and judicial, naming the various officers and fixing the salaries.

Governor Wright fled to England, and did not return until July, 1779, when he again set up a brief, rickety royal government.

CHAPTER XI

PATRICK HENRY IN COMMAND

UPON the retreat of Dunmore, the government of Virginia passed into the hands of the Committee of Safety. Patrick Henry was made Commanderin-Chief of the military forces.

Dunmore, at Norfolk, proclaimed martial law, appealed to the slaves to join him—offering them freedom-and he ravaged the shores of Chesapeake Bay. British and negroes overrun Hampton, burning, destroying, perpetrating every outrage.

The Committee of Safety sent Colonel Wood-, ford, with a small body of Virginia troops, toward Norfolk in December, 1775. When the Americans reached Great Bridge, Captain Fordyce, at the head of about sixty British grenadiers, attacked the breast works which the Virginians had hastily thrown up. A hot fire met the British, and their commander fell. He rose, brushing his knees as though he had merely stumbled, and he cheered his men onward until he was within twenty paces of the breastworks. There he fell dead. His grenadiers broke, and fled to the British fort. (December 9, 1775.)1

'John Marshall, afterward Chief Justice of the United States, was a lieutenant of Woodford's company in this action.

Dunmore left Norfolk, and took refuge in the English ships.

If any spur was needed to make the restless steed of revolution spring forward at mad gallop, the British now struck it home.

Falmouth was wantonly destroyed at the North; and at the South the chief city of Virginia was inhumanly bombarded and burned!

As provocations to furious wrath and desperate desire for revenge, the Boston Massacre and Bunker Hill were as nothing as compared to Falmouth and Norfolk. Bunker Hill was manly fighting, in the open, against men entrenched and ready; the other was brutal and cowardly destruction for the sake of destruction-was the murder, in reckless, insolent barbarity, of unarmed men, helpless women and children.

British ships destroyed Falmouth on October 17, 1775; British guns and torches destroyed Norfolk January 1, 1776. On January 10, 1776, the Pennsylvania Journal announced:

"This day was published, and is now selling by Robert Bell, price two shillings, Common Sense,' addressed to the inhabitants of North America." Published and now selling!

A timelier pamphlet never hit the market. It came as the news of Norfolk came. The glare of burning homes was on its pages as the people read; the cries of women and children, fleeing for

their lives as British guns poured cannon-balls into the streets, were in the ears of the American patriot as he heard the ringing voice of Thomas Paine calling him to freedom!

Like torch to dry stubble, like spark to powder, the pamphlet set the American world on fire. It "burst from the press with an effect which has rarely been produced by types and paper in any age or country." "The great American cause owed as much to the pen of Paine as to the sword of Washington."

Revolutionary governments were already in control of most of the colonies. The Carolinas, Virginia, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Maryland, Georgia, were practically independent, having drifted steadily in that direction ever since the formation of Committees of Correspondence.

Thomas Nelson, said to be the richest man in Virginia, moved the Virginia Convention (May 15, 1776) to instruct her delegates in Congress to propose a declaration of independence, declaring the United Colonies free and independent States. The resolutions were unanimously adopted, the next day the troops at Williamsburg received them with shouts and with boom of cannon. The American flag was run up on the Capitol, and at night Williamsburg was illuminated.

George Mason then prepared his celebrated Bill of Rights and the Virginia Constitution of 1776

-the first written Constitution, completely organizing a government, which was ever adopted by a free people.

Richard Henry Lee presented in Congress the resolutions which Virginia had instructed her delegates to present, and supported them with his customary eloquence and zeal. Great differences of opinion still existed among the delegates, all being patriots, but some being hot while others were only warm, and a few were somewhat cold.

John Adams was the tower of strength to the resolutions, "the colossus of that debate."

Pennsylvania was not ready, South Carolina was not ready, others wanted more time-fearing to burn the bridge.

It was at this period that the American patriots won their first decisive victory over Great Britain. British ships, under Sir Peter Parker,' attacked Fort Sullivan, in South Carolina, and were thoroughly beaten by raw troops screened behind palmetto-logs.

England's strong arm was her navy; at Charleston she had some of her best ships, commanded by some of her best officers.

A plain citizen, whose chief fitness to defend a position was his courage, undertook to hold a fort

'Not Sir Hyde Parker, as Professor Channing, of Harvard, states in that Student's History.