the rising tide would not release him till three o'clock next morning! Such luck was too good to be thrown away.

The captain of the packet had no sooner told the prominent merchant, Mr. Brown, than the merchant told one of the captains who was in his serv. ice; and this captain was seen to hurry off, wearing a pleasant expression of countenance. Soon a drum was heard in the streets, and then a voice proclaiming the forlorn situation of the Gaspee. Cordial invitation was called out to all citizens who would like to bear a hand in the destruction of the Gaspee to meet at Savage's tavern at firstdark. The summons was gratefully obeyed, and by nine o'clock eight boats, manned by the representative citizens of the town, were rowing toward the Gaspee.

At midnight they reached the British vessel, surprised the one sailor who was on the watch; shot the lieutenant who came hurrying to the deck in his night-shirt, boarded the ship, and easily mastered the leaderless, half-awake, and wholly unprepared British sailors.

Landing the captives on shore, where every care was taken of the wounded Dudingston, the assailants set fire to the Gaspee, and by sun-up she was a smoking hulk; while the daring men who had boarded her were rowing home to breakfast and congratulations.

The English Government was deeply stirred, for the burning of the Gaspee was an overt act, flagrant and defiant, of premeditated high treason. Who did it? That was the only question of doubt. Proclamations, offering large rewards, were issued without results. Royal commissioners were appointed to investigate, and troops were put at their service to assist them in bringing the culprits to punishment. Again there were no results; investigation failed to identify the guilty. Parliament lost its head, and passed an act to punish with the death penalty any person who should destroy any object belonging to an English war-vessel-an act so general in its terms that it could have been held to embrace the most trifling article of ship furniture, equipment, or naval uniform. Worst of all, the persons accused were to be sent to England for trial.

Mr. Sydney George Fisher says that "it is difficult to see how the government could have been more conciliatory and forbearing."

When the Virginia Assembly met in the spring of 1773, the Gaspee incident, the commission of inquiry which had been created, and the act of Parliament which threatened the entire citizenship of America with loss of trial by jury in the American courts, had rearoused the spirit of resistance to Great Britain. The younger members of the House, Patrick Henry, the two Lees, Dabney Carr,

Thomas Jefferson, and one or two others, broke away from the more conservative counsels of the older leaders, held private meetings apart, and mapped out an aggressive policy. Richard Henry Lee proposed the creation of a committee of correspondence, and Jefferson reduced the plan to writing. Dabney Carr was made their spokesman to the House, and on March 12, 1773, in a speech of eloquence and power, the young tribune moved the famous resolutions which were adopted unanimously, and which caused Governor Dunmore to dissolve the House. These resolutions, citing what had taken place in Rhode Island and in Parliament, proposed a Standing Committee of Correspondence and Inquiry to obtain information of all proceedings of Parliament in regard to the colonies, to keep up and maintain a correspondence and communication with the other colonies, and to report from time to time to the House. This committee consisted of the Speaker, Peyton Randolph, Robert C. Nicholas, Richard Henry Lee, Edmund Pendleton, Patrick Henry, Dabney Carr, Archibald Cary, and Thomas Jefferson.1

The dispute as to whether Massachusetts or Virginia should have the credit of organizing the

1 The True Thomas Jefferson represents the secret meetings of the younger members as being held in 1772, and George Washington is named as one of the group. The meetings were not held in 1772 and Washington was not one of the group. Washington did not get left by the procession, but he did not lead it. Henry was the real leader.

こ

revolutionary movement may be left where Bancroft put it:

"Virginia laid the foundation of our Union. Massachusetts organized a province. Virginia promoted a confederacy."

Brilliant Dabney Carr! We see him here at his best, at his highest. We see him unfurl the flag of union, see him on a pinnacle of patriotism from which he surveys every colony, planning for all, hoping for all, inspiring and uniting all. The warm impulse of brotherhood opens his arms to the North as well as to the South; his rapt vision takes in the future as well as the present and the past. "The cause of one, the cause of all," is the gist of his speech and the pith of his plan; and while Rhode Island has touched the chord, the music is that of union-union of hearts and of hands. His last speech and his best. His one great appearance in a national rôle; his almost unconscious placing of the corner-stone of the Republic! We see him here with the radiance of inspiration upon his handsome face, the clarion call of heroic patriotism on his lips; we shall see him no more at all. It was only yesterday, as it were, that Jefferson saw him in his "very small house, with a table, half a dozen chairs, one or two servants," yet the happiest man in the universe. For Martha Jefferson, his devoted young wife, was by his side, and on his knee his little boy. "He speaks, he thinks,

he dreams of nothing but this young son. Every incident in life he so takes as to render it a source of pleasure." Independent of riches; contented in his poverty; happy in his wife and child; studious, but no recluse; ambitious, but in no feverish haste to rise; patriotic and earnest, but not morbidly intense; here he was, in 1770, a philosopher whose healthy enjoyment of life amid comparative privations excited generous admiration in all who knew him. Thirty-five days after he laid the corner-stone of what was to be the greatest of all republics, death darkened that small house where he had been so unenviously happy, draped the poor wife in the weeds of widowhood, and to the lips of his little children brought the wail of orphanhood. He was only thirty years old-died in the very glory of young manhood, died when his readings and his studies, his hopes and his plans and his dreams seemed just to be leading forward to the harvests of steadied efforts.

A lost leader! Yet it was his to speak the word that lives, to do the work that is imperishable, to set the example which is an inspiration for all the years to come.1

The Virginia Committee of Correspondence met the day after the dissolution of the House and began its labors. They despatched a copy of their

1 In his five-volume History of the American People, Dr. Woodrow Wilson finds space for Dabney Carr's name-just the bare mention of his name. The reader is told absolutely nothing about him.