Patriot vs. Patriot: Social conflict in virginia and the origins of the American revolution

Journal of American Studies

Volumn 34, Issue 2, 2000, Pages 231-256

  McDonnell, Michael A ^a   Holton, Woody ^b  

^a SWANSEA UNIVERSITY   (United Kingdom)

^b University of Richmond   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 63749114092     PISSN: 00218758     EISSN: 14695154     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0021875899006374     Document Type: Article

References (144)

1. The authors wish to thank Fred Anderson, Edward Countryman, Marc Egnal, Sylvia Frey, Warren Hofstra, Albert Tillson, Fredrika J. Teute, Ronald Hoffman, Philip D. Morgan, John M. Murrin, Steve Sarson, Thad W. Tate, John Thompson, Peter H. Wood, Peter Thompson, Daniel W. Howe, Betty Wood and the American History seminars at the University of Wales, Swansea and Cambridge University for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this essay. For financial assistance and support in researching and writing this piece, we would like to thank the American Antiquarian Society, Balliol College, Oxford, the Virginia Historical Society, the David Library of the American Revolution, the Huntington Library, the Department of American Studies, Swansea, the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation, Monticello, and the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and Public Policy.
2. Lund Washington to George Washington, 29 Feb. and 7 Mar. 1776, in W. W. Abbot and Dorothy Twohig, eds., The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series (7 vols, to date; Charlottesville, Va., 1985-), 3, 395-396 and 432.
3. Committee of Safety, Journal, 2 Mar. 1776, in William J. Van Schreeven, Robert L. Scribner and Brent Tarter, comps., Revolutionary Virginia: The Road to Independence. ([Charlottesville, Va.], 1973-1983), 6, 164, 166.
4. Leitch to [Powell], 15 May 1776, in Robert C. Powell, ed., A Biographical Sketch of Col. Leven Powell, Including his Correspondence During the Revolutionary War (Alexandria, Va., 1877), 87.
5. Lund Washington to George Washington, 15 February 1776, and 7 March 1776, in Abbot and Twohig, eds., Papers of George Washington. Revolutionary War Series, 3, 317, 432-433
6. Becker's famous formulation can be found in his History of Political Parties in the Province of New York, 1760-1776 (Madison, Wise, 1909), 22.
7. History of Political Parties in the Province of New York 1760-1776 (1909), 22, Ibid.;
8. Arthur Meier Schlesinger Sr., The Colonial Merchants and the American Revolution, 176-1776 (New York, 1918)
9. Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard, The Rise of American Civilisation (2 vols.; reprint edn, New York, 1930)
10. Merrill Jensen, The Articles of Confederation: An Interpretation of the Social-Constitutional History of the American Revolution, 1774-1781 (Madison, Wise, 1940)
11. Jensen, The American Revolution within America (New York, 1974).
12. For Philadelphia, see esp. Richard Alan Ryerson, " The Revolution is Now Begun" : The Radical Committees of Philadelphia, 1765-1776 (Philadelphia, 1978)
13. and Steven Rosswurm, Arms, Country, and Class: The Philadelphia Militia and " Lower Sort" during the American Revolution, 1778-1783 (New Brunswick, N.J., 1988).
14. Scholars have found internal direct conflict from at least Massachusetts to Maryland. See, for example, Stephen E. Patterson, Political Parties in Revolutionary Massachusetts (Madison, Wise, 1973)
15. Edward Countryman, A People in Revolution: The American Revolution and Political Society in New York, 1760-1790 (Baltimore, 1981)
