It should be remembered that this was never a total war. Independence simply demanded that Washington, the Continental Congress, and the states keep an army in the field and a fleet on the seas until the British accepted the fact that they could not defeat the Americans or until they decided victory was not worth the cost. Whenever the call came, Virginians poured forth in sufficient numbers and with sufficient supplies in the crucial days of 1777-1778 and 1780-1781 to prevent defeat. And in 1781 they were there in enough numbers to insure victory at Yorktown.



Part V:

The War for Independence

[Sidenote: "He has abdicated government here...."]

Virginia's participation in the Revolutionary War military operations developed in seven stages: (1) the initial conflict with Lord Dunmore in the Norfolk and Chesapeake areas in 1775-1776; (2) the thousands of Virginians who joined the Continental Army and campaigned throughout the country; (3) the bloody Cherokee war in the southwest from 1775-1782; (4) George Rogers Clark's audacious and spectacular victory in the Northwest; (5) the British invasion and ravaging of Virginia throughout 1780-1781; (6) the southern campaigns of Generals Gates and Greene in 1780 and 1781; and (7) the final victory at Yorktown in the fall of 1781.[41]

[41] The best general survey of the war is by John Alden, A History of the American Revolution (Knopf: New York, 1969). The best detailed account is by Christopher Ward, The War of the Revolution, 2 volumes. (MacMillan: New York, 1952). Both have been utilized in this section.

Virginians and the Continental Army, 1775-1779

The decision to make George Washington commander-in-chief of the Continental armies was undoubtedly a political act meant to bind the southern colonies to the war and to blunt charges that this was a New England revolution. Seldom has a political decision borne greater positive benefits. Washington is an enigma and he always will remain so to his countrymen. His greatness as a man and as a commander are difficult to fathom. The contradictions are best summarized by military historian John Alden:

Faults have been, and can be, found in Washington as commander. He did not have the advantages of a good military education. He did not know, and he never quite learned, how to discipline and to drill his men. He was not a consistently brilliant strategist or tactician.... (Often) he secured advantage ... by avoiding battle. Actually he was quite willing to fight when the odds were not too heavily against him. He retreated only when he was compelled to do so, during the campaigns of 1776 and 1777.... On occasion he was perhaps too venturesome. His generalship improved as the war continued. However, his defeats in the field were more numerous than his victories; and he had to share the laurels of his great triumph at Yorktown, with the French. If Washington had his shortcomings as a tactician, he nevertheless performed superbly under the most difficult conditions. He gave dignity, steadfast loyalty, and indomitable courage to the American cause.... Indeed Congress supplied historians with convincing evidence of Washington's greatness. It not only appointed him as commander in chief, but maintained him in that post year after year, in victory and defeat, in prosperity and adversity, until the war was won.[42]

[42] Alden, American Revolution, 183-184.

At first Congress was not certain Washington could command and eagerly sought European officers for field command positions. Charles Lee and Horatio Gates, two of the four major-generals appointed to serve under Washington, were residents of Virginia. Both were English army officers who had left the British army, settled in Berkeley County, and become ardent advocates of the colonials' cause. Lee, the well-bred son of English gentry had served under Braddock in the ill-fated Fort Duquesne expedition of 1756, was later wounded, left the army after the war, and became interested in western land schemes. He came to Virginia in 1775 after a stint as a general in the Polish army. Lee was courageous, ambitious, and vain. He could command when necessary, but had difficulty following Washington's orders. Given credit for stopping the British attack on Charleston, South Carolina, in June 1776, he came back north and was captured in New Jersey in December 1776. Exchanged by the British, he resumed command in 1778. However, his scandalous behavior at Monmouth in June 1778 resulted in his court martial. He was finally dismissed from the service by Congress in 1780.

Gates was the son of an English servant. Somehow he received a regular army commission, serving in the colonies during the French and Indian War. He resigned as a major in 1772 and moved to Virginia. Whereas Lee was haughty, Gates was pleasant and amiable. He also was ambitious and constantly sought military commands whose demands exceeded his talents. Commander of the northern army which won the great victory at Saratoga in 1777, Gates was willing to take over as commander in chief in the dark days of 1777-1778, but his friends in Congress could not displace Washington. Over Washington's recommendation, Congress elected him commander of the southern armies in 1780. He left that command after the blundering defeat at Camden, South Carolina, in August 1780. Gates retired to Virginia where he lived to an old age, much honored as an Englishman who loyally supported independence.

The English generals from Virginia did not give Washington his eventual victories, however. His command strength came from Virginians who learned by experience, were devoted to the Revolutionary cause, and were loyal to the general. They were with the Continental Army in its darkest days at Morristown in the winter of 1776-1777 and Valley Forge in 1777-1778. These included Colonel Theodorick Bland and his cavalry who fought at Brandywine in 1777 and Charleston in 1780; General William Woodford, the victor at Great Bridge, who commanded Virginia Continentals fighting at Brandywine and Germantown in 1777, and Monmouth in 1778, was captured at Charleston in 1780 and died in a New York prison that December; Colonel William Washington and his cavalry who fought in nearly all the battles in southern campaigns; Colonel Peter Muhlenberg, who raised the German Regiment from the Valley and Piedmont around his Woodstock home and commanded them with distinction at Brandywine, Germantown, Monmouth, and Stony Point, and later led Virginia militia against Cornwallis in 1781; and the gallant Colonel Edward Porterfield, who died with many of his troops, called "Porterfield's Virginians" at Camden.

There also was a distinguished group of young men like John Marshall, James Monroe, and Henry "Light Horse Harry" Lee who achieved distinction and displayed loyalty to the national cause which they never surrendered. The percentage of Virginians who fought in the Continental Army and who supported the stronger national government of the Federal Constitution was high. These were men who experienced and remembered the embarrassments and inadequacies of a weak national government during the Revolution. They did not want to see the experience repeated.

Perhaps the best Virginia field general and the prototype of the inventive, untrained American general was Daniel Morgan. A wagon master from Frederick County, Morgan had fought in the French and Indian War. He raised the first unit of Virginia Continentals, a company of Valley riflemen, and took them to Boston in 1775. He and his men fought brilliantly in the near victory of General Richard Montgomery at Quebec on Christmas 1775. Captured along with the equally bold Benedict Arnold, Morgan was exchanged. Developing effectively the Virginia riflemen into mobile light infantry units and merging frontier tactics with formal warfare, Morgan showed a real flare for commanding small units of men. His greatest moments were at Saratoga in 1777 and later in his total victory over Colonel Banastre Tarleton at Cowpens, South Carolina in 1781. The wagon master progressed steadily from captain to colonel, to general, and became one of the genuine heroes of the Revolution.

The total number of Virginians who fought in the Continental Army is difficult to determine. Records were poor, lengthy service infrequent, and troop strength constantly overestimated. There were possibly 25,000 Virginians in the Continental Army at one time or another, although the number in the field at any one time was much smaller. Another 30,000 to 35,000 might have joined the Virginia militia. In an era when European armies went into winter quarters and did not fight at all, the unorthodox Continental Army won some of its greatest victories in the dead of winter, yet it too tended to suffer from winter desertions and unauthorized leaves. Still the shriveled army always seemed to revive in the spring as the men returned to the ranks.

