A Biography of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence, and of Washington and Patrick Henry: With an appendix, containing the Constitution of the United States, and other documentsJudson, L. Carroll (Levi Carroll)
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A Biography of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence, and of Washington and Patrick Henry: With an appendix, containing the Constitution of the United States, and other documents
Judson, L. Carroll (Levi Carroll)
Henry, Patrick, 1736-1799; United States. Declaration of Independence -- Signers; Washington, George, 1732-1799
At the close of 1777, Mr. Harrison resigned his seat in Congress and
returned to the bosom of his family. No one member had performed more
labour than him, and no one was more highly esteemed and honoured.
He was a colossus in the cause of liberty and human rights. He was
emphatically a powerful working man.
On his return to his constituents he was not permitted to enjoy repose,
but was immediately elected to the house of burgesses, and on taking
his seat, was elevated to the dignified station of speaker, which he
continued to fill for five successive years. During that period the
revolutionary storm rolled its fury over Virginia, which before had
experienced but little inconvenience within its own borders. Arnold
the traitor and Cornwallis the tyrant, were tinging its streams and
saturating its soil with the blood of her noble sons. Fire and sword,
murder and rapine, ruin and destruction, marked their savage career.
The house of burgesses was driven from Richmond to Charlottesville, to
Staunton, and to the Warm Springs, and found but a transient resting
place at either. Application was made to Washington, but he could
afford no relief. During these rapid removes of the legislature,
Mr. Harrison remained firm, and used every exertion to promote such
measures as were best calculated to ward off impending dangers. He did
much to rouse the people to action and dispel the terrors of their
minds. He knew no fugitive fears; the opinion of another writer to the
contrary notwithstanding, uttered without any foundation in truth,
merely to raise his own hero above his proper level, by climbing upon
the shoulders of the towering reputation of Mr. Harrison. This _ruse de
guerre_ will not answer even at this late day. Records speak for the
dead in a voice that withers the slanderer like the hand writing that
paralysed the sturdy frame of Belteshazzer.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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