Virginia. History, Government, and Geography Service
The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783
May 27, 1774. On May 25, the day after the news of the Boston Port Acts, Richard Henry Lee had ready his proposals for calling a Continental Congress, but when he delayed presenting them to the House so as not to invoke dissolution, he lost the opportunity of having the House of Burgesses act upon them. The day after Dunmore had dissolved the Assembly, the members of the House met in the Apollo room of the Raleigh Tavern. After denouncing the "intolerable" Acts, they instructed the committee of correspondence to write to the other colonies and propose a Continental Congress.
May 30, 1774. Twenty-five Burgesses who were still in town met to consider a packet of letters fresh from Boston. Massachusetts proposed that all of the colonies suspend all trade with Britain. The Burgesses agreed to send out notices to the members of the "late House" for a meeting on August 1, 1774. During the next two months, the inhabitants in the various counties met to elect delegates to the August Convention and to prepare resolutions condemning the Boston Port Acts. Feeling was running high and sympathy for Boston took the form of an outpouring of gifts for the unfortunate city. Jefferson's Summary View published at this time was intended as a guide for the August Convention, but it was too advanced for the moment in its outright denial of all Parliamentary authority in America.
August 1, 1774. With the meeting of the August Convention, Virginia took a big step toward revolution and began to build an extra-legal framework which would take over the functions of government when British authority collapsed. The Convention agreed to import no more from Britain after November 1 and to export no more after August 10, 1775. It chose as delegates to the Continental Congress Peyton Randolph, Richard Henry Lee, George Washington, Patrick Henry, Richard Bland, Benjamin Harrison, and Edmund Pendleton. The Convention instructed each county to appoint a committee of correspondence. The amazing effectiveness with which the committees organized the counties helps to explain Virginia's smooth transition from colony to commonwealth.
1775. With an estimated population of 550,000, Virginia had 61 counties on the eve of the Revolution. Ten of these were formed since the departure of Governor Dinwiddie in 1758: Fauquier in 1759; Amherst and Buckingham in 1761; Charlotte and Mecklenburg in 1765; Pittsylvania in 1767; Botetourt in 1770; and Berkeley, Dunmore, and Fincastle in 1772.
March 20, 1775. Peyton Randolph, moderator of the August Convention, called for a meeting at Richmond in March. The March convention, dominated by members of the House of Burgesses, approved the work of the Continental Congress, but foremost in the minds of the delegates was the problem of defense. After Henry's "Give me liberty or give me death" speech, the delegates made provisions for developing a military establishment. What they in fact did was to undermine the regular militia through the formation of "Independent Companies" in the counties. The revolutionary government which was evolving became a little more clearly defined when the Convention instructed each county to elect two delegates to sit in future Conventions.
April 20, 1775. Lord Dunmore watched the events of 1774-1775 with helpless alarm. Particularly frightening for him was the formation of the "Independent Companies" in the spring of 1775. On the night of April 20 he took the precaution of having the small store of arms and ammunition in the magazine at Williamsburg removed and placed on H.M.S. Fowey in the York River. On the morning of the 21st, the people of Williamsburg learned what the Governor had done during the night and were vastly excited. An incredible wave of fury spread through the Colony and everywhere men took up arms. All the pent up passion of the past months was turned against the unfortunate Governor.
April 28, 1775. At the height of the excitement over the powder magazine affair, news came from the northward that colonials had engaged British regulars at Concord and Lexington.
May 3, 1775. Thoroughly frightened, Lord Dunmore made a public proclamation on May 3 in which he attempted to justify his actions of April 20 and to pacify the people. Beyond being pacified, the people cheered Patrick Henry who marched upon Williamsburg with the Hanover Independent Company and stopped short of the town only because Governor Dunmore sent him 300 pounds to pay for the powder taken from the public magazine.
