The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783

Believing New England was in a state of rebellion and that the embargoes were acts of treason, parliament in March 1775 passed the Restraining Act. New England commerce was restricted to Great Britain, Ireland, and the West Indies, excluded from the Newfoundland fisheries, and barred from coastal trading with other colonies until they ended their associations and complied with the Boston Port Act. When further testimony demonstrated that Virginia, South Carolina, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland were equally guilty of forming non-importation associations, they were added to the Restraining Act list.

Simultaneously, parliament passed North's plan for reconciliation which embodied the proposal for removing all parliamentary taxes if the colonial legislatures would provide alternative sources of revenue.

War

As parliament debated, events in America took matters out of the realm of abstract theory and put them into the context of practical revolution.

For Virginia the crucial decisions had been made by the Second Virginia Convention meeting on March 20, 1775 at St. John's Church, Richmond, far from Governor Dunmore's eyes in Williamsburg. Originally called to hear reports from the delegates to the First Continental Congress, to elect delegates to the Second Congress, and to review the operations of the association, the convention soon found itself embroiled in a call by Patrick Henry for sanctioning a Virginia colonial militia independent of the existing militia which was deemed too reliant on the governor. To Henry the situation was obvious. Time was fleeting. Increasing numbers of troops were in New England; a fleet was bound for New York; war was inevitable; Virginia must be protected. Rather ingeniously he argued that a well-armed Virginia militia would eliminate the need for a standing army of British regulars in the colonies. "A well regulated Militia, composed of gentlemen and yeoman is the only Security of a free Government." To Bland, Robert Carter Nicholas, and Edmund Pendleton it was too soon for an armed militia. Such an action would be a direct affront to the king. More to the point, they were concerned that the colony was yet too unprepared to meet the full force of British arms which would certainly be brought down upon Virginia for such an act of rebellion. Time was necessary to prepare for this warlike act.

Henry would hear none of it. On March 23 in perhaps his greatest speech, he swept up the reluctant delegates with his fervent cry:

Gentlemen may cry, peace, peace,—but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery: Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, Give me Liberty or Give me Death.31

Backed by Jefferson, Thomas Nelson, Jr., and Richard Henry Lee, who were determined that Virginia should not be as timid as the Continental Congress had been, Henry carried the day by a close vote. A committee of 12 was elected and included Henry, Lee, Washington, Andrew Lewis of Botetourt and Adam Stephens of Berkeley, fresh from victories over the Indians in Dunmore's War just a few weeks earlier, William Christian of Fincastle and Isaac Zane of Frederick, both experienced Indian fighters, Jefferson, Nicholas, Benjamin Harrison, Pendleton, and Lemuel Riddick of Nansemond.

The committee was a consensus of all opinions. It was a mark of the Virginia legislatures, both the burgesses and the conventions, that once a decision was made, opposition ceased and the delegates went forward together. One has to be careful not to talk too much about conservatives and radicals. They were all patriots together. The process by which Virginians moved in unison to revolt was summarized by Jefferson:

Sensible however of the importance of unanimity among our constituents, altho' we (Jefferson, Henry, Lees, Pages, Masons, etc.) often wished to have gone faster, we slackened our pace, that our less ardent colleagues might keep up with us; and they, (Pendleton, Bland, Wythe, Randolph, etc.) quickened their gait somewhat beyond that which their prudence might of itself have advised, and thus consolidated the phalanx which breasted the power of Britain. By this harmony of the bold with the cautious, we advanced with our constituents in undivided mass, and with fewer examples of separation (Tories) than perhaps existed in any other part of the Union.32

The committee quickly went to work and authorized formations of at least one infantry company and one cavalry troop in each county. Supplies would be furnished as quickly as possible. Each company would commence drilling at once.

Throughout the spring of 1775 Virginia was alive with signs of rebellion. County committees and associations coaxed, cajoled, and frequently coerced reluctant colonists, particularly the Scots merchants, to comply with non-importation, non-consumption agreements. Militia troops drilled, often in disorderly fashion with little hint of being a threat to British redcoats. Fashionable gentry took to wearing the plain clothes of frontiersmen, and shirts emblazoned with the words "Liberty or Death" were everywhere. County courts had ceased operations, nearly all their justices were now members of the extra-legal committees which ruled Virginia.

