Virginia. History, Government, and Geography Service
The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783
By 1769 Chatham finally realized he could not longer govern and resigned the government to his hero-worshipping follower, the Duke of Grafton, ostensibly over the decision of Chatham's own ministers to dismiss General Jeffrey Amherst as titular governor of Virginia and replace him with Norbonne Berkeley, Baron de Boutetourt.26 Actually, Chatham's policies in Europe and America had been repudiated and "hardliners" were regaining power. Grafton managed to hold on and to do nothing until February 1770 when the Whig majority completely fell apart and the king turned to Lord North and the Tories to run the country.
One result of this political infighting and personality conflict was support for the king. Amidst the factionalism, corruption, and greed, independent members of parliament saw the crown as the only means for creative, effective leadership. For that reason George, after 1770, not only had a minister he could work with, he had a more tractable parliament aided by the complete disintegration of the Whigs and a hardening attitude toward the Americans whose actions bordered on disloyalty, if not treason.
Virginia Politics, 1766-1768
Political leadership in Virginia also underwent a change after 1766. Unlike Britain, the changes in Virginia broadened political leadership to include the new elements which emerged during the Stamp Act debates, the Lee-Henry group. It also brought into power those who were less likely to be satisfied with political addresses and constitutional niceties should parliament pass into law the powers it claimed in the Declaratory Act.
In May 1766 Speaker-Treasurer John Robinson died. His death coincided with the murder by his son-in-law, Colonel John Chiswell, of Robert Routledge of Cumberland County in a tavern fight. Although his father-in-law and his Randolph relatives managed to gain his release from jail pending trial, Chiswell believed he was going to be convicted if the case came to trial and chose suicide to jail. Both events shook the Robinson-Randolph leadership and the gentry everywhere. Robinson's death brought into the open the extent of his financial problems and persons to whom he had loaned money.
In 1766 Virginians were treated to another new phenomenon—an open and free press. From 1732 when William Parks set up the Virginia Gazette until 1766 there had been only one paper in the colony. Besides the paper relied heavily upon the government, both royal and assembly, for printing contracts, the Gazette tended to print only news which would not offend. After 1766 there were three Virginia Gazettes, being published simultaneously in Williamsburg by William Hunter, William Rind, and Alexander Purdie. In aggressively seeking subscribers and advertisers in lieu of government printing contracts the two new papers gave extensive coverage to the Robinson scandals, the Chiswell murder case, and the running debates between the various candidates for Robinson's offices. From 1766 on Virginians had a public forum for political debates in the letters-to-the-editor columns on British policies and actions.
The immediate result of Robinson's death was the division of his two offices. After vigorous campaigning previously unknown in Virginia, Peyton Randolph won out as speaker over the Lee candidate, Richard Bland. Robert Carter Nicholas, who had conducted the first newspaper campaign in Virginia, was elected treasurer. John Randolph replaced his brother as attorney-general. Major changes came in the house committees where Lee, Henry, and friends were placed on the powerful Committee on Elections and Privileges. The death of Robinson did not result in an overthrow of the Tidewater leadership. Virginia leadership has seldom changed in a dramatic fashion. Instead, the prevailing groups have tended to expand just enough to include those who gained political power, but not those who have demagogically courted it.
Lee, with his great planter family tradition, was merely admitted to a house leadership at a time when most members were sharing his passionate dislike of the British. Henry won his spurs not before the crowd but on the floor of the House of Burgesses. At a time when the British were falling into greater factionalism, the Virginians were healing breaches. The willingness of Richard Bland, a cousin of Peyton Randolph, to run for the speakership with Lee-Henry backing is one example of this truth.
The Townshend Act in Virginia, 1767-1771
Reaction to the Townshend Act was greatest in the northern colonies which it most directly affected. Reaction was sharpest in Massachusetts. There the legislature passed and distributed a circular letter in February 1768 urging all colonies to join in a petition to the king against the intent of the act—to make the governor and other officials financially independent from the legislatures over which they presided. The situation in Massachusetts, as it had in the latter stages of the Stamp Act Crisis, quickly degenerated into violence, and General Gage had to send British troops to restore order in Boston.
