1774.
Lady Dunmore and Children--Gayety of Williamsburg--Boston Port
Bill--Fast-day appointed--Governor dissolves the Assembly--
Resolutions of Burgesses--Convention called--The Raleigh--
Mason's Opinion of Henry--Patriotic Measures--Convention--
Jefferson's "Summary View."
LATE in April there arrived at the palace in Williamsburg, the Right
Honorable the Countess of Dunmore, with George, Lord Fincastle, the
Honorable Alexander and John Murray, and the Ladies Catherine, Augusta,
and Susan Murray, accompanied by Captain Foy and his lady. On this
occasion there was an illumination, and the people with acclamations
welcomed her ladyship and family to Virginia. The three sons of Lord
Dunmore were students in the College of William and Mary in that year.
When the assembly met in May, Williamsburg presented a scene of unwonted
gayety, and a court-herald published a code of etiquette for the
regulation of the society of the little metropolis. Washington, arriving
there on the sixteenth, dined with Lord Dunmore. At the beginning of the
session the burgesses made an address congratulating the governor on the
arrival of his lady, and the members agreed to give a ball in her honor
on the twenty-seventh; but the sky was again suddenly overcast by
intelligence of the act of parliament shutting up the port of Boston.
The assembly made an indignant protest against this act, and,[572:A]
imitating the example of the Puritans in the civil wars of England, set
apart the first of June, appointed for closing the port, as a day of
fasting, prayer, and humiliation, in which the Divine interposition was
to be implored to protect the rights of the colonies, and avert the
horrors of civil war, and to unite the people of America in the common
cause.
On the next day Dunmore, summoning the burgesses to attend him in the
council chamber, dissolved them in the following words: "Mr. Speaker and
Gentlemen of the house of burgesses, I have in my hand a paper published
by order of your house, conceived in such terms as reflect highly upon
his majesty and the parliament of Great Britain, which makes it
necessary for me to dissolve you, and you are dissolved accordingly."
The burgesses repaired immediately to the Raleigh,[573:A] and in the
room called "the Apollo" adopted resolutions against the use of tea and
other East India commodities, and recommended the annual convening of a
congress. In this measure, as in the appointment of committees of
correspondence, Virginia took the lead. North Carolina promptly followed
her example. Notwithstanding the untoward turn of events, Washington
dined with the governor on the twenty-fifth, and passed the evening with
him, rode with him to his farm, and breakfasted there on the following
day, and attended the ball given on the twenty-seventh in honor of Lady
Dunmore.
Further news being received from Boston, the members who remained in
Williamsburg held a meeting on the twenty-ninth, at which Peyton
Randolph presided, and they issued a circular, recommending a meeting of
deputies in a convention to assemble there on the first of August.
A dissolution of the assembly had been expected, but it had been
supposed that it would be deferred until the public business should be
despatched--toward the latter part of June. Consultations and measures
for the preservation of the public rights and liberties were conducted
and matured very privately, and by very few members, of whom Patrick
Henry was the leader. George Mason, who arrived in Williamsburg in the
latter part of May, says, in a letter to a friend: "At the request of
the gentlemen concerned, I have spent an evening with them upon the
subject, where I had an opportunity of conversing with Mr. Henry and
knowing his sentiments, as well as hearing him speak in the house since
on different occasions. He is by far the most powerful speaker I ever
heard. Every word he says not only engages, but commands the attention,
and your passions are no longer your own when he addresses them. But his
eloquence is the least part of his merit. He is, in my opinion, the
first man upon this continent as well in abilities as public virtues,
and had he lived in Rome about the time of the first Punic war, when the
Roman people had arrived at their meridian glory, and their virtue not
tarnished, Mr. Henry's talents must have put him at the head of that
glorious commonwealth."
Mr. Mason found the minds of all at Williamsburg entirely absorbed in
the news from Massachusetts. The burgesses, at their own expense, sent
to their counties copies of the resolution adopted against the Boston
port bill, in order that it should be ratified by the people. Mr. Mason,
as other members probably did, directed that his elder children should
attend church on the day of fasting, humiliation, and prayer, in
mourning. The first of June was observed as set apart by the house of
burgesses. The same day being the time fixed for the discontinuance of
the use of tea, the ladies, before that day, sealed up their stock, with
a determination not to use it until the duty should be repealed, and
resolutions of sympathy and encouragement, and contributions of money
and provisions, were sent from Virginia for the relief of "our
distressed fellow-subjects of Boston."
In the midst of these excitements John Page, of Rosewell, was elected
president of the Society for the Advancement of Useful Knowledge.
