81. Patriotic Activity of Peter Muhlenberg.--Peter was the oldest son of H. M. Muhlenberg. He was sent to the University of Halle for his theological training, where his independent spirit soon brought him into trouble. At one occasion he resented an insult on the part of his instructor with a blow. Forestalling expulsion, the young man enlisted in a German regiment, in which he was known as "Teufel Piet." After two years of military training he returned to America, and consented to study theology under his father. After a short pastorate in New Jersey he was transferred to Woodstock. He traveled extensively through the Shenandoah Valley and the mountains to the west, preaching wherever Lutherans could be found. When the Revolution began, Peter Muhlenberg roused the patriotism of his fellow-Germans in Virginia, who were much better established and in closer touch with their English neighbors than those in North Carolina, many of them being acquainted with Lord Fairfax and George Washington and holding civil offices in their communities. Muhlenberg brought about, and was chairman of, the Woodstock Convention, June 16, 1774, at which the Germans united with their Scotch-Irish neighbors in a declaration against British tyranny, nearly a year before the famous Mecklenburg Declaration in May, 1775. The resolutions adopted at Woodstock were prepared by a committee, of which Muhlenberg was chairman. They read, in part, as follows: "That we will pay due submission to such acts of government as His Majesty has a right by law to exercise over his subjects, and to such only." "That it is the inherent right of British subjects to be governed and taxed by representatives chosen by themselves only, and that every act of the British Parliament respecting the internal policy of America is a dangerous and unconstitutional invasion of our rights and privileges." "That the enforcing of the execution of the said act of Parliament by military power will have a necessary tendency to cause a civil war, thereby dissolving that union which has so long happily subsisted between the mother country and her colonies; and that we will most heartily and unanimously concur with our suffering brethren of Boston and every other part of North America that may be the immediate victim of tyranny, as promoting all proper measures to avert such dreadful calamities to procure a redress of our grievances and to secure our common liberties." After the Woodstock meeting Muhlenberg was elected a member of the House of Burgesses of Virginia and also of the State Convention. He was appointed colonel of the Eighth regiment, afterwards known as the German regiment, which he also raised. After receiving his commission, Muhlenberg preached the famous war sermon which Colonel Roosevelt, several years ago, repeated in _Collier's Weekly_, in his plea for fair play for the Germans. Beneath his black pulpit robe, which is to-day in the possession of the Henkel Brothers' Publishing House,