Part 6 (1/2)

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, Was.h.i.+ngton, 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 Ma.s.sachusetts 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 Was.h.i.+ngton 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 Ma.s.sachusetts. 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 a.s.sociation patterned after the Virginia a.s.sociation was urged for every town and county in the colonies to a.s.sure 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 const.i.tutional 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 a.s.sociations to be acts of rebellion. When they learned about the Continental a.s.sociation 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, rea.s.serted the fundamental power of the crown, and repealed all the colonial acts pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sociations 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 a.s.sociations, they were added to the Restraining Act list.

Simultaneously, parliament pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sociation, 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 G.o.d! 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, Was.h.i.+ngton, 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 Ridd.i.c.k of Nansemond.