[96] 4 Am. Arch. i. 350.
[97] Campbell, Hist. Va. 573.
[98] 4 Am. Arch. i. 350, 351. The narrative of these events as given by Wirt and by Campbell has several errors. They seem to have been misled by Jefferson, who, in his account of the business (Works, i. 122, 123), is, if possible, rather more inaccurate than usual.
[99] Campbell, Hist. Va. 573.
[100] Mason to Martin Cockburn, Va. Hist. Reg. iii. 27-29.
[101] The full text of this letter of instructions is given in 4 Am. Arch. i. 689, 690. With this should be compared note C. in Jefferson’s Works, i. 122-142.
CHAPTER VIII
IN THE FIRST CONTINENTAL CONGRESS
On the morning of Tuesday, the 30th of August, Patrick Henry arrived on horseback at Mt. Vernon, the home of his friend and colleague, George Washington; and having remained there that day and night, he set out for Philadelphia on the following morning, in the company of Washington and of Edmund Pendleton. From the jottings in Washington’s diary,[102] we can so far trace the progress of this trio of illustrious horsemen, as to ascertain that on Sunday, the 4th of September, they “breakfasted at Christiana Ferry; dined at Chester;” and reached Philadelphia for supper—thus arriving in town barely in time to be present at the first meeting of the Congress on the morning of the 5th.
John Adams had taken pains to get upon the ground nearly a week earlier; and carefully gathering all possible information concerning his future associates, few of whom he had then ever seen, he wrote in his diary that the Virginians were said to “speak in raptures about Richard Henry Lee [Pg 102] and Patrick Henry, one the Cicero, and the other the Demosthenes, of the age.”[103]