Though a brute and a dunce, like the rest of the clan,
I can govern as well as most Englishmen can;
And if I'm a drunkard, I still am a man:
I missed it some how in comparing my notes,
Or six years ago I had joined with your votes;
Not aided the negroes in cutting your throats.[126]
Although with so many hard names I was branded,
I hope you'll believe, (as you will if you're candid)
That I only performed what my master commanded.
Give me lands, whores and dice, and you still may be free;
Let who will be master, we sha'nt disagree;
If king or if Congress—no matter to me;—
I hope you will send me an answer straitway,
For 'tis plain that at Charleston we cannot long stay—
And your humble petitioner ever shall pray.
Dunmore.
Charleston, Jan. 6, 1782.
[124] First published in the Freeman's Journal, February 13, 1782, and printed almost without change in the various editions. Lord Dunmore was appointed Royal Governor of Virginia in 1770, but, after a stormy career was forced to flee from the colony after the news of Lexington had reached the Southern patriots.
[125] "The last Royal Governors: Robert Eden of Maryland; Joseph Martin of North Carolina; William Franklin of New Jersey; William Tryon of New York."—Duyckinck.
[126] After the second patriot convention assembled in Richmond, Va., in March, 1775, to take measures toward putting the colony in a state of defence, Dunmore, "To intimidate the Virginians, issued proclamations and circulated a rumor that he would incite an insurrection of their slaves.... 'The whole country,' said he, 'can easily be made a solitude; and by the living God! if any insult is offered to me or to those who have obeyed my orders, I will declare freedom to the slaves and lay the town in ashes.'"—Bancroft.