We begin our revisit to Virginia’s Revolution and New Nation era with the political history “Dunmore’s New World” about the last royal governor in Virginia, followed by the “Accommodating Revolutions”, a case study of the Revolutionary period in the Northern Neck.
We then look at two titles addressing African American slave agency during war and peace, “Internal Enemy” and “War in the Chesapeake” in 1813 and 1814.
Political identity is explored in “Jefferson’s Freeholders” showing the centrality of property holding, “Chesapeake Politics” shows the origins of political parties in Virginia, Maryland and North Carolina, then “Brothers of a Vow” argues that white artisans and workingmen in Virginia found alternative political identity apart from property holding and slave owning in their fraternal organizations.
For more book reviews at TheVirginiaHistorian.com in this historical era addressing other topics, see the webpage for Revolution, Constitution and New Nation Era (1750-1824). General surveys of Virginia History can be found at Virginia History Surveys. Other Virginia history divided by topics and time periods can be found at the webpage Books and Reviews.
Dunmore’s New World
James Corbett David wrote Dunmore’s New World: The Extraordinary Life of a Royal Governor in Revolutionary America, with Jacobites, Counterfeiters, Land Schemes, Shipwrecks, Scalping, Indian Politics, Runaway Slaves, and Two Illegal Royal Weddings in 2013. It is now available at the University of Virginia Press, on Kindle and online new and used.
This is a study of a ambitious Scottish peer who sought advancement in his the mid 1700s government posts of British New York, Virginia and Bahamas. His most famous mark in history is “Dunmore’s War” against the Shawnee on Virginia’s northwestern frontier, followed by his proclamation as the last royal Virginia governor freeing slaves at the onset of the Revolution if they would but join the Loyalist cause. His efforts were of mixed motives and questionable outcomes.
Dunmore repeatedly asserted expansive policies that extended further than he was authorized amidst inconsistent royal restrictions, conflicting and contradictory native treaties. Overlapping British colonial claims from Pennsylvania were no barrier to his unrelenting determination to advance land-hungry ambitions of the Virginian gentry and himself beyond the Ohio River.
Learn more to buy “Dunmore’s New World” at Amazon.com.
Accommodating Revolutions
Albert H. Tillson, Jr. wrote Accommodating Revolutions: Virginia’s Northern Neck in an Era of Transformations, 1760–1810 in 2010. It is now available at the University of Virginia Press and online new and used. Tillson writes predominantly a social history, extending the understanding of the Northern Neck gentry residing between the Potomac and Rappahannock Rivers. He incorporates elements of the political, economic and religious.
Evangelicals at first challenged the social order in the Spirit of 1776. Presbyterians, Methodists and Baptists challenged race privilege by including slaves in their religious communities. While they eventually made peace with the landed gentry and their slavery, class resentment continued to fester among both tenants and overseers long after the Revolution ended, and plantation slaves sometimes resisted with sabotage and threats of insurrection.
The interloping Scottish traders who encumbered the gentry with debilitating debt provoked an intellectual tradition of non-capitalist Southern economy famously elaborated by George Fitzhugh. The pre-revolutionary landed gentry maintained their political and cultural control of the peninsula. By and large, the earlier social order had been founded more on accommodation and consensus than coercion and conflict, resulting in a society marked by greater continuity from 1760 to 1810 than experienced elsewhere in Pennsylvania, for instance.
Learn more to buy “Accommodating Revolutions” at Amazon.com.
The Internal Enemy
Alan Taylor wrote The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772–1832 in 2013. It is now available in a second edition on Kindle and online new in paperback.
The American Revolution and the War of 1812 gave opportunity for Virginia slaves to choose freedom, and in both cases, hundreds did choose freedom. Gabriel Prosser’s 1800 plot to hold Richmond hostage to gain Virginian emancipation reminded the Virginia gentry that they lived surrounded by enslaved blacks who might take action to secure freedom of their own accord. Nat Turner’s 1831 Rebellion in Southampton County only served to confirm their worst fears.
Taylor describes the shift from Revolutionary nationalism to states rights ideology. The national government did not assist in Virginia’s defense of the British Chesapeake Bay raids in either the Revolution or the War of 1812. The agency shown by Prosser and Turner was magnified by sustained rumors of slave revolt amidst cases of arson and assaults on overseers. In choosing a sectionalist stance, Virginia leaders aligned themselves with those of other slave states in the emerging cotton belt to the south and west.
