Both remained silent for half a minute, each, I have no doubt, controlling an impulse to explode. Relations between the colonies and England resembled an open powder-keg. With a bow that might indicate he desired to avoid a dangerous subject the governor shifted the conversation by remarking:
“After all, it doesn’t matter what Pennsylvania thinks, so long as we know her interests are hostile to Virginia’s. I am governor of Virginia. I will serve her interests, and by gad! if the Quakers don’t like our way they can chew their thumbs.”
“We are one in that!” heartily cried the colonel.
Governor Dunmore frowned down at his gold shoe-buckles and wearily said:
“They say I want war. But the Williamsburg paper has insisted on this war since last March. Truth is, the border wants the war. And let me confess to you, Colonel Lewis, that the Earl of Dartmouth, as Secretary of State for the colonies, will express His Majesty’s great displeasure to me before this war is over.
“England does not want his campaign to go through. Taking the position I have means I will meet with disfavor and criticism at home.”
Turning to me, he querulously complained.
“And it’s you people along the border who make the war necessary. It’s the horrible massacres of harmless Indians that brought the trouble upon me.”
This was grossly untrue and I countered:
“Even Logan doesn’t claim that. It’s been give and take as to the killings, with the Indians getting the better of it in scalps. A general war can result only from the Indians’ belief that our settlers are crossing the mountains to settle in the Kentucky country.”