Troops, even continental units, tended to serve near home. Northern troops were rarely found in the deep southern colonies and vice versa. Yet Virginians, because of their proximity to all fighting zones, fought from Quebec to Charleston, contributing heavily to the units fighting to hold the middle states in 1777 and 1778 and the Carolinas in 1780 and 1781.

The Indian Wars

The Revolution reopened the long series of Indian wars along the western frontiers. Encouraged and financed by the same British agents who had once acted in behalf of the former colonists, the Cherokees and Shawnees, particularly, seized upon the unsettled conditions to strike back at the steadily advancing waves of settlers moving southwestward along the Clinch, Holston, French Broad, and Watauga Rivers. Throughout 1775 and 1776 Virginian, North Carolinian, and Georgian frontiersmen fought the Cherokee in a series of bloody battles. The culminating attack by 2,000 riflemen under Colonel William Christian destroyed the major Cherokee villages and compelled the Cherokees to sign "humiliating" treaties with the southern states in 1777. The determined Cherokee chieftain, Dragging Canoe, moved westward, regrouped his warriors at Chickamauga, and launched another series of frontier raids. North Carolina and Virginia riflemen under Colonel Evan Shelby in 1779 and Colonel Arthur Campbell in 1781 battled the undaunted Cherokees. Finally, in 1782, the Indians yielded their territory to the frontiersmen. Little noticed, this series of battles involved a high percentage of the western Virginians in nearly constant battle readiness.

George Rogers Clark and the Winning of the West

In the Kentucky, Ohio, and Illinois country the Revolution was a continuation of the long series of bloody battles, ambushes, and deceptions which the Indians and whites had been perpetrating against each other since the settlers had pushed over the mountains in the early 1770's. The British had merely replaced the French as the European ally of the Indians. The principal opponents were the tough, well-organized Shawnees who had been the main targets of Dunmore and Colonel Andrew Lewis during Dunmore's War in 1774. The Shawnees were joined by the Miami, Delaware, and Ottawa Indians. These Ohio Indians needed little encouragement from Lieutenant Colonel Henry Hamilton, the British commander at Fort Detroit. Amply supplied with munitions, guns, and money for patriot scalps received from Hamilton, known among the frontiersmen as the "Hair Buyer", these Indians swarmed across the Ohio River in 1775, 1776, and 1777. No quarter was asked by either side; none was given. Conditions became especially critical in 1777 when the Indians were angered and embittered by the foolish and senseless murder of Cornstalk, the captured chief of the Shawnees.

Complicating any military solution to the western fighting were the old rivalries among the states for control of the western lands. Virginia had to establish county government in Kentucky in order to head off North Carolinian Richard Henderson's bid for that region in 1776. Pennsylvanians and Virginians still quarrelled over Pittsburgh and the Upper Ohio. Aid from the Continental Congress was obstructed by the claims of at least four states to Ohio and the jealousy of the landless states toward the landed states.

Then in 1777 a 23 year-old Virginian, George Rogers Clark, found the solution. Virginia should go it alone, raise and equip a small army of riflemen, and in a lightening move take the Indiana and Illinois region from the British. Clark reasoned that the British were trying to hold a vast tract of land with a few troops, a handful of Tories, and the Indians. The British posts at Kaskaskia, on the Mississippi, and Vincennes, on the Wabash, were former French forts manned by men with no allegiance to Britain. Clark's enthusiasm convinced Governor Henry and the Council of State that victory was possible if the operation was conducted secretly. Support from George Mason, Thomas Jefferson, and George Wythe was solicited and gained. The assembly, without knowing the purpose for the authorization, gave Clark permission to raise troops and released the needed gunpowder.

In June 1778 Clark with 175 riflemen, far short of his hoped-for complement, set out from the Falls of the Ohio (Louisville). The small number can be attributed to the fact that the men, like the assembly, had to sign-on without knowing their destiny. A few slipped away after they learned Clark's true plans. Those who stayed were dedicated warriors. On July 4, after floating down the Ohio, Clark's men appeared outside Kaskaskia. The fort surrendered without a shot being fired. As Clark suspected, the French inhabitants welcomed the Americans. On July 6 another former French town, Cahokia, 60 miles northward, capitulated. And on July 14 Frenchmen from Kaskaskia persuaded their fellow countrymen at Fort Sackville in Vincennes to surrender. On August 1 Clark occupied the fort.

Clark's plan had worked to perfection. But he was now faced with the same problem which had enabled him to seize the region—he could not hold three forts scattered over several hundred miles (Vincennes is 180 miles east of Kaskaskia). Therefore, when Governor Hamilton moved south from Detroit in December with his own make-shift army, Clark's men had to abandon Vincennes and flee west to Kaskaskia. All seemed lost.

Again the refusal of the Americans to follow European military conventions paid off. Clark, ignoring the tradition to go into winter quarters took Vincennes in the dead of winter with less than 130 men, many of them French. It was the most remarkable single military feat of the Revolution. Only men who had lived in the frontier wilderness could have endured the march. Despite wading waist-deep through flooding rivers and swamps in freezing February snowstorms, going days without warm food, poorly clothed, and carrying only the minimum supply of gunpowder and shot, Clark and his men reached Vincennes determined to fight. Learning that he had arrived undetected by the British, Clark ordered great bonfires lit, both to warm his frozen men and to deceive Hamilton. Watching dancing shadows of seemingly countless men whooping and shouting in front of the fires, Hamilton concluded he was hopelessly outnumbered. The next morning, February 24, 1779, the bold Clark demanded Hamilton's surrender. At first the governor refused, but a series of well placed rifle shots took the fight out of the defenders. Then Clark ordered several Indians, caught in the act of taking scalps into the fort, tomahawked in full view of the fort. Hamilton agreed to surrender. Clark sent Hamilton under heavy guard to Virginia, passing through the Kentucky settlements his Indians had harassed. Ignoring protests from the British, Governor Jefferson refused to exchange Hamilton, keeping him in irons in the Williamsburg jail until November 1780 when the prisoner finally agreed to sign a parole not to fight against the Americans or to go among the Indians.[43] Clark was treated shamefully by the Virginia Assembly after the war and was never fully reimbursed for his personal expenses in the west.

[43] For a dramatic, but not inaccurate, account of the expedition and Clark, read John Bakeless, Background to Glory: The Story of George Rogers Clark (Lippincott: Philadelphia, 1957.)

For Clark the capture of Vincennes was to be a prelude to taking Detroit. In both 1779 and 1780 he planned marches to the center of British western power. Neither time could he bring off a coordinated attack. The frontier was under too heavy pressure from the Ohio Indians led by Tory Henry Bird and the infamous renegade, Simon Girty. Instead, Clark concentrated on Indians closer to Kentucky. In August 1780 with 1,000 riflemen he destroyed the principal Shawnee towns of Chillocothe and Piqua, but could not break the Shawnee strength. The invasion of eastern Virginia in 1781 ended hopes for the Detroit project, drew men from the west, and opened the way for the Ohio Indians to go on the offensive. Bitter fighting continued in the west after Yorktown. Clark's troops finally broke the Shawnees in November 1782 when they again leveled Chillocothe and Piqua. Hostilities and the British presence in the Northwest Territory remained a contentious issue until after the War of 1812.

