Boston had its Tea Party, Fairfax County had its Resolves

By Tammy Mannarino

On July 4, 2026, our nation will commemorate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. In formal terms, this is our country’s semiquincentennial (half of five centuries). No matter how you refer to it, the American Revolution did not happen overnight. Therefore, we have already started recognizing the 250th anniversary of events that led to the separation of the American Colonies from Britain. In December, the Country joined in celebrating the 250th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party. In 2024, milestones of the Revolution are moving closer to home here in Fairfax County.

In the spring of 1774, the British Parliament responded to the American tea protest by passing an act to close the Port of Boston effective June 1st. On May 24, 1774, the Virginia House of Burgesses moved in solidarity with Boston, calling for a day of “Fasting, Humiliation and Prayer.” Virginia Governor Dunmore then responded by dissolving the House of Burgesses on May 26, 1774, leaving 89 former members of that body in Williamsburg with free time to determine their next move. George Washington was there representing Fairfax County.

Over the next few days, some of the ex-Burgesses gathered in the Apollo Room of the Raleigh Tavern. They collectively decided “not to purchase or use any kind of East India commodity…until the grievances of America are redressed.” They also agreed to a “general congress” of the Colonies and planned a Virginia convention—the first of five “extra-legal” meetings. They quickly devised a letter,

“to invite all the Members of the late House of Burgesses to a general meeting in this City on the first Day of August next. We fixed this distant Day in Hopes of accommodating the Meeting to every Gentleman’s private Affairs, and that they might in the mean Time, have an Opportunity of collecting the Sense of their respective Counties.”  

Virginians took this assignment to “collect the Sense of their respective counties” seriously. They held meetings and appointed committees to frame resolutions, or resolves, that would serve as instructions to their elected representatives. In a remarkably cohesive response, 45 of the 61 Counties in Virginia produced resolves by the first week in August. Fairfax County was not the first to turn in their homework. They waited for George Washington to return from Williamsburg before meeting. 

In a letter to his brother, Washington reported on the results of a preliminary meeting on July 5, “we appointed a Committee to frame such Resolves as we thought the Circumstances of the Country would permit us to go into, & have appointed the 18 for a day of meeting to deliberate on them.” George Mason and George Washington were almost certainly members of that committee who created and began circulating a draft of the Fairfax Resolves in early July. It is unclear whether Bryan Fairfax, Washington’s longtime friend and hunting companion, was on the committee. In any case, Fairfax exchanged detailed correspondence with Washington regarding his concerns with some of the language. 

On July 14, George Washington and Charles Broadwater were elected to represent Fairfax County at the Virginia Convention. Washington had hoped to convince George Mason or Bryan Fairfax to run for the position, but Mason often preferred to stay at home and Fairfax declined because he recognized that his opinions were not in the mainstream. 

Mason spent the evening of July 17th at Mount Vernon and he and Washington rode to Market Square in Alexandria the next day. At that time, Alexandria City was part of Fairfax County with the County Courthouse located on Fairfax Street approximately opposite the Carlyle House. 

On July 18, 1774, with Washington serving as Chair, 25 prominent Fairfax County Inhabitants and Freeholders adopted the 24 Fairfax Resolves. They are statements of dissatisfaction, agreed upon measures, instructions to legislators and more. In comparison to the work of other counties that summer, historians have applied superlatives to  the Fairfax Resolves such as “most detailed,” “most influential,” and “most radical.” The Fairfax Resolves even carry an anti-slavery position, including their “most earnest Wishes to see an entire Stop for ever put to such a wicked cruel and unnatural Trade.” 

Washington carried the Fairfax Resolves with him to Williamsburg to the First Virginia Convention, where they influenced the writing of foundational documents of the Revolution. They were published in the August 4th edition of Clementina Rind’s Virginia Gazette and make great summer reading 250 years later.