The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 Part 4

The Stamp Act brought violence, rioting, and destruction in several colonies. Virginia met the act with rigid non-compliance, reasoned arguments, "friendly persuasion", non-importation of British goods, and finally, nullification of the act altogether. Virginians of all ranks united against the Stamp Act as they were not to unite against any British action thereafter. No one defended the act. Virginians were aided by the complicity and courage of soft-spoken Governor Francis Fauquier.

Enforcing the Stamp Act depended upon having a law to enforce, a commissioner to administer it, and stamps to attach to the doc.u.ments.

Colonel George Mercer, prominent planter who had won the commissioner's post from Richard Henry Lee, arrived in Williamsburg from London on October 30, 1765. The law was to take effect on November 1. As Mercer's ill-luck would have it, the Virginia General Court was in session and hundreds of citizens were in town, many of them the leading gentry and lawyers. Hearing that Mercer had arrived, a crowd quickly gathered and moved on the Mercer family residence. Learning of their coming, Mercer set out to meet them. At once they demanded to know whether or not he would resign his post. Mercer pleaded for time and promised an answer before the law would become effective. With that he went to what is now Mrs. Christiana Campbell's coffee house where the governor was eating.

The crowd followed. After talking with Mercer briefly, the governor invited him to the palace and walked unescorted with Mercer through the a.s.sembled hundreds. Privately to the Board of Trade, Fauquier remarked that he would have called the crowd a "mob, did I (not) know that it was chiefly if not altogether composed of Gentlemen of property in the Colony, some of them at the Head of their Respective counties, and Merchants of the Country, whether English, Scotch, or Virginia."

Mercer, after talking with the governor, returned to his father's house and discussed the situation with his brothers. The next morning he found 2,000 Virginians a.s.sembled and awaiting his answer. Concluding it was "an Impossibility to execute the Act" and "being obliged to submit to Numbers", he resigned as commissioner and wrote Fauquier that he had no stamps with which to execute the act. With that the crowd carried him off in triumph to the coffee house.

Virginia developed a clever legal stratagem to allow the tobacco fleet to sail without the required stamps. Here the agreement of governor, gentry, merchants, and ship captains was essential. Once Mercer had resigned and stated he had no stamps for the customs office, Councilor Peter Randolph, in his capacity of Surveyor General of His Majesty's Customs, declared the ships could sail for England with the stamps on the ships' manifests. Governor Fauquier then followed with sealed certificates for each ship captain attesting to this fact and relieving the captains of any responsibility for non-compliance. With that the tobacco fleet sailed off to England and Scotland.

The other Virginia inst.i.tution most effected by the tax was the court system. The General Court closed. Many county courts did likewise. At the suggestion of Richard Henry Lee, the Westmoreland County court on September 24, 1765 stated it would not sit again until the Stamp Act was repealed. Northampton County court took a radically different approach proposed by Littleton Eyre and stayed open, declaring the Stamp Act "did not bind, affect or concern the inhabitants of this colony, inasmuch as they conceive the same to be unconst.i.tutional." The neighboring Eastern Sh.o.r.e county of Accomac followed suit. Edmund Pendleton advised James Madison, Sr., that justices of the peace should serve on the county courts and the courts should stay open, for the justices had taken an oath to uphold the law since the Stamp Act was unconst.i.tutional, they would not be violating their oaths if they held court without the stamps. It was a strange restructuring of British const.i.tutional procedure which saw Virginia county courts and individual justices of the peace declaring the laws of parliament unconst.i.tutional. Nullification of the law was at hand.

