While life was still moving easily and happily in Virginia, where in 1772 the theatrical season had been particularly brilliant, things were coming to a head in New England. News of the Bill closing the Port of Boston on the first of June, 1774, reached the Virginia Assembly during the spring session; how it was received had better be told in the words of Jefferson. As so often happens in history at the decisive turn of events, the leadership was taken by a very small group of men who made up their minds at once, assumed responsibility and changed the course of the ship of state. So far no strong protest had been made by Virginia to the British Government. Dunmore was far from being tyrannical; the order imposing duties on many English products had been largely rescinded, except on tea, but it may not be sacrilegious to state that the Virginia gentry were more partial to French wines, Madeira and Nantes rum than to the English national beverage. If Virginia had not declared at that particular time her solidarity, if Jefferson and his friends had not taken the right steps and found the right words to "arouse the people from the lethargy into which they had fallen", even New England steadfastness and stanchness of heart would have been unequal to the task. It was on this occasion, rather than on the Fourth of July, 1776, that the fate of the British colonies of America was decided. According to Jefferson's own statement, leadership in these subjects was no longer left to the old members of the Assembly, but Patrick Henry, R. H. Lee, F. L. Lee, three or four other members and he himself met in the library after agreeing that they must take "an unequivocal stand in the line with Massachusetts." They decided that the best means of calling the seriousness of the situation to the attention of the public was to appoint a day of general fasting and prayer, quite an unprecedented measure in Virginia; but they rummaged in old books "for revolutionary precedents and forms of the Puritans", and they finally "cooked up a resolution, somewhat modernizing their phrases, for appointing the 1st day of June on which the port-bill was to commence, for a day of fasting, humiliation, and prayer, to implore Heaven to avert from us the evils of civil war, to inspire us with firmness in support of our rights, and to turn the hearts of the King and Parliament to moderation and justice."[30] Clearly the day of fasting and prayer did not appear to any of the members of the unofficial committee as springing from a profound religious sentiment, but they knew how strong over the people was the power of the Church, and how impossible it was to unite them except by giving a religious appearance to a purely political manifestation. These young Virginia lawyers knew their people and were not totally unacquainted with mass psychology; they knew how to play the game of practical politics, despite their high and disinterested ideal.