The First Virginia Convention

Even gentle acts can be revolutionary. On the morning of August 1, 1774, dozens of Virginia gentlemen assembled in Williamsburg’s Capitol. They chatted politely until, called to order, they settled in their seats. In some ways, it was all quite ordinary. This midsummer meeting echoed generations of earlier gatherings in the same room. For decades, wealthy white Virginia landowners had assembled in the Capitol, where they surrounded themselves with a Virginia coat of arms and other symbols of royal authority, to serve colony and King. ¹

But this morning was different. Amid a crisis in the British empire, Virginia’s leaders had assembled as an independent political body that would not answer to the governor, Parliament, or the monarchy. Over the next week, they organized a trade embargo, which created a model for intercolonial resistance. They also chose a slate of influential leaders to send to the First Continental Congress, which was meeting the next month. Their decisions defined colonial resistance for years to come.

Yet the convention’s boldest step was, perhaps, simply to assemble without official permission. For as much as the delegates protested that they had an “inviolable and unshaken Fidelity and Attachment to our most gracious Sovereign,” their assembly was an early experiment in self-rule for Virginia.³ The delegates’ actions transformed a center of royal authority into a political laboratory. Perhaps the Capitol and its regal furnishing looked different to the delegates as they dispersed. Did some delegates gaze with cool defiance at the armor clad-figures that appeared on either side of the Virginia coat of arms in the House of Burgesses chamber? Did others shrink from the disapproving glare of the royal figure at its crest? In the summer of 1774, as conflict escalated, Virginians finally began to confront the face of revolution.

It was like a “shock of Electricity.”⁴ In May, news arrived in Williamsburg that Parliament was closing Boston harbor in response to the Boston Tea Party. Virginia’s elites erupted with anger. If Boston could be punished so severely, some colonists protested, then perhaps Virginia was next. After the colony’s House of Burgesses protested Parliament’s actions, Governor Dunmore dissolved them. Undaunted, the former Burgesses met in the Raleigh Tavern to plan a response. They called for a boycott of some British goods and for a “general congress” of the British colonies.⁵

After they adjourned, a series of letters from other colonies arrived in Williamsburg seeking to completely end trade with Britain. The twenty-five former Burgesses remaining in town called for the election of a new body to address these questions, which would meet on August first in Williamsburg.⁶ As Peyton Randolph explained, they chose “this distant Day” so that leaders would have time to collect “the Sense of their respective Counties.” For such an unprecedented political assembly to succeed, the people would need to support it.

When the voters of Fairfax County assembled in July 1774, George Washington and the other candidates treated them to “a Hogshead of Toddy.” In the evening, the voters attended a ball, which featured “Coffee and Chocolate, but no Tea.”⁷

An election in colonial Virginia was an intimate occasion. The voters who assembled to elect representatives to the Williamsburg convention in June and July made up only a small portion of the population.⁸ Only white land-owning men could vote in Virginia. This ruled out enslaved people, women, Native people, and the landless half of the white male population.⁹ Even so, many eligible voters failed to show up. In some counties, only a few dozen “freeholders” assembled on behalf of thousands of inhabitants.¹⁰

The 1774 county meetings selected the usual group of wealthy landowners to represent them. The slate of delegates included notable planters such as Peyton Randolph (who became president of the convention), George Washington, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, Edmund Pendleton, and Richard Henry Lee.¹¹

Most county meetings also passed resolutions about the conflict with Britain or instructions for the delegates to the convention.¹² Often drafted by local revolutionary leaders, these resolutions called for Virginians to flex their economic muscles. In Fairfax County, near what is now Washington, D.C., George Mason and George Washington authored the most detailed and radical of these resolutions. The Williamsburg convention adopted many provisions of the Fairfax Resolves, as they have become known.

