It appears to your Committee from the Testimony of Benjamin Waller that the morning after the Powder was removed from the public Magazine, the People in the City of Williamsburg were much alarmed and assembled some with and others without Arms, but when, the Corporation reported the
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Governor’s answer to their Address, they, by the persuasion of the Magistrates, and other principal Gentlemen of the Town dispersed and were quiet, except in the Evening, when a Report prevailed that the Marines were landed, and intended to Town, they expressed great uneasiness and went with their Arms to the Magazine to guard it, but soon dispersed except a few who acted as patrole that Night. That the next Day Doctor Pasteur came to the said Waller’s House, and informed him of the Governor’s Threatening that if himself his Family or Captain Collins were insulted, he would declare liberty to the Slaves, and lay the Town in Ashes, and that the Governor had desired him to communicate this his Declaration to the Magistrates of the City, for that there was not an Hour to Loose. That these Declarations gave the said Waller and the other Inhabitants of the Town great uneasiness. That several days afterwards his Excellency came to the said Waller’s House on some private business, and in the Course of Conversation, his Lordship said that Captain Collins had only taken fifteen half Barrels of Powder from the Magazine that some was not good and other barrels not full but that he believed that one whole barrel might be got out of three half barrels, whereupon he said Waller took the liberty to mention to his lordship that he was very sorry to tell his Excellency that he had lost the Confidence of the People not so much for having taken the Powder as for the declaration he made of raising and freeing the Slaves to which he answered that he did say so and made no secret of it and that he would do that or any thing else to have defended himself in case he had been attacked. That his Lordship further observed that some Slaves had offered him their Service at the time the Hanover Men were coming down but that he had sent them away. The said Benjamin Waller further says that several young Gentlemen of the Town and others had formed themselves into a Company by the name of an independent Company to learn the Military exercise and elected the Colonel of the Militia for their Captain and that they usually mustered once a Week. That when his Excellency returned from the Indian Expedition last fall many of the said Company waited upon him in their uniform to congratulate his Lordship on his Return but the said Waller heard they were cooly received. That the said Waller says that he never heard of any Powders’ being lodged in the Magazine from the Rippon Man of War until since the removal of the Powder and then only from Report of the truth of which he doth not know.