The War and Eastern Virginia, 1776-1779

Initial British war strategy did not call for a direct attack on the Chesapeake states. They were too hard to hold once conquered. There were no towns to occupy, no natural defense positions, too many rivers to cross, too little to be gained in comparison to New York, Philadelphia, or Charleston. Furthermore, there was no sizeable loyalist population to rise up and assist the British as in the Carolinas and the middle states.

The war effort was men, material, and money. Under Governor Henry the executive branch functioned reasonably well. There were no emergencies, no need for quick decisions which only the executive can make, and little sapping of morale which a long, inconclusive war can bring. Still, Henry recognized the restrictions placed on the governor, whom he called a "mere phantom". Fortunately for him, he left office in June 1779 before the inherent weakness of the executive branch became apparent. Jefferson was not to be so fortunate. From time to time in the administrations of Henry, Jefferson, and Thomas Nelson, Jr., persons talked of making the governor a "dictator" (in the Roman use of this word, not the modern connotation). These were mostly speculative discussions, not serious attempts to change the government. Only in the dire crises of Summer 1781 was it even a remote possibility.

The most direct threat to Virginia in these early years was on the seas. To meet that threat Virginia established a state navy in 1776. Eventually the Virginia navy had "72 vessels of all classes, including many ships, brigs, and schooners; but apparently most of them were small, poorly manned, and lightly armed; and were used largely for commerce."[44] Never intended to meet the British fleet in combat, the Virginia navy did succeed in establishing regular patrols, clearing the Bay of privateers, and protecting merchantmen trading in the West Indies.

[44] Gardner W. Allen, A Naval of the American Revolution, 2 volumes (Boston, 1913), I, 40-41.

By January 1779 the British army came into Piedmont Virginia in a totally unexpected manner. Congress declared the "convention" (treaty of surrender) by which Burgoyne had surrendered his troops at Saratoga to be faulty and ordered some 4,000 Hessian and British soldiers imprisoned in Albemarle County. Settled along Ivy Creek, the prisoners, mostly Germans, lived in hastily built huts generously called "The Barracks". Several of their chief officers, among them Baron de Riedesel and General William Phillips, lived in comfort and close contact with their near neighbor, Governor Jefferson. Phillips was shortly exchanged and went to New York. The conditions under which the troops lived steadily deteriorated, although the prisoners were so inadequately guarded that hundreds walked away. In November 1780 Governor Jefferson concluded that the convention troops should be moved from Virginia to get them away from invading British troops. The British troops moved first toward Frederick, Maryland, with the Hessians following. Again many of the prisoners drifted off into the forests never reaching Frederick.

Black Virginians in the Revolution

One particularly difficult question for the government was whether to utilize the black population in the military. Only a few thousand of the nearly 230,000 black residents were free men. The remainder were slaves. There was a constant fear that arming free blacks would incite their slave brethren to revolt. This fear was strongest in 1775-1776 when Dunmore had encouraged slaves to flee their masters and join his troops. Although Dunmore's black troops numbered only several hundred nearly 10,000 slaves fled Virginia during the war. Most did not better their lot, ending up as slaves in the West Indies. Many did get to Nova Scotia where they lived as free men in the large loyalist colony there. Others settled in the British West African colony of Sierra Leone.

Negro troops were present at Lexington, Concord, Bunker Hill, and in the ranks of Washington's first Continentals. Quickly, however, under pressure from southern colonies, notably South Carolina, Congress adopted a policy of excluding blacks from further enlistment in the Continental Army. Although most states excluded slaves from service, they did not exclude free blacks from enlisting in the militia. Virginia allowed free blacks to enlist after July 1775. This enticed slaves to run away and enlist as free blacks, a practice the assembly tried to halt by requiring all black enlistees to have certificates of freedom. Then an odd reversal occurred after 1779 when the state began to conscript white males into the militia. Taking advantage of the provision in the draft law allowing draftees to send substitutes, some slave owners offered their slaves as substitutes. This was as far as the enlistment of slaves went. James Madison proposed in 1780 that the state purchase slaves, free them, and make them soldiers. The legislature rejected the plan. On the other hand, the state did buy some slaves to work in shipyards, on shipboard, and in state-run factories.[45]

[45] For a fuller discussion of black Virginians in the Revolution, see Luther P. Jackson, Virginia Negro Soldiers and Sailors in the Revolutionary War (Norfolk, 1944), and Benjamin Quarles, The Negro in the American Revolution (University of North Carolina Press: Chapel Hill, 1961).

The actual number of black Virginians in the service is unknown. Historians Luther Jackson and Benjamin Quarles suggest there were several hundred in the army and at least 140 in the small Virginia navy. Usually these men were orderlies, drummers, and support troops. In the navy they frequently served as river pilots. There were exceptions like freeman John Banks of Goochland, who fought as a cavalryman under Colonel Bland for two years, the well-known spy James Lafayette, who performed invaluable work for Lafayette in the closing days of the war, or John de Baptist, a sailor who served with distinction on the Dragon.

Peace did not bring freedom for the slaves in the services. The state-owned slaves were resold. Free men who had enlisted in the service were entitled to and did receive enlistment and pay bounties due all soldiers. Slaves whose masters had offered them as substitutes had a more difficult time. Some slave owners tried to reclaim them as slaves even though the Virginia law explicitly permitted the enlistment only of free men. Fortunately, Governor Benjamin Harrison was enraged by this duplicity at what he called a repudiation of the "common principles of justice and humanity" and prevailed upon the legislature "to pass an act giving to these unhappy creatures that liberty which they have been in some measure instrumental in securing for us."

Nevertheless, although white Virginians recognized the contradiction between that liberty which they enjoyed and the slavery which existed around them, they did not see a means whereby the ideal that all men were created equal could become a practical reality. Unlike later generations, however, the Revolutionary generation made no attempt to justify slavery or to accept its extension. In 1778 Virginia became the first state to prohibit the importation of slaves, and in 1782 passed a liberal manumission law permitting masters to free their slaves without special legislative act. Many took advantage of this law. Virginia also determined that there should be no slavery in the western lands ceded to the federal government. Jefferson saw to it that a prohibition against slavery was written into the federal Land Ordinance of 1784 and the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. Yet, what was earlier noted bears repeating—the principles set forth in the Declaration of Independence were the beginning of a great governmental experiment, not the finished product.

The British Move South, 1780-1781

The British shifted their armies southward in 1779, hoping to cut off the lower southern states, break the morale of the rest of America, and force a negotiated peace. Their principal hopes rested on exploiting loyalist strength in the fiercely divided Carolinas where much of the fighting since 1775 had been colonial against colonial, patriot against Tory. In early 1780 General Henry Clinton sailed from New York with 8,000 troops, outmaneuvered General Benjamin Lincoln, and captured Charleston. The defeat was a severe blow to the Americans costing them their chief southern seaport, several thousand Continentals and militiamen from the Carolinas and Virginia, and Generals Lincoln and William Woodford.

