**** These documents were drawn by George Mason, the friend and associate of Washington. Mr. Jefferson then a member of the Continental Congress, also prepared a constitution and sent it to the Convention. It arrived a day or two after the adoption of Mason's form. The convention prefixed Jefferson's preamble to it, which, in a great degree, resembles the Declaration of Independence.—See Tucker's Life of Jefferson.
* This device was upon many flags in the army and navy of the Revolution. The expression "Don't tread on me," had a double signification It might be said in a supplicating tone, "Don't tread on me or menacingly, "Don't tread on me."
Declaration of Independence proclaimed at Williamsburg.—Officers under the new Government.—Freneau's Prophecy
a scourge. Over the device was placed the word Virginia; and beneath, Sic semper tyrannis. "Thus we serve tyrants." * The convention adjourned on the fifth of July, and the government under the new Constitution was established. **
The Declaration of Independence was proclaimed at Williamsburg on the twenty-fifth of July, amid great rejoicings, and from that time until 1779, when the government offices were removed to Richmond, the old Capitol of the commonwealth for eighty years, was the center of Revolutionary energy in Virginia.
Here let us close the chronicle and depart for Yorktown, the scene of the last great triumph of the patriot armies of the Revolution.
* The device on the reverse of the great seal is a group of three figures. In the center is Liberty, with her wand and cap; on the right side, Ceres, with a cornucopia in one hand, and an ear of wheat in the other; and on her left side, Eternity, holding in one hand the globe on which rests the Phoenix.
** The following-named gentlemen were appointed to fill the respective offices provided for by the Constitution: Patrick Henry, governor; John Page, Dudley Digges, John Taylor, John Blair, Benjamin Harrison of Berkeley, Bartholomew Dandridge, Charles Carter, and Benjamin Harrison of Brandon, counselors of state; Thomas Whiting, John Hutchings, Champion Travis, Thomas Newton, Jr., and George Webb, commissioners of admiralty; Thomas Everard, and James Cooke, commissioners for settling accounts; and Edmund Randolph, attorney general. The General Assembly of Virginia met at Williamsburg for the first time on the seventeenth of October, 1776. Then commenced her glorious career as a sovereign state of a "great and free confederacy. It was a joyful day for her patriot sons; and her sages, scanning the future with the eye of faith and hope, were prone to exclaim, in the words of Freneau, written a year before:
"I see, I see
Freedom's established reign; cities and men,
Numerous as sands upon the ocean shore,
And empires rising where the sun descends!
The Ohio soon shall glide by many a town
Of note; and where the Mississippi's stream,
By forests shaded, now runs sweeping on,
Nations shall grow, and states not less in fame
Than Greece and Rome of old!
We, too, shall boast
Our Scipio's, Solon's, Cato's, sages, chiefs
That in the lapse of time yet dormant lie,
Waiting the joyous hour of life and light.
Oh snatch me hence, ye muses, to those days
When, through the veil of dark antiquity,
A race shall hear of us as things remote,
That blossom'd in the morn of days!"
Ride to Yorktown.—William Nelson, Esq.—Location and Appearance of Yorktown.—Its early Settlement