|
The American Revolution was fought over a fundamental issue of authority. Where does the consent of the governed
lie, and who is entitled to rule? By 1775 most Virginians doubted the legitimacy of centralized power exercised from
afar. It was alien to their own long experience. Constitutional quarrels, however, seldom arise from purely theoretical
concerns about the distribution of power. There must be specific grievances.
Prelude to War
After 1763 Great Britain underestimated the economic and political maturity of the American colonies. Our
national mythology would have us believe that Americans were a wilderness David facing a cosmopolitan British
Goliath. True, the colonies had no organized forces of resistance -- because they still identified themselves as
loyal British subjects -- but the colonies already had the highest standard of living in the world, higher than
that of England itself. And the American colonists already had more freedom than the king's subjects in
the mother country.
Nonetheless, Great Britain's attempt to compel the colonies to pay part of the cost of their defense in
the Seven Years' War inaugurated a series of escalating quarrels. The colonies argued that taxes could
be levied on free men only through their legislatures, by which they meant their local assemblies. The
government in London argued that Parliament was the legislature of the whole empire. A pamphlet war
ensued in which the respective powers of these bodies was argued. The political consensus broke
down irrevocably, however, when the colonies maintained that their provincial assemblies were their
only legislatures, not Parliament in London at all. They would remain nominal British subjects only if
Great Britain relinquished power over them in fact. This was unacceptable to the British. After all, they
reasoned, if colonies did not benefit the Mother Country, why have them at all?
The British argued that, after the Glorious Revolution of 1688-89, sovereignty (ultimate authority) lay in the
King-in-Parliament, that is, the king acting in accord with a majority in Parliament. If the King-in-Parliament
was sovereign in Britain, how could it not be sovereign in Britain's colonies? How could there be an empire
at all with fourteen sovereign entities -- one in London and thirteen in America?
On the other hand, by the Declaratory Act of 1766, Parliament asserted its right not merely to regulate the
empire's external affairs like foreign policy or trade, but also to make laws binding the colonies in "all cases
whatsoever." The colonists envisioned the empire instead as a federation, something like what the British
Commonwealth of Nations later became. Was it reasonable that men of the quality of Washington and
Jefferson could never aspire to sit in a legislature that claimed absolute authority over their lives? And,
if given representation in Parliament, wouldn't the Americans be overwhelmingly outvoted whenever
their interests conflicted with Britain's (this argument would arise again in 1861)? Was it not true
that the consent of the governed in Virginia (at least of those who could vote) rested with the
General Assembly in Williamsburg? These arguments were then irreconcilable. The idea of
self-government within the Empire would not be conceived until 1839 -- for Canada -- with
the precedent of 1776 fresh in mind.
Independence
Virginia declared itself independent on May 15, 1776, and three weeks later Richard Henry Lee introduced
a resolution of national independence at the Continental Congress in Philadelphia. Once enacted, a document
announcing the fact to the world was deemed appropriate. Congress entrusted this work to a committee, which
in turn asked Thomas Jefferson to prepare a draft. The resulting
Declaration of Independence reflected the
duality of the American Revolution as an anti-colonial struggle for independence and a revolution in thinking
about the nature of government -- a revolution in thought that arose from the circumstances of the colonies'
own development since 1607. As a propaganda document, the Declaration indicted the king rather than
Parliament for the separation because it was easier to stir up hatred against an individual than an institution.
But people do not remember the Declaration for its specious bill of indictment against George III as a tyrant.
Rather, they remember it for making "the pursuit of happiness" by ordinary people the chief object of government,
for vesting sovereignty in the people rather than in kings, and for asserting that all men were created equal, which
reversed thousands of years of class presumptions. Although it meant white men, even that was revolutionary for
1776, and the new nation's founding on principles of liberty and equality eventually doomed conditions that
oppressed women and blacks.
The Revolutionary War
Americans quite naturally view the Revolutionary War from their own perspective, but from the British viewpoint it was
their equivalent of our Vietnam War. There were British hawks and doves (though they did not use that terminology). The
war's morality was questioned. Rebel leaders were reviled in some quarters and revered in others. Whig politicos who
wore the buff-and-blue of Washington's army resembled our Hollywood stars praising Ho Chi Minh. There was a
domino theory that Ireland and the West Indies would follow America. And after six years of fighting, however,
public opinion finally concluded that the war was unwinnable. France's joining the Americans in 1778 tipped the
scales. Both countries contributed to the decisive event that changed British public opinion -- the siege of
Yorktown. The French fleet sealed Chesapeake Bay, preventing the British from resupply, reinforcement,
or escape. Otherwise, they would have just sailed away from Washington's besieging forces. But because
of this remarkable collaboration -- unprecedented in the eighteenth century because of the difficulty of
communicating with a fleet at sea -- Lord Cornwallis's whole command surrendered. The British Prime
Minister took the news "as he would have a [musket] ball in the breast" and moaned "Oh God, it is all
over, it is all over."
