The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 Part 7

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.

A second vital observation is the Declaration's firm adherence to the doctrine of popular sovereignty--the power of the government is derived from the people and can be exercised only with their consent or the consent of their elected representatives.

A third observation, among many which can be made, is that for the first time a sovereign state prevented itself and its own legislature from infringing on the basic liberties of its peoples. The possible a.s.sault on popular rights by an elected legislature had been made all too vivid by parliament in the 1760's and 1770's.

Edmund Randolph said one aim of the Declaration was to erect "a perpetual standard". John Adams had warned "we all look up to Virginia for example". Neither Randolph nor Adams could have been disappointed.

Mason's Declaration of Rights was utilized by Jefferson as he drafted the Declaration of Independence, written into the bills of rights of numerous other states, and finally in 1791 was incorporated into the Federal Const.i.tution as the Bill of Rights.

Declaration of Independence

In Philadelphia, Lee introduced the Virginia independence resolution on June 7, 1776. On that day only seven colonies were prepared to vote "aye". Therefore, congress put off a full vote until July 1, hoping by that date for all states to have received instructions from home. In the meantime congress appointed John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman of Connecticut, Robert R. Livingston of New York, and Thomas Jefferson to draft a declaration. For nearly two weeks Jefferson, with the advice of Adams and Franklin, wrote and rewrote the draft, seeking just the right phrase, the right concept. On June 28 the committee laid its draft before the chamber. On July 4 the Congress completed its revisions. The changes were few when one considers the normal way legislative bodies amend and rewrite the very best of prose. Still the changes were too many for the red-haired delegate from Albemarle County, Virginia, who possessed an ample store of pride in his own words. Jefferson thought his version had been manhandled; Lee went further and said it had been "mangled".

The preamble to the Declaration of Independence is timeless. There in clear and unmistakable language is a rationale for revolution, not just 1776, but all revolutions.

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 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 usurpations, 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.

The last thread which held the colonies to Britain was the king and to cut that thread Jefferson and the Congress charged him with all the acts of parliament and the ministries. As Dumas Malone remarks:

The charges in the Declaration were directed, not against the British people or the British Parliament, but against the King. There was a definite purpose in this. Jefferson, and the great body of the Patriots with him, had already repudiated the authority of Parliament.... Now ... the onus must be put on George III himself.

Such a personification of grievances was unwarranted on strict historical grounds. This was the language of political controversy, not that of dispa.s.sionate scholars.h.i.+p.[35]

[35] Malone, Jefferson the Virginian, 224.

Parliament, in fact, is not mentioned at all. Jefferson would not even acknowledge its existence, referring to it instead as "others" who have joined with the king in these "repeated injuries and usurpations." But before we worry too much about the king and sympathize with those who believe "poor George" has suffered unnecessary abuse, let us remember that we now know the king, while neither vindictive nor a tyrant, was an adherent to the policies proposed by his ministers which brought disunion to the empire.

On July 4, 1776, by a vote of 12-0, with New York abstaining, the colonies voted independence. On July 8 the Declaration was read publicly.

On July 15 New York voted "yes". And on August 2 most delegates signed the formal Declaration itself. (The last signer did not put his signature on it until 1781.)

Just as George Was.h.i.+ngton misjudged himself and history when he remarked, "Remember, Mr. Henry, what I now tell you: from the day I enter upon the command of the American armies, I date my fall, and the ruin of my reputation," so Jefferson thought little of his composition. He was much more interested in and concerned about the Virginia Const.i.tution. At first he was not identified as the author of the Declaration, for the names of all those who signed were not revealed until January 1777. He was wrong, of course, as the judgment of time has confirmed. The Declaration is the greatest political statement written by an American.

To the citizens of the United States it was, and has remained, the most popular and beloved of all their public doc.u.ments.

The Virginia Const.i.tution, June 29, 1776

One mark of the revolutionary generation's greatness is seen in this series of simultaneous events taking place in June 1776. One Virginian, George Was.h.i.+ngton, was a.s.sembling an army to defend the new nation; two Virginians, Richard Henry Lee and Thomas Jefferson, were leading the congress to independence; and a third group, George Mason and the Virginia Convention were constructing a new government for Virginia. Just as Virginia was the first colony to declare independence, she was also the first state to draft a new form of government.

The convention had charged Mason and his committee with writing "such a plan as will most likely maintain peace and order in this colony, and secure substantial and equal liberty to the people". Within two weeks Mason had completed his task. It was not, however, a work of haste, for Mason had contemplated for a long time the proper form of government. To Mason and most Virginians the const.i.tution must: 1) give life to the liberties set forth in the Declaration of Rights; 2) prevent those tyrannies of government which had undermined the once ideal English const.i.tution; and 3) preserve those elements which had been the strengths of the old colonial government. The Const.i.tution of 1776 achieved these ends.

Virginia was made a commonwealth. As Robert Rutland tells us, "Mason's choice of the word 'commonwealth' was no happenstance. Mason knew pa.s.sages of John Locke's Second Treatise on Government verbatim.

None struck Mason more forcefully than Locke's notion that a commonwealth was a form of government wherein the legislature was supreme." There was a consensus within the convention that there should be a separation of powers between executive, legislative, and judicial functions, but no equality of powers. The legislative function was to be supreme.