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Massachusetts, being filled with Puritans who were rebelling against the Church of England and ultimately the monarchy, was always ripe for revolution. It supported Oliver Cromwell in the English Civil War while Anglican Virginia was still very Royalist at that time. But how did Virginia go from supporting the crown in the 1640s to supporting the Revolution in the 1770s?
Virginia supported the crown, but that doesn't mean supporting the parliament. There is an important distinction here. Post French/Indian war really turned Virginia colonist against the England. The war was very expensive, and taxes were levied by the English Parliament to colonists to pay for it all. Virginia was a very rich colony, full of aristocrats who opposed paying all these taxes. You lose the aristocrats, who were already full of talented and educated leaders with radical ideas (Jefferson, Washington, Richard Henry Lee, George Mason - all important founding fathers), you lose the colony of Virginia.
From its outset, Virginia always tried to govern itself. Who had the right to govern, to tax, was the primary issue, but there were more grievances. After Bacon's Rebellion in 1676, Virginia was going to reintroduce universal free (not indentured servants) white male suffrage; the Crown objected and after a few bitter years, the Crown won.
But taxes were levied by the colony up until 1752 when Governor Dinwiddie insisted on his right to charge a fee of one pistole (a Spanish coin worth about £1 2s. 6d. in Virginia) for signing land grants. The Burgess objected and appealed to the Privy Council in London. They lost.
Meanwhile, VA imposed a new tax, but it was objected to by the clergy. The clergy appeared to the Privy Council in London which overruled the legislation. In short, London was starting to impose tax policy on the colony, but it only got worse.
By the early 1760's, the Virginia economy was in disarray. The colony's debt was high (see below, they really didn't know how bad it was), there was a cash shortage, the exchange rate between tobacco, cash and the pound sterling made it impossible for many to pay taxes. When London started to impose more taxes on a failing economy it was too much.
But there was more to come. Many of the most wealthy had their life style underwritten by the Treasurer and Speaker of the House of Burgess, John Robinson (1705-1766). When he died, it was like a house of cards and even the most wealthy now needed relief. His death revealed how broke the colony was - £100,761. (The debt was paid off by the estate in 1781 - but at depreciated wartime paper currency. The estate was not fully settled until 1805.)
Add to that other grievances such as the Proclamation Line of 1763 and the authority of the Board of Trade in London to manage the mercantilistic economy of VA and it was the perfect storm.
Add to that other grievances such as the Proclamation Line of 1763 and the authority of the Board of Trade in London to manage the mercantilistic economy of VA and it was the perfect storm.
Thanks for the responses. Seems like it was largely economic, without the religious component in Massachusetts.
There was a religious component also, albeit perhaps not like further north. The Church of England had a monopoly on all aspects of life. Taxes were paid by everyone to the colony and also directly to the local VA parishes of the Church of England. For decades people complained and legislation was introduced to force the clergy to do their jobs instead of just taking the money and not ministering.
Vestries were responsible for road maintenance and the ferries; the vestries also appointed "tobacco viewers" who ensured too much tobacco wasn't being grown. Then they also had the more familiar roles of caring for orphans - and for illegitimate orphans, they could indenture them out. They were also responsible for going to mark property boundaries within the parish every four years. Being on a vestry was reserved for the wealthy. All of the Founders served as vestrymen at one time or another; some like Washington for over 20 years, others like Jefferson for fewer years, George Mason was a vestryman for 36 years. With rank and privilege came responsibility and most did not shirk it.
Dissenters were discriminated against, harassed, expelled at times. The Baptists made it clear that they would not support the Revolution unless the harassment stopped. The few Jews in the colony got by; it was sure better than being under the Spanish. (The first Jewish synagogue in VA, Beth Ahabah in Richmond was founded in 1789 by Spanish and Portuguese Jews; it is still in existence.)
The role of the Anglican Church in VA became a hot issue in the 1780's. In the end, people like Patrick Henry who wanted its powers restored, lost. Church functions became government functions. The last glebe lands which were set aside for the support of the Anglican Church were appropriated by the Commonwealth in 1802.
In the end, so much resentment had built up.
As a side note, (Lt.) Governor Fauquier had a proposal for self rule. Alas, no copies remain. He was a popular Governor even in the build up to the Revolution. His An Essay on Ways and Means for Raising Money for the Support of the Present war, Without Increasing the Public Debts was ignored. Anyone looking at wikipedia should note that the wiki article is wrong - the portrait is of his son, not him.)
Keep in mind that the English Civil War was from 1640 to 1650, while the beginnings of the American Revolution started in the 1760's. A century of difference - New England wasn't Puritan by 1760, but was still dominated by the Congregationalist churches. John Adams, in his letters to his wife Abigail during 1775/1776, regarded Puritans as ancestors, not contemporaries, although he does refer to Roger Sherman, one of the Connecticut representatives to the Continental Congress as 'an old Puritan'.
