Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume V.djvu/662

 658 DAN DANA de-camp of Rochambeau, and subsequently served under Biron as colonel of dragoons. He was raised to the rank of general, and at Valmy, Sept. 20, 1792, commanded a division under Dumouriez. At Jemappes, Nov. 6, 1792, he had the principal part in the brilliant victory over the Austrians, but was subsequently de- feated at Maestricht, and shared in the defeat at Neerwinden, March 18, 1793. After the defection of Dumouriez Dampierre succeeded as commander-in-chief, and undertook the of- fensive against superior numbers of the enemy. He was repulsed on May 6, but renewed the action the following day in the forest of Vi- cogne, and received a fatal wound. The at- tack was repelled, but the French retired in good order. The convention, which had been on the point of sending him to the guillotine, decreed public honors to his memory. DAN. I. The name of the fifth son of Jacob, and of the tribe descended from him. Dan was the first son of Bilha, Rachel's maid, and own brother to Naphtali, and in a sense con- nected with Joseph and Benjamin. There is no record of his life ; and only one son is at- tributed to him, though his name Hushim is of plural form, and perhaps indicates not an individual but a family. "When the people were numbered near Sinai, Dan was the largest tribe except Judah, containing 62,700 men able to serve; and on entering Canaan they had increased 1,700. It was the last tribe to re- ceive its portion of land, which, though fertile, was the smallest of the twelve, lying in the S. W. part of the country, near the Mediter- ranean. This ground was disputed by the rem- nant of the Canaanites, and the Danites became necessarily a rude warlike people, and their principal settlement was called Mahaneh-Dan (the encampment of Dan). The tribe is men- tioned as late as the time of David, but after that seems to have lost its identity, its people mingling with the other tribes. II. A city in the northern part of Palestine, familiar in the expression "from Dan even to Beersheba." The city was originally called Laish, and was inhabited by people connected with Sidon. A wandering tribe of Danites, tired of their har- assed life at home, captured it, and named it after their ancestor, setting up a graven image which they had stolen on their way, and estab- lishing a line of priests who were of the tribe of Levi, but not descended from Aaron. After this settlement it became the recognized northern outpost of Israel. Jeroboam subse- quently established an idolatrous worship in Dan. The city was finally laid waste, with other northern cities, by Benhadad. DAN, a river of Virginia and North Carolina, which rises at the foot of the Blue Ridge in Patrick co., Va., and flows S. E. into Stokes co., N. C. It then turns to the east, and after a winding course of 200 m., during which it five times crosses the boundary between the two states, and drains a -tract of 4,000 sq. m., it unites with the Staunton or Roanoke river at Clarksville, Ya. It is navigable by boats as far as Danville, Va. DANA, Francis, an American jurist, son of Richard Dana, born in Charlestown, Mass., June 13, 1743, died in Cambridge, April 25, 1811. He graduated at Harvard college in 1762, and was admitted to the bar in 1767. He joined the " Sons of Liberty," and John Adams's diary of January, 1766, speaks of the- club in which " Lowell, Dana, Quinoy, and other young fellows " were not ill employed in lengthened discussions of the right of taxation. In 1773 he acted in behalf of the Rhode Island patriots in concert with John Adams for the prosecution in the matter of Rome's and Mof- fatt's letters; and in the next year he op- posed, though one of the youngest of the bar, the addresses of that body to Gov. Hutchin- son on his departure. In September, 1774, he was chosen delegate from Cambridge to the first provincial congress of Massachusetts. In April, 1775, he sailed for England with confi- dential letters to Dr. Franklin on the critical state of affairs, from Warren, the elder Quincy, Dr. Cooper, and other leaders. In May, 1776, he was chosen by the Massachusetts assembly one of the council, who at that time acted not only as a senate but as the executive of the state ; of this body he continued a member till 1780. In the same year he was chosen a delegate from Massachusetts to the congress- of 1777, which formed the confederation, and again to the congress of 1778, where he was placed at the head of a committee charged' with the entire reorganization of the army and its establishments. Accompanied by President Reed, Gouverneur Morris, and others of the committee, he passed from January to April of that year in the camp at Valley Forge, con- certing with Washington the plan subsequent- ly transmitted by congress, June 4, 1778, to the commander-in-chief, "to be proceeded in with the advice and assistance of Mr. Reed and Mr. Dana, or either of them." On Sept. 29, 1779, he was chosen secretary to Mr. Adams's embassy, to negotiate treaties of peace and commerce with Great Britain, sailed with the minister from Boston Nov. 13, and arrived at Paris Feb. 9, 1780. On March 15 r 1781, he received in Paris the congressional appointment of minister to Russia, and in July proceeded to St. Petersburg. His powers ex- tended, besides the making of treaties of amity and commerce, to an accession of the United States to the " armed neutrality" of the north. The results of his two years' residence at the court of St. Petersburg are given in detail in Sparks's " Diplomatic Correspondence of the Revolution," vol. viii. He returned to Boston in De'cember, 1783, and in February, 1784, was again delegated by the assembly to the general congress, where he took his seat May 24, and on the 29th was selected to repre- sent Massachusetts on the committee of states, which continued in session until Aug. 11. On Jan. 18, 1785, he was appointed by Gov. HJ