Petition seeking Suffrage for All Taxpayers and Militiamen.

• imprint_number: 1815.069
• title: To the Legislature ... memorial ... citizens of [blank] county ...
• sequence_number: 69
• year: 1815
• place_issued: Virginia.
• issuing_press: Uncertain
• author: Citizens of Virginia.
• notes: Petitioners ask for a state convention to effect changes to the state constitution that would extend suffrage to anyone paying taxes or serving in the state militia; this petition was part of a flood of petitions delivered to this session from western Virginia that asked for changes in either statute law or the constitution to democratize suffrage and representation. The tidewater-dominated Assembly deferred consideration of all of those petitions, which led to an extralegal convention of the western counties in Staunton in August 1816 which passed resolutions demanding a constitutional convention to address these multiple grievances.
  Only known copy, held in the state archives at the Library of Virginia, lacks colophon; three such petitions were received by the Assembly on December 12, 1815, from Brooke, Ohio, and Rockingham counties; those localities suggest either a Wheeling or Harrisonburg origin; but the wider effort for a constitutional convention mean it could have issued just as easily at any press office west of the Blue Ridge, so the indeterminacy here.
  
  
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This version of the Index of Virginia Printing was a gift from the estate of the site's creator, David Rawson. The content contained herein will not be updated, as it is part of the Library of Virginia's personal papers collection. For more information, please see David Rawson Index of Virginia Printing website. Accession 53067. Personal papers collection, The Library of Virginia, Richmond, Virginia.