To the south and north of Virginia, counsels were divided. Those who led against the government in North Carolina had good reason to doubt whether they had even a bare majority of the people of their colony at their back. Every country-side in South Carolina, for all Charleston was as hot as Boston against the ministers, was full of warm, aggressive, outspoken supporters of the King’s prerogative. The rural districts of Pennsylvania, every one knew, were peopled with quiet Quakers whose very religion bade them offer no resistance even to oppressive power, and of phlegmatic Germans who cared a vast deal for peace but very little for noisy principles that brought mischief. Many a wealthy and fashionable family of Philadelphia, moreover, was much too comfortable and much too pleasantly connected with influential people on the other side of the water to relish thoughts of breach or rebellion. Virginians, it might have seemed, were themselves remote enough from the trouble which had arisen in Massachusetts to keep them in the cool air of those who wait and will not lead. But they were more in accord than the men of Massachusetts itself, and as quick to act. By the close of June, 1775, Charles Lee could write from Williamsburg, “Never was such vigor and concord heard of, not a single traitor, scarcely a silent dissentient.” As the men of the several counties armed themselves, as if by a common impulse, all turned as of course to Colonel Washington, of Fairfax, as their natural commander; and no one in Virginia was surprised to learn his response. “It is my full intention,” he said, “to devote my life and fortune to the cause we are engaged in.” On the 20th of March, 1775, the second revolutionary convention of Virginia met at Richmond, not at Williamsburg; and in it Mr. Henry made his individual declaration of war against Great Britain. Older and more prudent men protested against his words; but they served on the committee on the military organization of the colony for which his resolutions called, and Virginia was made ready.