Part 7 (1/2)

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 s.h.i.+ps on January 1, 1776 to sh.e.l.l 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 hara.s.sing 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 s.h.i.+ps 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 Was.h.i.+ngton”.

At the same time the convention appointed a committee led by George Mason to draw up a const.i.tution 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 Const.i.tution 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.

Part IV:

The Commonwealth of Virginia

Declaration of Rights

[Sidenote: ”_We hold these truths to be self-evident...._”]

The two greatest doc.u.ments of the Revolution came from the pens of Virginians George Mason and Thomas Jefferson. Political scientist Clinton Rossiter notes, ”The declaration of rights in 1776 remain America's most notable contribution to universal political thought. Through these eloquent statements the rights-of-man political theory became political reality.”[33]

[33] Clinton, Rossiter, Seedtime of the Republic (Harcourt, Brace: New York, 1953), 401.

As Richard Henry Lee rode north to Philadelphia with the Virginia resolution for independence, George Mason of Fairfax, sat down with his committee and drafted the Virginia Declaration of Rights. Presented to the Convention on May 27, 1776, the Declaration was adopted on June 12, 1776. It reads, in part:

A Declaration of Rights, made by the Representatives of the good People of Virginia, a.s.sembled in full and free Convention, which rights do pertain to them and their posterity as the basis and foundation of government.

I. That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.

II. That all power is vested in, and consequently derived from, the People; that magistrates are their trustees and servants, and at all times amenable to them.

III. That Government is, or ought to be, inst.i.tuted for the common benefit, protection, and security of the people, nation or community;--of all the various modes and forms of government, that is best which is capable of producing the greatest degree of happiness and safety, and is most effectually secured against the danger of maladministration;--and that, whenever any Government shall be found inadequate or contrary to these purposes, a majority of the community hath an indubitable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to reform, alter or abolish it, in such manner as shall be judged most conducive to the public weal.[34]

[34] Rutland, Mason, I, 287-289.

In 16 articles the Declaration goes on to: prohibit hereditary offices; separate the legislative, executive, and judicial branches; a.s.sure that elections shall be free; prevent suspending law or executing laws without consent of the representatives of the people; guarantee due process in criminal prosecutions; prevent excessive bail and cruel and unusual punishments; eliminate general warrants for search and seizure; provide jury trials in property disputes; a.s.sert ”that the freedom of the press is one of the great bulwarks of liberty and can never be restrained but by despotic governments”; provide for a well-regulated militia and warn against standing armies in peacetime; declare that no government can exist within the state independent of the government of Virginia; and grant to all men equally ”the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience.” (While this article granted free expression of religion, it did not end the establishment of the former Church of England as the official state church in Virginia. Full separation of church and state did not occur until the General a.s.sembly pa.s.sed Jefferson's famous Statute for Religious Freedom in 1786.)

The most intriguing article is XV, which is not a declaration of a right as much as it is a reminder that citizens who do not exercise their rights soon lose them.

XV. That no free government, or the blessing of Liberty, can be preserved to any people, but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality and virtue, and by a frequent recurrence to fundamental principles.

Nowhere is the break with England more clear than in the proclamation that ”all men are by nature equally free and independent”. No longer were Virginians claiming rights which were theirs as Englishmen; they now were claiming rights which were theirs as human beings. These were natural rights which belong to all persons everywhere and no one, either in the past or the future could alienate, eliminate, or diminish those rights.