CHAP, even to a spade. The guard at Bertier retreated by land, leaving nine boats behind. LXVII. 1776. June. At Chambly all the boats and baggage were brought over the rapids, except three heavy pieces of cannon. Arnold with his little garrison of three hundred men remained at Montreal till the enemy were at twelve miles' distance from him, and having, under the plea of instructions from Schuyler, seized such parcels of goods as could be serviceable to the army, crossed safely to La Prairie. All that was left of the invading army met on the seventeenth at St. John's; one half of them being sick, almost all destitute of clothing, and having no provisions except salt pork and flour. On the eighteenth the emaciated, half naked men, broken in strength and in discipline, too weak to have beaten off an assault from the enemy, as pitiable a spectacle as could be seen, removed to Isle aux Noix, where Sullivan proposed to await express orders from Schuyler. They were languidly pursued by a column under the command of Burgoyne, who excused his inactivity by pleading instructions from Carleton to hazard nothing till the column on his right should be able to coöperate with him. Meanwhile congress had introduced a new element of confusion. On the day on which Sullivan halted at Isle aux Noix, Gates, who enjoyed the friendship of John Adams, and had been elected a majorgeneral, was appointed to take command of the forces in Canada. The appointment could give Schuyler no umbrage, for he himself had uniformly refused to go into Canada; but no sooner had Gates reached Albany than the question arose whether the command would not revert to Schuyler the moment the army CHAP. should be found south of the Canada line. LXVII. June. At Isle aux Noix the men fit for duty remained 1776. for eight days, till the invalids could be taken to Crown Point. The voyage was made in leaky boats which had no awnings; so that the sick lay drenched in water and exposed to the sun. Their only food was raw pork, and hard bread or unbaked flour. A physician, who was an eye-witness said: "At the sight of so much privation and distress, I wept till I had no more power to weep." When, early in July, all the July. fragments of the army of Canada had reached Crown Point, the scene of distress produced a momentary despair. Every thing about them, their clothes, their blankets, the air, the very ground they trod on, was infected with the pestilence. "I did not look into a tent or a hut," says Trumbull, "in which I did not find either a dead or dying man." Of about five thousand men, housed under tents, or rudely built sheds, or huts of brush, exposed to the damp air of the night, full half were invalids; more than thirty new graves were made every day. In a little more than two months the northern army lost by desertion and death more than five thousand men. CHAPTER LXVIII. THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED COLONIES DEMAND INDE PENDENCE. CHAP. LXVIII June. JUNE JULY, 1776. AMERICAN independence was not an act of sudden passion, nor the work of one man or one assembly. 1776. It had been discussed in every part of the country by farmers and merchants, by mechanics and planters, by the fishermen along the coast and by the backwoodsmen of the West; in town meetings and from the pulpit; at social gatherings and around the camp fires; in newspapers and in pamphlets; in county conventions and conferences of committees; in colonial congresses and assemblies. The decision was put off only to hear the voice of the people. Virginia having uttered her will, and communicated it to all her sister colonies, proceeded as though independence had been proclaimed, to form her constitution. More counsellors waited on her assembly than they took notice of; they were aided in their deliberations by the teachings of the lawgivers of Greece; by the long line of magistrates who had framed the Roman LXVIII June. code; by those who had written best in English on CHAP. government and public freedom; but most of all by the great example of the English constitution, which 1776. was an aristocratic republic with a permanent executive. They passed by monarchy and hereditary aristocracy as unessential forms, and looked behind them for the self-subsistent elements of English liberty. The principles of the Virginia declaration of rights remained to her people as a perpetual possession and a pledge of indefinite progress in happier and more tranquil days; but for the moment internal reforms were postponed; the elective franchise was not extended; nor was anything done to abolish slavery beyond the prohibition of the slave trade. The king of England possessed the crown by birth and for life; the chief executive of Virginia owed his place to an election by the general assembly, and retained it for one year. The king was intrusted with a veto power, limited within Britain, extravagant and even retrospective in the colonies; the recollection that "by an inhuman use of his negative he had refused them permission to exclude negroes by law," misled the Virginians to withhold the veto power from the governor of their own choice. The governor like the king had at his side an elective privy council; and in the construction of this body of eight men, the desire of some permanent element of government is conspicuous. Braxton, in the scheme which he forwarded from congress, wishing to come as near as possible to the forms of monarchy, would have had the governor continue in authority during good behavior, the council of state hold their places for life, in order that they might LXVIII June. CHAP, possess all the weight, stability, and dignity due to the importance of their office. But Patrick Henry, 1776. Mason, and the other chief members of the convention did not share this dread of the power of the people; and nothing more was conceded than that two only of the eight councillors should be triennially changed, so that the whole body was to be renewed only once in the course of twelve years. The gov ernor with their advice had the appointment of militia officers and of justices of the peace; but the general assembly by joint ballot elected the treasurer, the judges, and officers of the higher courts. The general assembly like the British parliament consisted of two branches; an annual house of delegates; and a senate of twenty four members. The state was to be divided into twenty four districts for the choice of senators, of whom one fourth was to be renewed each year. The convention recognised the territorial rights of Maryland, Pennsylvania, and the Carolinas, and the limit set by the peace of 1763; otherwise it claimed jurisdiction over all the region, granted by the second charter of King James the First. The privilege of purchasing Indian titles was reserved to the public; but by resolves of the convention, a right of pre-emption was secured to actual settlers on unappropriated lands. In framing the constitution George Mason had a principal part, aided by the active participation of Richard Henry Lee and of George Wythe; a form of government, sent by Jefferson, arrived too late; but his draft of a preamble was adopted; and he was looked to by Wythe to become the author of further reform. The institutions of Virginia then established, like every thing else which is the work of man's hands, |