November 1774–July 1775
ON THE DAY AFTER the Battle of Point Pleasant, Tuesday, October 11, Lord Dunmore gave the order for his Northern Division to advance as planned. According to one tradition, he decided to do so the day after he heard the sounds of a small-arms infantry firefight in the distance—some thirty-five line-of-sight or seventy watercourse miles away. He had already, before the battle, sent Colonel Andrew Lewis orders to advance directly from Point Pleasant to the nearest Shawnee towns on the upper Scioto as soon as the rest of the left wing troops and supplies caught up to his main body. The intelligence received from White Eyes and Montour that the Shawnees would first go south to engage Lewis before turning their attention to his wing presented Dunmore with the opportunity to steal the march on his opponent and turn Cornstalk’s plan against its designer. Before marching from Fort Gower, Dunmore again dispatched messengers who repeated his orders for Lewis “to march soon to the [Shawnee] Towns & Join him on the way” near a region called the Pickaway Plains. With Cornstalk’s battle-weary force retreating and encumbered with wounded men, the Virginia army’s right wing encountered little opposition as it advanced.1
On October 12, Privates Sharp and Mann arrived at Fort Gower with a message for Dunmore from Lewis. Members of the one-hundred-man garrison posted to guard the supply magazines at the fort informed the messengers that the governor had marched with most of the right wing the day before they arrived. The messengers caught up to Dunmore the next day and delivered Lewis’s initial report of the engagement at the mouth of the Kanawha. When Dunmore had it announced, the news of the victorious Battle of Point Pleasant “occasioned great joy among the troops.” The outcome of the engagement proved “very different from what the Indians had promised themselves.”2
After a few more days of marching, the right wing of the Virginia army arrived at Pickaway Plains, not far from some important Indian towns. These included Grenadier Squaw’s Town on Scippo Creek, about one-half mile above its confluence with Congo Creek, and Cornstalk’s Town, another half mile to the north. The most important, or principal, town of the Shawnees was Chillicothe, which had “good Houses & plenty of Ammunition & Provisions.” White Eyes and John Montour had provided Dunmore with intelligence that the Shawnees and their allies had assembled five hundred to seven hundred warriors, plus their families, to make a stand. The town was on the west side of the Scioto, where the high bank and only one ford below the site made it a difficult place to attack. The Shawnees had “cleared the Woods to a great distance from the Place” to create fields of fire to improve on its inherent defensive qualities.3
As soon as Dunmore’s men arrived, they went to work and erected Camp Charlotte. Named in honor of the British queen, it manifested the British-colonial American doctrine for fighting Indians by combining the strategic offense with the tactical defense. Dunmore’s right wing had marched deep into Shawnee country, to the very outskirts of the nation’s principal towns. The fortified camp provided a secure base from which the Virginians could conduct forays against centers of Shawnee population, commerce, and food production. The Shawnees had to choose between abandoning their towns and retreating, or attacking. If they chose the latter, they would face 1,150 Virginia militiamen fighting on the tactical defense, entrenched behind sturdy earthen breastworks.4 To make matters more urgent, the Shawnees could expect Colonel Lewis and the left wing of the Virginia army to begin its advance to join forces with Dunmore.
