Washington [101]
This bald declaration shocked the assembled worthies into recognizing how little authority they wielded. They weren’t the ultimate source of power, which was doled out sparingly at the whim of the Crown. Once Lord Botetourt issued his decree, Washington and many other burgesses adjourned to the Apollo Room of the Raleigh Tavern to ponder “their distressed situation.”33 In this highly emotional gathering, Washington introduced the boycott scheme over which he and Mason had labored. The dissident members formed a committee, including Washington, that accepted the plan for a nonimportation association. The next morning the burgesses reconvened in the Apollo Room and affixed their signatures to the plan to boycott any British goods subject to taxes in America. For good measure, they threw in a lengthy list of untaxed goods to shun. This Virginia Association would remain in force until the Townshend Acts were repealed. Caught up in the giddy spirit of the moment, Washington purchased Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania to the Inhabitants of the British Colonies, an influential dissident pamphlet written by a wealthy Philadelphia lawyer, John Dickinson.
During this early period of discontent, Washington and his fellow burgesses danced a strange minuet with Lord Botetourt, alternating defiance with reconciliation. The day after signing the nonimportation agreement, Washington mentioned in his diary: “Dined again at Mrs. Dawson’s and went to the Queens birth night at the palace.”34 A proud, imposing building, the governor’s palace boasted marble floors and stacks of muskets mounted on black walnut walls; its ballroom glistened with portraits of the king and queen. That Washington and other burgesses would celebrate the queen’s birthday still seemed quite natural to them. As the Virginia Gazette commented, “The Governor gave a splendid ball and entertainment at the palace to a very numerous and polite company of ladies and gentlemen.”35 Nothing better illustrates the schizoid world of these unsettled legislators than the way they gravitated to the governor’s genteel ball despite the political passions smoldering underneath. Even among the most hypercritical burgesses, there existed as yet no sense of an irrevocable split from England.
In late July Washington seemed to rejoice at the chance to inform Robert Cary and Company that he was “determined to adhere religiously” to the new boycott agreement. In submitting an invoice of goods he wanted, Washington apprised his agents that nothing should be sent to him that appeared on the list of products taxed by Parliament “as I have heartily enter[e]d into an association” bound to boycott such goods.36 He welcomed the boycott as a chance to extend his far-reaching experiments in economic self-sufficiency at Mount Vernon. In the estimation of one observer, Washington “carried the scheme of manufacturing to a greater height than almost any man [in Virginia].”37
Washington remained a most unlikely revolutionary. When he was attending the burgesses that autumn, he, Martha, and her daughter, Patsy, traveled to Williamsburg in the glittering green coach, adorned with gilt-edged panels, that Washington had so painstakingly ordered from Robert Cary. The tone of this session was less confrontational than in the spring, and Lord Botetourt mollified members by supporting repeal of the Townshend duties, except for