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.

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.

Congress calls on all the states in May 1776 to write constitutions and eliminate the last remnants of royal rule.

By June, nine colonies are ready for independence; one by one, the last four fall into line—Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and New York.

Richard Henry Lee is instructed by the Virginia legislature to propose independence, and he does so on June 7.

A committee is created on June 11 to draft a document explaining the justifications for separation from Britain.

After securing enough votes for passage, independence is voted for on July 2.

The Declaration of Independence is drafted largely by Thomas Jefferson and presented by the committee; it is slightly revised and unanimously adopted by the entire Congress on July 4, marking the formation of a new sovereign nation that calls itself the United States of America.

The Second Continental Congress approves a new constitution, the "Articles of Confederation," for ratification by the states on November 15, 1777, and immediately begins operating under their terms.

The Articles will be formally ratified on March 1, 1781.

At that point, the Continental Congress will be dissolved and a new government of the United States in Congress Assembled will take its place on the following day, with Samuel Huntington as presiding officer.

Richard Henry Lee, in his Resolution on the 7th of June 1776 during the Second Continental Congress, puts forth the motion to declare Independence from Great Britain, which reads (in part):

    Resolved: That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.

Lee was born in Westmoreland County, Virginia to Col. Thomas Lee and Hannah Harrison Ludwell Lee on January 20, 1732.

He was raised and came from a line of military officers, diplomats, and legislators.

His father, Thomas Lee, was the governor of Virginia before his death in 1750.

Lee had spent most of his early life in Stratford, Virginia with his family at Stratford Hall.

Here he was tutored and taught in a variety of skills, and witnessed the very beginning of political career as his father sent him around to neighboring planters with the intention for Lee to become associated with neighboring men of like prominence.

In 1748, at sixteen, Lee had left Virginia for Yorkshire, England, to complete his formal education at Queen Elizabeth Grammar School, Wakefield.

Both of his parents died in 1750 and, in 1753, after touring Europe, he returned to Virginia to help his brothers settle the estate his parents had left behind.
 
Lee had been appointed justice of the peace in Westmoreland County in 1757.

In 1758 he had won election to the Virginia House of Burgesses, where he met Patrick Henry.

An early advocate of independence, Lee had been one of the first to create Committees of Correspondence among the many independence-minded Americans in the various colonies.

In 1766, almost ten years before the American Revolutionary War, Lee is credited with having authored the Westmoreland Resolution, which was publicly signed by prominent landowners who met at Leedstown, Westmoreland County, Virginia on February 27, 1766.

This resolution was signed by four brothers of George Washington as well as Gilbert Campbell.

In August 1774, Lee had been chosen as a delegate to the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia.

Lee had returned to Virginia by the time Congress voted on and adopted the Declaration of Independence, but he signed the document when he returned to Congress.

The Virginia Declaration of Rights is drafted in 1776 to proclaim the inherent rights of men, including the right to reform or abolish "inadequate" government.

The Declaration is adopted unanimously by the Fifth Virginia Convention at Williamsburg, Virginia on June 12, 1776, as a separate document from the Constitution of Virginia, which will later be adopted on June 29, 1776.

It will influence a number of later documents, including the United States Declaration of Independence (1776) and the United States Bill of Rights (1789).

Ten articles were initially drafted by George Mason circa May 20–26, 1776; three other articles were added in committee, seen in the original draft in the handwriting of Thomas Ludwell Lee, but the author is unknown.

James Madison later proposed liberalizing the article on religious freedom, but the larger Virginia Convention made further changes.

It was later amended by Committee and the entire Convention, including the addition of a section on the right to a uniform government (Section 14).

Patrick Henry persuades the Convention to delete a section that would have prohibited bills of attainder, arguing that ordinary laws could be ineffective against some terrifying offenders.

Edmund Pendleton proposed the line "when they enter into a state of society" which allows slave holders to support the declaration of universal rights which would be understood not to apply to slaves as they were not part of civil society.

Mason bases his initial draft on the rights of citizens described in earlier works such as the English Bill of Rights (1689), and the writings of John Locke.

The Declaration can be considered the first modern Constitutional protection of individual rights for citizens of North America.

It rejects the notion of privileged political classes or hereditary offices such as the members of Parliament and House of Lords described in the English Bill of Rights.

The Declaration consists of sixteen articles on the subject of which rights "pertain to [the people of Virginia]...as the basis and foundation of Government."

In addition to affirming the inherent nature of rights to life, liberty, property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety, the Declaration both describes a view of Government as the servant of the people, and enumerates its separation of powers into the administration, legislature, and judiciary.

Thus, the document is unusual in that it not only prescribes legal rights, but it also describes moral principles upon which a government should be run.

 

Many personal opinions have shifted by the time the debates and legislative maneuvering that goes into crafting the Bill of Rights amendments is done.

A number of Federalists have come out in support, thus silencing the Anti-Federalists' most effective critique.

Many Anti-Federalists, in contrast, are now opposed, realizing that Congressional approval of these amendments will greatly lessen the chances of a second constitutional convention.

Anti-Federalists such as Richard Henry Lee also argue that the Bill left the most objectionable portions of the Constitution, such as the federal judiciary and direct taxation, intact.

Madison will remain active in the progress of the amendments throughout the legislative process.