Although Massachusetts had played as great a role as Virginia in bringing about the Revolution, the
Old Dominion had the predominant role in formulating the new nation. George Mason's Virginia Declaration
of Rights of June 1776 (which Thomas Jefferson paraphrased in the Declaration of Independence) was the
pattern for the federal Bill of Rights. James Madison is called "The Father of the Constitution." Thomas
Jefferson's Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom was the most sweeping call for freedom of conscience
of any legislative enactment in history. John Marshall made the Supreme Court a co-equal branch of
government. Virginians served eight of the first nine presidential terms.
George Washington
The first president, chosen unanimously by the Electoral College, was George Washington. At his death,
"Light-Horse Harry" Lee -- Robert E. Lee's father -- extolled him as "first in war, first in peace, and first in
the hearts of his countrymen." As to the first, Washington lost as many battles as he won during the
Revolutionary War. He was not a tactician or strategist of the first rank. But he was "first in war"
because, by his personal character, he kept the Continental Army together for eight years until victory
was achieved. Washington was "first in peace" because his endorsement of the Constitution helped
secure its adoption and ratification (in Virginia by a vote of 89 to 79), and his tenure as the first
president set the republic on a sound foundation. He was "first in the hearts of his countrymen"
because he used power for the public good and relinquished it voluntarily. George III himself
said that if Washington gave up the lifetime of power that was his for the taking he would be
"the greatest man in the world."
Although Virginia's leaders determined the character of the infant republic more than any other people,
not everything developed as these founding fathers hoped. The Revolution's egalitarian rhetoric had the largely
unintended consequence of discrediting almost all ideas of dependence, hierarchy, and that deference that
the Virginia gentry was accustomed to receiving since Governor Berkeley's time in the 1600s. Henceforth,
money would be the principal determinant of status.
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson's election as president in the "Revolution of 1800," overthrowing the conservative, centralizing
Federalist party, seemed to augur well for what most Virginians favored -- liberal, limited, and cheap government in
a physically expanding nation. But, by the time of Jefferson's death -- portentously on July 4, 1826, fifty years to
the day -- raucous democracy was replacing genteel republicanism. Public spiritedness -- Jefferson called it virtue
-- was giving way to narrow individualism and materialism. And the Virginia Dynasty was about to be displaced
by a succession of "log cabin" presidents.
Moreover, Jefferson predicted that within twenty years every young man would be a unitarian, that is, one
who perhaps believed in God but certainly not in the divinity of Jesus. To his surprise and dismay, however,
evangelical Christianity swept the nation in the early 1800s and became the core culture of Virginia and the
United States for the next century.
African Virginians
If not all of Jefferson's dreams were fulfilled, what of the hopes and aspirations of African Virginians? Jefferson
did not intend his rhetoric about liberty and equality in the Declaration of Independence to apply to them, but they
heard it nonetheless. Like whites, they were divided by the Revolution, unsure of the path to freedom.
In November 1775 royal governor Lord Dunmore had proclaimed the freedom of any slave who would leave
his master to fight for the king. Thousands did, and white Virginians were appalled. When British forces moved into
Virginia in 1780, seventeen of George Washington's slaves -- 10 percent of the total -- fled to British lines. A
smaller number of blacks served with the American forces. In 1789 the Virginia legislature freed Caesar, a
slave of the Tarrant family who had piloted the Patriot, a Virginia vessel on which other black seamen also
served. For his services as a spy and guide, Saul Matthews was praised by such generals as baron von
Steuben and Nathanael Greene.
The Commonwealth of Virginia (as it had been called since 1776) acted ambivalently. On the one hand, in
1778 Virginia became the first government in the world to ban the African slave trade. But two years later the
legislature voted to reward Revolutionary War veterans with 300 acres and a slave. The irony of fighting for
liberty while owning slaves had troubled some whites during the Revolution and when, in 1782, the General
Assembly allowed slaveowners to free their slaves, a minority did. But outright abolition seemed too costly,
and the momentum for reform died out.
Some blacks decided to act on their own. In 1800 and 1802 they planned rebellions but were betrayed by
informers. Gabriel, a slave belonging to Thomas Prosser of Henrico County, led the revolt in 1800. On trial,
one of Gabriel's co-conspirators argued that "I have nothing to offer than what General Washington would have
had to offer, had he been taken by the British and put to trial. I have adventured my life in endeavoring
to obtain the liberty of my countrymen, and am a willing sacrifice in their cause." Gabriel had been
owned by a friend of Patrick Henry, whose famous words the slave rebels intended to invert and
put on a banner -- "Death or Liberty." In 1831 Nat Turner organized another slave revolt, symbolically
scheduled for July 4, in which between 55 and 60 whites were killed.