Most county courts stayed closed to pursue Lee's tactics of applying pressure on British merchants who needed the courts to enforce contracts and collect debts. By closing the courts and boycotting British imports, the Virginians put pressure on the merchants who put pressure on the government. a.s.serting pressure in a more direct manner, Lee and his fellow gentry, and any other freeholders who wanted to attend, gathered at Leedstown, Westmoreland County, on February 27, 1766 and drew up an "a.s.sociation". They restated the Stamp Act Resolves and a.s.serted that should anyone comply with the Stamp Act the "a.s.sociators--will with the utmost Expedition convince all such Profligates, that immediate danger and disgrace shall attend their prost.i.tute Purpose." Should any a.s.sociator suffer as a result of his action, the others pledged "at the utmost risk of our Lives and Fortunes to restore such a.s.sociate to his Liberty." The next day the a.s.sociators crossed over the Rappahannock to Hobb's Hole and "convinced" Tory merchant Archibald Ritchie to forego his announced intention to use stamps. A similar a.s.sociation in Norfolk, the Sons of Liberty, actually tarred and feathered ship captain William Smith, tied him to a pony cart and dragged him through Norfolk streets to Market House. Along the way by-standers, including Mayor Maximilian Calvert, heaved rocks and rotten eggs at the hapless captain whose final humiliation came when he was tossed into the harbor beside his ship.[20] Small wonder ship captains did not sail to Virginia and London merchants were quickly submitting pet.i.tions against the Stamp Act.

[20] The resolution of the Westmoreland and Northumberland courts, and Leadstown a.s.sociation, and the Norfolk Sons of Liberty are found in Van Schreeven and Scribner, Revolutionary Virginia, I, 19-26, 25-48.

Repeal and the Declaratory Act, 1766

In July 1766 for reasons unrelated to the American crisis, George III replaced the Grenville ministry with a new ministry, headed by the Marquis of Rockingham, which included the Duke of Newcastle, Henry Conway, and the Duke of Grafton. Missing was the Old Whigs princ.i.p.al leader, William Pitt, who preferred to pursue his independent and mercurial ways. The Rockingham ministry, most of whose members had disliked the Stamp Act from the beginning, drew their greatest strength from the merchant communities. By the time parliament opened in December, Rockingham and his supporters were in agreement--the act must be repealed. But how? The violence and riots in Boston and Newport had raised cries against property destruction while the extreme const.i.tutional position attributed to Virginia and the Stamp Act Congress challenged the very heart of parliament's sovereignty. Pitt hardly helped Rockingham by excoriating Grenville and exclaiming, "I rejoice that America resisted."

Pitt did, however, inadvertently propose the solution when he concluded his denunciation by saying:

... the Stamp Act (must) be repealed absolutely, totally, and immediately. That a reason be a.s.signed, because it was founded on an erroneous principle. At the same time, let the sovereign authority of this country over the colonies be a.s.serted in as strong terms of legislation whatsoever. That we may bind their trade, confine their manufactures, and exercise every power whatsoever, except that of taking their money out of their pockets without their consent.[21]

[21] Cited in Morgans, Stamp Act, 335. The discussion which follows accepts as convincing the Morgan's contention, pgs.

15-154, that the colonists made no distinction between internal and external taxes in theory, only between taxes in general and navigation acts for regulatory purposes.

Pitt, following the resolution of the Stamp Act Congress, defined "legislation" to mean laws governing trade for regulation and general government, but not internal or external taxes.

By January the clamor for repeal in financially-stricken London rose to fever pitch, but no solution which admitted that the act was based on "erroneous principle" would pa.s.s. Finally, a Declaratory Act was pa.s.sed embodying the ambivalent statement to the effect that parliament did have the power to make laws binding on the colonies "in all Cases whatsoever." Though Pitt and the colonists interpreted laws to mean everything except taxes, others interpreted it to mean taxes; and still others interpreted it to mean internal but not external taxes. But the ambivalence was removed when Pitt and Isaac Barre sought to remove the phrase "in all cases whatsoever" to prevent it being used to justify taxes. They failed. Thus, when the Declaratory Act pa.s.sed, most members of parliament were convinced they had declared their authority to levy taxes even though they had repealed a specific tax, the Stamp Tax.

In that same series of debates and those which followed on repeal itself, the idea grew in the minds of many members that the colonists had made a distinction between "internal" and "external" taxes--the one levied on goods and services inside the colony and the other levied outside the colony or before the goods reached the colony. The first might be the prerogative of the colonial a.s.sembly, the other of parliament. Undoubtedly, many seized upon the distinction between "internal-external" as a principle they could accept in the midst of a serious setback and failure. If so, they were helped along by a magnificent presentation by Benjamin Franklin, agent for Pennsylvania, who presented the colonial case to the commons. In his astute and often clever way, Franklin dodged the internal-external issue, knowing full well most house members would not accept the idea of complete colonial autonomy on tax matters, while the colonists would accept nothing less.

