Robert Treat Paine | |
---|---|
Education | Harvard College |
Occupation | Lawyer, politician |
Known for | Signer of the Declaration of Independence |
Spouse(s) | Sally Cobb (m. 1770–1814; his death) |
On the advice of a local lawyer, Henry in 1760 applied for a lawyer's license, appearing before the examiners—prominent attorneys in the colonial capital of Williamsburg. The examiners were impressed by Henry's mind even though his knowledge of legal procedures was scant.
Henry was reportedly married to Sarah Shelton in the parlor. In 1754, Henry married Sarah Shelton, reportedly in the parlor of her family house, Rural Plains. (It also became known as Shelton House.) As a wedding gift, her father gave the couple six slaves and the 300-acre (1.2 km 2) Pine Slash Farm near Mechanicsville.
Patrick Henry's father, Colonel John Henry, was the presiding judge. After the evidence was presented proving the facts at issue, Maury's counsel gave a speech in praise of the clergy, many of whom were in attendance.
Patrick HenrySpouse(s)Sarah Shelton ​ ​ ( m. 1754; died 1775)​ Dorothea Dandridge ​ ( m. 1777)​RelativesWilliam Henry (brother), Elizabeth Henry Campbell Russell (sister), Annie Henry Christian (sister)Alma materCollege of William & Mary (tutelage)ProfessionPolitician planter lawyer18 more rows
Dorothy QuincyJohn Hancock / Wife (m. 1775–1793)Dorothy Quincy Hancock Scott was an American hostess, daughter of Justice Edmund Quincy of Braintree and Boston, and the wife of Founding Father John Hancock. Wikipedia
Hancock was a behind-the-scenes force early in the American Revolution. Hancock raised money for the Revolution, he helped secure troops, and he played a role in getting naval forces organized. But a homesick Hancock left Congress in 1777 to return to Massachusetts.
As president of the Continental Congress, Hancock is credited as the first signer of the Declaration of Independence. His prominent, stylish signature became famous. (According to legend, Hancock boldly inscribed his name so the English king would not need glasses to read it.)
FairfieldOn this day in 1775, several members of prominent families from Connecticut and Massachusetts gathered at the Burr homestead in Fairfield, Connecticut to witness the marriage of one of America's most famous patriots, John Hancock, to his fiancée Dorothy Quincy.
10 fascinating facts about John HancockHancock was a wealthy guy. ... He was a bright student. ... Hancock should have been a Loyalist, but he wasn't. ... John Hancock, smuggler? ... Hancock also had a role in the Boston Tea Party incident. ... The British really didn't like Hancock.More items...•
Considered essential to the American Revolution, Betsy Ross is credited with sewing the first United States flag. A symbol of patriotism, Ross is often celebrated as the woman who helped George Washington finish the design.
smugglingHis business became a political flashpoint in 1768, when British customs officials seized one of his sloops, the Liberty. The customs agents accused Hancock of smuggling and, after a highly publicized trial, the charges were dropped without explanation, likely due to lack of evidence.
Again, this is a misunderstanding of the Quartering Act. Before the war, Gage would have to ask permission to live in Hancock's home as a guest and pay rent to him if given approval. A British general took over Hancock's home in mid-1775 after the war had started and Hancock had been gone for months.
Freemasonry. Several figures of note during the American Revolution, including George Washington and John Hancock, were Freemasons. John Hancock, by John Singleton Copley, Courtesy The Massachusetts Historical Society [553].
But why did John Hancock sign his name proportionally larger than the rest of the delegates? The popular legend states that he signed his name bigger than everyone else's so that the “fat old King could read it without his spectacles”.
John HancockBy that point, Hancock had really earned his large signature as the original broadsheet copies of The Declaration of Independence that were distributed throughout America contained only one name, John Hancock, as President.
Jefferson and his fellow representatives then met at the Raleigh Tavern and agreed to George Mason's proposal to not import or purchase a long list of British goods after September 1. The House of Burgesses reconvened when it was announced that all the Townshend Duties except the one on tea would be repealed.
He was born at Shadwell in Albemarle County, Virginia, on April 2, 1743 (o.s.), as the oldest son of surveyor and planter Peter Jefferson and Jane Randolph. Living on the western edge of the settled region of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson was educated at local schools run by Anglican ministers.
Jefferson remained out of public office for the next two years to spend the time with his family. This was when he wrote much of the only book he would publish, Notes on the State of Virginia.
Because the governor's office created by the Virginia constitution in 1776 was exceptionally weak in executive authority, Jefferson could do little to oppose Arnold's movements up the James River to Richmond. Arnold occupied the city in January 1781 and caused the government to flee west to Charlottesville.
