The effective leadership shown by the Virginia Whigs in the last week of May 1774 was not just the result of its economic and political eminence. It was also the outcome of the innovative networking they had conducted in the previous fifteen months. When the House of Burgesses established a new committee of correspondence and charged it with initiating a regular carrespondence with 12 other assemblies in British America, the House was seeking to accomplish several things. First, and most explicitly, they wished to develop a new institution--a standing committee of correspondence attached to each assembly--that would provide an "address" for essential communication during a political crisis that has become, over the previous eight years, a periodic aspect of the relationship with Britain. Secondly, as Richard Henry Lee's Feb 4, 1773 letter to Samuel Adams makes clear, Virginia wanted a channel outside of the unreliable newspapers for the sharing of important information, documents and joint deliberation. Finally, and more implicitly, Virginia, as the oldest, largest and richest of the American colonies, was asserting her prerogative to offer leadership to the other colonies.

The dates of the responses received by the Virginia committee demonstrate the promise and difficulty of this initiative. The quickest positive responses come first from New England, and then 2 out of 3 of the Southern colonies (South Carolina and Georgia). The assemblies of the middle Atlantic colonies were slowest to respond, and one, the Pennsylvania Assembly, led by Joseph Galloway, actually declined to appoint a committee. However, the general success of this Virginia initiative meant that by the spring of 1774, when it proved of great utility to American Whigs, a network for communication had been established.