239 



doiibtefl, I determined to enquire into it as accurately 

 as the testimony remaining, after a lapse of twenty odd 

 years, would permit; and that the result should be 

 made known, either in the first new edition -which 

 should be printed of the Notes on Virginia, or by pub- 

 lishing an Appendix. I thought that so far as that 

 work had contributed to impeach the memory of 

 Cresap, by handing on an erroneous charge, it was 

 proper it should be made the vehicle of retribution. 

 Not that I was at all the author of the injury. I had 

 only concurred, with thousands and thousands of others, 

 in believing a transaction on authority which merited 

 respect. For the story of Logan is only repeated in 

 the Notes on Virginia, precisely as it had been current 

 for more than a dozen years before they were publish- 

 ed. V/hen Lord Dunmore returned from the expedi- 

 tion against the Lidians, in 1774, he and his officers 

 brought the speech of Logan, and related the circum- 

 stances connected with h. These were so affecting, 

 and the speech itself so fine a morsel of eloquence, that 

 it became the theme of every conversation, in Williams- 

 burgh particularly, and generally, indeed, wheresoever 

 any of the officers resided or resorted. I learned it in 

 WillJamsburgh ; I believe at Lord Dunmore's ; and I 

 find in my pocket-book of that year (1774) an entry of 

 the narrative, as taken from the mouth of some person, 

 whose name, however, is not noted, nor recollected, pre- 

 cisely in the words stated in the Notes on Virginia. 

 The speech was published in the Virginia Gazette of 

 tliat time (I have it myself in the volume of gazettes of 

 that year) and though "in a style by no means elegant, yet 

 it was so admired, that it flew through all the public pa- 

 pers of the continent, and through the magazines and 

 other periodical publications of Great Britain ; and those 

 who were boys at that day will now attest, that the 

 speech of Logan used to be given them as a school ex- 

 ercise fop repetition. It was not till about thirteen or 

 fourteen years after the newspaper publications, that the 

 Notes on Virginia were published in America. Com- 

 bating in these, the contumelious theory of certain 



