The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution, 1763-1789 (19 page)

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¹⁸
Beeman,
Patrick Henry
, 16.

¹⁹
Quoted in
ibid.,
19
.

with his first major effort. The next day, however, the fifth resolve was rescinded by what by this time was a very small rump meeting.
²⁰

As printed in
The Journal of the House of Burgesses
, the first four resolutions ran as follows:

Resolved,
That the first Adventurers and Settlers of this his Majesty's Colony and Dominion of Virginia brought with them, and transmitted to their Posterity, and all other his Majesty's Subjects since inhabiting in this his Majesty's said Colony, all the Liberties, Privileges, Franchises, and Immunities, that have at any Time been held, enjoyed, and possessed, by the People of Great Britain.

Resolved,
That by two royal Charters, granted by King
James
the First, the Colonists aforesaid are declared entitled to all Liberties, Privileges, and Immunities of Denizens and natural Subjects, to all Intents and Purposes, as if they had been abiding and born within the Realm of
England.

Resolved,
That the Taxation of the People by themselves, or by Persons chosen by themselves to represent them, who can only know what Taxes the People are able to bear, or the easiest Method of raising them, and must themselves be affected by every Tax laid on the People, is the only Security against a burthensome Taxation, and the distinguishing characteristick of British Freedom, without which the ancient Constitution cannot exist.

Resolved,
That his Majesty's liege People of this his most ancient and loyal Colony have without Interruption enjoyed the inestimable Right of being governed by such Laws, respecting their internal Polity and Taxation, as are derived from their own Consent, with the Approbation of their Sovereign, or his Substitute; and that the same hath never been forfeited or yielded up, but hath been constantly recognized by the Kings and People of Great Britain.
²¹

A much better attended House had approved statements of about this same tenor the year before. Hence the question of why there should have been disagreement over these resolutions is puzzling. Perhaps the answer lies in the composition of supporters of the resolutions. Patrick Henry was a young man and for the most part so were the others who backed him in the Burgesses.
His opponents included several of the

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most distinguished members of the House -- Peyton Randolph, John Robinson, Robert Carter Nicholas, Richard Bland, George Wythe -- all older men, and all apparently resentful of the upstart from Louisa County and his youthful cohorts and their inflammatory language.
²²

That brings us to Henry's speech delivered in support of his resolutions. No copy survives, but fragments exist, as reported by an anonymous French traveler who witnessed the proceedings on May 30 and 31 from the lobby of the House. According to this French observer, Henry began in a grand style, declaring that "in former times tarquin and Julus had their Brutus, Charles had his Cromwell, and he Did not Doubt but some good american would stand up, in favour of his Country."
²³
At this point John Robinson, the speaker of the House, cut Henry off by accusing him of talking treason. Henry immediately begged the pardon of Robinson and the House and stated that he was prepared to demonstrate his loyalty to George III "at the Expense of the last Drop" of his blood. Passion may have carried him too far, he said, passion and "the Interest of his Countrys Dying Liberty."

Henry backed down, but certainly not all the way. Apparently the damage was done, for the House divided. The young men there made their point in the four resolves and also succeeded in getting a fifth passed. The
Journal
of the House says nothing of it, however, and there seems to be no way of establishing its content. It may have been worded as follows -- the text is from a paper Henry left behind:

Resolved,
Therefore that the General Assembly of this Colony have the
only and sole exclusive
Right and Power to lay Taxes and Impositions upon the Inhabitants of this Colony and that every Attempt to vest such Power in any Person or Persons whatsoever other than the General Assembly aforesaid has a manifest Tendency to destroy British as well as American Freedom.
²⁴

Several colonial newspapers printed this resolution and informed their readers that it had been passed. The
Newport Mercury
not only printed it but also a sixth and/or seventh:

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²²
Beeman,
Patrick Henry
, 33-35, argues persuasively that though Henry was not as well educated as most burgesses and though he had less political experience than they, he did not head a democratic insurgency in the House. None existed.

²³
Journal of a French Traveller in the Colonies, 1765,
AHR
, 26 ( 1921), 726-47 (quotations in this paragraph on 745-46).

²⁴
Morgan, ed.,
Prologue
, 48.