Clinton sailed back to New York, leaving his troops with Lord Cornwallis. The most daring of the British generals, Cornwallis decided to leave Charleston and invade the Carolinas. With excellent support from Colonel Banastre Tarleton, Lord Rawdon, and Major Patrick Ferguson he swept all before him. Tarleton, the best cavalry officer in either army, and Ferguson led partisan loyalist units. Tarleton's troopers, known as the British Tory Legion, needed no introduction to Virginians. They had slaughtered without quarter unarmed Virginians under Colonel Abraham Buford in May 1780 at the Waxhaws, south of Charlotte, North Carolina. From then on he was known as "Bloody Tarleton".

Congress elected Horatio Gates to replace Lincoln in the southern command. Gates hurried south with several thousand Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina militiamen and Continental troops. Stumbling into Cornwallis' army at Camden, South Carolina, he planned and executed a faulty battle plan. Cornwallis executed perfectly and completely routed Gates. For the only time in the war Virginia militiamen behaved badly, fled the field, and were a major contributing factor to the disaster. Not only did Gates lose 600 men, many of them battle-hardened Continentals, he lost two outstanding officers, General Jean de Kalb, the tough German officer, and Colonel Edward Porterfield from Virginia. Facing almost sure defeat in the Carolinas, Congress replaced Gates with Nathaniel Greene of Rhode Island, taking care not to embarrass the Englishman who had given so much to Patriot cause.

Greene turned out to be the man to baffle Cornwallis. With a constantly underequipped and often inadequate army he managed to keep Cornwallis at bay. He was moved by one desire—to force Cornwallis into costly battles, but never expose his whole army to capture. Flee if necessary, but be able to fight another day. He was inventive and unorthodox. With an army much smaller than Cornwallis' he divided it into thirds, plus compelling Cornwallis to divide his own army. Greene knew that Cornwallis, victorious as he might have been, was detached from Charleston and had to live off the land. He would fight a war of attrition and wear Cornwallis down. His strategy worked, although not without fateful moments. He had great faith in his command officers and gave them considerable leeway. They rewarded him with two stunning victories—King's Mountain, North Carolina in October 1780 and Cowpens, South Carolina in January 1781.

King's Mountain was a unique battle for it was fought almost completely between Americans, Major Ferguson and his South Carolina, New York, and New Jersey Tories on the British side and North Carolina and Virginia frontier riflemen under Colonels Isaac Shelby, fiery William Campbell, and John Sevier for the United States. Although Ferguson's position from the outset was nearly impossible, he refused to surrender, knowing what was in store if he did. He was correct. The hatred which only the Carolina civil war unleashed during the Revolution burst forth. Only the intervention of Shelby and Campbell kept the frontiersmen from annihilating Ferguson's Tories. As it was, the British lost 1,000 men, 700 of them captives. Ferguson was killed.

Cowpens was a personal victory for General Daniel Morgan who felt he had been slighted by congress. Greene gave him a full command and sent him off to find Tarleton. He found him at Cowpens, not too far from King's Mountain. Morgan utilized his riflemen, light infantry, and cavalry and Continental regulars in an unconventional manner. He thoroughly whipped Tarleton, who up until that time had been invincible. Morgan's men killed 100 British, captured 800, and seized Tarleton's entire supply train.

The combination of King's Mountain and Cowpens completely disrupted Cornwallis' plan and led him into the series of mistakes which ended at Yorktown.[46]

[46] Ward, American Revolution, II, 792.

Even when he suffered defeat or a stalemate, as he did at Guilford Courthouse (Greensboro, North Carolina) in March 1781, Greene made Cornwallis pay such a heavy price that the British general could not afford the cost of victory. Wandering aimlessly after Greene across North Carolina and unable to live off the barren countryside, Cornwallis retreated eastward to Wilmington. There in the spring of 1781, with only 1400 of his original 3,000 troops left, he decided to move north and join Benedict Arnold's troops who had invaded Virginia on December 30, 1781.

The Invasion of Virginia, 1781

Three times before the British had appeared in the Chesapeake. In 1777 Admiral Howe sent a fleet into the upper Bay to assist the grand attack which was to take New York and Philadelphia simultaneously. He had withdrawn without contact after Burgoyne's defeat at Saratoga ruined the scheme.

Admiral George Collier swept into Hampton Roads in May 1779, burned the shipyard at Gosport, captured 130 ships, occupied Portsmouth, and raided the countryside, doing $2,000,000 damage. Before he could be challenged by General Thomas Nelson, Jr., and the Virginia militia he was gone. One consequence of the raid was the loss of all future loyalist support for the British. At Collier's arrival, the numerous Norfolk-Portsmouth loyalists came out from under cover, only to be abandoned when the British left after a few days. They never ventured forth again.

In October 1780 General Alexander Leslie descended upon Hampton Roads with a substantial British force, fully intending to take Virginia out of the war in coordination with Cornwallis' march through the Carolinas. King's Mountain ended that plan. Needing reenforcements, Cornwallis called Leslie southward. Again the British left the state.

Although Virginia breathed a sigh of relief, she was in a most difficult position at the end of 1780. Her military resources were stretched to the limit. Governor Jefferson had tried simultaneously to meet calls for troops from Washington to the north and Greene to the south, while never overlooking Clark to the west. Although roundly criticized for stripping Virginia to aid other states, Jefferson well understood the crucial nature of Greene's campaign. The only reserves he had left were militiamen.

Of the estimated 55,000 to 60,000 Virginians who fought at some time during the Revolution, as many as 35,000 were militia. Many were short-term soldiers, fighting only three to six months at a time. Often they were unprepared and untrained, not used to disciplined fighting, good marksmen, but unskilled in the use of the bayonet. Often, and unnecessarily disparaged, the militia was the backbone of the patriot armies, appearing when needed, disbanding as soon as danger passed. In Virginia they had been called out in 1777, in 1779, for a false rumor in June 1780, and to meet Leslie in October 1780. In each case the enemy disappeared. These British cat-and-mouse appearances may have lulled the Virginians and Jefferson into a false sense of security, for the state was unprepared for the real invasion Washington had warned was coming.

On December 30, 1780, Benedict Arnold, seeking the glory in the British army he thought had been denied him by the Americans, sailed into the Chesapeake with a small, well-disciplined British army. Whatever might be said about Arnold's political ethics, few have criticized his command performance with small forces. He was initially aided in Virginia by Jefferson's caution which left Nelson's militia only half-mobilized. The only other force was a small Continental regiment under Steuben.

Arnold sailed up the James to Westover, the estate of Tory William Byrd III. From there he moved unopposed to Richmond, the official state capital since April 1780. Throughout January 5 and 6 his men burned the state buildings, destroyed the iron and powder factory at Westham, and seized or burned all available state records. Knowing he could not hold Richmond, Arnold returned to Portsmouth and went into winter quarters.

Recognizing the danger Arnold posed, Washington sent Lafayette south from New York with 1,200 New England and New Jersey Continentals. Even after joining his troops with the Virginia militia of Nelson, Muhlenberg, and George Weedon, he could do little more than watch Arnold. Arnold had already sent General William Philips, the former prisoner of war in Charlottesville, against Petersburg. Meeting little opposition from the Virginia militia as he destroyed tobacco and supplies in the town on April 24, Philips went into Chesterfield county, burning militia barracks and supplies. At the same time Arnold was burning more than 20 ships in the James below Richmond.