16. Ronald Hoffman, A Spirit of Dissension: Economics, Politics, and the Revolution in Maryland (Baltimore, 1973), 147.
17. For North Carolina, see Marjoleine Kars, " 'Breaking Loose Together': Religion and Rebellion in the North Carolina Piedmont, 1730-1790" (Ph.D. diss., Duke University, 1994);
18. Rachel N. Klein, Unification of a Slave State: Tie Rise of the Planter Class in the South Carolina Backcountrj, 1760 - 1808 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1990)
19. Hoffman, Spirit of Dissension; Countryman, People in Revolution;
20. Rowland Berthoff and John M. Murrin, " Feudalism, Communalism and the Yeoman Freeholder: The American Revolution Considered as a Social Accident," in Stephen G. Kurtz and James H. Hutson, eds., Essays on the American Revolution (New York, 1973)
21. Woody Holton, Forced Founders: Indians, Debtors, Slaves, & the Making of the American Revolution in Virginia (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1999), esp. i36n;
22. Holton, " Rebel against Rebel: Enslaved Virginians and the Coming of the American Revolution," Virginia Magazine of History and Biography (hereafter VMHB), 105 (April 1997), 164-166
23. Peter Wood, " The Dream Deferred': Black Freedom Struggles on the Eve of White Independence," in Gary Y. Okihiro, ed., In Resistance: Studies in African, Caribbean, and Afro-American History (Amherst, Mass., 1986), 166-187
24. Wood, " 'Liberty is Sweet': African-American Freedom Struggles in the Years before White Independence," in Alfred F. Young, ed., Beyond the American Revolution: Explorations in the History of American Radicalism (Dekalb, 111., 1993), 149-84
25. Benjamin Quarles, The Negro in the American Revolution (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1961);
26. Sylvia R. Frey, Water from the Rock: Black Resistance in a Revolutionary Age (Princeton, N.J., 1991);
27. Robert A. Olwell, " 'Domestick Enemies': Slavery and Political Independence in South Carolina, May 1775-March 1776," journal of Southern History, 55 (January 1989), 21-48.
28. Quoted in Hoffman, Spirit of Dissension, 147.
29. Some farmers in Virginia voted for delegates who supported Independence in the spring of 1776 because they believed that in the new " form of Government," they would be " independt [sic] of the rich men [and] eve[r]y man would then be able to do as he pleasd [sic]" (Landon Carter to George Washington, 9 May 1776, Papers of George Washington, 4, 236-37).
30. The phrase " contagion of liberty," of course, comes from Bernard Bailyn, Tie Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 1967), Chs. 6 & 7
31. whilst the " Transforming Hand of Revolution" comes from J. Franklin Jameson, The American Revolution Considered as a Social Movement (1926; reprint ed., Boston, 1956).
32. Excellent surveys of this literature can be found in the edited collections of Alfred F. Young, The American Revolution: Explorations in the History of American Radicalism (Dekalb, 111., 1976)
33. and Beyond the American Revolution, and, more recently, in Ronald Hoffman and Peter J. Albert, eds., The Transforming Hand of Revolution: Reconsidering the American Revolution as a Social Movement (Charlottesville, Va., 1995).
34. John E. Selby, The Revolution in Virginia, 177J-1783 (Charlottesville, Va., 1988), xi
35. Rhys Isaac, " Dramatizing the Ideology of Revolution: Popular Mobilization in Virginia, 1774-1776," William and Mary Quarterly (hereafter WMO), 3rd ser., 38 (July 1976), 367
36. Isaac, The Transformation of Virginia, 17)0-1790 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1982).
37. Even the so-called neo-Progressive historians, the heirs of Carl Becker's faith that the revolution was not only a struggle for home rule, but also a conflict over who should rule at home, paint the same picture of Virginia as a relatively harmonious state. Edward Countryman wrote that Virginia, "alone among the thirteen provinces .. did not face armed internal dispute during the revolutionary era." The American Revolution (New York, 1985), 35.
38. Marc Egnal spoke of the "relative docility of the poorer farmers in Virginia." A Mighty Empire: The Origins of the American Revolution (Ithaca, N.Y., 1988), 302.
39. Recent challenges to this view include Holton, Forced Founders and Michael A. McDonnell, "Popular Mobilization and Political Culture in Revolutionary Virginia: The Failure of the Minutemen and the Revolution from Below," Journal of American History, 85 (Dec. 1998), 946-81, esp. 948-951, for a review of the scholarship.
40. The basis for calling Virginia the most important North American colony is that it was the most populous, and that, through its tobacco exports, it brought the imperial government the most revenue. The only part of Virginia where historians have found social conflict is at the fringes, and, even there, most historians have chalked it up to toryism. See, for example, Adele Hast, Lojalism in Revolutionary Virginia: The Norfolk Area and the Eastern Shore (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1982)
41. Emory G. Evans, " Trouble in the Backcountry:'Disaffection in Southwest Virginia during the American Revolution," in Ronald Hoffman, Thad W. Tate, and Peter J. Albert, eds., An Uncivil War: The Southern Backcountry during the American Revolution (Charlottesville, Va., 1985)
42. and Thomas Michael Costa "Economic Development and Political Authority: Norfolk, Virginia, Merchant-Magistrates, 1736-1800" (Ph.D. diss., College of William and Mary, 1991).
