Part 8 (1/2)
The residual power in the Const.i.tution of 1776 is vested in the people and exercised through the General a.s.sembly. Within the General a.s.sembly the House of Delegates was to be supreme. The a.s.sembly had two houses: The House of Delegates, replacing the House of Burgesses, had two members from each county and one from each town; and the Senate, replacing the old royally-appointed council, had 24 members chosen from 24 districts throughout the state. A peculiarity of this const.i.tution was the use of 12 electors, chosen by the voters in each district, to actually choose the senator from that district. All legislation originated in the House of Delegates, the Senate being allowed to amend all laws except appropriation bills, which it had to accept or reject completely.
Mindful of royal authority and disdainful of executive power, the const.i.tution emasculated the power of the governor, leaving him a ”mere phantom”. Elected annually by the combined vote of the General a.s.sembly for a maximum of three consecutive terms, the governor had no veto power and virtually no power of executive action. He could not act between legislative sessions without approval of an eight-man Council of State.
This council was elected by the a.s.sembly ”to a.s.sist in the administration of government”. In truth, the council restrained the executive.
The virtual semi-autonomy of the county courts and the justices of the peace remained. A system of state courts was provided for, its judges also elected by the a.s.sembly. Property qualifications for voters and for office holders continued in force. No clergymen were permitted to hold state office.[36]
[36] Rutland, Mason, I, 295-310.
The const.i.tution, then retained what had worked well in the past--the General a.s.sembly and the county court system; granted to the House of Delegates the written powers it had claimed as the colonial House of Burgesses; eliminated the royally elected council, but retained the idea of an upper house composed of men of property; and totally restrained the governor. Thus, if one definition of a commonwealth is a government in which the legislature is supreme, then Virginia in 1776 was certainly a commonwealth. This const.i.tution became a model for many other state governments, although most states benefited from the unfortunate experiences of governors Henry (1776-1779) and Jefferson (1779-1781) and gave their executives greater administrative lat.i.tude.
Jefferson had hastened back from Philadelphia to try to influence the writing of the const.i.tution. He arrived too late to have much effect beyond appending to the const.i.tution a preamble paraphrasing the Declaration of Independence. But many of his ideas were too ”democratical”. He feared the const.i.tution did not have the force of true law, for it had been written by a convention not elected for that purpose by the people. Nor had the people voted directly on the const.i.tution.
Jefferson was even more concerned about the remaining vestiges of feudalism, aristocracy, and privilege. He succeeded in eliminating primogeniture (the eldest child has greater inheritance rights than the younger children) and entails (a person could place restrictions on the use of his property in perpetuity). Both primogeniture and entail smacked of inequality and alienation of rights by one generation against the next. Although his Statute on Religious Freedom was not pa.s.sed until 1786, each session after 1776 saw Jefferson successfully whittle down the privileges of the once-established Anglican Church. From 1776 until 1778 Jefferson, Wythe, and Pendleton labored on a revision of the state law code, but only a part of their code was adopted. A revised criminal code was not fully enacted until the 1790's. Jefferson made little headway on his plans for public education.
There is no evidence that Virginians were concerned that the convention had written a const.i.tution without their direct approval. The Const.i.tution of 1776 remained in effect until 1830. Virginians developed great pride concerning the work of this revolutionary convention. Here a group of the richest and best men in the colony had initiated revolution, articulated a philosophy for revolution, and established a frame of government which were to be widely imitated throughout the country and adopted in part in France.
Out of this transformation of the English const.i.tution into a government for the Commonwealth of Virginia men like Jefferson, Henry, Mason, and even the more conservative Bland and Pendleton had produced a truly radical doctrine of popular sovereignty, an appeal to a higher law--the law of nature and Nature's G.o.d, the replacement of virtual representation with direct representation, and the subst.i.tution of a balance of interests within the Virginia society for the old English theory of a balanced government comprising crown, n.o.bility, and commons in restraint of each other.
In the words of historian Bailyn, they had worked ”a substantial alteration in the order of society as it was known” in 1775. They had unloosened a ”contagion of liberty” which could not be restrained.[37]
Ultimately Virginians and Americans came to believe the rhetoric of the Declaration of Rights and the Declaration of Independence when they read the words ”all men are created equal” to mean ”all persons”. If it is something of an anomaly that the men who wrote these words were slaveholders, it is no anomaly that these words came to be accepted as ”self-evident truths” when later generations applied these truths to the rights of man, regardless of race, creed, color, religion, or national origin. But that was a long way off. June-July 1776 was the beginning of a great experiment, not the finished product.
[37] Bernard Bailyn, Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, Harvard University Press, 1962, chapter 4.