Learn more to buy “The Internal Enemy” at Amazon.com.
War in the Chesapeake
Charles Patrick Niemeyer wrote War in the Chesapeake: The British Campaigns to Control the Bay, 1813-1814 in 2016. It is available at the U.S. Naval Institute Press, on Kindle and online new and used.
The War of 1812 was America’s first war of choice; it brought the burning of the capital in Washington DC. On the other hand, the British suffered surprising reverses at Craney Island at Norfolk and Fort McHenry at Baltimore. Nevertheless, American privateers were neutralized, the U.S.S. Constitution was bottled up in Norfolk, and the British were able to score some striking victories in raids up and down the Chesapeake Bay.
The humiliation at the defeat before Washington fed the anti-Madison administration war critics, but the Chesapeake Bay operations did not result in redeployment of any American forces away from the Canadian border. Over 4,000 Virginian slaves flocked to the British banner, providing scouts, guides, river-pilots, and manning the “Colonial Marines” landing forces to augment the British regulars.
Learn more to buy “War in the Chesapeake” from Amazon.com.
Chesapeake Politics
Norman Risjord wrote Chesapeake Politics, 1781-1800 in 1978. It is now available online new and used in hardcover. The dominance of tobacco in the early economies and trade connections among Virginia, Maryland and North Carolina made the populous eastern sections of those states a political unit. They all developed party machinery in the 1780s, which was developed amidst the increased transparency of state legislature roll call votes following the Revolution.
In Virginia, James Madison cultivated a small group into the creditor-nationalist-lawyer party that triumphed in the Ratification Convention of 1788. Party organization was extended into county committees, organized mass meetings, petition campaigns, and newspapers, bringing about a Republican sweep of the Congressional delegation as well as election of Jefferson as president in 1800.
Learn more to buy “Chesapeake Politics” at Amazon.com.
Jefferson’s Freeholders
Christopher Michael Curtis wrote Jefferson’s Freeholders and the Politics of Ownership in the Old Dominion in 2012. It is now available on Kindle and online new in paperback.
The right to be a political person in Virginia, whether for holding office or to vote, evolved significantly from the 1750s to the 1850s. Before the Revolution, the freehold of landowners entitled them to hold appointive offices and to vote in every town and county where they owned 100 acres of unimproved land.
At the Revolution, land ownership as “alluvial” rights remained a qualification for voting, and as of 1785, owning slaves conveyed the same alluvial rights as owning land. In the Virginia Constitution of 1830, the franchise was expanded to lease-holders, so property in land or slaves still being a qualification for voting rights until the Constitution of 1850.
Learn more to buy “Jefferson’s Freeholders” at Amazon.com.
Brothers of a Vow
Ami Pflugrad-Jackisch wrote Brothers of a Vow: Secret Fraternal Orders and the Transformation of White Male Culture in Antebellum Virginia in 2010. It is now available from University of Georgia Press and online new and used.
Southern white men found an identity apart from property ownership and slaveholding in fraternal orders where membership was openly known, but rituals were secret. Organizations such as the Freemasons, Independent Order of Odd Fellows and Sons of Temperance were based on a concept of manhood rooted in self-discipline, moral character and the reward of a good day’s work.
The emergence of a market-driven economy divided working class men from emerging professionals, merchants and businessmen. Most fraternal membership was drawn from the middling group of artisans and workingmen who were growing in numbers amidst Virginia’s early industrialization and agricultural diversification. Excluding women and blacks, the white fraternal organizations assumed a significant role in providing assistance to those in need thus displacing women from their earlier public sphere. The fraternal orders agitated for public education and made substantial appearances in public meetings even before their attainment of the vote.
Learn more to buy “Brothers of a Vow” at Amazon.com.
*Shalhope, Robert E. John Taylor of Caroline: Pastoral Republican (1980). It is now available online used. Learn more to buy “John Taylor” at Amazon.com.
Previously reviewed:
Selby, John E. The Revolution in Virginia, 1775–1783 (1988).
Tillson, Albert H., Jr. Gentry and Common Folk: Political Culture on a Virginia Frontier, 1740–1789 (1991).
Miller, J. Thornton. Juries and Judges versus the Law: Virginia’s Provincial Legal Perspective, 1783–1828 (1994).
McDonnell, Michael A. The Politics of War, Race, Class, and Conflict in Revolutionary Virginia (2007).