A Rich Man’s Revolution, A Poor Man’s Fight for Independence

Michael McDonnell’s new history of the American Revolution in Virginia is primarily a history of wartime mobilization, or more precisely, of the often futile efforts of a political elite to motivate the middling and lower classes to take up arms against Great Britain. In his Virginia, class, contrary to some earlier accounts, is as important as race. In a deeply hierarchal society, wealthy planters, hoping to maintain white solidarity in the defense of slavery, tended to minimize dissent, but in reality, slavery, rather than unifying whites, worked to reinforce class divisions. “The way patriot leaders organized for war and reacted to the demands of those they expected to fight it, “ McDonnell writes, “depicts a conservative, anxious, sometimes fearful group clinging to traditional notions of hierarchy, deference, and public virtue” (p. 6).

By the eve of the Revolution, the self-serving polices of a planter elite had alienated the colony’s lower classes. During the French and Indian War, for example, the House of Burgesses had exempted voters from military conscription, effectively limiting the draft to the landless poor. Many gentlemen hoped the imperial crisis of the 1770s might “galvanize popular support for the embattled ruling class” (p. 33). But, in McDonnell’s words, “the gamble went horribly awry” (p. 43). The confrontation with Great Britain only intensified class divisions.

The royal governor, Lord Dunmore, proved even less able to control events than did the gentlemen rebels. His decision in April 1775 to remove fifteen half barrels of gunpowder from the magazine at Williamsburg helped set in motion a chain of events that led to revolution. Even more explosive were his threats to enlist slaves and indentured servants to suppress the putative rebellion. While Dunmore’s posturing divided white Virginians, it also energized the militants, as even he came to understand. Once news of the outbreak of fighting at Lexington and Concord reached Virginia, the radicals seized the initiative.

A series of “conventions” provided Virginia with a semblance of government as royal authority begin to waver. In early June 1775, Dunmore, facing mounting opposition, abandoned Williamsburg. By the time the Third Convention met later that summer, relative moderates had regained control. McDonnell sees the mobilization plan they adopted as an attempt to “harness the enthusiasm” of newly formed independent militia companies that threatened to become too independent (p. 92). The plan called for the creation of a small regular force, the preservation of the traditional militia, and the establishment of a new eight-thousand-man minutemen service, a ready reserve that would be better trained and more strictly disciplined than the militia. But it proved difficult to recruit minutemen, and the service’s discipline dampened martial ardor. Slaves began to flee toward British lines, and high turnover in the November 1775 county elections suggested an “unprecedented level of discontent” among the voters (p. 127). According to McDonnell, “gentlemen had suddenly found that in challenging royal authority, their own authority was rendered precarious by a volatile enslaved population, an uneasy lower class, and an uncertain group of middling farmers” (p. 114).

When it might conceivably have failed, Dunmore saved the revolution in Virginia. McDonnell is relatively charitable to the luckless governor, but he does describe his miscues. Dunmore’s proclamation in November 1775, offering freedom to slaves and servants who would join the British forces, alienated conservative planters who were not otherwise inclined to become revolutionaries. An ill-advised attack at Great Bridge in December produced a bloody defeat and led Dunmore to surrender Norfolk, which the Americans promptly burned, scoring a propaganda victory in the meantime by blaming the British for the destruction.

In a sense, patriot leaders succeeded too well in instilling a love of independence in the masses. In Loudoun County, tenant farmers began to protest what they believed were oppressive rents. The protest, McDonnell claims, brought Virginia to “the brink of civil war” (p. 196). The unrest manifested...