Fairfax Resolves
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The Fairfax Resolves was a statement drafted on July 17, 1774 by George Washington and George Mason at Washington's Mount Vernon home, in response to Great Britain's punitive measures taken against Massachusetts in the Coercive Acts. On the following day, July 18, the Resolves were endorsed by a Fairfax County convention, a public protest meeting staged at the local courthouse with Washington presiding. The resolutions were taken on to the House of Burgesses and the Continental Congress.
The short document provided the following:
- a concise summary of American constitutional concerns on such issues as taxation, representation, judicial power, military matters and the colonial economy
- a proposal for the creation of a nonimportation effort to be levied against British goods
- a call for a general congress of the colonies to convene for the purpose of preserving the Americans' rights as Englishmen
- a condemnation of the practice of importing slaves as an "unnatural trade"; its termination was urged
- a veiled threat was aired in the reminder that the colonists were "Descendants not of the Conquered, but of the Conquerors."
The Fairfax Resolves, like the many other similar resolutions passed in county meetings throughout the colonies, summarized the feelings of many colonists in mid-1774 — a conviction that their constitutional rights were being violated by British policies. The Resolves also marked a step forward in inter-colonial cooperation as more Americans began to realize that a threat against one colony was a threat against all. Finally, political rivalries in Virginia were muted to some degree, allowing such figures as Washington and Mason to work productively with the more radical Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee and others.
[edit] External links
- The Fairfax Resolves, as published in the American Archives, presented online by the Northern Illinois University Libraries.
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