Everything seemed to go wrong. The French fleet sent from Newport to block Arnold at Portsmouth was routed by a British fleet off the Capes and went back to Rhode Island. The British forces ravaged at will the Virginia countryside along the James and Appomattox Rivers. Then Arnold was joined on May 20 by Cornwallis who had marched northward from Wilmington to meet him at Petersburg. There were now 7,200 British troops in Virginia. Facing them was the young Marquis de Lafayette with 3,200 soldiers, 2,000 of them inexperienced Virginia militia. Total collapse of Virginia seemed imminent.

Artfully, Lafayette kept his smaller army intact, moving westward along the South Anna River, then northward over the Rapidan west of Fredericksburg. There he was joined by General Anthony Wayne and his Pennsylvanians. Cornwallis followed but could not draw Lafayette or Wayne into battle. So he settled down at Elk Hill, the estate of Mrs. Jefferson's father in Cumberland County. From there he sent Major John Simcoe on a raid against General Steuben and the major munitions center at Point of Fork on the James. At first Simcoe was unsuccessful; then he tricked Steuben into withdrawing to the west, needlessly abandoning the munitions.

At the same time Cornwallis ordered Tarleton to leave Lafayette in Hanover County, take his cavalry, dash to Charlottesville, break up the assembly then meeting there, and capture Jefferson. By hard riding on the nights of June 3 and 4 Tarleton nearly made it to Charlottesville undetected. But he stopped at Cuckoo Tavern in Louisa County, where he was spotted by militia Captain John Jouett, Jr. Guessing Tarleton's mission, Jack Jouett rode madly through the night over the back roads he knew well, and beat Tarleton's men to town. At Jouett's warning most of the legislators fled over the Blue Ridge to Staunton, while Governor Jefferson left Monticello southward to his summer home at Poplar Forest, Bedford County. Seven members of the assembly, one of whom was Daniel Boone, delegate from Kentucky County, were captured. Unable to take them with him, Tarleton paroled them.

This was the low point of Jefferson's public career. His term had ended officially on June 3 and since he had not intended to stand for reelection, he did not go to Staunton. Some disgruntled delegates wanted him censured. Instead a formal investigation in December 1781 ended with the senate and house presenting him with a unanimous vote of commendation.

The assembly elected Thomas Nelson, Jr., radical patriot, wealthy merchant from Yorktown, and commander of the Virginia militia, to be governor. Nelson served only five months, compelled by ill health to resign in December. In those five months Virginia went from the depths of despair to the glories of Yorktown. Nelson was succeeded by Benjamin Harrison, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.

On June 15 Cornwallis left his camp at Elk Hill, sacking the plantation as he departed. He moved eastward toward the coast where he could better coordinate his movements with those of Clinton in New York. Clinton was under heavy pressure from Washington and French General Rochambeau. Heading for Williamsburg, Cornwallis plundered the countryside as he went. Reaching Williamsburg, he received orders from Clinton to send 3,000 men to New York. Leaving Williamsburg for his ships at Portsmouth, he maneuvered Lafayette and Wayne into a reckless battle near Jamestown on July 6. Beating Wayne badly, Cornwallis had Lafayette at his mercy, but could not follow up for a complete victory.

At this point indecision by Clinton, commander-in-chief of the British army, caused a fatal error. He had ordered Cornwallis to send the men to New York; then he countermanded that order and wanted them shipped to Philadelphia; then to New York again. Finally learning that Admiral de Grasse with a major French fleet had left France for America, he suggested Cornwallis move across the James from Portsmouth and find a suitable site on the peninsula for both an army and the British fleet. He suggested Old Point Comfort. His proposal was examined by Cornwallis and rejected as undefendable. Cornwallis settled on Yorktown with its high bluff and good port.

Yorktown, September-October, 1781

The news that Admiral de Grasse and the French fleet had cleared France presented Washington with an opportunity he had to exploit. Washington and Rochambeau took counsel and concluded an assault on Clinton in New York was not a certain success. Cornwallis was a better bet. They decided to leave Clinton in New York believing he was about to be attacked by a large army and move quickly southward to Virginia. Coordinating their arrival with that of de Grasse in the Chesapeake, they would snare Cornwallis at Yorktown.

For once in the war a grand American plan went off without a hitch. Washington and Rochambeau left New York on August 21, getting away without detection by Clinton. Simultaneously Lafayette moved his troops south of Cornwallis to block an escape into the Carolinas. On August 30 de Grasse with his great fleet of 24 major ships, 1,700 guns, 19,000 seamen, and 3,000 troops reached the Capes. He had disembarked his troops before a smaller British fleet arrived to challenge him. On September 5 the French fleet drove the English back to New York. Cornwallis was trapped.

Carefully Washington, Rochambeau, and de Grasse plotted the siege of Yorktown. When the formal siege began on September 28, Washington had an army of nearly 16,000 men including 7,800 fresh, disciplined, and well-equipped French troops. The 8,800 Americans included 3,000 Virginia militia commanded by Governor Nelson and veteran Generals Weedon, Robert Lawson, and Edward Stevens. The bulk of Washington's Continentals were from Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey. Cornwallis had about 7,000 men, many of whom had been in the field since February, 1780.

At the beginning Cornwallis abandoned his weaker outer defenses, which Washington immediately turned into artillery battery positions. Once the siege began in earnest on October 6, the allied artillery pounded the British into submission. Parallel trenches were dug close to the British lines. On the night of October 14 a combined attack by Americans under Colonel Alexander Hamilton and the French took the two redoubts which were the keys to the sagging British defenses. On the 16th Cornwallis attempted to escape across the York River to Gloucester Point and then north to New York and Clinton. A sudden storm scattered his boats and barges. With that Cornwallis recognized the utter hopelessness of his position and on the 17th signalled Washington for terms of surrender. Washington replied that only complete surrender was acceptable. Cornwallis agreed. There was no choice. At 2 p.m. on October 19, 1781, Cornwallis' army of 7,247 stacked arms and surrendered to the Americans while a British regimental band played the now famous military march, "The World Turned Upside Down." Cornwallis, pleading illness was not present. He was later to go on to a distinguished career as governor-general of India.

Fighting went on spasmodically in the Carolinas and in the West for some time. But everyone knew the war was over. The British people no longer wanted to fight what had become a world war involving the Dutch, French, and Spanish, as well as the Americans. When he heard the news from Yorktown, Lord North supposedly cried out, "Oh God! It is all over."

And it was. On March 4, 1782, the House of Commons voted for peace. Commissioners for both sides meeting in Paris agreed on terms on November 30, 1782. The formal treaty was ratified on September 3, 1783. The United States of America existed in law as well as in fact.

What had begun as an attempt by Britain to balance her budget after the victorious French and Indian War ended with an independent United States. She also gave Florida back to the Spanish who returned Louisiana to the French. Perhaps wiser men than George Grenville and George III might have prevented the separation. Probably not. Thomas Paine put it so simply and so persuasively, "An Island was not meant to rule a continent."



