The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 Part 13

June 29, 1776. The Convention chose Patrick Henry to be the first Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia. A skilled agitator, a great orator, and a radical-turning-conservative, Henry made but an indifferent Governor.

July 8-9, 1776. At the battle of Gwynn's Island, Dunmore's fleet was so severely damaged that he soon left the coast of Virginia, never to return.

1776. During the Revolution, nineteen counties were formed: Monongalia, Ohio, and Yohogania in 1776; Henry, Kentucky, Montgomery, Was.h.i.+ngton, Fluvanna, and Powhatan in 1777; Greenbrier, Rockbridge, Rockingham, Shenandoah, and Illinois in 1778; Fayette, Jefferson, and Lincoln in 1780; Greensville in 1781; and Campbell in 1782.

October 7, 1776. The first session of the new legislature was dominated by Thomas Jefferson, who replaced Henry as the leader of the more radical elements in Virginia. Jefferson began a needed revision of the laws. In the next two decades, the colonial codes and laws were adapted to the needs of an independent state. In this same session, he also secured the abolition of primogeniture and entail, humanized the criminal code, and began his attack upon the church establishment.

July 4, 1778. George Rogers Clark captured Kaskaskia. On the strength of this victory, the Virginia legislature created Illinois county, thus providing the first American administrative control in the Northwest Territory.

February 25, 1779. The dramatic capture of Vincennes by George Rogers Clark on this date secured the Northwest Territory from British control.

May 9, 1779. For the first three years of the Revolutionary War, Virginia was spared invasion because the British were concentrating their efforts in the northern colonies; but on May 9, 1779, Admiral Sir George Collier anch.o.r.ed in Hampton Roads with a British fleet. After capturing Portsmouth with little trouble, he sent out raiding parties and then departed. Naval stores in large quant.i.ty and thousands of barrels of pork were destroyed.

June 1, 1779. Thomas Jefferson was elected Governor to replace Patrick Henry. Weakened by a conservative s.h.i.+ft in opinion and unable to cope with invasion which came in 1780, Governor Jefferson left office with a tarnished reputation, June 12, 1781. He was replaced by Thomas Nelson who served only until November 30, 1781. Benjamin Harrison was the last of the war Governors.

April, 1780. The capital was moved from Williamsburg up to Richmond.

October, 1780. The British recaptured Portsmouth, this time primarily for the purpose of establis.h.i.+ng communication with General Cornwallis in South Carolina. General Leslie remained in Portsmouth with his 3000 men for one month.

January 5, 1781. The third and most serious British attack upon Virginia was carried out by General Benedict Arnold who sailed through the Capes on December 30, 1780. Instead of stopping at Portsmouth, he continued on up the James to capture Richmond, the new capital, on January 5, 1781. After Arnold had set up his headquarters at Portsmouth, two attempts to launch a sea and land attack against him failed to materialize. Cornwallis marched into Virginia in late spring and in May crossed the James and entered Richmond. During the summer of 1781, the main achievement of Lafayette and the continental forces in Virginia was to avoid destruction.

July 25, 1781. Cornwallis, marching from Richmond, reached Williamsburg on June 25. He remained there until July 5, when he moved toward the James River where transports awaited to take him to the Surry side. Before he was able to make the crossing, he was attacked by Lafayette, at Green Spring. After successfully repelling the American forces, he crossed the river and pushed on to Portsmouth. In August he crossed Hampton Roads and marched to Yorktown, which he fortified.

August 30, 1781. The stage was being set for the destruction of Cornwallis's army when the French fleet under Admiral de Gra.s.se sailed through the Virginia Capes on August 30, 1781. General Was.h.i.+ngton was hurrying with his army from New York and Lafayette was bringing up his troops preparatory to bottling up Cornwallis on the Yorktown peninsula where he had encamped with his army.

September 5, 1781. One avenue of escape for Cornwallis's army was shut off when De Gra.s.se a.s.sured French control of the river and bay by repulsing the British fleet commanded by Admiral Graves.

September 28, 1781. The surrender of Cornwallis became only a matter of time when Was.h.i.+ngton brought his army up to reenforce the besieging forces of Lafayette.

October 19, 1781. General Cornwallis surrendered his army at Yorktown. With the aid of the French, General Was.h.i.+ngton had won for the colonies their independence. The independence of America became official with the signing of the Treaty of Paris on September 3, 1783.

October 20, 1783. Virginia, agreeing to the terms of Congress, ceded her claims to territory north of the Ohio, and the deed pa.s.sed March 1, 1784. Virginia was shrunken to the limits contained in the present States of Virginia, West Virginia, and Kentucky.

Declaration of Independence

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to a.s.sume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature's G.o.d ent.i.tle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are inst.i.tuted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to inst.i.tute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly, all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolis.h.i.+ng the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies, and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpation, all having, in direct object, the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this let facts be submitted to a candid world:

He has refused to a.s.sent to laws the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his governors to pa.s.s laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his a.s.sent should be obtained; and, when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pa.s.s other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature; a right inestimable to them, and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing, with manly firmness, his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused, for a long time after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the State remaining, in the meantime, exposed to all the dangers of invasions from without and convulsions within.

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose, obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pa.s.s others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his a.s.sent to laws for establis.h.i.+ng judiciary powers.

He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a mult.i.tude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to hara.s.s our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the military independent of, and superior to, the civil power.

He has combined, with others, to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our const.i.tution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his a.s.sent to their acts of pretended legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them by a mock trial from punishment, for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing taxes on us without our consent:

For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefit of trial by jury:

For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses.

For abolis.h.i.+ng the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establis.h.i.+ng therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries, so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these colonies:

For taking away our charters, abolis.h.i.+ng our most valuable laws and altering fundamentally, the powers of our governments:

For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection, and waging war against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is, at this time, transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the work of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun, with circ.u.mstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow-citizens, taken captive on the high seas, to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, s.e.xes, and conditions.

In every stage of these oppressions we have pet.i.tioned for redress in the most humble terms; our repeated pet.i.tions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.