University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER VI

THE REVENUE ACT—CRISES OF THE SLOOP
GASPEE, AND THE BOSTON PORT BILL

The concession obtained from the ministry and from Parliament
constituted a great victory, but it fell short of what the
colonists had hoped for, and they did not abate their vigilance.
The retention of the duty on tea was a great disappointment
to Lord Botetourt. In November, 1769, he had called the
Assembly together to inform the members officially of the assurances
he had received not long before from the Earl of
Hillsborough, the British Secretary of State for the Colonies,
that it was the intention of the English government not to propose
any further taxes upon the American people and to take
off the duties on glass, paper and colors. In conveying to
them this personal intelligence he added his own personal
pledge that "he would be content to be declared infamous, if
he did not to the last hour of his life, at all times and in all
places and upon all occasions, exert every power, with which
he was or ever should be legally invested, to obtain and maintain
for the continent of America that satisfaction which he
had been authorized to promise that day."

This speech the Burgesses received with much applause,
and turning themselves from the old disturbing subject of
the interference of Parliament, addressed themselves to the
matter of the western boundary and to various important local
measures, chief among which was the project of a vineyard
to be managed by one, Andrew Esclave, a Frenchman; the
establishment of a hospital for the insane, first recommended
in 1766 by Governor Fauquier, and the erection at the joint

expense of James City County and Williamsburg of a courthouse
on the Market Square in said city.

These measures were all brought to consummation. Authority
was given to a committee to purchase for the vineyard
not exceeding a hundred acres of land near Williamsburg,
which was afterwards located to the east of the city, and
north of the road leading to Yorktown, being the site of the
battle of Williamsburg, in 1862. Esclave had but little success
but he attributed his failure to unseasonable weather and
asked the indulgence of the people, but the war of the Revolution
put a stop to his labors, and in 1784 the land, with other
public lands, was given by the Legislature to the College of
William and Mary.

The hospital, which is still functioning, was the first of its
kind in the United States, and the Court House, erected by
virtue of the authority then given, still serves the purpose of
the City of Williamsburg and County of James City, and has
been often admired by architects of national reputation for
the accuracy of its proportions.

This Assembly adjourned for the Christmas holidays on
December 21, to meet again on May 21, 1770, and in the interim
knowledge of the action of Parliament became known. The
colonists were made acquainted with the fact that despite the
alterations in the law, the ministry, of which Lord North was
now the head by the retention of the tax on tea, was fixed in
its purpose not to abandon the claim to impose taxes on the
American colonies at their pleasure.

In Virginia people were not, therefore, satisfied with the
result, and on June 10, 1770, the Assembly adopted a petition
to the King stating their disappointment that "the late agreeable
prospect" had not laid the foundation for harmony as
they expected, and praying for the absolute repeal of all laws
imposing taxes or authorizing the transportation of persons
beyond the sea for trial before distant courts of Admiralty,
without the formality of a jury.

As further evidence of their dissatisfaction, it was determined

to enforce the non-importation agreement as strictly as
possible. Now the merchants of Virginia had an organization
among themselves called the "Cape Company," which
held annual meetings in Williamsburg. The perverse course
of the British Ministry, brought to Williamsburg on June 22,
1770, a large convention. They elected Andrew Sproule, of
Norfolk, chairman, and he and his associates joined with the
gentlemen of the House of Burgesses in an association against
purchasing any manufactures imported from Great Britain, or
any wines or any slaves from anywhere, and against using tea
until the obnoxious laws of Parliament were repealed. Of the
new association, Peyton Randolph was made President, and
the terms of the organization provided for a committee of
five persons in every county to enforce the association and the
President could call a meeting of the association, at his discretion,
and must do so on the request of twenty members of
the body.[69]

It is stated that the course of the British ministry so preyed
upon Lord Botetourt that he asked his recall, and not long
after the adjournment of the Assembly he fell sick of bilious
fever, which, aggravated by chagrin and disappointment,
reached a fatal termination on October 15, 1770. His death
was deeply lamented, and the funeral ceremonies were elaborate.
His remains, encased in three coffins, one of them a leaden
affair, heavily ornamented with silver, were deposited, according
to his request, under the floor of the Chapel of William and
Mary College. During the war for Southern Independence the
vaults were broken open by vandals of the Federal Army in
their search for treasure. Only the leaden coffin was found
intact, and the lid of this was ripped open and the skeleton exposed.
The silver plate with Botetourt's name and death upon
it was carried north, and in 1890 returned to the President of
the College, through Fitzhugh Lee, the Governor of Virginia,
by an Albany jeweler, to whom it had been sold by a woman,
who was described as the "widow of a private Brown."

