The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 Part 5

In 1770 the duties, except for the Tea Tax, were repealed. George Mason, Thomas Nelson, Jr., and Thomas Jefferson lamented the retention of the Tea Tax as a symbol of British oppression and supported the half-hearted "a.s.sociation". Most Virginians agreed with Robert Carter Nicholas' plea:

Let things but return to their old channel, and all will be well; We shall once more be a happy people.

The False Interlude, 1770-1773

The Chesapeake tobacco economy rebounded sharply upward in the early 1770's. The recovery from the recession of the 1760's soothed many ruffled feelings and Virginians were "once more a happy people."

Unfortunately it was a false prosperity. The old economic problems reappeared in 1773. Overproduction of tobacco, overextension of credit by British merchants, speculation in lands and tobacco, and inflated prices caused the tobacco economy to collapse. The crisis first appeared when several leading Glasgow merchants failed. They were unable to pay their own creditors and unable to call in money from Virginia. Several large London firms followed the Scots into bankruptcy, and a general retrenchment of tobacco credit followed throughout 1773 and into 1774.

The calm produced by repeal of the duties also was false. There were many Englishmen who understood the problem. Said Edmund Burk, the most creditable opponent of the various tax schemes and the most cogent defender of colonial liberty in parliament:

The Americans have made a discovery, or think they have made one, that we mean to oppress them. We have made a discovery, or think we have made one, that they intend to rise in rebellion against us...

we know not how to advance; they know not how to retreat....

Lord North put his finger squarely on the issue as it remained unresolved after 1770:

The language of America is, We are not subjects of the king; with parliament we have nothing to do.

That is the point at which the factions have been aiming; upon that they have been shaking hands.

The empire was being held together by a king. Affection for the crown and love for the British const.i.tution as the best government in the world was the hallmark of Virginia loyalty. Not until the eve of independence did Virginians come to believe that the king, himself, had subverted the const.i.tution. When they did they could no longer "shake hands". Only outside the empire could the blessings of the true const.i.tution be retained.

In October of 1770, the beloved governor, Lord Botetourt died. His successor, the Earl of Dunmore, arrived in July of 1771.

The Road to Revolution, 1773-1774

Virginia tobacco planters and merchants were not alone in their distress. From India came word of serious, even disastrous, troubles plaguing the East India Company. The company not only controlled the tea market, it also governed India for the British. Collapse of the company would be a major disaster for the crown, company, country, and colony together. To save the company the north ministry proposed, and parliament approved, laws to improve company management, lend it money, lower but enforce the duty on tea, and grant the company a monopoly on tea sales in England and America.

Reaction in Virginia was quick and pointed. The Tea Act of 1773 raised two highly volatile issues: the right to tax and the granting of a trade monopoly on tea. In both instances the principle was most bothersome. The tea tax was small, but as Bland had said of the Pistole Fee, "the question then ought not to be the smallness of the demand, but the Lawfulness of it." A small tax successfully collected would lead to other levies. Also, a successful monopoly of the tea trade granted to the East India Company could be followed by similar actions to the detriment of all American traders, merchants, and consumers. The discriminatory uses of both taxing power and the Navigation Acts became pointedly clear in a time of economic decline in which no one was proposing loans and special privileges for Virginia tobacco planters.

Bland had been right--"LIBERTY and PROPERTY are like those precious Vessels whose soundness is destroyed by the least flaw and whose use is lost by the smallest hole."

Virginia was already prepared for intercolonial action. In June 1772 the British s.h.i.+p, Gaspee, ran aground while on customs duty in Narragansett Sound. Rhode Islanders burned the s.h.i.+p to the water line, injuring the captain in the process. When the guilty colonists, who were well-known members of the Providence community, were not apprehended, a royal proclamation was issued decreeing trial in England for any of the culprits caught and granting use of troops to help apprehend them. A royal commission was dispatched to Rhode Island. Such a commission, if once the precedent was established, could be used against all the colonies.

For a long time Richard Henry Lee had been advocating an intercolonial committee of correspondence. Now the time had come to act and for all the colonies to be more alert to these "transgressions" and "intrusions upon justice." On March 12, 1773 the House of Burgesses, on a motion by Dabney Carr, burgess from Albemarle County and brother-in-law to Jefferson, established a Committee of Correspondence composed of Bland, Richard Henry Lee, Henry, Jefferson, Robert Carter Nicholas, Benjamin Harrison, Edmund Pendleton, Dudley Digges, Carr, and Archibald Cary to inquire into the Gaspee affair. More importantly, the resolution called upon all the other a.s.semblies to "appoint some person or persons of their respective bodies to communicate from time to time, with the said committee."[27] Said an unknown "Gentleman of Distinction" (probably a Lee) in the Virginia Gazette the following day, "... we are endeavoring to bring our Sister Colonies into the strictest Union with us; that we may resent, in one Body, any Steps that may be taken by Administration to deprive any one of us the least Particle of our Rights and Liberties." Within months every colony had a committee of correspondence. And within months the "Administration" would deprive Boston of its rights and liberties.

[27] For the resolution see, Van Schreeven and Scribner, Revolutionary Virginia, I, 89-92. Also note that this committee consists of men who ware on opposite sides of the fence in the Stamp Act debate in 1765.