He hoped repeal would remove the immediate difficulty and parliament would avoid the taxation issue in the future. His brilliant presentation was instrumental in gaining repeal of the Stamp Act, but the short-term solution created long-term confusion.[22]

[22] ibid., 327-352.

Nevertheless, repeal was achieved and a collective sigh of relief was heard in London and in the colonies. The colonists rejoiced in their victory. A few men like George Mason read the Declaratory Act and the debates carefully and concluded that the act did not disavow parliament's taxing power. Until a specific disclaimer was included, the problem was not solved. Mason was particularly defiant and sarcastic about the claims by London merchants that they had been able to gain repeal only by promising good behavior from the colonies in the future and warning the Virginians not to challenge parliament again. In his reply Mason mockingly declared:

The epithets of parent and child have been so long applied to Great Britain and her colonies, that ... we rarely see anything from your side of the water free from the authoritative style of a master to a schoolboy:

"We have with infinite difficulty and fatigue got you excused this one time; pray be a good boy for the future, do what your papa and mama bid you, and hasten to return them your most grateful acknowledgements for condescending to let you keep what is your own ... and if you should at any time hereafter happen to transgress, your friends will all beg for you and be security for your good behaviour; but if your are a naughty boy,... then everybody will hate you, and say you are a graceless and undutiful child; your parents and masters will be obliged to whip you severely...."[23]

[23] Robert A. Rutland, ed., Papers of George Mason, 3 vols.

(Chapel Hill, N.C., 1970), I, 65-73.

One other Virginian did not rest until he had challenged the notion, much discussed in parliament by commons member Soame Jenyns, that the colonists, like all British citizens, were "virtually" represented in parliament. To Richard Bland nothing could be more vital to the rights of British subjects than to be represented "directly" by those whom they knew and whom they chose to represent them. In March 1766 he published his magnificent defense of Virginia rights, An Inquiry into the Rights of the British Colonies. He would not concede to parliament the notion that the colonies and colonists were represented "virtually" in that body just as the nine out of ten Englishmen were who did not have the vote, or because members of commons were elected from districts in which they did not live or own property, or because nearly every profession and "interest", be it merchant, farmer, west Indian planter, physicians, soldier, clergy, and even a few Americans sat in parliament. The Inquiry was a hard-hitting defense of "direct representation". Interlaced with citations to the ancient charters of Virginia were terms of fury--"detestable Thought", "Ungenerous Insinuation", "despicable Opinion", "slavery", "oppression", terms which suggest the level to which rhetoric had risen even for as rational a man as the moderate burgess from Prince George County, now grown "tough as whitleather" with "something of the look of musty old Parchments which he handleth and studieth much". The Inquiry was widely read in Virginia and England and its statement on "direct representation" became the standard American defense against "virtual representation" and any half-way measure which would have given the colonies a few seats in parliament in the manner of Scotland or Wales.

Still the conservative Bland, who said things in a most radical way, was among those most happy to read Governor Fauquier's proclamation of June 9, 1766 announcing Repeal.[24]

[24] For the full text of Bland's Inquiry, see Van Schreeven and Scribner, Revolutionary America, I, 27-44.

British Politics and the Townshend Act, 1766-1770.

The fluid British political situation shifted again in July 1767. The conciliatory Rockingham ministry, having brought off the Stamp Act repeal and modification of the Sugar Act of 1764, could not sustain itself in office. Members of both commons and lords had fought doggedly against repeal and accepted defeat only after considerable patronage pressures from the ministry. These ministry opponents were determined to rea.s.sert, on the first opportunity, parliament's authority over the colonies, believing to delay such a confrontation was a sign of weakness. Within the Rockingham ministry personality conflicts developed which eventually brought the ministry to a standstill.

George III correctly perceived that his government faced an emergency.

In this crisis he turned to Pitt to lead a new ministry. In one way the king and Pitt were alike. They were "probably the only men in the eighteenth century to believe absolutely in (their) own slogans about patriotism, purity, and a better system of conducting government."[25]

On the other hand they differed as to what these terms meant. The intent was good, the timing was wrong. Pitt, for reasons still somewhat obscure, accepted a peerage and became Lord Chatham and opened the door to cries of corruption and sell-out by the "Great Commoner." More significantly, Chatham was trying to lead a ministry from the House of Lords. He could not bring it off and sank deeper into that melancholia which left him mentally incapacitated during much of his ministry's short life.