In March 1760 Jefferson entered the College of William and Mary to continue his studies in Greek and Latin, gain a better understanding of mathematics, and obtain "a more universal Acquaintance, which may hereafter be serviceable" to him than if he stayed "at the Mountains.".
As the transatlantic political debate quieted down somewhat, Jefferson focused his attention on building his legal practice and his personal life, but the imperial controversy was never far away. In February 1770 much of Shadwell burned, taking most of his books and papers with it.
His legion of accomplishments includes his authorship of the Declaration of Independence, his service as America's first Secretary of State and its third President , and his establishment of the University of Virginia.
Women contributed to the American Revolution in many ways and were involved on both sides. Formal politics did not include women, but ordinary domestic behaviors became charged with political significance as Patriot women confronted a war which permeated all aspects of political, civil, and domestic life. They participated by boycotting British goods, spying on the British, following armies as they marched, washing, cooking, and mending for soldiers, delivering secret messages, and even fighting disguised as men in a few cases, such as Deborah Samson. Mercy Otis Warren held meetings in her house and cleverly attacked Loyalists with her creative plays and histories. Many women also acted as nurses and helpers, tending to the soldiers' wounds and buying and selling goods for them. Some of these camp followers even participated in combat, such as Madam John Turchin who led her husband's regiment into battle. Above all, women continued the agricultural work at home to feed their families and the armies. They maintained their families during their husbands' absences and sometimes after their deaths.
On August 23, 1775, George III declared Americans to be traitors to the Crown if they took up arms against royal authority. There were thousands of British and Hessian soldiers in American hands following their surrender at the Battles of Saratoga in October 1777. Lord Germain took a hard line, but the British generals on American soil never held treason trials and treated captured American soldiers as prisoners of war. The dilemma was that tens of thousands of Loyalists were under American control and American retaliation would have been easy. The British built much of their strategy around using these Loyalists. The British maltreated the prisoners whom they held, resulting in more deaths to American prisoners of war than from combat operations. At the end of the war, both sides released their surviving prisoners.
According to British historian Jeremy Black, the British had significant advantages, including a highly trained army, the world's largest navy, and an efficient system of public finance that could easily fund the war. However, they seriously misunderstood the depth of support for the American Patriot position and ignored the advice of General Gage, misinterpreting the situation as merely a large-scale riot. The British government believed that they could overawe the Americans by sending a large military and naval force, forcing them to be loyal again:
The Battle of Bunker Hill followed on June 17, 1775. It was a British victory —but at a great cost: about 1,000 British casualties from a garrison of about 6,000, as compared to 500 American casualties from a much larger force. The Second Continental Congress was divided on the best course of action, but eventually produced the Olive Branch Petition, in which they attempted to come to an accord with King George. The king, however, issued a Proclamation of Rebellion which declared that the states were "in rebellion" and the members of Congress were traitors.
In 1772, the Sons of Liberty burned the HMS Gaspee —a British customs schooner—in Narragansett Bay. In June 1772, American patriots, including John Brown, burned a British warship that had been vigorously enforcing unpopular trade regulations in what became known as the Gaspee Affair.
Free blacks in the North and South fought on both sides of the Revolution, but the majority fought for the Patriots. Gary Nash reports that there were about 9,000 black Patriots, counting the Continental Army and Navy, state militia units, privateers, wagoneers in the Army, servants to officers, and spies. Ray Raphael notes that thousands did join the Loyalist cause, but "a far larger number, free as well as slave, tried to further their interests by siding with the patriots." Crispus Attucks was one of the five people killed in the Boston Massacre in 1770 and is considered the first American casualty for the cause of independence.
As early as 1651, the English government had sought to regulate trade in the American colonies, and Parliament passed the Navigation Acts on October 9 to pursue a mercantilist policy intended to ensure that trade enriched Great Britain but prohibited trade with any other nations. The Acts prohibited British producers from growing tobacco and also encouraged shipbuilding, particularly in the New England colonies. Some argue that the economic impact was minimal on the colonists, but the political friction which the acts triggered was more serious, as the merchants most directly affected were also the most politically active.
On April 19, local militiamen clashed with British soldiers in the Battles of Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts, marking the “shot heard round the world” that signified the start of the Revolutionary War.
During the long, hard winter at Valley Forge, Washington’s troops benefited from the training and discipline of the Prussian military officer Baron Friedrich von Steuben (sent by the French) and the leadership of the French aristocrat Marquis de Lafayette. On June 28, 1778, as British forces under Sir Henry Clinton (who had replaced Howe as supreme commander) attempted to withdraw from Philadelphia to New York, Washington’s army attacked them near Monmouth, New Jersey. The battle effectively ended in a draw, as the Americans held their ground, but Clinton was able to get his army and supplies safely to New York. On July 8, a French fleet commanded by the Comte d’Estaing arrived off the Atlantic coast, ready to do battle with the British. A joint attack on the British at Newport, Rhode Island, in late July failed, and for the most part the war settled into a stalemate phase in the North.