The Boston Tea Party and the Intolerable Acts

Reaction to the Tea Act was nearly unanimous. The tax should not be paid and a boycott on tea imposed. A boycott developed in Virginia.

Merchants exhausted their stocks and refused to replenish them. Most Virginians ceased drinking tea. No one, however, was prepared to resort to violence, so there was little sympathy among Virginians for the destruction of tea in Boston harbor by a "tribe of Indians" on December 16, 1774. Old colonial friends in England including Burke, Chatham, Rose Fuller, and even Isaac Barre were also shocked.

Parliament saw the issue as order, government by law, protection of private property, and even treason. The long history of riotous actions by Bostonians was recalled. The commons decided that the time had come to stand firm. Repeal of the Stamp Act and Townshend Duties had not brought respect for and acceptance of authority. Mason's "dutiful child" now was to be "whipped". Boston must be brought into line for her obstreperousness. The response of parliament was slow, measured, and calculated. The Coercive Acts (the English name, not the colonial) took two months to pa.s.s. By these acts: 1) the port of Boston was closed until the destroyed tea was paid for; 2) the Ma.s.sachusetts government was radically restructured, the governor's powers enhanced, and the town meetings abolished; 3) trials of English officials accused of felonies could be moved to England; and 4) a new Quartering Act applicable to all colonies went into effect.

At the same time, and unconnected with the Coercive Act, parliament rendered its final solution to the western land problems by pa.s.sing the Quebec Act of 1774. Most of the provisions of the Proclamation of 1763 respecting government were made permanent. All the land north of the Ohio was to be in a province governed from Quebec. Lost was the hope of many Virginia land company speculators and those in other colonies as well. Not only was the land now in the hands of their former French enemies in Quebec, but the land would be distributed from London and fall into the hands of Englishmen, not colonials. Coming as it did just after Governor Dunmore and Colonel Andrew Lewis and his land-hungry valley frontiersmen had driven the Shawnees north of the Ohio in the b.l.o.o.d.y battle of Point Pleasant (1774) (also called Dunmore's War), the Quebec Act was seen in Virginia as one more act of an oppressive government, one more act in which the Americans had suffered at the expense of another part of the empire. That the act was a reasonable solution to a knotty problem was overlooked.

When the Virginians talked about the Coercive Acts, they called them the Intolerable Acts and included not just the four Ma.s.sachusetts laws but the Quebec Act as well.

Word of the Boston Port Bill and the intent of the other Intolerable Acts reached Virginia just as the a.s.sembly prepared to meet on May 5, 1774. Public indignation built rapidly even among small planters and farmers who knew little of the const.i.tutional grievances. They could not understand the "mailed fist" stance implicit in the acts. With the necessary legislation out of the way, the house on May 24, 1774 appealed to the public at large to send aid to their blockaded fellow-colonists in Boston. They then declared June 1st, the day the Boston port was to be closed, "a day of Public Fasting, Prayer, and Humiliation." A sense of inter-colonial camaraderie was building. Any reservations Virginians had about the propriety of the Tea Party was lost in the furious reaction to the Intolerable Acts. Governor Dunmore on May 26 dissolved the a.s.sembly for its action. He could not prevent the day of fasting and prayer from occurring on June 1st. Nor could he halt the determined burgesses.

On May 27th the burgesses rea.s.sembled informally in Raleigh Tavern, elected Speaker Randolph to be their moderator, and formed an a.s.sociation which was signed by 89 burgesses. At the urging of Richard Henry Lee, the most ardent exponent of intercolonial action, the burgesses issued a call for the other colonies to join in a Continental Congress. They then agreed to rea.s.semble in Williamsburg on August 1st to elect and instruct delegates to the congress and to formulate plans for a non-importation, non-exportation agreement to bring total pressure on British merchants.

It would be a year before Lexington and Concord and two years before the Declaration of Independence, but the revolution in Virginia had already begun in the true meaning of John Adams' words "the Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people." After May 17 the center of Virginia government moved from the General a.s.sembly to the Virginia Conventions. The a.s.sembly would meet briefly in June 1775, but the real "mind and heart" of Virginia would be in the convention.

Part III:

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, Ess.e.x, Middles.e.x--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 Was.h.i.+ngton 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 inst.i.tuted, 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 const.i.tutional impa.s.se, 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 a.s.sure compliance and enforcement of these agreements 107 delegates signed the Virginia a.s.sociation binding themselves together in common action. The convention elected and instructed Peyton Randolph, Richard Henry Lee, Was.h.i.+ngton, Henry, Bland, Harrison, and Pendleton "to represent this Colony in general Congress". They then departed to establish committees and a.s.sociations in every county and town in Virginia. Determination to aid Ma.s.sachusetts 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 t.i.tle, 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 a.s.sumption--The British const.i.tution was "the wisest system of legislation that ever did, or perhaps ever will, exist". It provided a balance in government between the crown, the n.o.bility, 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 const.i.tution 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 princ.i.p.al 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 pa.s.sed 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 impa.s.sioned 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 a.s.serted 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 a.s.sistance, voluntarily formed a government based on their own natural rights and were ent.i.tled 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 s.h.i.+ft of the colonists in their allegiance from 1763 to 1775. He noted that while parliament had pa.s.sed 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.