Virginia and the First Continental Congress
On August 30, Washington, Henry, and Pendleton set out from Mount Vernon for Philadelphia. There they met their fellow Virginians and delegates from every colony except Georgia whose governor had prevented the legislature from sending delegates. The Massachusetts men, conscious that many colonists considered them radical, impulsive, and even crude, determined to operate behind the scenes, deferring to the Virginians whom Adams called "the most spirited and consistent of any delegation". They were successful, for Caesar Rodney of Delaware was soon complaining that "the Bostonians who have been condemned by many for their violence are moderate men when compared to Virginia, South Carolina, and Rhode Island". The union of New England and the southern colonies quickly produced the election of Peyton Randolph as speaker of the convention and alarmed the more conservative members like Joseph Galloway of Pennsylvania.
Try as they might the members of this first congress made slow headway. They knew little of each other and often spent time defending their own reputations rather than finding common grounds for action. While bound together by parliament's invasion of their rights, they could not move forward in unison with a specific plan to protect those rights. So limited were their visions by their own provincial experiences that they had to be asked directly by Patrick Henry, "Where are your Landmarks; your Boundaries of Colonies. The Distinctions between Virginians, Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers, and New Englanders, are no more. I am not a Virginian, but an American!" George Washington in his more plain way did the same thing by talking about "us" instead of "you".
Then unfounded rumors circulated that Boston had been bombarded by General Thomas Gage. Complacency ended. Congress acted with dispatch to approve the Suffolk Resolves from Massachusetts. In direct, defiant terms these Resolves restated the rights of the Americans in tones familiar to Virginians:
"If a boundless Extend of Continent, swarming with Millions, will tamely submit to live, move and have their Being at the Arbitrary Will of a licentious Minister, they basely yield to voluntary Slavery, and future Generations shall load their Memories with incessant Execrations—On the other Hand, if we arrest the Hand which would ransack our Pockets.... Posterity will acknowledge the Virtue which preserved them free and happy...."
Slavery, freedom, happiness, virtue, liberty were the clarion calls to which the colonials acted and reacted.
When the First Congress had completed its tedious work on October 26, it had adopted much of the Virginia Convention proposals: non-importation of British and West Indian products would begin on December 1; non-exportation, if necessary, would begin on September 1, 1776; and a Continental Association patterned after the Virginia Association was urged for every town and county in the colonies to assure enforcement of the embargoes. Congress prepared an address to the British people and a mild memorial to the American people setting forth the history of "Parliamentary subjugation". The delegates turned aside as premature Richard Henry Lee's call for an independent militia in each colony.
The very conservative nature of the whole revolutionary movement can be seen in congress' plea to the British people—"Place us in the same situation we were at the close of the last war, and our former harmony will be restored." They wanted a restoration of rights they thought they long had held and now had lost. To do so, however, involved a concession of parliamentary authority which few in England were willing to do.
Great Britain Stiffens