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This is another of the critically important community documents which predate the Declaration of Independence of 4 July 1776. Ideas of liberty were not born in Philadelphia that summer, but had been carried across the Atlantic for generations before.
Botetourt County is in the mountains of Virginia, south of Staunton, in the Shenandoah Valley - nearby was an area named the Irish Tract due to the overwhelmingly Ulster-Scots / Scotch-Irish settlement of the region. Among them were Limavady-born William Preston, and Donegal-born James Patton and William Thompson. Lots more about them in this article from the Journal of Backcountry Studies.
Like every other set of similar Resolutions in 1774 & 1775, these express loyalty to the King, assert the entitled liberties of being subjects of the Crown, and mobilise absolute opposition to the actions of the London Parliament which had eroded, withdrawn and threatened those same liberties.
Usually, these events are presented to us as merely being competing nationalities. That's primary school thinking. The true value of nationality is as a mechanism for liberty.
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To the Honourable PEYTON RANDOLPH, RICHARD BLAND, EDMUND PENDLETON, RICHARD HENRY LEE, PATRICK HENRY, GEORGE WASHINGTON, and BENJAMIN HARRISON, Esquires, Delegates from Virginia to the late General Congress.
The Address of the Freeholders and Inhabitants of the County of BOTETOURT.
We, the Freeholders and Inhabitants of the County of Botetourt, assembled at the Court House, taking into our consideration the unhappy disputes which at present subsist between Great Britain and America, and being greatly alarmed at the dangerous and unconstitutional measures adopted by Administration, with respect to the Colonies, beg leave now to address you as the guardians of our rights and privileges.
Please, therefore, to accept our most sincere and grateful acknowledgments for your steady and patriotick conduct in the support of American Liberty, at the late General Congress. And we assure you, that although the alarming situation of our frontiers, for some time past, hath prevented our co-operating with our fellow-subjects, in their laudable efforts to obtain redress of our common grievances, we highly approve of the plan you have adopted for that purpose, and shall most cheerfully abide by your resolutions.
As you have so fully and clearly ascertained the Rights and Liberties of American subjects, we have nothing to add on that head. We are happy to find our sentiments entirely correspond with yours; because, in these sentiments, we are determined to live and die. We are too sensible of the inestimable privileges enjoyed by subjects under the British Constitution, even to wish for a change, while the free enjoyments of those blessings can be secured to us; but, on the contrary, can justly boast of our loyalty and affection to our most gracious Sovereign, and of our readiness in risking our lives, whenever it has been found necessary, for the defence of his person and Government.
But should a wicked and tyrannical Ministry, under the sanction of a venal and corrupt Parliament, persist in acts of injustice and violence towards us, they only must be answerable for the consequences. Liberty is so strongly impressed on our hearts, that we cannot think of parting with it but with our lives.
Our duty to God, our country, ourselves, and our posterity, all forbid it. We therefore stand prepared for every contingency.
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