When it met on August 1, the Williamsburg convention was in a precarious position. It was expected to respond to Parliament, but it lacked legal authority to legislate for the colony. Rather than risking treason, the delegates created a voluntary compact, or “Association.” Signers agreed to several conditions. They would stop importing all goods from Britain, except for medicine. They would not import enslaved people. They would neither consume nor import tea. If their demands were not met within a year, they would cease exports to Britain, including tobacco. In anticipation of this move, they would “refrain from the Cultivation of Tobacco” altogether. Instead, they would focus on improving Virginia’s industry and self-sufficiency.¹³

These were drastic steps. Tobacco and slavery were the basis of elite Virginia’s wealth. But this economic system wasn’t working anymore. Tobacco prices were falling. The soil was exhausted. Many elite planters had fallen deeply in debt. Moreover, many white Virginians worried about the colony’s growing population of enslaved Africans. Fearing a revolt, Virginia leaders had tried to restrict the slave trade for years. The Association envisioned a new economy for Virginia. The colony would import less and produce more. Its farmers would grow less tobacco and more grain. Since grain was less labor-intensive to produce than tobacco, there would be less need for enslaved labor. Virginians would export the grain to the Caribbean, which the Association’s plan protected. ¹⁴

Since many colonists had ignored earlier boycotts, the Association aimed to force everyone to make a choice. Signatories pledged not to do business with price-gouging merchants or anyone refusing to join the association. Local committees would name and shame noncompliant merchants in the pages of the Virginia Gazette.¹⁵ The plan would succeed or fail depending on the vigilance of the public. Roused by public anger, Virginians enforced this plan more tightly than in the past. By the end of the year, even Thomas Jefferson would have to explain to a local committee why he had placed a recent order with a British merchant for fourteen “sash windows.”

There were no surprises in the list of delegates that the convention sent to the First Continental Congress, which was meeting next month in Philadelphia. They chose a slate of prominent landowners: Peyton Randolph, Richard Henry Lee, George Washington, Patrick Henry, Richard Bland, Benjamin Harrison, and Edmund Pendleton.¹⁶

The Virginia convention also developed instructions to guide their delegates’ negotiations with other colonies. Before the Williamsburg convention began, Jefferson took it upon himself to draft instructions for this delegation to the Continental Congress. On his way to Williamsburg, though, he was struck with dysentery and went home. He sent ahead his notes. Though too radical for some delegates, others submitted his planned instructions to the local printer, Clementina Rind, who published them as A Summary View of the Rights of British America.

The instructions that Virginia’s convention sent with the delegates to Philadelphia largely repeated the Association’s articles. But they contained one important feature. The convention chose “to restrain” their representatives from signing onto any agreement that would block exports earlier than a year in the future. As they explained, they hoped to ensure that they would be able to pay their debts and did not want to punish farmers who had “applied so much of their Labour to the perfecting of the present Crop.”¹⁷ This proved to be a fateful decision. Partly because of these instructions, the First Continental Congress could not agree to immediately stop exporting goods to Britain. As a result, the Continental Association, adopted in late 1774, was not as effective as it otherwise might have been.¹⁸

The other colonies were watching. While Virginians were electing their delegates to the Williamsburg convention, Philadelphia revolutionary leader Charles Thomson wrote to Virginia’s leaders, “All America look up to Virginia to take the Lead . . . You are ancient, you are respected; you are animated in the Cause.”¹⁹ A few weeks after the convention closed, John Adams went to a Philadelphia coffeehouse. He picked up a copy of the Virginia Gazette that contained the terms of the Virginia Association. His diary recorded his excitement: “The Spirit of the People is prodigious. Their Resolutions are really grand.”

Running from August 1 through August 6, 1774, the convention in Williamsburg announced Virginia’s revolutionary leadership. The final article of the Virginia Association allowed the meeting’s moderator Peyton Randolph to call the delegates to reassemble “at such Time and Place as he may judge proper.”²⁰ By January, Randolph had decided to convene a second convention in March. The time had come, according to Patrick Henry, to decide: would it be liberty or death?