Adoption of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, 1974

by Jack W. Clifton (1912—90)

Oil on canvas. Virginia State Capitol, Richmond, VA.

The Virginia Declaration of Rights was approved at Williamsburg on 12 June 1776.

Patrick Henry is standing, addressing the Fifth Virginia Convention. Seated at the Speaker’s chair is the president, Edmund Pendleton, and to his right is George Mason. On the far right is Thomas Jefferson, recognizable by his red hair.

There is some poetic license in this depiction. Jefferson was not actually at the Convention — he was in Philadelphia, serving as one of Virginia’s delegates to the Second Continental Congress. But he was alert to the events at Williamsburg and was drafting a constitution for Virginia — just before he was asked to write the Declaration of Independence.

There is a symmetry between the folly of Burgoyne’s march south to Saratoga and that of Cornwallis’s march north to Yorktown. Military historians debate why Burgoyne risked marching south from Fort Edward in the same way that they question why Cornwallis advanced north beyond North Carolina into Virginia. Although Cornwallis had none of the outward vanity of Burgoyne, the two men were similar in that they were both junior generals and neither of them was commander in chief of the British army in America. Both blamed their subsequent failures on rigid orders and insufficient latitude. They both expected to march through predominantly friendly territory. They both ignored the chain of command and went over the heads of their superiors to communicate independently with Lord George Germain. They both allowed their supply lines to become overextended and their forces suffered harassment by enemy militia. They presided over the two most decisive defeats of the American Revolutionary War.

— Andrew Jackson O’Shaughnessy

The Men Who Lost America: British Leadership, the American Revolution, and the Fate of the Empire (2013)