Thomas Jefferson

José I (king of Portugal, 1750-77) dies in February 1777, and with him goes Pombal's hold on power and his common sense approach of encouraging industrial development.

Pombal's successor as secretary of state for overseas dominions, Martinho de Melo e Castro, is alarmed that the nascent Brazilian factories could make the colony independent and warns that "Portugal without Brazil is an insignificant power."

In January 1785, he orders that they all be "closed and abolished."

Brazilian students at Coimbra in the early 1780s, had pledged themselves to seek independence.

They are influenced greatly by the success of the North American British colonies in forming the United States of America.

In 1786 and 1787, Jose Joaquim Maia e Barbalho of Rio de Janeiro, a Coimbra graduate studying medicine at Montpelier and a critic of the colonial relationship, approaches Ambassador Thomas Jefferson in France.

He tells Jefferson that the students intend to break with Portugal and requests the aid of the United States.

One of the Coimbra graduates is Jose Bonifacio de Andrada e Silva, the patriarch of Brazilian independence.

The failed Minas Conspiracy (Inconfidencia Mineira) of 1789 involves some of the leading figures of the captaincy: tax collectors, priests, military officers, judges, government officials, and mine owners and landowners.

Some had been born in Portugal, several had had their early education with the Jesuits and later studied at Coimbra, a number write poetry that is still read and studied, but what they have most in common are financial problems caused by crown policies that require them to pay their debts, or that cut them out of lucrative gold and diamond contraband trade.

They argue that Brazil has all it needs to survive and prosper and that Portugal is a parasite.

They pledge to lift restrictions on mining; exploit iron ore; set up factories; create a university, a citizens' militia, and a Parliament; pardon debts to the royal treasury; free slaves born in Brazil; and form a union with São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro similar to that of the United States.

The history of the Minas Conspiracy is full of heavy drama.

Revelation of the conspiracy turns brothers, friends, clients, and patrons against each other in an unseemly scramble to escape punishment.

In one sense, the affair foreshadows the nature of future Brazilian revolutionary movements in that it is a conspiracy of oligarchs seeking their own advantage, while claiming to act for the people.

In the end, Lisbon decides to make an example of only one person, a low-ranked second lieutenant (alferes) of the Royal Mineiro Dragoons named Joaquim Jose da Silva Xavier ("Tiradentes").

His execution in 1792 in Rio de Janeiro might well have been forgotten if the nineteenth-century republicans had not embraced him as a symbolic counterpoise to Dom Pedro I, who declares Brazilian independence from Portugal in 1822.

Later, with the establishment of the republic in 1889, every town and city in Brazil will build a Tiradentes square, and the day of his execution, April 21, will become a well-commemorated national holiday.

Nonetheless, because the Minas Conspiracy is marked more by skulduggery than nobility and clarity, its value as a national symbol requires selective interpretation and presentation.

Portugal resolves to watch Brazilians more carefully and reacts forcefully to a nonexistent but suspected plot in Rio de Janeiro in 1794, and to a real, mulatto-led one in Bahia in 1798.

Meanwhile, the French Revolution, the resulting slave rebellion in Haiti, and the fear of similar revolts in Brazil persuades the Brazilian elites that the dream of a United States-style conservative revolution that will leave the slave-based socioeconomic structure intact and in their hands is impossible.

The crown separates the residents of Minas Gerais from the revived coastal sugar producers through policies that set their interests at odds.

Lisbon diverts Brazilian nationalism with greater imperial involvement.

Two Acts of the Parliament of Great Britain passed on July 2, 1767, originally proposed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer Charles Townshend, place a tax on common products imported into the American Colonies, such as lead, paper, paint, glass, and tea, while giving revenues from these taxes to the British governors and other officials that are normally paid by town assemblies.

In contrast to the Stamp Act of 1765, the laws are not a direct tax, but rather a tax on imports.

The Townshend Acts have also created three new admiralty courts to try Americans and reaffirmed the legality of writs of assistance, which give tax collectors permission to search for smuggled goods (these smuggled goods would be sold in England and the European countryside for profit to Britain).

When Virginia's royal governor, Norborne Berkeley, Lord Boretourt, discovers that prominent figures in Virginia society intend to resist the Act, he dissolves the House of Burgesses.

The representatives thereupon march down the street to reassemble at a private home.

Here they issue the Virginia Nonimportation Resolution signed by the colony's "principle gentlemen"; among whom are Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, Carter Braxton, Richard Henry Lee, and George Washington.

A total of about seven thousand to eight thousand Patriots serve on "Committees of Correspondence" at the colonial and local levels, comprising most of the leadership in their communities.

Loyalists are excluded.

The committees become the leaders of the American resistance to British actions, and largely determine the war effort at the state and local level.

When the First Continental Congress decides to boycott British products, the colonial and local Committees take charge, examining merchant records and publishing the names of merchants who attempt to defy the boycott by importing British goods.

Virginia, the largest colony, sets up its Committee of Correspondence in early 1773, on which Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson serve.

Dabney Carr proposes the formation of a permanent Committee of Correspondence before the Virginia House of Burgesses in March 1773.

Virginia's own committee is formed on March 12, 1773 and members consist of Peyton Randolph, Robert Carter Nicholas, Richard Bland, Richard Henry Lee, Benjamin Harrison, Edmund Pendleton, Patrick Henry, Dudley Digges, Dabney Carr, Archibald Cary, and Thomas Jefferson.

Many colonists see the Coercive Acts as a violation of their constitutional rights, their natural rights, and their colonial charters.

They therefore view the acts as a threat to the liberties of all of British America, not just Massachusetts.

Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, for example, describes the acts as "a most wicked System for destroying the liberty of America".