Dispirited, the Indian chiefs and leading warriors held a council. Cornstalk convinced them that seeking terms of peace presented the best option for their nation. The Indian leaders resolved to make no further attempts to challenge the Big Knife, or what Dunmore characterized in his report to Lord Dartmouth as “a Power they saw so far Superior to theirs.” Instead of continuing to fight, the Shawnee chiefs decided to “throw themselves upon our Mercy.” Knowing that Dunmore had marched with the Northern Division, the Indian headmen went to find and meet him the day he arrived near their towns. They sent Pennsylvania trader Matthew Elliott with a flag of truce to arrange the meeting.5
Another Pennsylvania trader, John Gibson, the widower of Logan’s sister, Koonay, accompanied Dunmore’s expedition as an interpreter. Elliott informed Dunmore that the Shawnee chiefs had sent him to ask the governor to halt his army and send someone to their town who understood their language. Dunmore’s officers recommended Gibson. When he arrived, Gibson found Cornstalk and Logan. After Logan shed an “abundance of tears,” he delivered his famous lament.6 “Logan’s Lament” was later published in the Virginia Gazette to wide acclaim. Thomas Jefferson included it in Notes on the State of Virginia:
I appeal to any white man to say, if he entered Logan’s cabin hungry, and he gave him not meat; if ever he came cold and naked, and he clothed him not. During the course of that long and bloody war, Logan remained idle in his cabin, an advocate for peace. Such was my love for the whites, that my countrymen pointed as they passed, and said, ‘Logan is the friend of white men.’ I had even thought to have lived with you, but for the injuries of one man. Col. Cresap, the last spring, in cold blood, and unprovoked, murdered all the relations of Logan, not sparing even my women and children. There runs not a drop of my blood in the veins of any living creature. This called on me for revenge. I have sought it: I have killed many: I have fully glutted my vengeance. For my country, I rejoice at the beams of peace. But do not harbour a thought that mine is the joy of fear. Logan never felt fear. He will not turn on his heel to save his life. Who is there to mourn for Logan?— Not one.7
Logan then agreed to bring in the prisoners he still held. These included the young Roberts boy from the Holston, the two black men captured at Blackmore’s, Betsy Spicer, and William Robinson. The last was the man to whom he dictated the letter to Cresap that was left on the war club at the Robertses’ home. Gibson returned to Camp Charlotte with the Shawnee leaders’ answer to Dunmore’s invitation to discuss peace terms and “renew and Brighten the Chain of Friendship” between their peoples. Although the Shawnees professed a desire to end the fighting, they also expressed fear for their safety if they went to his location. Dunmore promised they would be in the “utmost safety,” and repeated his invitation with a challenge to their sincerity. If they did not come to Camp Charlotte immediately, he would have to assume their professions of peace did not come from their hearts, and he would have to “proceed accordingly.”8
ON OCTOBER 12, only two days after the bloody Battle at Point Pleasant, the left wing began preparing in earnest for continuing the expedition. Colonel Christian sent fifty men to get the cattle left behind when the Fincastle troops made the forced march to Point Pleasant on the day of the battle. Because many of the beeves and horses had wandered away and “dispersed in different quarters” in the confusion that day, Major Ingles sent the cattle and packhorse drivers out to gather and drive their charges back to camp. Lieutenant James Allen, his brother Hugh having been killed in action, resumed supervising the construction of the storehouse as Colonel Lewis urged the master and artificers to have it “finished as quick as possible.” The commanders of the several companies had their men clear away all the “underwood” near their unit’s tents. The captains then divided the proposed line according to their companies’ strength, and after the quartermaster sergeant issued them the necessary tools, the men began work on the defensive breastwork.9
Very early on the morning of October 13, Privates Sharp and Mann returned from Fort Gower with Dunmore’s orders to march toward the Shawnee towns and meet him on the way.10 The next day, Colonel Lewis issued the necessary commissions and appointments to replace those officers killed in the battle, and Captain Slaughter arrived with the soldiers and cattle that Christian had left at the Elk River. Over the next few days, the fatigue details finished building the storehouse and bastion and “running up” a breastwork that measured “two logs high.” A detail consisting of three men drawn from each company went out to search for all of the army’s horses still on the loose and drive them back to camp, while the cattle drovers gathered and penned their animals.11
