Dispatch from 1774: More than 30 Virginia counties pass resolutions to protest British response to Boston Tea Party

The year 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Cardinal News has embarked on a three-year project to tell the little-known stories of Virginia’s role in the march to independence. As part of this, I will be writing monthly columns about the politics of the era, written the same way I’d write them today. The events described here took place in 1774.

Tea spilled into the harbor in Boston has led to ink being spilled across Virginia. Let us pray that blood does not follow.

As we are all by now aware, in December a band of tax protesters in Massachusetts, the most truculent of the Colonies, disguised themselves as Mohawk warriors, boarded a tea ship in the harbor and tossed its contents into the water. The event, now popularly known as “The Destruction of the Tea” (modern editor’s note: Not until 1834 did the event start being called the Boston Tea Party) , was inspired by protests over who has the right to tax what. Namely, can a parliament in London that no American Colonists voted for impose taxes on us?

The ripples of that tea-dumping have now made their way to Virginia and they are growing, not ebbing.

This spring and summer has seen a head-spinning series of events that have reshaped the political landscape, not just in Virginia, but throughout other Colonies, as well.

In March, Parliament voted to close the port in Boston to commerce unless the Colonists paid for the tea they’d destroyed. If parliamentarians in London thought this drastic action would cow Boston into submission, they miscalculated. On the contrary, they succeeded only in uniting 13 often quarreling Colonies against Britain. (The 14th, Nova Scotia, remains an outpost of pro-British feeling due to the large naval presence in Halifax. The 15th, French-speaking Quebec that Britain acquired after defeating France in the last war, has always been a place apart. The 16th, Newfoundland, is so far away we never think about it.)

You’ll recall that last year the Virginia House of Burgesses cleverly set up a standing Committee of Correspondence to keep in touch with other Colonies, and encouraged others to do the same. (See my previous dispatch on that touchy subject). That, too, was in response to trouble up North — then tax-averse Rhode Island merchants who had burned a British customs ship. We’re starting to sense a trend here.

Not much has happened since then, but now there’s suddenly a lot to correspond about. The news about the port closure legislation reached our shores in May, right when the House of Burgesses was in session. What followed has been nothing short of dramatic. The House of Burgesses, in an act of solidarity with the Bostonians, promptly declared June 1 — the day the port law was set to go into effect — as a “ Day of Fasting, Humiliation and Prayer .” Furious, Governor Dunmore immediately dissolved the legislature. We’ve had royal governors dissolve the legislature before, but have we ever seen such a clear conflict between the king’s magistrate in Virginia and her people’s elected representatives? This will be a difficult breach to repair — even if nothing else happened. But several other things have happened.

Some 89 of the burgesses simply reconvened at the Raleigh Tavern in Williamsburg and resumed conducting business in open defiance of the governor. Those burgesses also instructed the Committee of Correspondence to write their counterparts in other Colonies to propose something extraordinary — the formation of a congress of all the Colonies.

This action was patently illegal. Once dissolved by the governors, the House of Burgesses ceased to exist, so there was no legal body to instruct that Committee of Correspondence. Indeed, since the committee is a creature of the now-disbanded legislature, that committee no longer has legal standing either. Those legalities hardly seemed to bother the burgesses, who have gone about conducting some business based on their moral authority alone. When Peyton Randolph — the Speaker of the House when it was still legally constituted — received copies of resolutions from Annapolis, Boston and Philadelphia in support of a congress — he reconvened 25 burgesses still within easy distance of Williamsburg. They unanimously agreed to support whatever this proposed Continental Congress might do, and then proceeded to implore every county to elect delegates to convene in Williamsburg on August 1 as a “convention” to elect representatives to this new gathering, which will be in Philadelphia in September.

It hasn’t just been the burgesses taking action, either. In multiple counties, we’ve seen public meetings to pass a series of resolutions, or “resolves.”

The first of those came in early June in Prince William County, where an assembly in Dumfries approved six “Prince William Resolves” that are revolutionary — I keep coming back to that word — in their demands.

Prince William declared that only the Colonists have a right to tax themselves, a direct rebuke to Parliament. The county called for an economic boycott of all British goods (something that we colonists have tried before, with occasional success). Prince William suspended all court proceedings, which makes it impossible for British merchants to collect debts from Prince William residents. Further, the county declared its support for Boston and called on other counties to adopt similar resolutions.

More than 30 counties followed suit.

The language varied from place to place (Prince William had six resolves, Essex had 15, Fairfax had 24) but the key points were all the same: No taxation without representation. No more British imports. And we’re all on the side of Boston. (The Fairfax Resolves added yet another point: A call for a ban on the importation of enslaved labor, a matter I discussed in my previous dispatch).

