Chinese philosophers considered perfection to be an ideal beyond the reach of human beings. In the practical world, this concept often found relevance with the makers of porcelain and pottery who would install what was termed a “fatal flaw” in a piece that they were making, thereby affirming its imperfection.
I thought of this practice as I watched the first episode of the masterful documentary, “The American Revolution,” by Ken Burns. In that segment of the series, the Leedstown Resolutions were not mentioned, although they were of pivotal importance in the resistance to the Stamp Act passed by the British Parliament in 1765 that required the purchase of a tax stamp to be affixed to all documents issued in the American Colonies.
Our colonial forebearers were enraged by this usurpation of their rights without their consent, the beginning of the protest sloganized as “taxation without representation.” Here in the Northern Neck that resentment crystalized in a meeting at Leedstown on the Rappahannock River in Westmoreland County in which a document was drawn up and approved by the parties present that has come down through history as The Leedstown Resolutions or the Leedstown Resolves.
Today, Leedstown is a small village on the south shore of the Rappahannock River, but in the 18th century it was a thriving port town with a ferry crossing the river, which remained in service until the construction of the Downing Bridge to Tappahannock in 1927. In 1766, local community leaders gathered there to voice their opposition to the Stamp Act.
The meeting resulted in the composition of a list of grievances decrying British colonial practices that the signatories considered to be in violation of their rights as free Englishmen. Whereas the British Parliament was seeking ways to raise funds to pay for the expenses of the recently concluded Seven Years War, known to the Colonies as the French and Indian War, those who gathered at Leedstown considered being required to pay a direct tax in the form of a stamp, which was required to be affixed on all legal documents, publications and printed matter, to be unlawful inasmuch as they had not been allowed to vote on its imposition.
The document also is known as the Westmoreland Association or the Northern Neck Declaration. Drafted by Richard Henry Lee, 10 years prior to his introduction of the motion in the Continental Congress to declare the Colonies independent from Britain, the Resolutions document contains six clauses that explain in detail the colonists’ objection to and resentment towards the Stamp Act.
The document that came out of the Leedstown meeting was one of the earliest formal protests against the manner in which Parliament was treating the colonies. The movement exerted such force that Parliament repealed the Stamp Act on March 18, 1766, but only to replace it with other means of revenue-gathering legislation known as the Townshend Acts and subsequent legislation that the colonists termed the Intolerable Acts.
Given the slower means of communication in the 18th century, Parliament might not have known of the Leedstown Resolutions that had predated the repeal by 19 days. But the Resolutions set the tone for the subsequent course of history.
The Townshend Acts were the brainchild of Charles Townshend, the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, who put forth a plan to tax imports that the colonists were buying from the Mother Country in the form of glass, pint, paper, lead and tea. These measures met with equal resistance on the part of the colonists, leading to several of them being repealed.
The tax on tea was not repealed, which led to the Boston Tea Party, followed by the imposition of the Intolerable Acts in 1774. Soon thereafter, the Battles of Lexington, Concord and Bunker Hill followed, and the Revolutionary War was underway.
Reading the document drafted at Leedstown in 1766 in 21st-century America, the names of the signatories remain familiar to residents of the Northern Neck in that numerous of their descendants continue to live here and work the land of our counties. In large measure, their ancestors began the American Revolution. Omitting their role in the Ken Burns’ series, is the “Chinese flaw” in an otherwise splendid presentation that every American should see.