As for the British North American colonies in general, from about the Glorious Revolution in Britain in 1688 to the end of the Seven Years War, there was no freer or more prosperous people in the world than the British citizenry in North America - at least the white male citizenry. The British Crown let their colonies there be in a sort of benign neglect. They were lightly taxed by the mother country, limited to the Navigation Acts which regulated trade between the colonies and the motherland and between the British Empire and foreign nations. The colonists had their own legislatures and set their own laws and taxes. The Crown appointed Royal Governors, who worked with the existing colonial legislative assemblies; the governors exercised their role almost ceremoniously, sometimes seeming to exist only to remind the colonist that they were part of the benevolent British Empire. There were few British troops in the North American colonies, military protection was self-provided by colonial militias.
This all changed with the end of the Seven Years War. Great Britain had accumulated the largest debt it had ever incurred, and the treasury was empty. The citizens of Britain proper were already taxed, definitely more than the British colonists around the Empire. As a result, the British Crown came to the conclusion that it was time to start taxing the colonists to pay down the debt and maintain the Empire - armies and navies are expensive.
The British Parliament began raising taxes on the colonials in North America. The French Canadians, newly acquired, had no issues with paying direct taxes to the Crown. Neither did the British colonies in the Caribbean, as they had always been more reliant on British military protection, being comprised of wealthy sugar plantations coveted by other European powers.
Aside from the above colonists, the British colonists in North America had long become accustomed to raising their own taxes for their own internal needs, and defending themselves from the Native Americans with their own citizen militias. Their belief was that direct taxes could only be raised by legislatures elected by and responsible to those being asked to pay these taxes, a right of Englishmen everywhere, and derived from the Magna Carta.
The British Parliament believed that they spoke for all of the people of the British Empire through a concept known as virtual representation, and thus had the power to enact taxes for all British subjects. Parliament didn't need to have members elected from North America any more than they needed to have members elected from Leeds, England. Parliament spoke for all British subjects, whether those subjects had a voice in the election of members of Parliament or not.
That's the seed of the American Revolution - a difference in opinion of where the power lay for the raising of direct taxes upon the populace, in either the local governments or the British Parliament.
It grew from there to economic boycotts across the Colonies in opposition to the Stamp Act (and leading to the repeal of the Stamp Act, destruction of property in response to the Tea Act, military occupation of Boston in response to the Boston Tea Party, resistance in local legislatures by colonials as they realized that if Boston could be subject to military rule then any colony was also vulnerable, suspension of colonial legislatures by royal governors, dispatching of British Army troops to back up the royal governors, powder raids conducted by British troops upon local colonial militia armories, and eventual armed conflict.
I don't have a pat answer and have never studied the issue. All I can say is, the Declaration of Independence was written by a Virginian and includes a very long list of practical, mundane, legal and social grievances.
The word "God" appears in the declaration only once, and there is no other reference to God, faith, church, worship, or religion in the rest of the entire document.
Reading the list of grievances, they are simply practical economic and social complaints. So I can't get to the "how" of it, but that is the what of it behind the how.
I probably should have just shut up if I wasn't going to answer your question.
A few misc. notes as heat sets in and their methods of keeping cool come to mind.
Some say Virginia got its name of the "Old Dominion" due to the number of colonists who remained loyal to the Crown instead of Cromwell. Some who fought for the Crown fled to Virginia and were known as Cavaliers (UVA's nickname). Many of the First Families of Virginia (FFV's) descend from these refugees. By the time of the Revolution however most were indifferent or were Whigs and leading revolutionaries. It can be argued that one reason they were more tolerant when it came to religion was they saw the danger of repeating a religious war.
As for the Declaration of Independence, much of the opening was lifted by Jefferson from the Virginia Declaration of Rights which was written by George Mason:
A few misc. notes as heat sets in and their methods of keeping cool come to mind.
Some say Virginia got its name of the "Old Dominion" due to the number of colonists who remained loyal to the Crown instead of Cromwell. Some who fought for the Crown fled to Virginia and were known as Cavaliers (UVA's nickname). Many of the First Families of Virginia (FFV's) descend from these refugees. By the time of the Revolution however most were indifferent or were Whigs and leading revolutionaries. It can be argued that one reason they were more tolerant when it came to religion was they saw the danger of repeating a religious war.
As for the Declaration of Independence, much of the opening was lifted by Jefferson from the Virginia Declaration of Rights which was written by George Mason:
One other factor was age. We see the Founders as old men - when they could afford to have their portraits painted. But many were in their 30's and 40's.
Of the Virginia signers of the Declaration of Independence:
Richard Henry Lee: 44
Francis Lightfoot Lee: 42
Carter Braxton: 40
Thomas Jefferson: 33
George Wythe & Benjamin Harrison were the old men at 50
Thomas Nelson, Jr.: 38
George Mason & James Madison were the authors of the Virginia Declaration of Rights and Constitution of 1776. Mason gets credit for the former, Madison for the latter - they were issued together. Mason was 51, Madison was 25. Madison was also 25 when he was appointed to the Council of State (Privy Council)* which under the 1776 state constitution held equal power with the governor.
Its true life expentency was 38 or so, but that includes infant deaths and high mortality among women during childbirth. For white men, it was higher.
* Of the Privy Council in 1778 - these are the men and their ages:
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