DATE: Friday, July 18, 1997                 TAG: 9707160208

SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS     PAGE: 13   EDITION: FINAL 
COLUMN: Olde Towne Journal 

SOURCE: Alan Flanders 

                                            LENGTH:   89 lines

DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE WRITTEN WITH HAMPTON ROADS EVENTS IN MIND

``When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, . . . We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.''

Most American citizens are familiar with the above as the opening words of the Declaration of Independence. Written in the hot days of July, 1776 in Philadelphia, Thomas Jefferson authored one of the most outstanding political statements in history. In essence he marshaled the sentences that outlined the very framework of a democratic America and simultaneously and openly declared war against the most powerful nation on earth. Calling King George III, ``A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people,'' Jefferson went on to enumerate what he called ``a long train of abuses and usurpations.''

Over one half of the document contains a narrative list of how the British government tyrannized and bullied the Colonies. Much of that list came from Jefferson's pen in direct response to what was already taking place on the Norfolk and Portsmouth waterfronts. When Jefferson criticized the King, he could have just as easily substituted the name John Murray, Fourth Earl of Dunmore, last royal governor of Virginia.

One year before the Declaration was written, Lord Dunmore took flight from the capital at Williamsburg in July, 1775. Sailing down the York River, he headed for a safe anchorage where he thought he would receive aid and comfort from a large population of Tories living around the area. After arriving at Gosport shipyard, Dunmore set about establishing marshal law throughout the community, forcing private citizens to open their homes for the quartering of royal troops. Shortly thereafter with shipyard owner Andrew Sprowle's help, a virtual state of war was declared against the Colonials. Military forays on land and sea were sent from Gosport throughout Norfolk County, nearby Hampton, Princess Anne County and the Chesapeake Bay to cut support for local Colonial militias. During the British raids, farms were burned, livestock seized, private vessels interdicted and confiscated, while city and county governments were suspended. Using free blacks, who had been emancipated by his own proclamation and foreign mercenaries, Dunmore built a fort near Great Bridge to further police the population. At the Battle of Great Bridge, Dunmore's forces were badly defeated on 9 December 1775, forcing his withdrawal to Gosport. Continually harassed by militiamen on the opposite side of the Elizabeth, Dunmore ordered his ships to open fire on warehouses along the Norfolk waterfront. As a consequence of this action, and destructive fires set by locals, the town of Norfolk was decimated on January 1, 1776.

Tiring of reading about himself in the Virginia Gazette, Dunmore committed one of the greatest outrages of the period by seizing the press of Norfolk printer John Hunter Holt. Fortunately for Holt he was not captured, but the British raiding party made off with his press on September 30, 1775.

These events were not lost on Jefferson. Both in Philadelphia and back in Virginia, he was able to keep up with Dunmore's actions by information conveyed to him by Committees of Correspondence - Colonials appointed to work as a communication system for the militia and leaders of the rebellion. Following the outrages committed by Dunmore along the Elizabeth, Jefferson was able to build a solid case for independence. A partial list of these abuses as enumerated in the Declaration reads, ``He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures, He has affected to render the Military independent, of and superior to the Civil power, For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us: For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit in the Inhabitants of these States: For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world: For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offenses, He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us, He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people. ...'' And so it went, a litany of misdeeds, cruelties, unlawful violence and plunder, all written by Jefferson against the government of King George III, but squarely in response to Dunmore's outrages in the name of the King in Hampton Roads.

By July 4, 1776, Jefferson's work was over. The Declaration of Independence was sent to the various Colonial legislatures for ratification which was completed by August. By then Dunmore and his forces had retreated from Gosport for Gwynn's Island, now part of Mathews County. It is more than an irony that in July, 1776, Dunmore was finally driven from Virginia waters as the last royal governor. Indeed the British political reign was over, but it would take five more years of hard and bitter fighting before Jefferson and other Colonials fulfilled their dream of a free and independent United States.

No doubt there were many misgivings along the way, but if any supporting the rebellion had any doubts, the Declaration and the record of events upon which it was based in Hampton Roads were proof enough that complete independence was the only way. ILLUSTRATION: File photo

Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence on the heals

of oppression by the Lord Dunmore, Virginia's last royal governor.

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