Resolved, That his Majesty's liege People, the Inhabitants of this Colony, are not bound to yield Obedience to any Law or Ordinance whatever, designed to impose any Taxation whatsoever upon them, other than the Laws or Ordinances of the General Assembly aforesaid.
²⁵

The
Mercury
, however, omitted the third resolve printed in the
Journal of the House
. The
Maryland Gazette
printed all seven, and most other newspapers offered either six or seven.
²⁶
The last resolve -- the sixth in the Mercury, which was the seventh in the
Maryland Gazette
-- carried the greatest thunder and was at least debated by the House. The French traveler, a fascinated observer, followed the proceedings and copied down the gist of this last resolve:

That any Person who shall, by Speaking, or Writing, assert or maintain, That any Person or Persons, other than the General Assembly of this Colony, with such Consent as aforesaid, have any Right or Authority to lay or impose any Tax whatever on the Inhabitants thereof, shall be deemed, AN ENEMY TO THIS HIS MAJESTY'S COLONY.
²⁷

Not even the remnant of the faithful who remained in Williamsburg at the end of May had a stomach for stuff as strong as this. The first four resolves doubtless represented the prevailing opinion of the burgesses even though they were encumbered by the sponsorship of young men such as Patrick Henry.

These last days of May exposed a generational split in the House, but it did not cut deeply -- and there were no other important divisions within the body. There were, of course, differences in politics and society, but they had not made their way into established institutions. Certainly these potentially divisive interests had not appeared in the Burgesses. One interest dominated the House, indeed dominated Virginia's government and politics: tobacco planters, landed, slave-owning, hard-driving producers of a staple sold in England and on the European continent. If the House of Burgesses was united, so was the colony as a whole because this group ran its life. Other interests existed in the colony -religious dissenters in the West, Baptists, Presbyterians, and Methodists -- but these radicals of the spirit had not yet forced their way into the government of the colony.

Every newspaper report of Virginia's action made events in Virginia

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²⁵
June 24, 1765.

²⁶
Maryland Gazette
( Annapolis), July 4, 1765.

²⁷
This version appears in the
Maryland Gazette
. The French traveler's account differs slightly.

sound more extravagant than they were. The Burgesses had passed four resolves; Maryland printed six and Rhode Island seven; undoubtedly stories relayed in private letters, by word of mouth, the gossip of taverns, parishes, towns, and court meetings introduced further distortions. Henry's bravado was reported in these stories; his backing down was not.

Because official action had been taken in Virginia, the pressure built up elsewhere to respond in a similar vein. Before the end of 1765, the lower houses of eight other colonies had approved resolutions denouncing the Stamp Act and denying Parliament's right to tax the American colonies for revenue. And in October a Stamp Act Congress, composed of representatives of nine colonies, passed similar declarations of colonial rights.
²⁸

The statements of these bodies possess a transparent clarity and force that imply that agreement on them was complete and easily achieved. In fact, in almost every case the response was the purchase of effort and conflict, because the Stamp Act offered an opportunity for gaining political advantage in long-standing struggles. Where local divisions were deep -- and felt intensely -- the Stamp Act encouraged bitter conflict and usually drove divisions even deeper.

None of these legislatures passed resolutions before the fall of 1765. Most had finished their spring sessions by the time the news of the Virginia Resolves arrived, and none had been able to pull itself together sufficiently to act with a similar force. Virginia's example clearly helped them act in the fall, and so did popular action undertaken in the summer. By early 1766 politics in most of the colonies had assumed a shape rather different from that of March 1765 when the Stamp Act was passed.

Massachusetts -- where violence began and where politics was transformed -- offers an instructive example of a political stand-off which at first inhibited protest, and then -- when it was broken -- intensified conflict and violence. Indeed, long-standing political feuds contributed to at least one instance of unrestrained violence -- the mobbing of Thomas Hutchinson's house -- and to the general hostility to Parliament's attempt to tax the colonies. For these provincial political divisions gave the opponents of taxation the opportunity to taint their enemies with something approaching treason to America.
But at first -- in the spring of 1765 --

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political division, and the peculiar cast of alignments in Massachusetts, produced only paralysis.
²⁹

The most important political division in Massachusetts in 1765 went back to another division between James Otis, Sr., and Thomas Hutchinson which had its origin in 1757. Division is probably too mild a word to apply to the Otis-Hutchinson conflict; their struggle took on the proportions of a feud. As is still often the case in politics, the feud was over political office -- first a seat on the governor's Council which James Otis, Sr. of Barnstable wanted, and then the chief justiceship which they both wanted. Otis, Sr. hoped in 1757 that the House of Representatives would elect him to the Council, and when it did not, he blamed Thomas Hutchinson. The two men had been on opposite sides of the fence before -- in a sense they were when the election to the Council was held, for Otis had been supporting the current governor, Thomas Pownall, who feared that Hutchinson coveted his place.
³⁰