May 24, 1774

Virginia Burgesses Protest Boston Port Bill with Day of Fasting and Prayer

News of the first of the Coercive Acts having reached Williamsburg, the House of Burgesses adopts an idea "cooked up" by Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, and Richard Henry Lee to order June 1 (the day Boston's port was to be closed) as "a day of Fasting, Humiliation, and Prayer" for the burgesses "devoutly to implore the divine interposition, for averting the heavy Calamity which threatens destruction to our Civil Rights, and the Evils of civil War." Upon learning of the measure two days later, Virginia's governor dissolves the assembly.