By Saturday, five days after the battle, the army had regained much of its strength and had the camp in a reasonably good state of defense. Lewis issued the order for company commanders to inspect their men to identify all the sick, lame, and others “Judged unfit for Duty” who would remain at Camp Point Pleasant when the rest of the Southern Division marched.12 The captains issued each of the men going on the expedition one-half pound of powder and one-half pound of lead to cast into bullets. The commissary directed the butchers to prepare a five-day ration of beef to issue the next day so they could prepare for its “carriage” as the companies completed the breastwork. Lewis called for the scouts to assemble for his instructions for the next phase of the campaign. By Sunday, Major Ingles had selected the sixty strongest packhorses to carry the flour and one horse for each company to carry its tents.13
Colonel Fleming, still recovering from his wounds, assumed command of the camp and the 278 men who stayed behind. His command included a garrison of three company-size detachments, “properly officered,” with one composed of men from Augusta, one from the Botetourt and Fincastle, and the third from the contingents of the other counties represented, with a total strength of 7 officers, 15 sergeants, 2 musicians, and 156 rank and file, plus a number of cattle and packhorse drivers and boatmen. He also had responsibility for ninety-four sick and wounded and eighteen men who functioned as “waiters on the wounded.” While the rest of the army continued the expedition, those remaining served to secure the camp from an enemy attack, send out ranging patrols, and perform the regular camp duties, which included guard mount and work details to complete the fort. When finished, in addition to the storehouse, breastwork, and bastions, Fort Blair would have four curtain walls and barracks constructed of hewn timber. The post would also serve as a magazine to guard, store, and relay supplies and provisions to the expedition as it marched deeper into enemy territory. Private Joseph Hundly, originally of Captain William Leftwich’s Bedford County company who served in Captain Slaughter’s garrison company, recalled that the men built the stockade to house the sick and wounded, and “there was men left sufficient to protect the garrison at that place.” On Monday, October 17, the left wing crossed the Ohio with 1,150 men, 118 beeves, and a ten-day supply of flour. The next morning, it started its march for the Shawnee towns.14
In spite of the number of casualties suffered in the recent engagement, the troops of the left wing were confident and eager to face the next challenge. As the main body prepared to cross the Ohio and enter Shawnee territory the next day, Ensign James Newell of Captain William Herbert’s company of Fincastle County, one of the units that remained behind to garrison the Camp at Point Pleasant, felt inspired to express his thoughts in verse. On October 17, after he recorded the next day’s orders and his company’s strength report, or return, Newell entered the poem he composed in his Orderly Book and Journal. It is remarkable not only as a statement of duty and resolve but also for expressions of respect and loyalty to Lord Dunmore and King George III:
Bold Virginians all, each cheer up your heart.
We will see the Shawnees before we part,
We will never desert, nor will we retreat,
Until that our Victory be quite complete. Ye offspring of Britain!
Come stain not your name,
Nor forfeit your right to your father’s fame,
If the Shawnees will fight, we never will fly,
We’ll fight & we’ll conquer, or else we will die.
Great Dunmore our General valiant & Bold,
Excels the great Heroes—the Heroes of old;
When he doth command we will always obey,
When he bids us fight we will not run away.
Good Lewis our Colonel, courageous & Brave,
We wish to command us—our wish let us have.
In Camp he is pleasant, in War he is bold
Appears like great Caesar—great Caesar of old.
Our Colonels & Captains commands we’ll obey,
If the Shawnees should run, we will bid them to stay.
Our Arms, they are Rifles, our men Volunteers,
We’ll fight & we’ll conquer; you need have no fears.
Come Gentlemen all, come strive to excel,
Strive not to shoot often, but strive to shoot well.
Each man like a Hero, can make the woods ring,
And extend the Dominion of George our Great King.
Then to it, let’s go with might & with main,
Tho’ some that set forward return not again.
Let us quite lay aside all cowardly fear,
In hopes of returning before the new year.
The land it is good, it is just to our mind,
Each will have his part if his Lordship be kind.
The Ohio once ours, we’ll live at our ease,
With a Bottle & glass to drink when we please.
Here’s a health to King George & Charlotte his mate,
Wishing our Victory may soon be complete,
And a fine female friend along by our Side,
In riches & in splendor till Death to abide.
Health to great Dunmore our general also,
Wishing he may conquer wherever he go.
