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CHAPTER XIII.

The Commonwealth of Virginia, 1776-1860.

In the first seventy-five years of the eighteenth century, Virginia's population trebled. It went from the head of Tidewater, through the Piedmont, across the Blue Ridge into the Great Valley and finally across the Allegheny mountains, even to the borders of the Ohio River.

England had in her first American daughter, a great commonwealth which would have been to her a source of incalculable benefit had she known how to handle her own children in the new world. Unfortunately, she was unwilling to give to them in America the same rights and privileges that they would have enjoyed had they resided in England. She proposed, after the French and Indian War, in which Virginia had taken so active a part under Washington at Fort Duquesne, and in which Virginia thus showed her entire loyalty to England, to tax the American colonies for the support of English troops on American soil. In 1765, the English Parliament passed the Stamp Act, from which sprang the serious trouble in American colonies. It raised the ire of the liberty-loving Virginians who were led by Patrick Henry in the House of Burgesses in 1765, to adopt the famous Stamp Act resolutions which declared that the right to tax the colony of Virginia lay in the General Assembly of the colony, and in no other power. When the Stamp Act was repealed, and the tea tax imposed, Virginia again adopted a series of famous resolves. The Assembly was dissolved for this action that was regarded as treasonable. The members of the House of Burgesses, among them George Washington, immediately assembled in the famous Raleigh Tavern, at Williamsburg,

and entered into a non-importation agreement, by which they bound themselves not to buy any tea from England as long as the tax was imposed. One measure after another followed. The Virginians smypathized with the people of Boston when their harbor was closed. They became distrustful of their governor, Lord Dunmore. They, therefore, accepted the invitation of Massachusetts to the first Continental Congress in 1774. The colony had already appointed a committee of correspondence to correspond with all of the colonies on the conditions prevailing in them. Her son, Peyton Randolph, was president of the first Continental Congress; her Jefferson presented to that Congress a famous paper known as the summary view of the rights of British America; and her Henry in that Congress declared "British oppression has effaced the boundaries of the several colonies, the distinctions between Virginians, Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers and New Englanders are no more. I am not a Virginian but an American." In the meanwhile matters were reaching a crisis in Virginia. Lord Dunmore marched with a force to the West to meet the Indians, but instead of joining General Andrew Lewis, left that pioneer to fight alone with Cornstalk and his warriors at Point Pleasant. It was generally thought that Dunmore did this with the hope that the Virginia army might be destroyed. Then it was that the Virginians called a convention, and in March, 1775, in Old St. John's Church in Richmond, Patrick Henry made his famous speech, asking that troops be raised to defend Virginia against British oppression. Hardly had a force been raised before word came from New England of the battle of Lexington and Concord. In the meantime, Lord Dunmore seized the gun-powder that was stored in the powder magazine at Williamsburg; whereupon Virginian troops marched against him; and forced him to pay for the gun powder. Thereupon the governor fled from Williamsburg, and open war was begun between the colony of Virginia and its royal governor. In the meantime,

the second Continental Congress (1775) had met in Philadelphia, and Washington had been elected as commander-inchief of the American army.

Dunmore seized Norfolk, and was driven out by Colonel William Woodford. He then retired to Gwynn's Island, off the coast of Matthews county, from which he was finally driven, in July, 1776. While war was raging, great events had taken place at Williamsburg. The famous convention of 1776 had met, of which Edmund Pendleton was president. Resolutions had been adopted, instructing the delegates in the Continental Congress to declare the colonies free and independent. Virginia then proceeded to adopt the famous Bill of Rights drawn by George Mason, which set forth that all men are equally free and independent. On the 29th of June, she adopted her first constitution, five days before Jefferson's famous Declaration of Independence was adopted by the Continental Congress. On the 30th of June, the Convention elected the first governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia, and for this position, in the trying times of the rebellion against the Mother Country, Henry was selected. For five years Virginia occupied a prominent place in the councils of the united colonies and on the battle-field, and it was on her soil that the final great struggle-the battle of Yorktowntook place.

The history of Virginia from 1776 to 1860 deals chiefly with matters relating to home development and the relation of the State to the Federal government. Following the adoption of her constitution, under the direction of Jefferson, the General Assembly of Virginia dis-established the church and declared for religious freedom. It abolished the primogeniture and entail system, by which lands were held in the family and handed down from the father to the oldest sor

From 1780 to 1850 a struggle was made for the extension of suffrage. Under the constitution of 1776 a relic of colonial government, no man could vote who did not possess as

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County Street, Yorktown, Va., the Principal Street of the Town.

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Custom House at Yorktown, Va., built 1706.

Now owned by Dr. D. M. Norton, a colored physician. The oldest Custom House in the U. S.

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