The General Assembly voted a large sum of money to
erect a statue to Botetourt's memory, and this statue, made in
London in 1773 by Richard Haywood, is now, after various
vicissitudes, standing in front of the College of William and
Mary, in a rather shattered condition.

After Botetourt's death, the executive authority for the
third time devolved on John Blair, President of the Council,
who resigned because of ill health and old age, and thereupon
William Nelson succeeded him as President of the Council.

His father, Thomas Nelson, came from the north of England,
about 1690, and settled at Yorktown in 1705, where he
became the leading merchant and acquired a great fortune.
Thomas Nelson, a son, became Secretary of State of the Colony,
and William Nelson, another son, inherited much of his
father's wealth, which he largely increased by his extensive
business at Yorktown. He became a member of the Council of
State in 1745 and served as such until his death at Yorktown,
November 19, 1772. In his politics he was a conservative, and,
while strongly opposed to taxation by parliament, he did not
approve what he deemed the hasty action of Patrick Henry
and the other progressives. During his administration, which
lasted about a year, quiet prevailed in Virginia as elsewhere,
disturbed only by the great freshet, which flooded the rivers in
the eastern part of the colony, and by an agitation started
by some zealous churchmen in the Middle States for an
American Episcopacy.

America was in the see of the Bishop of London, but New
York and New Jersey were dissatisfied and deputed the Rev.
Dr. Cooper, President of Kings College, and Rev. Mr. McKean,
deputies to visit the south in regard to petitioning the
King for an American bishop. At their urgent solicitations
James Horrocks, President of William and Mary College
and Commissary to the Bishop of London, called a convocation
of the clergy. Twelve ministers, out of about 100, in pursuance
of the call, met at the College June 4, 1771, and adopted a resolution

by a small majority to join in the petition. John Camm,
Professor of Divinity, was the chief agitator, and he was
warmly opposed by Rev. Samuel Henley, and Rev. Thomas
Gwatkin, the two professors of philosophy in the College, and
by two clergymen among the generality, Rev. Richard Hewitt
and Rev. William Bland. Formal protests were published in
the Gazette by the four protesters against the legality as well
as the regularity of the proceedings. This brought on a severe
paper war. Mr. Camm appeared in the newspaper as the advocate
of a bishop, and Mr. Henley and Mr. Gwatkin against a
bishop. This newspaper war continued with much violence
and personal abuse till the meeting of the Assembly in July,
1771. Horrocks went to England that summer on the plea of ill
health, which his death not long after proved well founded,
though he was suspected of embarking for the purpose of
having himself appointed as "the First Right Reverend
Father of the American Church."

The movement for a bishop created a great stir not in Virginia
only, but in all the other parts of America as well. In
Virginia it was looked upon as a scheme to deprive the vestrymen
of the powers which they wielded over the appointment
and control of their clergymen, and to strengthen the general
plan of English authority. So the Assembly at its session beginning
July 11, 1771, very promptly put a quietus on the
movement by extending its thanks through Richard Henry
Lee and Richard Bland to Messrs. Henley and Gwatkin for
"their wise and well-timed opposition."

Among the advocates of the scheme was the Rev. Jonathan
Boucher, who held the opinion that the refusal of Virginia
to consent to a bishop was to "unchurch the church." But as
a matter of fact the opposition of the majority of the clergymen
in Virginia was not so much to a bishop, for a hierarchy
was a part of their tenets, as to a too intimate connection with
the English system, interfering like the Stamp Act, with the
personal rights of the citizens. In New England the proposition

was severely condemned, but that was to be expected from
the religious views of those people.

This scheme of creating a bishop had been entertained more
than a hundred years before, and Dean Swift at one time cherished
hopes of the office, with power, as it is said, to ordain
deacons and priests for all the colonies, and parcel them out
into deaneries, parishes, etc., and to recommend and present
thereto.

