Except for the Dunmore raids in 1775-1776 and an abortive plot in 1776 by Dr. John Connolly in the Fort Pitt region there were no loyalist military operations in Virginia. Several hundred loyalists joined the royal army, a small number in comparison to most colonies. Most loyalists went to London or Glasgow. Except for William Byrd III and Attorney-General John Randolph, most native Virginia loyalists, including Richard Corbin, John Grymes, and Ralph Wormeley stayed quietly on their plantations.[38 ] Virginia's only nobleman, aging recluse, Thomas, Sixth Lord Fairfax, owner of the Northern Neck, 9,000 square miles of land, remained untouched at his hunting lodge in Frederick County.
In the early years there was a general appreciation of the difficulty some Virginians had experienced in breaking with England and swearing allegiance to a new nation. This switch was especially difficult for members of the governor's council and the Anglican clergy who had taken personal oaths of allegiance to the king, not a casual act in the 18th Century. Most of these men and women had been respected leaders in pre-Revolutionary Virginia, had many friends, brothers, and sons in the patriot camp, and took no direct action to support the British. Generally they were well treated.
As the war moved along, however, and the colonists suffered enormous losses in the winters of 1777 and 1778, sympathy decreased and demands for public declaration of allegiance to the patriot cause grew. Laws were passed providing for heavy taxation and then confiscation of loyalist properties. The fortunes of the war can almost be read in the evolution of loyalist laws. After the battle of Great Bridge (1775) the convention allowed those who had borne arms against Virginia to take an oath of allegiance to the Committee of Safety. Most Norfolk area loyalists did. But when Dunmore persisted in raiding Virginia that spring, the convention, in May 1776, changed the law and declared those who aided the "enemy" subject to imprisonment and their property to seizure. In December 1776 the new General Assembly voted that those who joined the enemy or gave aid and comfort were to be arrested for treason. If guilty, they would be executed. Those guilty of adherence to the authority of the king (as opposed to those who refused to support the new government) were subject to heavy fines and imprisonment.
A major turning point occurred in 1777 when general patriot outcries against those not supporting the Revolutionary cause forced the assembly to pass a test oath. Washington and Jefferson were especially vocal on this point. Every male over 16 was required to renounce his allegiance to the king and to subscribe to a new oath of allegiance to Virginia. In 1778 those who refused to take the oath were subjected to double taxation; in 1779 the tax was tripled. In 1779 legal procedures for the sale of sequestered and confiscated property were established and sales begun, although these sales never brought the income expected to the financially hard pressed state.
A similar progression from toleration to harshness faced the merchants who had stayed in the colonies as well as those who had fled. The latter had much of their property confiscated and their ships seized. Those who stayed found there was no neutrality. The key issue here was debt payment. The assembly declared that the new Virginia paper money circulated was legal tender and must be accepted for both new and pre-war debts. Many Virginians took advantage of this opportunity to pay their debts in the inflated money, a move which caused many problems after the war when attempts were made to straighten out personal British accounts. There was no sympathy for those who protested the inequity of this action. Revolutions and civil wars seldom bring equity. The remarkable thing is that in Virginia the Revolution progressed with so little internal strife.[39 ]
The War at Home, 1776-1780
From the time Dunmore left in July 1776, until the British moved into Virginia again in 1779, Virginians fought the war for independence on the soils of the other colonies. Their main contributions were providing the men and material which all wars demand. When one considers the natural reluctance of colonials to serve outside their own boundaries, Virginians' record of men and supplies were good.
The demands on the Virginia economy were great. With much of the natural granary in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Long Island occupied by British forces and the middle state ports blockaded, pleas from Washington for Virginia meat and food supplies were constant. Munitions works at Westham (Richmond), Fredericksburg, and Fort Chiswell and naval shipyards at Gosport, South Quay, and Chickahominy River operated at full capacity. A major munitions magazine opened at Point of Fork on the James River in Fluvanna County, and small iron furnaces appeared throughout the Piedmont and in the Valley areas. In 1779 Virginia exports of food and grain outside the United States were halted and redirected to the needs of Congress. Everywhere Virginians began to spin and weave their own cloth. Simpler life styles became the order of the war.
The plainer way of life was not just a patriotic morale-builder. It was a necessity. The natural trade routes between the Chesapeake and Britain were closed and the tobacco trade was ruined. To finance the war the assembly taxed nearly everything which could be taxed. Many taxes were those which the Virginians had rejected when imposed by parliament, including legal papers and glass windows. The difference was the necessity or war and the source of the tax laws—the people's own elected representatives.