The leader-enterprise. [volume] (Fitzgerald, Ga.) 1912-1915, 1913-05-09

llullla1.On OF uhe men TOT wnom ne
had labored.
Meanwhile events darkened omi-
nously.
A new administration had been
formed ~ England under Lord North
and had begun its government by re-
pealing all the taxes of 1863 except
that on tea. But it was parliament
right to tax them that the colonlsts
were fighting, not the taxes them
selves, and one tax was as hatetul as
a hundred.
The Boston Affair.
The year had been marked in SIMS
ter fashion, moreover, by brolI De-
tween townsmen and troops in tho
streets Of Boston, in which arms had
been used and men slain, and in the
heated imaginations Of the colonlsts
the affair had taken on the ugly as
pect of massacre.
The year 1911 went quietly enough
for Virginians. Botetourt was dead,
and that good merchant of York, Will
liam Nelson, president of the council,
sat in the place of authority through
out the year. Although the whole
country refused the taxed tea, the at
tention of the ministers, as it hap
pened, was fixed chiefly upon Massa-
chusetts, where trade centered at
growing port and opposition mad
local habitation.
Quiet in Virginia.
In Virginia there was no place TO
send troops to, unless the whole coun-
try were occupied and SO long as
Mr.. Nelson was acting governor,
Colonel Washington could go without
preoccupation to the races, and gentle
men everywhere follow their own de-
vices in the quiet counties.
There was rioting-rebellion, even
in North Carolina, so uneasily did az
fairs go there; but Governor Tryon
was soldier as well as a despot, and
did not need to trouble his neighbors
about that.
An Unpopular Governor.
1t was not until the first months OF
1772 that Virginians began to read
plain signs of change in the face of
their new governor, John Murray, earl
of Dunmore-a dark and distant man,
who seemed to the Virginians to come
like a satrap to his province, who
brought a soldier with him for secre~
tary and confidential adviser, set up
fixed etiquette to be observed by all
who would approach him, spoke
abruptly and without courtesy, dis
played in all things an arbitrary tenn
per, and took more interest, it pres
emily appeared, in acquiring tracts of
western land than in conducting the
government of the colony.
The year of his coming was marked
by the secret destruction of the reve-
nue. schooner Gaspe in Rhode Island,
| and by many significant flaws of tenn
per here and there throughout the col
onies; and 1775 saw affairs at last
come to a crisis.
Dunmore and the Burgesses.
Dunmore had summoned the bur
aesses to meet him upon his first COM
| ing, but had liked their proud temper
as little as they liked his, and was
careful not to call them together again
till March, 1773, though he had prom
Used to convene them earlier.
| There was instant trouble.
In. view of the affair of the Gaspe,
parliament had again resolved upon
the trial of malcontents in England,
and the burgesses were hot at seeing
the sentiments of the colonies so
fiouted. Conservative men would still
have waited to try events, but their
fellow-members of quicker pulse were
diligent TO disappoint them.
Leadership fell to those who were
bold enough to take it; and Patrick
Henry, Richard Henry Lee, Dabney
Carr and Thomas Jefferson, radicals
all, drew together, a self-constituted
committee of guidance.
Evening after evening they met in
a private room at the Raleigh, with
now and again one or two other like
what should be done.
Richard Henry Lee proposed that
| the colonies should be invited to join
Virginia in appointing committees of
correspondence, through which to de-
wise steady concert of action, and that
Virginia's committee, to be appointed
at once, should be instructed to look
into the character of the new court of
trial lately established in Rhode Is
! land.
an Understanding With New England.
Dabney Carr was directed to move
the resolutions, and the eloquence of
Lee and Henry won for them an in
slant and hearty acceptance.
Dunmore promptly dissolved the as
sembly, and Washington was free to
set out for New York to place Jacky
| Gusts at Kings college, lingering on
the way in Philadelphia to see the
races, and pick up the talk of the
hour during half a dozen evenings at
the rooms of the Jockey club, at the
balls and assemblies of the gay town,
and at the hospitable tables of his
| friends.
Washineton's Amusing Letters.
The oDening of the year had found