43. Lund Washington to George Washington, 29 Feb. 1776, Papers of George Washington, 3, 595-596
44. This and the following paragraphs have been adapted from McDonnell, " Popular Mobilization and Political Culture in Revolutionary Virginia," 951-74, where the arguments and evidence have been more fully developed.
45. Charles Dabney to William Wirt, 21 Dec. 1805, in William Wirt Henry, Patrick Henry: Life, Correspondence and Speeches (3 vols.; New York, 1891), 1, 251-252
46. Our account of the formation of the Independent companies is drawn primarily from the following sources, which informed the next paragraph in addition: Declaration of Subscribers to the First Independent Company of Dunmore County, [n.d., but probably after January 1775], Dunmore County Committee of Safety Papers, VHS; Fairfax County Militia Association, [21 Sept. 1774], The Papers of George Mason,ed. Robert A.Rutland, 3 vols. (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1970), I, 210-211
47. Fairfax County Militia Plan for Embodying the People, [Enclosure of 6 Feb. 1775], The Papers of George Mason, ibid., 1, 215-216
48. Remarks on Annual Elections for the Fairfax Independent Company, [c. 17-26 Apr. 1775], The Papers of George Mason, ibid., 229
49. " Terms of Inlisting," [c. Apr. 1775], in R. A. Brock, ed., " Papers, Military and Political, 1775-1778, of George Gilmer, M.D., of 'Pen Park,' Albermarle County, Va.," Virginia Historical Society, Collections, new. ser., 6 (Richmond, Va., 1887), 82 (hereafter " Gilmer Papers" )
50. William E. White, in " The Independent Companies of Virginia, 1774-1775," VMHB, 86 (Apr. 1978), 152
51. see also " The First Independent Company of Dunmore," VMHB, 44 (Apr. 1936), 102-4.
52. For further examples of enlisted men electing their officers see " Report of the Committee to inquire into the causes of the late disturbances and commotions in the country," 1 June 1775, esp. testimony of Benjamin Waller, Robert Gilchrist, and Patrick Kennan of Caroline County, and Archibald Govan, Thomas Evans, John Johnson, and George Braikenridge of Hanover, in " The Proceedings of the House of Burgesses of Virginia," (Williamsburg, 1775), in William S. Jenkins, ed., Records of the States of the United States (Library of Congress, 1949), mf. reel va.ib, reel 3, 1773-1781
53. William Byrd to Sir Jeffery Amherst, jo July 1775 and Robert Munford to William Byrd, 20 Apr. 1775, in Marion Rose Goble Tinling, ed., The Correspondence of the Three William ByrdsofWestover, Virginia, 1684-1776, 2 vols. (Charlottesville, Va., 1977), 2, 812 and 806
54. Byrd to Ralph Wormeley, 4 Oct. 1775, Wormeley Family Papers, manuscripts department, Alderman Library, University of Virginia (hereafter UVA). Munford's experiences were satirized bitterly in his play, " The Patriots," written in early 1777 (see Courtlandt Canby, ed., " Robert Munford's The Patriots" in WMO, 3rd ser., 6 [July 1949], 437-503)
55. Louisa County Committee, 4 Dec. 1775, in Dixon and Hunter's Virginia Gazette, 23 December 1775.
56. Cf. Michael A. McDonnell, " The Politics of Mobilization in Revolutionary. Virginia: Military Culture and Political and Social Relations, 1774-1783" (D.Phil. Thesis, University of Oxford, 1995), Ch. i, for an account of the formation and expansion of the Independent Companies and the fears of the gentry.
57. George Mason to Martin Cockburn, 24 July 1775, Papers of George Mason, 1, 241.
58. Selby, 51-52; McDonnell, 63-68.
59. Lund Washington to George Washington, 29 Feb. 1776, George Washington Papers, 3, 595-596
60. Gilmer, " Address to the Inhabitants of Albemarle," [fall 1775], in " Gilmer Papers," 122, 126.
61. Leven Powell to Sally Powell, 5 Dec. 1775, photocopy of original letter in private hands, VHS.
62. Lund Washington to George Washington, 29 Feb. 1776, Papers of George Washington, 3, 395-396
63. Washington to the President of Congress, 24 Sept. 1776, in John C. Fitzpatrick, ed., The Writings of George Washington From the Original Manuscript Sources, 1741-1799, Vol. 6 (Washington, D.C., 1932), 110.
