Fort Nelson.
"During the Revolution Sovereign Virginia erected Fort Nelson to resist Lord Dunmore, should he ever attempt to return to the harbor of Norfolk and Portsmouth. It was named for the patriot Governor Nelson, who gave his private fortune to aid the credit of Virginia, and risked his life and sacrificed his health on the battlefields of the American Republic. On account of its location it was never the scene of any bloody battle, but like the 'Old Guard,' it was held in reserve for the emergencies of war. On the 9th of May, 1779, a great British fleet, under Admiral Sir George Collier entered Hampton Roads, sailed up Elizabeth river, and landed three thousand royal soldiers under General Matthews in Norfolk County, where Fort Norfolk now stands, to flank this fortification and capture its garrison composed of only 150 soldiers. Maj. Matthews, the American commander, frustrated the designs of the British general by evacuating the fort, and retired to the northward. On the 11th of May, the British took possession of the two towns, and gave free hand to pillage and destruction. Sir George Collier, after satisfying his wrath sailed back to New York. Varying fortunes befell Fort Nelson during the remainder of the war until the evacuation by Benedict Arnold, after which no British grenadier ever paced its ramparts. After the close of the Revolution, it was rebuilt and for many years was garrisoned by regular soldiers of the United States; but since, abandoned as a fortification, it has been a beautiful park and a home for sick officers and sailors of our navy.
"The garrison of Fort Nelson, under the glorious stars and stripes, on the 22nd of June, 1813, stood to their shotted guns, to meet the British invaders, who were defeated at Crany Island, by our Capt. Arthur Emerson and other gallant heroes. Here thousands of soldiers marched in response to the call of Virginia in 1861."
In the naval park at Portsmouth, the site of Fort Nelson, there is a monument whose granite body embraces a real Revolutionary cannon. This gun was selected from a number of guns known to be of the period of the American Revolution. It is believed that one, at least, of these was mounted at Crany Island for the defense of Portsmouth and Norfolk. The honor of erecting this monument is due to the ladies of the Fort Nelson Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution and to Admiral P. F. Harrington of the United States Navy, and also Medical Director R. C. Person of the navy. It is said that with proper care this gun will last centuries and "It will carry down to distant generations a memorial of the patriots of the American Revolution, a mark of the formation of a nation and the token of the later patriots, the Daughters of the American Revolution, to whose efforts is due this important national service to which the gun has been dedicated."
After these first assaults, for about three years of the war, there was almost no fighting in Virginia, but during that term she was furnishing her full quota of men, money and inspiration to the cause, with devoted loyalty, assisting in the north and in the south, wherever an attack was made. Directing her attention to the main army she built no defences of any importance on her own territory east of the Alleghanies. "The British success in the north and followed by still more decided victories in the south. Thus later the English began to look forward, with certainty, to the conquest of the entire country, and as Virginia was regarded as the heart of the rebellion, it was decided to carry their victorious arms into the state, as the surest way of bringing the war to a speedy conclusion." We had no time, then, for building forts, and when we recall the traitor Arnold's advance on Richmond, with the two days he spent there destroying public and private property—his taking of Petersburg, burning the tobacco and vessels lying at the wharves, with Col. Tarleton's raids, scouring the country of every thing; in fact all of Cornwallis' reign of terror, which was soon to end in that imposing scene at Yorktown, we realize truly that "the battle is not to the strong, nor the race to the swift," but that a country's bulwark often are not forts and strong towers, but her courageous heart, and her staunch friends, such men as Lafayette, De Rochambeau, De Grasse and Steuben, who with Washington, led the allied Americans and French forces at Yorktown, and besieged the British fortification, the surrender of which virtually closed the Revolutionary War on the 19th of October, 1781. The place is sacred, their devotion reverenced.