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Appendix

A Chronology of Selected Events in Virginia

1763-1783[47]

[47] The chronology of selected events in Virginia 1763-1783 was taken from William W. Abbot's publication entitled, A VIRGINIA CHRONOLOGY 1585-1783, "To pass away the time", Williamsburg, Virginia, 1957. Permission for use of this material has been granted by the publisher.

May 10, 1763. After the news of the signing of the Peace of Paris on February 10, 1763, came to Virginia, the Virginia regiment was disbanded.

May 28, 1763. The defeat of the French in America introduced new stresses and strains in the British Empire. Differences between the colonies and Mother Country began to appear immediately and with increasing frequency and intensity. The Bland Report of 1763 made to the House of Burgesses revealed one point of conflict between the two. Virginia had in part financed her contribution to the recent war by issuing paper money backed by taxation. The British merchants, creditors of the colonial planters, feared inflation and were bitterly attacking the policy of printing paper money in the colonies. Defending Virginia's actions, the Bland Report presented the American argument for paper money. The British merchants carried the day to their own hurt by securing an Act of Parliament in 1764 forbidding the future issue of paper currency in the colonies.

October 7, 1763. Another cause for colonial resentment at war's end was the King's proclamation closing the trans-Allegheny west to settlement.

December, 1763. One consequence of the Parsons' Causes was the sudden emergence of young Patrick Henry on the political scene. When the court of Hanover county decided in favor of Reverend James Maury, the defendants called on Henry to plead their cause before the jury which was to fix the amount of damages. By appealing to the anti-clerical and even lawless instincts of the jury and by doing it with unmatched oratorical skill, Patrick Henry won the jury to his side and made himself a popular hero in upcountry Virginia.

October 30, 1764. Many Burgesses arrived early for the October December session of the General Assembly "in a flame" over the Act of Parliament proposing a Stamp tax on the American colonists. The committee of correspondence had been busy during the summer communicating with the agent in London, and the Burgesses were ready to take action against the proposed tax.

December 17, 1764. The House of Burgesses and the Council agreed upon an address to the Crown and upon memorials to the House of Commons and to the House of Lords. The three petitions stressed the sufferings such a tax would cause war-weary Virginians and also opposed the levy on constitutional grounds. They argued that the colonial charters and long usage gave the Virginia House of Burgesses the sole right to tax Virginians and that the fundamental constitution of Britain protected a man from being taxed without his consent. These arguments, elaborated and refined, were to be the heart of the colonial contentions in the turbulent days ahead.

May 29, 1765. The arguments of the Virginia Assembly went unheeded. On February 27, 1765, Parliament decreed that the stamp tax should go into effect on November 1. The General Assembly was in session when news of the passage of the Stamp Act came to Virginia, and on May 29 the House went into the committee of the whole to consider what steps it should take. Burgess Patrick Henry presented his famous resolutions which fixed at the outset the tenor of colonial opposition to the stamp tax. The House adopted by a close vote on the 30th five of Henry's seven resolutions, and all seven were given wide circulation throughout the colonies.

October 30, 1765. On the day before the stamp tax was to go into effect, George Mercer, the collector, arrived in Williamsburg with the stamps. Williamsburg was filled with people in town for the meeting of the General Court, and Governor Fauquier had to intervene to protect Mercer from the insults of the mob. On November 1, the courts ceased to function and all public business came to a virtual halt.

February 8, 1766. Foreshadowing the judicial review of a later day, the Northampton county court declared the Stamp Act unconstitutional and consequently of no effect.

March 13, 1766. A number of the inhabitants of the town and environs of Norfolk assembled at the court house and formed the Sons of Liberty. The Sons of Liberty usually appeared hereafter at the forefront of any anti-British agitation in the colonies.

1766. Richard Bland published his famous An Inquiry into the Rights of the British Colonies in which he took a rather advanced constitutional position in opposition to parliamentary taxation of the American colonies.

May 11, 1766. At the height of the Stamp Act crisis, the dominant group in the House of Burgesses was shaken by a scandal involving the long-time Speaker and Treasurer of the Colony, John Robinson, who died on this day leaving his accounts short by some 100,000 pounds.

June 9, 1766. Governor Fauquier announced by public proclamation the repeal of the Stamp Act (March 18, 1766). Although repeal brought a wave of reaction against the agitation of the past months and a strong upsurge of loyalty to Great Britain, the leaders of Virginia, and of the other colonies, had consciously or not moved to a new position in their view of the proper relationship between the Colony and the Mother Country. The failure of the rulers of Britain to appreciate and assess properly the changed temper of the colonists lost for them the American empire.

November 6, 1766. The General Assembly of 1766-1768 met: November 6-December 16, 1766 and adjourned to March 12-April 11, 1767, and then met in a final session, March 31-April 16, 1768.

January, 1768. The Virginia Gazette began to publish John Dickenson's letters from a "Pennsylvania Farmer." These letters did a great deal to clarify, in the minds of many, the American position with regard to the Parliamentary claim of the right of taxation in the colonies.

March 3, 1768. Governor Fauquier died.

March 31, 1768. News of the passage of the Townshend Acts and of the suspension of the New York legislature was already causing a wave of indignation in Virginia when the General Assembly met in March. Having taken under consideration the circular letter of the Massachusetts legislature opposing the Townshend Acts and various petitions to the same effect, the House of Burgesses prepared petitions to the Crown and to both Houses of Parliament, and on April 14 adopted all three unanimously. The House then sent word to the other colonial Assemblies of its action and congratulated the Massachusetts House "for their attention to American liberty."

August 12, 1768. In a move to strengthen the hand of the Virginia Governor and at the same time to conciliate the Colony, the King made Fauquier's replacement, Norborne Berkeley, Baron de Botetourt, Governor of Virginia in the place of Jeffrey Amherst. Not since the time of Governor Nicholson had the Governor himself come out to Virginia.

October 26, 1768. Lord Botetourt arrived in Williamsburg.

May 8, 1769. The Governor, Lord Botetourt, opened the first and only session of the General Assembly of 1769 (May 8-17) with a conciliatory speech; but, obviously unmoved, the House of Burgesses set about with remarkable unanimity to restate their position with regard to Parliamentary supremacy. The House also denounced the reported plan for transporting colonists accused of treason to England for trial. On May 16, the House adopted resolutions to this effect and then on the next day unanimously approved an address to the Crown.

May 17, 1769. The House resolutions of the 16th caused Lord Botetourt to dissolve the General Assembly. Dissolution blocked the planned adoption of George Mason's proposal for forming an association with the other colonies for the purpose of suspending the importation of British goods. But the Burgesses got around this by meeting in their private capacity at the house of Anthony Hays. This was a momentous step. The meeting made Speaker Peyton Randolph the moderator and appointed a committee to present a plan for association.

May 18, 1769. The Burgesses adopted the report of the committee calling for a boycott on English goods to force the repeal of the Townshend Acts and invited the other colonies to join the association.

November 7, 1769. The General Assembly of 1769-1771 met November 7-December 21, 1769, and adjourned to May 21-June 28, 1770; and then it met in a final session July 11-20, 1771.

In his speech to the Assembly on the first day of its meeting, Lord Botetourt pacified the Virginians momentarily with information from Lord Hillsborough that His Majesty's administration contemplated no new taxes in America and in fact intended the repeal of the Townshend Acts.

