French cannon at Yorktown
Source: National Park Service, Sidney King Painting
French cannon at Yorktown
Source: National Park Service, Sidney King Painting
Governor Dunmore led the official British forces in Virginia at the start of the American Revolution. Local residents had appointed guards to watch the brick "magazine" in Williamsburg where the coloniy's muskets and gunpowder were stored, but on the very windy night of April 20, 1775 they abandoned their posts. Dunmore took advantage of the opportunity. He had 20 sailors and marines from the schooner Magdalen land at Burwell's Ferry, near the modern Kingsmill Resort. They walked four miles to Williamsburg, opened the locked gates of the magazine using keys provided by Lord Dunmore, and started to remove the half-barrels of gunpowder weighing 65 pounds each.
Local residents quickly discovered what was happening, but the sailors and marines had time to load 15 of the 18 half-barrels into a wagon and return safely to the Magdalen.
The governor claimed he was ensuring a slave insurrection could not use the gunpowder, but the colonists recognized he was disarming them. Patrick Henry led militia on an unauthorized march to the capital city; violence was avoided by a face-saving compromise when the royal Receiver General paid for the value of the gunpowder.1
the Magazine in Williamsburg stored gunpowder, which Lord Dunmore removed in April 1775
Lord Dunmore fled the Governor's Palace and reached safety on the H.M.S. Fowey on June 8, 1775. He sought to spark civil war among the colonists, with the hope that the Loyalists would fight the rebels and allow him to reoccupy the Governor's Palace. He also sought to weaken the patriots by recruiting their enslaved men to flee to the British lines. There they would provide labor needed to construct fortifications, and their absence from Virginia plantations would reduce food and supplies needed by the Virginia militia that was fighting against him.2
Dunmore's strategy failed in part because the Loyalists were threatened seriously by rebels who lived nearby. Dunmore created a base of operations at Norfolk after he fled Williamsburg, but he destroyed the city on January 1 and sailed out to the Chesapeake Bay after he lost control of the Great Bridge crossing over the Southern Branch of the Elizabeth River. His last base was at Gwynn's Island, which he abandoned after it was attacked in July 1776.
The British fleet sailed out of the Chesapeake Bay in August, 1776. For almost the next three years, there were no British forces in Virginia. During that time, there were not enough Loyalists concentrated in one place to create their own army, seize control of a part of Virginia, and create a parallel government to Virginia's revolutionary conventions and ultimately the new state government.
British troops returned during a raid in May, 1779 by Commodore George Collier and Major General Edward Mathew. They destroyed the Gosport Shipyard at Portsmouth, but the raid was followed by another British abandonment after just two weeks.
the British captured the Gosport Shipyard at Portsmouth and burned it in 1779
Source: Library of Congress, Part of the Province of Virginia (1791)
Major General Alexander Leslie arrived with over 2,000 troops in October, 1780, but that attack was just a diversion to disrupt supplies and support Lord Cornwallis's campaign in the Carolinas. Leslie left after only a month in the Hampton Roads area.
General Benedict Arnold returned at the end of December, 1780, followed by General William Phillips and finally Lord Cornwallis. Arnold established a base at Portsmouth, but as British troops marched across the state they stayed in one place only briefly. Loyalists who committed to support the invading army were exposed to retaliation as soon as the troops moved on.
British forces under Benedict Arnold reached Richmond in January, 1781
Source: Leventhal Map Collection, Boston Public Library, Skirmish at Richmond Jan. 5th. 1781
On February 22, 1781, General Arnold held a public assembly in Princess Anne County to get 400 local residents to swear a new oath of allegiance to the British government. They were willing to drink and eat what Arnold supplied for the event, and willing to mouth the words in the required oath, but they were just going through the motions.
Captain Johann Ewald, commanding Hessian forces, challenged one uncommitted Loyalist to raise troops locally in order to maintain control over the county. Ewald promised that the British would provide uniforms and weapons as needed. The Princess Anne resident replied to Ewald:3
Ewald replied initially, frustrated that his Hessians were risking their lives to assist the Loyalists unwilling to risk anything:4
Cornwallis entered Virginia after crossing South Carolina and North Carolina, before choosing Yorktown as the deepwater port where he would be resupplied by ships of the Royal Navy sailing from New York
Source: Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States, Campaigns of 1781 (Plate 160h, digitized by University of Richmond)
Later, Ewald recognized that Loyalists were wise to keep a low profile. He was surprised to discover that the response he heard was convincing, and provided a clear rationale for not overtly supporting the British cause. The Marquis de Lafayette articulated the same perspective in a letter to the Continental Congress, which was alarmed that Cornwallis was marching through North Carolina into Virginia without meeting formal resistance:5
Lord Corwallis chased General Nathaniel Green to the Dan River, before marching back into North Carolina and then fighting at Guilford Courthouse
Source: Library of Congress, The marches of Lord Cornwallis in the Southern Provinces (by William Faden, 1787)
General William Phillips brought 2,000 more soldiers to Portsmouth from New York in March, 1781 with directions by Sir Henry Clinton to take command from Benedict Arnold. Expanding the war effort in Virginia would reduce the number of troops who could be sent south into the Carolinas, and interdict supplies which could support George Washington's army around New York.
