<?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Virginia's Declaration of Rights<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
J. Michael Sharman
 
 
Just before Christmas in 1773, a crowd of a thousand Boston men dressed as Indians ran down a Boston wharf armed with axes and pistols. Climbing aboard three merchant ships, they chopped open all the tea chests and tossed the tea overboard to protest the hated tea tax which was a symbol of the King’s misuse of power over them,
The men were careful to keep their symbolic act pure. As they ran down the wharf to the ships they yelled, “We have no king but King Jesus!” None of the British sailors aboard the ships were injured, no goods other than tea were removed or destroyed, and upon departing the ships the men carefully removed their shoes and shook them out so that they could not be accused of keeping even a single tea leaf for themselves.
In angry response, the British Parliament closed the port of Boston and took away the power of her legislature.
On May 24, 1774, in hope of “averting the heavy calamity which threatens destruction to our civil rights and the evils of civil war”, the Virginia House of  Burgesses passed a Resolution, written by Patrick Henry and others, calling for a day of fasting and prayer to be held on June 1, 1774.
 Governor Dunsmore considered that call for unified prayer to be as much of a threat to the British monarchy as the Boston Tea Party and on May 26th, 1774 he dissolved the Virginia House of Burgesses. But instead of going home, the burgesses met in a nearby tavern and began to organize the colony’s counties into a new organization called the Virginia Convention.
They also carried out their plans for a day of prayer. George Washington, who was then a member of the House of Burgesses, wrote in his diary on June 1, 1774, "Went to Church & fasted all day".
The Continental Congress met in early May, 1776 and advised the colonies to assume their own sovereign powers and to adopt new forms of government. Leading the rest of the colonies, the Virginia Convention met almost immediately on May 15th, 1776. George Mason arrived two days later and was instantly appointed to the committee to draft “a Declaration of Rights, and such a plan of Government as will be most likely to maintain peace and order in this Colony, and to secure substantial and equal liberty to the people.”
Mason wryly complained that his committee was “according to custom, overcharged with useless members.” He did not let that bother him, however, and simply did all the work himself, producing a draft of the Virginia Declaration of Rights seven days later. The Convention debated it briefly, added the tenth and fourteenth sections and then passed it unanimously on June 12th, 1776.
Former Virginia Supreme Court Justice Harry L. Carrico summed up how incredible this accomplishment really was: “Thus, in less than a month, one of the major documents in world history had been proposed, prepared, and adopted by a body composed of some of the most independent thinkers of the time.”
And less than a month after that, Thomas Jefferson used the concepts in Virginia’s Declaration of Rights as part of his Declaration of Independence. Later that summer, Delaware and Pennsylvania adopted, almost word for word, the Virginia Declaration of Rights for their own constitutions. All but a few of the other new states incorporated those rights into the their constitutions.
The United States Constitution was ratified at first without any individual freedoms, but George Mason’s fellow Virginian James Madison in 1789 managed to get most of Virginia’s Declaration of Rights incorporated into the Constitution as our Bill of Rights.
The Virginia Declaration of Rights is indeed one of the most important documents in world history. It distilled all the great individual freedoms from the Magna Carta onward and then poured out those liberties upon future generations.