Inalienable Rights

Inalienable Rights. Fredericksburg: Timeless..

"After passing through a small town called Falmouth at the Falls of the Rappahannock, we crossed in a Ferry boat and arrived at Fredericksburg, putting up at an In[n] or Public House kept by one Weedon, who is now a General Officer in the American Army, and was then very active and zealous in blowing the flames of Sedition." , , An Englishman who visited Fredericksburg in 1774

, Three months after the Continental Congress declared independence from Britain, the Virginia Assembly held its first session, in Williamsburg, on October 7, 1776. The revolutionary government appointed Thomas Jefferson and four other delegates to a Committee of Law Revisors, asking them to rewrite Virginia's Colonial laws to reflect the principles of the new government. Over the next few years, the committee would present 126 statutes to the Assembly for adoption., In January 1777, the committee began its work at Weedon's Tavern (on the opposite side of this intersection). The tavern owner, George Weedon, had long been an ardent supporter of American independence and was then in New Jersey commanding Virginia troops in George Washington's Continental Army. The American forces included large numbers of African American soldiers. Many of them would receive their freedom after the war, even as slavery expanded in the South., [Captions:] , Thomas Jefferson wrote: "The equal rights of man, and the happiness of every individual, are now acknowledged to be the only legitimate objects of government." Virginia's law revisors crafted laws that emphasized the rights of citizens, while excluding slaves as outside of civil society., George Mason was a strong proponent of state and individual rights and joined the initial discussions of Jefferson's revolutionary committee. Both men where intellectually astute, but decidedly unable to recognize the human rights of their respective slaves., The U.S. Constitution reflected the political concepts of a republic, but compromised on the issue of slavery. By the mid nineteenth century, the unresolved matter of human bondage had evolved into a constitutional crisis.