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FROM the year 1773, in
which John Paul, or as he must now be called, John Paul Jones, came to
America to settle his brother's estate, may definitely be dated the
beginning of the discontented colonists' grievances. With the increase
of wealth and power during the last hundred and fifty years came growing
intolerance of laws foisted on them by legislators who knew nothing of
their conditions, and there was an awakening of that love of
independence which had driven so many to the new country. Virginia was
rent by two antagonistic political parties: the "Tide-water
Aristocracy," consisting of planters whose plantations lay along the
York and James River, who, by right of prior arrival, ruled arbitrarily
in matters social and political, and the Scotch-Irish, who settled the
valley of Virginia. These hardy beings pioneered their way up country
into the districts belonging to the Rappahannock Indians, on whose lands
they unconcernedly established themselves, with the natural consequence
of years of Indian warfare in all its cunning and ferocious phases,
during which the small farmers and planters were harassed to the verge
of distraction. One of the principal grievances the masses registered
against the "Oligarchy "—as they called the governor and House of
Burgesses—was the inactivity displayed in taking measures to punish the
Indians for their depredations, and it was more than whispered the
governor's inaction was due to the very lucrative trade he drove in
pelts and furs, which would have been interrupted had he commenced
hostilities against his savage merchants. But when troops were wanted by
the "Tidewater" faction, they were recruited from the Scotch-Irish, who,
though they loved fighting, after a time began to tire of this "more
kicks than halfpence" kind of warfare, and protested at all the plums
being pounced on by the other party. Like so many colonial possessions,
Virginia suffered from absenteeism, Sir Godfrey Amherst, the governor
who controlled her destinies from 1763 till 1768, never even playing the
farce of going to his domain. The governors did not interfere with their
underlings, provided the perquisites of their office were forthcoming,
the king knew less of his colony than the governor, and there was a
great deal going on easy to describe in one essentially modern
word—graft.
The great wealth of
Virginia was in the tobacco- producing lands, which the ignorant
colonist exhausted by planting tobacco year after year in succession,
instead of alternating it with maize or corn, and in the end he lost
heavily by his thriftlessness. The best houses were brick and stone,
brought from England with the workmen to build and decorate them. All
the furnishings came from over the seas, and many a bit of rare silver
and family portraits ended their days in this strange new land. There
were abrupt contrasts of primitiveness and civilisation afforded by
glimpses of those gaudy, cumbersome coaches, creaking and swaying on
their leather springs, and filled with gorgeously habited beauty,
driving on the rough sandy tracks, called by courtesy roads, of that
unexplored country. My lady never took her airings unaccompanied by a
train of slaves, and armed white men closed up the rear of the cortege,
which finally disappeared, Cinderella-like, in a cloud of dust.
There remained but few
Indians in this part of Virginia, but the Virginia gentleman was never
found without his ready pistol, and, on occasions of ceremony, his
sword. Those who governed Virginia enjoyed themselves, there is no doubt
of that; they were, of course, exiled from home, but in many instances
at home they would have been nobodies, and here they were
cocks-of-the-walk. Colonial society then, as to-day, boasted many
undesirables sent as far from home as possible by their thoughtful
relatives, hoping to replenish the family exchequer with the dowry of
some fair colonial, who, of course, was awaiting just such a brilliant
opportunity! The social lines were drawn with a rigidity allowing no
stretch, and what equality there may have been among the first settlers
had long ago faded into obscurity so dense that not a tradition
remained. There was no common property and no common interest. The
wines, sweetmeats and a thousand small refinements came from England or
France, as did the red-heeled shoes of my lord and the powder patches
and lappets of my lady. How eagerly the belle counted on her taper
fingers the days which must elapse before the Nancy and her
treasure-trove hove in sight; how fervently she prayed that her new "gownd"
would come in time to end for ever the aspirations of her bosom friend
and hated rival to outshine her as a woman of fashion. To be sure, Papa
"poo-poo'd" and "tush-tush'd " at the nonsense of girls and their
fal-lals, but a sly suggestion that his fine old Madeira, which had
already twice doubled the Cape, was invoiced in the same tardy vessel,
bestirred Papa to the point of commanding a look-out to be kept for the
good ship Nancy, and the instant landing of the goods consigned to his
distinguished family.