Health to his Lady—may they long happy be
And a health, my good friends, to you & to me.15
WHEN THE Shawnee leaders arrived at Camp Charlotte, Dunmore immediately welcomed them to a conference in which they settled the differences that existed between the two sides. Dunmore proposed terms that surprised the Indians as more lenient than they could have hoped. In specifying the “Terms of our reconciliation,” the first article required the Shawnees to “Deliver up all prisoners without reserve.” This included not only those captured in the course of this conflict but those captives still held since the end of the French and Indian and Pontiac’s Wars. The Indians also had to “Restore all horses and other valuable effects” they carried off in the course of their raids on the backcountry settlements. In keeping with the Treaties of Stanwix, Hard Labor, and Lochaber, the Shawnees recognized the cessions the Six Nations of Iroquois and the Cherokees made to British colonial officials. Accordingly, they promised to neither hunt on the Virginia side of the Ohio River “nor molest any boats passing on it.” In establishing peace with the Virginia colony, the Shawnees also had to “Promise to agree” to the regulations that governed their trade with that colony and its people “as hereafter dictated by the King’s Instructions.”16
To provide guarantee that they would abide by the articles of the treaty, Dunmore required the Shawnees to “Deliver . . . certain hostage” chiefs or their sons for security. The Virginians would keep them in custody at Williamsburg until convinced of the Shawnees’ “sincere intention” to comply with the articles of the treaty. Pleased that Dunmore imposed no punishment, the Indian leaders agreed to the terms “with alacrity and solemn assurances of their quiet and peaceable deportment for the future.” Dunmore reciprocated by promising their nation “protection and good treatment” by his government and the people of Virginia.17 The Treaty of Camp Charlotte represented only an interim agreement or an armistice. The parties would meet again, in spring 1775, after the General Assembly reconvened and ratified the terms, at which time they would conclude the formal treaty at Fort Dunmore.
Cornstalk then stood to address the Big Knife—Dunmore. In accepting the peace terms without admitting guilt for initiating the war, Cornstalk attempted to mitigate his nation’s decision to fight. He expressed regret for the “Depredations committed on your People by the Shawnees” but alleged that it was “the Mingoes that occasioned it,” who then “stood and looked on” as spectators. Cornstalk pledged that from that day forward, his people would stand together with the Virginians against other Indians, and “never go to war with you again,” to which he added “let your heart be strong.” He then recommended that Dunmore set one or two of the hostages at liberty among the Mingoes so they could influence “correct affairs” among that polity, and “be of great service towards the Peace.”18
It looked as though the parties had agreed to peace and the war ended when Shawnee scouts reported to their headmen of another force of Virginians approaching that had come as close as fifteen miles from their towns. The headmen took their concern to Lord Dunmore, and he immediately dispatched an express to order Colonel Lewis to halt his division and advance no further. He informed Lewis that he had “very near concluded a peace.” Finding no suitable place to encamp, and because someone had fired on them earlier that day, Lewis ordered his men to continue marching.
The next morning, another express arrived from Dunmore to inform Lewis that a peace treaty “was in a manner concluded” and that the “Shawanese had agreed to his terms.” He repeated the order for Lewis to halt, approach no closer, and encamp. The governor also invited Lewis and any of his officers as he deemed proper to come over to Camp Charlotte. Not thinking it “prudent” for a party of a few officers to travel in enemy territory despite the pending treaty, Lewis led his entire division with the intention of joining with that of Dunmore. His guide, however, led them on the wrong path, taking one that led between the Shawnee towns and Dunmore’s location instead of the one that led to Camp Charlotte. The Indians, fearing that Lewis would attack their towns, “left his Lordship, and run off.”
All the Indians left Camp Charlotte except White Fish, who had accompanied John Gibson. Dunmore headed straight to Lewis’s division and arrived at his camp at dusk. He asked Lewis why he had not stopped when he so ordered and if he intended to march on the Indian towns. The colonel explained what had happened and the mistake that had transpired, and he assured Dunmore that he had no intention of attacking the Indian towns after he had received the governor’s orders. The next morning, Dunmore addressed the assembled captains and field officers of the Southern Division to explain that the Indians had agreed to terms. Believing the continued presence of Lewis’s troops could hinder the conclusion of the peace treaty, Dunmore sent them home, except for fifty Fincastle men who went to the other wing’s camp. Following beating of the general the next morning, Lewis’s men broke camp and marched in the direction of the Ohio River. The Southern Division reached Point Pleasant on October 28, and all crossed over to the Virginia side the following day.19
The Shawnees had complied with the terms of the agreement, but the Mingoes had not. They objected to some conditions, and Major William Crawford believed that they intended to deceive the Virginians. John Montour confirmed Crawford’s suspicion when he informed Dunmore that the Mingoes intended to “slip off” while the Virginians settled matters with the Shawnees. Montour added that they planned to escape to the Great Lakes, where the Virginians would not follow, taking their captives and stolen horses with them.20 In response, the governor ordered Crawford to lead 240 men to go after them. Private John W. Howe of Robertson’s Fincastle company volunteered to join them. He explained that when the Mingoes “defied or failed to come in,” the governor ordered Crawford’s unit “to go against their town.”21
In order to deceive the Mingoes about the true nature of their mission, Crawford’s men set out at night on October 20 under the pretense of going to the magazine at Hockhocking for provisions. The soldiers changed course and marched swiftly to the Mingo settlement at Salt-Lick Town, forty miles up the Scioto from Camp Charlotte. According to Montour’s information, all the Mingoes had planned to rendezvous there the next day before beginning their journey. Crawford and his men reached Salt-Lick Town that night. At daybreak, he sent half of his force around Salt-Lick and the other half to another small village one-half mile away.