[25] J. Steven Watson, THE REIGN OF GEORGE III (Oxford, 1960), 4.

American affairs fell into the hands of the brilliant, egotistical, unstable, and ambitious Charles Townshend, whom Pitt called in as his chancellor of the exchequer. Townshend was one of those junior government officials who, during the French and Indian War, had discovered the economic richness and maturity of the colonies and their const.i.tutional rebelliousness. He had opposed repeal and represented the gradual infiltration of ministry positions by men who believe the colonists should pay for their government in a manner which forthrightly established parliamentary supremacy. In the 1750's he had developed a plan to bring the colonies into check. Once given the opportunity by Chatham, he seized it with enthusiasm. That opportunity came with the huge deficit in American defense costs for 1766 and New York's intransigent defiance of the Mutiny Act of 1765 (the Quartering Act.)

The Revenue Act of 1767 (the Townshend Act) was a direct challenge to colonial self-government and a true measure of the chancellor's insensitivity and folly. Citing the supposed distinction between "internal" and "external" taxes, a distinction which he, himself, did not believe existed, Townshend proposed import duties on gla.s.s, paints, lead, paper, and tea, of which only tea was a potential producer of any real revenue. The funds from these import duties were a.s.signed to pay the salaries of colonial governors and other royal officials and were not for defense expenditures. Had Townshend calculated a means for arousing the ire of the colonists, he could not have chosen a better device. It was an injustice that Townshend died suddenly before he had to wrestle with the consequence of his actions.

By 1769 Chatham finally realized he could not longer govern and resigned the government to his hero-worshipping follower, the Duke of Grafton, ostensibly over the decision of Chatham's own ministers to dismiss General Jeffrey Amherst as t.i.tular governor of Virginia and replace him with Norbonne Berkeley, Baron de Boutetourt.[26] Actually, Chatham's policies in Europe and America had been repudiated and "hardliners" were regaining power. Grafton managed to hold on and to do nothing until February 1770 when the Whig majority completely fell apart and the king turned to Lord North and the Tories to run the country.

[26] Ibid. (From 1710 to 1768 the governor for Virginia did not reside in the colony, choosing instead to accept a fixed salary and agreeing to send in his stead a lieutenant-governor who actually exercised all the power. This system ended with Amherst and his lieutenant-governor, Francis Fauquier, who died in March 1768.)

One result of this political infighting and personality conflict was support for the king. Amidst the factionalism, corruption, and greed, independent members of parliament saw the crown as the only means for creative, effective leadership. For that reason George, after 1770, not only had a minister he could work with, he had a more tractable parliament aided by the complete disintegration of the Whigs and a hardening att.i.tude toward the Americans whose actions bordered on disloyalty, if not treason.

Virginia Politics, 1766-1768

Political leadership in Virginia also underwent a change after 1766.

Unlike Britain, the changes in Virginia broadened political leadership to include the new elements which emerged during the Stamp Act debates, the Lee-Henry group. It also brought into power those who were less likely to be satisfied with political addresses and const.i.tutional niceties should parliament pa.s.s into law the powers it claimed in the Declaratory Act.

In May 1766 Speaker-Treasurer John Robinson died. His death coincided with the murder by his son-in-law, Colonel John Chiswell, of Robert Routledge of c.u.mberland County in a tavern fight. Although his father-in-law and his Randolph relatives managed to gain his release from jail pending trial, Chiswell believed he was going to be convicted if the case came to trial and chose suicide to jail. Both events shook the Robinson-Randolph leadership and the gentry everywhere. Robinson's death brought into the open the extent of his financial problems and persons to whom he had loaned money.

In 1766 Virginians were treated to another new phenomenon--an open and free press. From 1732 when William Parks set up the Virginia Gazette until 1766 there had been only one paper in the colony. Besides the paper relied heavily upon the government, both royal and a.s.sembly, for printing contracts, the Gazette tended to print only news which would not offend. After 1766 there were three Virginia Gazettes, being published simultaneously in Williamsburg by William Hunter, William Rind, and Alexander Purdie. In aggressively seeking subscribers and advertisers in lieu of government printing contracts the two new papers gave extensive coverage to the Robinson scandals, the Chiswell murder case, and the running debates between the various candidates for Robinson's offices. From 1766 on Virginians had a public forum for political debates in the letters-to-the-editor columns on British policies and actions.