That same month, determined to crush the rebellion, the British government sent a large fleet, along with more than 34,000 troops to New York. In August, Howe’s Redcoats routed the Continental Army on Long Island; Washington was forced to evacuate his troops from New York City by September.
The engagement, known as the Battle of Bunker Hill, ended in British victory, but lent encouragement to the revolutionary cause. Recommended for you. 1917.
The Continental Congress voted to meet again in May 1775 to consider further action, but by that time violence had already broken out. On the night of April 18, 1775, hundreds of British troops marched from Boston to nearby Concord, Massachusetts in order to seize an arms cache.
Attempts by the British government to raise revenue by taxing the colonies (notably the Stamp Act of 1765, the Townshend Acts of 1767 and the Tea Act of 1773) met with heated protest among many colonists, who resented their lack of representation in Parliament and demanded the same rights as other British subjects.
At the same time, Britain signed separate peace treaties with France and Spain (which had entered the conflict in 1779), bringing the American Revolution to a close after eight long years. Access hundreds of hours of historical video, commercial free, with HISTORY Vault. Start your free trial today. pinterest-pin-it.
Henry urged independence, and when the Fifth Virginia Convention endorsed this in 1776, served on the committee charged with drafting the Virginia Declaration of Rights and the original Virginia Constitution. Henry was promptly elected governor under the new charter, and served a total of five one-year terms.
Fauquier dissolved the Burgesses on June 1, 1765, hoping new elections would purge the radicals, but this proved not to be the case, as conservative leaders were instead voted out. The governor did not call the Burgesses into session until November 1766, by which time the Stamp Act had been repealed by Parliament, preventing Virginia from sending delegates to the Stamp Act Congress in New York. Henry's role in the active resistance that took place in Virginia against the Stamp Act is uncertain. Although the lack of a legislative session sidelined Henry during the crisis, it also undermined the established leaders of the chamber, who remained scattered through the colony with little opportunity to confer, as the public rage for change grew hotter.
The Burgesses were sitting when in 1774, word came that Parliament had voted to close the port of Boston in retaliation for the Boston Tea Party , and several burgesses, including Henry, convened at the Raleigh Tavern to formulate a response.
On April 21, 1775, Governor Dunmore had the Royal Marines under his command seize gunpowder from the magazine in Williamsburg and take it to a naval ship. The gunpowder belonged to the government, to be issued in case of need, such as a slave uprising.
Because Henry was educated at home, by his father, he has become a symbol of the homeschooling movement. In 2000, Patrick Henry College was founded in Purcellville, Virginia, in large part for those who had been homeschooled.
Henry did not sit in the Fourth Virginia Convention which met in December 1775, as he was ineligible because of his military commission. Once he was again a civilian, the freeholders of Hanover County in April 1776 elected him to the fifth convention, to meet the following month. Most delegates were for independence, but were divided on how to declare it, and over timing. Henry introduced a resolution declaring Virginia independent and urging the Congress to declare all the colonies free. When he at last spoke, according to clergyman Edmund Randolph, Henry "appeared in an element for which he was born. To cut the knot, which calm prudence was puzzled to untie, was worthy of the magnificence of his genius. He entered into no subtlety of reasoning but was roused by the now apparent spirit of the people as a pillar of fire, which notwithstanding the darkness of the prospect would conduct to the promised land." The eventual resolution was based in large part on Henry's, and passed unanimously on May 15, 1776. As well as declaring Virginia independent, the resolution instructed the state's delegates in Congress to press for American independence, which they would, with Lee introducing the motion, and Jefferson penning the Declaration.
Henry deemed any king who annulled good laws, such as the Two Penny Act, as a "tyrant" who "forfeits all right to his subjects' obedience", and the clergy, by challenging an impartial law designed to bring economic relief, had shown themselves to be "enemies of the community".
The American Revolution was an ideological and political revolution that occurred in British America between 1765 and 1791. The Americans in the Thirteen Colonies formed independent states that defeated the British in the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), gaining independence from the British Crown, establishing the constitution that created the United States of America, t…
Following the Battle of Bunker Hill in June 1775, the Patriots had control of Massachusetts outside the Boston city limits, and the Loyalists suddenly found themselves on the defensive with no protection from the British army. In all 13 colonies, Patriots had overthrown their existing governments, closing courts and driving away British officials. They held elected conventions and "legislatures" that existed outside any legal framework; new constitutions were drawn up in eac…