On this day 250 years ago, the freeholders of Fincastle County, Virginia met to elect a Committee to enforce the Continental Association and to govern the County in place of Royal authority. Fincastle County in 1775 was a huge territory that comprises multiple counties in southwest Virginia and southern West Virginia as well as all of Kentucky. Although it was subsequently claimed that the Fincastle County meeting occurred at the Chiswell Lead Mines, the more likely location for the meeting was at James McGavock’s Ordinary in Fort Chiswell, in present-day Wythe County, Virginia.
The meeting unanimously adopted a resolution declaring:
even to these remote regions the hand of unlimited and unconstitutional power hath pursued us, to strip us of that liberty and property with which God, nature, and the rights of humanity, have vested us. We are ready and willing to contribute all in our power for the support of his Majesty’s government, if applied to constitutionally, and when the grants are made by our own representatives; but cannot think of submitting our liberty or property to the power of a venal British parliament, or to the will of a corrupt Ministry.
. . .
But if no pacifick measures shall be proposed or adopted by Great Britain, and our enemies will attempt to dragoon us out of these inestimable privileges which we are entitled to as subjects, and to reduce us to a state of slavery, we declare, that we are deliberately and resolutely determined never to surrender them to any power upon earth, but at the expense of our lives.
These are our real, though unpolished sentiments, of liberty and loyalty, and in them we are resolved to live and die.
The Fincastle Resolutions have often been claimed as the first pledge to fight to the death to defend American liberties, although similar rhetoric had been used in earlier resolutions.
The meeting also elected as the Committee to govern Fincastle County:
Reverend Charles Cummings, Colonel William Preston, Colonel William Christian, Captain Stephen Trigg, Major Arthur Campbell, Major William Inglis, Captain Walter Crockett, Captain John Montgomery, Captain James McGavock, Captain William Campbell, Captain Thomas Madison, Captain Daniel Smith, Captain William Russell, Captain Evan Shelby and Lieutenant William Edmondson. After the election the committee made choice of Colonel William Christian for their chairman, and appointed Mr. David Campbell to be clerk.
As indicated by their ranks, all these men were officers in the Virginia militia (including Cummings who served as a chaplain and was known as a “fighting parson”) and would continue to serve in the militia and in public office for Virginia throughout the Revolutionary War, although William Inglis (or Ingles) was accused of being a Tory in 1780. William Campbell would command a large detachment of men from the former Fincastle County (by then divided into other counties) who joined the Overmountain Men at the critical American victory of Kings Mountain and at Guilford Courthouse, and would then die from illness as a general in the Continental Army during the Yorktown Campaign. Colonel William Preston also fought at Guilford Courthouse and would die of illness in militia service in 1783. Colonel William Christian, Lt. Col. Stephen Trigg, and Lt. Col. John Montgomery would all be killed by Indian allies of the British in the years following Yorktown. William Russell served in the Continental Army and was at both the American surrender at Charleston and British surrender at Yorktown rising to the rank of Brigadier General at the end of the war.
Sources: https://vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/672b0c83-5d0c-4bed-85f0-57599c7a60b1/content; https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/the-fincastle-resolutions/;
On January 27, 2025, Smyth County, Virginia will host a celebration and reenactment of Rev. Cummings’ role in adoption of the Fincastle Resolutions . https://va250.org/event-detail/?id=1425
Also on January 20, 1775, James Madison wrote to his friend William Bradford in Philadelphia:
We are very busy at present in raising men and procuring the necessaries for defending ourselves and our frends in case of a sudden Invasion. The extensiveness of the Demands of the Congress and the pride of the British Nation together with the Wickedness of the present Ministry, seem, in the Judgment of our Politicians to require a preparation for extreme events There will by the Spring, I expect, be some thousands of well trained High Spirited men ready to meet danger whenever it appears, who are influenced by no mercenary Principles, bearing their own expences and having the prospect of no recompence but the honour and safety of their Country.
Source: “From James Madison to William Bradford, 20 January 1775,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-01-02-0039. [Original source: The Papers of James Madison, vol. 1, 16 March 1751 – 16 December 1779, ed. William T. Hutchinson and William M. E. Rachal. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1962, pp. 134–138.] accessed at https://founders.archives.gov/?q=%2220%20January%201775%22&s=1111311111&sa=&r=5&sr=
And on that day in London, William Pitt the Elder gave his most eloquent speech before the House of Lords in support of a motion to remove
British troops from Boston. His hour-and-a-half-long speech included:
now, my Lords, we find that instead of suppressing the opposition in Boston, these measures have spread it over the whole continent. They have united that whole people by the most indissoluble of all bands—intolerable wrongs…
Resistance to your acts was as necessary as it was just, and your vain declarations of the omnipotence of Parliament, and your imperious doctrines of the necessity of submission, will be found equally impotent to convince or enslave your fellow subjects in America who feel that tyranny, whether ambitioned by an individual part of the Legislature, or by the bodies which compose it, is equally intolerable to British principles…
Woe be to him who sheds the first—the inexpiable—drop of blood in an impious war with a people contending in the great cause of public liberty. I will tell you plainly, my Lords: No son of mine, nor any one over whom I have influence, shall ever draw his sword upon his fellow subjects…
I trust it is obvious to your Lordships that all attempts to impose servitude, to establish despotism over such a mighty continental nation, must be vain, must be fatal. We shall be forced ultimately to retract, while we can, not when we must. I say we must necessarily undo these violent and oppressive Acts. They must be repealed!
When Pitt finished speaking, the House of Lords voted 68-18 to leave British troops in Boston.
On This Day In The Revolution 