Phillips sailed out of Portsmouth on April 18, 1781. He seized Williamsburg, then destroyed the Virginia State Navy base on the Chickahominy River. He crossed the James River and captured Petersburg, then destroyed the barracks at Chesterfield Court House and captured ships and supplies at Osborne's Landing. General Phillips raided Richmond again, this time destroying the cannon foundry at Westham upstream of the city.
Cornwallis marched north from Wilmington to Petersburg. Phillips went to join him there, but died from malaria or typhus before Cornwallis arrived. The general's body was buried secretly in the cemetery at Blandford Church; the exact location is still unknown.6
Lord Corwallis marched from Wilmington, North Carolina to Petersburg to combine forces with General William Phillips
Source: Library of Congress, The marches of Lord Cornwallis in the Southern Provinces (by William Faden, 1787)
Col. Banastre Tarleton seized the ships and supplies at Osborne's Landing on April 27, 1781
Source: Huntington Library, Journal of the operations of the Queen's Rangers (Colonel John Simcoe, 1782)
After Phillips died, Cornwallis sidelined Benedict Arnold by sending him back to New York. Col. Banastre Tarleton, in his 1787 memoirs, diplomatically described Cornwallis' removal of a person he did not want in his army:7
The British forces moved from Petersburg towards Richmond, seeking to defeat the Marquis de Lafayette before he could unite with reinforcements coming from Pennsylvania. The British had complete military dominance thanks to their superior numbers (over 7,000 men) and especially their cavalry. Lafayette had only a few men on horses, and struggled to even monitor the movements of Cornwallis' forces.
The rebellious Virginia leaders in the General Assembly fled Richmond on May 10, headed west to reconvene on May 24 in Charlottesville. A quorum of members was finally available on May 28, when the legislature reconvened in (probably) Scottsville at the former Albemarle County Courthouse. Jefferson's second one-year term expired at the start of June and he had declined to serve any longer, but the legislature did not elect his replacement on May 28.8
Cornwallis decided that he could not cross the North Anna River and catch Lafayette before General "Mad" Anthony Wayne would arrive with the Pennsylvania reinforcements. Cornwallis also decided that the supplies stored by the Virginians at two locations to his west were more significant that the material at Fredericksburg and Hunter's Iron Works at Falmouth.
Taking advantage of Lafayette being on the other side of the North Anna River, Cornwallis split his army. He sent Colonel John Simcoe and his Queens Rangers to seize an important supply base at the mouth of the Rivanna River, ordered Col. Banastre Tarleton to race west from Hanover Court House to Charlottesville, and marched with the rest to a planned reunion at Thomas Jefferson's Elk Hill plantation in Goochland County.
At Point of Fork (the site of the old Monacan town of Rassawek, near modern-day Columbia), Baron von Steuben moved all the supplies and boats away from Colonel John Simcoe to the south side of the James River. Von Steuben was fooled into thinking all of Cornwallis' army had arrived, and the American rebels fled. The British were able to cross the river unopposed and destroy the stockpile.9
under Colonel John Simcoe, the Queen's Rangers (American Tories) captured Baron von Steuben's supply base at Point of Fork (modern-day Columbia) on June 5, 1781
Source: Huntington Library, Journal of the operations of the Queen's Rangers (Colonel John Simcoe, 1782)
Col. Banastre Tarleton led a raid to Charlottesville with his British Legion to destroy supplies there and also to capture the General Assembly. As British cavalry were riding up the hill at Monticello on June 4, Thomas Jefferson fled in the other direction. He retired to property he owned in Bedford County where he later constructed Poplar Forest.
Opponents, primarily supporters of Patrick Henry, quickly accused Jefferson of mismanaging the Virginia response to the invasions by Arnold, Phillips, and Cornwallis, and of personal cowardice for his flight. Jefferson responded that the state always lacked the resources to counter the British, particularly a navy to stop them from crossing rivers:10
The legislators who escaped Tarleton went further west to Staunton and reassembled in Trinity Church. While meeting in Staunton, the General Assembly elected Thomas Nelson Jr. as the next governor.11
After being rejoined by Simcoe and Tarleton, Cornwallis marched his army east from Elk Hill back to Williamsburg. There he receive a message from Gen. Henry Clinton in New York, who feared attack by the combined forces under General George Washington and the French under the Count de Rochambeau. Clinton demanded Cornwallis detach a force from his unchallenged marches through Virginia and send them to New York. To supply the troops and to ensure adequate fortifications to protect his remaining force, Cornwallis started to move to the British base at Portsmouth.
That required crossing the James River again. The British Navy brought up ships, and the army moved to Jamestown Island in order to be ferried across to Cobham.
That is where Lafayette finally sent Wayne's troops to attack Cornwalllis. Lafayette thought he was dealing with only the rear guard because Tarleton had arranged for him to capture a false deserter with that "intelligence," but Cornwallis had disguised his movements and outnumbered the Americans. Wayne managed to retreat back to Green Spring Plantation, the former home of Governor Culpeper. The British victory was the largest infantry engagement to occur in Virginia during the American Revolutionary War.
After crossing to the south bank, Tarleton was sent west to Bedford County to interdict and destroy supplies intended for the General Greene's army in the Carolinas. The British Legion left Cobham on July 9, 1781, passing through Petersburg and Prince Edward Courthouse (now Worsham, near Hamden-Sydney college south of Farmville). During the raid, the cavalry rested in the middle of the day to avoid exhausing the horses.
British intelligence was faulty; the American supplies had been shipped to the Carolinas a month earlier. Tarleton chose a different route back to reach Portsmouth, since General Wayne had moved his units to Petersburg. Fortunately for the British, no Americans contested their crossing over the Blackwater River, where a defended position could have blocked the ford.
Over the course of 15 days, the cavaly rode over 400 miles. There were no significant engagements, and few supplies were destroyed. Fine Virginia horses were captured, but Tarleton later judged that the British had been more damaged by the long, hot ride than the Virginians:12
One of the tall tales of the Revolutionary Way is of the superhuman strength of Peter Francisco. He was an impressively-large man, perhaps 6'6" tall. Supposedly he single-handedly pulled an 1,100 pound cannon off its carriage and brought it safely to a wagon during the battle of Camden. During Tarleton's Bedford raid, nine of Tarleton's cavalry made Franciso their prisoner. When one demanded he hand over the silver buckles on his shoes, Franciso reportedly grabbed the soldier's sword, wounded him, and forced the other eight to flee while leaving ther horses behind.
Perhaps the most accurate element of the story is the behavior of the tavern keeper. Francisco reported that he helped the British, giving one a gun to shoot Francisco. Not all Virginians were strong supporters of the patriot cause, especially when surrounded by British troops.13
Peter Francisco, an unusually strong and courageous man, became an American hero for his fighting against the British
Source: Library of Congress, Peter Francisco's gallant action with nine of Tarleton's cavalry in sight of a troop of four hundred men
After Tarleton left on the Bedford raid, Cornwallis took the rest of his army along the path of modern Route 10 to Suffolk and on to Portsmouth. He received new orders directing him to stay north of the James River and to secure Old Point Comfort as a base for the British Navy. After determining it was not the best place to establish a base and wait for resupply from New York, he moved the British Army by ship to Yorktown in August, 1781. The British destroyed the fortifications at Portsmouth to prevent them from being used by Lafayette.14
the British sailed from Portsmouth to Yorktown in August, 1781 in anticipation of getting resupplied there
Source: Library of Congress, The marches of Lord Cornwallis in the Southern Provinces (by William Faden, 1787)
The ultimate fate of the British army at Yorktown was determined by a naval battle in the Atlantic Ocean. At the Battle of the Capes, a French fleet blocked the British ships coming from New York from entering the Chesapeake Bay. When Washington and Rochambeau arrived with American and French troops, Cornwallis was trapped in Yorktown without the expected reinforcements or supplies.
His surrender to a united force of French and American troops in October, 1781, was a catastrophe for the enslaved men and women who had chosen to abandon their Virginia homes and follow the British. During the four months of marching across the state, Cornwallis encouraged enslaved people to leave their masters and follow him. Cornwallis learned from his Carolina experience, and did not expect Virginia's Tories to re-establish control and govern after his army had moved on. He did not try to win the hearts and minds of white Virginians by returning slaves. Instead, he sought to impose economic pain on the rebels and force the colony into submission, and to the enslaved population "freedom wore a red coat" in 1781.
After Cornwallis surrendered, George Washington ordered that the free blacks within the British lines be separated from the enslaved blacks. Those who were judged to be escaped slaves were returned to their masters.15
Yorktown brought most, but not all, fighting to an end. On the western frontier, British officers worked with Native Americans to launch two major assaults in 1782.
On August 19, 50 British soldiers and 300 Native Americans clashed with 182 Kentucky militiamen at the Battle of Blue Licks in Kentucky. The Americans had been pursuing the British/Native American force which had attacked Bryan's Station and, after failing to capture it, headed north to cross the Ohio River.
Daniel Boone warned the Kentucky militia that they were following a too-obvious trail, and an ambush lay ahead. Other leaders chased on anyway, to avoid accusations of cowardice. Boone followed, commenting:16
Boone was correct. About 1/3 of the Kentuckians - including Boone's son Israel - died that day.17
In the other assault by British rangers and Native American warriors, Fort Henry was surrounded in September, 1782. The defenders inside the fort at Wheeling were just the local residents, who raced inside just before the raiders appeared. A few other Virginians, including the family of Ebenezer Zane, fled to the nearby blockhouse where the gunpowder was stored.
The fort's defenders repelled two attacks on the first night, but ran low on gunpowder by morning. Elizabeth Zane ran from the fort to the blockhouse, filled her apron with gunpowder, and raced back to the fort under fire from the attackers. That enabled the defenders to continue their resistance. The attackers had brought only enough supplies for a few days, and soon abandoned the siege.18
The American retaliation came in November, 1782. George Rogers Clark led an army into Ohio and burned five Shawnee villages, in the Northwest Territory to which Virginia had only recently ceded its claims to the Continental Congress. The Shawnee retreated rather than fight, but the expedition is often described as the "last battle" of the American Revolution.19
The Treaty of Paris, which ended the war and acknowledged American independence, was signed in 1783.
in 1781, Lafayette (yellow line) could only shadow the British (red line) as they chose to raid Richmond and destroy supplies throughout Virginia
Source: Library of Congress, Campagne en Virginie du Major General M'is de LaFayette : ou se trouvent les camps et marches, ainsy que ceux du Lieutenant General Lord Cornwallis en 1781
Cornwallis concentrated forces at Petersburg in April 1781, crossed the James River to Westover Plantation and captured Richmond, then embarked at Bermuda Hundred to sail back to the British base at Portsmouth
Source: Library of Congress, Campagne en Virginie du Major General M'is de LaFayette : ou se trouvent les camps et marches, ainsy que ceux du Lieutenant General Lord Cornwallis en 1781
after an American victory at Cowpens, General Daniel Morgan and General Nathaniel Greene managed a strategic retreat across the Carolinas and crossed the Dan River before General Cornwallis
Source: Internet Archive, A School History of the United States, from the Discovery of America to the Year 1878 (p.196)
highway historical markers highlight Revolutionary War events in eastern Virginia
route of Comte de Rochambeau's army through Northern Virginia, 1781 and 1782
Source: Library of Congress, Cote de York-town - Boston: Marches de l'armee
Lord Cornwallis fortified Yorktown, with the expectation that reinforcements would arrive from New York before his base could be captured through a siege by French and America armies
Source: Library of Congress, Plan of Yorktown and Glucester [sic], Virginia, October 1781
re-enactors at the Yorktown Victory Monument
Source: Joint Base Langley-Eustis
Blandford Church in Petersburg - burial site of Major General William Phillips, who captured the city in 1781
in 1781, Col. Banastre Tarleton raided as far west as Bedford and Charlottesville and Lord Cornwallis marched up to the North Anna River
Source: Library of Congress, The marches of Lord Cornwallis in the Southern Provinces (by William Faden, 1787)
Bedford was not safe from the British in 1781
Source: Library of Congress, The marches of Lord Cornwallis in the Southern Provinces (by William Faden, 1787)
the Treaty of Paris ended the Revolutionary War in 1783
Source: Iowa Historical Society, Treaty of Paris
Cornwallis's surrender in 1781 was negotiated in the Moore House outside the town of Yorktown by subordinates - Cornwallis and Washington did not meet there in person to sign terms of capitulation
Source: Historical collections of Virginia, The Moore House, Yorktown (p.530)
the Moore House in Yorktown was damaged during the Civil War
Source: The Photographic History of the Civil War, The Scene of Yorktown's Only Surrender (p.268)
 Yorktown Victory Monument |
 Yorktown Grace Church |
 Yorktown fascine (1781 sand bag) |
 Yorktown "Fox" cannon |
 NPS visitor center (Yorktown Battlefield) |
 Thomas Nelson house (Yorktown) |
 Nelson House 1781 cannonball (fake...) |
 Yorktown mural (Read Street) |