The plantation which
Jones inherited was not, as counted in tidewater Virginia, large,
comprising about "three thousand acres of prime land, bordering for
twelve furlongs on the right bank of the Rappahannock, running back
southward three miles, i000 acres cleared and under plough or grass,
2000 acres strong, first-growth timber, grist mill with flour cloth and
fans turned by water power; mansion, overseer's house, negro quarters,
stables, tobacco houses, threshing-floor, river wharf, one sloop of
twenty tons, thirty negroes of all ages (18 adults), 20 horses and
colts, 8o neat cattle and calves, sundry sheep and swine, and all
necessary means of tilling the soil."
With the property came
the legacy of old Duncan Macbean, whom his brother, when serving with
the "Virginia Provincials," saved after Braddock's rout by the French
and Indians, brought home and nursed through his wounds, and kept in his
service. Duncan was a typical thrifty Scotchman, with a canny eye open
in the interests of his master, not having any sympathy with the
wasteful fashion in which "saxpences" went " bang" in this heathenish
land. Jones was too good a disciplinarian not to appreciate the trait in
another, so Duncan was left supreme in his management, and the
plantation waxed fat and throve apace.
It is not easy to
reconcile the varying statements of this part of Paul Jones's life. On
the 4th of May, 1777, he wrote from Boston to Mr. Stuart Mawey of
Tobago—
"After an unprofitable
suspense of twenty months (having subsisted on fifty pounds only during
that time), when my hopes of relief were entirely cut off, and there
remained no possibility of my receiving wherewithal to subsist upon from
my effects in your island, or in England, I at last had recourse to
strangers for that aid and comfort which was denied me by those friends
whom I had intrusted with my all."
Was Jones, in truth,
without money? By his own showing in 1777 he had a considerable sum
derived from the plantation, which he constantly drew on to pay the
expenses of his crews and maintenance. Or does he refer to the
destruction of his property following the bombardment of Norfolk by the
Earl of Dunmore, January 1, 1776, or to the non-receipt of drafts from
his agents in the West Indies; as the declaration of war had made
communication by sea precarious and uncertain? Otherwise it is
impossible to account for the state of abject poverty in which he was
supposed to exist. There was no evidence of this when he was in
Virginia, for he entertained his friends on every available opportunity,
travelled, moved in the first rank of colonial society, went to
Fredericksburg to attend the meetings of the House of Burgesses, and in
all ways took a prominent part in the life of the colony, being a great
favourite with the ladies, and is accused of evincing a partiality for
the society of one Mistress Betty Parke, a relative of the much
buckramed, whaleboned lady, who kept the character of the immortal
George in such good order. But Jones had other ambitions, and Mistress
Betty bestowed her hand and self on some one by the name of Tyler, while
her quondam admirer was busy with the rules and regulations of the
infant United States Navy and with contemporary polities.
How natural it would have
been could Paul have accepted the windfall fate had sent him, lived the
life of a planter, married and disappeared from sight in this pleasant
drifting. Slaves anticipated every wish, the planter rode leisurely over
his broad acres in the early day, before the sun had become unbearable;
if he would fish, there was the river; if he preferred oysters, the most
succulent were, in very truth, at his door. The surrounding forests
concealed game in profusion, and the low sandy marshes around Urbana
abounded in snipe, so "that it would hardly be possible to fire a gun in
a horizontal position and not kill many at one shot." There were
terrible and frequent devastating fires in the dense forests, caused by
the careless settlers burning the brush when clearing land for
cultivation. Their practice of cutting great gashes in the pine trees,
and placing troughs under them to catch the resinous matter which flowed
from the wound, and then abandoning the tree to decay, filled the
country with dead wood that caught like tinder at the first opportunity.
Deep in the gloom of these forests flowed streams of the coldest clear
water, first trickling into tiny pools and lakes, gurgling their way
over moss-green stones to end in dashing waterfalls, turning the mills
to grind corn and saw wood.
Would Paul have preferred
the life of "calm contemplation and poetic ease" to which he alludes in
his famous letter to the Countess of Selkirk Was he in earnest when he
wrote, " I have sacrificed, not only my favourite scheme of life, but
the softer inclinations of the heart, and the prospect of domestic
happiness." Is it, indeed, in this period of his career that we should
cherchez la femme Many a pair of bright eyes peeped at him from beneath
those bonnets which "disfigure the wearer amazingly, being made with a
caul fitting close on the back part of the head, and a front stiffened
with small pieces of cane, which project nearly two feet from the head
in a horizontal direction. To look at a person at one side, it is
necessary for a woman wearing a bonnet of this kind to turn her whole
body around."