On April 19, 1775, General Thomas Gage, learning that the Massachusetts independent militia had armed itself, marched on known caches of arms and powder at Lexington and Concord. The colonial militia under Captain John Parker, warned by Paul Revere and William Dawes, drove the British regulars from the two villages and harrassed them all the way back to Boston. The next night, in a totally unrelated incident, Governor Dunmore of Virginia, for the same reasons, seized the gunpowder in the magazine at Williamsburg. Fighting in Virginia was narrowly averted when the governor paid for the powder. In Massachusetts fighting continued and the British were soon penned up in Boston, surrounded by 13,000 ill-armed but determined New Englanders. In both places the situation was clear enough—the colonists were armed and prepared to fight to defend their rights.

Small wonder then that Lord Dunmore worried over the gunpowder in the Williamsburg magazine. On the night of April 20-21 marines from the H.M.S. Magdalene stealthily carried away the powder. Dunmore coyly suggested he had ordered the powder removed for safekeeping to prevent a rumored slave insurrection. Although his lame excuse fooled no one, quiet returned to Williamsburg after a brief flurry of excitement and marches to the Governor's Palace by the Williamsburg independent company.

The Powder Magazine Raid might have come to nothing if word of the Lexington-Concord attacks had not arrived. This news first reached Virginia by rider on April 29. Gage's raid on the Lexington-Concord magazines and Dunmore's seizure of the Williamsburg powder seemed too coincidental for Patrick Henry and 300 militiamen from Hanover and surrounding counties. Henry, who always fancied himself a general, led his men from Newcastle on May 2 toward Williamsburg. Dunmore sent Lady Dunmore and their children to the H.M.S. Fowey at Yorktown and garrisoned the palace in anticipation of attack. Fighting was averted when Henry's troops reached Richard Corbin's house in King and Queen County and demanded that Corbin's wife pay for the powder from her husband's funds. Corbin, the receiver-general of royal customs, was away. Upon hearing about the demand he sent a secured note for £300 which Henry finally accepted for the powder. With that the militiamen returned to Hanover.

Conditions were peaceful enough for Dunmore to call the General Assembly into session on June 1 to consider Lord North's plan of reconciliation. The House of Burgesses ignored the plan and concentrated on routine business. On June 5 the house appointed a committee to examine the powder magazine, because, they said with tongue-in-cheek, they had heard it had been burglarized. Dunmore vacillated, first agreeing, then disagreeing to allow the burgesses in. Finally he gave them the key. Then in consternation, for he feared seizure by the colonials, he took refuge on the Fowey. Despite pleas from the assembly, Dunmore, who was still a reasonably popular man, refused to return.

On June 24, 1775, the assembly adjourned. For all intents and purposes, although the assembly met briefly in 1776, the history of the Virginia General Assembly ended with this meeting. Thenceforward, government in Virginia came from the Virginian Conventions. The membership of these conventions was comprised mostly of the members of the old House of Burgesses.

At the same time the Virginia Assembly came to an end the Continental Congress was moving to aid Boston and to defend the New Englanders from further armed attack. On June 15, congress unanimously elected George Washington to take command of the new Continental Army created "for the Defense of American Liberty, and for repelling every hostile invasion thereof." The army of 15,000 formed to defend Boston and New York would be supported by the congress with payments from all the colonies. Eight rifle companies, including two led by Captain Daniel Morgan of Frederick County and Captain Hugh Stephenson of Berkeley County were ordered to Boston.

To rally popular support, congress proclaimed "A Declaration of the Causes and Necessity for Taking Up Arms." Written by Jefferson and John Dickinson of Pennsylvania, this declaration laid bare a long succession of "oppressions and tyrannies" by parliament and the king's "errant ministers" who had misled the king into presuming his colonists were disloyal. Although professing continued loyalty to George III, the delegates reiterated their intentions to defend themselves as "free men rather than to live as Slaves", for:

Our cause is just. Our union is perfect. Our internal Resources are great, and, if necessary, foreign Assistance is undoubtedly attainable.