The British-Americans: The Virginia Loyalists
Jefferson was correct in stating that Virginians moved forward to war with greater unity and with fewer examples of Torism than any other colony. Robert Calhoon, historian of loyalism, notes Virginia Loyalists consisted ”of a handful of Anglican clergymen, the members of a moribund Royal Council, and several hundred Scottish merchants, and were ... not a very formidable coalition.” This confirms the much older view of Isaac Harrell who characterized Virginia loyalists as small in number, not more than a few thousand, whose activities after the departure of Governor Dunmore were limited. Only in the Norfolk area, the Hobbs Hole region of Middles.e.x County, in Accomac County on the Eastern Sh.o.r.e, and in the isolated frontier area along the Monongahela River, claimed jointly by Pennsylvania and Virginia, were there enough loyalists to even suggest a majority of the population. ”Of the 2,500 claims filed with British government for loyalist property lost during the Revolution, only 140 were from Virginia.” Most of these 140 claims were made by British natives living in Virginia at the outbreak of the war. Only 13 were Virginians.
Except for the Dunmore raids in 1775-1776 and an abortive plot in 1776 by Dr. John Connolly in the Fort Pitt region there were no loyalist military operations in Virginia. Several hundred loyalists joined the royal army, a small number in comparison to most colonies. Most loyalists went to London or Glasgow. Except for William Byrd III and Attorney-General John Randolph, most native Virginia loyalists, including Richard Corbin, John Grymes, and Ralph Wormeley stayed quietly on their plantations.[38]
Virginia's only n.o.bleman, aging recluse, Thomas, Sixth Lord Fairfax, owner of the Northern Neck, 9,000 square miles of land, remained untouched at his hunting lodge in Frederick County.
[38] Robert M. Calhoon. The Loyalists in Revolutionary America, 1760-1781, (Harcourt, Brace: New York, 1973), 458; Isaac Harrell, Loyalism in Virginia (Duke University, 1926), 62-65.
In the early years there was a general appreciation of the difficulty some Virginians had experienced in breaking with England and swearing allegiance to a new nation. This switch was especially difficult for members of the governor's council and the Anglican clergy who had taken personal oaths of allegiance to the king, not a casual act in the 18th Century. Most of these men and women had been respected leaders in pre-Revolutionary Virginia, had many friends, brothers, and sons in the patriot camp, and took no direct action to support the British. Generally they were well treated.
As the war moved along, however, and the colonists suffered enormous losses in the winters of 1777 and 1778, sympathy decreased and demands for public declaration of allegiance to the patriot cause grew. Laws were pa.s.sed providing for heavy taxation and then confiscation of loyalist properties. The fortunes of the war can almost be read in the evolution of loyalist laws. After the battle of Great Bridge (1775) the convention allowed those who had borne arms against Virginia to take an oath of allegiance to the Committee of Safety. Most Norfolk area loyalists did.
But when Dunmore persisted in raiding Virginia that spring, the convention, in May 1776, changed the law and declared those who aided the ”enemy” subject to imprisonment and their property to seizure. In December 1776 the new General a.s.sembly voted that those who joined the enemy or gave aid and comfort were to be arrested for treason. If guilty, they would be executed. Those guilty of adherence to the authority of the king (as opposed to those who refused to support the new government) were subject to heavy fines and imprisonment.
A major turning point occurred in 1777 when general patriot outcries against those not supporting the Revolutionary cause forced the a.s.sembly to pa.s.s a test oath. Was.h.i.+ngton and Jefferson were especially vocal on this point. Every male over 16 was required to renounce his allegiance to the king and to subscribe to a new oath of allegiance to Virginia. In 1778 those who refused to take the oath were subjected to double taxation; in 1779 the tax was tripled. In 1779 legal procedures for the sale of sequestered and confiscated property were established and sales begun, although these sales never brought the income expected to the financially hard pressed state.
A similar progression from toleration to harshness faced the merchants who had stayed in the colonies as well as those who had fled. The latter had much of their property confiscated and their s.h.i.+ps seized. Those who stayed found there was no neutrality. The key issue here was debt payment. The a.s.sembly declared that the new Virginia paper money circulated was legal tender and must be accepted for both new and pre-war debts. Many Virginians took advantage of this opportunity to pay their debts in the inflated money, a move which caused many problems after the war when attempts were made to straighten out personal British accounts.
There was no sympathy for those who protested the inequity of this action. Revolutions and civil wars seldom bring equity. The remarkable thing is that in Virginia the Revolution progressed with so little internal strife.[39]
[39] Harrell, Loyalism in Virginia, 66-96.
The War at Home, 1776-1780
From the time Dunmore left in July 1776, until the British moved into Virginia again in 1779, Virginians fought the war for independence on the soils of the other colonies. Their main contributions were providing the men and material which all wars demand. When one considers the natural reluctance of colonials to serve outside their own boundaries, Virginians' record of men and supplies were good.
The demands on the Virginia economy were great. With much of the natural granary in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Long Island occupied by British forces and the middle state ports blockaded, pleas from Was.h.i.+ngton for Virginia meat and food supplies were constant. Munitions works at Westham (Richmond), Fredericksburg, and Fort Chiswell and naval s.h.i.+pyards at Gosport, South Quay, and Chickahominy River operated at full capacity. A major munitions magazine opened at Point of Fork on the James River in Fluvanna County, and small iron furnaces appeared throughout the Piedmont and in the Valley areas. In 1779 Virginia exports of food and grain outside the United States were halted and redirected to the needs of Congress. Everywhere Virginians began to spin and weave their own cloth.