The Intolerable Acts P2

Last week I ended in talking about the British cutting off all supplies to America’s busiest sea ports, Boston’s Committees of Correspondence informing the other colonies what was happening, food being supplied from across the country and a day of fasting and prayer.

Virginia joined Massachusetts, in calling a day of prayer. Thomas Jefferson was among those who penned Virginia’s state prayer resolve, which called on the legislature and the people “to implore the Divine Interposition…to give us one heart and one mind firmly to oppose, by all just and proper means, every injury to American rights. On the designated day; The members of the Virginia House of Burgesses assembled at their place of meeting and went in procession—with the speaker at their head—to the church and listened to a discourse (or sermon).

“Never,” a lady wrote, “since my residence in Virginia have I seen so large a congregation as was this day assembled to hear Divine service.” The preacher selected his text the words: ‘Be strong and of good courage, fear not, nor be afraid of them; for the Lord thy God, He it is that doth go with thee. He will not fail thee nor forsake thee (Deuteronomy 31:6).” “The people,” Jefferson says, “met generally with anxiety and alarm in their countenances (their faces), and the effect of the day through the whole colony was like a shock of electricity, arousing every man and placing him erect and solidly on his center.” These words described the effect of the Port Act throughout the 13 colonies.

Content Sourced From The American Story: The Beginnings by David Barton and Tim Barton.