Notwithstanding the dissatisfaction with the act of Parliament
modifying the Revenue Act, the flame of rebellion
burned very low during the next two years. In the interval
quiet prevailed in all the colonies except in Massachusetts,
where the mob, by assaulting some British troops stationed in
Boston, had created a temporary excitement on the very day,
March 5, 1770, on which Lord North moved the repeal of the
duties on glass, lead and paper. One of the soldiers was
knocked down and another was hit with a club. Either with
orders, or without them, six or seven shots were fired by soldiers
in the street or by persons from the windows of the Custom
House just above them. Four citizens were killed and
others were wounded. Bernard had now returned to England,
and in his absence Hutchinson, who was lieutenant governor
as well as chief justice, was acting governor. He handed over
the soldiers accused to be tried by a Boston jury and ordered
the rest of the troops to be moved from the town to Castle
William, in Boston Harbour. Some of the ablest lawyers in
Massachusetts, including John Adams, volunteered for the defence
of those under arrest, and as it was impossible to prove
that any order to fire had been given, the officer who had commanded
the guards was discharged. Two of the privates
were convicted of manslaughter, and claiming benefit of clergy,
were burnt in the hand and dismissed. The affair seems to
have been nothing more than a scrap between the mob and
the soldiers in which the former, who began the row, got the
worst of it, but it soon acquired the name of the "Boston Massacre,"

and has figured as a great event, ever since Americans,
chiefly New Englanders, began writing American history.[70]

At any rate after the removal of the troops the people in
Massachusetts went about their business very much as they
did elsewhere, "and it seemed for a time that at last the behests
of Parliament would be obeyed, and the duties levied at
the Custom House be paid." The efforts for non-importation
did not prove satisfactory. In the very nature of the case it
was difficult to make such a system complete. The merchants
of Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Pennsylvania widely
evaded the agreement. "More tea," says Hutchinson, "was
imported legally into Massachusetts than into all the other
colonies."[71] In June, 1770, New York broke down and announced
her intention to confine the inhibition to tea alone.
Her example was demoralizing, and on December 9, 1770, William
Nelson wrote "the spirit of association which hath prevailed
in this colony for some time past, seems to me, from the
defection of the Northern provinces, to be cooling every day,"
and no general bonds remained to hold the colonies together.

In the fall of the year 1771 arrived in Williamsburg as
governor-in-chief of Virginia, John Murray, Earl of Dunmore,
a Scotch nobleman and peer of the realm. He was born in
1732; was descended in the female line from the royal house of
Stuart; succeeded to the peerage in 1765; appointed governor
of New York in January, 1770, and of Virginia in July, 1771.
This gentleman has been severely criticised by the Virginians,

but his friends warmly attested his kindness and generosity.
The conditions would have made it very difficult for him under
any circumstances to have escaped some measure of blame, and
he has evidently been blamed in some cases without any just
reason and merely from suspicions or prejudice.

Certainly his first expressions, on the meeting of the Assembly
February 10, 1772, were very sensible and suggestive. In
this speech he assured the Assembly that they might depend
on his "zealous co-operation" in "directing the skill and invigorating
the industry of the people, in regulating and encouraging
agriculture, in opening new sources of wealth and
promoting the dependence of the colony and Mother Country
on one another." In this speech it will be noticed that he was
perhaps the first royal governor to state that "dependence"
was not that simply of Virginia on England but England on
Virginia. His next step was to surrender a list of fees for
commissions to county officers, inspectors of tobacco, presentations
to a parish and other offices, exacted by his predecessors
without any authority of law, and for this act he was cordially
thanked by the Virginia Assembly.

Pursuant to his message various enterprises were undertaken
by the Legislature, such as improving the navigation of
the Potomac; clearing Mattapony River; circumventing the
falls of James River by a canal from Westham to a point below
Richmond; and a canal from Archer's Hope Creek to Queen
Creek, through Williamsburg, connecting James River with
York River; requiring gates to be furnished in mill dams
for the passage of fish; opening roads and repairing others
already opened. Seldom before in the history of the colony had
such improvements been suggested, much less received a serious
consideration, and this first legislation under Dunmore
marks really the beginning of the first industrial era in the history
of Virginia. To one measure, however, desired by the
House, he did not give his countenance, and this was the proposed
removal of the capital from Williamsburg to another
part of the state. In this opposition he had, however, the support

of his Council, which had defeated a similar proposition
approved by the House at the time of the burning of the capitol
in 1746.

