died." In his long letter to George, written in 

 1 768, he reflected on the fact that, although through 

 the years 98 Negroes had been born at Marlborough, 

 he, at that time, had fewer than the total of all he 

 had ever bought. "Your sister Selden," he vvrotc 

 "attributes it to the unhealthiness of Patoinack 

 Neck, which there may be .something in ... . I 

 thank God, however, that my own family has ijcen 

 generally as healthy as other people's." '"' 



THE END OF THE WAR 

 AND THE STAMP ACT 



The vear 1763 marked the end of the war. It also 

 signaled a turning point in the colonies' relations with 

 England. In a royal proclamation the King pro- 

 hibited the colonies from expanding westward past 

 the Appalachian ridge, in effect nullifying the Ohio 

 Company's claims and objectives. George Mercer 

 was appointed agent of the company and was dis- 

 patched to England to plead its cause. 



By this time Britain was beginning to apply the 

 other allegedly oppressive measures which preceded 

 the Revolution. Antismuggling laws were enforced, 

 implemented by "writs of assistance," thus increasing 

 colonial burdens which had been avoided previoush- 

 by widespread smuggling. The South was particular- 

 ly hard hit by parliamentary orders forbidding the 

 colonies the use of paper money as legal tender for 

 payment of debts. In a part of the world where a 

 credit economy and chronic indebtedness made a 

 flexible currency essential, this measure was a 

 disastrous matter. 



Despite the ominousness of the times, Mercer con- 

 tinned with the daily routine, the minutiae of which 

 filled his journal. He noted on January 9, 1763, that 

 he went to Potomac Church — "Neither Minister or 

 clerk there." On February 21 he went a mile — 

 probably up Potomac Creek — to watch "John 

 Waugh's hailing the Saine & home." On March 1 

 his merchant friend John Champe was buried. Aftei- 

 the funeral Mercer went directly to Selden's for an 

 Ohio Company meeting. 



From December 10 until March 1765, Mercer was 

 sick. Of this interval, he wrote George in 1768 that 

 "My business had latterly so much encreased, 

 together with my slowness in writing, & Rogers, tho 



a tolerable good clerk, was so incapable of assisting 

 me out of the common road, that when you saw me at 

 Williamsburg, I was reduced by my fatigue, to a very 

 valetudinary state." '^" Indebtedness, overwork, ad- 

 vancing age, and the reverses of the times had 

 evidently caused a crisis. 



Passage of the Stamp .\ct in 1 765, to raise revenues 

 to support an army of occupation in the colonies, 

 struck close to John Mercer, for George, while in 

 England, had been designated stamp officer for 

 Virginia. George returned to Williamsburg, little 

 expecting the hostile greeting he was to receive from 

 a crowd of angry planters. Quickly disavowing his 

 new office, he returned the stamps the following day. 



Many made the most of George's tactical blunder 

 in accepting the stamp-officer appointment. Indeed, 

 the Mercers seem to have been made the scapegoats 

 for the frustrations and turmoil into which the 

 mother country's actions had plunged the colony. 

 George Mercer was hanged in effigy at Westmoreland 

 courthouse, and James Mercer took to the Gazettes 

 to defend him. There were counterattacks on James 

 while he was absent in Frederick County, and 

 Mercer himself rushed in with a lengthy satirical 

 diatribe entitled "Prophecy from the East." Oc- 

 cupying all the space normally devoted to foreign 

 news in Purdie cS: Dixon's Virginia Gazette for Sep- 

 tember 26, 1766, this struck out at anonymous 

 attackers whom Mercer scathingly nicknamed Gibbet, 

 .Scandal, Pillory, and Clysterpipe. He later explained 

 to George that James' "antagonist was backed by 

 so many anonymous scoundrels, that I was drawn 

 in during his abscence at the springs in Frederick 

 to answer 1 did not know whom tho it since appears 

 D'' Arthur Lee was the principal, if not the only 

 assassin under different vizors, cS: he w as so regardless 

 of truth that he invented & published the most 

 infamous lies as indisputable facts: on your brother's 

 return I got out of the scrape but front a paper war 

 it turned to a challenge, which produced a skirmish, 

 in which your bro. without receiving any dam- 

 age broke the Doctors head, & closed his eyes in 

 such a manner as obliged him to keep his house 

 sometime . . . ." '^'* 



Of John Mercer's own attitude towards the Stamp 

 Act there can be no question. On November 1, 



'- GeoT'^c Mercn Papers, op. cit. (footnote 51), p. 21.3. 



"" Ibid., p. 187. 

 »'Ibid. 



