erri Button, Supervisor
History, Government, and
Geography Service
State Department of Education

Thomas A. Elliott, Assistant
Supervisor
History, Government, and
Geography Service
State Department of Education

Clyde J. Haddock, Assistant
Supervisor
History, Government, and
Geography Service
State Department of Education

James C. Page, Assistant Supervisor
History, Government, and Geography Service
State Department of Education

Dr. D. Alan Williams, Consultant
THE ROAD TO INDEPENDENCE: VIRGINIA 1763-1783
Professor of History
University of Virginia

_The Road to Independence:_

_Virginia 1763-1783_

Part I:

1763: The Aftermath of Victory

[Sidenote: "_He has refused to assent to laws the most wholesome and
necessary for the public good...._"]

Virginia in 1763 appeared to stand on the edge of a new era of
greatness. The Peace of Paris signed that year confirmed the total
victory of the British in North America during the long French and
Indian War (1754-1763). Virginia's natural enemies were subdued: the
French were driven from Canada, the Forks of the Ohio, the Illinois
Country, and Louisiana; the Spanish were forced to give up Florida; and
the Indians, now without any allies, were defeated or banished beyond
the Appalachians. Virginians were free to continue their remarkable
growth of the past 40 years during which they had left the Tidewater,
pushed up the James, Rappahannock, Appomattox, and Potomac river
basins, and joined thousands of Scotch-Irish and Germans pushing
southward out of Pennsylvania into the Valley of Virginia. Although
they were halted temporarily in 1755 when Braddock's disastrous defeat
in Pennsylvania and the massacre of frontier pioneer James Patton at
Draper's Meadow (Blacksburg) encouraged the Indians to resist the white
man's advance, Virginians eagerly eyed the lands in southwestern
Virginia along the Holston, Clinch, and French Lick Rivers and those
that lay beyond the mountains along the Ohio. This territory, from
which was carved the states of Kentucky and West Virginia, made
Virginia, even without considering her strong claim to all the lands
north of the Ohio, the largest of the American colonies.

Following the end of the French and Indian war, Virginians expected to
recapture the economic prosperity that had been interrupted by the
conflict. In 1763, they were the most affluent and the most populous
white colonists. There were at least 350,000