Volume 4, Chapter 17, Virginia Battles Lord Dunmore
Virginia had only a few thousand Tories at most, but they were concentrated in a few
strategic areas. Aided by Lord Dunmore, the highly energetic royal governor, they gave
the American rebels a good deal of trouble. Apart from the Tory predominance on the eastern
and Sure, the loyalist were concentrated among the Scottish merchants in Virginia's commercial
city of Norfolk and on the extreme northwestern frontier around Pittsburgh. After the rejection
by the Virginia Assembly of Lord North's conciliation scheme in June 1775, Dunmore
fled with over a hundred British regulars to a British ship in the harbor of congenial
Norfolk.
Tourism was strong, though not predominant, on the American frontiers, undoubtedly in
part because of a suspicion that the American governments might not be able or eager to
supply armed forces to push back the Indians.
Tourism on the Virginia frontier was concentrated around Pittsburgh, now in Pennsylvania, near
Here where Fort Pitt had been dismantled three years before.
Under Dunmore, Virginia during 1773 and 1774 had aggressively expanded its territory.
Dunmore had seized control of the Pittsburgh region, arresting and expelling Pennsylvania
officials and creating a new West Augusta County there for Virginia.
Furthermore, in Dunmore's war, the governor had defied the proclamation line of 1763 and
had driven the Shawnee Indians out of Kentucky.
When the Revolutionary War began, John Connolly, a physician, Tory militia official, and faithful
ally of Dunmore and Britain, conceived an audacious plan.
Having Dunmore on his ship during August 1775, Connolly brought with him a pledge of loyalty
to Dunmore and the Crown from several hundred inhabitants of West Augusta County, including
the Indian traders Alexander McKee and Simon Gertie. More important, Dunmore and Connolly
agreed to the latter's scheme, the Connolly Plot, in which Dunmore would raise a troop
In early October, a peace conference at Pittsburgh between Indians and the representatives of
Virginia and Pennsylvania had resulted in an agreement that provided for Indian neutrality
in exchange for an American pledge to maintain the proclamation line of 1763 as the limit
of Western Settlement. This agreement defied the fact that the line had already been rendered
de facto obsolete by the white victory of Dunmore's War over the Shawnees and by the
subsequent beginning of the settlement of Kentucky. McKee and Connolly were agreeable
to this arrangement as a short-term tactic until their proposed campaign could begin.
It was an ambitious and, undeniably, unworkable scheme. But at any rate, it never had a chance,
as Connolly and two aides were arrested shortly afterward by alert militia at Frederick, Maryland.
Connolly was brought before the Continental Congress for trial and promptly imprisoned.
As for McKee, he was soon confined to Pittsburgh by the local Committee of Correspondence,
The collapse of the Connolly Plot left Lord Dunmore with his forces based upon the sea.
For the first time in the war, the British now found themselves a small armed force facing
a large, unorganized, hostile population.
Except for the initial shock at Concord, the British forces had encountered regular American
armies, as at Boston, or fought in friendly or neutral territory in Canada.
But now Lord Dunmore was facing the essence of counter-revolutionary warfare, since it
is waged by relatively small though heavily armed forces of the government or its supporters
Against the mass of the civilian population, counter-revolutionary warfare must needs be
mobile, swift, and devoted to hit-and-run rating. Even so, it is a grave mistake made
by many analysts and historians to confuse this kind of rating with true guerrilla warfare.
Guerrilla warfare must rest on the active support of the bulk of the populace. The guerrilla
The Federal Reserve is the armed spearhead of the revolutionary masses. Its fire is directed
in pinpoint fashion against government troops and installations, and sometimes against their
relatively few allies and sympathizers. Its aim is to dislodge the rulers from the backs
of the people. Its long-run chances of victory are excellent. The counter-revolutionary rating
is necessarily conducted in wild and haphazard fashion by an armed minority against the bulk
of the people. Its aim is not simply to dislodge a ruling group, but to spread terror among
the people, to injure, harass and disrupt the economy. Its long-run chances of victory
are slight. The strategies proper to the two types of warfare reinforce these differences.
The more scrupulously the guerrillas refrain from harming the civilian population, the
more solemnly and securely the populace will support them. While the more vigorous the
counter-revolutionary terror raids, the more bitterly hostile will the populace become.
Short-term successes for guerrillas therefore promote victory in the long run. Short-term
from gains for counter-revolutionary bans anger the people still further and ensure
long-run defeat. It was this sort of harassing force that Lord Dunmore established on the
Virginia coast. Dunmore began in June 1775 with one hundred regulars and a few ships
anchored off Norfolk, where he was kept supplied by the preponderant late Tory town, dominated
by Scott's Merchants and Their Factors and Clerks.
When in early October, Dunmore was angered by rebel newspapers in Norfolk, he sent a
detachment of soldiers ashore to seize the press and paper, as well as the persons of
two of the printers. The local militia was called out to stop the outrage, but the apathetic
militiamen failed to lift a finger to protect the printers. The mayor and alderman of Norfolk
sent the governor a feeble pro forma protest. So mild indeed was Norfolk's indignation
that shortly afterward a town meeting invited Dunmore to occupy the town. The Virginia rebels
decided to take action against renegade Norfolk and soon 300 local militia of adjoining Norfolk
Dunmore, adding some Negroes and Scottish clerks to his force, marched against the rebels.
The Americans skillfully trapped him in an ambush, but they fled in panic at the sight
of the British.