The immediate result of Robinson's death was the division of his two offices. After vigorous campaigning previously unknown in Virginia, Peyton Randolph won out as speaker over the Lee candidate, Richard Bland. Robert Carter Nicholas, who had conducted the first newspaper campaign in Virginia, was elected treasurer. John Randolph replaced his brother as attorney-general. Major changes came in the house committees where Lee, Henry, and friends were placed on the powerful Committee on Elections and Privileges. The death of Robinson did not result in an overthrow of the Tidewater leadership. Virginia leadership has seldom changed in a dramatic fashion. Instead, the prevailing groups have tended to expand just enough to include those who gained political power, but not those who have demagogically courted it.

Lee, with his great planter family tradition, was merely admitted to a house leadership at a time when most members were sharing his pa.s.sionate dislike of the British. Henry won his spurs not before the crowd but on the floor of the House of Burgesses. At a time when the British were falling into greater factionalism, the Virginians were healing breaches. The willingness of Richard Bland, a cousin of Peyton Randolph, to run for the speakership with Lee-Henry backing is one example of this truth.

The Townshend Act in Virginia, 1767-1771

Reaction to the Townshend Act was greatest in the northern colonies which it most directly affected. Reaction was sharpest in Ma.s.sachusetts. There the legislature pa.s.sed and distributed a circular letter in February 1768 urging all colonies to join in a pet.i.tion to the king against the intent of the act--to make the governor and other officials financially independent from the legislatures over which they presided. The situation in Ma.s.sachusetts, as it had in the latter stages of the Stamp Act Crisis, quickly degenerated into violence, and General Gage had to send British troops to restore order in Boston.

The Virginia General a.s.sembly was in session when the circular letter arrived in April 1768. The house formed a committee headed by Bland to draw up another pet.i.tion to the king, memorial to the lords, and remonstrance to the commons. Moderate in tone, but forceful in defense of Virginian's rights, the 1767 Remonstrance protested parliament's pa.s.sage of the tax package and perhaps most forcefully denounced parliament's action in closing the New York legislature for opposing the Mutiny Act. The council concurred in these addresses. Before the a.s.sembly could move on to bolder actions, the meeting was prorogued by President John Blair. The a.s.sembly did not meet again until May 1769.

In the interim Lord Botetourt arrived to replace Fauquier who had died in March 1768.

By the time the burgesses rea.s.sembled other colonies had formed non-importation agreements and were boycotting British goods. On May 16 the House of Burgesses adopted resolutions rea.s.serting its exclusive right to levy taxes in Virginia and condemning recent parliamentary proposals to transport colonists accused of treason to England for trial. George Washington introduced a non-importation plan devised by Richard Henry Lee and George Mason. Before the house could act Botetourt dissolved the a.s.sembly. This time most of the house moved up the street to the Raleigh Tavern where 89 of them signed a non-importation a.s.sociation on May 18, 1769. Lee, Mason, and Washington proposed a ban on tobacco exports as well, but lost. The a.s.sociation called for a ban on British imports, a reduced standard of living to lessen dependence of British credit, and the purchase of goods produced in America. Hopefully, the British merchants again would bring pressure on parliament.

The a.s.sociation, which was voluntary and lacked enforcement procedures, was only partially successful in Virginia. A second a.s.sociation was announced in May 1770 following repeal of all the Townshend duties except the tea duty. By late summer the boycott had collapsed although the a.s.sociation was not dissolved until 1771.

Neither in Virginia nor the other colonies did the Townshend protests arouse the pa.s.sions or unanimity of support generated by the Stamp Act.

The lack of strong reaction may have been the result of a number of factors. The Townshend duties applied to goods which were less widely used than those affected by the Stamp Act. The Virginia economy was still struggling to recover its forward momentum, and the merchants who had to bear the greatest burden in the boycott were reluctant to protest too strongly. In addition, the colonists had a feeling the duties would be repealed. Most importantly, the imposition of a duty to pay for the governor's salary was no issue in Virginia where the a.s.sembly had given the governor a permanent salary in 1682.