In the meantime, over in England, while Parliamentary
interference did not go further, the King, by instructions,
which offended the popular sentiment in America, raised issues
in nearly every colony. A set of instructions was not framed
to apply to all the colonies alike, but special instructions were
sent to each colony as local circumstances dictated. "Hence,
the patriots could not create a general issue upon them."[72]

Out of an order which restrained the governors of the colonies
from assenting to any restriction of the slave trade
sprang the noble petition to the King of the Virginia Legislature
in February, 1772, in which they spoke of the importation
of slaves as a trade of "great inhumanity" and "one calculated
to endanger the very existence of your majesty's American
dominions." This petition, which is at once pathetic and
prophetic in its appeal, was one of the measures to check the
slave trade. Again and again the Assembly had passed laws
restraining the importation of negroes from abroad, but these
laws had been disallowed by the King of England.

Similarly, a grievance existed in Massachusetts because
of royal orders which made the salaries of Governor Hutchinson,
the judges, and subordinate officers of the courts, payable
out of the imperial treasury. Such a mode of payment tended
to make these officers wholly independent of the local conditions
and bound them to England. Samuel Adams took advantage
of the quarrel, during the latter part of 1772, to organize
an opposition through committees of correspondence in the
Massachusetts towns. He seemed to have intended spreading
his committees, if possible, to towns outside of the province and
indeed to making them national. But the plan did not succeed,
and after four months it had not been adopted in any
other State—"not one town outside of Massachusetts, I think,
choosing a committee of correspondence."[73]

Indeed, the issue on the royal instructions, as applied to
the salaries of officials, by Adams, was too essentially local
to meet the requirements. Lord Dartmouth supplied the
want in a fresh royal instruction, dated September 4, 1772, but
not made public until four months later.

This time the scene of the Revolutionary occasion was in
Rhode Island, the smallest of the colonies, not Massachusetts.
Incensed by the vigorous manner in which the British sloop
Gaspée was enforcing the navigation act, a party of disguised
men in June, 1772, boarded the vessel while accidentally
stranded, wounded the captain, and destroyed the vessel by
fire. The affair deserved punishment, but the exasperated
ministry went too far. Lord Dartmouth sent an order under
the sign manual of the King, creating a commission to enquire
into the circumstances. It was instructed that the offence of
the men concerned in the attack on the Gaspée was high treason,
and was directed to arrest the parties charged with the
crime and to send them to England for trial. This measure
raised again the question of the fundamental right of the trial
by jury. In the presence of this great national issue, Rhode
Island acted very tamely, and its assembly would issue no
circular calling for aid and left the chief justice, Stephen
Hopkins, who asked their advice, to his own discretion.

The issue was once more met by Virginia, and all America
was roused by the call. The House of Burgesses met on
March 4, 1773, when the Rhode Island court of enquiry received
their attention. The lead was now taken from the older
members Peyton Randolph, George Wythe, Richard Bland
and Robert Carter Nicholas by a caucus of whom Patrick
Henry was the chief, and numbered also Richard Henry Lee,
Thomas Jefferson, George Mason, Francis Lightfoot Lee, and
Dabney Carr. Their remedy was a system of intercolonial
committees. Jefferson, who probably drew the paper, was requested
to present it to the assembly, but he desired that that
honor should be accorded his brother-in-law, Dabney Carr.
Patrick Henry and Richard Henry Lee made impressive

speeches, and on March 12, 1773, the resolutions were unanimously
adopted. Eleven members were appointed a committee
of correspondence to communicate with the other colonies.
Lord Dunmore was now governor in the place of Botetourt, deceased,
and on March 15, he dissolved the House. The following
day the committee of correspondence agreed upon a
circular which the speaker, Peyton Randolph, was directed
to send to the other colonies.

This action of Virginia was statesmanlike and proved an
inspiration. The supineness of Rhode Island, the neighbor
of Massachusetts, had provoked Nathanael Greene, the future
general, into saying that its Assembly had lost its ancient public
virtue. But it now applauded the example of Virginia, and
chose a corresponding committee. Five of the other colonies
also accepted the proposals and returned their warm and
earnest thanks. Their resolutions setting forth the object of
the committees were generally a transcript of those of Virginia,
and were sent to the Assemblies in a circular letter
usually signed by the Speaker. "Heaven itself," says one
New England writer, "seemed to have dictated to the noble
Virginians." The intercolonial committees "struck a greater
panic in the ministers," wrote William Lee from London,
"than anything that had taken place since the passage of the
Stamp Act." The British ministry, in fact, saw in it for the
first time a real union of American interests, and regarded it
as the sure precursor of a continental congress.