Nevertheless, the Congress made clear that it did not desire disunion and independence, it merely wanted justice for the Americans. To that end they passed the "Olive Branch Petition", a plea to the king to find some way toward reconciliation.

It is unlikely Congress expected anything more to come from the "Olive Branch Petition" in England than had come from Lord North's plan of reconciliation in the colonies. Nothing did. The king refused it. He had already declared the colonists to be rebels. Parliament rejected it, applying instead its own brand of economic coercion by passing the Prohibitory Act in December 1775. Effective January 1, 1776, all American ports were closed to trade and all American ships on the high seas were subject to seizure and confiscation as enemy ships. By proclaiming the colonists to be enemies in rebellion, parliament and the king, in effect, declared war on the colonies.

To assure itself of manpower, Britain negotiated treaties with Hesse-Cassel and Brunswick for 13,000 Hessians to fight with the British armies in America. From the beginning it was obvious many Englishmen had no stomach for fighting their fellow Englishmen overseas. Conversely it was obvious the colonial Englishmen were prepared to fight in defense of their rights and liberties as Englishmen. After the passage of the Prohibitory Act and the hiring of the Hessian mercenaries no doubt remained that this was to be a full war in which the colonies would, in the king's words, "either submit or triumph." The king felt that he would violate his coronation oath if he failed to defend the supremacy of parliament. He felt that the act of settlement establishing the protestant succession in the House of Hanover to the exclusion of the Catholic Stuarts made parliament supreme and that he was bound by his coronation oath to uphold this supremacy and that he could not honorably agree to the colonists' position. A colonial declaration was inevitable.

Independence

On July 17, 1775, delegates to the Virginia Convention reassembled in Richmond. Those who were reluctant in March now knew that forceful measures must be taken to defend Virginia through creating an interim government. Dunmore could not manage the colony from shipboard, and the royal council was defunct without him. From Philadelphia came word of the formation of the Continental Army with Washington as its commander; from Boston the news was of the staggering casualties inflicted on the British redcoats by the New Englanders before they abandoned Breed's Hill in the battle known as Bunker Hill; from New York rumors spread of the impending invasion by the British navy; and for good news there were the victories of Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold at Fort Ticonderoga and Crown Point.

The July Convention elected an 11-man Committee of Safety to govern the colony. This committee, which had greater powers than any other executive body in the history of Virginia, could set its own meeting times, appoint all military officers, distribute arms and munitions, call up the militia and independent minute-men companies, direct military strategy, commit men to the defense of other colonies and to assure the colony of its general safety. Unlike many colonies whose interim governments fell into the hands of men previously excluded from high office, the Virginia Committee of Safety comprised men of the first rank, respected leaders from throughout the colony: Pendleton, Mason, Bland, John Page, Thomas Ludwell Lee, Paul Carrington, Dudley Digges, William Cabell, Carter Braxton, James Mercer, and James Tabb. Pendleton was the chairman. This committee met in almost continuous session during the crises of 1775.

The convention established a Virginia army of three regiments commanded by Thomas Nelson, Jr., William Woodford, and Patrick Henry, with Henry designated as commander. The choice of the great orator for a field command post turned out to be a mistake which even his most loyal supporters subsequently admitted. The error was later rectified, but not without creating considerable hard feelings.

Throughout the late summer and early fall Dunmore, in command of several ships and British regulars brought up from St. Augustine, blockaded the Chesapeake, raided several plantations, and built bases at Gosport, at the shipyard of Andrew Sprowle used by the Royal Navy near Portsmouth, and in Norfolk. There he was joined by a number of Loyalists, mostly Scots, and 300 former slaves whom Dunmore made into a military company he dubbed "his Loyal Ethiopians". On October 25-27, 1775, Dunmore sent five ships to burn Hampton. Reinforcements were sent from Williamsburg. Except for a severe salt shortage resulting from the blockade and the irritation of seeing former slaves in British uniform with the mocking motto "Liberty for Slaves" replacing the colonial slogan "Liberty or Death", most Virginians saw Dunmore as a nuisance rather than a serious threat.

