Part 12 (1/2)

May 28, 1763. The defeat of the French in America introduced new stresses and strains in the British Empire. Differences between the colonies and Mother Country began to appear immediately and with increasing frequency and intensity. The Bland Report of 1763 made to the House of Burgesses revealed one point of conflict between the two.

Virginia had in part financed her contribution to the recent war by issuing paper money backed by taxation. The British merchants, creditors of the colonial planters, feared inflation and were bitterly attacking the policy of printing paper money in the colonies. Defending Virginia's actions, the Bland Report presented the American argument for paper money. The British merchants carried the day to their own hurt by securing an Act of Parliament in 1764 forbidding the future issue of paper currency in the colonies.

October 7, 1763. Another cause for colonial resentment at war's end was the King's proclamation closing the trans-Allegheny west to settlement.

December, 1763. One consequence of the Parsons' Causes was the sudden emergence of young Patrick Henry on the political scene. When the court of Hanover county decided in favor of Reverend James Maury, the defendants called on Henry to plead their cause before the jury which was to fix the amount of damages. By appealing to the anti-clerical and even lawless instincts of the jury and by doing it with unmatched oratorical skill, Patrick Henry won the jury to his side and made himself a popular hero in upcountry Virginia.

October 30, 1764. Many Burgesses arrived early for the October December session of the General a.s.sembly ”in a flame” over the Act of Parliament proposing a Stamp tax on the American colonists. The committee of correspondence had been busy during the summer communicating with the agent in London, and the Burgesses were ready to take action against the proposed tax.

December 17, 1764. The House of Burgesses and the Council agreed upon an address to the Crown and upon memorials to the House of Commons and to the House of Lords. The three pet.i.tions stressed the sufferings such a tax would cause war-weary Virginians and also opposed the levy on const.i.tutional grounds. They argued that the colonial charters and long usage gave the Virginia House of Burgesses the sole right to tax Virginians and that the fundamental const.i.tution of Britain protected a man from being taxed without his consent. These arguments, elaborated and refined, were to be the heart of the colonial contentions in the turbulent days ahead.

May 29, 1765. The arguments of the Virginia a.s.sembly went unheeded. On February 27, 1765, Parliament decreed that the stamp tax should go into effect on November 1. The General a.s.sembly was in session when news of the pa.s.sage of the Stamp Act came to Virginia, and on May 29 the House went into the committee of the whole to consider what steps it should take. Burgess Patrick Henry presented his famous resolutions which fixed at the outset the tenor of colonial opposition to the stamp tax.

The House adopted by a close vote on the 30th five of Henry's seven resolutions, and all seven were given wide circulation throughout the colonies.

October 30, 1765. On the day before the stamp tax was to go into effect, George Mercer, the collector, arrived in Williamsburg with the stamps. Williamsburg was filled with people in town for the meeting of the General Court, and Governor Fauquier had to intervene to protect Mercer from the insults of the mob. On November 1, the courts ceased to function and all public business came to a virtual halt.

February 8, 1766. Foreshadowing the judicial review of a later day, the Northampton county court declared the Stamp Act unconst.i.tutional and consequently of no effect.

March 13, 1766. A number of the inhabitants of the town and environs of Norfolk a.s.sembled at the court house and formed the Sons of Liberty. The Sons of Liberty usually appeared hereafter at the forefront of any anti-British agitation in the colonies.

1766. Richard Bland published his famous An Inquiry into the Rights of the British Colonies in which he took a rather advanced const.i.tutional position in opposition to parliamentary taxation of the American colonies.

May 11, 1766. At the height of the Stamp Act crisis, the dominant group in the House of Burgesses was shaken by a scandal involving the long-time Speaker and Treasurer of the Colony, John Robinson, who died on this day leaving his accounts short by some 100,000 pounds.

June 9, 1766. Governor Fauquier announced by public proclamation the repeal of the Stamp Act (March 18, 1766). Although repeal brought a wave of reaction against the agitation of the past months and a strong upsurge of loyalty to Great Britain, the leaders of Virginia, and of the other colonies, had consciously or not moved to a new position in their view of the proper relations.h.i.+p between the Colony and the Mother Country. The failure of the rulers of Britain to appreciate and a.s.sess properly the changed temper of the colonists lost for them the American empire.

November 6, 1766. The General a.s.sembly of 1766-1768 met: November 6-December 16, 1766 and adjourned to March 12-April 11, 1767, and then met in a final session, March 31-April 16, 1768.

January, 1768. The Virginia Gazette began to publish John d.i.c.kenson's letters from a ”Pennsylvania Farmer.” These letters did a great deal to clarify, in the minds of many, the American position with regard to the Parliamentary claim of the right of taxation in the colonies.

March 3, 1768. Governor Fauquier died.

March 31, 1768. News of the pa.s.sage of the Townshend Acts and of the suspension of the New York legislature was already causing a wave of indignation in Virginia when the General a.s.sembly met in March. Having taken under consideration the circular letter of the Ma.s.sachusetts legislature opposing the Townshend Acts and various pet.i.tions to the same effect, the House of Burgesses prepared pet.i.tions to the Crown and to both Houses of Parliament, and on April 14 adopted all three unanimously.

The House then sent word to the other colonial a.s.semblies of its action and congratulated the Ma.s.sachusetts House ”for their attention to American liberty.”

August 12, 1768. In a move to strengthen the hand of the Virginia Governor and at the same time to conciliate the Colony, the King made Fauquier's replacement, Norborne Berkeley, Baron de Botetourt, Governor of Virginia in the place of Jeffrey Amherst. Not since the time of Governor Nicholson had the Governor himself come out to Virginia.

October 26, 1768. Lord Botetourt arrived in Williamsburg.

May 8, 1769. The Governor, Lord Botetourt, opened the first and only session of the General a.s.sembly of 1769 (May 8-17) with a conciliatory speech; but, obviously unmoved, the House of Burgesses set about with remarkable unanimity to restate their position with regard to Parliamentary supremacy. The House also denounced the reported plan for transporting colonists accused of treason to England for trial. On May 16, the House adopted resolutions to this effect and then on the next day unanimously approved an address to the Crown.

May 17, 1769. The House resolutions of the 16th caused Lord Botetourt to dissolve the General a.s.sembly. Dissolution blocked the planned adoption of George Mason's proposal for forming an a.s.sociation with the other colonies for the purpose of suspending the importation of British goods. But the Burgesses got around this by meeting in their private capacity at the house of Anthony Hays. This was a momentous step.

The meeting made Speaker Peyton Randolph the moderator and appointed a committee to present a plan for a.s.sociation.

May 18, 1769. The Burgesses adopted the report of the committee calling for a boycott on English goods to force the repeal of the Townshend Acts and invited the other colonies to join the a.s.sociation.

November 7, 1769. The General a.s.sembly of 1769-1771 met November 7-December 21, 1769, and adjourned to May 21-June 28, 1770; and then it met in a final session July 11-20, 1771.

In his speech to the a.s.sembly on the first day of its meeting, Lord Botetourt pacified the Virginians momentarily with information from Lord Hillsborough that His Majesty's administration contemplated no new taxes in America and in fact intended the repeal of the Townshend Acts.