Furious at the Tea Party, the King punished Boston.
He approved the Boston Port Act, MARCH 7, 1774, effectively closing their harbor to all commerce and ruining their economy.
Surrounding towns rallied by sending food.
William Prescott, who later commanded at Bunker Hill, wrote:
“If we submit to these regulations, all is gone…
Our forefathers passed the vast Atlantic, spent their blood and treasure, that they might enjoy their liberties, both civil and religious, and transmit them to their posterity…
Now if we should give them up, can our children rise up and call us blessed?”
Upon hearing of the Boston Port Act, Thomas Jefferson drafted a Day of Fasting & Prayer resolution, to be observed the same day the blockade was to commence.
It was introduced in the Virginia House of Burgesses by Robert Carter Nicholas, May 24, 1774.
Supported by Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee and George Mason, it passed unanimously:
“This House, being deeply impressed with apprehension…from the hostile invasion of the city of Boston in our Sister Colony of Massachusetts Bay, whose commerce and harbor are, on the first day of June next, to be stopped by an armed force,
deem it highly necessary that the said first day of June be set apart, by the members of this House, as a Day of Fasting, Humiliation and Prayer, devoutly to implore the Divine interposition, for averting the heavy calamity which threatens destruction to our civil rights…
Ordered, therefore that the Members of this House do attend…with the Speaker, and the mace, to the Church in this City, for the purposes aforesaid; and that the Reverend Mr. Price be appointed to read prayers, and the Reverend Mr. Gwatkin, to preach a sermon.”
On the appointed Day of Fasting, June 1, 1774, George Washington wrote in his diary:
The King’s appointed Royal Governor, Lord Dunmore, was so upset by this Day of Fasting & Prayer resolution that two days later he dissolved Virginia’s House of Burgesses.
Less than two years after that, the Continental Congress voted for independence from the King.