June 1, 1775. Fortified with Lord North's conciliatory proposals, Dunmore made his last bid to regain control of the colony by recalling the General Assembly to Williamsburg on June 1, 1775. The Burgesses refused to re-open the courts as Dunmore asked; they approved the proceedings of the Continental Congress and the colonial Conventions without a dissenting vote; and then they allowed Jefferson to reply to North's proposal in terms of his Summary View of the year before.
June 8, 1775. Lord Dunmore wrote the Assembly that he considered Williamsburg no longer safe for him and his family and that he had taken up residence in the Fowey in the York River. When the General Assembly refused to do business with him there and proceeded to operate independently of the Governor, royal government in Virginia was virtually at an end. The General Assembly adjourned itself on June 24 to October 12, 1775, and then to March 7, 1776, and finally to May 16, 1776, but a quorum never appeared.
July 17, 1775. The July Convention completed the transfer of power from the royal government to the revolutionists. It sought to legalize its control by providing for the proper election of its members. The Convention became the successor of the colonial General Assembly. When the rumor went about on August 16 that Dunmore was going to attack Williamsburg, the Convention appointed a Committee of Public Safety of 11 members. This Committee acted as the executive of the Colony until after the adoption of the constitution in 1776. The Convention also set up the basic structure for the defense establishment and for taxation.
November 7, 1775. The main threat to the revolutionary regime in 1775 came from Lord Dunmore who remained at Norfolk with his small fleet and a detachment of British regulars. Despite the "chicken stealing" raids of the ships in the late summer and fall, the Committee of Public Safety made no move against Dunmore until after he had declared martial law on November 7 and it had become apparent that disaffection was growing in Norfolk.
December 1, 1775. The December Convention acted as the legislative body for the government of Virginia.
1776. Hampden-Sydney, a school for men, was founded under the auspices of the Hanover Presbytery.
January 1, 1776. The provincial forces skirmished with Dunmore's at Great Bridge on December 9 and took Norfolk on December 14. The guns of Dunmore's ships set Norfolk afire on January 1, 1776, and colonial troops, with connivance of officers, added to the conflagration by setting fire to the houses not hit by the ships. Lord Dunmore finally sailed away in May, 1776.
May 6, 1776. The revolutionary Convention met for the last time in May and June of 1776. It proceeded to draw up a constitution for Virginia, which it adopted on June 28. It incorporated in the constitution George Mason's famous Bill of Rights and provided that the legislature should dominate the new government.
May 15, 1776. The Convention adopted Richard Henry Lee's resolution instructing the delegates to the Continental Congress to urge the Congress "to declare the United Colonies free and independent States."
June 29, 1776. The Convention chose Patrick Henry to be the first Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia. A skilled agitator, a great orator, and a radical-turning-conservative, Henry made but an indifferent Governor.
July 8-9, 1776. At the battle of Gwynn's Island, Dunmore's fleet was so severely damaged that he soon left the coast of Virginia, never to return.
1776. During the Revolution, nineteen counties were formed: Monongalia, Ohio, and Yohogania in 1776; Henry, Kentucky, Montgomery, Washington, Fluvanna, and Powhatan in 1777; Greenbrier, Rockbridge, Rockingham, Shenandoah, and Illinois in 1778; Fayette, Jefferson, and Lincoln in 1780; Greensville in 1781; and Campbell in 1782.
October 7, 1776. The first session of the new legislature was dominated by Thomas Jefferson, who replaced Henry as the leader of the more radical elements in Virginia. Jefferson began a needed revision of the laws. In the next two decades, the colonial codes and laws were adapted to the needs of an independent state. In this same session, he also secured the abolition of primogeniture and entail, humanized the criminal code, and began his attack upon the church establishment.
July 4, 1778. George Rogers Clark captured Kaskaskia. On the strength of this victory, the Virginia legislature created Illinois county, thus providing the first American administrative control in the Northwest Territory.
February 25, 1779. The dramatic capture of Vincennes by George Rogers Clark on this date secured the Northwest Territory from British control.
