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A democratic form of government had been established in North America over a thousand years before the first English colonist set foot on the land. Although many indigenous nations practiced this form of government, it is best documented for the Iroquois Confederacy (also known as the Haudenosaunee) which stretched from modern-day Canada down through North Carolina. The tribes once fought each other in near-constant wars over food and water supplies until the arrival of the Great Peacemaker, Dekanawida, who inspired his two best-known disciples – Hiawatha and, later, Tadodaho – to spread the message of peace and power through unity. At the first meeting of the House of Burgesses, 22 men, representing 11 settlements, assembled in Jamestown with Governor Yeardley and his Governor’s Council.
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Attempts at limitation included eliminating annual sessions, prohibiting the legislators from hearing appeals decided in the colony’s General Court, and vetoing bills on certain subjects or even sending them to the king for him to veto. The governors seized from the burgesses the right to appoint the clerk of the House, though the body retained the right to appoint their speaker and other officers. For the next thirty to forty years, Virginia’s royal governors and, to a lesser extent, its councillors, wielded larger shares of political power than the elected burgesses. The twenty-two men met from July 30 to August 4 in unicameral session with Yeardley, the six-man governor’s Council, and the secretary and treasurer of the colony. House of Burgesses, representative assembly in colonial Virginia, which was an outgrowth of the first elective governing body in a British overseas possession, the General Assembly of Virginia.
Building and Rebuilding the Capitol
In 1676 CE, during Bacon’s Rebellion, Jamestown was burned and the government moved to the area of Middle Plantation, later known as Williamsburg. The House of Burgesses’ first order of business was relations between the colonists and Native Americans, and this would remain an ongoing concern of the assembly in the following years. In May 1776 the House of Burgesses ceased to meet, and the Virginia Constitution of 1776 created a new General Assembly composed of an elected Senate and an elected House of Delegates. Landowners continued to elect representatives to the House of Delegates, two from each county and one from each city. Because the state constitution required that all bills originate in the House (permitting the Senate only to propose amendments), the lion’s share of political power in Virginia was lodged for the next seventy-five years in the House of Delegates.
Jamestown Colony of Virginia
Along with the governor, the Council also acted as the colony’s highest civil and criminal court, known as the General Court. Though the General Court’s members were not usually lawyers, they had jurisdiction over all kinds of criminal, civil, and even religious disputes. In one memorable case in 1718, the court sentenced a group of Blackbeard’s pirates to hang.7 Unfortunately, most of the records from the Virginia General Court were destroyed in (you guessed it) a fire during the Civil War.
American Revolution
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Posted: Tue, 30 Jul 2019 07:00:00 GMT [source]
The House of Burgesses was a superior school for statesmen, not only for those serving Virginia, but also for those serving the new United States. Peyton Randolph, the House of Burgesses’s last speaker, was the first president of the Continental Congress, and many of the Virginia representatives to Congress had experience as burgesses. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Richard Henry Lee, Patrick Henry, and other great revolutionary leaders of Virginia served first in the House of Burgesses, where they learned the skills that enabled them to lead in founding the new nation. The House of Burgesses is important to United States history because it was the first elected representative government in Colonial America.
Those former Burgesses that opposed the new Constitution, Anti-federalists like Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson, worried that creating a powerful central authority would simply replace the tyranny of the king with a different tyrant. These men preferred local control and felt states should be governed as each one saw fit. Former Burgesses like George Washington who saw the need for a strong central government were called Federalists. They argued that without this change the nation would be virtually defenseless in the face of foreign aggression. Additionally, the numerous currencies and laws of the thirteen states would tend to destabilize the nation, possibly leading to its dissolution. With the advent of the new Virginia Constitution in 1776, the House of Burgesses was finally dissolved.
Burgesses and Delegates
The first meeting of the House of Burgesses was held in a church choir in Jamestown on July 30, 1619. In 1618, the Virginia Company appointed a new governor for the Virginia colony, Sir George Yeardley. After Bacon’s Rebellion, the king and his younger brother, James, the Duke of York (later King James II), began to impose stricter regulation on the colonies, specifically targeting the freedom of action exercised by colonial assemblies like the House of Burgesses. Over the next twenty-five years the Crown sent a succession of governors to Virginia with instructions to limit the power of the assemblies.
The Revolutionary War
Following the passage of the Intolerable Acts, the Burgesses passed a resolution for a Day of Feasting and Prayer in support of the city of Boston. The House of Burgesses met for the first time on July 30, 1619, in the wooden church at Jamestown. The Virginia House of Burgesses was established in 1619 as the first representative government in the British Colonies in North America. Through the years leading up to the Revolutionary War, many leaders of the move toward independence made their names in the House of Burgesses.
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In response to revolutionary agitation, Governor Dunmore dissolved the House of Burgesses in 1774, though he briefly called them together again the next year. They reconvened in the Capitol on May 16, 1776, when a group of delegates to a Fifth Virginia Convention met briefly as Burgesses, without conducting any business. As Edmund Pendleton explained, they had decided “not to adjourn, but let that body die.”6 Shortly after, the Virginia Constitution of 1776 replaced the House of Burgesses with the House of Delegates, which has met ever since. The House of Burgesses was the lower branch of colonial Virginia’s General Assembly, elected by property-owning voters throughout Virginia.
Their purpose was to meet with the Governor and the Governor’s Council to discuss and pass laws for the colony. Over time, the House of Burgesses gained more power and eventually became a bicameral legislature. As the American Revolution intensified, it played a critical role in events, adopting the Virginia Stamp Resolves and organizing the permanent Committees of Correspondence. Some of the most important Founding Fathers, including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Patrick Henry served as Burgesses. The assembly was dissolved in 1776 when Virginia declared independence and created a state constitution.
This revenue grab did not go over well with the colonists who were used to controlling their own internal affairs. The debates and the documents that flowed from the House of Burgesses after that act spearheaded our nation’s drive for independence from England. This began to change in 1765 when Parliament passed the Stamp Act which imposed a tax on paper products such as newspapers, pamphlets, and legal documents.
Although the electorate was ultimately restricted to adult white males, the percentage of such men in each county who could vote varied enormously. The economic and demographic characteristics as well as the settlement patterns of each county dictated the size and composition of the local electorate. In Fairfax County, for example, less than 25 percent of the adult white males owned enough land to qualify to vote, but another 20 to 30 percent qualified as life-lease tenants. In some counties, on the other hand, 60 to 80 percent of the adult white males owned enough land to vote, while only a handful of tenants had appropriate leases.
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