Then on November 7,1775, Dunmore, exercising one last gasp of royal power, declared Virginia to be in rebellion, imposed martial law, and announced that all slaves belonging to rebels were emancipated. This action cost Dunmore his creditability and destroyed his reputation among the colonists. Until this time the Virginians had been very respectful of both Lord and Lady Dunmore, whom they assumed were following orders which could not be ignored. Now with this personal act Dunmore had shown himself to favor a determined policy against the colonists.

Deciding to wait no longer, the Committee of Safety which had been criticized for its inaction, dispatched Woodford with an army independent of Henry's command to drive Dunmore from Gosport. Dunmore removed himself to Norfolk. In December 1775 Woodford's men, supported by some North Carolinians, faced Dunmore's army of redcoats, loyalists, and former slaves at Great Bridge, the long land causeway and bridge through the swampland and over the Elizabeth River near Norfolk. There on December 9 Woodford's men repulsed a frontal attack by Dunmore's regulars and drove them from Great Bridge. After losing the Battle of Great Bridge, Dunmore knew he could not defend Norfolk. He abandoned the town to Woodford on December 14, but returned with his ships on January 1, 1776 to shell and burn the port. Woodford's men then completed the destruction of the one center of Torism in the colony by burning the city to the ground.

Dunmore resumed harassing colonial trade for several more months. However, his loyalist supporters dwindled away and he received no reenforcements of British regulars. Most of his black troops had been abandoned to the colonists after Great Bridge. Those who remained with him were later sent into slavery in the West Indies. Finally, on July 8-9, 1776, Colonel Andrew Lewis' land-based artillery badly damaged Dunmore's fleet at the Battle of Gwynn's Island, in Gloucester County, now Mathews County. With this Dunmore and his ships left Virginia, the Governor going to New York where he took an army command under General Howe. Not until 1779 did a British fleet return in force to the Chesapeake.

On May 6, 1776, the Virginia Convention had reconvened, this time in Williamsburg, for there was no need to fear Dunmore. Nor was there any doubt about the overwhelming Virginian sentiment for independence. The winter's war, the king's stubbornness, Parliament's Prohibitory Act, Dunmore's martial law, and Thomas Paine's stirring rhetoric in his incomparable Common Sense had all swung public opinion toward independence. Paine's Common Sense touched Virginians through the printed word in much the same manner as Henry's fiery oratory reached their hearts.

Immediately upon sitting, the Convention received three resolutions for independence. Leading the resolutionists was Edmund Pendleton, President of the Convention, formerly among the more cautious of patriots. For once Henry wavered slightly and let others take the lead.

On May 15 the convention instructed Richard Henry Lee as a delegate to the Continental Congress to introduce a resolution for independence stating:

the Congress should 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....

This Virginia resolution was a declaration of independence. Read the following day to cheering troops in Williamsburg, the resolution prompted the troops to hoist the Continental Union flag and to drink toasts to "the American Independent States", "the Grand Congress", and to "General Washington".

At the same time the convention appointed a committee led by George Mason to draw up a constitution and a declaration of rights for the people of the new Commonwealth of Virginia. Mason's famous Declaration of Rights was adopted on June 12, 1776, and the Constitution of Virginia was adopted on June 28, 1776.

Virginia was a free and independent state. It would be seven long years, however, before Great Britain accepted this as fact.

Part IV:

The Commonwealth of Virginia

Declaration of Rights

The two greatest documents of the Revolution came from the pens of Virginians George Mason and Thomas Jefferson. Political scientist Clinton Rossiter notes, "The declaration of rights in 1776 remain America's most "We hold these truths to be self-evident...." notable contribution to universal political thought. Through these eloquent statements the rights-of-man political theory became political reality."33

As Richard Henry Lee rode north to Philadelphia with the Virginia resolution for independence, George Mason of Fairfax, sat down with his committee and drafted the Virginia Declaration of Rights. Presented to the Convention on May 27, 1776, the Declaration was adopted on June 12, 1776. It reads, in part:

A Declaration of Rights, made by the Representatives of the good People of Virginia, assembled in full and free Convention, which rights do pertain to them and their posterity as the basis and foundation of government.

