Part V:
The War for Independence
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
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"He has abdicatedgovernment here...."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
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
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.43Clark was treated shamefully by the Virginia Assembly after the war and was never fully reimbursed for his personal expenses in the west.
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."44Never 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.
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
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 theDragon.
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
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.
A large building with several columns in the front
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.
Paul Revere galloping on his horse
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.
Drummer boys
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."
Federal buildings
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