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Sampson Mathews
Sampson Mathews (c. 1737 – January 20, 1807) was an American merchant, soldier, and legislator in the colony (and later U.S. state) of Virginia. A son of John and Ann (Archer) Mathews, Mathews was an early merchant in the Shenandoah Valley region, where he and his brother George Mathews ran a series of stores across the valley with contacts extending to Atlantic trade networks. Mathews also took part in the Indian Wars and colonial revolutionary efforts. He was a member of the Augusta County Committee of Safety that drafted the Augusta Resolves, a precursor to the Declaration of Independence, and the Augusta Declaration, a precursor to the Articles of Confederation. Mathews was elected to the inaugural Virginia State Senate in 1776. During the American Revolution, he toured the western frontier to fortify the colonial border from Indian attacks, and oversaw sail manufacture for the Continental Navy's Virginia fleet. When turncoat Benedict Arnold enacted a surprise ra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Virginia State Senate
The Senate of Virginia is the upper house of the Virginia General Assembly. The Senate is composed of 40 senators representing an equal number of single-member constituent districts. The Senate is presided over by the lieutenant governor of Virginia. Prior to the American War of Independence, the upper house of the General Assembly was represented by the Virginia Governor's Council, consisting of up to 12 executive counselors appointed by the colonial royal governor as advisers and jurists. The lieutenant governor presides daily over the Virginia Senate. In the lieutenant governor's absence, the president pro tempore presides, usually a powerful member of the majority party. The Senate is equal with the House of Delegates, the lower chamber of the legislature, except that taxation bills must originate in the House, similar to the federal U.S. Congress. Members of the Virginia Senate are elected every four years by the voters of the 40 senatorial districts on the Tuesday succee ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Virginia
Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth are shaped by the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Chesapeake Bay, which provide habitat for much of its flora and fauna. The capital of the Commonwealth is Richmond; Virginia Beach is the most-populous city, and Fairfax County is the most-populous political subdivision. The Commonwealth's population was over 8.65million, with 36% of them living in the Baltimore–Washington metropolitan area. The area's history begins with several indigenous groups, including the Powhatan. In 1607, the London Company established the Colony of Virginia as the first permanent English colony in the New World. Virginia's state nickname, the Old Dominion, is a reference to this status. Slave labor and land acquired from displaced native tribes fueled the gro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Raid On Richmond
The Raid on Richmond was a series of British military actions against the capital of Virginia, Richmond, and the surrounding area, during the American Revolutionary War. Led by American turncoat Benedict Arnold, the Richmond Campaign is considered one of his greatest successes while serving under the British Army, and one of the most notorious actions that Arnold ever performed. Background The British general Sir Henry Clinton hoped that sending an American-born commander to Richmond would convince more Loyalists in the area to join the British cause, which would subsequently give the British Army the upper hand in the Southern Theatre of the war. Prior to the beginning of the raid, Thomas Jefferson, the then-Governor of Virginia, had moved the capital of Virginia from Williamsburg to Richmond, because of its strategically central, defensible location. In the event of an attack, Jefferson moved all of the town's military supplies to a foundry five miles outside of Richmond. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Benedict Arnold
Benedict Arnold ( Brandt (1994), p. 4June 14, 1801) was an American military officer who served during the Revolutionary War. He fought with distinction for the American Continental Army and rose to the rank of major general before defecting to the British side of the conflict in 1780. General George Washington had given him his fullest trust and had placed him in command of West Point in New York. Arnold was planning to surrender the fort there to British forces, but the plot was discovered in September 1780, whereupon he fled to the British lines. In the later part of the conflict, Arnold was commissioned as a brigadier general in the British Army, and placed in command of the American Legion. He led the British army in battle against the soldiers whom he had once commanded, after which his name became synonymous with treason and betrayal in the United States. Rogets (2008) Arnold was born in Connecticut. In 1775, when the war began, he was a merchant operating ships ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Continental Navy
The Continental Navy was the navy of the United States during the American Revolutionary War and was founded October 13, 1775. The fleet cumulatively became relatively substantial through the efforts of the Continental Navy's patron John Adams and vigorous Congressional support in the face of stiff opposition, when considering the limitations imposed upon the Patriot supply pool. The main goal of the navy was to intercept shipments of British matériel and generally disrupt British maritime commercial operations. The initial fleet consisted of converted merchantmen because of the lack of funding, manpower, and resources, with exclusively designed warships being built later in the conflict. The vessels that successfully made it to sea met with success only rarely, and the effort contributed little to the overall outcome of the war. The fleet did serve to highlight a few examples of Continental resolve, notably launching Captain John Barry into the limelight. It provided n ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
American Frontier
The American frontier, also known as the Old West or the Wild West, encompasses the geography, history, folklore, and culture associated with the forward wave of American expansion in mainland North America that began with European colonial settlements in the early 17th century and ended with the admission of the last few western territories as states in 1912 (except Alaska, which was not admitted into the Union until 1959). This era of massive migration and settlement was particularly encouraged by President Thomas Jefferson following the Louisiana Purchase, giving rise to the expansionist attitude known as " Manifest Destiny" and the historians' " Frontier Thesis". The legends, historical events and folklore of the American frontier have embedded themselves into United States culture so much so that the Old West, and the Western genre of media specifically, has become one of the defining periods of American national identity. The archetypical Old West period is generall ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