In the latter part of June, Washington presided as moderator at a
meeting held in his own county, Fairfax, and he was made chairman of a
committee appointed to draught resolutions on the alarming state of
public affairs, to be reported at a future meeting. He about this time
warmly supported the patriotic measures, in a correspondence with his
neighbor and friend, Bryan Fairfax, who adhered to the Anglican side in
the dispute. On the twenty-fourth of August he wrote to him: "I could
wish, I own, that the dispute had been left to posterity to determine;
but the crisis is arrived when we must assert our rights, or submit to
every imposition that can be heaped upon us, till custom and use will
make us as tame and abject slaves as the blacks we rule over with such
arbitrary sway."
The Fairfax committee framed resolutions, intimating that a persistence
of the government in its measures of coercion would result of necessity
only in a resort to the arbitrament of arms. These resolutions were
adopted by a county meeting held on the eighteenth of July, and
Washington was elected a delegate to the convention which was about to
convene. This body met on the first day of August, (although Dunmore had
issued writs for a new assembly,) its object being to consider the state
and condition of the colony, and to appoint delegates to congress. A new
and more thorough non-importation association was organized. Peyton
Randolph, Richard Henry Lee, Washington, Henry, Bland, Benjamin
Harrison, Jr., of Berkley, and Pendleton, were appointed[575:A]
delegates to congress. Patrick Henry and Richard Henry Lee were listened
to with delight, and Washington said, "I will raise one thousand men,
subsist them at my own expense, and march myself at their head for the
relief of Boston."[575:B]
Mr. Jefferson was elected a member of this convention, but was prevented
from attending by the state of his health. In the interval before the
meeting he prepared instructions for the Virginia delegates in congress,
in which he assumed the ground that the British parliament had no right
whatever to exercise any authority over the colony of Virginia. These
instructions being communicated through the president of the convention,
Peyton Randolph, were generally read and approved of by many, though
considered too bold for the present. But they printed them in a
pamphlet, under the title of "A Summary View of the Rights of British
America."[575:C] The following excerpts are taken from it: "History has
informed us that bodies of men as well as individuals are susceptible of
the spirit of tyranny." "Scarcely have our minds been able to emerge
from the astonishment into which one stroke of parliamentary thunder has
involved us before another more heavy and more alarming is fallen on
us." "The great principles of right and wrong are legible to every
reader; to pursue them requires not the aid of many counsellors. The
whole art of government consists in the art of being honest; only aim to
do your duty, and mankind will give you credit where you fail. No longer
persevere in sacrificing the rights of one part of the empire to the
inordinate desires of another, but deal out to all equal and impartial
right. Let no act be passed by any one legislature which may infringe on
the rights and liberties of another." "Accept of every commercial
preference it is in our power to give for such things as we can raise
for their use, or they make for ours. But let them not think to exclude
us from going to other markets to dispose of those commodities which
they cannot use, or to supply those wants which they cannot supply."
On the subject of slavery Mr. Jefferson used the following language:
"The abolition of domestic slavery is the great object of desire in
these colonies, where it was unhappily introduced in their infant state.
But previous to the enfranchisement of the slaves we have, it is
necessary to exclude all further importations from Africa, yet our
repeated attempts to effect this, by prohibitions, and by imposing
duties which might amount to a prohibition, have been hitherto defeated
by his majesty's negative; thus preferring the immediate advantage of a
few British corsairs to the lasting interests of the American States and
to the rights of human nature deeply wounded by this infamous practice."
In consonance with these opinions, the convention adopted the following
resolution: "After the first day of November next we will neither
ourselves import, nor purchase any slave or slaves imported by any other
person, either from Africa, the West Indies, or any other place."
Mr. Jefferson's pamphlet displays a thorough knowledge of the history
and constitutional rights of the colony; it breathes a fiery spirit of
defiance and revolution, and the rhythmical splendor of elevated
declamation in some of its passages is hardly inferior to Junius. If
some of its statements and views are extravagant or erroneous, yet it is
bold, acute, comprehensive, luminous, and impressive. This pamphlet, it
is said, found its way to England, was taken hold of by the opposition,
interpolated a little by Edmund Burke, so as to make it answer
opposition purposes, and in that form it ran through several editions.
FOOTNOTES:
[572:A] May twenty-fourth.
[573:A] The Raleigh tavern, a wooden house, is upwards of a hundred
years old. There was formerly a bust of Sir Walter Raleigh in front of
the house. The ball-room in the Raleigh was styled "The Apollo." There
was a tavern in London called "The Apollo" in 1690.
[575:A] August eleventh.
[575:B] Life and Works of John Adams, ii. 360.
[575:C] To be found in Amer. Archives, published by Congress, fourth
series, i. 690, and in the Congress edition of Mr. Jefferson's works.
See also Memoir and Correspondence of Jefferson, 100, 116.