Women and Education
American women, too, hoped to gain freedom from the Revolution. During the war Hannah Lee Corbin
complained that she was a victim of taxation without representation. She wanted to vote. Her brother Richard
Henry Lee was sympathetic, but most Virginia men thought the idea preposterous. Only very gradually did the
Revolution's expansion of the idea of freedom uplift the status of women.
One gesture was taken in the 1780s, when Virginians were granted the right to divorce, although until 1827
it required legislative action. Some free women benefitted from the concept of "republican womanhood," the
idea that in the new republic "surely the Mothers of free men from whom the Infant mind receives its first and
most lasting impressions should not be left to pine in ignorance." Schools for young white women blossomed
all over Virginia. These were not finishing schools. Curricula included ancient and modern languages, moral
and natural philosophy, science, and literature. Their goal was neither careers for women nor their participation
in the public arena. They had to combat the attitude of men such as William Wirt, who held that "the ostentatious
display of intellect in a young lady is revolting." Nevertheless, they did establish the social acceptability of the
formally educated woman in Virginia, and once that idea was accepted, the prospects for future change
were incalculable.
These schools, however, seldom were free. Education was for those who could afford it. Women also
organized to establish orphanages and other charities. The first time that American women legally incorporated
was to save Mount Vernon from ruin. But there were countercurrents. In the early 1800s the emerging cult of
domesticity tied women to the homeplace. Women, who traditionally had been seen as inferior to men in mind
and body, now were seen as superior to men in some respects -- more virtuous, religious, and high-minded,
a counterweight to men's scrambling for money and power. But they were expected to exercise these soothing
influences at home, not in the outside world.
Women became the mainstay of the churches and of the many church-based organizations. There had been
a revolution in religion as well as in politics in Virginia. Throughout the colonial period Anglicanism -- the Church
of England -- had been "established" by law as the official tax-supported church of both England and Virginia.
It had more adherents than in any other British colony. Its parishes functioned as ecclesiastical units and as
adjuncts of government. Religious services were well-attended when offered, but there were few clergymen
to minister to the dispersed population.
Religious Freedom
The Church of England in Virginia was "low church," much lower than today. To some it seemed dry and
lifeless. A longing for more emotional religion than Anglicanism then offered led to increased numbers, first
of Presbyterians, then of Methodists and Baptists. Although most Anglicans in Virginia supported the
Revolution, the state deprived the church of tax revenue in 1776, formally disestablished it in 1786, and
disendowed its lands in 1802. From near extinction it took the name Protestant Episcopal Church in 1789
and gradually revived. Thereafter, its influence always was greater than its numbers.
The principle of religious freedom affirmed in the 1776 Virginia Declaration of Rights, and the policy set forth in
the 1786 Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, constituted the most radical result of the American Revolution.
Virginia had articulated the most sweeping support for freedom of conscience ever made by a government in the
history of the world. James Madison got the statute passed, in preference to one favored by Patrick Henry and
George Washington that would have distributed tax revenue among the Christian denominations. Then Madison
was instrumental in getting his policy into the "First Amendment," that is, the first of ten amendments to the United
States Constitution collectively known as the Bill of Rights.
With the end of state-supported religion, Baptists and Methodists most successfully combined religious enthusiasm
with the ideology of egalitarian republicanism. Their triumph was not assured, however, until they rid themselves of
subversive ideas about race and slavery. Then, white Virginians flocked to their congregations. By 1850, Methodists
and Baptists owned three-quarters of Virginia's churches and numbered in their ranks the great majority of white
churchgoers and nearly all black churchgoers.
Most second- and third-generation African Virginians adopted Christianity in the 1700s. Nearly all became
evangelicals, mostly Baptists (who welcomed them), and others who stressed the influence of spirits in everyday life,
divine healing, and emotional experiences as reflections of God's presence. Black evangelicalism, however, was
rooted in West African spirituality, and gradually diverged from the more conservative white variety. After the
slave revolts of 1800 and 1802, mixed race churches gradually segregated, and free blacks formed their own
congregations, while slaves often worshiped in secret "hush hollows." The issue of slavery had not gone away,
and as Virginians addressed a new century -- the nineteenth -- with hope for the promise of their new nation,
the dark cloud of slavery still hovered.
Next chapter: Becoming Southerners
Previous chapter: Becoming Virginians
Home: Chapter menu
Teacher's Guide | Resource Bank | Credits | Comments | VHS Home | Online Exhibitions | Search
Image rights owned by the Virginia Historical Society. Do not use without permission. Rights and reproductions
|