64. Charles Lee also argued that " men who chuse [sic] to preserve the decent distance of officers, must have a decent subsistance, and without this distance no authority or respect can be expected." Charles Lee to Benjamin Rush, 10 Oct. [1775], Charles Lee Papers, 1, 212.
65. Gilmer, " Address to the Inhabitants of Albemarle," in " Gilmer Papers," 126, 128.
66. Washington to Patrick Henry, 13 Apr. 1777, Writings of George Washington, 7, 407-9.
67. Gilmer, " Address to the Inhabitants of Albemarle," 122, 126.
68. William Waller Hening, ed., The Statutes at Large; Being a Collection of All the Laws of Virginia 13 vols. (Richmond, 1819-1823), 9, 20.
69. Petition of Inhabitants of Lunenburg County, [26 Apr. 1776], Revolutionary Virginia, comps. Van Schreeven, Scribner, and Tarter, 6, 474-77;
70. Gilmer, " Address to the Inhabitants of Albemarle," 122-123
71. cf. Address to the Inhabitants of Albemarle, ibid., 7, 87, 114-15, 236, 349.
72. For an analysis of these and other related complaints about the new military organization established in the fall of 1775, see McDonnell, " Popular Mobilization and Political Culture," 963-74
73. and " 'Loaded Guns and Imprudent Expressions': Military Culture and Gentry-Smallholder Relations in Virginia During the Revolutionary Crisis, 1774-1783," paper delivered at the Southern Historical Association Annual Meeting, 11 Nov. 1994, 20-30.
74. Lund Washington to George Washington, 29 Feb. 1776, Papers of George Washington, 3, 395-396
75. See William Lee to Richard Henry Lee, 17 January 1775, Lee Family Papers, UVA; Richard Henry Lee to George Washington, 26 Sept. 1775, Papers of George Washington, 2, 53;
76. Fielding Lewis to George Washington, 14 Nov. 1775, ibid., 2, 372-373
77. Only about £2,000 sterling worth of British goods reached the Chesapeake in 1775 (United States Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1957 [Washington, D.C., 1960], 1176-78).
78. 20 Nov. 1775, The Journal of Nicholas Cresswell, 1774-1777 (New Yotk, 1924), I32;
79. Lund Washington to George Washington, 24 Nov. 1775, Papers of George Washington, 2, 423;
80. Fairfax County to John Hancock, 23 Nov. 1775, Revolutionary Virginia, comps. Van Schreeven, Scribner, and Tarter, 4, 455-56;
81. Revolutionary Virginia, ibid., 379.
82. Hanover County Committee Proceedings, 12 December 177;, Revolutionary Virginia, 5, 120;
83. Cf. Dale E. Benson, " Wealth and Power in Virginia, 1774-1776: A Study of the Organization of Revolt" (Ph.D. diss., University of Maine, 1970), 301-303
84. Lund Washington to George Washington, 8 Feb. 1776, Papers of George Washington, 3, 271.
85. Johnston to William Preston, 16 Dec. 1775, quoted in Benson, 302; Revolutionary Virginia, 4, 13.
86. Quoted in Ron Hoffman and Michael A. McDonnell, " The Ideology of Disaffection in the American Revolution" (Paper presented to the Brunei/Cambridge Conference on Early American History, June 1999), 6;
87. Keith Mason, " Localism, Evangelicalism, and Loyalism: The Sources of Discontent in the Revolutionary Chesapeake," journal of Southern History 56:1 (Feb. 1990), 33-36.
88. Lund Washington to George Washington, 29 Feb. 1776, Papers of George Washington, 3, 396.
89. Richard Henry Lee to John Page, 19 Mar. 1776, Letters of Delegates to Congress, ed. Smith, 3, 4o8n (emphasis added).
90. Alexander Watson Jr. to William Lloyd, 18 Oct. 1775, Revolutionary Virginia, 4, 237.
91. See also Alexander Watson Jr. to Alexander Watson Sr., 10 Nov. 1775, Revolutionary Virginia, ibid., 4, 373.
92. Dunmore to Lord Dartmouth, 24 Dec. 1774, Revolutionary Virginia, 3, 67;
93. Virginia Gazette (Pinkney), 9 Dec. 1775.See also Benson, 302-303, 302n.
94. See Barbara Clark Smith, " Food Rioters and the American Revolution," WMO, 3rd ser., 51 (Jan. 1994), 3-38
95. and Smith, " Social Visions of the American Resistance Movement," in Hoffman and Albert, eds., Transforming Hand of Revolution, 27-57.