In Essex County, a collection was taken up to support the Bostonians — more than a thousand bushels of corn. (Modern editor’s note: The ship bearing this cargo was blown off course and wound up in the Caribbean. Fortunately, the captain found a buyer for the corn on the Leeward Islands, and sent the money to Boston, where it finally arrived in 1775.)

It should be noted that the assemblies passing these revolutionary resolves are drawn from the highest levels of Virginia society, our largest planters and most successful merchants. In Fairfax County, the resolves there were instigated by George Washington (who is well-known for his military service in the French and Indian War as well as his survey work) and written largely by George Mason (another prominent planter who is said to be one of the best-read Colonists).

These resolves all take pains to profess allegiance to the crown. We will at all times and on all occasions bear true and faithful allegiance to his Majesty, King George the Third,” the Essex Resolves say in their very first point. However, what follows is an important qualification: “As free men we have always been and ever shall be willing constitutionally to give and grant liberally our property for the support of his crown and dignity and the preservation of our parent state, but that we can never consent to part with it on any other terms.” Note the key word “constitutionally” — “shall be willing constitutionally” — which raises the prospect that maybe some demands on our property may not be constitutional. And then note the most important qualifier of all: “but that we can never consent to part with it on any other terms,” means not on unconstitutional terms. In short, these resolves are saying: “Yes, we support the king but —.” But what? Over a span of just four months, we have sent ourselves hurtling into uncharted territory, and are now raising questions that have dared not been raised before.

That “Virginia convention” — a rogue assembly in the eyes of royal authority — has now met in Williamsburg, on August 1, and formalized those local resolves on a Colony-wide basis. The convention is essentially an updated version of the House of Burgesses by another name; the delegates elected Randolph as their speaker, for example. They then voted to ban commerce with Britain and to bar the collection of any debts owed to the mother country. They declared their support for beleaguered Bostonians, set about raising supplies — and elected seven delegates to that upcoming congress in Philadelphia. Six of those seven had been members of the Committee of Correspondence that’s been making plans for the congress. Virginia will have a high-level delegation: Richard Bland of Prince George County, who first questioned the right of London to tax its Colonies in a pamphlet he distributed in 1766; Benjamin Harrison of Charles City County; Patrick Henry of Hanover County, whose orations need no description; Richard Henry Lee of Westmoreland County; Edmund Pendleton of Caroline County; Speaker Randolph of Williamsburg; George Washington on Fairfax County, who pushed for those Fairfax Resolves. We can only speculate what they might do next month.

All around us, we see what seem like sparks firing off. Have they lit some fuse? And if so, where does that lead? We live in unsettled times.

* * *

Jefferson urges abolition of slavery

As a side note, Thomas Jefferson of Albemarle County presented fellow delegates at that Virginia convention with a curious tract he had written: “A Summary View of the Rights of British America.” In this quite radical document, Jefferson makes the case that the Colonies legally have been independent from Parliament since their founding. That goes far beyond what others have been willing to say.

Young Jefferson is a quiet man who speaks eloquently with his pen. He also seems a complicated sort. Although the owner of about 130 enslaved workers at any given time, Jefferson’s tract includes this provocative passage: “The abolition of domestic slavery is the great object of desire in those colonies, where it was unhappily introduced in their infant state.” Jefferson’s views on that subject are certainly not unanimous.

Sources:

• “Virginia, the New Dominion” by Virginius Dabney
• Encyclopedia Virginia entry on Committees of Correspondence and entry on Virginia Convention
• Essex County Historical Society
• Virginia American Revolution 250 Commission
• Library of Congress

Other dispatches

Dispatch from 1773: Smuggling in Rhode Island prompts Virginia to do something revolutionary

Dispatch from 1772: Britain vetoes Virginia’s vote to abolish transatlantic slave trade.

Dispatch from 1769: Governor dissolves House of Burgesses; Virginia vows boycott of British goods

Dispatch from 1766: A sensational murder at Mosby’s Tavern highlights how much Virginia’s gentry is in debt to Britain.

Dispatch from 1766: In Tappahannock, the Stamp Act prompts threats of violence.

Dispatch from 1765: Augusta County mob murders Cherokees, defies royal authority.

Dispatch from 1763: Despite cries of ‘treason!,’ Hanover County jury delivers rebuke to the church — and the crown. (The court case that made Patrick Henry a celebrity.)

Dispatch from 1763: King’s proclamation has united often opposing factions in Virginia (Opposition to the king’s proclamation forbidding western settlement.)

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