The effect on the court of enquiry was demoralizing. The
members vacillated, and were afraid to call for military force.
The commission held a final session in June, 1774, when they
agreed upon an elaborate report, in which they conceded that
the commander of the Gaspée, in detaining vessels indiscriminately,
exceeded the bounds of his duty. The commission then
adjourned. "The design of transporting Americans to England
was given up. This was the close of the issue of Royal
instructions."[74]

Some Massachusetts writers claim that these international
committees of correspondence sprang from the town committees
of Massachusetts, but the claim is without foundation.
The subject has been thoroughly examined by James Miller
Leake in his "The Virginia Committee System and the American
Revolution," one of the Johns Hopkins University
studies. Preliminary to a union of the colonies there was the
necessity of a unity of sentiment in each province itself. Virginia
was the most united in public sentiment of all the colonies,
but in Massachusetts there was much division in the
towns, even in Boston itself, and local committees of correspondence
were therefore needed to make unity there.

The Virginia intercolonial committee of correspondence
appears to have developed out of a "committee of correspondence"
appointed in 1758 by the General Assembly to deal with
an agent in London in regard to all public matters arising
there. This committee was sometimes required to discharge
other public functions, such as to reply to the Massachusetts
circular on the Sugar Bill in 1764. Both this committee and the
intercolonial committee were standing committees of the
Legislature. Each possessed the power to exercise its proper
function in the recess between the sessions of the Legislature.
The proceedings of each had to be laid before the body by which
it was appointed and to which it was amenable. In function
and manner of appointment they bore a close resemblance to
one another. The Virginia intercolonial committee was appointed
by its Assembly, while in Massachusetts the Assembly
had nothing to say about Sam Adams' local committees, which
were appointed by the towns. The task of the Virginia committee
was infinitely a more difficult one and a more important
one than that of the local committees in Massachusetts. It was
to secure united action among disjointed colonies, which really
constituted two separate nationalities, and which only an extreme
sense of mutual oppression could even temporarily drive
together.

Among the first to recognize this true method of uniting

Richard Henry Lee

the colonies was Richard Henry Lee. As early as 1768 in a
letter to John Dickinson, he declared that "to understand each
other and timely to be informed of what occurs, both here and
in Great Britain, it would seem that not only select committees
should be appointed by all the colonies but that a private correspondence
should be conducted between the lovers of liberty
in every province." His brother, Dr. Arthur Lee, than whom
very few performed a greater part in stirring up opposition to
England, wrote from London to Samuel Adams January 10,
1771, suggesting as a means to counteract the breaking down
at that time of the non-importation associations, which had
destroyed confidence in England of any successful opposition,
"the establishment of a correspondence among the leading
men of each province that you might harmonize in any future
measure for the general good in the several Assemblies. Unanimity
among yourselves will render you formidable and
respected here."

Whether Samuel Adams was guided in his actions by Lee
or not, the necessity of unification of the towns of Massachusetts
appears as a corollary to Lee's suggestion uttered to
Samuel Adams a year or more before.

CRISIS OF THE BOSTON PORT BILL

Succeeding this interesting episode of the sloop Gaspée,
the English ministry, despairing of accomplishing their purpose
by frowns and threats, determined to try to enforce the
revenue act by appealing to the cupidity of the colonies. They
persuaded Parliament to take off the duties imposed in England
on tea and allow the three pence collectible in America
only to stand, supposing that the Americans would not decline
to buy tea at the cheap price possible. After the proposal
became a law, the East India Company, having large supplies
stored in their warehouses in England, began to ship cargoes
of tea to Charleston, New York, Philadelphia and Boston.
Hutchinson says that the association against tea had been

so thoroughly abandoned in Boston, "even by some of the
great friends to liberty," that "the first news failed to arouse
any alarm, and the patriots were excited to action by friends in
England."[75]

Among those who were instrumental in this particular, Dr.
Arthur Lee again proved his usefulness. In a letter to Samuel
Adams, dated October 13, 1773, he informed him of the proposed
law, and dwelt at large upon its dangers. He declared
that the introductions of the tea ought to be opposed. "The
commodity may under this maneuver come cheaper to the consumer,
but whatever touches our liberties should under every
temptation be avoided. Besides, when once they have fixed
the trade upon us they will find ways enough to enhance the
price."

Doubtless Lee in giving this advice to Samuel Adams had
orderly action in view, and Adams was prominent in meetings
at Faneuil Hall to prevent the landing of the tea, but there is no
evidence of his advising a resort to violence.

