Give Me Liberty: The Struggle for Self-Government in Virginia

by Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker

Dunmore's folly gave him an excuse for doing so without waiting for a reply. Food and water were becoming scarce on the crowded ships in the river, many of the refugees became ill, several died. So Dunmore threatened to bombard the city if the patriots cut off supplies, and moved the warships to a position close by. But now the riflemen, firing from warehouses near the wharves, began picking off his men whenever they appeared on deck. On the afternoon of January 1, 1776, the warships opened fire, and several boatloads of soldiers rowed up to the wharves and set fire to the adjacent buildings.[53]

It was a striking evidence of the sacrifices which the colonial Virginians were willing to make in the cause of liberty that twice they applied the torch to one of their towns to prevent the enemy from using it as a base. The burning of Jamestown by Bacon and his men foreshadowed the burning of Norfolk by the revolutionary troops a century later. Seizing upon the fires set by the British as an excuse, the soldiers went from house to house to spread the flames. In all nearly nine hundred houses were destroyed. A month later, by command of the convention, the Americans burned down what was left of the city, 416 houses in all.[54]

The burning of Norfolk was a drastic step indeed. All who witnessed the plight of the people as they trudged along the roads leading out of the city to seek refuge in nearby farms must have condemned it as an act of useless cruelty. But in the end it probably saved more suffering than it entailed. Had the city been spared, the British would almost certainly have occupied it and held it throughout the remainder of the war, just as they held New York. It would have been a haven for Tories from all the adjacent states, the British would have made it a great naval and military base, from it expeditions would have been launched up the great Virginia rivers as Berkeley had launched expeditions from the Eastern Shore.

Since the Virginians had no fleet of warships capable of driving Dunmore out of their waters, they decided to starve him out. They even threatened to move the entire population of parts of Norfolk and Princess Anne Counties to prevent provisions from reaching him. In May he gave orders for the fleet to leave the Elizabeth River and proceed to Gwynn's Island, in the Chesapeake Bay, near the mouth of the Rappahannock River. Here he established a camp. But when General Andrew Lewis set up batteries on the mainland and opened fire, the place became untenable. One shot struck the Dunmore and wounded the Governor. "Good God! that ever I should come to this!" he shouted. A few days later his fleet sailed down the bay and out through the capes. With it went the last vestige of British authority in Virginia.[55]

Now the question of independence was in the minds of all. The small planter as he set out his tobacco crop debated it with himself; the blacksmith talked it over with his client as he shod his horse; it was the topic of conversation in the church yard before the sermon began; the members of the convention debated it as they rode along the muddy roads. In May, 1775, Dunmore wrote: "It is no longer to be doubted that independence is the object in view."[56] But in this he was wrong. The colonists did not want independence. They were Englishmen, most of them, speaking the English language, living under English law, attached to English institutions. They had hardly ceased to speak of England as "home." They looked to the British navy for protection, they were keenly alive to their economic dependence upon the mother country, they were weak and disunited. The colonies went into the war hugging the hope that there might yet be reconciliation, with Washington referring to the British soldiers as the Ministerial troops, and the American chaplains, in public services, praying for the King.

The colonies, in taking up arms, sought only to maintain existing conditions. The King and the Ministry were the real revolutionists, not the Americans. It was Washington who wrote in 1769, that "at a time when our lordly masters in Great Britain will be satisfied with nothing less than the deprivation of American freedom, something should be done to avert the stroke and maintain the liberty which we have derived from our ancestors." Washington by no means considered himself a rebel. He was championing the British constitution and American rights under it against the illegal aggressions of a reactionary Ministry.

But the war had not been long in progress before the people saw that they must preserve their freedom at the bayonet's point, or make abject submission. When, in the summer of 1775, Richard Penn and Arthur Lee went to England with the last effort of Congress for reconciliation, the so-called Olive Branch, they were rebuffed. The King and his Ministers refused to see them. While they were in London a proclamation was read at Palace Yard and Temple Bar by heralds, prohibiting all intercourse with the colonies.

Moreover, the ties of reverence and affection gave way rapidly before the anger and bitterness of war. The news that the King was purchasing troops from certain German rulers for use against them aroused the Americans to fury. Angry men gathered everywhere, in the coffee houses, on the village greens, or around the courthouses to discuss the burning of Portland in the midst of a Maine winter, or the arming of the slaves by Dunmore.

It was at this moment that Tom Paine's Common Sense made its appearance. Although this pamphlet was bombastic, radical, and filled with absurdities, it fell in with the trend of the day, and so tended to crystallize thought in favor of independence. More than 100,000 copies were sold, and it was estimated that every third person in the colonies read it. "Where, some say, is the King of America? I'll tell you friend. He reigns above, and doth not make havoc of mankind like the royal brute of England. A government of our own is our natural right. Ye who oppose independence now, ye know not what ye do: ye are opening a door to eternal tyranny."

Reluctantly the leaders of thought in Virginia came to the conclusion that the British government was forcing them into independence. Jefferson wrote John Randolph in November, 1775, that he loved the union with Great Britain, "but by the God that made me I will cease to exist before I yield to a connection on such terms as the British Parliament propose, and in this I think I speak the sentiments of America."