and Geography Service Government Virginia. History

“ 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. ”

“ 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!" ”

“ 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. ”

“ Out of this transformation of the English constitution into a government for the Commonwealth of Virginia men like Jefferson, Henry, Mason, and even the more conservative Bland and Pendleton had produced a truly radical doctrine of popular sovereignty, an appeal to a higher law—the law of nature and Nature's God, the replacement of virtual representation with direct representation, and the substitution of a balance of interests within the Virginia society for the old English theory of a balanced government comprising crown, nobility, and commons in restraint of each other. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The foremost task facing Britain was meeting the costs of victory. To gain and maintain the new empire cost great sums of money which the crown knew it could not extract from British taxpayers already overburdened with levies on land, imports, exports, windows, carriages, deeds, newspapers, advertisements, cards and dice, and a hundred other items of daily use. The land tax, for instance, was 20 percent of land value. These were taxes parliament had levied on residents in Great Britain but not on the colonists. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Massachusetts, which for once had lagged behind, called for a Stamp Act Congress to meet in New York in October. Virginia did not attend, for Governor Fauquier would not call the assembly into session to elect representatives. Virginians did not need to be there. Everyone knew where they stood. The Stamp Act Congress quickly picked up the spirit, although not the strident language of the Henry Resolves, and declared all taxes, internal and external, should be repealed.
Too much should not be made of the division between the Henry-Johnston forces and the Robinson-Randolph-Bland-Wythe group. ”

“ The Stamp Act brought violence, rioting, and destruction in several colonies. Virginia met the act with rigid non-compliance, reasoned arguments, "friendly persuasion", non-importation of British goods, and finally, nullification of the act altogether. Virginians of all ranks united against the Stamp Act as they were not to unite against any British action thereafter. No one defended the act. Virginians were aided by the complicity and courage of soft-spoken Governor Francis Fauquier. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Rights of the Subjects are so secured by Law that they cannot be deprived of the least part of their property without their own consent. Upon this Principle of Law, the Liberty and Property of every Person who has the felicity to live under a British Government is founded. ”

“ They had unloosened a "contagion of liberty" which could not be restrained.37 Ultimately Virginians and Americans came to believe the rhetoric of the Declaration of Rights and the Declaration of Independence when they read the words "all men are created equal" to mean "all persons". If it is something of an anomaly that the men who wrote these words were slaveholders, it is no anomaly that these words came to be accepted as "self-evident truths" when later generations applied these truths to the rights of man, regardless of race, creed, color, religion, or national origin. ”

“ The percentage of white males who voted in the 18th Century elections was quite high. True, the colonial voters elected only the burgesses, but that single choice was an important guarantee of their rights, since the House of Burgesses was the strongest political body in Virginia. Thomas Jefferson once remarked that the election process itself tended to eliminate class conflicts and extremism: the planter aristocrat with no concern for the small farmer was not apt to be elected, and the man who demagogically courted the popular vote was ostracized by the gentry. ”

“ Nevertheless, although white Virginians recognized the contradiction between that liberty which they enjoyed and the slavery which existed around them, they did not see a means whereby the ideal that all men were created equal could become a practical reality. Unlike later generations, however, the Revolutionary generation made no attempt to justify slavery or to accept its extension. In 1778 Virginia became the first state to prohibit the importation of slaves, and in 1782 passed a liberal manumission law permitting masters to free their slaves without special legislative act. ”

“ Though they remembered their own interests, the burgesses believed they were bound to respect and protect those of others. This was a fundamental part of Virginia public ethics and was one reason for the absence of extensive political corruption. They held that sovereignty was vested in the people, who delegated certain powers to government. This they believed long before the Revolution. As early as 1736 Sir John Randolph reminded the burgesses:
We must consider ourselves chosen by all the People; sent hither to represent them, to give their Consent in the weightiest of their Concerns ”

“ Resolved, That the Taxation of the People by themselves or by Persons chosen by themselves to represent them, who can only know what Taxes the People are able to bear, and the easiest Mode of raising them, and are equally affected by such Taxes Themselves, is the distinguishing Characteristic of British Freedom and without which the ancient Constitution cannot subsist. ”

“ Had the opposition to taxes been led mainly by those who faced bleak economic futures or the loss of once-powerful positions and declining family status, one could agree with those who say that the reaction of Virginians to the Currency, Sugar, Stamp, or Tea Acts was primarily economic. However, there were many other rising young leaders, families which had managed their estates, and men who lived within their means, paid attention to their debts, and resisted credit extensions until their tobacco was harvested and cured. ”

“ In the early years there was a general appreciation of the difficulty some Virginians had experienced in breaking with England and swearing allegiance to a new nation. This switch was especially difficult for members of the governor's council and the Anglican clergy who had taken personal oaths of allegiance to the king, not a casual act in the 18th Century. Most of these men and women had been respected leaders in pre-Revolutionary Virginia, had many friends, brothers, and sons in the patriot camp, and took no direct action to support the British. ”

