CHAPTER VI
 

the
 

HE outbreak of the War of American In-
depetidence found our Valley wonderfully
increased in population and wealth.
Towns and  villages   had   been  laid   out.
 

rich soil had been brought under cultiva¬
tion and the high prairie grass had been turn¬
ed under by the wooden plow of the time.
Roads had been made, and the streams spanned by
bridges. The waters of the Antietam and Cono¬
cocheague were turning numerous mill wheels.
There was some manufacturing, and two or three
iron furnaces were in blast. A considerable trade
had sprung up between Hagerstown, which was
already the principal town in the Valley and the
surrounding country reaching far to the west and
into the Valley of Virginia.

Among the inhabitants were many who were
leading men in the Province, and many who after¬
wards distinguished themselves by fighting their
country's battles, of whom we shall see more later.
The people were hard3', brought up to endure hard¬
ship, vigorous in frame, tireless on the march and
wonderfully expert in the use of the rifle. No¬
where did patriotic fervor manifest itself more
than in Washington County. Possibly the knowl¬
edge that their homes were entirely safe from any
visitation or invasion by the British Army may
have made them more fearless than they would
have been had they been in constant fear of retri¬
bution. But independent of this, there were other
causes combining to make our people ardent pa¬
triots. The great mass of them were not of Eng¬
lish blood, and never had any of that feeling of
filial affection for the Mother Country which made
so   many   Tories   in   the   eastern   part   of   the
 

of Province. Many of them were the Scotch-Irish
who had been expatriated and brought with them
feelings of bitter resentment against England.
The life they led, and the Indian fighting many
of them had done, fitted them in an eminent degree
for the arduous life of the Continental soldier,
and enabled them to sustain hardships and want
and hunger and cold such as would have demoral¬
ized the armies of almost any nation.

The passage of the stamp act, March 22, 1765,
at once kindled the patriotic flame in the breasts
of our people. At Frederick Town, the stamp
distributor was burnt in effigy in August. That
3-ear the Governor called the Legislature together
and among the delegates from this portion of Fred¬
erick County were Joseph Chapline, the founder
of Sharpsburg, a gentleman of wealth and high
character and one of the largest landed proprietors
in the Valley; and the brave old Col. Thomas
Cressap, who had threatened upon a former occa¬
sion to march to Annapolis at the head of his rifle¬
men and bring the Assembly to their senses. It
was this Legislature which appointed delegates to
the first Continental'Congress.

In November, Court convened at Frederick
City. John Darnall, the clerk of the Court, refused
to issue any processes or to perform any official aet
which required the use of stamped paper under the
stamp act, he not being provided with such paper.
The Court thereupon ordered that all business
should be transacted upon unstamped paper re¬
gardless of the act of Parliament and in defiance
of it; and that all the officers of the Court should
proceed with their avocations as usual. The Court
then went on to justify its order, upon the ground