LESSON LXXXV.

The South in Revolutionary Times.

(Adapted from Curry's "Southern States.")

Dr. JABEZ LAMAR MONROE CURRY, divine, statesman, orator, and patriot-able, noble, and untiring in his long ministry of public usefulness-is the most widely-known

and fondly loved Southerner in the Union to-day.

He is a native of Georgia, but he belongs to the entire South more than to any particular State. In 1838 his father moved into Alabama, in which State Dr. Curry was reared. He was graduated from the University of Georgia, took his degree in the Harvard Law School, began the practice of law in Talladega,

Alabama, and later served in the State Legislature, and in both the Confederate and Federal Congresses.

In 1861 he entered the Confederate army. After the war he was ordained to the Baptist Ministry. He became President of Howard College, Alabama, and later served for thirteen years as Professor of English, Philosophy, and Law in Richmond College, Virginia.

From 1881 to 1885 he was agent of The Peabody Education Fund. In 1885 he was appointed by Mr. Cleveland minister of the United States to the Court of Spain, where he discharged his duties with distinguished grace and ability. Upon his return to America he resumed the agency of the Peabody Fund. Dr. Curry himself has been a munificence and beneficence to the South fully as great as the Fund he has administered.

He is widely known throughout the Union as an able and eloquent orator, and as the author of a number of valuable books, the most prominent of which are "Constitutional Government in Spain," "Life of William E. Gladstone," Establishment and Disestablishment," and "The Southern States of the American Union" from which the following selection is adapted.

1. The patriotic and noble efforts of the Northern Colonies in our Revolutionary struggle must not be underrated,

and it is far from my purpose to do so. On the other hand, it is unnecessary to claim any superiority of sacrifice or devotion on the part of the Southern Colonies; but it is well to exhibit again and again the indebtedness of the cause and the country to the South in those times of storm and stress-lest we forget.

2. The Southern Colonies were either the first to propose or the first to follow the measures that secured our independence of the Mother Country.

3. When the Legislature of Massachusetts counseled obedience to the Stamp Act, Virginia, under the leadership of Patrick Henry, declared that law to be an infringement of the privileges, liberties, and immunities of the colony, subversive of the fundamental privileges of her chartered rights, and destructive of British as well as American freedom. And this was the first legislative opposition to the Stamp Act in America. Thus it was that "Virginia rang the alarum bell and gave the signal for the Continent.”

4. When the British stamp ship reached Wilmington, the Carolina colonists seized the stamp master, forced him to kneel in the sand of the street, in front of the Governor's mansion, under the frowning cannon upon its stoop, and to swear solemnly never to execute the duties of his office. And this was done without disguise and in the broad daylight.

5. The first call for an American Congress, in 1765, came from Massachusetts; but it was South Carolina that first heard and heeded that call. "And had it not been for South Carolina, no Congress would then have convened," said Gadsden. "As the united American people spread through

the vast expanse over which their jurisdiction now extends, be it remembered," says Bancroft, "that the blessing of Union is due to the warm-heartedness of South Carolina."

6. Again; it was Samuel Adams that proposed Committees of Correspondence in the various colonies for concerted action, but "whether this great idea should become a reality depended upon Virginia." Her response to the Massachusetts plan was prompt and spirited, and every other colony in the South followed her lead. "In this manner Virginia laid the foundations of our Union. Massachusetts organized a province, Virginia promoted a confederacy," says Bancroft.

7. Paul Revere and his romantic ride to Lexington, in 1775, is a patriotic story, but so also is the story of Herman Husbands and his Regulators, who, in 1771, upon the field of Alamance, offered the first armed resistance to British authority in America. The first blood of the Revolution was shed in North Carolina.

8. Boston's Tea Party is well known, and deserves to be well known for its conspicuous patriotism; but it is not so well known that Charleston, South Carolina, also had her tea party. In Boston the tea was thrown into the bay; in Charleston it was thrown into damp cellars and left to the ravages of decay.

9. It was upon Virginia's motion that the Continental Congress of 1774 assembled. By the beginning of the New Year a military company existed in nearly every county of the Old Dominion. Washington declared himself ready, at his own expense, to raise and support one thousand soldiers for the defence and the liberties of his country.

The Richmond Convention organized a body of State troops for war. Arming the colonies for defence was a bold step from which there was no retreat. Other colonies, following the lead of Virginia, came courageously to accept all the hazards which a determination to protect life and property and liberty might involve.

10. Thirteen months before the Declaration in Philadelphia, in 1776, the people of Mecklenburg county, North Carolina, had passed a similar Declaration of Independence. Three months before the Act of the Continental Congress, the Provincial Congress of North Carolina unanimously resolved upon independence and so instructed her delegates in Philadelphia. All this, mind you, while elsewhere our separation from England was desired only by a few of the most resolute. A peaceful solution of our troubles was generally desired and expected, and almost until the last moment Congress held out the hope of reconciliation. When no other course was compatible with self-respect, Virginia and Massachusetts stood side by side in the breach. Robert C. Winthrop bears this testimony to Virginia: “It is hardly too much to say that the destiny of our country at that period hung and hinged upon her action and upon the action of her great and glorious sons. It was union which opened our independence, and there could have been no union without the influence and co-operation of that great leading Southern colony."

II. Before the Declaration of Independence was uttered, Virginia had exercised the highest function of State sovereignty by establishing after her own free and sovereign will a constitution which continued in force until 1829.

12. In the war which followed, our Southern soldiers bore a glorious part. After the Long Island campaign, Adjutant-General Reed declared that the gallantry of the Southern men had inspired the whole army. In the South Tories were especially numerous among the colonists, and the struggle for liberty there became a bitter contest among families and neighbors. With British troops in the front and Tories in the rear, there was unparalleled hardship for the patriotic colonists of the South. Still, by the exploits of these patriotic backwoodsmen, the War of the Revolution was brought nearly to a close. The Battle of King's Mountain drove Cornwallis back into South Carolina; the defeat at Cowpens made his second invasion of North Carolina a desperate enterprise; Guilford Courthouse made fugitives of the British army and rendered Yorktown possible.

13. Without succor from Congress or colonies, Marion, Sumter, Horry, Pickens, and others, at the head of untrained and unpaid gentlemen, achieved deeds and successes which, in another land more careful of its chronicles and more habituated to record its achievements, would have been the theme of inspiration for romance or verse or history. The victories of these men were a triumphant overthrow of cowardice and Toryism.

14. While the Southern soldiers fought bravely, they went to the front almost to a man. Virginia and Pennsylvania were nearly equal in population, still Virginia furnished nearly twice as many troops. Although New Hampshire and South Carolina had nearly the same military population, South Carolina furnished nearly twice as many soldiers. The South Carolina soldiers outnumbered those from