_The
Road
to
Independence:_
_Virginia
1763-1783_
HISTORY, GOVERNMENT, AND GEOGRAPHY SERVICE
DIVISION OF SECONDARY EDUCATION
STATE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
RICHMOND, VIRGINIA
_Foreword_
Many of the fundamental principles of our nation's development are
rooted in the Colonial Period; therefore, this era deserves careful
attention in the public schools of Virginia. The spirit of freedom
engendered in the early days of the nation's history has remained the
hallmark of the nation. It has been maintained by commitment to
democratic traditions and values.
In the public schools of Virginia, various courses deal with American
history, and consideration and study is given to the Colonial Period
from kindergarten through grade twelve. The publication entitled, THE
ROAD TO INDEPENDENCE: VIRGINIA 1763-1783, offers teachers in the
secondary schools of Virginia a special challenge to select important
areas of emphasis for the period 1763-1783 that will provide an
improved perspective for students to see new meaning in familiar
events. The teacher should present the material in a broader context so
as to enable young Americans to comprehend the ideas, events, and
personalities of the period. It is hoped that this publication will
help to accomplish this goal.
W. E. Campbell
State Superintendent of
Public Instruction
_Table of Contents_
FOREWORD ii
INTRODUCTION iv
_The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783_
PART I:
1763: The Aftermath of Victory 1
The New Generation in Politics: Britain and Virginia 4
The Political Philosophy of Virginia, 1763 7
PART II:
The Road to Revolution, 1763-1775 14
The Grenville Program, 1763-1765 14
Western Lands Defense 15
A New Revenue Program 16
The Currency Act of 1764 17
Virginia and the Stamp Act, 1764 18
The Stamp Act Resolves, May 1765 20
The Stamp Act Crisis, 1765-1766 24
Repeal and the Declaratory Act, 1766 26
British Politics and the Townshend Act, 1766-1770 28
Virginia Politics, 1766-1768 29
The Townshend Act in Virginia, 1767-1771 30
The False Interlude, 1770-1773 31
The Road to Revolution, 1773-1774 32
The Boston Tea Party and the Intolerable Acts 33
PART III:
From Revolution to Independence 35
The First Virginia Convention 35
Virginia and the First Continental Congress 38
Great Britain Stiffens 39
War 40
Independence 43
PART IV:
The Commonwealth of Virginia 46
Declaration of Rights 46
Declaration of Independence 48
The Virginia Constitution, June 29, 1776 49
The British-Americans: The Virginia Loyalists 52
The War at Home, 1776-1780 53
PART V:
The War for Independence 55
Virginians and the Continental Army, 1775-1779 55
The Indian Wars 57
George Rogers Clark and the Winning of the West 58
The War and Eastern Virginia, 1776-1779 60
Black Virginians in the Revolution 60
The British Move South, 1780-1781 62
The Invasion of Virginia, 1781 63
Yorktown, September-October, 1781 66
BIBLIOGRAPHY 68
APPENDIX
A Chronology of Selected Events in Virginia, 1763-1783 70
The Declaration of Independence 75
Suggestive Questions for Exploring Virginia's Role in the
Winning of Independence 77
Suggested Student Activities 79
_Introduction_
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.
This publication was prepared to assist teachers in developing topics
of study relating to the American Revolution and Virginia's role in the
winning of independence and to help students develop deeper
appreciation for the rich heritage that is theirs as citizens of the
Commonwealth. The Virginia tradition was created by responsible men and
women who believed in the inherent dignity of the individual, the role
of government as a servant of the people, the value of freedom,
justice, equality, and the concept of "rule of law." These ideals and
beliefs remain the hallmark of Virginia and the nation.
Important objectives of this publication are:
To emphasize the study of Virginia history during the period from 1763
to 1783 when the state exerted influential leadership and wisdom in the
winning of American independence;
To develop a deeper understanding of the meaning of freedom and basic
principles and traditions which have nourished and sustained the
American way of life;
To further the students' understanding of individual rights and
responsibilities in a free society;
To further acquaint students with their heritage of freedom and the
importance of perpetuating democratic traditions; and
To further students' understanding of the concept of self-government
and the American way of life.
It is hoped that this publication will assist in achieving these
objectives.
N. P. Bradner, Director
Division of Secondary Education
State Department of Education
Mrs. Jerri Button, Supervisor
History, Government, and
Geography Service
State Department of Education
Thomas A. Elliott, Assistant
Supervisor
History, Government, and
Geography Service
State Department of Education
Clyde J. Haddock, Assistant
Supervisor
History, Government, and
Geography Service
State Department of Education
James C. Page, Assistant Supervisor
History, Government, and Geography Service
State Department of Education
Dr. D. Alan Williams, Consultant
THE ROAD TO INDEPENDENCE: VIRGINIA 1763-1783
Professor of History
University of Virginia
_The Road to Independence:_
_Virginia 1763-1783_
Part I:
1763: The Aftermath of Victory
[Sidenote: "_He has refused to assent to laws the most wholesome and
necessary for the public good...._"]
Virginia in 1763 appeared to stand on the edge of a new era of
greatness. The Peace of Paris signed that year confirmed the total
victory of the British in North America during the long French and
Indian War (1754-1763). Virginia's natural enemies were subdued: the
French were driven from Canada, the Forks of the Ohio, the Illinois
Country, and Louisiana; the Spanish were forced to give up Florida; and
the Indians, now without any allies, were defeated or banished beyond
the Appalachians. Virginians were free to continue their remarkable
growth of the past 40 years during which they had left the Tidewater,
pushed up the James, Rappahannock, Appomattox, and Potomac river
basins, and joined thousands of Scotch-Irish and Germans pushing
southward out of Pennsylvania into the Valley of Virginia. Although
they were halted temporarily in 1755 when Braddock's disastrous defeat
in Pennsylvania and the massacre of frontier pioneer James Patton at
Draper's Meadow (Blacksburg) encouraged the Indians to resist the white
man's advance, Virginians eagerly eyed the lands in southwestern
Virginia along the Holston, Clinch, and French Lick Rivers and those
that lay beyond the mountains along the Ohio. This territory, from
which was carved the states of Kentucky and West Virginia, made
Virginia, even without considering her strong claim to all the lands
north of the Ohio, the largest of the American colonies.
Following the end of the French and Indian war, Virginians expected to
recapture the economic prosperity that had been interrupted by the
conflict. 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 Chesapeake colonies produced a raw material
(tobacco) which the British sold to European customers, and they bought
vast quantities of finished products from craftsmen and manufacturers
in the mother country. These were years when the English mercantile
system worked well. There was lax enforcement of the Navigation Acts,
liberal credit from English and Scots merchants, generous land grants
from the crown, a minimum of interference in Virginia's government, and
peace within the empire. Both mother country and colony were happy with
the arrangement. With peace would come a renewal of those "good old
days." Or so Virginians thought. But it was not to be so.
It is never possible to return to the status quo ante bellum. It would
not be possible for Great Britain to do it in 1763. The British ended
the Seven Years War (the French and Indian War 1756 became a general
world war) as the dominant country in Europe, triumphant over France in
India, the West Indies, and North America, and owners of Spanish
Florida. Yet victory had its price and its problems. The wars had to be
paid for; a policy for governing the new territories had to be
formulated; the Indian tribes beyond the Appalachians had to be
pacified and protected; and Britain had to remain "at the ready" to
defend her newly-won position of power.
Neither France, nor Spain, was about to give in easily. The French,
particularly, were awaiting the chance to challenge the British. For
that reason, the Peace of Paris was only a truce in a series of wars
which began in the 1740's and did not end until the defeat of Napoleon
in 1814. The eager French support of the American Revolution was based
on more than the attraction of young aristocrats like Lafayette to the
republican ideals of a war for independence. French self-interest and
revenge also were heavily involved.
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. Many taxes had been in effect since
an earlier war in the 1740's (King George's War). With the national
debt at a staggering £146,000,000, much of it the result of defending
interests in the New World, and several million pounds owed to American
colonies as reimbursement for maintaining troops during the war,
British taxpayers, rich and poor alike, expected relief. In fact, these
war debts forced parliament to impose additional taxes in 1763,
including a much-despised excise tax on cider. It is hardly surprising
to find most Britons agreed that in the future the Americans should be
responsible for those expenses directly attributable to maintaining the
empire in America. That future costs were to be shared seemed
politically expedient and the reasonable thing to do. Every ministry
which came to power in Britain after 1763 understood this as a national
mandate it could not ignore.
The French and Indian War produced a rather curious and very
significant by-product: the English literally rediscovered America and
Virginia. Since the late 17th Century there had been very little
personal contact between Englishmen in authority and the colony. From
1710 to 1750, the years when all was running so well, the only contact
Virginia had with English government was through her royal governor.
Most of the other royal officials in Virginia were Virginians, not
Englishmen. And, as events turned out, even the royal governors were a
thin line of communication. Governor Alexander Spotswood (1710-1722)
became a Virginia planter rather than go home to Britain; Governor Hugh
Drysdale (1722-1726) died in Williamsburg; and Governor William Gooch
(1727-1749) served in the colony for 22 years without once visiting
England. Moreover, fewer young Virginians were going to England for
their schooling, preferring to attend the College of William and Mary
or the recently opened College of New Jersey (Princeton). There were,
of course, London and Bristol tobacco merchants who knew Virginia well,
but the great increase in Virginia wealth after 1720 was partially
obscured from Englishmen because it was the Scots merchants, not the
English, who came to control much of the Chesapeake tobacco trade.
English politicians and citizens alike had a very incomplete
understanding of the great strides made by Virginia. They still thought
of Virginians as provincials, struggling in the wilderness, or as
impoverished Scots, Irish, and Germans living in the back-country.
Hundreds of English military officers, many of whom would achieve
positions of political influence in the 1760's and 1770's, were
surprised to find Virginia and other American colonies to be
economically prosperous, socially mature, and attractive places in
which to live. Englishman after Englishman wrote about Virginians who
lived in a style befitting English country gentry and London merchants.
Over and over again they noted the near absence of poverty, even on the
frontier. Their discoveries matched English political needs. Not only
was it necessary for the Americans to assume a greater share of the
financial burdens, Englishmen now knew they could do it.
These Englishmen also made another major discovery--the colonies were
violating the English constitution. They had grown independent of the
crown and the mother country. They paid little attention to
parliamentary laws and the Navigation Acts; they smuggled extensively
and bribed customs officials; and they traded with the enemy in
wartime. They had developed political practices which conflicted with
the constitution as the British knew it. Legislatures ignored the
king's instructions, often refused to support the war efforts until
they had forced concessions from the governors, and had taken royal and
executive prerogatives unto themselves. Worse yet, royal governors like
Robert Dinwiddie and Francis Fauquier yielded to the demands of the
House of Burgesses and accepted laws explicitly contrary to their royal
instructions. What these Englishmen discovered was the collapse of the
imperial system as set forth in the creation of the Board of Trade in
1696. In its place there had been substituted, quite unnoticed by
British officials, the House of Burgesses which thought of itself as a
miniature House of Commons.[1]
[1] An excellent summary of the ways in which the Virginia
burgesses and their counterparts in North and South Carolina and
Georgia quietly gained the upper hand by mid-century, see Jack P.
Greene, Quest for Power (University of North Carolina Press,
1963).
Once the British made the discovery about these constitutional changes
they quite understandably believed such conditions could not be
ignored. Quite understandably, the Virginians were not willing to give
up rights and privileges which they believed were theirs, or the
semiautonomy they had enjoyed the previous 30 years.
The New Generation in Politics: Britain and Virginia
There came to power in the 1760's an entirely new political leadership
in England. The most important change was the kingship itself. George
II, who had come to the throne in 1727, died in 1760 and was succeeded
by his grandson, George III. Unlike his grandfather and his
great-grandfather, George I (1715-1727), both of whom were essentially
Hanoverians, George III "gloried in the name of Briton" and believed it
was essential for the king to be his own "prime" minister and for the
king to be active in managing the crown's political affairs in
parliament. Unlike the first two Georges, the third George could not
achieve the political stability which Robert Walpole and the Duke of
Newcastle had imposed on parliament from 1720 to 1754. It is well known
that George had a congenital disease which pushed him into periods of
apparent insanity during his long reign (he died in 1820). Present day
medical scholars now believe that this illness was perhaps porphyria or
some type of metabolic illness, which could now be treated and
controlled by diet and medication. Such illness does not appear to have
been a major factor in his actions prior to the Revolution, the first
significant attack not occurring until 1788. Instead, the stolid and
often plodding king tended to rely upon men like the unimaginative Lord
Bute or his somewhat stodgy wife, Charlotte of Mecklenberg (for whom
two Virginia counties and the town of Charlottesville are named.) The
breakdown of the once-powerful Whig political coalition also added to
the king's problems.
About the time George ascended the throne, the English Whigs who had
dominated English politics since 1720 fell victim to their own
excesses. Walpole and Newcastle had controlled and directed parliament
and the ministry through the "judicious" use of patronage and
government contracts and contacts. Nevertheless they had done so with a
consistent governmental program in mind and in a period of peace. By
the 1760's the Whigs had deteriorated into factions quarreling over
patronage, spoils, and contracts, not policy. They became thoroughly
corrupt and interested in power primarily for personal gain.
Consequently, the king could not find anyone whom he could trust who
could also provide leadership and hold together a coalition capable of
doing his business in the House of Commons. He tried Whigs George
Grenville (1763-1765), Lord Rockingham (1765-1766), Lord Chatham, the
former William Pitt (1766-1768), and the Duke of Grafton (1768-1770).
Finally, in 1770, he turned to Lord North and the Tories. North held on
until 1782.
What these frequent changes suggest is that at the height of the
American crisis in the 1760's, when the real seeds of the Revolution
were being sown, the instability of the British parliamentary
government precluded a consistent and rational approach to American
problems. Lacking internal cohesion, the English government could not
meet the threat of external division. It also means that the colonists,
especially the Virginians, saw parliament as being thoroughly corrupt
and the king surrounded by what even the mild-mannered Edmund Pendleton
called "a rotten, wicked administration". Not until the eve of
independence in 1776 were Virginians to think of George as a tyrant and
despot. In fact, he was neither. He was a dedicated man of limited
abilities in an age demanding greatness if the separation of the
American colonies from the empire was to have been prevented. Perhaps
even greatness could not have prevented what some have come to believe
was inevitable. (For a sympathetic study, see King George III, by John
Brooke, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1972).
Leadership also changed dramatically in Virginia in the 1760's. This
was partially due to changing economic conditions. 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.
Such a favorable balance of economic factors did not exist in the
1760's. The European market could not absorb continued annual increases
in the good, cheap tobacco Virginia produced. Prices fell. With an
oversupply of tobacco in the warehouses, English and Scots merchants
limited further credit extensions and called for repayment of
long-outstanding loans. Within Virginia the centers of tobacco
production shifted from the older, worn-out Tidewater lands to the
newer, richer soils along the Fall Line, on the Piedmont, and in the
Northern Neck. A few men like George Washington switched from tobacco
to wheat, corn, barley, and rye. Most Tidewater planters did not
realize fully what was happening to them, presuming at first that they
were just in another swing of the unpredictable tobacco business cycle,
and were not caught in a situation which would be permanent. Eventually
the total debt of Virginians, most of it owned by Tidewater planters,
to Scots and English merchant houses reached £2,000,000, equalling the
total private debts of the other 12 colonies.
One other economic factor was apparent to many Virginians--they were
living beyond their means, building fine houses, furnishing them with
exquisite taste, wearing the latest fashions, riding in expensive
carriages, and occasionally over-extending themselves at the gaming
tables and race courses. Although these personal extravagances added to
the debt structure, they would not have been so significant if they had
not been accompanied by a lack of business ability among some of the
younger Tidewater planters. The sons did not seem to have inherited the
same business acumen and hard-driving business instincts of their
fathers and grandfathers. Having grown up in a period of affluence,
they were eternally optimistic that it would continue, that their
setbacks were temporary, and their social positions were secure. 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.
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. They also took violent exception
to crown and parliamentary solutions to imperial problems. The growing
personal indebtedness caused Virginians to rethink their economic ties
to the empire, it did not cause them to seek independence in order to
avoid paying their bills.[2]
[2] For differing views of the debt situation see Lawrence H.
Gipson, The Coming of the Revolution (Harper and Row: New
York, 1954), 40-54, and Emory G. Evans, "Planter Indebtedness and
the Coming of the Revolution in Virginia," William and Mary
Quarterly, 3rd. series, XIX (1962), 511-33. Evans holds an
anti-debt position.
Political leadership changed during the 18th Century from the council
to the House of Burgesses and from a few great families to a
broad-based gentry. In the early 18th Century several great families
directed Virginia politics. Mostly members of the Governor's Council,
they not only won power and wealth for themselves, they challenged the
power of the royal governors and managed to defeat or neutralize
several strong-willed governors, including Governor Francis Nicholson
(1698-1705) and Governor Alexander Spotswood. They even converted
Spotswood into a Virginia planter. The council reached its height of
power in the 1720's and then lost its influence as the great planters
passed on. Robert "King" Carter died in 1732, Commissary James Blair in
1743, William Byrd II in 1744, Thomas Lee in 1750, and Lewis Burwell in
1751. Only Thomas Lee successfully passed on his political position to
his heir, Richard Henry Lee. Unlike his father, Lee achieved his power
in the House of Burgesses.
The day of the House of Burgesses had come. Its leader was John
Robinson, of King and Queen County, whose father and uncle had been
councilors. From the day in 1738 when he became Speaker of the House
and Treasurer of Virginia until his death in 1766, Robinson quietly and
efficiently built the power and influence of the burgesses. He took as
his watchword the promise of his predecessor as speaker, Sir John
Randolph, to the burgesses:
The Honour of the House of Burgesses hath of late been raised
higher than can be observed in former Times; and I am persuaded you
will not suffer it to be lessened under your Management.
I will be watchful of your Privileges, without which we should be
no more than a dead Body; and advertise you of every Incident that
may have the least tendency to destroy or diminish them...[3]
[3] Journal of House of Burgesses, 5 August 1736.
Robinson never flagged in his devotion to protecting and advancing the
privileges of the house.
Robinson correctly understood the times. By the 1730's the number of
affluent families numbered well over 100 and could no longer be
effectively represented by the 12-member council. 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." Mostly planters and burgesses from the
James and York river basins, they included a few of their heirs who had
built substantial plantations on the Piedmont. Their principal rivals
had been northern Tidewater and Northern Neck planters led by Councilor
Thomas Lee and then by Richard Henry Lee. Although these rival gentry
groups might compete for choice lands in western Virginia and the Ohio
Valley and for royal offices and positions of influence, they did not
differ in political philosophy. Nor did they deny house leadership to
men with talent. Unlike their counterparts in the House of Commons they
did not differ on matters of English policy--political and economic
decisions were to be made in Virginia by Virginians and not by royal
governors, the Board of Trade, the crown, or the English Parliament.
Above all it was not to be made by parliament. They were the parliament
for Virginia.
In the 1760's three new groups joined the prevailing Robinson-Randolph
leadership. The first was the generation born in the 1730's and 1740's
which would reach maturity in the 1760's and be waiting to enter the
"tobacco club" as a matter of birth. The second was a generation of men
who had achieved wealth and influence, mainly in the Piedmont, whose
fathers and brothers had not been in the first rank of planter gentry.
The third was a new element--burgesses from recently established
frontier counties who had the ambition, drive, and determination to
make good which were characteristics of the late 17th Century founders
of the great families. Rarely did these men want to overturn the
prevailing political leadership, they wanted to join it. The declining
fortunes of the Tidewater planters and the crises of the 1760's
accelerated the rise to power of all three of these new elements in the
House of Burgesses.
The Political Philosophy of Virginia, 1763
From that moment on September 2, 1774, when the Virginians appeared at
the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia, and John Adams recorded
in his diary, "The gentlemen from Virginia appear to be the most
spirited and consistent of any", until Chief Justice John Marshall died
in 1835, Americans marveled at the quality, quantity, and political
brilliance of this generation of revolutionary Virginians. And we have
marveled since. It was not just the towering national figures like
Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson,
James Madison, James Monroe, and John Marshall, or the great state
leaders like Peyton Randolph, Richard Bland, George Wythe, or Edmund
Pendleton who astounded contemporaries. It was the fact that they knew
of other men in Virginia as capable--Thomas Nelson, Jr., Benjamin
Harrison, Severn Eyre, Francis Lightfoot Lee, John Page, John Blair,
Jr., Robert Carter Nicholas, or Dr. Thomas Walker.
The key to the political sagacity of these revolutionary Virginians is
found in the willingness of an elite group of planter gentry to serve
government and to serve it well and in the acceptance of their
leadership by the rest of the Virginians. It is found in the
enlightened attitudes these leaders had about their responsibilities as
officeholders to the people. 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. Instead, it was the English who had not been
vigilant and who had allowed a particularly strong concept of liberty
to grow strong in Virginians.
How could a planter elite become the fount of republicanism.[4] First,
the common bond of land and tobacco farming gave the large and small
planters similar economic interests and a homogeneous society, at least
east of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Second, the less-affluent farmer
naturally elected his more prosperous neighbors to the House of
Burgesses. The poorly run plantation was no recommendation for a public
office whose main responsibility was promoting agricultural prosperity.
Third, the hard-working small farmers lacked the time and money to
serve in public office. Virginia had a long tradition of voluntary
service in local government and only a small per diem allowance for
attending the House of Burgesses. 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.
[4] See D. Alan Williams, "The Virginia Gentry and the Democratic
Myth", Main Problems in American History, 3rd. ed. (Dorsey Press,
Homewood, Illinois, 1971), 22-36.
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. Honor, duty, and devotion to public and
class interest called them to office, and they took that call
seriously. They alone had the time, the financial resources, and the
education necessary for public office. As social leaders they were
expected to set an example in manners and public morals, to uphold the
church, to be generous with benevolences, to serve with enlightened
self-interest, and to be paragons of duty and dignity. With a certain
amount of condescension and considerable truth, they thought colonial
Virginia would be ill-served if they refused to lead and government was
run by those who were less qualified to hold office. They set a
standard which has remained the benchmark of Virginia political ethics.
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; and to bind them by Laws which may advance their Common
Good. Herein they trust you with all that they have, place the
greatest Confidence in your Wisdoms and Discretions, and testify
the highest Opinion of your virtue.[5]
[5] Journal of House of Burgesses, 5 August 1736.
When Randolph made these remarks, he was telling the burgesses what
they already knew and at a time when there were no pressing public
issues. It was this abiding interrelationship between electorate and
representatives which was the strength of the Virginia political
system. The gentry extolled republicanism not only because it seemed
the right and just attitude but also because it worked.
The small farmers and slaveholders acted as a restraint upon any
tendency toward oligarchy which the gentry might have entertained. The
small farmers were in the majority and they had the right to vote. 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. Therefore, the House of Burgesses became, at the same time, the
center of planter rule and of popular government.[6]
[6] For a short well-written discussion of the election process
see Charles S. Sydnor, Gentlemen Freeholders: Political Practices
in Washington's Virginia (University of North Carolina, 1952,
reprinted in paperback as Revolutionaries in the Making:
Political Practices in Washington's Virginia.)
The constitutional philosophy of the House of Burgesses proclaimed in
response to the Grenville revenue program in 1764 was not new. When
Patrick Henry electrified the burgesses with his Stamp Act Resolves in
May 1765, he was not setting forth a new concept of government, he was
reaffirming, in a most dramatic form, constitutional positions the
burgesses themselves well understood. The burgesses had developed their
constitutional positions during the 1750's in response to a series of
minor, isolated events--royal disallowance, the Pistole Fee
Controversy, and the Two-Penny Act.
After trying for years to codify and reform laws long in use, the
General Assembly in 1748 completed a general revision of the laws.
Included in these revisions were several laws already in force and
approved by the crown. The assembly did not include a suspending clause
with these acts, (holding up their implementation until the crown had
an opportunity to approve them). While a suspending clause was supposed
to be attached, the assembly had not done so regularly for years and
the governors had not challenged them, nor had the crown complained. In
1752, however, the crown disallowed half-a-dozen laws, claiming the
assembly had intruded upon the king's rights and ignored the governor's
instructions. Angered, the assembly protested this "new" behavior by
the crown and asserted they could not remember when the king had vetoed
laws which were of no consequence to the crown, nor contrary to
parliamentary law, but which were of importance to Virginia. It was the
beginning of a long struggle.
In 1752 there also occurred a second and more decisive dispute--the
Pistole Fee Controversy. One of the frequently overlooked events in
Virginia, this debate between the royal governor and the House of
Burgesses brought forth the classic constitutional defense by the house
of its right, and its right alone, to tax Virginians. The burgesses'
powers, as proclaimed by Richard Bland, became the fundamental argument
by Virginians against royal encroachment upon what they believed were
their rights.
Shortly after his arrival in Virginia Governor Robert Dinwiddie
announced his intention to charge one pistole (a Spanish coin worth
about $3.50) for applying the governor's seal to all land grants. The
council, believing this was a routine fee for a service rendered,
concurred. The storm of protest which followed amazed Dinwiddie. The
burgesses accused Dinwiddie of usurping a right not his in order to
line his pockets. This was not a fee, it was a tax, and only the
burgesses could initiate a tax on Virginians. Dinwiddie denied that the
fee was solely for his personal remuneration. Instead, he maintained
his aim was to return to the tax rolls millions of acres of land
withheld by Virginians in order to prevent collection of the annual
quit-rent on the land which every Virginia landowner paid the crown. In
the heated debates which followed, both parties built their cases
around the rights and privileges each claimed was its own. The ultimate
outcome, which resulted in a compromise by the crown, satisfactory to
both Dinwiddie and the burgesses, is not as important as the
constitutional argument put forth by the burgesses.
The house resolutions included ringing phrases which would become
familiar in the 1760's:
The Rights of the Subject are so secured by Law, that they cannot
be deprived of the least Part of their Property, but by their own
Consent; Upon this excellent Principle is our Constitution founded
... That the said Demand is illegal and arbitrary, contrary to the
Charters of this Colony, to his Majesty's and his Royal
Predecessor's Instructions to the several Governors, and the
Express Order of his Majesty King William of Glorious Memory ...
That whoever shall hereafter pay a Pistole ... shall be deemed a
betrayer of the Rights and Privileges of the People.[7]
[7] Journal of House of Burgesses, 1752-1758, 143, 154-155.
The author of these resolves was Richard Bland, a tough-minded burgess
from Prince George County, descendant of one of the colony's oldest
families. One of the earliest graduates of the College of William and
Mary to achieve a major position in the burgesses, he was one of the
most widely read. He held four beliefs common to the revolutionary
generations, beliefs he translated into major works during the Pistole
Fee Controversy, the Parsons' Cause, the Stamp Act, and the later
revenue crises:
the eternal validity of the natural-law doctrines most cogently
stated by John Locke;
the superiority over all other forms of government of the English
Constitution, of which an uncorrupted model or extension was the
peculiar property of the Virginians;
the like superiority of those unique rights and liberties which
were the heritage of the free-born Englishman; and
the conviction that the good state rests on the devotion of men of
virtue, wisdom, integrity, and justice.[8]
[8] Clinton Rossiter, Six Characters in Search of a Republic
(Harcourt, Brace: New York, 1964), chap. 5, "Richard Bland, the
Whig in America", 184.
In addition to the house resolutions, Bland wrote a closely reasoned
essay attacking the Pistole Fee, A Modest and True State of the
Case (1753). Only a portion survives and is known as A Fragment
Against the Pistole Fee. His underlying principle, one which the
British ignored and Virginians never forget, is cogently set forth.
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. The question then ought not to be the
smallness of the demand but the Lawfulness of it. For if it is
against Law, the same Power which imposes one Pistole may impose a
Hundred ...
LIBERTY & PROPERTY are like those precious Vessels whose soundness
is destroyed by the least flaw and whose use is lost by the
smallest hole.
Virginians never deviated from this view.
In 1818 John Adams, when asked what was the Revolution, replied, "the
Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in
the minds and hearts of the people ... This radical change in the
principles, sentiments, and affections of the people, was the real
American Revolution." In Virginia, the Revolution began in the minds
and hearts of the House of Burgesses with the Pistole Fee. Its author
was Richard Bland.
The third event was the Parsons' Cause. This event reached the people,
and in it the people found a spokesman--Patrick Henry. The Parsons'
Cause was an outgrowth of the Two-Penny Acts. Nearly all Virginia
salaries and most taxes were paid in tobacco, rather than specie (hard
money). Many officials, including the clergy, had their salaries set by
acts of the assembly at a specified number of pounds of tobacco per
year. In the case of the clergy this was a minimum of 16,000 lbs. per
year. In the 1750's a series of droughts and other natural disasters
brought crop shortages in some areas, driving tobacco prices well
beyond normal levels. In 1753 and again in 1755 the assembly allowed
taxpayers to pay taxes in either tobacco or specie at the rate of two
pennies per pound of tobacco owed. On one hand this seemed eminently
fair. The crop shortages worked a double penalty on the planter--he had
little tobacco because of the weather, but he was forced to pay his
taxes in valuable tobacco he did not have. On the other hand, the
clergy and others protested they received no relief when tobacco was in
oversupply and the price was low. More importantly, they had a contract
which had been enacted into law and approved by the king. No assembly
could repeal a law approved by the king without his approval. In 1753
and 1755 the issue faded away.
