The year 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Cardinal News has embarked on a project to tell the little-known stories of Virginia’s role in the march to independence. As part of this, I’m 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 May 1776. You can sign up for our monthly newsletter here:
A new flag flies today over the Capitol in Williamsburg, the flag of a new nation being born.
May 15, 1776, is surely a day that will be engraved in history for centuries yet to come — assuming, of course, that this new nation is not strangled in its crib.
For those who have heard the rumors in taverns, allow me to confirm them — and clarify them, if necessary. Virginia has not declared independence. However, it has declared itself for independence — a subtle distinction that did not seem to make a difference to the townspeople of Williamsburg, who fired off a cannon to celebrate the news, hoisted down the Union Jack and instead ran up a new flag designed earlier this year to represent a union of American states.
Technically, it will be up to the Continental Congress, meeting in Philadelphia, to make that formal declaration of independence. However, our independence from Great Britain seems to already be a practical fact that merely awaits some legal confirmation.
In some ways, Virginia has been independent since the night last June when our royal governor, Lord Dunmore, slipped out of Williamsburg and boarded a British naval vessel. He has exerted no power over Virginia since then, except perhaps in whatever port he’s anchored at the time.
One by one, nine other royal governors have left their posts, leaving many Colonies to their own devices. King George III himself made that official last August when he declared the Colonies to be in rebellion; Parliament underscored it in December when it passed the Prohibitory Act that cut off all trade with the Colonies. The American Colonies may not need to declare themselves independent; the king and Parliament have effectively made us so.
All around us, the world is changing.
Our House of Burgesses may never meet again. The last time it attempted to assemble, on May 6, there weren’t enough legislators for a quorum. Instead, all authority seems to have passed to the Fifth Virginia Convention, which was elected in April and now meets in Williamsburg.
In doing so, Virginia has gotten out in front of a directive from the Continental Congress, issued May 10, that if Colonies don’t have a government inclined toward independence, then they should form one.
Five days later, on May 15, both the Fifth Virginia Convention and the Continental Congress — acting separately and nearly 300 miles apart — took actions to accelerate this hurtle toward independence.
In Philadelphia, that noted Massachusetts delegate, John Adams, introduced a resolution that declares American differences with Britain “absolutely irreconcilable” and therefore it was “necessary that the exercise of every kind of authority under the said crown should be totally suppressed.” Adams told the president of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress that this was “the most important Resolution that ever was taken in America.”
In Williamsburg, the Fifth Virginia Convention voted to instruct its delegates to the Continental Congress to pursue independence. This seems to guarantee that a resolution for independence will be introduced soon, and the vote in Philadelphia seems to suggest there’s a majority waiting to support it.
This is not so simple as just saying “we’re independent.” If we’re to be truly independent, we need some system of government. Since the collapse of royal authority, we’ve essentially improvised, which has worked for the short term but won’t work forever. During the recent elections, Richard Henry Lee wrote to Patrick Henry about the necessity of setting up a more formal government than we have now. Parliament, Lee wrote, has “to every legal intent and purpose dissolved our Government, uncommissioned every magistrate, and placed us in the high road to Anarchy. In Virginia we have certainly no Magistrate lawfully qualified to hang a murderer, or any other villain offending ever so atrociously against the state. We cannot be Rebels excluded from the King’s protection and Magistrates acting under his authority at the same time. This proves the indispensable necessity of our taking up government immediately, for the preservation of Society.”
While the Fifth Virginia Convention’s resolution in favor of independence is what’s set tongues wagging, the other action the convention took is equally, if not more, important. The convention has directed a committee of delegates “to prepare a Declaration of Rights and such a plan of government as will be most likely to maintain peace and order in this colony, and secure substantial and equal liberty to the people.”
We cannot very well complain that the king and Parliament have violated our rights if we don’t lay out what we think those rights are — and it does no good to create a government of our own that doesn’t respect them, either.
Edmund Pendleton, the convention’s president, has named a 28-member committee headed by Archibald Cary to oversee these arrangements. This committee includes the most senior members of Virginia’s legislature over the years, but curiously includes at least one freshman lawmaker — newcomer James Madison of Orange County.
Of course, none of this matters if we don’t prevail militarily. The latest word we’ve heard is that our troops are now retreating through Quebec, a military adventure that appears now to have been quite unsuccessful in rallying the French colonists there to our side, while General George Washington is busy securing New York before the expected British assault.
None of our declarations will matter if Washington fails.
