GW dined at Patrick Coutts’s home. Coutts was a Richmond merchant living on Shockoe Hill. GW stayed another night at tavern owner Gabriel Galts’ home.  At the Second Va. Convention, Patrick Henry gave his famous “give me liberty or give me death” speech, and the convention voted on Henry’s proposal to put the colony into “a posture of Defence.” The resolution passed by a close vote. The convention appointed GW to a committee to “prepare a plan for embodying, arming and disciplining” the armed force as its last order of business for the day.

Valentine Crawford, who had helped GW obtain his western lands, had arrived at Mount Vernon on 17 March, but GW had already left for Richmond. He wrote GW a letter apologizing that he had not finished transacting GW’s business and promising that he would help James Cleveland, who had been hired to develop GW’s western lands.