Thomas Jefferson's A Summary View of the Rights of British Americans, in which he lays out for delegates to the First Continental Congress a set of grievances against the King, especially against his (and Parliament's) response to the Boston Tea Party, is published in 1774.

Previous criticism of the Coercive Acts has focused on legal and constitutional issues, but Jefferson offers the radical notion that the colonists have the natural right to govern themselves.

In this, his first published work, Jefferson argues that Parliament is the legislature of Great Britain only, and has no legislative authority in the colonies.

He holds that allodial title, not feudal title, is held to American lands; thus the people do not owe fees and rents for that land to the British crown.

"Give me liberty, or give me death!" is a quotation attributed to Patrick Henry from a speech he makes to the Second Virginia Convention, after the Virginia House of Burgesses had been disbanded by the Royal Governor, on March 23, 1775, at St. John's Church in Richmond, Virginia.

He is credited with having swung the balance in convincing the convention to pass a resolution delivering Virginian troops for the Revolutionary War.

Among the delegates to the convention are future U.S. Presidents Thomas Jefferson and George Washington.

According to Edmund Randolph, the convention sat in silence for several minutes afterwards.

Thomas Marshall will tell his son John Marshall, who will later become Chief Justice of the United States, that the speech was “one of the most bold, vehement, and animated pieces of eloquence that had ever been delivered.”

Edward Carrington, who was listening outside a window of the church, requested that he be buried on that spot.

In 1810, he will get his wish.

The drafter of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, George Mason, said, “Every word he says not only engages but commands the attention, and your passions are no longer your own when he addresses them.”

More immediately, the resolution, declaring the United Colonies to be independent of the Kingdom of Great Britain, passes, and Henry is named chairman of the committee assigned to build a militia.

Britain's royal governor, Lord Dunmore, reacts by seizing the gunpowder in the public magazine at Williamsburg—Virginia’s equivalent of the battles of Lexington and Concord.

Most delegates to the Second Continental Congress follow John Dickinson in his quest to reconcile with King George III of Great Britain.

However, a rather small group of delegates led by John Adams believes that war is inevitable.

During the course of the Second Continental Congress, Adams and his group of colleagues have decided that the wisest course of action is to remain quiet and wait for the opportune time to rally the people.

This decision has allowed Dickinson and his followers to pursue whatever means they choose for reconciliation.

It is during this time that the idea of the Olive Branch Petition is approved by the delegates.

Dickinson is the primary author of the petition, though Benjamin Franklin, John Jay, John Rutledge and Thomas Johnson also serve on the drafting committee.

Dickinson claims that the colonies do not want independence but that they merely want to negotiate trade and tax regulations with Great Britain.

Dickinson suggests that the King draw up a final plan or agreement to settle trade disputes.

To help the King with his plan, Dickinson suggests that the colonists be given either free trade and taxes equal to those levied on the people in Great Britain, or no taxes and strict trade regulations.

The introductory paragraph of the letter named twelve of the thirteen colonies, all except Georgia. The letter is approved on July 5 and signed by John Hancock, President of the Second Congress, and by representatives of the named twelve colonies.

On July 6, 1775 Congress issues a Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms, which contains the words: "Our cause is just. Our union is perfect... being with one mind resolved to die freemen rather than to live slaves...".

The Olive Branch Petition is sent to London on July 8, 1775, in the care of Richard Penn and Arthur Lee.

Penn, the second son of Richard Penn, Sr. (1706–1771) and the grandson of William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania, had been educated at Eton College and St John's College, Cambridge before joining the Inner Temple.

In 1763 he and his brother John had visited Pennsylvania, of which his family were still sole proprietors.

Qualified as a councilor on January 12, 1764, he had returned to Pennsylvania in 1771 and had been appointed lieutenant governor, soon becoming acting governor when his brother returned to England to attend to the colony's legal interests.

He had proved popular with the provincials, taking much care over their commercial interests, but less so with his uncle, the proprietor.

After two years he had been supplanted by the re-appointment of his brother as governor.
 
On May 21, 1772, at Christ Church, Philadelphia, he had married Mary "Polly" Masters, daughter of the late William Masters of Philadelphia.

The bride's mother had given them as a wedding present a splendid Philadelphia city house, where Penn entertains members of the Continental Congress, Virginia delegate Colonel George Washington, being among his guests.

Penn had been elected a trustee of the College and Academy of Philadelphia (now the University of Pennsylvania) in 1772, serving as president of the board in 1773 and 1774.

With the coming of the Revolution, he retires and returned to England in the summer of 1775, when the Continental Congress entrusts him with the Olive Branch Petition to the King.


Dickinson hopes that word of the bloodshed at Lexington and Concord combined with the "humble petition" will inspire the King to at least negotiate with the colonists.

However, the petition will be received too late to do any good.

George III will refuse to accept the petition, but Penn will give evidence to the House of Lords on the colonies' attitudes toward independence.

Kentucky's settlers, as the American Revolutionary War began in the East, had become involved in a dispute about the region's sovereignty.

Richard Henderson, a judge and land speculator from North Carolina, has purchased much of Kentucky from the Cherokee in an illegal treaty.

Henderson intends to create a proprietary colony known as Transylvania, but many Kentucky settlers do not recognize Transylvania's authority over them.

In June 1776, these settlers select George Rogers Clark and John Gabriel Jones to deliver a petition to the Virginia General Assembly, asking Virginia to formally extend its boundaries to include Kentucky.

Clark and Jones travel the Wilderness Road to Williamsburg, where they persuade Governor Patrick Henry to create Kentucky County, Virginia.

Before the Revolution had been a leading land speculator in lands west of the Appalachians where Virginians, including George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, have sought control from Native Americans.

Clark has been given five hundred pounds (two hundred and thirty kilograms) of gunpowder to help defend the settlements and is appointed a major in the Kentucky County militia.