May 9, 1779. For the first three years of the Revolutionary War, Virginia was spared invasion because the British were concentrating their efforts in the northern colonies; but on May 9, 1779, Admiral Sir George Collier anchored in Hampton Roads with a British fleet. After capturing Portsmouth with little trouble, he sent out raiding parties and then departed. Naval stores in large quantity and thousands of barrels of pork were destroyed.
June 1, 1779. Thomas Jefferson was elected Governor to replace Patrick Henry. Weakened by a conservative shift in opinion and unable to cope with invasion which came in 1780, Governor Jefferson left office with a tarnished reputation, June 12, 1781. He was replaced by Thomas Nelson who served only until November 30, 1781. Benjamin Harrison was the last of the war Governors.
April, 1780. The capital was moved from Williamsburg up to Richmond.
October, 1780. The British recaptured Portsmouth, this time primarily for the purpose of establishing communication with General Cornwallis in South Carolina. General Leslie remained in Portsmouth with his 3000 men for one month.
January 5, 1781. The third and most serious British attack upon Virginia was carried out by General Benedict Arnold who sailed through the Capes on December 30, 1780. Instead of stopping at Portsmouth, he continued on up the James to capture Richmond, the new capital, on January 5, 1781. After Arnold had set up his headquarters at Portsmouth, two attempts to launch a sea and land attack against him failed to materialize. Cornwallis marched into Virginia in late spring and in May crossed the James and entered Richmond. During the summer of 1781, the main achievement of Lafayette and the continental forces in Virginia was to avoid destruction.
July 25, 1781. Cornwallis, marching from Richmond, reached Williamsburg on June 25. He remained there until July 5, when he moved toward the James River where transports awaited to take him to the Surry side. Before he was able to make the crossing, he was attacked by Lafayette, at Green Spring. After successfully repelling the American forces, he crossed the river and pushed on to Portsmouth. In August he crossed Hampton Roads and marched to Yorktown, which he fortified.
August 30, 1781. The stage was being set for the destruction of Cornwallis's army when the French fleet under Admiral de Grasse sailed through the Virginia Capes on August 30, 1781. General Washington was hurrying with his army from New York and Lafayette was bringing up his troops preparatory to bottling up Cornwallis on the Yorktown peninsula where he had encamped with his army.
September 5, 1781. One avenue of escape for Cornwallis's army was shut off when De Grasse assured French control of the river and bay by repulsing the British fleet commanded by Admiral Graves.
September 28, 1781. The surrender of Cornwallis became only a matter of time when Washington brought his army up to reenforce the besieging forces of Lafayette.
October 19, 1781. General Cornwallis surrendered his army at Yorktown. With the aid of the French, General Washington had won for the colonies their independence. The independence of America became official with the signing of the Treaty of Paris on September 3, 1783.
October 20, 1783. Virginia, agreeing to the terms of Congress, ceded her claims to territory north of the Ohio, and the deed passed March 1, 1784. Virginia was shrunken to the limits contained in the present States of Virginia, West Virginia, and Kentucky.
Declaration of Independence
When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly, all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies, and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpation, all having, in direct object, the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this let facts be submitted to a candid world:
He has refused to assent to laws the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and, when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature; a right inestimable to them, and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing, with manly firmness, his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused, for a long time after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the State remaining, in the meantime, exposed to all the dangers of invasions from without and convulsions within.
He has endeavored to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose, obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.
He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.
He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the military independent of, and superior to, the civil power.
He has combined, with others, to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:
For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them by a mock trial from punishment, for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing taxes on us without our consent:
For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefit of trial by jury:
For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses.
For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries, so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these colonies:
For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws and altering fundamentally, the powers of our governments:
For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection, and waging war against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is, at this time, transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the work of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun, with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow-citizens, taken captive on the high seas, to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions.
In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms; our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them, from time to time, of attempts made by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them, by the ties of our common kindred, to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They, too, have been deaf to the voice of justice and consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war—in peace, friends.
We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the World for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name and by authority of the good people of these colonies solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, Free and Independent States; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved; and that as free and independent States, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce and to do all other acts and things which independent States may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.