The Virginia General Assembly was in session when the circular letter arrived in April 1768. The house formed a committee headed by Bland to draw up another petition to the king, memorial to the lords, and remonstrance to the commons. Moderate in tone, but forceful in defense of Virginian's rights, the 1767 Remonstrance protested parliament's passage of the tax package and perhaps most forcefully denounced parliament's action in closing the New York legislature for opposing the Mutiny Act. The council concurred in these addresses. Before the assembly could move on to bolder actions, the meeting was prorogued by President John Blair. The assembly did not meet again until May 1769. In the interim Lord Botetourt arrived to replace Fauquier who had died in March 1768.
By the time the burgesses reassembled other colonies had formed non-importation agreements and were boycotting British goods. On May 16 the House of Burgesses adopted resolutions reasserting its exclusive right to levy taxes in Virginia and condemning recent parliamentary proposals to transport colonists accused of treason to England for trial. George Washington introduced a non-importation plan devised by Richard Henry Lee and George Mason. Before the house could act Botetourt dissolved the assembly. This time most of the house moved up the street to the Raleigh Tavern where 89 of them signed a non-importation association on May 18, 1769. Lee, Mason, and Washington proposed a ban on tobacco exports as well, but lost. The association called for a ban on British imports, a reduced standard of living to lessen dependence of British credit, and the purchase of goods produced in America. Hopefully, the British merchants again would bring pressure on parliament.
The association, which was voluntary and lacked enforcement procedures, was only partially successful in Virginia. A second association was announced in May 1770 following repeal of all the Townshend duties except the tea duty. By late summer the boycott had collapsed although the association was not dissolved until 1771.
Neither in Virginia nor the other colonies did the Townshend protests arouse the passions or unanimity of support generated by the Stamp Act. The lack of strong reaction may have been the result of a number of factors. The Townshend duties applied to goods which were less widely used than those affected by the Stamp Act. The Virginia economy was still struggling to recover its forward momentum, and the merchants who had to bear the greatest burden in the boycott were reluctant to protest too strongly. In addition, the colonists had a feeling the duties would be repealed. Most importantly, the imposition of a duty to pay for the governor's salary was no issue in Virginia where the assembly had given the governor a permanent salary in 1682.
In 1770 the duties, except for the Tea Tax, were repealed. George Mason, Thomas Nelson, Jr., and Thomas Jefferson lamented the retention of the Tea Tax as a symbol of British oppression and supported the half-hearted "association". Most Virginians agreed with Robert Carter Nicholas' plea:
Let things but return to their old channel, and all will be well;
We shall once more be a happy people.
The False Interlude, 1770-1773
The Chesapeake tobacco economy rebounded sharply upward in the early 1770's. The recovery from the recession of the 1760's soothed many ruffled feelings and Virginians were "once more a happy people." Unfortunately it was a false prosperity. The old economic problems reappeared in 1773. Overproduction of tobacco, overextension of credit by British merchants, speculation in lands and tobacco, and inflated prices caused the tobacco economy to collapse. The crisis first appeared when several leading Glasgow merchants failed. They were unable to pay their own creditors and unable to call in money from Virginia. Several large London firms followed the Scots into bankruptcy, and a general retrenchment of tobacco credit followed throughout 1773 and into 1774.
The calm produced by repeal of the duties also was false. There were many Englishmen who understood the problem. Said Edmund Burk, the most creditable opponent of the various tax schemes and the most cogent defender of colonial liberty in parliament:
The Americans have made a discovery, or think they have made one, that we mean to oppress them. We have made a discovery, or think we have made one, that they intend to rise in rebellion against us… we know not how to advance; they know not how to retreat....
Lord North put his finger squarely on the issue as it remained unresolved after 1770:
The language of America is, We are not subjects of the king; with parliament we have nothing to do.
That is the point at which the factions have been aiming; upon that they have been shaking hands.
