Commonwealth of Virginia

“ While North Carolina has the honor of first authorizing its delegates to concur with other Colonies in declaring independence, it was quickly followed by South Carolina and Georgia, which also gave general instructions broad enough to include such action. But the first instructions which unconditionally directed its delegates to declare for independence came from the great Commonwealth of Virginia. These were immediately followed by Rhode Island and Massachusetts, while the other Colonies, with the exception of New York, soon adopted a like course. ”

“ The legislature, eventually finding the scheme of establishing towns by legal enactments impracticable, declared it expedient to leave trade to regulate itself.
The assembly of March, 1661, consisted in the main of new members. At another session held in October of the same year, there appeared still fewer of the members who had held seats during the Commonwealth; and it may be reasonably inferred that the bulk of the retiring members were well affected to the Commonwealth of England. Intelligence of the restoration of Charles the Second had already reached Virginia, and was joyfully received. ”

“ The Bill of Rights of Virginia, framed in 1776, reaffirmed in 1860, and again in 1851, expressly reserves this right to the majority of her people, and the existing constitution does not confer upon the General Assembly the power to call a Convention to alter its provisions, or to change the relations of the Commonwealth, without the previously expressed consent of such majority. ”

“ The traditions of high breeding were still maintained, and a small England, much as it existed in the time of the Commonwealth, was perpetuated in the Virginia of 1800. Social position was a birthright, not merely of the well born, but of the highly gifted. Nearly all the great lawyers of Virginia were of the same social stock as in New England,—poor and gifted men, welcomed into a landed aristocracy simple in tastes and genial in tem­per. ”

“ Thus the Commonwealth period in Virginia came to an end. No longer was the Assembly to be the supreme power, selecting the Governor and Council, and controlling local government. The old struggle for self-government had to be resumed; the representatives of the people again had to steel themselves against the encroachments of arbitrary Kings and arbitrary Governors. More than a century was to elapse before the rights surrendered when Charles II was proclaimed were regained. ”

“ Nevertheless, even from an economic point of view, it is important to know that the great body of men who sued out patents to public lands in Virginia were sprung from the portion of the English commonwealth that was removed from the highest as well as from the lowest ranks in the community, and which, while in many instances sharing the blood of the noblest, yet as a rule belonged to the classes engaged in the different professions and trades, in short, to the workers in all of the principal branches of English activity. ”

“ From the territory of Virginia thus cut down, further slices are carved from time to time; first Maryland in 1632, then Carolina in 1663, then Georgia in 1732, almost at the end of our narrative. Colonies thus arise which present a few or many different social aspects from those of Old Virginia; and while our attention is still centred upon the original commonwealth as both historically most important and in personal detail most interesting, at the same time the younger common [Pg vii] wealths claim a share in the story. ”

“ LEGISLATIVE POWER is the power to legislate or make LAWS, hence the General Assembly is the LEGISLATURE of Virginia. COMMONWEALTH, which means COMMON WELL-BEING, or common good, is a name sometimes given to a State or country which has a republican form of government—that is, a government in which the people are the supreme power, and in which all the people have common (that is, equal) interests and common rights. CONSISTING means formed or made up of. ”

“ 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 commonwealth had driven many excellent royalists from England to Virginia, and while Hugh Price seeks to smother his anger in clouds of tobacco smoke, we will make a quotation from John Esten Cooke's "Virginia" in regard to some of them:
"The character of the king's men who came over during the commonwealth period has been a subject of much discussion. They have been called even by Virginia writers as we have seen, 'butterflies of aristocracy,' who had no influence in affairs or in giving its coloring to Virginia society. The facts entirely contradict the view. ”

“ That the good people of this commonwealth, having ever felt, and continuing to feel, the most sincere affection for their brethren of the other states, the truest anxiety for establishing and perpetuating the union of all, and the most scrupulous fidelity to that Constitution which is the pledge of mutual friendship and the instrument of mutual happiness,—the General Assembly doth solemnly appeal to the like dispositions in the other states, in confidence that they will concur with this commonwealth in declaring, as it does hereby declare, that the acts aforesaid are unconstitutional ”

“ Stuart will always be worthy of military study. Virginia helped the Confederacy, economically as well as militarily, especially with the food products of the Saltville area and of the Shenandoah Valley and the manufactured arms equipment of the Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond. When West Virginia became an independent state without the consent of Virginia, it reduced the area and population of the Commonwealth considerably. The ending of the War between the States, like that of the American Revolutionary War, took place in Virginia. ”

“ It was also stipulated "that the people of Virginia have [Pg 101] free trade as the people of England do enjoy to all places and with all nations according to the lawes of that commonwealth". Even more interesting was the agreement "that Virginia shall be free from all taxes, customs and impositions whatsoever, and none to be imposed on them without consent of the Grand Assembly, and soe that neither fforts nor castles bee erected or garrisons maintained without their consent". ”