Greatly emboldened by his victory, Dunmore proclaimed martial law on November 7 and set
up the King's Standard for the Colony. In a few days, 300 citizens took an oath of
allegiance to the Crown at Kempsville, as did 500 more at Norfolk. Soon 3,000 took the
oath in Princess Anne, Norfolk, Anne, Nansamand, Counties. The inhabitants of Princess Anne,
pledging themselves to support Dunmore, end the Crown to the last drop of their blood.
On November 17, with imagination and daring lacking in his fellow British commanders,
Lord Dunmore decided to exacerbate the contradictions in American society by offering freedom to
any Negro slaves who would join his armed forces, thereby permanently enraging the conservative
slave-holding Virginia Planters, who would probably not have supported the British in
any case.
Soon he was able to organize two regiments of Tory militia, the Queen's Own Loyal Virginia
Regiment and the Ethiopian Regiment composed of runaway slaves.
The Conservative Committee of Safety leading the rebel cause at Williamsburg was now finally
forced to act, sending two regiments of militia against Norfolk with the aid of a regiment
of North Carolina militia.
The rebels, over 900 men, led by Colonel William Woodford, faced Dunmore's 500 at Great Bridge
near Norfolk on December 11, 1775. Dunmore, in the foolish European manner exemplified
by Howe at Bunker Hill, chose to make a direct, massed frontal assault on the entrenched rebel
Physicians, Rebel Musket and Rifle Fire thoroughly smashed the British as they came forward,
and the British suffered sixty casualties while only one rebel was wounded. Dunmore,
decisively defeated, fell back to his ships and Norfolk was recaptured by the rebel forces.
The Virginia Army, on occupying the Norfolk area, recommended that the entire population
of the region be forcibly removed to the interior, to prevent any trade or intercourse with Dunmore's
ships. While this recommendation was never really put into effect, a reign of terror
was launched against the Tories in the area. Their homes destroyed and plantations seized,
the bulk of them fled the colony. Some went to Scotland, others to England and the West
Indies. Many joined the British Army in Boston. The Tories were angered at being so callously
abandoned by Lord Dunmore, who paid little attention to them, and treated even those
who fled to his ship with scant consideration. The case of the Sproul family is a particularly
poignant one. One of the wealthiest men in Virginia, and for several decades president
of the Court of Virginia Merchants, the ardently Tory Andrew Sproul fled to Dunmore's ship
as the rebels entered Norfolk. The revolutionaries destroyed his urban properties and confiscated
his plantation. This was too much for old Sproul, who died soon after. His wife Catherine,
also on Dunmore's ship, obtained permission from Dunmore to visit her son, imprisoned
as a Tory in a North Carolina jail. When she landed, the Williamsburg Committee of
Safety refused to allow her the visit and sent her back, but now Dunmore cruelly refused
to let her board the vessel. Booted back and forth between the two sides and not allowed
a resting place, she was finally able to obtain passage to Scotland. She was placed on a modest
British Pension List, but was arbitrarily cut off by Lord Dunmore while her Virginia
plantations were sequestered and sold by the Virginia government.
On New Year's Day, Dunmore received well over a hundred regulars and much arms from
Boston and St. Augustine. Emboldened by the reinforcements, he promptly shelled Norfolk,
Deliberately firing warehouses on the docks used for cover by the rebel forces.
The revolutionaries used this incident as a convenient cover for brutally putting a
large portion of Tory Norfolk to the torch.
It is estimated that Dunmore's naval fire that day destroyed 50 houses valued at over
Over 3,600 pounds sterling, but that the rebels deliberately destroyed nearly 900 houses valued
at over 110,000 pounds sterling.
In February, the ruling Virginia Convention made it official.
At its order, the rest of Norfolk, over 400 houses, was deliberately and savagely burned
to prevent Dunmore from ever again using it as a base. Thus did these moderate revolutionaries
in a consensus America pass a harsh collective sentence upon the people of Norfolk. Yet,
in the propaganda war, the rebels were able to lay the blame for the burning of the city
upon Dunmore, who the previous October had desperately but unsuccessfully tried to burn
burn the coastal town of Hampton as punishment for the people's burning of a grounded British
warship. Outside of Norfolk, the Virginia rebels tended to be more lenient, and in December
1775, the Virginia Assembly offered pardon from arrest and confiscation if the Tories
would take an oath of allegiance to the new Virginia government. However, enforcement
often differed in accordance with race. Thus in May 1776, thirteen whites and twelve negroes
were arrested for Tory activity and sent to Williamsburg for trial. The Virginia Convention
tried the cases in June. The negroes were sent to forced labor in Virginia's lead mines,
while the whites were either freed or given parole.
Ousted from his Norfolk base and failing to rouse the West, Dunmore intensified his plunder
in terror raids up and down Chesapeake Bay and along the Virginia coast. He ardently
intercepted shipping, seized tobacco, and burned plantations, and many Negroes seized
the opportunity to supply the British and to join Dunmore's forces, naturally enraging
and still further, even the most conservative planters. All in all, nearly 2,000 Negroes
ran away to join his fleet even though only the Negro soldiers and not their families
had been offered freedom. The slave exodus from coastal Warwick and Northampton counties
was particularly heavy, but a severe smallpox epidemic decimated their ranks and ruined their
Potential Effectiveness. His troops thus ravaged and his supplies running low, Dunmore decided
in the summer of 1776 to give up and join the British fleet in the north. Several hundred
of the healthiest remaining Negroes were taken north with the fleet, but Dunmore perfidiously
shipped many others into slavery in Florida and the West Indies.