GUNSTON HALL, March 9th, 1775.

DEAR SIR:

I have at last finished the Potomack River Bill, which I now send you, together with some very long remarks thereon, and a letter to Mr. Johnston, into which you 'll be pleased to put a wafer, when you forward the other papers to him.

I also return the Acts of Assembly, and Mr. Johnston's notes, which you sent me. This affair has taken me five times as long as I expected; and I do assure you I never engaged in anything which puzzled me more; there were such a number of contingencies to provide for and drawing up laws-a thing so much out of my way. I shall be well pleased if the pains I have bestowed upon the subject prove of any service to so great an undertaking; but by what I can understand, there will be so strong an opposition from Baltimore and the head of the Bay as will go near to prevent its passage through the Maryland Assembly in any shape it can be offered.

I suppose you have heard of the late purchase made by some North Carolina gentlemen from the Cherokee Indians, of all the country between the Great Conhaway [sic] and the Tennessee Rivers.

I think considering this colony has just expended about £100,ooo upon the defence of that country, that this is a pretty bold stroke of the gentlemen. It is suspected some of our Virginia gentlemen are privately concerned in it. I have always expected that the newfangled doctrine lately broached, of the Crown's having no title beyond the Alleghany Mountains till after the purchase at Fort Stanwix, would produce a thousand other absurdities and squabbles. However, if I am not mistaken, the Crown, at that treaty, purchased of the Six Nations all the lands as low as the Tennessee River. So now, I suppose, we must have a formal trial, whether the Six Nations or the Cherokees had the legal right; but whether this is to be done by ejectment, writ of enquiry, writ of partition or what other process, let those who invented this curious distinction determine. The inattention of our Assembly to so grand an object, as the right of this colony to the Western lands is inexcusable, and the confusion it will introduce endless.

If I knew when you set off for the Convention at Richmond I

THE POTOMAC COMPANY,

189

would trouble you with two or three Virginia Cavalry Bills, to make my second payment to Mr. Mazzay as I may not perhaps have an opportunity of sending it in April.

We make but a poor hand of collecting; very few pay, though everybody promises except Mr. Hartshorn, of Alexandria, who flatly refused; his conscience I suppose would not suffer him to be concerned in paying for the instruments of death. George has been very unwell for some days past; as soon as he gets well he intends [going] up into the forest.

The family here join in their compliments to Mrs. Washington and the family at Mount Vernon,

With, Dear Sir,

Your affectionate humble Servant,

G. MASON.'

A messenger from "Mount Vernon" arrived that very day at "Gunston Hall," and Colonel Mason wrote a second letter of the same date in reply to his friend. In it he says: "I beg you to inform Mr. Johnston the bill I have drawn is intended only as a ground-work, and that I desire every part of it may be submitted to his correction." He sends Washington, as he tells him, "some cherry-graffs, May-dukes and large black May cherries" for his garden.

The Potomac Company, afterwards merged into the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Company, of which we hear something at the present day, was projected at least as early as 1762, and was part of the scheme of the Ohio Company for developing the Western lands. At a meeting held in Frederick, Maryland, in May, 1762, a number of prominent gentlemen were elected managers, and Col. George Mercer was one of the two treasurers appointed, the other one being a Marylander. George Mason's Potomac River bill was designed to obtain the necessary legislation on the subject. Thomas Johnson, afterwards Governor of Maryland, and a member in 1774 of the Continental Congress, was the gentleman on the northern side of the Potomac who was at the head of this project in 1774, while Washington and George Mason were its most prominent advocates in Virginia. Washing

1 Ibid.

ton wrote to Thomas Jefferson as early as 1770 in reply to the latter, and discussed the scheme of opening the inland navigation of the Potomac by private subscription. He looked forward, he said, to seeing "the Potomac a channel of commerce between Great Britain and the immense western territory, a tract of country unfolding to our view." He advocated "a more extensive plan" than one proposed by Thomas Johnson, as a “means of becoming a channel of the extensive trade of a rising empire." The company was formed, consisting of twenty or more gentlemen in Virginia, and an equal number in Maryland, and a meeting was called at Georgetown on the 12th of November, 1774, to appoint from among the whole number of trustees a small and convenient number to act for the whole. Heading the list of the Virginia gentlemen are the names of George Washington, George Mason, Thomson Mason, Bryan Fairfax, Daniel McCarty, and John Carlyle. The work was commenced, but abandoned a year later, as the Maryland Act of Assembly co-operating with Virginia had not been obtained. Ten years later, when the scheme was about to be revived, Washington alludes, in a letter to Jefferson, to these earlier efforts.

