John Marshall, afterwards chief justice, was in this expedition.[635:A] Richard Kidder Meade, father of Bishop Meade, was also present at the affair of the Great Bridge. This was the first scene of revolutionary bloodshed in Virginia. On the night following this action the royalists evacuated the fort, and Dunmore took refuge on board of his fleet. Colonel Howe, with five or six hundred North Carolina troops, now joined Woodford, and assumed command at the Great Bridge, with the consent of Woodford, who yielded to the seniority of his commission. Colonel Henry now saw the colonel of the second Virginia regiment, who had refused to acknowledge his command, submitting himself to an officer of no higher rank, and of another colony. He found himself, although invested with the title of commander-in-chief, yet virtually superseded and reduced to the mere shadow of a name. To nullify his superiority of command the committee had only to detach his subordinate officers.
On the thirteenth of December a member of the convention wrote to Colonel Woodford: "I have talked with Colonel Henry about this matter; he thinks he has been ill-treated, and insists the officers under his command shall submit to his orders:" and again, "A commander or general, I suppose, will be sent us by the congress, as it is expected our troops will be upon continental pay." Mr. Pendleton, chairman of the committee, in a letter dated December the twenty-fourth, and addressed to Colonel Woodford, said: "The field-officers to each regiment will be named here and recommended to congress; in case our army is taken into continental pay, they will send commissions. A general officer will be chosen there, I doubt not, and sent us; with that matter I hope we shall not intermeddle, lest it should be thought propriety requires our calling, or rather recommending, our present officer to that station." It appears that Colonel Henry had not owed his military appointment to those members of the committee of safety who conducted the correspondence.[636:A] Mr. Pendleton looked upon the appointment of Henry as an "unlucky step." Pendleton and Woodford were both of the County of Caroline.
Late in December, Colonel Henry insisting upon a determination of the question thus raised between him and Colonel Woodford, the committee passed the following resolution:—
"Resolved, Unanimously, that Colonel Woodford, although acting upon a separate and detached command, ought to correspond with Colonel Henry, and make returns to him at proper times of the state and condition of the forces under his command, and also that he is subject to his orders when the convention or the committee of safety is not sitting; but that while either of these bodies is sitting he is to receive his orders from one of them."
This decision virtually annulled the power of Henry as commander-in-chief. The clause of the ordinance of convention which authorized the committee to direct military movements is the following:—
"And whereas it may be necessary for the public security that the forces to be raised by virtue of this ordinance should, as occasion may require, be marched to different parts of the colony, and that the officers should be subject to a proper control,—
"Be it ordained by the authority aforesaid, That the officers and soldiers under such command shall, in all things not otherwise particularly provided for by this ordinance and the articles established for their regulation, be under the control and subject to the order of the general committee of safety."[637:A]
It could hardly be said of Woodford and his men that they were marched to a different part of the colony; he and Colonel Henry were still in the same quarter of Virginia, and not far apart. For so numerous a body as the convention, or even the committee of safety, to assume all the functions of the commander-in-chief, was incompatible with the unity, secrecy, and promptitude demanded in the conduct of war. If not, of what advantage was the appointment of a commander-in-chief at all? If the committee, by such a construction of their powers, could virtually annul the authority of the commander-in-chief, he, whose powers were at the least as ample as theirs, might, by a like construction, have repudiated their authority. The conduct of the committee toward Colonel Henry was strongly censured by the people as well as the troops, and they imputed it to personal envy.[637:B] Those, however, who approved of the committee's course, attributed it to a want of confidence in Colonel Henry, as deficient in military experience.[638:A] Other mortifications were in store for the man of the people.
Shortly after the battle of the Great Bridge the Provincials, under Howe, took possession of Norfolk, encamped there in the "Town Camp."