“ Like men everywhere when their private world begins to break down, they tended to strike out at those closest to them—the merchants who extended the credit, the tobacco buyers who would not pay top prices, and the politicians in power. It was not the best of times for London to be asking some Virginians to pay new and quite different taxes. ”

“ Many burgesses not only were as wealthy as councilors, they were their social equals. Quite commonly they were their brothers or nephews. As the burgesses gained the ascendancy over the council, the house became, in the words of Carl Bridenbaugh, "the tobacco gentry club". There sat the new generation of Randolphs, Harrisons, Nelsons, Robinsons, and Lees.
There developed around Robinson and his cousin, Attorney-General Peyton Randolph, a group of like-minded gentry known in Virginia politics as the "Robinson-Randolph Clique." ”

“ Prosperity did not return as rapidly as expected. The long war probably masked a basic flaw in the Virginia economy which Virginians believed they had solved—they were too reliant on tobacco. The great Virginia fortunes of the mid-18th Century were built on extensive credit from Britain, the efficient operation of the mercantile system, the initiative and enterprise of Scots merchants who had succeeded in marketing in Europe nearly all the tobacco produced by the new planters in the Piedmont and Northern Neck, and by the prudence of the planters themselves. ”

“ Economic coercion through non-importation, non-exportation, and non-consumption was the main weapon of the colonials. It had worked before, it was not to work in 1774. There was a growing resentment in Britain against the colonials' intransigence. Repeal of the Stamp Act and the Townshend duties had brought no respect from the colonists and no suggestions about how to relieve the financial pressures on British taxpayers. ”

“ How will a study of the ideas and institutions of the Colonial Period, the Declaration of Independence, and the American Revolution establish a framework for inquiring into the natural rights philosophy, the justification of the Revolution, and the principal components of our modern day social, political, and economic system? ”

“ There was a constant fear that arming free blacks would incite their slave brethren to revolt. This fear was strongest in 1775-1776 when Dunmore had encouraged slaves to flee their masters and join his troops. Although Dunmore's black troops numbered only several hundred nearly 10,000 slaves fled Virginia during the war. Most did not better their lot, ending up as slaves in the West Indies. Many did get to Nova Scotia where they lived as free men in the large loyalist colony there. Others settled in the British West African colony of Sierra Leone. ”

“ In 1763, they were the most affluent and the most populous white colonists. There were at least 350,000 settlers, including 140,000 slaves, in Virginia. Pennsylvania, the next largest colony, had 200,000 residents. If the past was any indication, the numbers of Virginians surely would multiply. In 1720 there were 88,000 colonists in Virginia, 26,000 of whom were black. The years between 1720 and 1750 had been very fruitful ones and were to be remembered as "the Golden Age" of Colonial Virginia. Virginia and Maryland were ideal colonies for the British. ”

“ The natural trade routes between the Chesapeake and Britain were closed and the tobacco trade was ruined. To finance the war the assembly taxed nearly everything which could be taxed. Many taxes were those which the Virginians had rejected when imposed by parliament, including legal papers and glass windows. The difference was the necessity or war and the source of the tax laws—the people's own elected representatives.
Taxes, alone, however have never financed a major war. As in the French and Indian War, Virginia issued paper money and floated state loans. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Virginia should go it alone, raise and equip a small army of riflemen, and in a lightening move take the Indiana and Illinois region from the British. Clark reasoned that the British were trying to hold a vast tract of land with a few troops, a handful of Tories, and the Indians. The British posts at Kaskaskia, on the Mississippi, and Vincennes, on the Wabash, were former French forts manned by men with no allegiance to Britain. Clark's enthusiasm convinced Governor Henry and the Council of State that victory was possible if the operation was conducted secretly. ”

“ It is found in the day-to-day operations of government in the county and the General Assembly not just in the great crises of the Stamp Act, the Coercive Acts, and Lexington and Concord. Liberty and freedom do not spring full-blown into life only in times of trial, they are nurtured carefully and often unknowingly over the years. They demand, as Jefferson said, "eternal vigilance". Certainly, liberty and freedom were not allowed to atrophy and become weak in colonial Virginia. ”

“ Finally, social mobility was fairly fluid in a fast-growing society, and the standard of living among the lower classes had improved visibly in pre-Revolutionary Virginia. The independent farmers and small slaveholders saw no reason to oust or destroy the power of the larger planters. They wanted to emulate them and they fully expected to be able to do so.
The liberal humanism of the planter gentry did much to assure the people that they had little to fear from their "betters". The gentry served because they believed in noblesse oblige—with power and privilege went responsibility. ”

“ Virginia, the birthplace of our nation, played an important role in the winning of American independence. Virginia, the largest and the most influential of the 13 colonies, led the struggle for American independence and has helped to formulate American ideals and to shape our country's institutions. ”