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The character and life-work of few men belonging to the pre-Revolutionary era are better worth studying than are those of James Otis, the patriot-orator of Massachusetts, who took so prominent a part in opposing England's obnoxious Stamp Act and in arousing the American Colonies to a sense of the outrage done them by the issue of the arbitrary Writs of Assistance.
Many of the splendid old pre-Revolutionary country houses of brick no longer remain to us. Some are gone altogether; others are remodeled almost beyond recognition; a few, hedged around by the growing city, have been allowed to fall into a state of hopeless decay.
The settlement was situated, too, partly in North Carolina and partly in South Carolina, so that in the pre-Revolutionary days many of the inhabitants hardly knew, or cared to know, in which of the two provinces they dwelt. Upon their arrival Jackson's friends bought land on the creek and within the bounds of the settlement.
To say nothing of Rousseau, the father and founder of the nature-worship, which is the nearest approach to a positive side that the Revolution has ever possessed, how much fine colour and freshness of feeling there is in Réné, what a sense of air and space in Paul and Virginia, and what must they have been to a generation that had just emerged from the close parlours of Richardson, the best of the sentimentalists of the pre-revolutionary type?
A placard on a quaint old hostelry informs us that it was a tavern in pre-Revolutionary times. Leaving the "common," around which most New England towns cluster, one soon reaches Monument Street. Following it until houses grow infrequent, one comes to an interesting specimen which seems familiar. A conspicuous sign proclaims it private property and that sightseers are not welcome.
Had pre-Revolutionary France listened to men like Turgot and backed them up all would have gone well. But the beneficiaries of privilege, the Bourbon reactionaries, the short-sighted ultra-conservatives, turned down Turgot; and then found that instead of him they had obtained Robespierre.
Most of these men and women had been respected leaders in pre-Revolutionary Virginia, had many friends, brothers, and sons in the patriot camp, and took no direct action to support the British. Generally they were well treated.
The Moscow Conference did in fact give to all organizations, Duma, Councils of Workmen's and Soldiers' Deputies, the recently elected local-government bodies, coöperative and professional unions, in fact every group, socialist and non-socialist, revolutionary and pre-revolutionary institutions, the opportunity to express views.
I found him and his family at supper. . . . They seem to be plain, affable people. . . . The ambassador is a venerable old gentleman, with a full head of perfectly white hair, looking not unlike an old-fashioned wig; and this, together with his collarless white neckcloth and his brown coat, gave him precisely such an aspect as one would expect in a respectable person of pre-revolutionary days.
Here was a mixture of native savagery and efficiency, plus the lynching spirit, plus the pre-revolutionary American spirit and against which, with unequal numbers and complete surprise, no mathematically trained European force had the slightest chance. Meantime Richmond was burning, and my poor friend Ryerson and I were facing new dangers. "Come on!" he cried with new hope in his eyes.
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