245

mained faithful to the Crown. In February, 1776, he was elected captain of an artillery company, and marched to Hampton to repress the incursions of the enemy." In November, 1776, he was appointed lieutenant-colonel of one of the six battalions of infantry to be raised on the Continental establishment; and joining the Northern army, he became one of the aids of Washington, and shared in the glory of Trenton, Princeton, Brandywine, Germantown, and Monmouth. 246 His regiment having dwindled, from the casualties of war, beneath the dignity of a lieutenant-colonel's command, he resigned his commission, and returned to Virginia. In October, 1778, he was appointed by the Assembly one of the commissioners of the navy. 27 In 1780 he entered the House of Delegates as a member from James City, where he made his first essay as a debater. At the solicitation of Washington he raised a regiment for home defence, and was present with his command at the siege of York. He then devoted himself to the profession of law, and attained a high rank at the bar. His popular manners, his classical taste, and his captivating eloquence soon attracted public attention, and he was elected the successor of Edmund Randolph in the office of Attorney-General. In the faculty of addressing popular

244 Letter of Miss Lucy H. Randolph, September 24, 1855. Miss Randolph is a granddaughter of Colonel Innes. I trust that she will see that, wherein I have not adopted her statements, I have record evidence beyond dispute to sustain me.

245 Virginia Gazette of that date. For his appointment as lieutenantcolonel, see Journal of the House of Delegates, November 13, 1776, page 54. George Nicholas was appointed major at the same time; also Holt Richeson. For the settlement of the father of Innes in Drysdale parish, see Bishop Meade's Old Churches, I, 414.

246 Burk's Virginia, IV, 234.

247 Journal of the House of Delegates, October 21, 1778, page 22. It has been stated that Colonel Innes was at the battle of Monmouth. An anecdote, told of Innes in connection with that battle, has been long current in Virginia, for the truth of which I do not avouch. It seems that he at once comprehended the reason of Lee's retreat, and being asked why he did not communicate his impressions to Washington when that gentleman overhauled Lee in rough terms, he said that at that moment he would as soon have addressed the forked lightning. Innes was born in 1754. His mother was Miss Catharine Richards, of Caroline.

bodies, of all his contemporaries he approached, in the general estimation, nearest to Patrick Henry. There were those, who, fascinated by the graces of his manner, by his overwhelming action, by the majestic tones of his voice, and by his flowing periods, thought him more eloquent than Henry. We know that the most distinguished living Virginian, who had heard both speakers, has pronounced Innes the most classical, the most elegant, and the most eloquent orator to whom he ever listened. 248 Born in Caroline, the residence of Pendleton, and the pupil of Wythe, he possessed the confidence of those illustrious men, who watched with affectionate attachment the development of his genius, who witnessed his finest displays, and who, in their extreme old age, deplored his untimely death.

His physical qualities marked him among his fellows as distinctively as his intellectual. His height exceeded six feet. His stature was so vast as to arrest attention in the street. He was believed to be the largest man in the State. He could not ride an ordinary horse, or sit in a common chair, and usually read or meditated in his bed or on the floor. On court days he never left his chamber till the court was about to sit, studying all his cases in a recumbent posture. It is believed that he was led to adopt this habit not so much from his great weight as from a weakness induced by exposure during the war. In speaking, when he was in full blast, and when the tones of his voice were sounding through the hall, the vastness of his stature is said to have imparted dignity to his manner. His voice, which was of unbounded power and of great compass, was finely modulated; and in this respect he excelled all his compeers with the exception of Henry. From his size, from the occasional vehemence of his action, and from a key to which he sometimes pitched his voice, he is said to have recalled to the recollections of those who had

248 Such is the opinion of Governor Tazewell, who, when a young man, was accustomed to hear Innes. I once asked Governor Tazewell what he thought of Innes as a lawer. "Innes, sir, was no lawyer (that is, he was not as profound a lawyer as Wythe, or Pendleton, or Thomson Mason, who were eminent when Innes was born); but he was the most elegant belles-lettres scholar and the most eloquent orator I ever heard." It must be remembered that Innes, at the time of his death, in 1798, had not completed his forty-fourth year, and that Wythe and Pendleton attained to nearly double his years.

heard Fox the image of that great debater. A miniature by Peale, still in the possession of his descendants, has preserved his features to posterity. He is represented in the dress of a colonel in the Continental line; and we gather from that capacious and intellectual brow, shaded by the fresh auburn hair of youth, those expressive blue eyes, that aquiline nose, some notion of that fine caste of features and that expression which were so much admired by our fathers. His address was in the highest degree imposing and courteous; and in the social circle, as in debate or at the bar, his classical taste, and an inexhaustible fund of humor, of wit, of accurate and varied learning, kindly and generously dispensed, won the regard and excited the admiration of all.

