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.
CHAPTER XXI
VIRGINIANS LEARNING TO SHOOT BRITISH TROOPS
Rodney’s duties took him to Philadelphia during the Continental Congress. There he saw Washington, a delegate from Virginia and clad in his uniform, for he knew war must come, and that warlike dress proclaimed his belief more loudly than his voice. There also were the Adamses, from Massachusetts, Samuel and John, the latter a wise, shrewd organizer determined to have all the colonies, especially the southern, committed to the revolution he saw approaching. In this effort he used his influence, not for John Hancock of Massachusetts, who coveted the place of commander-in-chief, but for George Washington, who the day after the battle of Bunker Hill was chosen and modestly accepted with the proviso that he should receive no pay for his services. There, also, came Benjamin Franklin, just returned from England and convinced nothing remained but war; and there, too, was Jefferson, likewise certain the time had come for the colonies to declare their independence of England.