endeavoring to raise two regiments here--one of
white people, the other of black. The former goes on very
slowly, but the latter very well, and would have been in
great forwardness, had not a fever crept in amongst them,
which carried off a great many very fine fellows."

* * * * *

[No. 3]

{"SHIP 'DUNMORE,' IN GWIN'S ISLAND HARBOR, VA.,
{ June 26, 1776.

"I am extremely sorry to inform your Lordship, that that
fever of which I informed you in my letter No. 1 has proved
a very malignant one, and has carried off an incredible
number of our people, especially the blacks. Had it not been
for this horrid disorder, I am satisfied I should have had
no doubt of penetrating into the heart of this colony."

The dread in which the colonists held the negro was equal to that with
which they regarded the Indians. The incendiary torch, massacre,
pillage, and revolt, was ever presenting a gloomy and disastrous picture
to the colonists at the South. Their dreams at night; their thoughts by
day; in the field and in the legislature hall, were how to keep the
negro down. If one should be seen in a village with a gun, a half score
of white men would rush and take it from him, while women in the street
would take shelter in the nearest house. The wrongs which they continued
to practice upon him was a terror to them through their conscience,
though then, as in later years, many, and particularly the leaders,
endeavored to impress others with their feigned belief of the natural
inferiority of the negro to themselves. This doctrine served them, as
the whistle did the boy in the woods; they talked in that way simply to
keep their courage up, and their conscience down.

The commander of the American army regarded the action of Lord Dunmore
as a serious blow to the national cause. To take the negroes out of the
field from raising produce for the army, and place them in front of the
patriots as opposing soldiers, he saw was a danger that should be
averted. With this in view he wrote to Joseph Reed in December, saying:

"If the Virginians are wise, that arch-traitor to the rights
of humanity, Lord Dunmore, should be instantly crushed, if
it takes the whole army to do it; otherwise, like a snowball
in rolling, his army will get size, some through fear, some
through promises,