Virginians made the rejection of the Intolerable Acts revolutionary.
The Intolerable Acts were outrageous abrogations of American liberty. Massachusetts was their primary target, but sympathy began to spread beyond its borders. The Orangetown Resolutions showed how small-town New Yorkers could commit themselves to solidarnosc with Boston. But the most important acceders were the Virginians.
Virginia was the largest and richest colony. It gave the lead to all the colonies to its south—North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. To have the support of Virginia was to make the cause of Boston truly American, the cause of all the disparate colonies rather than of a disaffected northern fringe.
This is why Lord Dunmore, Virginia’s royal governor, dissolved Virginia’s House of Burgesses after it proclaimed—in words drafted by Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, and Richard Henry Lee—that June 1, 1774, should be set aside as “a day of fasting, humiliation and prayer, to implore heaven to avert from us the evils of civil war, to inspire us with firmness in the support of our rights, and to turn the hearts of King and Parliament to moderation and justice.” But Dunmore’s dissolution only made matters worse. The burgesses immediately reconvened at a local tavern and sent word that Virginia’s counties should elect delegates to meet at a special convention in August. A special committee of Fairfax gentlemen, including George Washington and George Mason, met to draft instructions for Fairfax County’s delegates to the upcoming Virginia Convention. What they wrote—namely Mason and Washington—was the Fairfax Resolves, adopted on July 18, 1774, a statement of the constitutional principles at issue, of the rights of freedom which must be protected.
- Resolved that the most important and valuable Part of the British Constitution, upon which it’s very Existence depends, is the fundamental Principle of the People’s being governed by no Laws, to which they have not given their Consent, by Representatives freely chosen by themselves; who are affected by the Laws they inact equally with their Constituents, to whom they are accountable, and whose Burthens they share; in which consists the Safety and Happiness of the Community: for if this Part of the Constitution was taken away, or materially altered, the Government must degenerate either into an absolute and despotic Monarchy, or a tyrannical Aristocracy, and the Freedom of the People be annihilated.
- Resolved that the Powers over the People of America now claimed by the British House of Commons, in whose Election We have no Share, on whose Determinations We can have no Influence, whose Information must be always defective and often false, who in many Instances may have a seperate, and in some an opposite Interest to ours, and who are removed from those Impressions of Tenderness and Compassion arising from personal Intercourse and Connections, which soften the Rigours of the most despotic Governments, must if continued, establish the most grievous and intollerable Species of Tyranny and Oppression that ever was inflicted upon Mankind.
- Resolved that it is our greatest Wish and Inclination, as well as Interest, to continue our Connection with, and Dependance upon the British Government; but tho’ We are it’s Subjects, we will use every Means which Heaven hath given Us to prevent our becoming it’s Slaves.
The Intolerable Acts culminated in a decade of increasingly tyrannical British misgovernment of the American colonies. In Massachusetts and elsewhere, Americans increasingly had invoked principles of liberty. But it was the gentlemen of Fairfax County who married these statements of principles of liberty to the Intolerable Act and who made an unmistakably revolutionary threat: we will use every means which Heaven hath given Us to prevent our becoming its [Britain’s] Slaves. Virginians took the crucial step to transform resistance to arbitrary government into what might become a revolution for freedom.
Indeed, they started broadening these principles in ways that had nothing to do with the Intolerable Acts:
- Resolved that it is the Opinion of this Meeting, that during our present Difficulties and Distress, no Slaves ought to be imported into any of the British Colonies on this Continent, and We take this Opportunity of declaring our most earnest Wishes to see an entire Stop for ever put to such a wicked cruel and unnatural Trade.
Not Northerners, but Southerners—and Southern slaveowners at that—were the first to marry the quickening revolution to a moral condemnation of slavery.
The current hatred directed toward white Southerners—first a specialty of liberals, now a drumbeat of the Woke—is hatred directed at the authors of American liberty, the very authors of the broadening of the principles of liberty to include black slaves. It is hatred that serves, and at least unconsciously is meant, to divide Americans and to destroy American liberty. If we wish to preserve our American liberty now, we must know to cherish piously all the authors of our liberty, in Virginia and Massachusetts alike.
The current hatred, the tyranny, is also a product of social distance. Note the description of the British House of Commons: “who are removed from those Impressions of Tenderness and Compassion arising from personal Intercourse and Connections, which soften the Rigours of the most despotic Governments.” The Woke, of course, are members of a cult who remove their members from all social intercourse with their American fellows they wish to rule; by their unwillingness to work with, marry, or maintain any friendly relation with Americans who disagree with their inhuman catechism, they make themselves into alien tyrants.
And the current concern to articulate the principles of freedom for which we should fight is not idle. When the Claremont Review of Books runs articles on National Conservatism vs. American Conservatism, when there are rival statements of principle of National Conservatism and Freedom Conservatism, these are the competing first drafts of the new Fairfax Resolves that will state what the liberty we wish to fight for is. We know the abuses our tyrants impose on us; we do not yet know, as a nation, precisely the nature of the free government we wish to (re)establish. The intellectual work to articulate the nature and the extent of our liberties is vital.
Our generation’s George Washingtons, George Masons, Thomas Jeffersons, Patrick Henrys, and Richard Henry Lees are writing our Fairfax Resolves. Soon, we will know what we fight for, to make sure we suffer no more intolerable tyranny.
Art by Beck & Stone
“Not Northerners, but Southerners—and Southern slaveowners at that—were the first to marry the quickening revolution to a moral condemnation of slavery”
No.
The three things to remember are (a) the moral (as opposed to economic) objection to slavery grew out of the Enlightenment values of the Revolution itself (which is why Massachusetts would eliminate slavery in 1803), (b) slavery existed in the North at the time, andi (c) slavery harmed the White working class because it was cheaper to have those jobs done by slaves.
The easiest way to understand the third point is in the current context of illegal immigration and it is the working class Americans who are losing their jobs to illegal aliens, not white collar professionals.
The American Revolution needs to be seen as a concurrent economic civil war, a battle between the rising middle class and the established upper class Royalilsts. It was the latter who owned most of the slaves in Massachusetts and hence most of the slaves became free when the property of the Loyalists was confiscated in the Revolution, there weren’t that many slaves left to be freed by the 1803 SJC ruling.
I’d want to see an economic study of slavery in Virginia circa 1774 — both existing plantations and those proposed to be expanded via newly-imported slaves — and this overlaid a breakdown between the pro and anti independence factions in Virginia at the time. I’m not so sure the evidence would support Dr. Randall’s claim. I would ask who was then currently benefiting from the importation of *more* slaves and who would instead benefit from the immigration of White Germans, as was currently happening in the North. The classic Cuo Bono?
Never forget that this also was an economic civil war…