Peyton Randolph was an American politician and planter who was a Founding Father of the United States. Born into Virginia's wealthiest and most powerful family, Randolph served as speaker of Virginia's House of Burgesses, president of the first two Virginia Conventions, and president of the First Continental Congress. He also served briefly as president of the Second Continental Congress.
Patrick Henry was an American politician, planter and orator who declared to the Second Virginia Convention (1775): "Give me liberty, or give me death!" A Founding Father, he served as the first and sixth post-colonial Governor of Virginia, from 1776 to 1779 and from 1784 to 1786.
The Stamp Act 1765, also known as the Duties in American Colonies Act 1765, was an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain which imposed a direct tax on the British colonies in America and required that many printed materials in the colonies be produced on stamped paper from London which included an embossed revenue stamp. Printed materials included legal documents, magazines, playing cards, newspapers, and many other types of paper used throughout the colonies, and it had to be paid in British currency, not in colonial paper money.
The House of Burgesses was the elected representative element of the Virginia General Assembly, the legislative body of the Colony of Virginia.
The American Colonies Act 1766, commonly known as the Declaratory Act, was an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain which accompanied the repeal of the Stamp Act 1765 and the amendment of the Sugar Act. Parliament repealed the Stamp Act because boycotts were hurting British trade and used the declaration to justify the repeal and avoid humiliation. The declaration stated that the Parliament's authority was the same in America as in Britain and asserted Parliament's authority to pass laws that were binding on the American colonies.
The Townshend Acts or Townshend Duties were a series of British acts of Parliament passed during 1767 and 1768 introducing a series of taxes and regulations to enable administration of the British colonies in America. They are named after the Chancellor of the Exchequer who proposed the programme. Historians vary slightly as to which acts they include under the heading "Townshend Acts", but five are often listed:
The Stamp Act Congress, also known as the Continental Congress of 1765, was a meeting held in New York City in the colonial Province of New York. It included representatives from most of the British colonies in North America, which sought a unified strategy against newly imposed taxes by the British Parliament, particularly the Stamp Act. It was the second such gathering of elected colonial representatives after the Albany Convention of 1754 at the outbreak of the French and Indian War. Massive debts from that war, which ended in 1763, prompted the British Parliament to implement measures to raise revenues from the colonies. The Stamp Act required the use of specialty stamped British paper for all legal documents, newspapers, almanacks, and calendars, and even playing cards and dice. When in force, it would have an impact on practically all business in the colonies, starting on November 1, 1765. Resistance to it came especially from lawyers and businessmen, but was broadly protested by ordinary colonial residents.
"No taxation without representation" is a political slogan that originated in the American Revolution and which expressed one of the primary grievances of the American colonists for Great Britain. In short, many colonists believed that as they were not represented in the distant British parliament, any taxes it imposed on the colonists were unconstitutional and were a denial of the colonists' rights as Englishmen since the Magna Carta.
A stamp act is any legislation that requires a tax to be paid on the transfer of certain documents. Those who pay the tax receive an official stamp on their documents, making them legal documents. A variety of products have been covered by stamp acts including playing cards, dice, patent medicines, cheques, mortgages, contracts, marriage licenses and newspapers. The items may have to be physically stamped at approved government offices following payment of the duty, although methods involving annual payment of a fixed sum or purchase of adhesive stamps are more practical and common.
The concept of virtual representation was that the members of the UK Parliament, including the Lords and the Crown-in-Parliament, reserved the right to speak for the interests of all British subjects, rather than for the interests of only the district that elected them or for the regions in which they held peerages and spiritual sway. Virtual representation was the British response to the First Continental Congress in the American colonies. The Second Continental Congress asked for representation in Parliament in the Suffolk Resolves, also known as the first Olive Branch Petition. Parliament claimed that their members had the well being of the colonists in mind. The patriots in the Colonies rejected this premise.