The empire was being held together by a king. Affection for the crown and love for the British constitution as the best government in the world was the hallmark of Virginia loyalty. Not until the eve of independence did Virginians come to believe that the king, himself, had subverted the constitution. When they did they could no longer "shake hands". Only outside the empire could the blessings of the true constitution be retained.
In October of 1770, the beloved governor, Lord Botetourt died. His successor, the Earl of Dunmore, arrived in July of 1771.
The Road to Revolution, 1773-1774
Virginia tobacco planters and merchants were not alone in their distress. From India came word of serious, even disastrous, troubles plaguing the East India Company. The company not only controlled the tea market, it also governed India for the British. Collapse of the company would be a major disaster for the crown, company, country, and colony together. To save the company the north ministry proposed, and parliament approved, laws to improve company management, lend it money, lower but enforce the duty on tea, and grant the company a monopoly on tea sales in England and America.
Reaction in Virginia was quick and pointed. The Tea Act of 1773 raised two highly volatile issues: the right to tax and the granting of a trade monopoly on tea. In both instances the principle was most bothersome. The tea tax was small, but as Bland had said of the Pistole Fee, "the question then ought not to be the smallness of the demand, but the Lawfulness of it." A small tax successfully collected would lead to other levies. Also, a successful monopoly of the tea trade granted to the East India Company could be followed by similar actions to the detriment of all American traders, merchants, and consumers. The discriminatory uses of both taxing power and the Navigation Acts became pointedly clear in a time of economic decline in which no one was proposing loans and special privileges for Virginia tobacco planters. Bland had been right—"LIBERTY and PROPERTY are like those precious Vessels whose soundness is destroyed by the least flaw and whose use is lost by the smallest hole."
Virginia was already prepared for intercolonial action. In June 1772 the British ship, Gaspee, ran aground while on customs duty in Narragansett Sound. Rhode Islanders burned the ship to the water line, injuring the captain in the process. When the guilty colonists, who were well-known members of the Providence community, were not apprehended, a royal proclamation was issued decreeing trial in England for any of the culprits caught and granting use of troops to help apprehend them. A royal commission was dispatched to Rhode Island. Such a commission, if once the precedent was established, could be used against all the colonies.
For a long time Richard Henry Lee had been advocating an intercolonial committee of correspondence. Now the time had come to act and for all the colonies to be more alert to these "transgressions" and "intrusions upon justice." On March 12, 1773 the House of Burgesses, on a motion by Dabney Carr, burgess from Albemarle County and brother-in-law to Jefferson, established a Committee of Correspondence composed of Bland, Richard Henry Lee, Henry, Jefferson, Robert Carter Nicholas, Benjamin Harrison, Edmund Pendleton, Dudley Digges, Carr, and Archibald Cary to inquire into the Gaspee affair. More importantly, the resolution called upon all the other assemblies to "appoint some person or persons of their respective bodies to communicate from time to time, with the said committee."27 Said an unknown "Gentleman of Distinction" (probably a Lee) in the Virginia Gazette the following day, "… we are endeavoring to bring our Sister Colonies into the strictest Union with us; that we may resent, in one Body, any Steps that may be taken by Administration to deprive any one of us the least Particle of our Rights and Liberties." Within months every colony had a committee of correspondence. And within months the "Administration" would deprive Boston of its rights and liberties.
The Boston Tea Party and the Intolerable Acts
Reaction to the Tea Act was nearly unanimous. The tax should not be paid and a boycott on tea imposed. A boycott developed in Virginia. Merchants exhausted their stocks and refused to replenish them. Most Virginians ceased drinking tea. No one, however, was prepared to resort to violence, so there was little sympathy among Virginians for the destruction of tea in Boston harbor by a "tribe of Indians" on December 16, 1774. Old colonial friends in England including Burke, Chatham, Rose Fuller, and even Isaac Barré were also shocked.