But the star which
dominated Paul's life called him to play his part among men, called him
to abandon for ever that peace for which in his turbulent destiny there
was no place. Unconsciously his was to be the hand to fire a train
ending in an explosion heard all over the country. In 1774 Jones,
returning from Edmonton, stopped over in Norfolk to visit some friends.
Several British ships lay at anchor in the harbour, and the hospitable
colonists, wishing to show their loyalty and friendliness to his
Majesty's representatives, entertained the officers at a ball. The next
day Jones wrote to his constant correspondent, Joseph Hewes—
"The insolence of these
young officers, particularly when they had gotten somewhat in their
cups, was intolerable, and there could be no doubt that they represented
the feeling of their service generally. As you may hear imperfect
versions of an affair brought on by the insolence of one of them, I will
take the liberty of relating it: in the course of a debate, somewhat
heated, concerning the state of affairs, a lieutenant of the
sloop-of-war, Parker by name, declared that in the case of a revolt or
insurrection it would easily be suppressed, if the courage of the
Colonial men was on a par with the virtue of the Colonial women!"
This was too much for the
gallantry of young Jones. "I at once knocked Mr. Parker down," he
continued, "whereupon his companions seized him, and all hurried from
the scene, going aboard their ship. Expecting naturally that the affair
would receive further attention, I requested Mr. Granville Hurst, whom
you know, to act for me; suggesting only that a demand for satisfaction
should be favourably considered, and that he should propose pistols at
ten paces; place of meeting Craney Island; time, at the convenience of
the other side."
Mr. Parker seems to have
been loath to put himself at the disposition of Jones's notedly unerring
pistol; for, to the latter's "infinite surpise, no demand came," and the
sloop-of-war departed on the ebb tide, for Charlestown, "without word of
any kind."
Like wildfire the news of
the encounter spread, and the colonial papers rang with it. The men
flocked about Jones, congratulating him heartily on the stand he had
taken, and the women, in whose defence he had spoken with such striking
eloquence, did their best to turn his head with the pans of praise they
so unstintedly chanted. Paul found himself the most talked-of man in
Virginia, as it was his fate to be at the French Court some years later,
for though the relations between England and her colonies had long been
strained to the point of breaking, it was the first "actual collision
that had occurred on the soil of Virginia." The aggressor wearing his
Majesty's uniform, and Paul Jones being a colonist who was respected by
all as well as extremely popular, made it impossible to gloss the breach
over. Rumour had it that Mr. Parker's brother officers thought him well
punished for his insolence, and refused to act for him in the event of a
duel, and that he was obliged to resign his commission; but as he is
known to have been present at the bombardment of Fort Moultrie by the
British squadron some time later, this was perhaps not true.
Jones was a man of keen
political foresight, and saw clearly what the inevitable end must be.
During the following spring, that of i75, after a trip to New York in
his sloop with his crew and two favourite slaves, Cato and Scipio, he
wrote to Thomas Jefferson on hearing of the battle of Lexington—
"It is, I think, to be
taken for granted that there can be no more temporising. I am too
recently from the mother country, and my knowledge of the temper of the
king, his ministers and their majority in the House of Commons is too
fresh to allow me to believe that anything is, or possibly can be, in
store except either war to the knife or total submission to complete
slavery."
He advances a most
logical theory, unsuggested by his contemporaries—
"I have long known it to
be the fixed purpose of the Tory party in England to provoke these
colonies to some overt act which would justify martial law, dispersion
of the legislative bodies by force of arms, taking away the charters of
self-government, and reduction of all the North American colonies to the
footing of the Vest India Islands and Canada—that is, to crown colonies
under military rule; or, perhaps, to turn them over to the mercies of a
chartered company as in the Hindostan, all of which I have seen.\
"I cannot conceive of
submission to complete slavery; therefore only war is in sight. The
Congress, therefore, must soon meet again, and when it meets, it must
face the necessity of taking those measures which it did not take last
fall in its first session, namely, provision for armament by land and
sea.
"Such being clearly the
position of affairs, I beg you to keep my name in your memory when the
Congress shall assemble again, and in any provision that may be taken
for a naval force, to call upon me in any capacity which your knowledge
of my seafaring experience and your opinions of my qualifications may
dictate." |