But once more the influences at Boston to which I have
hitherto alluded made Massachusetts the occasion of the Revolutionary
movement. In Charleston, New York and Philadelphia,
the consignees, being without any support, declined
to receive the tea and resigned; but in Boston, where Thomas
Hutchinson had succeeded Francis Bernard as governor, the
Tory and military influences were so strong that the consignees—two
of whom were Hutchinson's sons, were tempted
to hold on. Then the mob materialized again, and on the night
of December 16, 1773, a band of men disguised as Indians
boarded the vessel, cut open the tea chests and threw the entire
cargo overboard, valued at £15,000.

It has never been ascertained who constituted this marauding
party, and it is impossible to suppose that any man of note
had any part in it, else concealment to this time would have
been improbable. Howard believes[76] that Samuel Adams was

in the secret and probably the instigator, but he does not think
that this lawless destruction of private property "can be
justly looked upon as an honor to his memory." But more
than that this disguise looks cowardly, and Adams, standing
by out of danger himself, and urging them on, appears even
more cowardly than the actors. The brutal outrage perpetrated
on Captain Smith in Norfolk during the Stamp Act had
at least the element of openness about it. The South Carolinians
in refusing to buy the tea shipped to Charleston till it
all rotted in the warehouses presented a more honorable and
patriotic aspect than the actors in the "Tea Party" in Boston.

But the English government hastened to put itself in the
wrong, though the action of the rioters was disavowed by
decent people in Boston. The provocation to extreme action
was undoubtedly great and no one at this time can blame England
for feeling indignant. But the remedy adopted went
far beyond the necessities of the case and evoked sympathy in
the other colonies. It did more, it emblazoned in history as
particularly worthy an act which on cool consideration has not
as good standing as lynching negroes in the South in our day
for unmentionable crimes.

The English government, stimulated by Governor Hutchinson,
breathed of nothing but threats of execution and transportation
beyond the seas, and Boston was made to suffer for
the deeds of irresponsible persons. Boston was condemned,
and Parliament passed bills to shut up the port and to abrogate
the charter of Massachusetts in some essential particulars.

Boston's remedy was found in an appeal put forward by
her town meeting to the people of the colonies to join her in a
total cessation of commerce with Great Britain. But the invitation
was received at first very coldly in the northern section
where New York and Philadelphia were in no hurry to
take action. Fortunately, "Warmer hearts," writes Bancroft,
"beat below Mason's and Dixon's line."

In April, 1774, arrived in Williamsburg Lady Dunmore
and her children, George, Lord Fincastle, the Honorables

Alexander and John Murray, and the Ladies Catherine,
Augusta and Susan Murray. They were welcomed with an
illumination of the city, and the three young noblemen were
put to school at the college. The late measure of Parliament
was as yet unknown in Virginia, and the feeling of loyalty still
predominated with all classes.

When the assembly met in May, 1774, Williamsburg presented
a scene of unwonted gaiety, and a court herald published
a code of etiquette for the regulation of the society of
the little metropolis. There were balls, dancing, assemblies,
theatricals, and a large concourse of people from the country.
George Washington arrived and dined with Lord Dunmore.

The scene, however, changed as soon as the news of the act
of Parliament with reference to the closing of the port of
Boston reached the city. Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson,
R. H. Lee, Francis Lightfoot Lee, and three or four other gentlemen
of the Progressive Party drew up a resolution, which
they persuaded Robert Carter Nicholas of the conservative
element to offer, denouncing the action of the British government
and setting apart the first day of June on which the port
bill was to commence, for a day of fasting, humiliation and
prayer throughout the colony. These resolves were printed
in the Virginia Gazette of May 26, and on seeing them Lord
Dunmore ordered the house immediately that day to come
upstairs to the council chamber, where he addressed them in
the following language: "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 to 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 members, thereupon, left the capitol, and next day
(May 27) gathered in the Apollo Hall at the Raleigh Tavern,
and with Peyton Randolph, their late speaker in the chair,
completed the work which they had intended by voting that the
attack on Massachusetts was an attack on all the colonies, to be

opposed by the united wisdom of all, that a Congress should be
annually held, that as a punishment to the East India Company,
no East India commodity, hereafter, should be imported,
and that, if the unconstitutional principle of taxing the colonies
should be persisted in, commercial intercourse with
Great Britain should be altogether suspended.

