Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 16.djvu/438

 432 Southern Historical Society Papers,

house and demanded that Governor Tryon should desist from all at- tempts to execute the Stamp Act, and forced him to deliver up Houston, the Stampmaster for North Carolina. Having seized upon him, they carried him to the market-house, and there made him take an oath never to attempt to execute the duties of his office as Stamp- master.

" It was nearly ten years after that the Boston tea-party assembled, when a number of citizens, disguised as Indians, went on board a ship and threw overboard the tea imported in her. This was done in the night by men in disguise, and was directed against a defence- less ship. But the North Carolina movement, ten years earlier in point of time, occurred in open day, and was made against the Gov- ernor himself, ensconced in his palace, and by men who scorned dis- guise." Senator T, L. Clingham.

Every school-boy knows of the Boston tea-party of 1773; how many of my intelligent audience know of the Wilmington party of 1765? Yea, verily, the Old South has sorely needed historians of its own.

Virginia gave seven Presidents and many illustrious statesmen and warriors to the nation. She gave Patrick Henry, the war-trumpet of the revolution, Washington, its sword, and Jefferson, its mouth- piece. When independence and white-winged peace came to the colonies, she gave to the Union that vast northwest territory, out of which have been carved the great States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin.

Oh, but generosity does not pay. Possibly the " mother of States and statesmen " thought so when the soldiers of these five great States swarmed over her soil, and grand old Virginia became Dis- trict No. i.

I'll now take up the second question: " Did the Old South furnish brave soldiers?" The commander-in-chief in the rebellion against Great Britain was the Southern-born Washington, of whom Byron lamented that the earth had no more seed to produce another like unto him, and of whom Wellington said : " He was the grandest, the sublimest, and yet withal the plainest and simplest character in the world's history." That the Old South did its duty in this war, I will try to show, notwithstanding imperfect records and deceptive pension rolls. Tlie Old South went nobly to the assistance of their Northern brethren, who were first attacked, and nearly all the battle- fields of the North were drenched with Southern blood. In the retreat from Long Island, Smallwood's Maryland regiment distin-