“From beginning to end it was the work of Virginia. A Virginia planter (Mason) conceived it; a Virginia lawyer (Jefferson) drafted it; and a Virginia soldier (Washington) defended it and made it a living reality.”
FIRST FLAG RAISED BY JOHN PAUL JONES.
It was John Paul Jones, a Fredericksburg man, who raised the first flag over our infant navy, and the first to throw our National flag—the Stars and Stripes—to the breeze of heaven. The National Portrait Gallery, volume 1, giving a short sketch of Jones’s life, says: “On the organization of the infant navy of the United States, in 1775, John Paul Jones received the appointment of first of the first lieutenants in the service, in which, in his station on the flag-ship Alfred, he claimed the honor of being the foremost on the approach of the Commander-in-Chief, Commodore Hopkins, to raise the new American flag. This was the old device of a rattlesnake coiled on a yellow ground, with the motto, ‘Don’t tread on me,’ which is yet partially retained in the seal of the war-office. * * * By the resolution of June 14, 1777, he was appointed to the Ranger, newly built at Portsmouth—a second instance of the kind—had the honor of hoisting for the first time the new flag of the Stars and Stripes.”
HEADS OF THE ARMY AND NAVY.
It was Fredericksburg that gave to the country the head of the armies of the United States in the great war for independence, in the person of the peerless Washington, and also furnished the greatest naval commander of that war in the person of the dauntless John Paul Jones. In addition to Washington, the small town of Fredericksburg sent to the field during the great Revolution five other generals—Gen. Hugh Mercer, Gen. George Weedon, Gen. Wm. Woodford, Gen. Thomas Posey and Gen. Gustavus B. Wallace, besides many officers of the line of high rank.
MADISON THE FATHER OF THE CONSTITUTION.
It was James Madison, of Orange county, a Virginian, born a few miles below Fredericksburg, at Port Conway, in King George county, who gave that wonderful instrument, the Constitution of the United States, to the country, that has been described as the “grand palladium of our liberty, the golden chain of our union, the broad banner of freemen, a terror to tyrants and a shining light to patriots.”
Hon. James D. Richardson, of Tennessee, in his great work of compiling the messages and papers of the Presidents, with short biographical sketches of each, after recounting the labors, works and achievements of Mr. Madison, says: “It was not for these things or any of them his fame is to endure. His act and policy in the framing of the marvellous instrument, the constitution of our country, his matchless advocacy of it with his voice and pen, and his adherence to its provisions at all times and in all exigencies, obtained for him the proudest title ever bestowed upon a man, the title of the ‘Father of the Constitution.’ It is for this ‘act and policy’ he will be remembered by posterity.”
JUDGE WALLACE ON THE CONSTITUTION.
Hon. A. Wellington Wallace, at one time Judge of the Corporation Court of Fredericksburg, contributes for this work the following paper on the Constitution of the United States: