From Revolution to Independence
The First Virginia Convention
[Sidenote: "_He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies
without the consent of our legislatures...._"]
By the time members of the convention gathered in Williamsburg on
August 1 popular opinion for stern action against the Coercive Acts was
unequivocal. From Spotsylvania, Norfolk, Portsmouth, Prince William,
Frederick, Dunmore (now Shenandoah), Westmoreland, Prince George,
Essex, Middlesex--in all, 31 towns and counties, came outspoken
resolutions against parliamentary usurpation of Virginia rights.
Liberally sprinkled throughout the resolves were sentiments like, "it
is the fixed Intention of the Said Ministry to reduce the Colonies to a
State of Slavery", "we owe no Obedience to any Act of the British
Parliament", "we will oppose any such Acts with our Lives and
Fortunes", "the present Odious Measures", or "ministerial Hirelings,
and Professed Enemies of American Freedom". The targets were parliament
and the king's ministers. As yet, few Virginians were willing to
believe that they would not receive justice from the king, choosing to
believe instead that the king was as much a victim of parliament's
"corruption" as were the colonists.
The unifying theme in the resolves were calls for "non-importation,
non-exportation, and non-consumption". Halt the importation of all
goods from Britain, export no tobacco or supplies to Britain and the
West Indies, and consume no European goods, luxuries, and above all no
tea. Knowing economic coercion had brought repeal of the Stamp Tax and
the Townshend Duties, they were certain coercion would work against the
Intolerable Acts.[28]
[28] Copies of the extant county and town resolves with the names
of many of the signers can be found in Van Schreeven and
Scribner, Revolutionary Virginia, I, 168. There are known, but
unrecorded, resolves from at least nine more of the 65 Virginia
jurisdictions.
The outpouring of delegates to the non-legal convention, well over 100
of the 153 delegates eligible to serve, so gratified the usually
laconic George Washington that he noted, "We never before had so full a
Meeting of delegates at any one Time." 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. Here the convention went beyond a mere desire to
place economic pressure on British slave traders; their objective was
to halt the trade altogether. The major stumbling block to action was
non-exportation of tobacco and non-collection of debts. While most
exponents of non-exportation and non-collection wanted to break the
business links to Britain and to hasten resolution of the
constitutional impasse, there were some Virginians who undoubtedly
believed that these measures would bring them relief from their
creditors. The majority of the delegates, however, including many of
the radicals and those most deeply in debt, held it was improper to
refuse to send to England tobacco promised to merchants and creditors.
Such a tactic was a violation of private contract and personal honor.
Radical Thomson Mason put it succinctly, "Common honesty requires that
you pay your debts."
Eventually a series of compromises was worked out. All importations
from Britain and the West Indies would cease on November 1, 1774; all
slave importations would cease the same day; no tea would be drunk; and
colonists would wear American-manufactured clothes and support American
industries. If these measures did not bring relief and redress of
grievances, all exports would cease on August 10, 1775. To assure
compliance and enforcement of these agreements 107 delegates signed the
Virginia Association binding themselves together in common action. The
convention elected and instructed Peyton Randolph, Richard Henry Lee,
Washington, Henry, Bland, Harrison, and Pendleton "to represent this
Colony in general Congress". They then departed to establish committees
and associations in every county and town in Virginia. Determination to
aid Massachusetts and a conviction that if one colony suffered, all
suffered, permeated the convention resolutions. 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 second were notes and
resolutions by Thomas Jefferson, later published and distributed widely
throughout the colonies under the title, A Summary View of the
Rights of British America.[29]
[29] Both are published in Van Schreeven and Scribner,
Revolutionary Virginia, I, 169-203 and 240-256.
Thomson Mason's letters, often ignored in favor of Jefferson's
Summary View, are especially intriguing because they start with
a favorite Virginia assumption--The British constitution was "the
wisest system of legislation that ever did, or perhaps ever will,
exist". It provided a balance in government between the crown, the
nobility, and the commons, or as Mason suggests, it blended the three
forms of government, "monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy (each)
possessed of their distinct powers, checked, tempered, and improved
each other.... The honour of the monarchy tempered the Impetuousity of
democracy, the moderation of aristocracy checked the ardent aspiring
honour of monarchy, and the virtue of democracy restrained the one,
impelled the other, and invigorated both. In short, no constitution
ever bid so fair for perpetual duration as that of England, and none
ever half so well deserved it, since political liberty was its sole
aim, and the general good of mankind the principal object of its
attention."
What went wrong according to Mason, was not that a hapless king
ascended the throne, but a corrupt aristocracy had perverted parliament
and parliamentary powers to its own end. 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!" in 1774.
Jefferson's more famous Summary View moved to nearly the same
conclusion with perhaps even more emotion and rhetoric. Intended to
arouse the convention, from which he was absent, the Summary
View is one of Jefferson's few impassioned pleas, written with
fervor in what Dumas Malone, his distinguished biographer, calls "the
white heat of indignation against the coercive acts."[30] Filled with
errors he would undoubtedly have corrected if he had not fallen sick,
Jefferson directed himself toward moral and philosophical arguments.
The essential question was "What was the political relation between us
and England?". The answer was a voluntary compact entered into between
the king and his people when they voluntarily left England for America,
a compact which they had never renounced, but which parliament had
broken and the king had not protected. He denied the authority of
parliament even to make laws for trade and navigation and asserted
England was now attempting to take for its own benefits the fruits of a
society wrested from the wilderness by the American colonists. These
colonists, having arrived without assistance, voluntarily formed a
government based on their own natural rights and were entitled to
defend those rights and that government against the repeated incursions
of parliament. Then Jefferson touched upon a very telling point in
understanding the radical shift of the colonists in their allegiance
from 1763 to 1775. He noted that while parliament had passed laws
previously which had threatened liberty, these transgressions had been
few and far between. More recently, however,
[30] Dumas Malone, Jefferson the Virginian (Little, Brown:
Boston, 1948), 182. His excellent discussion of the Summary View
is on pages 181-190.
Scarcely have our minds been able to emerge from the astonishment into
which one stroke of parliamentary thunder had involved us, before
another more heavy, and more alarming, is fallen on us. Single acts of
tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of the day; but a
series of oppressions, begun at a distinguishable (an identifiable
point in time) period, and pursued, unalterably through every change of
ministers, too plainly prove a deliberate and systematical plan for
reducing us to slavery.
To Jefferson in 1774 the source of this conspiracy to reduce the
colonies to slavery was parliament; by 1776 he would identify the king
as being involved as well.
Too rash, and too radical, for the August convention or even for the
Continental Congress in October 1774, the Summary View would earn for
Jefferson an intercolonial reputation as a brilliant writer and a
foremost patriot. It was this reputation which resulted in his
appointment to the committee in June 1776 which drew up a declaration
of independence.
Virginia and the First Continental Congress
On August 30, Washington, Henry, and Pendleton set out from Mount
Vernon for Philadelphia. There they met their fellow Virginians and
delegates from every colony except Georgia whose governor had prevented
the legislature from sending delegates. The Massachusetts men,
conscious that many colonists considered them radical, impulsive, and
even crude, determined to operate behind the scenes, deferring to the
Virginians whom Adams called "the most spirited and consistent of any
delegation". They were successful, for Caesar Rodney of Delaware was
soon complaining that "the Bostonians who have been condemned by many
for their violence are moderate men when compared to Virginia, South
Carolina, and Rhode Island". The union of New England and the southern
colonies quickly produced the election of Peyton Randolph as speaker of
the convention and alarmed the more conservative members like Joseph
Galloway of Pennsylvania.
Try as they might the members of this first congress made slow headway.
They knew little of each other and often spent time defending their own
reputations rather than finding common grounds for action. While bound
together by parliament's invasion of their rights, they could not move
forward in unison with a specific plan to protect those rights. So
limited were their visions by their own provincial experiences that
they had to be asked directly by Patrick Henry, "Where are your
Landmarks; your Boundaries of Colonies. The Distinctions between
Virginians, Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers, and New Englanders, are no
more. I am not a Virginian, but an American!" George Washington in his
more plain way did the same thing by talking about "us" instead of
"you".
Then unfounded rumors circulated that Boston had been bombarded by
General Thomas Gage. Complacency ended. Congress acted with dispatch to
approve the Suffolk Resolves from Massachusetts. In direct, defiant
terms these Resolves restated the rights of the Americans in tones
familiar to Virginians:
"If a boundless Extend of Continent, swarming with Millions, will
tamely submit to live, move and have their Being at the Arbitrary
Will of a licentious Minister, they basely yield to voluntary
Slavery, and future Generations shall load their Memories with
incessant Execrations--On the other Hand, if we arrest the Hand
which would ransack our Pockets.... Posterity will acknowledge the
Virtue which preserved them free and happy...."
Slavery, freedom, happiness, virtue, liberty were the clarion calls to
which the colonials acted and reacted.
When the First Congress had completed its tedious work on October 26, it
had adopted much of the Virginia Convention proposals: non-importation
of British and West Indian products would begin on December 1;
non-exportation, if necessary, would begin on September 1, 1776; and a
Continental Association patterned after the Virginia Association was
urged for every town and county in the colonies to assure enforcement of
the embargoes. Congress prepared an address to the British people and a
mild memorial to the American people setting forth the history of
"Parliamentary subjugation". The delegates turned aside as premature
Richard Henry Lee's call for an independent militia in each colony.
The very conservative nature of the whole revolutionary movement can be
seen in congress' plea to the British people--"Place us in the same
situation we were at the close of the last war, and our former harmony
will be restored." They wanted a restoration of rights they thought
they long had held and now had lost. To do so, however, involved a
concession of parliamentary authority which few in England were willing
to do.
Great Britain Stiffens
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. Whereas parliament had listened to the pleas from distressed
London tobacco merchants and traders in 1766 and 1770, members of both
houses were increasingly of the opinion that the earlier repeals were a
mistake. The basic issue of constitutional supremacy had been avoided.
Now it must be faced. Even before the Continental Congress had met,
King George remarked to Lord North, "The die is cast, the Colonies must
either submit or triumph; I do not wish to come to severer measures but
we must not retreat." There is no evidence that British public opinion
differed with him.
Most Englishmen, the king and most members of the commons among them,
considered the raising of independent militia companies in New England
and the enforcement of non-importation by the Virginia Associations to
be acts of rebellion. When they learned about the Continental
Association in late 1774, they were convinced sterner measures were
called for. At its January 1775 session parliament defeated a late-hour
plan of union offered by Chatham. This plan would have conferred
limited dominion status on the American colonies, reasserted the
fundamental power of the crown, and repealed all the colonial acts
passed by parliament after 1763. A similar plan had been offered by
Galloway to the First Continental Congress. Both failed. Lord North,
while sympathetic to plans for easing tensions, offered a plan of
reconciliation by which the colonists would grant annual amounts for
imperial expenses in lieu of taxes, but he could find no solution which
at the same time did not diminish the authority of parliament or force
the colonists to accept some vague annual levy determined in Britain.
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]
[31] As with Henry's other great speeches no correct text
remains. There seems little doubt that the exact words in the
speech were lost and that as time went on, they were improved.
But the debate over the exact text should not obscure the basic
fact that Henry's oratory stirred men's hearts with phrases in a
manner no other Virginian, perhaps no other American, has ever
done.
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]
[32] "Jefferson's Recollections," 400-401.
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.