for marching to Dunmore’s house and seizing him, but cooler heads prevailed.
The two boys had spent the previous day looking over the capital and visiting the college at the other end of the one long street, three quarters of a mile distant. They lodged at the famous Raleigh Tavern, which had sheltered the most prominent men of the day, and so were right in the midst of the hubbub when the excitement began. Out in the street they watched the people assemble and listened to the talk. 180 When some one proposed marching on the “palace,” a tipsy fellow cried out, “You jes’ th’ feller t’ go.”
Then when another bystander interfered and tried to take him away, he began to struggle, and was being roughly handled when a fat, pompous man bristled up, saying, “Treat him kindly.”
At that moment the drunken man, swinging his arms about wildly, struck the pompous man on the head, knocking his old three-cornered hat into the dust.
The change in the fat philanthropist was marvellous, for he jumped up and down crying, “Kill him, kill him.”
The crowd laughed. A man came running toward them saying, “They’ve sent for Patrick Henry.”
“I’ll see him, after all,” exclaimed Angus.
“I’ve got a message for him, so we had better ride to his home in New Castle. We may meet him,” Rodney replied.
“I want to see him and I want to see the fun.”
“Want to keep your cake and eat it too,” replied Rodney.
Just then a report spread through the crowd that Dunmore had seized the powder for the purpose of sending it to another county where he feared there would be an uprising of the blacks.
“We’re likely to have one of our own,” exclaimed a bystander.
An old woman, somewhat deaf, cried, “The blacks are risin’! I knowed it. I didn’t dream of snakes fer nothin’.”
“If I had your imagination, Granny Snodgrass, I’d make molasses taffy out o’ moonshine,” remarked a pert miss.
“Looks to me, Angus, as though these people were going to do their fighting with their tongues,” said Rodney. “So let’s get away to New Castle.”
When they reached New Castle, late the next day, they found Mr. Henry busy assembling the volunteers for a march on Williamsburg to demand return of the powder, also to see to it that Dunmore did not take the money in the colonial treasury. These men were called “gentlemen independents of Hanover,” and they were manly looking, resolute men, and well armed. By the time they had reached Doncaster’s, within sixteen miles of Williamsburg, their number was increased to one hundred and fifty.
“Dunmore will wish he hadn’t when he’s seen ’em,” remarked Angus.
Dunmore was frightened before he saw them and sent Corbin, the receiver general, to meet them and make terms with them, which he did, paying three hundred and thirty pounds for the powder, surely all it was worth.
“I’ve concluded, Angus,” said Rodney, “from what I can see and hear, that Mr. Henry hasn’t cared so much about the powder as he does for an excuse to rouse the country, get the men together and encourage them by backing Lord Dunmore down,” all of which indicated that the lad had become a shrewd observer.
After the powder was paid for, Patrick Henry, who 182 was a delegate to the Colonial Congress, set out for Philadelphia. Lord Dunmore, however, had been badly frightened, and he issued a proclamation against him, and declared that if the people didn’t behave he would offer freedom to the negroes and burn the town; he also had cannon placed around his house, proceedings which, it is easy to understand, made the citizens very angry.
The boys returned to Charlottesville and Angus immediately joined a company of volunteers, declaring if there was to be a war he was going.
By this time they had heard the news of the battle of Lexington, brought all the way from Boston by mounted messengers riding by relays.
“That means war,” Rodney remarked to his mother. How he wanted to go, to do as Angus had done and join the volunteers! But he hadn’t the heart to propose it after seeing the look which came into his mother’s face. It sometimes happens, however, that war comes to those who do not go to war, and so it happened to Rodney Allison.