As a Virginia scout crept toward the village, he encountered an Indian lying behind a log that blocked his path just outside of town. On being discovered, the Virginian had no choice but to kill the Indian. Crawford’s men then attacked and caused much damage, but because the noise alerted the Indians in the process, most of the band escaped. The Virginians killed six and wounded several more of the enemy. The troops also took fourteen prisoners and captured ten guns and all of the Mingoes’ baggage and horses, and they rescued two white captives. The plunder later sold for £400. Lord Dunmore kept eleven of the prisoners and returned the rest to their people as a sign of good faith in an effort to persuade them to accept all the terms he had offered.22
When Dunmore had arrived at the mouth of the Hockhocking River before beginning the march toward the Scioto towns, John Leith recalled that in Standing Stone, the town where he remained a captive, “Some of the Indians proposed to kill me.” Fortunately, the boy’s adoptive Indian father “interfered, and prevented their cruel intentions.” As the Indians evacuated their towns, Leith said, they “took me with them, with my hands bound behind my back . . . on a long and wearisome journey to their camp.” Not knowing what to expect, or if his guardian’s influence would continue to be sufficient to protect him, Leith “formed a firm and settled resolution to make my escape, if any opportunity should offer.” Although he made several attempts, he was “so carefully watched, that all possibility of escape was utterly abortive.”
“After the cessation of hostilities,” Leith later recalled, “my [Indian] father gave me and his two sons our freedom with a rifle, two pounds of powder, four pounds of lead, a blanket, shirt, match-coat, pair of leggings &c. to each, as our freedom suits.” The chief then told the boys “to shift for ourselves.” Although free, Leith remained in Indian country, making his life once more as a trader and hunter.23
With peace concluded, Lord Dunmore ordered the discharge of the militia from colonial service. The companies of the Northern Division made their way back down the Hockhocking to Fort Gower, then up the Ohio, while most of the Southern Division returned by the way they had come, along the Kanawha Trail to the Elk River and on to Camp Union. Some crossed the Kanawha at its mouth and headed directly for points in Fincastle County. The colony maintained garrisons at the mouth of the Kanawha, at what was later named Fort Blair, and at Fort Dunmore in Pittsburgh. Fort Fincastle, at Wheeling, remained unoccupied but ready for use by the local militia in a future alarm.
