If you think this year has been tumultuous, consider the one that a previous generation of Virginians lived through 250 years ago.
The year 1776 is etched in our collective memory as Americans, but in many ways, the year 1775 was far more critical to our history.
The year 1775 began with growing political tension between the American Colonies and the British government in London; it ended with open warfare taking place up and down the Eastern Seaboard.
The year 1775 saw Patrick Henry deliver his famous “Give me liberty or give me death!” speech that resonated throughout the Colonies, and it saw the ascension of George Washington from a Virginia figure into a national one as he was called upon to command the newly formed Continental Army.
The year 1775 saw the American Colonies make a formal peace offer in which they still described themselves as “your Majesty’s faithful subjects” and “ready and willing at all times, as they ever have been with their lives and fortunes to assert and maintain the rights and interests of your Majesty and of our Mother Country.”
King George III refused to even read the so-called Olive Branch Petition from the Continental Congress, considering the Congress an unauthorized and possibly illegal assembly. Instead, he declared the Colonies to be in “open and avowed rebellion” and ordered his military to crush the revolt, thus ending any hope of a rapprochement that might have led to a United States of America still under the British crown.
More strikingly, while the warfare between the Colonies and Britain started with British soldiers on the march toward the towns of Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts, it ended with the British either under siege (in Boston) or in retreat (in Canada) as a makeshift army of Americans took the offensive against Britain’s professional army.
By the end of 1775, many of Britain’s North American Colonies were functionally independent of both Parliament and the crown; the actions of 1776 simply formalized that arrangement and set it to stirring words largely written by Thomas Jefferson.
If you’ve been following our Cardinal 250 series, which looks anew at Virginia’s role in the revolution, you’ve seen all this play out in something close to real time with our monthly installments, but as 2025 comes to a close, it’s useful to step back and look at 1775 in context. If you’re not signed up for our monthly Cardinal 250 newsletter, you can do so here:
In our own time, we’ve seen the fortunes of some politicians rise and then fall with stunning speed. None, though, have hit the depths that Virginia’s Governor Dunmore did — our last royal governor who was born John Murray but was more commonly referred to by his title of nobility as Lord Dunmore.
In December 1774, Dunmore returned to the Colonial capital of Williamsburg as a war hero who had just pushed indigenous tribes out of modern-day West Virginia and across the Ohio River, thus securing new land for Virginia settlers. Andrew Lewis of Roanoke County was the true military hero who led the fighting, not Dunmore, but Dunmore got the political credit for both a victorious war that was named in his honor (“Lord Dunmore’s War”) and the peace treaty that he forced Native Americans to sign afterward. Had there been political polls in those days, the ones taken in Virginia at the start of 1775 would have likely shown Dunmore at high levels. Virginians of all classes (well, the white ones anyway) liked the idea of more land to the west — the gentry saw the potential for land speculation, the yeoman saw more land to work. Dunmore’s prickly personality had never gone over well in Virginia (he originally didn’t want the Virginia appointment at all), but the prospect of more land, without the threat of Native Americans insisting it was really theirs, would have overshadowed any personal reservations about the governor.
Then it all fell apart.
The speed with which British authority collapsed in North America is, in hindsight, quite remarkable, especially given that news then could only travel at the speed of horseback.
While Dunmore was returning to Williamsburg, the soldiers he had led were returning to their homes and hearing about the events that had transpired during their absence — such as the Continental Congress passing a resolution in favor of a boycott of British goods. The frontiersmen of western Virginia were particularly emboldened after the military victory. The leaders of Fincastle County — a now-defunct county that covered much of modern-day Southwest Virginia and Kentucky — met in what is now Wythe County and passed their own resolution. Those Fincastle Resolutions made them the first in the Colonies to declare their willingness to fight the crown for what they felt were their rightful liberties: “If no pacifick measures shall be proposed or adopted by Great Britain, and our enemies will attempt to dragoon us out of these inestimable privileges which we are entitled to as subjects,” the resolution read, “we declare, that we are deliberately and resolutely determined never to surrender them to any power upon earth, but at the expense of our lives.”
The first spark of revolution was lit in Southwest Virginia, but others would follow elsewhere.
Massachusetts had always been the most restive of Britain’s North American Colonies — throwing tea into the harbor rather than pay taxes, holding town meetings to declare certain unpopular acts of Parliament to be null and void in the Colony. King George III had first sent a military governor to quell the troublemakers; when that failed, the king in February 1775 declared Massachusetts to be in rebellion.
From there, events spiraled out of the king’s control — and perhaps out of the control of American Colonists, as well.
In April, the British, sensing trouble, tried to send soldiers to disarm the rebels and arrest their leaders. The results were the first shots fired, at Lexington and Concord. In Virginia, Governor Dunmore tried to prevent a similar confrontation by removing the gunpowder from the community storehouse in Williamsburg. That only stoked outrage — and saw Patrick Henry lead a militia force to march on the capital. A southern Lexington and Concord was only avoided when Dunmore returned the gunpowder, but the political harm was irreparable. He was a royal appointee who insisted on preserving the authority of Parliament and the crown. Public opinion in Virginia, and elsewhere, was moving in the opposite direction.