Two days later, on May 29, letters from the North arriving
by way of Philadelphia and Annapolis, with information of the
desire of Boston for immediate non-intercourse, the twenty-five
members still remaining in town called a convention of the
people to meet on August 1.

By the proceedings thus described, Virginia maintained
herself at the front of the Revolutionary movement. It was
the glory of Virginia that she was not only the first colony in
America to identify herself with Boston, but the first to call a
Congress of the colonies. For although unknown to our
patriots in Williamsburg, the suggestion of a Congress was
made in advance during the same month of May by the committee
of correspondence in New York, and a town meeting in
Providence, these were mere local affairs without any general
authority.[77] The action at Williamsburg, on the other hand,
was that of an organized, legislative body, presided over by a
speaker, and presuming to declare officially for a whole colony.
The Virginia Burgesses took the lead in calling not only a
Congress, but an annual Congress of the colonies involving a
permanent union, first started by the institution of the inter-colonial
committees of correspondence. On June 3, Connecticut
adopted a call for Congress, but the action of Virginia was
decisive, and the assembly of Rhode Island followed her lead
on June 15, Massachusetts on June 17, Pennsylvania on July
22, till all had fallen in line. The colonies which had not acted
now appointed their committees of correspondence, and the
local committees, which had not crossed the border of Massachusetts,
now under the stimulating influence of Virginia's

action, spread from town to town and county to county,
through all the colonies.

The position of Virginia, as leader of the colonies, at this
critical juncture of their affairs, is abundantly attested by the
literature of the day. The Philadelphia Committee of Correspondence
wrote June 3, (1774): "All America look up to
Virginia to take the lead on the present occasion." The Delaware
committee wrote, May 26, that because of the "high
opinion of the zeal and firmness of those of your colony in the
common cause of America, we are persuaded that their resolutions,
at this important crisis, will have great weight here."
The Connecticut committee June 13, praised "the wise,
spirited, and seasonable proceedings of your truly patriotic
House of Burgesses, in early proposing a correspondence between
and union of the colonies and the manly, pious and
humane attention more lately manifested to the distresses of
the town of Boston." Perhaps stronger evidence still is to be
found in a letter dated July 6, 1774, to Governor Dunmore from
Lord Dartmouth, who had succeeded Lord Hillsborough as
Secretary of State in management of the colonies. Lord Dartmouth
wrote: "There was reason to hope from appearances
in the other colonies that the extravagant proposition of the
people of Boston would have been everywhere disregarded.
But it now may well be doubted whether the extraordinary
conduct of the Burgesses of Virginia, both before and after
their dissolution as a House, may not become (as it has already
become in other instances) an example to the other colonies."

On August 3, 1774, Dartmouth wrote again to Lord Dunmore:
"The proceedings of the Burgesses of Virginia do not
encourage me to hope for a speedy issue to the present discussion,
and we have seen too much of the prevalence of the example
they have set the other colonies, not to be greatly
alarmed at what may be the result of the unconstitutional
meeting (Congress) they are endeavoring to promote."

To Patrick Henry, who led the people in Virginia, George
Mason, whose ability to judge cannot be questioned, referred

George Mason

at this time, "as by far the most powerful speaker he had ever
heard," and "as the first man on the continent as well in
ability as public virtues."

In the interval between the dissolution of the General
Assembly and the meeting of the convention on August 1,
1774, the Freeholders of every county in Virginia held meetings
and adopted patriotic resolutions, pledging provisions for
Boston, asserting the rights of the colonies, and endorsing the
strictest non-intercourse with Great Britain. There were
some, indeed, who thought the policy of non-intercourse on
the one hand too tame as a means of resistance to government,
and on the other too harsh in its application to the Virginia
creditors in England, and wanted the ground to be taken at
once that no attention whatever should be paid to the tea act
or any other act of Parliament infringing on colonial rights.
The champion advocate of this policy was Thomson Mason, of
Stafford, brother of George Mason, who set out his views in
six able articles published in the Virginia Gazette, under the
title of "A British American."

The convention duly met, appointed a delegation to the
Congress, and adopted an extensive system of non-intercourse,
and all signed the paper except Thomson Mason, who refused
for the reasons stated above.