Then in 1758 the assembly passed another Two-Penny Act, applying
throughout the colony and to all officials and even to private debts.
Governor Francis Fauquier, although knowing that he could not put such
a law into effect until the king had given his approval, decided he
would do the politically expedient thing and signed the bill.
Fauquier reckoned without the tenacity of the clergy led by the Rev.
John Camm, a William and Mary college professor and parish pastor.
Camm, whom Fauquier called "a Man of Abilities but a Turbulent Man who
Delights to live in a Flame", later became President of the college,
rector of Bruton Parish Church, and a member of the council.
In 1759 he was determined to receive what he believed was his
guaranteed salary. Camm believed the law unconstitutional on two
grounds: the assembly had passed a law repealing one already approved
by the king, and Fauquier had permitted the law to go into effect
without the suspending clause period taking place. At the behest of
many Anglican clergy, Camm went to England. Presenting the parsons'
case to the Bishop of London, who in turn forwarded the case to the
Privy Council, Camm succeeded. The king declared the law
unconstitutional.
Virginians were outraged. Unlike the Pistole Fee, which touched most
directly the larger planters and the burgesses, the Parsons' Cause
enflamed the entire populace. Camm and a number of clergymen sued in
county courts for back salary. They received little satisfaction.
Several county courts went so far as to declare the Two-Penny Act legal
despite the king's disallowance.
Hanover County Court took a different tack. There the Rev. James Maury,
Jefferson's field school teacher and hard-pressed father of 11
children, sued the vestry of Fredericksville Parish for his salary. The
county court upheld his right to sue for claims and called for a jury
trial to set the damages. Ironically, one of the clergymen who would
benefit from a favorable verdict for Maury was the Rev. Patrick Henry.
Presiding over the county court on December 1, 1763, was his brother,
John Henry. Defending the parish vestry was his nephew and namesake,
and the son of the justice, Patrick Henry. Hanover County was a center
of Presbyterianism and in the jury box undoubtedly sat men who already
had a dislike for Anglican clergymen whose salaries they were compelled
to pay but whose churches they did not attend.
Young Patrick Henry, in his first prominent trial, launched immediately
into a scathing attack on the established clergy, calling them
"rapacious harpies", men who would "snatch from the hearth of their
honest parishioners his last hoe-cake, from the widow and her orphan
children their last milch cow; the last bed, nay, the last blanket from
the lyin-in woman". Having stunned his audience into silence, Henry
turned his invective upon the king. Although the constitutionality of
the law was not an issue, because the county court had already decided
it was constitutional, Henry proceeded to excoriate the king himself
for violating the English constitution. His biographer, Robert Meade,
notes:
Henry insisted on the relationship and reciprocal duties of the
King and his subjects. Advancing the doctrine of John Locke as
popularized by Richard Bland and other colonial leaders, he
contended that government is a conditional compact, composed of
mutually dependent agreements 'of which the violation by one party
discharged the other'. He bravely argued that the disregard of the
pressing wants of the colony was 'an instance of royal misrule',
which had thus far dissolved the political compact, and left the
people at liberty to consult their own safety.[9]
[9] Robert D. Meade, Patriot in the Making (Patrick Henry)
(Lippincott: Philadelphia, 1957), 132.
The jury retired, and then returned with its verdict--one penny damages
for Parson Maury. Henry had lost the legal case, he had won the battle
for their minds and hearts.
Out of the Parsons' Cause in 1763 came four important developments: the
Anglican clergy suffered an irreparable setback and loss of status; the
House of Burgesses now closely scrutinized the instructions from king
to governor; the suspending clause was seen as a direct challenge to
colonial legislative rights; and Patrick Henry burst forth as the
popular spokesman for Virginia rights, winning a seat in the 1765
election to the House of Burgesses. In 1763 few people were willing to
accept his premise that the king had been guilty of "royal misrule". In
a dozen years they would.
Thus, by 1763 the fundamental political principles which would bring
Virginia to independence already had been proclaimed. They were not
developed in response to British actions, but Virginia experiences.
They awaited only the specific challenges before they would be
transformed into inalienable rights. Within a few months those
challenges tumbled forth from Britain.