  I. That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.

 II. That all power is vested in, and consequently derived from, the People; that magistrates are their trustees and servants, and at all times amenable to them.

III. That Government is, or ought to be, instituted for the common benefit, protection, and security of the people, nation or community;—of all the various modes and forms of government, that is best which is capable of producing the greatest degree of happiness and safety, and is most effectually secured against the danger of maladministration;—and that, whenever any Government shall be found inadequate or contrary to these purposes, a majority of the community hath an indubitable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to reform, alter or abolish it, in such manner as shall be judged most conducive to the public weal.34

In 16 articles the Declaration goes on to: prohibit hereditary offices; separate the legislative, executive, and judicial branches; assure that elections shall be free; prevent suspending law or executing laws without consent of the representatives of the people; guarantee due process in criminal prosecutions; prevent excessive bail and cruel and unusual punishments; eliminate general warrants for search and seizure; provide jury trials in property disputes; assert "that the freedom of the press is one of the great bulwarks of liberty and can never be restrained but by despotic governments"; provide for a well-regulated militia and warn against standing armies in peacetime; declare that no government can exist within the state independent of the government of Virginia; and grant to all men equally "the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience." (While this article granted free expression of religion, it did not end the establishment of the former Church of England as the official state church in Virginia. Full separation of church and state did not occur until the General Assembly passed Jefferson's famous Statute for Religious Freedom in 1786.)

The most intriguing article is XV, which is not a declaration of a right as much as it is a reminder that citizens who do not exercise their rights soon lose them.

XV. That no free government, or the blessing of Liberty, can be preserved to any people, but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality and virtue, and by a frequent recurrence to fundamental principles.

Nowhere is the break with England more clear than in the proclamation that "all men are by nature equally free and independent". No longer were Virginians claiming rights which were theirs as Englishmen; they now were claiming rights which were theirs as human beings. These were natural rights which belong to all persons everywhere and no one, either in the past or the future could alienate, eliminate, or diminish those rights.

A second vital observation is the Declaration's firm adherence to the doctrine of popular sovereignty—the power of the government is derived from the people and can be exercised only with their consent or the consent of their elected representatives.

A third observation, among many which can be made, is that for the first time a sovereign state prevented itself and its own legislature from infringing on the basic liberties of its peoples. The possible assault on popular rights by an elected legislature had been made all too vivid by parliament in the 1760's and 1770's.

Edmund Randolph said one aim of the Declaration was to erect "a perpetual standard". John Adams had warned "we all look up to Virginia for example". Neither Randolph nor Adams could have been disappointed. Mason's Declaration of Rights was utilized by Jefferson as he drafted the Declaration of Independence, written into the bills of rights of numerous other states, and finally in 1791 was incorporated into the Federal Constitution as the Bill of Rights.

Declaration of Independence

In Philadelphia, Lee introduced the Virginia independence resolution on June 7, 1776. On that day only seven colonies were prepared to vote "aye". Therefore, congress put off a full vote until July 1, hoping by that date for all states to have received instructions from home. In the meantime congress appointed John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman of Connecticut, Robert R. Livingston of New York, and Thomas Jefferson to draft a declaration. For nearly two weeks Jefferson, with the advice of Adams and Franklin, wrote and rewrote the draft, seeking just the right phrase, the right concept. On June 28 the committee laid its draft before the chamber. On July 4 the Congress completed its revisions. The changes were few when one considers the normal way legislative bodies amend and rewrite the very best of prose. Still the changes were too many for the red-haired delegate from Albemarle County, Virginia, who possessed an ample store of pride in his own words. Jefferson thought his version had been manhandled; Lee went further and said it had been "mangled".