And yet nothing, indeed, could testify more for the elevated
principles of the Virginians than their action at this time. Not
only did they by non-intercourse voluntarily invite the hardships
of the Boston Port Bill to their own firesides, but the
policy thus adopted was more hurtful to their interests than
to the interests of the people of England, and far more than
to the interests of the four colonies of New England, as by
their home industries the latter was much less dependent on
the mother country, and their exports and imports did not
amount to half the exports and imports of Virginia and Maryland.[78]

Among the members of the convention was George Washington,
who united a great moral and intellectual power with
an imposing physical appearance. It is said of him that he was
a man of strong emotions kept in check by perfect self-control.
It is probable that his apprehension of his own natural vehemence
made him as a rule silent in deliberative bodies. History
tells of two occasions when his habitual self control gave way
and his emotions swept in a mighty tumult over every obstacle.
One was at Monmouth when he was provoked beyond endurance
at the pusillanimous conduct of General Charles Lee.
The other, it seems, was in this convention when the modest,
taciturn officer rose in the might of his strength and blazed in
the glory of oratory. Thomas Lynch, of South Carolina, told
John Adams that "Colonel Washington made the most eloquent
speech at the Virginia Convention that ever was made.
Said he, `I will raise one thousand men, subsist them at my
own expense, and march myself at their head for the relief of
Boston.' "[79]

Mr. Jefferson, the young member for Albemarle, was the
draftsman of instructions for the delegates, which were
deemed too bold as a first measure. They assumed, though
with a spirit more decided, the extreme ground taken by Bland,
in 1766, that the colonies were independent in all respects of
Parliament, and summed up with trenchant pen that easily
gave him the first place among American writers the rights
and wrongs of the continent. Another set of instructions,
probably drawn by Mr. Henry, falling short of the position
adopted by Mr. Jefferson, was preferred, but Mr. Jefferson's
paper was "read generally by the members, and approved by
many, and by the convention printed in pamphlet form under
the title of `A Summary View of the Rights of British America.'
" This magnificent pamphlet passed through various

editions, both here and in England, and furnished to a large
extent, if not the topics, the phrases, of the American Revolution.
Indeed, it contained every idea of the Declaration of
Independence adopted two years later, except the explicit
statement of separation.

In the great Congress of the States, which assembled at
Philadelphia on September 5, 1774, Virginia shone resplendent
in the constellation which composed her delegation. The delegates
elected to Congress were Peyton Randolph, Speaker of
the House of Burgesses, and President of the Virginia Convention,
Richard Henry Lee, George Washington, Patrick
Henry, Richard Bland, Benjamin Harrison and Edmund
Pendleton. Joseph Reed, president of the Pennsylvania convention
of 1775, has left this record of the prevailing impression:[80] "We are so taken up with the Congress that we hardly
think of talking of anything else. About fifty have come to
town and more are expected. There are some fine fellows come
from Virginia, but they are very high. The Bostonians are
mere milk-sops to them. We understand that they are the
capital men of the colony, both in fortune and understanding."

The pre-eminence of Virginia was promptly recognized by
the election of Peyton Randolph, chairman of her delegation
as president, and the appointment of his colleagues on all the
important committees. Patrick Henry made the great opening
speech, and he and Richard Henry Lee took the palm as
orators.[81] Richard Henry Lee drafted the memorial to the
"inhabitants of the British colonies," and Patrick Henry
drew up an address to the King, but its sentiments proving
too strong for the conciliatory attitude of Congress, a rather
tame substitute, prepared by John Dickinson, of Pennsylvania,
was preferred. Col. Washington did not write State

papers or speak in the open, but his influence among the members
must have been prodigious. When returned to his home,
Patrick Henry was asked by a neighbor who he thought was
the greatest man in Congress, and he answered: "Col. Washington,
who has no pretensions to eloquence, is a man of more
solid judgment and information than any man on that floor."
His speech in the convention proved, however, that Washington
could be an orator, when the occasion was great enough,
and he let himself out.

At this meeting, Congress in defining the attitude of America,
abandoned the Otis doctrine of the supremacy of Parliament
and placed itself squarely upon the Virginia platform.
An article drawn by John Adams claimed for the
colonies the exclusive power of Legislation "in all cases of
taxation and internal policy," but consented to the operation
of such acts of the British Parliament, as were bona fide restrained
to the regulation of trade. In strict conformity with
a petition of the Massachusetts Legislature in 1773,[82] the retrospect
of grievance was only carried back to 1763, and all
the acts of Parliament passed since that time were pronounced
inadmissible. To give effect to this attitude, they adopted, in
all essential particulars, the plan of non-intercourse proposed
by the Virginia convention and recommended the appointment
of a committee in every county, city and town in America to
carry it out.