January 16, 2025
The 200th anniversary of the Fincastle Resolutions, adopted on January 20, 1775, was celebrated with a dramatic reading, re-enactments in period clothing, and patriotic music, as illustrated by the photographs below from the January 20, 1975 issue of Southwest Times, published in Pulaski. Fifty years later, the 250th anniversary of the Fincastle Resolutions will be celebrated in 2025 with a dramatic reading, re-enactments in period clothing, and patriotic music.
The consistency in these celebrations is suggestive of the durable meaning attached to this moment in the early stages of the American Revolution. These resolutions, signed by fifteen men of position and privilege, declared their determination not to “surrender” the rights and privileges they claimed as Virginians. The commemorations in 1975 and 2025 both celebrate this document as an important step towards the American revolution.
As we approach the semiquincentennial celebrations in the coming years, it is always important to ask “freedom for whom?” The Fincastle Resolutions asked for freedom from the authority of the English king and parliament, and their representatives in the colonies. Yet the freedom these men sought was, to a great extent, freedom to act more aggressively in removing Native Americans from the western frontiers. Freedom for white men definitely did not mean freedom for Native Americans. In addition, the freedom sought by these men was also the freedom to own slaves. William Preston, one of the signatories of the Fincastle Resolutions, purchased sixteen enslaved Africans in 1759 and brought them to western Virginia to work on his plantations. Over the next century, more than two hundred enslaved men, women, and children worked on the Smithfield Plantation founded by Preston and owned by his descendents. The dualities inherent in the revolutionary era — freedom for a few did not mean freedom for all — is an important theme of the episodes in this podcast.
Cyclists along Route 76 pass within a few miles of the monument to the Fincastle Resolutions, located in the community now called Austinville. The monument is about ten miles south of Fort Chiswell. Cyclists seeking a scenic route may choose to ride along the New River Trail which brings riders close to the monument.
Leave a Reply