Virginia and North Carolina have long been rivals; today, they can still argue over which was the first to chase out its royal governor.
In May 1775, protesters surrounded the “royal palace” at New Bern, then North Carolina’s capital. Gov. Josiah Martin fled to a coastal fort 127 miles south. He was out of the capital, but still on land.
On June 8, 1775, Dunmore slipped out of Williamsburg for the safety of a British ship. North Carolina’s governor was the first to flee his capital; Virginia’s was the first to board a ship. Which Colony should get the credit?
That same month, Rhode Island’s legislature voted to “suspend” its royal governor, who had opposed raising an army in case war with Britain would be necessary. Joseph Wanton wrote: “The prosperity and happiness of this colony is founded in its connection with Great Britain; for if once we are separated, where shall we find another Britain to supply our loss? Torn from the body to which we are united by religion, liberty, laws and commerce, we must bleed at every vein.” Wanton, a prosperous merchant, simply retired from politics and stuck with business.
About a month later, on July 13, 1775, North Carolina’s governor also decided that a British naval vessel was a safer place than the fort.
That was three royal governors deposed in the space of two months. More followed.
New Hampshire’s fled in August.
South Carolina’s bolted in September.
New York’s left in October.
Others stuck around but were ineffectual. The royal governor in Massachusetts was pinned down in the siege of Boston.
Connecticut’s royal governor simply switched sides.
By the end of autumn, most of the Colonies were governing themselves, one way or another, and the fighting had spread out of New England.
In Virginia, the first shots were in October at Hampton, a little-known battle that had big consequences. Dunmore, his ship docked near Portsmouth, was looking for a way to regain power. Patriots feared he would sail up the James River to attack Williamsburg. Dunmore, emboldened by his success along the Ohio River and fancying himself more of a military genius than he was, envisioned sailing up the York River and attacking Williamsburg from the north. He sent a ship to scout landing spots; a hurricane ran it aground, and the locals burned the vessel to the waterline. They were even more outraged to learn that escaped slaves were serving in Dunmore’s force; the locals demanded the return of their human property. Dunmore refused, which set the stage for more battles — and Dunmore’s dramatic Emancipation Proclamation that promised freedom to any slaves who joined his force.
In the North, the revolution was a fairly straightforward conflict over who had the right to tax (and otherwise regulate) the people of North America: their own elected legislatures or one across the Atlantic.
In the South, particularly Virginia, the revolution was complicated by conflicting notions of liberty. Plantation owners, like the small farmers or shopkeepers of Massachusetts, saw liberty as the right not to be taxed by a government across the ocean that they didn’t elect. Many of their enslaved laborers saw liberty in different terms, as they flocked to the side of the royal governor who promised freedom in exchange for loyalty and service. The closing months of 1775 saw something remarkable (and, to some, frightening): multiracial armies on both sides going to war against one another in the marshlands of southeastern Virginia. At Great Bridge, in modern-day Chesapeake, the royal governor’s forces included escaped slaves who wore shirts with the provocative declaration “liberty for slaves.” On the other side, the hero of the battle was a Virginia militiaman named Billy Flora, a free Black man who owned a business in Portsmouth and who, as a sentry, held off an entire British platoon from crossing the bridge.
Dunmore’s army lost its battle, retreated to Norfolk and then withdrew entirely.
The close of 1775, and the beginning of 1776, saw two military events that shaped the war — and history today.
In the north, American armies hoped to add a 14th colony to their revolt and, for a time, succeeded. They marched two armies into French-speaking Quebec; the British fled Montreal. The Americans met with a prominent Quebec businessman who supported their cause to make arrangements for electing delegates to the Continental Congress. The businessman advised that the Americans wait until the British were completely out of the territory. The Americans march north, toward Quebec City. Marching north through Canada in winter was not a good idea. A snowstorm hit on Dec. 30, but Gen. Richard Montgomery ordered an attack anyway; many of the American enlistments were running out on Jan. 1, and he feared soldiers would simply leave. In a snowstorm on Dec. 31, Montgomery led the attack on Quebec City. He was shot through the head, and the Americans were whipped. One of Montgomery’s staff officers tried to drag his dead body through the snow to American lines but gave up. That officer’s name was Aaron Burr, who would go on to future fame — and infamy. The British found Montgomery’s body the next day. Montgomery had numerous counties named in his honor — Virginia’s Montgomery County being one of them — but the prospect of Quebec as part of a future United States died in the snow with him.
The next day, while the British were counting American bodies, Dunmore and the British fleet began bombarding Norfolk, setting the city ablaze. Dunmore soon gave up, but the Patriots continued the job — they distrusted Norfolk as a city unsympathetic to their cause — and within days the city was little more than ash and scorched chimneys that stood over the ruins. The burning of Norfolk was mostly a Patriot affair, but they used its destruction as a propaganda point.
Through the spring of 1776, the clamor for “independency” — once a forbidden thought if it had been a thought at all — arose throughout the 13 Colonies. The coming year will mark the 250th anniversary of that historic result, but as we make our way through all the commemorations and fireworks, we should remember that it’s the events of 1775 that made July Fourth possible.
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