Before Dunmore’s expeditionary army dissolved in November, some of the Northern Division’s officers met at the fortified magazine at the mouth of the Hockhocking, where they drafted and signed a document they titled the “Fort Gower Resolves.” The document reflected their loyalty to the British Crown while also stating their commitment to liberty and rights as freeborn Englishmen. The officers affirmed, “That we will bear the most faithful allegiance to his Majesty King George the Third . . . [and] at the expense of life, and everything dear and valuable, exert ourselves in support of the honor of his Crown and the dignity of the British Empire.” They closed by complimenting the governor: “We entertain the greatest respect for his Excellency, the Right Honorable Lord Dunmore, who commanded the expedition against the Shawanese . . . from no other motive than the true interest of this country.” While the officers acknowledged that political tensions between the government in London and the colonies had grown worse during their absence, they maintained that their fervent desire for a redress of colonial grievances had not kept them from faithfully performing their duties. But the officers made known to all their sympathies by stating, “We will exert every power within us for the defense of American liberty, and for support of her just rights and privileges; not in any precipitate, riotous, or tumultuous manner, but when regularly called forth by the unanimous voice of our countrymen.”24
The veterans of the victorious Virginia army were not the only group moving east after the cessation of hostilities. Nicholas Cresswell, an English traveler, recorded in his diary that he witnessed “four Indian Chiefs of the Shawnee Nation” at Winchester in December while he was on his way to survey land in the Ohio country. He further explained that the Shawnee, “who have been at War with the Virginians this summer, but have made peace with them,” had sent “these people to Williamsburg as hostages,” as the Treaty of Camp Charlotte required.25
Dunmore received a hero’s welcome when he triumphantly entered the capital of Williamsburg. Proclamations of thanks and gratitude abounded in print on the pages of the Virginia Gazette as well as in oratory. They came from those “most dutiful and loyal subjects,” the mayor, recorder, aldermen, and common council of both of Virginia’s major municipalities, the city of Williamsburg and the borough of Norfolk, and the president and professors of the College of William and Mary. Everyone, it seemed, congratulated and thanked him for performing “a dangerous and fatiguing service” and achieving the “defeat of the designs of a cruel and insidious enemy.” The king’s Virginia subjects likewise congratulated their governor on the newest addition to his family, a daughter, whom he and Lady Dunmore appropriately named Virginia.26 The celebrations continued in the best traditions of British America with the illumination of the Capitol and a ball.
The governor also received letters of congratulations from private sources, like one from Thomas Cresap, father of Captain Michael Cresap. The colonel wrote that his sources “from the other side of the Mountains” informed him that the “Delawares and Mingoes, or Six Nations who were up the Ohio,” were all “well pleased” with the outcome of his lordship’s campaign against the “Shawnees and Mingoes who had been amongst them.” He told the governor that his sources also said that traders were again taking gunpowder and lead, and along with others in the “interest of Pennsylvania,” were attempting to incite the Ohio Indians to resume the war against Virginia. These “villains” had spread rumors that Virginia forces had gathered at Point Pleasant, Wheeling, and Pittsburgh to invade Indian country in the spring, and, on a personal note, continued to represent him and his son Michael in “very Dark Colours to the Board of Trade.”27
Celebration, however, only delayed the impact, or masked the reality, of the bad news. In short order, Dunmore would learn of the true severity of the worsening constitutional crisis that had developed in his absence. It was only a matter of time before Americans would learn if Parliament intended to impose more coercive legislation on the other colonies, including Virginia, similar to the laws it had passed to force Massachusetts Bay back to its proper sense of duty. Up to that time, except when he dissolved the General Assembly in June 1774, Dunmore had not taken the visible elements of Virginia’s resistance seriously. He provided little or no information about the situation in his province to the secretary of state for the colonies, Lord Dartmouth. While the rumor of bloodshed in Massachusetts in September proved to be fiction, the constitutional crisis inched a little closer to the possibility of an actual rebellion when the First Continental Congress and the Virginia Convention passed resolutions calling for overt colonial resistance to parliamentary rule. The congress that met in Philadelphia resolved to form the Continental Association, a nonimportation and nonexportation agreement that mirrored the Virginia Association in his own colony, in an effort to persuade the British government to repeal the recent laws that colonists found intolerable. The reality of the volatile political situation became painfully obvious in April 1775, when the “Quiet Time” came to an abrupt end with an exchange of musketry. Lord Dunmore found that his popularity had waned as Virginia colonists learned that British regulars had fired on colonial militiamen in Massachusetts, and the constitutional crisis erupted into war. Dunmore had only a few months to reside in the Governor’s Palace at Williamsburg.
The colony’s General Assembly convened in June 1775, with the recently elected, or reelected, representatives taking their seats in the House of Burgesses. The matter of continuing or replacing the expired Militia Act, ratification of the Treaty of Camp Charlotte and appointing commissioners to negotiate the formal treaty with the Shawnees at Pittsburgh, and paying for the recently concluded Indian war led the list of issues that he would lay before the assembly for action.
