In this show, Will argues that Virginia, rather than Massachusetts, was the cradle of the American Revolution. To do so, he begins with the French and Indian War, describing the cost of it to both Virginia and Britain, and how it led to the Stamp Act, one of the key causes of the American Revolution. He then explains why the Stamp Act’s silver currency requirement was particularly harmful to the agrarian, tobacco-dependent Virginia economy.
Continuing, he argues that when Richard Henry Lee led Virginia into its 1766 passing of the Westmoreland Resolves—also called the Leedsburg Resolutions—that was the moment the Revolution began, and that the standard of organized political reaction to British tyranny set by it was the path to revolution that other states followed. Further, he explains why the Westmoreland Resolves were such a critical step forward that served as the beginning of the Revolution, what made the men behind them special, and how they show the unique culture of leadership and duty that existed in the Virginia of the Golden Age. He concludes by noting Richard Henry Lee’s later involvement in the Declaration of Independence, and how Virginia led America in pushing for it.
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Act I: The Spark in the Ohio Valley
The young officer, a surveyor turned planter of old lineage, is leading a detachment of forty raw Virginia militiamen from the Virginia Regiment alongside a fierce band of Mingo warriors under the command of the Half-King, Tanaghrisson. They are tracking a party of thirty-five French soldiers who have advanced deep into territory claimed by the British Crown and the Ohio Company of Virginia, in which Lieutenant Governor Dinwiddie, and much of the Virginia gentry, have a financial interest. The forest floor is slick, the air is cold, and the tension among the young Virginians is palpable as they surround the rocky hollow where the Frenchmen who could constrain their path to continental domination–if not properly and roughly handled now–sleeps.
Suddenly, a sudden, chaotic volley of musket fire shatters the fragile silence of the ravine. The damp woods explode into blinding flashes of black powder smoke and screaming men as the Virginians fire down into the exposed hollow and rake lead across the unsuspecting Frenchmen. The skirmish lasts a mere fifteen minutes, leaving thirteen French soldiers dead and several wounded on the blood-stained earth. Among the captured is the French commander, Joseph Coulon de Jumonville, an envoy who desperately attempts to explain through a translator that his mission is entirely diplomatic. But before Washington can secure order, Tanaghrisson steps forward, raises his heavy stone tomahawk, and crushes Jumonville’s skull, washing his hands in the brains of the dying Frenchman. This brutal act of backwoods violence first echoes through the Ohio valley…then becomes the match that sets the entire globe on fire, and begins a world war unlike any seen before.
The French response is swift and overwhelming, forcing Washington to retreat to a poorly situated, swampy meadow where his men construct a crude palisade named Fort Necessity. By July 3, 1754, a force of six hundred French troops and their native allies surround the outpost, pinning the Virginians down in a relentless downpour that floods their trenches and ruins their gunpowder. Surrounded, outgunned, and suffering from heavy casualties, the young major is forced to sign a humiliating capitulation document written in rain-smeared French—a document that inadvertently translates his actions at Jumonville Glen as an outright “assassination” of a French envoy. Washington, misled as to what the French-language document says, signs it and inadvertently admits to foul play. Or at least that’s what he later claims. Right now, he needs to get out of this catastrophe, and signing is the way to do so.
When this signed document reaches the courts of Paris and London, the diplomatic machinery of Europe clinks into its war gearing. This backwoods blunder pushes the British Empire and the Kingdom of France into the Seven Years’ War, a multi-continental struggle for global dominance that ruptures the old imperial order, and soon kindles the flames of the Revolution. But more on that in a bit.
You can read the rest here: https://www.theamericantribune.news/p/the-cradle-of-the-revolution-how