Parliament saw the issue as order, government by law, protection of private property, and even treason. The long history of riotous actions by Bostonians was recalled. The commons decided that the time had come to stand firm. Repeal of the Stamp Act and Townshend Duties had not brought respect for and acceptance of authority. Mason's "dutiful child" now was to be "whipped". Boston must be brought into line for her obstreperousness. The response of parliament was slow, measured, and calculated. The Coercive Acts (the English name, not the colonial) took two months to pass. By these acts: 1) the port of Boston was closed until the destroyed tea was paid for; 2) the Massachusetts government was radically restructured, the governor's powers enhanced, and the town meetings abolished; 3) trials of English officials accused of felonies could be moved to England; and 4) a new Quartering Act applicable to all colonies went into effect.
At the same time, and unconnected with the Coercive Act, parliament rendered its final solution to the western land problems by passing the Quebec Act of 1774. Most of the provisions of the Proclamation of 1763 respecting government were made permanent. All the land north of the Ohio was to be in a province governed from Quebec. Lost was the hope of many Virginia land company speculators and those in other colonies as well. Not only was the land now in the hands of their former French enemies in Quebec, but the land would be distributed from London and fall into the hands of Englishmen, not colonials. Coming as it did just after Governor Dunmore and Colonel Andrew Lewis and his land-hungry valley frontiersmen had driven the Shawnees north of the Ohio in the bloody battle of Point Pleasant (1774) (also called Dunmore's War), the Quebec Act was seen in Virginia as one more act of an oppressive government, one more act in which the Americans had suffered at the expense of another part of the empire. That the act was a reasonable solution to a knotty problem was overlooked.
When the Virginians talked about the Coercive Acts, they called them the Intolerable Acts and included not just the four Massachusetts laws but the Quebec Act as well.
Word of the Boston Port Bill and the intent of the other Intolerable Acts reached Virginia just as the assembly prepared to meet on May 5, 1774. Public indignation built rapidly even among small planters and farmers who knew little of the constitutional grievances. They could not understand the "mailed fist" stance implicit in the acts. With the necessary legislation out of the way, the house on May 24, 1774 appealed to the public at large to send aid to their blockaded fellow-colonists in Boston. They then declared June 1st, the day the Boston port was to be closed, "a day of Public Fasting, Prayer, and Humiliation." A sense of inter-colonial camaraderie was building. Any reservations Virginians had about the propriety of the Tea Party was lost in the furious reaction to the Intolerable Acts. Governor Dunmore on May 26 dissolved the assembly for its action. He could not prevent the day of fasting and prayer from occurring on June 1st. Nor could he halt the determined burgesses.
On May 27th the burgesses reassembled informally in Raleigh Tavern, elected Speaker Randolph to be their moderator, and formed an association which was signed by 89 burgesses. At the urging of Richard Henry Lee, the most ardent exponent of intercolonial action, the burgesses issued a call for the other colonies to join in a Continental Congress. They then agreed to reassemble in Williamsburg on August 1st to elect and instruct delegates to the congress and to formulate plans for a non-importation, non-exportation agreement to bring total pressure on British merchants.
It would be a year before Lexington and Concord and two years before the Declaration of Independence, but the revolution in Virginia had already begun in the true meaning of John Adams' words "the Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people." After May 17 the center of Virginia government moved from the General Assembly to the Virginia Conventions. The assembly would meet briefly in June 1775, but the real "mind and heart" of Virginia would be in the convention.
Part III:
From Revolution to Independence
The First Virginia Convention
By the time members of the convention gathered in Williamsburg on August 1 popular opinion for stern action against the Coercive Acts was unequivocal. From Spotsylvania, Norfolk, Portsmouth, Prince William, Frederick, Dunmore (now Shenandoah), Westmoreland, Prince George, Essex, Middlesex—in all, 31 towns and counties, came outspoken resolutions against parliamentary usurpation of Virginia rights. Liberally sprinkled throughout the resolves were sentiments like, "it is the fixed Intention of the Said Ministry to reduce the Colonies to a State of Slavery", "we owe no Obedience to any Act of the British "He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislatures...." Parliament", "we will oppose any such Acts with our Lives and Fortunes", "the present Odious Measures", or "ministerial Hirelings, and Professed Enemies of American Freedom". The targets were parliament and the king's ministers. As yet, few Virginians were willing to believe that they would not receive justice from the king, choosing to believe instead that the king was as much a victim of parliament's "corruption" as were the colonists.