Francis Fauquier was a British colonial administrator who served as the lieutenant governor of Virginia from 1758 to 1768. Born in England to a Huguenot family, he emigrated to the British colony of Virginia to take up of the office of lieutenant governor. A teacher and close friend of Thomas Jefferson, Fauquier frequently hosted lavish parties for the American gentry as governor.
John Robinson, Jr. was an American politician and landowner in the colony of Virginia. Robinson served as Speaker of the House of Burgesses from 1738 until his death, the longest tenure in the history of that office.
The Petition to the King was a petition sent to King George III by the First Continental Congress in 1774, calling for the repeal of the Intolerable Acts. The King's rejection of the Petition, was one of the causes of the later United States Declaration of Independence and American Revolutionary War. The Continental Congress had hoped to resolve conflict without a war.
John Tyler Sr. was an American lawyer, planter, politician and judge who served in the Virginia House of Delegates and became 15th Governor of Virginia and later United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Virginia. He was the father of U.S. President John Tyler.
Then Province of Maryland had been a British / English colony since 1632, when Sir George Calvert, first Baron of Baltimore and Lord Baltimore (1579-1632), received a charter and grant from King Charles I of England and first created a haven for English Roman Catholics in the New World, with his son, Cecilius Calvert (1605-1675), the second Lord Baltimore equipping and sending over the first colonists to the Chesapeake Bay region in March 1634. The first signs of rebellion against the mother country occurred in 1765, when the tax collector Zachariah Hood was injured while landing at the second provincial capital of Annapolis docks, arguably the first violent resistance to British taxation in the colonies. After a decade of bitter argument and internal discord, Maryland declared itself a sovereign state in 1776. The province was one of the Thirteen Colonies of British America to declare independence from Great Britain and joined the others in signing a collective Declaration of Independence that summer in the Second Continental Congress in nearby Philadelphia. Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, and Charles Carroll of Carrollton signed on Maryland's behalf.
The Braintree Instructions was a document sent on September 24, 1765 by the town meeting of Braintree, Massachusetts to the town's representative at the Massachusetts General Court, or legislature, which instructed the representative to oppose the Stamp Act, a tax regime which had recently been adopted by the British Parliament in London. The document is significant because, following the Virginia Resolves, it was among the earliest in British America to officially reject the authority of Parliament over the colonies in North America. The instructions were written by John Adams, who would ten years later become a key figure in the American Revolution and ultimately be elected the second President of the United States in 1796.
The history of Virginia in the American Revolution begins with the role the Colony of Virginia played in early dissent against the British government and culminates with the defeat of General Cornwallis by the allied forces at the Siege of Yorktown in 1781, an event that signaled the effective military end to the conflict. Numerous Virginians played key roles in the Revolution, including George Washington, Patrick Henry, and Thomas Jefferson.
George Johnston was a lawyer in Fairfax County, Virginia, while it was a British colony. He was twice elected to the House of Burgesses, in the assemblies of 1758-61 and 1761–65. On May 30, 1765, Johnston seconded Patrick Henry's speech advocating for resolutions against the Stamp Act. Johnston was elected to a third term, but died before the assembly reconvened. The portrait shown to the right hangs to this day in the Fairfax County Courthouse. The Fairfax Co. manager of historical records believes that he is one of the "lost Founding Fathers" due to his early death. His death was reported in the Virginia Gazette on September 19, 1766.
The Petition to His Majesty, The Memorial to the House of Lords and The Remonstrance to the House of Commons, commonly referred to collectively as the 1768 Petition, Memorial and Remonstrance (PMR), are a series of imprints that record a protest by the Virginia House of Burgesses in April 1768 that was sent to the British government by then-acting Lieutenant Governor John Blair.
The 27 grievances is a section from the United States Declaration of Independence. The Second Continental Congress's Committee of Five drafted the document listing their grievances with the actions and decisions of King George III with regard to the Colonies in North America. The Second Continental Congress voted unanimously to adopt and issue the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776.
