Conditions were peaceful enough for Dunmore to call the General Assembly into session on June 1 to consider Lord North's plan of reconciliation. The House of Burgesses ignored the plan and concentrated on routine business. On June 5 the house appointed a committee to examine the powder magazine, because, they said with tongue-in-cheek, they had heard it had been burglarized. Dunmore vacillated, first agreeing, then disagreeing to allow the burgesses in. Finally he gave them the key. Then in consternation, for he feared seizure by the colonials, he took refuge on the Fowey. Despite pleas from the assembly, Dunmore, who was still a reasonably popular man, refused to return.
On June 24, 1775, the assembly adjourned. For all intents and purposes, although the assembly met briefly in 1776, the history of the Virginia General Assembly ended with this meeting. Thenceforward, government in Virginia came from the Virginian Conventions. The membership of these conventions was comprised mostly of the members of the old House of Burgesses.
At the same time the Virginia Assembly came to an end the Continental Congress was moving to aid Boston and to defend the New Englanders from further armed attack. On June 15, congress unanimously elected George Washington to take command of the new Continental Army created "for the Defense of American Liberty, and for repelling every hostile invasion thereof." The army of 15,000 formed to defend Boston and New York would be supported by the congress with payments from all the colonies. Eight rifle companies, including two led by Captain Daniel Morgan of Frederick County and Captain Hugh Stephenson of Berkeley County were ordered to Boston.
To rally popular support, congress proclaimed "A Declaration of the Causes and Necessity for Taking Up Arms." Written by Jefferson and John Dickinson of Pennsylvania, this declaration laid bare a long succession of "oppressions and tyrannies" by parliament and the king's "errant ministers" who had misled the king into presuming his colonists were disloyal. Although professing continued loyalty to George III, the delegates reiterated their intentions to defend themselves as "free men rather than to live as Slaves", for:
Our cause is just. Our union is perfect. Our internal Resources are great, and, if necessary, foreign Assistance is undoubtedly attainable.
Nevertheless, the Congress made clear that it did not desire disunion and independence, it merely wanted justice for the Americans. To that end they passed the "Olive Branch Petition", a plea to the king to find some way toward reconciliation.
It is unlikely Congress expected anything more to come from the "Olive Branch Petition" in England than had come from Lord North's plan of reconciliation in the colonies. Nothing did. The king refused it. He had already declared the colonists to be rebels. Parliament rejected it, applying instead its own brand of economic coercion by passing the Prohibitory Act in December 1775. Effective January 1, 1776, all American ports were closed to trade and all American ships on the high seas were subject to seizure and confiscation as enemy ships. By proclaiming the colonists to be enemies in rebellion, parliament and the king, in effect, declared war on the colonies.
To assure itself of manpower, Britain negotiated treaties with Hesse-Cassel and Brunswick for 13,000 Hessians to fight with the British armies in America. From the beginning it was obvious many Englishmen had no stomach for fighting their fellow Englishmen overseas. Conversely it was obvious the colonial Englishmen were prepared to fight in defense of their rights and liberties as Englishmen. After the passage of the Prohibitory Act and the hiring of the Hessian mercenaries no doubt remained that this was to be a full war in which the colonies would, in the king's words, "either submit or triumph." The king felt that he would violate his coronation oath if he failed to defend the supremacy of parliament. He felt that the act of settlement establishing the protestant succession in the House of Hanover to the exclusion of the Catholic Stuarts made parliament supreme and that he was bound by his coronation oath to uphold this supremacy and that he could not honorably agree to the colonists' position. A colonial declaration was inevitable.
Independence