68. Support from Virginia

The well-disciplined citizens of Massachusetts held themselves in check and refused to be provoked into attack; and their angry leader Sam Adams wrote: “See what indignities we suffer rather than precipitate a crisis.” It took no uncommon astuteness to see that the colonies and Great Britain were on collision course.

In late March, before the Virginia convention—an enlarged House of Burgesses meeting illegally at Richmond without authorization of the governor—the golden-tongued Patrick Henry made his most famous speech. In it he prophetically warned: “The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms!”

The major issue at the Virginia convention, and the occasion for Henry’s speech, was his resolution to strengthen and arm the Virginia militia for the clash that Patrick Henry was sure was fast approaching. Henry openly welcomed the imminent revolutionary clash: “Let it come. I repeat, Sir, let it come!” Henry dramatically concluded: “Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!” Henry’s resolution was ably supported by the radical theoretician Richard Henry Lee and the military-minded George Washington. But the resolution to strengthen the militia met stiff conservative opposition, led by three delegates to the Continental Congress: Edmund Pendleton, Benjamin Harrison, and Richard Bland. As a result, the Henry resolution won only by a slim vote. Indeed, the delegates refused to call up any sizable number of armed men and to seize the reins of government openly; and they appointed a conservative committee, dominated by Pendleton and Harrison, to oversee the military preparations.

Nevertheless, the Virginia militia was formed in companies independent of officers appointed by the governor. Patrick Henry’s militia resolution was modeled on preceding county committee resolutions in Virginia, especially one of Fairfax County, where George Washington had led the adoption of this proposal in January. Washington’s resolves, in turn, had been strictly patterned upon the Maryland convention of November, which, in addition to approving the acts of the Continental Congress, urged the formation of a large-scale militia in Maryland, with officers to be elected, and with funds for the citizen-soldiery to be raised in a voluntary (and hence libertarian) manner.

North Carolina, counseled to follow the lead of Maryland and Virginia, declined to do so. One of North Carolina’s problems was the high proportion of Tories in the province, including the colonies of Highland Scots around Wilmington and Cape Fear, and in the back counties of Rowan, Surry, Anson, and Guilford, where hundreds of citizens signed loyalty pledges to Great Britain. Indeed, Governor Josiah Martin urged General Gage to send him weapons and ammunition to arm the North Carolina Tories.

The Tory sentiment in the back country has led historians to believe that the North Carolina Regulators, in anger against the seaboard planters who had suppressed them and who were now rebels against Britain, had reacted by joining the Tory cause. A pretty theory, but at odds with the facts. The most recent and most careful historian of the Regulator movement estimates that of 323 Regulators whose later choice is known, 289 joined the revolution while only thirty-four, slightly over ten percent, became Tories.*

Armed clashes between the popular and governmental troops began to occur in mid-April in the South, shortly before news of Lexington and Concord arrived. By mid-April, news had arrived of Britain’s decision to crack down on New England rather than conciliate. Accordingly, Lord Dunmore, governor of Virginia, had twenty kegs of powder in the Virginia provincial stores at Williamsburg seized by a British naval captain on the night of April 20. The Williamsburg masses threatened to rise up and recapture the powder. Virginia seethed with indignation, and the committees of Gloucester, Henrico, Dumfries, and Albemarle counties called for restoration of the gunpowder. Lord Dunmore refused to give up the powder, summoned all people loyal to Britain to rally to him, and threatened to free all the slaves of Virginia and burn Williamsburg to the ground. Six hundred well-armed Virginians met at Fredricksburg on April 29 to press their demands, but, as in the case of the Williamsburg agitation the week before, more conservative leaders, George Washington and Peyton Randolph, persuaded the men to disperse and refrain from advancing upon the British troops. The redoubtable Patrick Henry, however, refused to be cowed, as had even Richard Henry Lee, and himself led a militia company from Hanover County, which managed to seize at least the monetary equivalent of the powder from the British. Lord Dun-more declared Patrick Henry an outlaw, which more than ever made him a hero of the enraged people of Virginia.

The night after Dunmore’s raid on the powder, South Carolina rebels, joined in a secret committee of the South Carolina provincial congress headed by William Henry Drayton, staged a raid on the government armory, and carried off arms and ammunition. By the time of Lexington and Concord, much of the South, and especially Virginia, was at fever pitch.

*Elmer Douglas Johnson, “The War of the Regulation: Its Place in History” (unpublished master’s thesis, University of North Carolina, 1942), p. 115 and app. 3. On this as well as similar reports on the choices of the South Carolina Regulation, see Richard M. Brown, The South Carolina Regulators, p. 213.