249

From the day when a youth he entered the family of Washington to the day of his death, Innes shared the confidence of his chief. He was dispatched by him on a secret mission to Kentucky at a dangerous crisis, and was tendered the office of Attorney-General of the United States, which the state of his health and the condition of his family compelled him to decline. Had he accepted that appointment, and had his life been protracted to the age of his colleagues and associates-of Madison, of Monroe, of Marshall, and of Stuart, of Augusta-his history, instead of being made up of meagre shreds collected from old newspapers, from the scattering entries in parliamentary journals, from moth eaten and half-decayed manuscripts, from the testimony of a few solitary survivors of a great era, and from the fond but hesitating accents of descendants in the third and fourth generation, might have been yet living on a thousand tongues, and his name have been, in connection with the names of the friends and co-equals of his youth, one of the cherished household words of that country whose infancy had been protected by his valor, and whose glory had been enhanced by the almost unrivaled splendor of his genius, and by the undivided homage of his heart. 250

249 Innes died the year before Washington.

250 It is proper to say that I have frequently conversed during the past thirty years with those who knew James Innes from his youth upward, and that my impressions of his character have been drawn from various other sources than those already cited.

Unfortunately for the reputation of Innes, no fair specimen of his eloquence remains. We are told that, like Henry, 25 he rarely spoke above an hour; and that, as he prepared himself with the utmost deliberation, he presented a masterly outline of his subject, dwelling mainly upon the great points of his case; that he embellished his arguments with the purest diction and with the aptest illustrations, and that he delivered the whole with a power of oratory that neither prejudice nor passion could effectually resist.

Such was the man whom the friends of the Constitution had chosen to make the last impression upon the House in its favor. The occasion was not wholly congenial to his taste. Nor was it altogether favorable to his fame as a statesman. If he discussed the new system in detail he would injure the cause of its friends who were eager for the question, and he would promote the ends of its enemies who were anxious for delay and would rejoice to re-open the debate. And if he passed lightly over his subject he would suffer in a comparison with his colleagues who had, after months of study, debated at length every department of the new government. In the brief notes of his speech, which have come down to us, this vacillation of purpose is plainly visible. 252 He

251 Henry spoke in the present Convention several times for more than two hours, and on one occasion more than three, and at the bar in important cases he has spoken over three hours, and in the British debt cause for three entire days; but in the House of Delegates he rarely spoke over half an hour. One part of his policy was to provoke replies, which furnished him with fresh matter.

252 Innes adhered to the Federal party during the administration of Adams, and would have been sent envoy to France in place of Judge Marshall, had not a friend informed the President that he would be unable from the condition of his family to accept the appointment. He accepted, however, the office of Commissioner under Jay's treaty, in the latter part of 1797, and was discharging its duties in Philadelphia at the time of his death, on the second of August, 1798. He was buried in Christ Church burial ground in that city, not far from the grave of Franklin. A plain marble slab marks the spot. It once stood on columns, but from the filling up of the yard some years ago, is now level with the ground.

Henry Tazewell, one of his early friends and classmates, was buried within three feet of his grave. Innes died of a dropsy of the abdomen. The following epitaph from the pen of his classmate, Judge St. George Tucker, now legible in some of its parts only, was inscribed upon the

began by saying that his silence had not proceeded from neutrality or supineness, but from public duties which could not be postponed. The question, he said, was one of the gravest that ever agitated the councils of America. "When I see," he said, "in this House, divided in opinion, several of those brave officers whom I have seen so gallantly fighting and bleeding for their country, the question is doubly interesting to me. I thought that it would be the last of human events that I should be on a different side from them on this awful occasion."

He said that he was consoled by the reflection that difference of opinion had a happy consequence, inasmuch as it evoked distombstone of Innes: "To the memory of James Innes, of Virginia, formerly Attorney-General of that State. A sublime genius, improved by a cultivated education, united with pre-eminent dignity of character and greatness of soul, early attracted the notice and obtained the confidence of his native country, to whose service he devoted those conspicuous talents, to describe which would require the energy of his own nervous eloquence. His domestic and social virtues equally endeared him to his family and friends, as his patriotism and talents to his country. He died in Philadelphia August the second, 1798, whilst invested with the important trust of one of the commissioners for carrying into effect the treaty between Great Britain and the United States." This beautiful tribute to the memory of Innes has one great defect-the absence of the date of his birth. As the inscription is now nearly washed out by the rains of sixty years, it may not be amiss to say that the grave is directly in front of the seventh column of the brick wall (on Fifth) from Arch, about a foot from the wall. I am indebted to my friend, Townsend Ward, Esq., of Philadelphia, for his aid in deciphering the inscription, an accurate copy of which I afterwards received from another quarter. My impression is that Innes was a grand-nephew of Colonel James Innes, who at the date of his birth was a military character in the Colony.—Writings of Washington, XII, Index.

[Colonel James Innes, who commanded a regiment from North Carolina in the French and Indian wars, was a native of Scotland, and a citizen of New Hanover county, North Carolina. He had served in 1740, it is believed, as a captain in the unsuccessful expedition against Carthagena, commanded by Colonel William Gooch, subsequently knighted and Lieutenant Governor of Virginia. He was doubtless a familiar of Governor Dinwiddie in Scotland, as the latter constantly addressed him as "Dear James." See Dinwiddie Papers, Virginia Historical Collection, Vols. III, IV. The editor can adduce nothing in confirmation of the supposition of Mr. Grigsby as to his relationship to Colonel James Innes of the text.]