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  • The Politics of War: Race, Class, and Conflict in Revolutionary Virginia
  • Terry Bouton
The Politics of War: Race, Class, and Conflict in Revolutionary Virginia. By Michael A. McDonnell (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2007) 544 pp. $45.00

In his wonderful Politics of War, McDonnell uses the difficulties that Virginia faced in fielding an army during the War of Independence as a way to probe the internal conflict about the direction and meaning of the American Revolution. This sweeping book about the social, political, and military dimensions of war presents a complex tapestry of civil-military clashes, shifting loyalties, slave and Indian uprisings, battlefield exploits, and legislative combat. McDonnell’s primary concern, however, centers on how Virginia’s method of recruiting soldiers upset the balance of power between the gentry, middling folk, and the lower sort. Although slaves play an important role in the story, McDonnell is interested chiefly in the class struggles among whites regarding who was going to fight the war and who was going to foot the bill.

The bulk of the action unfolds in a chronological narrative that traces Virginia’s mobilization for war from the initial enlistments in 1775 to its attempts to keep the army together until peace could be secured in 1783. McDonnell’s impressive research allows him to give a fully rounded story of the multifaceted conflict within Virginia. He moves deftly from contentious backcountry militia musters to Williams-burg and Richmond, where state legislators debated whether to accede to popular demands—among other things, an end to the draft and of the gentry’s exemption from service, increased militia pay, and progressive taxation—or to close ranks and impose the gentry’s will.

McDonnell creates vivid portraits—whether it be Lord Dunmore aboard a ship on the James River pondering freedom for Virginia slaves or a company of runaway slaves defending Great Bridge on the Elizabeth River near Norfolk for the British. He is equally adept at depicting small farmsteads, where draftees weighed the penalties of desertion [End Page 435] against the hardships of serving, which would mire their families in debt and privation, and George Washington’s Mount Vernon plantation, where the general’s caretaker cousin fretted about upstart plebian neighbors, slaves, and indentured servants. Across these landscapes, McDonnell reveals the ups and downs of waging war and, especially, the troubles that the gentry encountered when ordinary black and white Virginians refused to play their assigned docile roles.

Some of the near-constant recruiting problems were the product of a long, chaotic war, in which the home front was also a battlefield. Other troubles stemmed from the popular belief that the gentry was administering the war in elitist, antidemocratic, and self-interested ways. Predictably, the revolutionary government had a harder time mustering soldiers as the war continued. Farmers worried about leaving fields unattended and families exposed to attack from British regulars, Indians, and enslaved Virginians; governments and individuals endured financial setbacks as taxes mounted and currencies depreciated; enlistments plummeted when soldiers were expected to fight far away or when British armies invaded the state. McDonnell imbues even familiar conditions and events with fresh urgency by showing how they wreaked havoc on the lives of ordinary Virginians and created agonizing decisions about whether to serve or resist.

McDonnell’s most original arguments come in his discussion of how the gentry’s elitism often undermined recruitment efforts. He shows how the Virginia elite—many of whom had supported independence largely to reassert control over the common people—stifled popular enthusiasm for the war by trying to transform democratically run militia companies into a hierarchical, gentry-controlled, strictly disciplined corps of minutemen. Popular sentiment also waned when the gentry enacted regressive taxes to fund the war and exempted slaveholders from serving (which caused many others to balk at fighting in and paying for a war to defend the property of rich slaveholders who refused to sacrifice anything for the cause).

The gentry also proved tone deaf to the rhythms of Virginia’s agrarian society. Soldiers complained about long training musters and tours of duty that required considerable travel at the height of planting and harvest; they were outraged by...

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