On this day 250 years ago in Williamsburg, Delegate Archibald Cary submitted to the Virginia Convention the proposed constitution for the Commonwealth of Virginia drafted by his committee. The draft was primarily the work of George Mason with input from separate proposals prepared by Richard Henry Lee and Thomas Jefferson (and also by John Adams of Massachusetts). Jefferson’s draft had been received by the committee late and they declined to adopt his most progressive provisions including: letting small landowners and taxpayers vote; proportioning representation in the legislature based on the population of voters; outlawing the importation of slavery; abolishing capital punishment except for murder and “offenses in the Military Service”; prohibiting torture “in any case whatever”; banning the importation of slaves; abolishing primogeniture; and providing that “females shall have equal rights with males” in inheritance. All these reforms would come in the future.

Virginia and America have never accepted Jefferson’s radical proposal to guarantee landless adults fifty acres of land. And our federal government today is questioning the right of naturalization that Thomas Jefferson proposed 250 years ago that

All persons who by their own oath or affirmation, or by other testimony shall give satisfactory proof to any court of record in this colony that they propose to reside in the same 7 years at the least and who shall subscribe the fundamental laws, shall be considered as residents and entitled to all the rights of persons natural born.

Sources: Broadwater at 94-97; https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/jeffcons.asp

On this day 250 years ago in Philadelphia, the Continental Congress voted that Royal Governor William Franklin of New Jersey

be sent under guard to Governor Trumbull [of Connecticut], who is desired to take his parole; and, if Mr. Franklin refuses to give his parole, that Governor Trumbull be desired to treat him

as he would other prisoners.  The Journal of the Continental Congress did not record how Pennsylvania Delegate Benjamin Franklin, Governor Franklin’s father, voted on this resolution.

Sources: https://www.revolutionary-war-and-beyond.com/congress-imprison-governor-william-franklin.html; Journals of the Continental Congress at p. 473 accessed at https://archive.org/details/us_congress_continental/lljc005/page/473/mode/2up

On this day 250 years ago in Burlington, the Provincial Congress of New Jersey

Ordered, That Mr. Green, Mr. Cooper, Mr. Sergeant, Mr. Ogden, Mr. Elmer, Mr. Hughes, Mr. Covenhoven, Mr. Symmes, Mr. Condict and Mr. Dick, be a Committee to prepare the draught of a constitution.

Source: Minutes of the Provincial Congress and the Council of Safety of the State of New Jersey, Trenton: Naar, Day & Naar (1879) at p. 474, accessed at https://archive.org/details/minutesofprovinc00newj/page/474/mode/2up

On this day 250 years ago in Philadelphia, someone writing as “a Watchman” published an Address to the People of Pennsylvania on Independence:

The Tories . . . now acknowledge that Independence is inevitable, but endeavour to persuade us that a formal declaration of it is unnecessary, and that we are already as independent as we can be of the Crown of Britain. . . . Be not terrified, ye poor creatures, with a word, nor put off the day any longer that is to exalt you to the rank of men.

Your posterity will look upon it as the birth-day of permanent liberty to this country.

Should an immediate declaration of independence take place, we shall then only have crossed the Red Sea of our difficulties. A wilderness will still be before us. We have been enslaved with European ideas, manners, and laws. Hereditary right to power, titles, excise laws, &c, must all be laid in the dust before we can expect to establish or reap the fruits of good Government in the Colonies.

. . .

I would by no means exclude men of property from the confidence of the people, provided they possess understanding, integrity, and publick spirit. But always remember that they derive no right to power from their wealth; and that a freeman worth only fifty pounds is entitled, by the laws of our Province, to all the privileges of the first nabob in the country. Remember the influence of wealth upon the morals and principles of mankind. . . . Honour, liberty, and life, (and these are the common portions of every freeman in Pennsylvania,) are worth all the wealth in the world.

Source: https://declarationproject.org/?p=1192

On this day 250 years ago in the village of Annandale in Hunterdon County, New Jersey, a group of about 25 Loyalists armed with clubs raided the tavern house of Captain Thomas Jones, a prominent Patriot in the village. The Loyalists, who were neighbors and had previously been friends of Jones, beat him, threatened his family and stole money from his tavern bar. The Revolution was becoming a civil war.

Source: http://annandalevillage.com/gallery/jones_tavern.html