e convinced sterner measures were
called for. At its January 1775 session parliament defeated a late-hour
plan of union offered by Chatham. This plan would have conferred
limited dominion status on the American colonies, reasserted the
fundamental power of the crown, and repealed all the colonial acts
passed by parliament after 1763. A similar plan had been offered by
Galloway to the First Continental Congress. Both failed. Lord North,
while sympathetic to plans for easing tensions, offered a plan of
reconciliation by which the colonists would grant annual amounts for
imperial expenses in lieu of taxes, but he could find no solution which
at the same time did not diminish the authority of parliament or force
the colonists to accept some vague annual levy determined in Britain.

Believing New England was in a state of rebellion and that the
embargoes were acts of treason, parliament in March 1775 passed the
Restraining Act. New England commerce was restricted to Great Britain,
Ireland, and the West Indies, excluded from the Newfoundland fisheries,
and barred from coastal trading with other colonies until they ended
their associations and complied with the Boston Port Act. When further
testimony demonstrated that Virginia, South Carolina, New Jersey,
Pennsylvania, and Maryland were equally guilty of forming
non-importation associations, they were added to the Restraining Act
list.

Simultaneously, parliament passed North's plan for reconciliation which
embodied the proposal for removing all parliamentary taxes if the
colonial legislatures would provide alternative sources of revenue.

War

As parliament debated, events in America took matters out of the realm
of abstract theory and put them into the context of practical
revolution.

For Virginia the crucial decisions had been made by the Second Virginia
Convention meeting on March 20, 1775 at St. John's Church, Richmond,
far from Governor Dunmore's eyes in Williamsburg. Originally called to
hear reports from the delegates to the First Continental Congress, to
elect delegates to the Second Congress, and to review the operations of
the association, the convention soon found itself embroiled in a call
by Patrick Henry for sanctioning a Virginia colonial militia
independent of the existing militia which was deemed too reliant on the
governor. To Henry the situation was obvious. Time was fleeting.
Increasing numbers of troops were in New England; a fleet was bound for