June 22, 1770. During the May-June session of the General Assembly, the gentlemen of the House of Burgesses joined with a large group of merchants to take action against the duty on tea retained when the Townshend Acts were repealed. The Burgesses and merchants formed a new association to replace the ineffective one of 1769. This time, committees in each county were to take proper steps to see that the terms of the association were abided by.

June 27, 1770. The members of the House of Burgesses agreed unanimously to a new petition to the King asking for his interposition to prevent Parliament levying taxes in America.

October 15, 1770. Lord Botetourt of necessity had often opposed the colonists in their quarrel with the British Parliament, but he had done so without losing their affection and respect. On October 15, 1770, he died. William Nelson, president of the Council, then acted as Governor until the fall of 1771 when Governor Dunmore arrived.

October 12, 1771. John Murray, Earl of Dunmore, dissolved the General Assembly of 1769-1771 after coming to Virginia on September 25, 1771. Dunmore, Virginia's last British Governor, was an unperceptive and timorous man, a man who could do nothing to still the coming storm that rent an Empire.

February 10, 1772. The General Assembly of 1772-1774 met February 10-April 11, 1772; March 4-15, 1773; and May 5-26, 1774, when it was dissolved. Meeting in an interlude of relative peace between Britain and her colonies (1770-1773), the Assembly in its spring session of 1772 proceeded in a routine fashion and the Burgesses found no occasion to try the mettle of the new Governor.

March 4, 1773. Governor Dunmore for the first time found reason to complain of the General Assembly in its March meeting of 1773. He was miffed by an implied rebuke of the House of Burgesses for his handling of counterfeiters; but he had better reason to be disturbed by another development. On March 12, the House revived its committee of correspondence and extended its functions. As proposed by a self-constituted meeting at the Raleigh Tavern and headed by Richard Henry Lee, the House instructed its new committee of correspondence to inquire into the Gaspee affair, to keep in touch with the legislatures of the other colonies, and to correspond with the London agent. A key factor in the transfer of power which was to come shortly, the plan of a committee of correspondence was quickly adopted in the other colonies. Before proroguing the Assembly on March 15, Governor Dunmore signed the last Acts assented to by the royal Governor of Virginia.

May 24, 1774. The May meeting of the Assembly was uneventful until the news of the Boston Port Acts stirred up a hornets' nest in the House of Burgesses. The House expressed alarm and promptly declared June 1, the day the Acts were to go into effect, a day of fasting and prayer. Two days later, May 26, Governor Dunmore dissolved the General Assembly of 1772-1774. One consequence of interrupting the Assembly before any legislation had been completed was to put an end to civil actions in the courts for the lack of a fee bill, which pleased many a debt-ridden colonist.

May 27, 1774. On May 25, the day after the news of the Boston Port Acts, Richard Henry Lee had ready his proposals for calling a Continental Congress, but when he delayed presenting them to the House so as not to invoke dissolution, he lost the opportunity of having the House of Burgesses act upon them. The day after Dunmore had dissolved the Assembly, the members of the House met in the Apollo room of the Raleigh Tavern. After denouncing the "intolerable" Acts, they instructed the committee of correspondence to write to the other colonies and propose a Continental Congress.

May 30, 1774. Twenty-five Burgesses who were still in town met to consider a packet of letters fresh from Boston. Massachusetts proposed that all of the colonies suspend all trade with Britain. The Burgesses agreed to send out notices to the members of the "late House" for a meeting on August 1, 1774. During the next two months, the inhabitants in the various counties met to elect delegates to the August Convention and to prepare resolutions condemning the Boston Port Acts. Feeling was running high and sympathy for Boston took the form of an outpouring of gifts for the unfortunate city. Jefferson's Summary View published at this time was intended as a guide for the August Convention, but it was too advanced for the moment in its outright denial of all Parliamentary authority in America.

August 1, 1774. With the meeting of the August Convention, Virginia took a big step toward revolution and began to build an extra-legal framework which would take over the functions of government when British authority collapsed. The Convention agreed to import no more from Britain after November 1 and to export no more after August 10, 1775. It chose as delegates to the Continental Congress Peyton Randolph, Richard Henry Lee, George Washington, Patrick Henry, Richard Bland, Benjamin Harrison, and Edmund Pendleton. The Convention instructed each county to appoint a committee of correspondence. The amazing effectiveness with which the committees organized the counties helps to explain Virginia's smooth transition from colony to commonwealth.

1775. With an estimated population of 550,000, Virginia had 61 counties on the eve of the Revolution. Ten of these were formed since the departure of Governor Dinwiddie in 1758: Fauquier in 1759; Amherst and Buckingham in 1761; Charlotte and Mecklenburg in 1765; Pittsylvania in 1767; Botetourt in 1770; and Berkeley, Dunmore, and Fincastle in 1772.

March 20, 1775. Peyton Randolph, moderator of the August Convention, called for a meeting at Richmond in March. The March convention, dominated by members of the House of Burgesses, approved the work of the Continental Congress, but foremost in the minds of the delegates was the problem of defense. After Henry's "Give me liberty or give me death" speech, the delegates made provisions for developing a military establishment. What they in fact did was to undermine the regular militia through the formation of "Independent Companies" in the counties. The revolutionary government which was evolving became a little more clearly defined when the Convention instructed each county to elect two delegates to sit in future Conventions.

April 20, 1775. Lord Dunmore watched the events of 1774-1775 with helpless alarm. Particularly frightening for him was the formation of the "Independent Companies" in the spring of 1775. On the night of April 20 he took the precaution of having the small store of arms and ammunition in the magazine at Williamsburg removed and placed on H.M.S. Fowey in the York River. On the morning of the 21st, the people of Williamsburg learned what the Governor had done during the night and were vastly excited. An incredible wave of fury spread through the Colony and everywhere men took up arms. All the pent up passion of the past months was turned against the unfortunate Governor.

April 28, 1775. At the height of the excitement over the powder magazine affair, news came from the northward that colonials had engaged British regulars at Concord and Lexington.

May 3, 1775. Thoroughly frightened, Lord Dunmore made a public proclamation on May 3 in which he attempted to justify his actions of April 20 and to pacify the people. Beyond being pacified, the people cheered Patrick Henry who marched upon Williamsburg with the Hanover Independent Company and stopped short of the town only because Governor Dunmore sent him 300 pounds to pay for the powder taken from the public magazine.

June 1, 1775. Fortified with Lord North's conciliatory proposals, Dunmore made his last bid to regain control of the colony by recalling the General Assembly to Williamsburg on June 1, 1775. The Burgesses refused to re-open the courts as Dunmore asked; they approved the proceedings of the Continental Congress and the colonial Conventions without a dissenting vote; and then they allowed Jefferson to reply to North's proposal in terms of his Summary View of the year before.

June 8, 1775. Lord Dunmore wrote the Assembly that he considered Williamsburg no longer safe for him and his family and that he had taken up residence in the Fowey in the York River. When the General Assembly refused to do business with him there and proceeded to operate independently of the Governor, royal government in Virginia was virtually at an end. The General Assembly adjourned itself on June 24 to October 12, 1775, and then to March 7, 1776, and finally to May 16, 1776, but a quorum never appeared.