The unifying theme in the resolves were calls for "non-importation, non-exportation, and non-consumption". Halt the importation of all goods from Britain, export no tobacco or supplies to Britain and the West Indies, and consume no European goods, luxuries, and above all no tea. Knowing economic coercion had brought repeal of the Stamp Tax and the Townshend Duties, they were certain coercion would work against the Intolerable Acts.28
The outpouring of delegates to the non-legal convention, well over 100 of the 153 delegates eligible to serve, so gratified the usually laconic George Washington that he noted, "We never before had so full a Meeting of delegates at any one Time." With enthusiasm the representatives, most of whom had sat as burgesses in May, elected Peyton Randolph as moderator and issued a call for a Continental Congress of all the colonies to meet in Philadelphia in the fall.
Much more difficult to achieve were tactics and strategies for applying economic coercion. While the delegates agreed non-importation should be instituted, they could not easily agree upon what English and European goods should be excluded as luxuries. All did agree that no slaves should be imported. Here the convention went beyond a mere desire to place economic pressure on British slave traders; their objective was to halt the trade altogether. The major stumbling block to action was non-exportation of tobacco and non-collection of debts. While most exponents of non-exportation and non-collection wanted to break the business links to Britain and to hasten resolution of the constitutional impasse, there were some Virginians who undoubtedly believed that these measures would bring them relief from their creditors. The majority of the delegates, however, including many of the radicals and those most deeply in debt, held it was improper to refuse to send to England tobacco promised to merchants and creditors. Such a tactic was a violation of private contract and personal honor. Radical Thomson Mason put it succinctly, "Common honesty requires that you pay your debts."
Eventually a series of compromises was worked out. All importations from Britain and the West Indies would cease on November 1, 1774; all slave importations would cease the same day; no tea would be drunk; and colonists would wear American-manufactured clothes and support American industries. If these measures did not bring relief and redress of grievances, all exports would cease on August 10, 1775. To assure compliance and enforcement of these agreements 107 delegates signed the Virginia Association binding themselves together in common action. The convention elected and instructed Peyton Randolph, Richard Henry Lee, Washington, Henry, Bland, Harrison, and Pendleton "to represent this Colony in general Congress". They then departed to establish committees and associations in every county and town in Virginia. Determination to aid Massachusetts and a conviction that if one colony suffered, all suffered, permeated the convention resolutions. John Adams confided in his diary on August 23, "… saw the Virginia Paper. The Spirit of the People is prodigious. Their Resolutions are really grand."
Two publications issued during the summer of 1774 confirm the degree to which Virginians were moving away from Britain toward an autonomous commonwealth status with the king the only link binding the colonies to the mother country. The first was a series of letters published in the Virginia Gazette (Rind) during June and July signed by a "British American", who later identified himself as Thomson Mason, the outspoken brother of George Mason. The second were notes and resolutions by Thomas Jefferson, later published and distributed widely throughout the colonies under the title, A Summary View of the Rights of British America.29
Thomson Mason's letters, often ignored in favor of Jefferson's Summary View, are especially intriguing because they start with a favorite Virginia assumption—The British constitution was "the wisest system of legislation that ever did, or perhaps ever will, exist". It provided a balance in government between the crown, the nobility, and the commons, or as Mason suggests, it blended the three forms of government, "monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy (each) possessed of their distinct powers, checked, tempered, and improved each other.... The honour of the monarchy tempered the Impetuousity of democracy, the moderation of aristocracy checked the ardent aspiring honour of monarchy, and the virtue of democracy restrained the one, impelled the other, and invigorated both. In short, no constitution ever bid so fair for perpetual duration as that of England, and none ever half so well deserved it, since political liberty was its sole aim, and the general good of mankind the principal object of its attention."
