By Nancy Spannaus
August 31, 2025—While Virginia’s leading role in the American Revolution is widely acknowledged, little attention has been paid to the depth of the mobilization of its citizens. That mobilization, reflected in the adoption of Resolves in approximately 75% of the colony’s counties over the summer of 1774, was the subject of a presentation by historian Jim Bish at a meeting of the Sgt. John Champe Chapter of the SAR in Leesburg, Virginia on August 9.
Bish presented the results of his exhaustive study of how Virginia’s leaders and freeholders responded to the British government’s punitive crackdown on the city of Boston, an action that called for shutting the city’s port in an attempt to coerce it into paying for the tea dumped into Boston harbor in December 1773. The House of Burgesses in Virginia reacted to the news by calling for a day of prayer and fasting on June 1, 1774, aimed at seeking
Divine interposition for averting the heavy Calamity, which threatens Destruction to our civil Rights, and the Evils of civil War; to give us one Heart and one Mind firmly to oppose, by all just and proper Means, every injury to American Rights, and that the Minds of his Majesty and his Parliament may be inspired from above with Wisdom, Moderation, and Justice, to remove from the loyal People of America all Cause of Danger from a continued Pursuit of Measures with their Ruin.[1]
That was too much for Royal Governor Dunmore. Unique among royal governors in North America, he dissolved the House of Burgesses on May 26.
The Burgesses, however, were not inclined to comply. Eighty-nine of the 122 legislators reconvened in Raleigh’s Tavern to write and declare an “association” committed to resisting taxation without representation and the purchase of East India tea, and supporting Boston, since an attack on one colony was seen as an attack on all. The document urged the Committee of Correspondence, which had been established in spring 1773,[2] to contact other colonies in the interest of convening a “general congress,” and concluded with the warning that, if redress were not forthcoming, more radical measures (such as “avoid all commercial intercourse with Britain”) were to come.
The Committee of Correspondence, comprised at that point of 25 Burgesses who had not left Williamsburg, complied on May 30. They had in hand by that time, three letters from other colonies: 1) an appeal for support and suspending trade with Britain from Boston (written May 13); 2) New York’s response to the Boston appeal, calling for a general Congress (written May 23); and 3) a letter from leading citizens of Annapolis, Maryland which called for supporting Boston, embargoing Britain, suspending debts, and convening a colony-wide meeting on these matters.
On May 31, the Committee issued a call for a meeting of former Burgesses on August 1, after they had had the “Opportunity of collecting the Sense of these respective Counties,” and appointed from each locale seven delegates to attend the special convention.
The Counties Respond
The response of the counties reflects just how widespread the revolutionary mood had spread throughout British America’s largest colony. At least 45 of Virginia’s 61 counties passed Resolves calling for support for Boston and a variety of steps expressing their rejection of the Crown and Parliament’s taxation and police policies. The record shows that none of the most western 10 frontier counties produced Resolves, which Bish considers understandable given that they faced long travel times and Indian trouble. If they are not counted, Bish pointed out, at least 88 percent of all the Virginia counties met and produced Resolves.
The first to act was Prince William County, which passed Resolves on June 6. They included such radical measures as the ending of exportation and importation with Great Britain and its cooperating islands, and a shutdown of the civil courts. Eventually 29 counties took up the call for ending exportation and importation, and 12 called for the closure of the courts until the Coercive Acts (against Boston) were repealed. All called for supporting Boston against the crackdown.
As the counties mobilized through the summer, they added more and more measures to be taken in order to force the Parliament and King to rescind the punitive treatment of Boston and restore what they viewed as their civil rights. Frederick County, the second to pass Resolves, added the boycott of East India tea. This demand was echoed by 18 other counties. Westmoreland Country included the need for the colonies to take action to be self-sufficient economically, an element picked up in the Resolves of 16 other counties.
The two counties with the most detailed sets of Resolves were Fairfax and Caroline. This was clearly due to the political leadership: George Washington and George Mason in Fairfax, and James Taylor and Edmund Pendleton in Caroline. Both were among the five counties which identified the need to end the slave trade. (Three others identified the trade as a problem.)
Calls to restrict slavery
On June 30, Prince George County became the first to identify the evil of the slave trade. The measure read: “Resolved, That the African trade is injurious to this Colony, obstructs the population of it by freemen, prevents manufacturers and other useful emigrants from Europe from settling amongst us, and occasions an annual increase of the Balance of trade against the Colony
On July 7, the Culpeper Resolves picked up the issue and called for ending the trade. They read: “Resolved, That the importing of slaves and convict servants, is injurious to this Colony, as it obstructs the population of it with freemen and useful manufacturers, and that we will not buy any such slave or convict servant hereafter to be imported. for the end to the import of slaves and convicts.”
This demand was then picked up in the Fairfax Resolves, which were passed on July 18: “RESOLVED that it is the Opinion of this Meeting, that during our present Difficulties and Distress, no Slaves ought to be imported into any of the British Colonies on this Continent, and We take this Opportunity of declaring our most earnest Wishes to see an entire Stop for ever put to such a wicked cruel and unnatural Trade.”
The language of the Virginia Association Resolves, adopted at the August 1 convention, took it a step further. Its second item read: “We will neither ourselves import, nor purchase, any Slave, or Slaves, imported by any Person, after the 1st Day of November next, either from Africa, the West Indies, or any other Place.”
It should be noted that, as far as I know, no other colony but Virginia passed resolves which specifically mentioned eliminating the slave trade, although it could appropriately be included in the calls for general bans on importation. Yet the ban made it into the articles of the Continental Association established by the first Continental Congress, and it held.[3] It read: “Not to import or purchase slaves imported after December1st, 1774, after which time we will wholly discontinue the slave trade”; nor to hire vessels, nor sell commodities or manufactures, to others concerned in it.”
Building toward National Unity
Virginia was not the only colony where citizens mobilized broadly to discuss the Crown’s actions and what joint action should be taken. As the largest colony with the most counties, it’s no surprise that it saw the largest number of Resolves. The next broadest scope of participation, Bish said, was in New Jersey.
There were also a considerable number of County meetings convened in North Carolina and Maryland. Fewer were held in New York, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania; Bish has identified only one in each of Georgia, Rhode Island, Connecticut, South Carolina, and New Hampshire.
Nor can one assume that historians today have found evidence of all the Resolves which were passed in that fateful summer of 1774. Of the 45 we know were passed in Virginia, for example, we only have the text of 32. Historical documents from the Revolutionary era are still being uncovered today.
But, as Bish stressed, the mobilization in Virginia was unique in its depth and scope. Governor Dunmore’s shutdown of the legislature represented a shock, and led to the most democratic actions known to have happened in the state, then or later. As attested in practically every one of the Resolves, the local elite began to shift some of their power and authority to “Freeholders and other inhabitants of the county,” who were invited to discuss and vote on the major issues determining their future.
Through the process of Resolves, the American colonists began to build a spirit of continental unity in support of Boston, and against the perceived threat to tyranny, which would transform them into a nation. They did it by widespread debate on the fundamental issues of the time. Could we do that today?
[1] For the full text, click here.
[2] For more on the Committees’ significance, see https://americansystemnow.com/the-revolutionary-committees-of-correspondence/.
[3] McBurney, Christian, “The First Efforts to Limit the African Slave Trade Arise in the American Revolution,” published in three parts in the Journal of the American Revolution, Sept. 14 & 15, 2020.
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Tags: American Revolution, Jim Bish, Nancy Spannaus, Resolves, Sons of the American Revolution, Virginia