July 17, 1775. The July Convention completed the transfer of power from the royal government to the revolutionists. It sought to legalize its control by providing for the proper election of its members. The Convention became the successor of the colonial General Assembly. When the rumor went about on August 16 that Dunmore was going to attack Williamsburg, the Convention appointed a Committee of Public Safety of 11 members. This Committee acted as the executive of the Colony until after the adoption of the constitution in 1776. The Convention also set up the basic structure for the defense establishment and for taxation.

November 7, 1775. The main threat to the revolutionary regime in 1775 came from Lord Dunmore who remained at Norfolk with his small fleet and a detachment of British regulars. Despite the "chicken stealing" raids of the ships in the late summer and fall, the Committee of Public Safety made no move against Dunmore until after he had declared martial law on November 7 and it had become apparent that disaffection was growing in Norfolk.

December 1, 1775. The December Convention acted as the legislative body for the government of Virginia.

1776. Hampden-Sydney, a school for men, was founded under the auspices of the Hanover Presbytery.

January 1, 1776. The provincial forces skirmished with Dunmore's at Great Bridge on December 9 and took Norfolk on December 14. The guns of Dunmore's ships set Norfolk afire on January 1, 1776, and colonial troops, with connivance of officers, added to the conflagration by setting fire to the houses not hit by the ships. Lord Dunmore finally sailed away in May, 1776.

May 6, 1776. The revolutionary Convention met for the last time in May and June of 1776. It proceeded to draw up a constitution for Virginia, which it adopted on June 28. It incorporated in the constitution George Mason's famous Bill of Rights and provided that the legislature should dominate the new government.

May 15, 1776. The Convention adopted Richard Henry Lee's resolution instructing the delegates to the Continental Congress to urge the Congress "to declare the United Colonies free and independent States."

June 29, 1776. The Convention chose Patrick Henry to be the first Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia. A skilled agitator, a great orator, and a radical-turning-conservative, Henry made but an indifferent Governor.

July 8-9, 1776. At the battle of Gwynn's Island, Dunmore's fleet was so severely damaged that he soon left the coast of Virginia, never to return.

1776. During the Revolution, nineteen counties were formed: Monongalia, Ohio, and Yohogania in 1776; Henry, Kentucky, Montgomery, Washington, Fluvanna, and Powhatan in 1777; Greenbrier, Rockbridge, Rockingham, Shenandoah, and Illinois in 1778; Fayette, Jefferson, and Lincoln in 1780; Greensville in 1781; and Campbell in 1782.

October 7, 1776. The first session of the new legislature was dominated by Thomas Jefferson, who replaced Henry as the leader of the more radical elements in Virginia. Jefferson began a needed revision of the laws. In the next two decades, the colonial codes and laws were adapted to the needs of an independent state. In this same session, he also secured the abolition of primogeniture and entail, humanized the criminal code, and began his attack upon the church establishment.

July 4, 1778. George Rogers Clark captured Kaskaskia. On the strength of this victory, the Virginia legislature created Illinois county, thus providing the first American administrative control in the Northwest Territory.

February 25, 1779. The dramatic capture of Vincennes by George Rogers Clark on this date secured the Northwest Territory from British control.

May 9, 1779. For the first three years of the Revolutionary War, Virginia was spared invasion because the British were concentrating their efforts in the northern colonies; but on May 9, 1779, Admiral Sir George Collier anchored in Hampton Roads with a British fleet. After capturing Portsmouth with little trouble, he sent out raiding parties and then departed. Naval stores in large quantity and thousands of barrels of pork were destroyed.

June 1, 1779. Thomas Jefferson was elected Governor to replace Patrick Henry. Weakened by a conservative shift in opinion and unable to cope with invasion which came in 1780, Governor Jefferson left office with a tarnished reputation, June 12, 1781. He was replaced by Thomas Nelson who served only until November 30, 1781. Benjamin Harrison was the last of the war Governors.

April, 1780. The capital was moved from Williamsburg up to Richmond.

October, 1780. The British recaptured Portsmouth, this time primarily for the purpose of establishing communication with General Cornwallis in South Carolina. General Leslie remained in Portsmouth with his 3000 men for one month.

January 5, 1781. The third and most serious British attack upon Virginia was carried out by General Benedict Arnold who sailed through the Capes on December 30, 1780. Instead of stopping at Portsmouth, he continued on up the James to capture Richmond, the new capital, on January 5, 1781. After Arnold had set up his headquarters at Portsmouth, two attempts to launch a sea and land attack against him failed to materialize. Cornwallis marched into Virginia in late spring and in May crossed the James and entered Richmond. During the summer of 1781, the main achievement of Lafayette and the continental forces in Virginia was to avoid destruction.

July 25, 1781. Cornwallis, marching from Richmond, reached Williamsburg on June 25. He remained there until July 5, when he moved toward the James River where transports awaited to take him to the Surry side. Before he was able to make the crossing, he was attacked by Lafayette, at Green Spring. After successfully repelling the American forces, he crossed the river and pushed on to Portsmouth. In August he crossed Hampton Roads and marched to Yorktown, which he fortified.

August 30, 1781. The stage was being set for the destruction of Cornwallis's army when the French fleet under Admiral de Grasse sailed through the Virginia Capes on August 30, 1781. General Washington was hurrying with his army from New York and Lafayette was bringing up his troops preparatory to bottling up Cornwallis on the Yorktown peninsula where he had encamped with his army.

September 5, 1781. One avenue of escape for Cornwallis's army was shut off when De Grasse assured French control of the river and bay by repulsing the British fleet commanded by Admiral Graves.

September 28, 1781. The surrender of Cornwallis became only a matter of time when Washington brought his army up to reenforce the besieging forces of Lafayette.

October 19, 1781. General Cornwallis surrendered his army at Yorktown. With the aid of the French, General Washington had won for the colonies their independence. The independence of America became official with the signing of the Treaty of Paris on September 3, 1783.

October 20, 1783. Virginia, agreeing to the terms of Congress, ceded her claims to territory north of the Ohio, and the deed passed March 1, 1784. Virginia was shrunken to the limits contained in the present States of Virginia, West Virginia, and Kentucky.



Declaration of Independence

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly, all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies, and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpation, all having, in direct object, the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this let facts be submitted to a candid world:

He has refused to assent to laws the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and, when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature; a right inestimable to them, and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing, with manly firmness, his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused, for a long time after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the State remaining, in the meantime, exposed to all the dangers of invasions from without and convulsions within.

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose, obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the military independent of, and superior to, the civil power.

He has combined, with others, to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them by a mock trial from punishment, for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing taxes on us without our consent:

For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefit of trial by jury:

For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses.

For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries, so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these colonies:

For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws and altering fundamentally, the powers of our governments:

For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection, and waging war against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is, at this time, transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the work of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun, with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow-citizens, taken captive on the high seas, to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions.

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms; our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them, from time to time, of attempts made by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them, by the ties of our common kindred, to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They, too, have been deaf to the voice of justice and consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war—in peace, friends.

We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the World for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name and by authority of the good people of these colonies solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, Free and Independent States; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved; and that as free and independent States, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce and to do all other acts and things which independent States may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.