What went wrong according to Mason, was not that a hapless king ascended the throne, but a corrupt aristocracy had perverted parliament and parliamentary powers to its own end. Therefore, the colonies owed no obedience to the laws of parliament at all; in fact, to no law passed by that body since 1607. The people of Virginia should be prepared to defend themselves and ready to "unsheath the sword" to show the English aristocracy they were determined to protect the "few Rights which still remain" and to regain "the many privileges you have already lost." With great courage Mason signed his name to the last letter, in which he undoubtedly had written treasonous remarks. It is a measure of the times that no Virginian rose to shout "Treason!" in 1774.
Jefferson's more famous Summary View moved to nearly the same conclusion with perhaps even more emotion and rhetoric. Intended to arouse the convention, from which he was absent, the Summary View is one of Jefferson's few impassioned pleas, written with fervor in what Dumas Malone, his distinguished biographer, calls "the white heat of indignation against the coercive acts."30 Filled with errors he would undoubtedly have corrected if he had not fallen sick, Jefferson directed himself toward moral and philosophical arguments. The essential question was "What was the political relation between us and England?". The answer was a voluntary compact entered into between the king and his people when they voluntarily left England for America, a compact which they had never renounced, but which parliament had broken and the king had not protected. He denied the authority of parliament even to make laws for trade and navigation and asserted England was now attempting to take for its own benefits the fruits of a society wrested from the wilderness by the American colonists. These colonists, having arrived without assistance, voluntarily formed a government based on their own natural rights and were entitled to defend those rights and that government against the repeated incursions of parliament. Then Jefferson touched upon a very telling point in understanding the radical shift of the colonists in their allegiance from 1763 to 1775. He noted that while parliament had passed laws previously which had threatened liberty, these transgressions had been few and far between. More recently, however,
Scarcely have our minds been able to emerge from the astonishment into which one stroke of parliamentary thunder had involved us, before another more heavy, and more alarming, is fallen on us. Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of the day; but a series of oppressions, begun at a distinguishable (an identifiable point in time) period, and pursued, unalterably through every change of ministers, too plainly prove a deliberate and systematical plan for reducing us to slavery.
To Jefferson in 1774 the source of this conspiracy to reduce the colonies to slavery was parliament; by 1776 he would identify the king as being involved as well.
Too rash, and too radical, for the August convention or even for the Continental Congress in October 1774, the Summary View would earn for Jefferson an intercolonial reputation as a brilliant writer and a foremost patriot. It was this reputation which resulted in his appointment to the committee in June 1776 which drew up a declaration of independence.
Virginia and the First Continental Congress
On August 30, Washington, Henry, and Pendleton set out from Mount Vernon for Philadelphia. There they met their fellow Virginians and delegates from every colony except Georgia whose governor had prevented the legislature from sending delegates. The Massachusetts men, conscious that many colonists considered them radical, impulsive, and even crude, determined to operate behind the scenes, deferring to the Virginians whom Adams called "the most spirited and consistent of any delegation". They were successful, for Caesar Rodney of Delaware was soon complaining that "the Bostonians who have been condemned by many for their violence are moderate men when compared to Virginia, South Carolina, and Rhode Island". The union of New England and the southern colonies quickly produced the election of Peyton Randolph as speaker of the convention and alarmed the more conservative members like Joseph Galloway of Pennsylvania.
Try as they might the members of this first congress made slow headway. They knew little of each other and often spent time defending their own reputations rather than finding common grounds for action. While bound together by parliament's invasion of their rights, they could not move forward in unison with a specific plan to protect those rights. So limited were their visions by their own provincial experiences that they had to be asked directly by Patrick Henry, "Where are your Landmarks; your Boundaries of Colonies. The Distinctions between Virginians, Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers, and New Englanders, are no more. I am not a Virginian, but an American!" George Washington in his more plain way did the same thing by talking about "us" instead of "you".
Then unfounded rumors circulated that Boston had been bombarded by General Thomas Gage. Complacency ended. Congress acted with dispatch to approve the Suffolk Resolves from Massachusetts. In direct, defiant terms these Resolves restated the rights of the Americans in tones familiar to Virginians: