Elizabeth “Betty” Zane (1765–1823) was a heroine of the Revolutionary War. In 1782
Native American and Loyalist forces attacked a small garrison of forty-two at
Fort Henry in western Virginia (modern day Wheeling, West Virginia). The
garrison began to run out of black powder for their muskets and rifles. Zane
immediately volunteered to leave the fort to retrieve a secret cache of powder.
She ran fifty yards in full view of the enemy to retrieve the gunpowder. Her
mad dash allowed American forces to hold the fort.
In 1861, John S. Adams wrote a poem entitled, Elizabeth Zane which immortalized Betty Zane and which reads, in
part:
“No time had she to waver or wait
Back must she go ere it be too late;
She snatched from the table its cloth in haste
And knotted it deftly around her waist,
“Then filled it with powder –never, I ween,
Had powder so lovely a magazine;
Then scorning the bullets’ deadly rain,
Like a startled fawn, fled Elizabeth Zane.
“She gained the fort with her precious freight;
Strong hands fastened the oaken gate;
Brave men’s eyes were suffused with tears
That had been strangers for many years.”
Movies often give the impression
that everyone in the eighteenth century owned a horse.In fact, horses were transportation reserved
for the upper class and professionals because of the expense involved in
keeping them.At most, a horse could effectively
cover about fifty miles a day and most common folk walked if they needed to
travel.In the colonial period, the
Virginia gentry traveled often by horse and carriage to visit family and
friends, to attend social events, and to take part in the political life of
Williamsburg.The circumference of
travel was generally fairly small except for business or political reasons.
Overland on horseback from
Williamsburg to Richmond, in good weather, would take one day (fifty
miles).The journey from Williamsburg to
Charlottesville could take four days and to the Shenandoah Valley five or more
days.Even riding the fastest horse, a
trip from Williamsburg to New York City would take ten days.The most famous overland trip from New York
to Williamsburg was that made by the allied Franco-American army of George
Washington and General Rochambeau. The army began its march on August 19, 1781,
and arrived in Williamsburg, a march of some four hundred miles, on September
14.
The easiest
method of travel between Williamsburg and Philadelphia or New York City was by
ship. The trip to Philadelphia would take about a week, that to New York ten to
fourteen days, depending on the weather.Over land, the journey could take twice as long.Ships traveling across the Atlantic took at
least six weeks.
It
is not generally known that during the time when he was becoming one of the
leading Patriot leaders of Virginia Patrick Henry was under severe pressure in
his personal life. Henry’s wife Sarah began to show signs of mental illness
after the birth of her sixth child (some speculate that this was post-partum
depression). Patrick Henry’s mother wrote a letter in which she stated, “We
feel Sarah is losing her mind after the birth of Neddy.”
Sarah's doctor strongly recommended that she
be sent to the new Eastern State Hospital in Williamsburg. Built in 1773, this was the only
facility in Virginia at the time devoted to the care of the mentally ill. Patrick
Henry refused to send his wife to the asylum and decided to keep her confined
to the basement of the family home. This may actually have been a kindness, for
although the new hospital was created with the best of intentions the
treatments were harsh.Patients were
bled, blistered, subjected to pain, shock, and terror. They were dunked in
water and restrained.
Sarah’s behavior was reputed to be
unmanageable, and she was confined in a cellar room, bound in a straitjacket
and attended by a servant. This secret was kept from the public. After several years
of confinement, Sarah died in the spring of 1775 at the age of thirty-seven. She
may have killed herself.
At the outbreak of
the American Revolution, William Grayson served as a captain of the local militia but left the Virginia forces to become an aide-de-camp to General Washington. He
later took command of one of the sixteen regiments of the Continental Army. After
a bloody battle at Monmouth, New Jersey that virtually destroyed his entire
regiment, Grayson, now a Colonel, went on to serve on the Board of War.After the war, Grayson served as a member
of the Continental Congress and was later one of Virginia’s first two Senators.
Grayson died in Dumfries on March 12, 1790,
the first member of the United States Congress to die in office. He was
interred in the Grayson family vault in Woodbridge, Virginia on a hill overlooking
Marumsco Creek. The family burial
vault was originally located on a one-thousand-acre plantation. Now less than five
acres remain undeveloped. The burial vault, now sitting in the midst of a
Woodbridge residential neighborhood, was encased in concrete in the early 1900s
by the Daughters of the American Revolution. The Reverend
Spence Grayson, a “fighting parson” of the Revolution and lifelong friend of
George Washington is also buried in the vault.
Wealthy merchant Fielding Lewis, the
husband of George Washington’s only sister, Betty, was a colonel
in the Spotsylvania County militia. More importantly he provided saltpeter,
sulfur, powder, and lead for the production of ammunition.
In
1775, Lewis was appointed with four others to establish and equip a manufactory
of small arms for the newly formed Virginia government. Most of the operating
capital for the new enterprise was provided by Fielding Lewis. By May 1777, the
Fredericksburg Gunnery was producing twenty muskets, complete with bayonets
each week. Lewis also outfitted ships for the Virginia Navy, most notably the Dragon which was built in Fredericksburg.
The Dragon was initially used to
protect the Rappahannock River from British and Loyalist raiders but was later
used in the Chesapeake Bay.
Fielding
Lewis’ patriotic zeal ruined him financially as he advanced increasingly large
sums of money for the Patriot cause. Fielding Lewis died in December 1781, two
months after the defeat of General Cornwallis at Yorktown.
The legendary “Race to the Dan”, was one of
the most dramatic episodes of the American Revolutionary War.
In December of 1780, the British Army under the
command of Lord Charles Cornwallis was on the verge of victory in the Southern
theater of war. Cornwallis had captured Charleston and had destroyed an
American army at the Battle of Camden (South Carolina).
General Washington sent the able General
Nathanael Greene to North Carolina to retrieve the situation. Although
outnumbered, Greene was both aggressive and smart, as he fought a guerilla
campaign against the British.
On December 21, 1780, Greene sent General
Daniel Morgan, a Virginian, into South Carolina with one wing of his army to
harry the enemy. Morgan set a clever trap.
He allowed the British under Lieutenant
Colonel Banastre Tarleton to pursue his force until out of range of Cornwallis’
main army. He then turned and decisively defeated Tarleton at the Battle of
Cowpens.
Morgan utterly smashed Tarleton’s force and
retreated north into North Carolina with huge numbers of prisoners as well as
much needed weapons and supplies.
General Greene re-united the two wings of his
army in North Carolina as an enraged Lord Charles Cornwallis set out after the
Americans with the bulk of his forces, intent on recapturing the prisoners
taken by Daniel Morgan and smashing the Americans for good.
Greene’s objective now was to keep his
smaller army out of the reach of the British.
The Dan River, was a significant natural
barrier near the boundary of North Carolina and Virginia. If the Americans
could reach the Dan, they could prevent the British from crossing.
The “Race for the Dan” was on.
The Americans pushed the prisoners forward as
rapidly as possible. The British burned their slow moving supply wagons and
pursued with remarkable speed, sometimes being only a few hours behind the
Americans. Both sides were playing for high stakes.
On February 14, 1781, the American army
reached Boyd’s Ferry on the Dan River.Anticipating the arrival of General Greene’s army, a flotilla of small
boats had been assembled to carry men, supplies and cannon to safety. When the
British arrived, they could only look with frustration at the impassable river.
Charles City County - Westover Plantation: At the time of the Revolution this
was the home of William Byrd III. Byrd inherited a large fortune which he
turned into a very small fortune, through his lavish lifestyle and addiction to
gambling.On July 6, 1774, Byrd made
his will, disposing of an estate that “thro’ my own folly and inattention to
accounts the carelessness of some entrusted with the management thereof and the
villainy of others, is still greatly encumbered with debts which embitters
every moment of my life.”
Byrd deplored the “frantic patriotism”
sweeping Virginia and urged moderation and continued loyalty to the king. On
July 30, 1775, he wrote offering his service to the king. In November 1775,
however, he changed his mind after Lord Dunmore, the royal governor of
Virginia, offered freedom to slaves who ran away and joined the fight against
the Virginia revolutionaries.
This was too much for Byrd, who now sought
appointment as colonel of the 3rd Virginia Regiment. This came to
nothing, as did his attempt to persuade the Continental Congress to appoint him
as a Major General. In early January 1777, the embittered Byrd killed himself
at Westover.
During
Benedict Arnold’s 1781 raid on Richmond, the British made Westover their base
of operations for a week. William Byrd’s widow, Mary Willing Byrd, was a cousin
of Benedict Arnold’s wife, Peggy Shippen.
In 1776, Jefferson was chosen to draft the
Declaration of Independence, putting forward the arguments of the colonies for
declaring themselves free and independent states.
The Declaration
is regarded as a charter of universal liberties, proclaiming that all men are
equal in rights, regardless of birth, wealth, or status; that those rights are
inherent in each human, a gift of the Creator, not a gift of government, and
that government is the servant and not the master of the people.
Although
slavery, practiced in all thirteen colonies at the time, made a mockery of
Jefferson’s poetic vision, no less a figure than Abraham Lincoln, the Great
Emancipator, wrote:
“All honor to Jefferson – to the man who, in the concrete
pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the
coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary
document, an abstract truth, and so to embalm it there, that to-day and in all
coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers
of reappearing tyranny and oppression.”
Yorktown - Victory Monument:The cornerstone of this monument was
laid on October 19, 1881, to mark the centennial of the surrender of the
British at Yorktown. The monument to Alliance and Victory was completed on
August 12, 1884. A figure of Liberty stood atop the monument. On July 29, 1942,
during the darkest days of World War II, lightning struck the Liberty statue, sheering
off the arms and head. The body was shattered, and the base of the monument
damaged. Some thought this was an omen predicting the end of America.But America did not end and, after victory in
World War II was achieved, the monument was restored to its former glory in
1956, spurred on by the efforts of the Sons of the American Revolution.
One
foppish high fashion style of dress that made its way from England to Virginia
was the so called“Macaroni”.One
contemporary observer wrote:
“They
indeed make a ridiculous figure, with hats an inch in the brim, that do not
cover, but lie upon the head, with about two pounds of fictitious hair, formed
into what is called a club, hanging down their shoulders…. Their legs are at
times covered with all colours of the rainbow; even flesh-coloured and green
silk stockings are not excluded….Such a figure, essenced and perfumed, with a
bunch of lace sticking out under (the) chin, puzzles the common passenger….”
In
1774, Virginian James Mercer claimed that items had been stolen from him by a
“profound knave” named William Foster Crosby, whom he described as “(dressed)
like a Macaroni”
During the
Revolution British soldiers sang the ditty “Yankee Doodle” mocking Americans as
simpletons who thought if you stuck a feather in your cap you were the
embodiment of high fashion.Americans
adopted the song as a song of defiance.By 1781, “Yankee Doodle” had become a song of national pride.
Yankee
Doodle went to town A-riding on a pony Stuck a feather in his cap And called it macaroni.
Yankee Doodle keep it up Yankee Doodle dandy, Mind the music and the step, And with the girls be handy.
The average age of the Continental soldier was 22,
although soldiers varied in age from 15 to 70.
Continental soldiers came from many different
backgrounds and included African Americans and Native Americans.By 1780 persons of color made up as much as
fifteen percent of the Continental Army.Some estimate range as high as twenty five percent.
To fill the ranks, Congress assigned yearly quotas to
each state, which offered recruiting inducements such as bounties and land grants.States that were unable to fill positions
with volunteers resorted to sending members of the state militia, originally
only mustered to serve within the boundaries of the state, to serve with the
Continental Army.
In 1779, the Continental Congress established the blue
uniform coat as the color for the Army, but shortages of dye meant that many
regiments wore brown or green coats until the end of the war.
Regular United States Infantry during the Revolutionary
War were known as “Continentals” or the “Continental Line.”
Massachusetts and
Virginia each furnished the largest of the state Lines.Each state was
responsible for equipping its own soldiers.
At the beginning of the war equipping troops with
proper firearms was a major problem.Although men usually brought their own weapons when mustered (long
rifles or hunting guns), the lack of uniformity among these weapons was a
problem.
The notorious inaccuracy of the musket made the use of
the bayonet a key element in battlefield tactics.
The opposing armies
lined up facing each other in ranks two or three deep and fired in the direction
of the enemy. The musket was highly inaccurate at a distance greater than 80
yards.
Speed in loading and
firing was more important than aiming.The volume of fire was considered the measure of a good army. Presumably
if you fired enough times you were bound to hit someone.
The battlefield
tactics of the time called for reliance on the musket with a bayonet.
Civilian hunting guns
and rifles were not designed to mount a bayonet. If a fight was confined to
shooting, the Americans had an advantage with their longer range rifles.
If a battle ended
with a bayonet charge, of which the British were masters, the Americans would
be outmatched.
In 1777,
General Washington formed a Corps of Riflemen under the command of the
Virginian Daniel Morgan to take advantage of the long range shooting capability
and accuracy of the rifle.These
riflemen were a special unit, protected by regular Line troops when threatened
by bayonets.
The musket
problem was not resolved until 1777.France became the primary supplier of
military style muskets.
Some 102,000 muskets
were delivered to America between 1776 and 1781.By 1777 the entire Continental Line was
equipped with French muskets.
Until the formation of
the Continental Line in 1775, the American colonies had depended on home grown
militias for their day to day protection.
In times of peace the
militia was more of a social or drinking club than a military organization. Discipline
was lax and training sketchy. Even in times of war, militiamen were reluctant
to serve more than a few weeks away from home.Without them, who would work the farm and provide for the family?
Notwithstanding the shortcomings of
the militia, militiamen often provided essential manpower on the ground at key
moments.British commanders had to take
into account the size of militia forces operating against them when planning
campaigns.Such forces might be
unpredictable, and unsteady in a pitched battle against British regulars, but
they could inflict significant damage, especially in guerilla style attacks.
Even though the militia force was large and
useful, General Washington was convinced that ultimate victory over the British
would require the creation of a national, disciplined, professional army.He created this Continental Army which would
serve the American war effort well, with the militia providing significant
support.
The first widely distributed artistic rendition
of the Battle of the Little Bighorn was called “The Battle on the Little Big Horn River: The death struggle of General Custer.” Using a wood engraving based on a drawing by
W.M. Cary, The Daily Graphic: an
Illustrated Evening Newspaper, published
in New York, was able to portray the scene of battle as early as July 19, 1876.
The newspaper, which was the first in America
to publish daily illustrations, may have been the first in print, but the
depiction was not accurate.Custer is
seen standing on a boulder, waving a saber, in a double breasted coat with a
sash, which made him look more like a desperado or a pirate than a soldier.
Many regard Edgar S. Paxon’s “Custer’s Last Stand”
as the best pictorial representation of the battle.Arriving in Montana in 1877, the artist spent twenty years researching, and
eight years painting the monumental work, interviewing nearly one hundred men
on both sides including the Sioux chief Gall.
From these interviews Paxson, in his effort to achieve
historical accuracy, made detailed journals about the equipment, attire,
and physical location of each man on the battlefield.
The painting now resides at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in
Wyoming.
In 1884 the artists Cassilly Adams completed a painting he
named “Custer’s Last Fight.”The
painting was sold to John Ferber the owner of a saloon in St. Louis, Missouri,
where the picture was prominently displayed. The brewer Adolphus Busch
acquired the painting and the saloon in 1892 when Ferber went broke.
Busch commissioned Otto F. Becker, to produce lithographs
based on the painting to be used as advertising. The first advertising
prints appeared in 1896 with a run of fifteen thousand prints. There have
been eighteen subsequent editions with over one million copies having been
produced. The original Adams painting was destroyed by fire on June 13,
1946.
This painting has been criticized for having many historical
inaccuracies, including what appears to be a Zulu warrior rushing at Custer.
The renowned artist of the American Old West, Charles M. Russell
produced the lithograph “The Custer Fight” in 1903 depicting the battle from
the view of the Native American combatants.
"The Battle of Little
Bighorn" was painted by Kicking Bear in 1898 at the request of the western
artist Frederick Remington.Kicking
Bear fought at the Little Bighorn.His
drawing is a significant view of the battle as seen by Native Americans.
In 1775 Great Britain
depended on the Royal
Navy to maintain trade and project British
power.Throughout the war the British
could strike when and where they would along the virtually undefended American
coastline.
The British army
numbered 48,000 men, about a quarter of the size of the French army.Unlike the navy which depended on
conscription and impressment for manpower, the British Army at the time of the
American Revolution was a volunteer
force.
Volunteers were farm
laborers or the unemployed, and usually in their early twenties.A life in the army provided steady pay,
regular meals and an escape
from poverty.The non-commissioned officers were the backbone of the army and insured
strict discipline and rigorous training.
As
the war progressed, the army expanded rapidly.Some fifty thousand British soldiers fought in America.
Two
short periods ofimpressment were tried, in which
unemployed men were taken into the army.This proved so unpopular in Britain that it was quickly abandoned.
The
British turned to a well-established eighteenth century custom to augment their
numbers namely hiring foreign auxiliaries.
Approximately
30,000 German troops were hired by the British to fight during the American
Revolution. Most of these troops were from the German princely state of
Hesse-Cassel, and hence the term “Hessians” came to be applied to all German
troops in America no matter which princely state from which they may actually have
originated.
Soldierswere
a major export for Hesse-Cassel.Boys
were registered for military service at the age of seven.Men from the ages of sixteen to thirty
presented themselves annually for possible induction.School dropouts, bankrupts, and the
unemployed could be inducted at any time.Life in the Hessian army was marked by harsh discipline, but had
economic benefits.Wages were higher
than farm work and there was a promise of additional official money from the
sale of captured military property.There was also the lure of making money by plundering civilians, which
although officially forbidden was widespread.
Early in the war, the Continental Congress
devised a plan offering fifty acres of land, freedom to practice their
religion, and civil liberties to German deserters.Thousands of former Hessian soldiers did
indeed remain in America after the war.
After betraying his country, Benedict Arnold accepted a commission in the British army. After the war Benedict Arnold was not
celebrated when he arrived in England.
He tried to advise British politicians to continue the fight for America
despite the defeat at Yorktown.Members
of Parliament expressed the hope that the government would never put Arnold at
the head of a part of the British army lest “the sentiments of true honour,
which every British officer (holds) dearer than life, should be (offended).”
Arnold next tried his hand at business.He was turned down for a position in the East
India Company where great fortunes were being made with the explanation that
the purity of his conduct was generally thought low.
In 1785, Arnold tried land speculation in
Canada and trading in the West Indies.The entire family moved to Canada in 1787, where the quarrelsome
Arnold became involved in a series of bad business deals and petty
lawsuits.He became so unpopular that
the townspeople of Saint John, New Brunswick burned him in effigy in front of
his house as his family watched.
The
family returned to London in 1791.In July 1792, Arnold fought a
duel with the Earl of Lauderdale who had impugned his honor.When war broke out with France he outfitted a
privateer and sailed for the West Indies.By 1801 Arnold’s health began to fail.After four days of delirium he died on June 14, 1801 at the age of sixty
leaving debts and a name synonymous with treachery.
Lieutenant Colonel
Banastre Tarleton who led the fearsome Loyalist British Legion returned to England in triumph at the end of the American Revolution. He was universally acclaimed for his legendary exploits
in the American war and became a close friend of the Prince of Wales (the
future King George IV).In 1787 Tarleton
wrote History of the Campaigns of 1780 and
1781 in the Southern Provinces of North America.In 1790 he was elected to Parliament, where he
served for over twenty years. In the
Napoleonic Wars, Tarleton served under the Duke of Wellington reaching the
rank of lieutenant general in 1801.In 1815, he was awarded a baronetcy.
In 2006, four Patriot regimental
colors captured by Tarleton in 1779 and 1780 were auctioned by Sotheby’s in New
York City on Flag Day.Lot No. 1
consisted of one flag.Lot No. 2 consisted of the three regimental
colors of the 3rd Virginia Detachment that Tarleton captured at the
Battle of Waxhaws (also known as The Waxhaws Massacre).Passed down in Tarleton’s family for almost
two hundred and fifty years these battle flags were the last American Revolutionary
War colors known to remain in British hands and the last such colors to remain
in private hands anywhere.The fiercely contested
auction lasted fourteen minutes and raised $17.3 million. The three Virginia
flags sold for $5.0 million.The private
buyer remains anonymous, but the flags have occasionally been exhibited
publicly.
Despite his
defeat at Yorktown, Lord Charles Cornwallis was
cheered when he landed in England on January 21, 1782.He retained the confidence of
successive British governments and was appointed Governor-General and
Commander-in-chief in India in 1786.He
successfully led British forces to victory in the Third Anglo-Mysore War from
1789 to 1792.In 1798 Cornwallis was
appointed Lord Lieutenant and Commander-in-chief of Ireland.The spirit of revolution had swept the
British out of America and now threatened to do the same thing in Ireland.Disaffected Irishmen began to assert their
“constitutional rights” and sought aid from the French who had staged their own
revolution in 1789.A massive force of
26,000 was assembled under Lord Cornwallis which crushed the Irish rebellion
and repulsed a French invasion of Ireland.Following his service in Ireland, Cornwallis was reappointed to India in
1805 where he died of fever at the age of sixty-six not long after his arrival.
Peter Francisco (1760-1831) who was six feet
eight inches tall, and weighed some 260 pounds has come down to history with the
title the “Virginia Giant.” His deeds during the Revolutionary War became the stuff
of myth and legend. Some of the stories may actually contain an element of
truth, others if not true “ought to be”, in the words of the heroic
storytellers of the Revolution.The
stories of the Giant’s deeds were so popular by the 1820s that the early
Revolutionary War historian Alexander Garden wrote that he “scarcely ever met a
man in Virginia who had not some miraculous tale to tell of Peter Francisco.”
Pedro (later called Peter) Francisco arrived
at the dock in City Point aged five and was unable to speak English. It is
believed that he had been kidnapped from his Portuguese parents in the Azores.
He was taken in and raised by the family of Judge Anthony Winston.
In 1776, at the age of sixteen Francisco
enlisted in the Virginia Line. He fought in Pennsylvania at the Battle of
Germantown and in New Jersey at the Battle of Monmouth. Francisco was part of
an attack on the British fort of Stony Point in New York where supposedly,
even after receiving a nine-inch wound to the stomach, he continued to fight;
killing twelve British grenadiers and capturing the enemy’s flag.
One of his most well-known feats occurred in
South Carolina after the Battle of Camden. Seeing an American cannon mired in
mud and about to be abandoned, he freed the 1,100-pound cannon and carried it
on his shoulders to keep it from falling into the hands of the enemy.
He
fought at Guilford Court House in North Carolina. A monument at Guilford Court
House National Military Park commemorates Francisco’s efforts,” To Peter
Francisco a giant in stature, might, and courage who slew in this engagement
eleven of the enemy with his own broad sword rendering himself thereby perhaps
the most famous Private soldier of the Revolutionary War.”
The
story of “Francisco’s Fight” relates how the legendary giant, although unarmed, overpowered
nine enemy dragoons who were trying to rob him of the silver buckles on his
shoes. He supposedly killed three dragoons and made off with eight horses.
Posts
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
