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Subject Area: Political Theory
Subject Area: War and Peace
Topic: The American Revolution and Constitution

VIRGINIA CONVENTION. 1 - George Washington, The Writings of George Washington, vol. II (1758-1775) [1889]

Edition used:

The Writings of George Washington, collected and edited by Worthington Chauncey Ford (New York and London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1889). Vol. II (1758-1775).

Part of: The Writings of George Washington, 14 vols.

About Liberty Fund:

Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


VIRGINIA CONVENTION.1

1774. Aug. 1. Went from Colo. Bassett’s to Williamsburg to the meeting of the Convention. Dined at Mrs. Campbell’s, spent ye evening in my lodgings.

2. At the convention; dined at the Treasurer’s. At my lodgings in the evening.

3. Dined at the Speaker’s, and spent the evening at my own lodgings.

4. Dined at the Attorney’s, and spent the evening at my own lodgings.

5. Dined at Mrs. Dawson’s, and spent the evening at my own lodgings.

6. Dined at Mrs. Campbell’s, and spent the evening at my own lodgings.

7. Left Williamsburg about 9 o’clock.

[1 ]In compliance with the recommendation of the deputies, embodied in a circular issued from Williamsburg on the 31st of May, delegates were chosen in the county meetings to assemble at Williamsburg on August 1st. Washington was present, as the extracts from his diary show, but he gives no record of what business was before the convention or what was decided upon by the delegates. It was to this assembly, which by an act of its own was transferred into a convention, a revolutionary body as it afterwards appeared, that Jefferson, unable to attend because of illness, sent the paper that was later printed as A Summary View of the Rights of British America. This definition of rights and grievances intended to serve as instructions for the delegates to a general Congress was set aside by the Convention as “too bold for the present state of things. . . . Tamer sentiments were preferred, and, I believe, wisely preferred; the leap I proposed being too long, as yet, for the mass of our citizens.” Jefferson, Works, i., 123, 124. The instructions as adopted will be found in Force, American Archives, Fourth Series, i., 689, and in Jefferson, Works, i., 142. The Convention on the 5th, elected as delegates to the general or Continental Congress, Peyton Randolph, Richard Henry Lee, George Washington, Patrick Henry, Richard Bland, Benjamin Harrison and Edmund Pendleton.

The Convention also passed and unanimously adopted a new Association, pledging themselves not to import from Great Britain or elsewhere after the 1st of November, any goods, wares or merchandises whatever, medicines excepted; not to import slaves; not to use or import tea; not to buy of the East India Company, if payment for the tea destroyed at Boston be insisted upon, to whose acts the misfortunes of Boston were attributed; not to export tobacco or any other article to Great Britain, and to improve the domestic breed of sheep, with a view to establishing manufactures in the Colonies. The full Association is printed in Force, American Archives, Fourth Series, 1., 686-688. The Convention adjourned on Saturday, August 6.

“He [Mr. Lynch] told us that Colonel Washington made the most eloquent speech at the Virginia Convention that ever was made. Says he, ‘I will raise one thousand men, enlist them at my own expense, and march myself at their head for the relief of Boston.’ ” John Adams, Works, 11., 360.

It was probably in allusion to this saying that the following was written:

“The province of Virginia is raising one company in every county, which will make a body of six thousand men. They are all independent: and so great is the ambition to get among them, that men who served as commanding officers last war and have large fortunes, have offered themselves as private men.” American Archives, Fourth Series, i., 953.