The assembly attempted to take up the public’s business where the last session had left off the previous year when Dunmore dissolved the House of Burgesses. It being the first session convened following the end of hostilities with the Shawnees, the lower house followed the established procedures and appointed the required number of commissioners to examine the muster rolls to determine the pay soldiers earned for their service. They also examined commissary and quartermaster records to satisfy the claims for reimbursement of the citizens who contributed the goods, materials, services, and animals the army required, whether voluntary or impressed. Unfortunately for those entitled to the money, the General Assembly adjourned shortly after June 8, the day Lord Dunmore fled Williamsburg to seek refuge and send his family back to Great Britain. He reestablished his capital on board HMS Fowey anchored in the York River, which made it impossible to conduct the province’s business with the legislature still in Williamsburg, despite the latter’s guarantee of the governor’s personal safety.
THE THIRD Virginia Convention assumed the duties of the colonial legislature when it convened in Richmond on July 17, 1775. The Revolutionary War having begun, in order to defend the colony the convention established a new armed force consisting of regulars, minutemen, and militia, all of whom were answerable to the convention through its executive body, the Committee of Safety. The convention also voted to disband the companies the old government had retained in active service for the garrisons of Forts Blair and Dunmore (Pitt) to defend the frontier, as well as the volunteer militia companies the Second Convention had resolved to raise in March in order to provide for the colony’s defense after the old militia law expired without being continued by the General Assembly.28
The convention then took up the matter of paying for the recent Indian war, both in its responsibility to pay the soldiers and to satisfy the public service claims. After the commissioners completed their examinations and reported their findings to the committee of the whole, the convention voted to pay the veterans for their service to the colony. The new legislature also made provisions to award pensions for the relief of the wounded whose combat injuries prevented them from supporting themselves by their prewar occupations, as well as to the surviving widows and orphans of the men who died while in service. When the legislature finally settled all accounts, Dunmore’s War had cost Virginia approximately £350,000 in colonial currency.29 In order to raise the necessary revenue to meet these and other expenses, the convention voted to impose new taxes.30
It established the following per diem rate for each day of actual service Virginia soldiers performed: commanding officers, 1 pound, 5 shillings; county lieutenants, 1 pound; colonels, 15 shillings; lieutenant colonels, 13 shillings; majors, 12 shillings; captains, 10 shillings; lieutenants, 7 shillings, 6 pence; ensigns, 7 shillings; quartermasters and adjutants, 6 shillings; sergeants, 2 shillings, 6 pence; corporals, 2 shillings; drummers and fifers, 2 shillings; privates, 1 shilling, 6 pence; and scouts, 5 shillings. The convention voted to pay the men called into service by their counties and those who served under Lord Dunmore, including volunteers recruited in Maryland, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, according to the same scale. The veterans of Dunmore’s War therefore received the same compensation as the soldiers who served as Virginia regulars, minutemen, and militiamen in actual service to fight the British or guard the frontier from Indian attack in the early stages of the Revolutionary War.31
WHEN THE Revolutionary War came to Virginia, the legacy of Dunmore’s War had a significant effect. The victory of the Virginia militia, particularly at the Battle of Point Pleasant, effectively pacified the Ohio frontier with regard to the Shawnees and the faction of Mingoes allied with them. The officers of the British Indian Department did not convince them and other Ohio-area Indian nations to become full participants in the War for American Independence on the side of the British Crown until 1777.
The frontier along the Ohio River had remained peaceful during the two ensuing years, which coincided in part with an absence of British troops in the thirteen colonies and allowed the Patriot side a degree of security to adopt independence. Dunmore’s mild terms in the Treaty of Camp Charlotte arguably influenced the Shawnees’ and Mingoes’ decision to side with the British as a means of halting continued American expansion in the region. The unintended consequence of Ohio Indians’ military alliance with and cooperating with Crown forces made the area between the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers enemy-held territory. That situation prompted Governor Thomas Jefferson to order Brigadier General George Rogers Clark to lead Virginia forces in an invasion to reestablish the state’s claim in defiance of the Quebec Act of 1774.
It is somewhat ironic that Andrew Lewis, as a brigadier general in the Continental Army, commanded the forces that drove his former governor’s British and Loyalist forces out of Virginia in July 1776. Dunmore’s time in the colony thus came to an end.