American Revolution
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 and establishing the United States of America as the first nation-state founded on Enlightenment principles of liberal democracy. American colonists objected to being taxed by the Parliament of Great Britain, a body in which they had no direct representation. Before the 1760s, Britain's American colonies had enjoyed a high level of autonomy in their internal affairs, which were locally governed by colonial legislatures. During the 1760s, however, the British Parliament passed a number of acts that were intended to bring the American colonies under more direct rule from the British metropole and increasingly intertwine the economies of the colonies with those of Britain. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Articles Of Confederation
The Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union was an agreement among the 13 Colonies of the United States of America that served as its first frame of government. It was approved after much debate (between July 1776 and November 1777) by the Second Continental Congress on November 15, 1777, and sent to the states for ratification. The Articles of Confederation came into force on March 1, 1781, after ratification by all the states. A guiding principle of the Articles was to establish and preserve the independence and sovereignty of the states. The weak central government established by the Articles received only those powers which the former colonies had recognized as belonging to king and parliament. The document provided clearly written rules for how the states' "league of friendship" ( Perpetual Union) would be organized. During the ratification process, the Congress looked to the Articles for guidance as it conducted business, directing the war effort, conducting dipl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Augusta Declaration
The Augusta Declaration, or the Memorial of Augusta County Committee, May 10, 1776, was a statement presented to the Fifth Virginia Convention in Williamsburg, Virginia on May 10, 1776. The Declaration announced the necessity of the Thirteen Colonies to form a permanent and independent union of states and national government separate from Great Britain, with whom the Colonies were at war. When the Fifth Virginia Convention assembled on May 6, 1776, independence was a leading issue. Several of the delegates had already been instructed by their counties to pursue independence, and others had come with resolutions for independence in hand. The Augusta Declaration was the first official statement on the subject, being introduced by Thomas Lewis, on behalf of the Augusta County, Virginia Committee of Safety on May 10. Five days later, on May 15, the Convention declared Virginia wholly independent of Great Britain, and called for state papers (a declaration of rights and constitut ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
United States Declaration Of Independence
The United States Declaration of Independence, formally The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen States of America, is the pronouncement and founding document adopted by the Second Continental Congress meeting at Pennsylvania State House (later renamed Independence Hall) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on July 4, 1776. Enacted during the American Revolution, the Declaration explains why the Thirteen Colonies at war with the Kingdom of Great Britain regarded themselves as thirteen independent sovereign states, no longer subject to British colonial rule. With the Declaration, these new states took a collective first step in forming the United States of America and, de facto, formalized the American Revolutionary War, which had been ongoing since April 1775. The Declaration of Independence was signed by 56 of America's Founding Fathers, congressional representatives from New Hampshire, Province of Massachusetts Bay, Massachusetts Bay, Colony of Rhode Island and Providence P ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Augusta Resolves
The Augusta Resolves was a statement adopted on February 22, 1775 by six representatives of Augusta County, Colony of Virginia, in the early stages of the American Revolution. The resolves expressed support for Congress' resistance to the Intolerable Acts, issued in 1774 by the British Parliament, and a commitment to risk 'lives and fortune' in preservation of natural rights. Background and drafting After Parliament passed the Coercive Acts, also known as the Intolerable Acts, to punish Massachusetts for the Boston Tea Party, the Virginia House of Burgesses proclaimed that June 1, 1774, would be a day of "fasting, humiliation, and prayer" as a show of solidarity with Boston. In response, Lord Dunmore, the royal governor of Virginia, dissolved the House of Burgesses. The burgesses reconvened at the Raleigh Tavern on May 27 and called for Virginia's counties to elect delegates to a special convention to meet in August. Thomas Lewis and Samuel McDowell were elected as Augusta C ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Committee Of Safety (American Revolution)
In the American Revolution, committees of correspondence, committees of inspection (also known as committees of observation), and committees of safety were different local committees of Patriots that became a shadow government; they took control of the Thirteen Colonies away from royal officials, who became increasingly helpless.T. H. Breen, ''American Insurgents, American Patriots: The Revolution of the People'' (Macmillan, 2010), pp. 162, 186–89. In Massachusetts, as affairs drew toward a crisis, it became usual for towns to appoint three committees: of correspondence, of inspection, and of safety. The first was to keep the community informed of dangers either legislative or executive, and concert measures of public good; the second to watch for violations of , or attempts of loyalists to evade them; the third to act as general executive while the legal authority was in abeyance. In February 1776 these were regularly legalized by the Massachusetts General Court but consolidate ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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