2

"Despairing of any aid from the public," he writes, “I became the principal mover of a bill to empower a number of subscribers to undertake, at their own expense, on conditions which were expressed, the extension of the navigation [of the Potomac] from tide water to Will's Creek, about one hundred and fifty miles. The plan, however, was in a tolerably good trim when I set out for Cambridge in 1775, and would have been in an excellent way had it not been for the difficulties met with in the Maryland Assembly. ... In this situation I left matters when I took command of the army. The war afterwards called men's attention to different objects, and all the money they could or would raise was applied to other purposes."

1 Stewart's Report. First session, Nineteenth Congress.

2 Virginia Gazette, November 10, 1774.

3 Ibid., November 2, 1775.

4 16 Writings of Washington," Sparks, vol. ix., p. 30.

CHAPTER VI.

THE BEGINNING OF THE REVOLUTION.

1775-1776.

The Convention met in Richmond on the 20th of March, 1775, and it was then that Patrick Henry offered his memorable resolutions, "that the colony be immediately put in a state of defence, etc." The battle of Lexington was fought on the 19th of April, and George Mason, in his patriotic enthusiasm, named one of his plantations "Lexington" in honor of the event. Washington's journal records that on the 16th of April he had a number of visitors. General Charles Lee was one of them, and Mr. Harry Lee, Jr., "Light Horse Harry" that was to be. Colonel Mason came in the afternoon, and stayed all night. The next day they went together to Alexandria to a committee meeting and "to a new choice of delegates."

On the 20th of May Colonel Mason wrote to William Lee, who was still in London, notifying him that he had shipped one hundred hogsheads of Virginia, Potomac River, tobacco by the ship Adventure. The letter goes on to say:

"I expect the certainty of the exports being stopped here on the tenth of September next, if not much sooner, will raise what tobacco gets to market to an amazing price: indeed was there not this extraordinary cause, I think tobacco must be high, which is my reason for shipping so largely. People in general have not prepared this year for crops of tobacco as usual; and even those who have will be able to make very little, from the uncommon scarcity of plants, greater than in the noted year

1758, or perhaps than ever was known within the memory of man, and the season now too far advanced to raise more. You may depend upon this information as a certain fact, in all the upper parts of Virginia and Maryland. What is the case in the lower parts, I do not certainly know; but from the weather I have no doubt but that this scarcity of plants is general through the two colonies."

The year before, in the same month, Jefferson, at "Monticello," had noted in his garden book a severe frost which had killed many of the tobacco plants and was "equally destructive through the whole country." Eleven days after writing this letter to William Lee, George Mason wrote to Richard Henry Lee, then in Congress:

DEAR SIR:

92

GUNSTON HALL, May 31, 1775.

My son George has a mind to spend some days in Philadelphia, while the Congress is sitting; and as he has been yet very little in the world, and young fellows are too apt to fall into bad company in a place where they have few acquaintance, I must presume so far on your friendship as to recommend him to your notice and advice, for which I am sure he will be thankful.

We hear nothing from the Congress: I presume their deliberations are (as they ought to be) a profound secret. I hope the procuring arms and ammunition next winter when the ships of war can't cruise upon our coasts, as well as the means of laying in good magazines of provisions, &c., to the northward will be properly attended to.

I could almost wish that we paid the ministry the compliment of stopping our exports to Great Britain and the West Indies at the same time their Restraining Bill takes place, that our operations might have a fair start with theirs, and our measures have the appearance of reprizal. I think you are happy in having Dr. Franklin at the Congress, as I imagine no man better knows the intentions of the ministry, the temper of the nation, and the interest of the minority.

1MS. Letter.

2 Randall's "Jefferson," vol. i., p. 76.