Oct. CHAP. the British, having cut their way through the sunken LV. boats, renewed the attack; but the riflemen poured 1775. upon them a heavy fire, killing a few and wounding more. One of the tenders was taken with its armament and seven seamen; the rest were with difficulty towed out of the creek. The Virginians lost This is the first battle of the revolution in the Ancient Dominion; and its honors belonged to the Virginians. Nov. not a man. While yet a prey to passion after this repulse, Dunmore was informed that a hundred and twenty or thirty North Carolina rebels were marching into the colony to occupy the Great Bridge, which, at a distance of nine or ten miles from Norfolk, crossed the Elizabeth river. It rested on each side upon firm dry ground, which rose like islands above the wide spreading morasses, and could be approached only by causeways; so that it formed a very strong pass, protecting the approach to Norfolk by land from the county of Princess Anne and from a part of the county of Norfolk. He had twice received detachments from the fourteenth regiment, which had been stationed at St. Augustine: collecting all of them who were able to do duty, and attended by volunteers from Norfolk, Dunmore on the fourteenth of November hastened to the Great Bridge. Finding no Carolinians, he marched rapidly to disperse a body of militia who were assembled at Kemp's Landing, in Princess Anne. They lay in an ambuscade to receive him, and fired upon his party from a thicket; but being inferior in numbers, in discipline, and in arms, they soon. fled, panic struck and in confusion, leaving their commander and six others as prisoners. On his return, he ordered a fort to be built at the Great Bridge on the CHAP. side nearest Norfolk. LV. Nov. Encouraged by "this most trifling success," Dun- 1775. more raised the king's flag, and publishing a procla mation which he had signed on the seventh, he established martial law, required every person capable of bearing arms to resort to his standard, under penalty of forfeiture of life and property, and declared freedom to "all indented servants, negroes, or others, appertaining to rebels," if they would "join for the reducing the colony to a proper sense of its duty." The effect of this invitation to convicts and slaves to rise against their masters was not limited to their ability to serve in the army: "I hope," said Dunmore, "it will oblige the rebels to disperse to take care of their families and property." The men to whose passions he appealed were either criminals, bound to labor in expiation of their misdeeds, or barbarians, some of them freshly imported from Africa, with tropical passions seething in their veins, and frames rendered strong by abundant food and out of door toil; they formed the majority of the population on tide-water, and were distributed among the lonely plantations in clusters around the wives and children of their owners; so that danger lurked in every home. The measure was a very deliberate act which had been reported in advance to the ministry, and had appeared an "encouraging" one to the king; it formed a part of a system which Dunmore had concerted with General Gage and General Howe. He also sent for the small detachment of regulars stationed in Illinois and the northwest; he commissioned Mackee, a deputy superintendent, to raise a regiment Nov. CHAP. of Indians among the savages of Ohio and the westLV. ern border; he authorized John Connolly to raise a 1775. regiment in the backwoods of Virginia and Pennsylvania; and he directed these different bodies to march to Alexandria. At the same time he was himself to "raise two regiments, one of white people, to be called the Queen's Own Loyal Virginia regiment; the other of negroes, to be called Lord Dunmore's Ethiopian regiment." Connolly was arrested in Maryland in November; and thus the movements at the west were prevented. At Dunmore's proclamation a thrill of indignation ran through Virginia, effacing all differences of party; and rousing one strong impassioned purpose to drive away the insolent power by which it had been put forth. Instead of a regiment on the king's side from the backwoods, William Campbell and Gibson were on the march from Fincastle and West Augusta, with patriotic rifle companies, composed of "as fine men as ever were seen." In the valley of the Blue Ridge the different congregations of Germans, quickened by the preaching of Muhlenburg, were animated with one heart, and stood ready at the first summons to take up arms for the defence of the men of the low country, regardless of their different lineage and tongue. The general congress promptly invited Virginia, as it had invited New Hampshire and South Carolina, to institute a government of her own; and this was of the greater moment, because she was first in wealth, and numbers, and extent of territory. "If that man is not crushed before spring," wrote Washington of Dunmore, "he will become the most formidable enemy of America. Motives of resent LV. Nov. ment actuate his conduct to a degree equal to the CHAP. total destruction of Virginia. His strength will increase as a snowball by rolling, and faster, if some 1775. expedient cannot be hit upon to convince the slaves and servants of the impotency of his designs." The Virginians could plead and did plead that "their assemblies had repeatedly attempted to prevent the horrid traffic in slaves, and had been frustrated by the cruelty and covetousness of English merchants, who prevailed on the king to repeal their merciful acts; that the English encouraged and upheld slavery, while the present masters of negroes in Virginia pitied their condition, wished in general to make it easy and comfortable, and would willingly not only prevent any more negroes from losing their freedom, but restore it to such as had already unhappily lost it;" and they foresaw that whatever they themselves might suffer from a rising, the weight of sorrow would fall on the insurgent slaves themselves. But, in truth, the cry of Dunmore did not rouse among the Africans a passion for freedom. To them bondage in Virginia was not a lower condition of being than their former one; they had no regrets for ancient privileges lost; their memories prompted no demand for political changes; no struggling aspirations of their own had invited Dunmore's interposition; no memorial of their grievances had preceded his offers. What might have been accomplished, had he been master of the country, and had used an undisputed possession to embody and train the negroes, cannot be told; but as it was, though he boasted that they flocked to his standard, none combined to join him from a longing for an improved condition or even from ill will to their masters. CHAP. The innumerable affinities which had united the LV. people with the British government, still retained 1775. great force; a vague dread of taking up arms against Νον. their sovereign pervaded the mind of the common people; none had as yet renounced allegiance; after the success at Kemp's Landing, nearly a hundred of the men who were in the field the day before, came in and took the oath of allegiance which Dunmore had framed; and in the following three weeks it was accepted by nearly three thousand: but of these less than three or four hundred could bear arms, of which not half so many knew the use. Norfolk was almost entirely deserted by native Virginians, and was become the refuge of the Scotch, who, as the factors of Glasgow merchants, had long regulated the commercial exchanges of the colony. Loyal to the crown, they were now embodied as the militia of Norfolk. The patriots resolved to take the place. On the twenty eighth of November the Virginian forces under Woodford, consisting of his own regiment and five companies of the Culpepper minutemen, with whom John Marshall, afterwards chief justice of the United States, served as a lieutenant, marched to the Great Bridge, and threw up a breastwork on the side opposite to the British fort. They had no arms but the musket and the rifle; the fort was strong enough to withstand musket-shot; they therefore made many attempts to cross the branch on a raft, that they might attack their enemy in the rear; but they were always repulsed. Should the fort be given up, the road to Norfolk was open to the victors; in the dilemma between his weakness and his danger, Dunmore resolved to risk an attempt to fall on the |