Resistance to British tyranny continuing unabated, a yearning for union sprang up among all the colonies. "Whether that great idea," says Mr. Bancroft, "should become a reality, rested on Virginia."[[343]] Her House of Burgesses assembled in March, 1773, when, under the leadership of Dabney Carr, Richard Henry Lee, and Patrick Henry, resolutions were adopted providing for a system of inter-colonial committees of correspondence. "Carr's plan," says Mr. Bancroft, "included a thorough union council throughout the land. If it should succeed and be adopted by the other colonies, America would stand before the world as a confederacy." Copies of these resolutions were sent to every colony, with the request that each would appoint a committee to communicate from time to time with that of Virginia. "In this manner," says Mr. Bancroft, "Virginia laid the foundation of our Union."[[344]]
In May, 1774, the Virginia House of Burgesses by a resolution called upon their fellow-citizens to set apart the day on which the act closing the port of Boston was to take effect:
"As a day of fasting and prayer, devoutly to implore the divine interposition for averting the dreadful calamity which threatened destruction to their civil rights and the evils of a civil war, and to give to the American people one heart and one mind firmly to oppose, by all just and proper means, every injury to American rights."
Upon the adoption of this resolution, the Royal Governor dissolved the Assembly, but the members immediately met and resolved "that an attack made on one of our sister colonies to compel submission to arbitrary taxes is an attack made on all British America, and threatens ruin to the rights of all unless the united wisdom of the whole be applied."[[345]] These sentiments of fraternity and union were re-echoed in the words of Washington: "I will raise one thousand men, subsist them at my own expense, and march at their head for the relief of Boston," a declaration soon followed by the march of Virginians under Daniel Morgan to the succor of that besieged city.
THE CONTINENTAL CONGRESS
Largely as a result of the committees of correspondence created under the Virginia resolutions, the Continental Congress assembled in Philadelphia in September, 1774. Virginia gave to that body its first president, in the person of Peyton Randolph, while Patrick Henry fired the hearts of its members with the spirit of nationalism by the declaration: "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."
Thus was launched the Revolution—a movement in which, Mr. Bancroft declares: "Virginia rose with as much unanimity as Connecticut or Massachusetts, and with more commanding resolution."[[346]]
It was Virginia that first, by formal resolution of her Constitutional Convention, called on the Continental Congress to declare the colonies "free and independent states," absolved from all allegiance to the British crown. Richard Henry Lee submitted the motion to the Congress, and following its adoption, Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence. In the war which followed, Washington commanded the armies of the Revolution and by his incomparable qualities of leadership brought success to the cause.
VIRGINIA AND THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY
While bearing her part in maintaining the cause of the colonies in their struggle with the Mother Country, Virginia commissioned and equipped the expedition which under the leadership of her son, George Rogers Clark, conquered the empire of the northwest, an achievement the very romance of daring and valor. Even more important to the cause of union than the conquest was Virginia's action in dedicating the territory to the new confederation, thus cementing the ties and interests of the separate colonies in a vast domain, the common property of the whole.