Read The Conquest: The True Story of Lewis and Clark Page 5
III
_EXIT DUNMORE_
On the last day of that same August in which Meriwether Lewis was bornand Andrew Lewis was leading the Virginia volunteers against theShawnees, Patrick Henry and George Washington set out on horsebacktogether for Philadelphia, threading the bridle-paths of uncutforests, and fording wide and bridgeless rivers to the ContinentalCongress.
It had been nine years since Patrick Henry, "alone and unadvised," hadthrilled the popular heart with his famous first resolutions againstthe Stamp Act. From the lobby of the House of Burgesses, ThomasJefferson, a student, looked that morning at the glowing orator andsaid in his heart, "He speaks as Homer wrote." It was an alarm bell, acall to resistance. "Caesar had his Brutus, Charles the First hisCromwell, and George the Third"--how the staid, bewigged, beruffledold Burgesses rose in horror!--"and George the Third may profit bytheir example."
"Most indecent language," muttered the Burgesses as they hurried outof the Capitol, pounding their canes on the flagstone floor. But theyoung men lifted him up, and for a hundred years an aureole hasblazed around the name of Patrick Henry.
The Congress at Philadelphia adjourned, and the delegates ploddedtheir weary way homeward through winter mire. From his Indian war LordDunmore came back to Williamsburg to watch the awakening of Virginia.
Then came that breathless day when Dunmore seized and carried off thecolony's gunpowder.
The Virginians promptly demanded its restoration. The minute men flewto arms.
"By the living God!" cried Dunmore, "if any insult is offered to me orto those who have obeyed my orders, I will declare freedom to theslaves and lay the town in ashes."
Patrick Henry called together the horsemen of Hanover and marched uponWilliamsburg. The terrified Governor sent his wife and daughters onboard a man-of-war and fortified the palace. And on came PatrickHenry. Word flew beyond the remotest Blue Ridge. Five thousand menleaped to arms and marched across country to join Patrick Henry. Butat sunrise on the second day a panting messenger from Dunmore paid himfor the gunpowder. Patrick Henry, victorious, turned about and marchedhome to Hanover.
Again Lord Dunmore summoned the House of Burgesses. They came, grimmen in hunting shirts and rifles. Then his Lordship set a trap at thedoor of the old Powder Magazine. Some young men opened it for arms andwere shot. Before daylight Lord Dunmore evacuated the palace and fledfrom the wrath of the people. On shipboard he sailed up and down forweeks, laying waste the shores of the Chesapeake, burning Norfolk andcannonading the fleeing inhabitants.
Andrew Lewis hastened down with his minute men. His old Scotch ire wasup as he ran along the shore. He pointed his brass cannon at Dunmore'sflagship, touched it off, and Lord Dunmore's best china was shatteredto pieces.
"Good God, that I should ever come to this!" exclaimed the unhappyGovernor.
He slipped his cables and sailed away in a raking fire, and with thattragic exit all the curtains of the past were torn and through therent the future dimly glimmered.
After Dunmore's flight, every individual of the nobler sort felt thatthe responsibility of the country depended upon him, and straightwaygrew to that stature. Men looked in one another's faces and said, "Weourselves are Kings."
Around the great fire little William Clark heard his father andbrothers discuss these events, and vividly remembered in after yearsthe lightning flash before the storm. He had seen his own brothers goout to guard Henry from the wrath of Dunmore on his way to the secondContinental Congress. And now Dunmore had fled, and as by the irony offate, on the day after the signing of the Declaration of Independence,Patrick Henry became the first American Governor of Virginia, withheadquarters at the palace.