“ 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. ”

“ When the legislature shall have settled the exact limits of federal power, and the precise boundaries of state rights—if indeed these things can be done in our time—or when we shall have laid the broad and permanent foundation of a system of internal improvement,—we hope then at least to see Virginia treading in the paths of other states, and turning her attention to her own vast, and in some respects, hidden resources. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Patrick Henry in a letter, dated at Williamsburg, May twentieth, wrote to Richard Henry Lee: "The grand work of forming a constitution for Virginia is now before the convention, where your love of equal liberty and your skill in public counsels might so eminently serve the cause of your country. Perhaps I'm mistaken, but I fear too great a bias to aristocracy prevails among the opulent. I own myself a democratic on the plan of our admired friend, J. Adams, whose pamphlet I read with great pleasure. ”

“ Lee, Grayson, and Madison helped to secure the first ten amendments to the Constitution. The State was jealous of its rights, and on account of the passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts (q.v.) in 1798, put forward Madison's Virginia Resolutions (see Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions) , which declared for a strict construction of the Constitution. Priority of settlement, character and amount of population, valuable staples, and distinguished men made the colony powerful and kept the State prominent in the early years of the Republic. ”

“ The convention members elected delegates to the Continental Congress and instructed them to propose American independence from England. The delegates chosen were George Washington, John Blair, James Madison, George Mason, James McClurg, Edmund Randolph and George Wythe. On May 15, a resolution was introduced by Archibald Cary and passed which declared the colony of Virginia a free and independent State. Immediately the British flag was lowered from the Capitol at Williamsburg and the colonial colors were raised instead. ”

“ We have now to see how Virginia, which was fast becoming able to support itself, became also a self-governing community. The administrations of Lord Delaware, of Dale, of Yeardley, and of Argall, were all despotisms, whether mild or harsh. To trace the evolution of free government, we must take our start in the year 1612, when the London Company obtained its third charter. The immediate occasion for taking out this charter was the desire of the Company to include among its possessions the Bermuda Islands, and they were now added to Virginia. ”

“ But I cannot believe, that the fact is, that this is the only state in the union, which judges properly of these measures, and which will discover a just abhorrence of them. If no other state in the union thinks as we do, Virginia, the ancient, the great, the powerful, the rich and the republican state of Virginia, still remains free and independent; and if she had not dared to vote against our president, from a dislike to his political sentiments; if she had not still retained her republican principles; if she had not thought and been determined to act, as we have done ”

“ It declared that all power sprang from and was vested in the people; that all men were free by nature; that government should be for the common welfare; that no office should be hereditary, and that there should be no restraint of the free exercise of religion.
Virginian Liberties, Ordinance for the Security of.
An ordinance issued in 1621, giving Virginia a written constitution. It provided for a Governor and a permanent Council, appointed by the Virginia Company, and for an elected assembly, with legislative powers, to meet annually. ”

“ As the political life of New England was in a manner built up out of the political life of the towns, so the political life of Virginia was built up out of the political life of the counties. This was partly because the vast plantations were not grouped about a compact village nucleus like the small farms at the North, and partly because there was not in Virginia that Puritan theory of the church according to which each congregation is a self-governing democracy. ”

“ You are in the habit of discussing Federal politics; and permit me to say to you, very honestly and very openly, that next to brandy, next to card playing, next to horse-racing, the thing that has done more harm to Virginia than any other in the course of her past history, has been her insatiable appetite for Federal politics. She has given all her great men to the Union. Her Washington, her Jefferson, her Madison, her Marshall, her galaxy of great men she has given to the Union. ”

“ I will do more, sir, and what I hope will convince the most skeptical man that I am a lover of the American Union—that, in case Virginia shall not make punctual payment, the control of our custom-houses, and the whole regulation of trade, shall be given to Congress, and that Virginia shall depend on Congress even for passports, till Virginia shall have paid the last farthing, and furnished the last soldier. ”

“ In the Virginia convention of 1776 he favoured the postponement of a declaration of independence, until a firm union of the colonies and the friendship of France and Spain had been secured. In the same convention he served on the committee which drafted the first constitution for Virginia, and was elected governor of the State—to which office he was re-elected in 1777 and 1778, thus serving as long as the new constitution allowed any man to serve continuously. ”

“ As years pass and conditions vary, it becomes necessary to make changes in the framework of a government to meet such needs. Consequently, on four specific occasions, the Constitution of Virginia has been rewritten: namely, in 1829-1830, 1850, 1867 and 1901.
In 1816, the residents west of the Blue Ridge Mountains demanded more representation in their state government and fewer suffrage restrictions. After many years of discontent, these individuals finally encouraged enough residents throughout the state to vote for a constitutional convention to be held in Richmond in 1829. ”