96. Other tenants paid in produce either a fixed amount or a percentage of the crop. Willard F. Bliss, " The Rise of Tenancy in Virginia," VMHB, 58 (October 1950), 429-30
97. and Loudoun County Petition, [presented on 8 June 1776], Revolutionary Virginia, 7, 325-326
98. As a result, depreciation did hit the tenants hard, as even Lee noted that the price of farm produce had fallen to " a pittance" after nonexportation (though he deleted the word " pittance" from the letter before sending it out). Richard Henry Lee to Patrick Henry, [26 May 1777], The Letters of Richard Henry Lee, ed. James Curtis Ballagh, 2 vols. (New York, 1911-1914), 1, 299 and 299n
99. After nonexportation and the British blockade began, both tobacco and wheat fetched a " very low price." Oliver Perry Chitwood, Richard Henry Lee: Statesman of the Revolution (Morgantown, West Va., 1967), 137.
100. Richard Henry Lee to Patrick Henry, 26 May 1777, Richard Henry Lee Letters, 1, 298.
101. Loudoun County Petition, [presented on 8 June 1776], Revolutionary Virginia, 7, 325.
102. Lund Washington to George Washington, 30 Dec. 1775, Papers of George Washington, 2, 621.
103. 15 Feb. 1776, Papers of George Washington, 3, 317.
104. Richard Parker to Richard Henry Lee, 7 Mar. 1776, The Lee Family Papers, 1742-179, ed. Paul P. Hoffman (microfilm, Charlottesville, Va., 1966).
105. Lund Washington to George Washington, Dec. 30, 1775, Papers of George Washington, 2, 621.
106. Lund Washington to George Washington, 15 Feb. 1776, Papers of George Washington, 3, 317.
107. Leitch to [Leven Powell], 15 May 1776, Leven Poaell Sketch, 87.
108. Cresswell, Journal, 12 Feb. 1776, 138;
109. Loudoun County Court Records, 12 Feb. 1776, f. 574-576, Library of Virginia, Richmond.
110. Lund Washington to George Washington, 29 Feb. 1776, Papers of George Washington, 3, 395-396
111. Lund Washington to George Washington, 7 Mar. 1776, Papers of George Washington, ibid., 432;
112. Committee of Safety, 2 Apr. 1776, Revolutionary Virginia, 6, 306.
113. Cf. Benson, " Wealth and Power," 348-349
114. Committee of Safety, 2 Mar. 1776, Revolutionary Virginia, 6, 164, 306.
115. Cresswell, Journal, 22 Mar. 1776, 140; Committee of Safety, 20 Mar. 1776, 6, 231.
116. No mention was ever made of the possibility that the rioters might have been Tories. Even Andrew Leitch thought it was " honest, well meaning" farmers driven awry by " disappointed, carping creatures." And even the leaders of the protesters, Leitch admitted, were only " wrong from chagrin and prejudice, and not from principles of dissatisfaction] to their native country." The view that the tenants' patriotism was not an issue is countenanced by James Cleveland's later protestations. He told Lund Washington that he had been " misrepresented," and had twice asked the Loudoun Committee of Safety to enquire into his conduct, that he might " either be condemn'd or acquited for he knowg [tie] himself to be a Friend to his Country is unwillg [sic] to lay under the Censure he does." The Committee apparently did hear Cleveland, but he succeeded in making it appear that " no part of his behavour has been Criminal" or disloyal, for no suggestion of further punishment or censure appears in the records. Nor was anyone else in the revolt tried for treason or any criminal offence as far as the records show (Lund Washington to George Washington, 7 Mar. 1776, Papers of George Washington, 3, 432).
117. Committee of Safety, 2 Apr. 1776, Revolutionary Virginia, 6, 306.
118. Cf. Benson, 348; Andrew Leitch to [Leven Powell], 15 May 1776, Leven Powell Sketch, 87.
119. i May 1776, entry in Diary of Landon Carter, ed. Greene, 2, 1031.
120. Lund Washington to George Washington, 5 Nov. 1775 and 3 Dec. 1775, in Washington Papers, 2, 306, 479-8in
121. John Hatley Norton to [John Norton], [Oct. 16, 1775], in Frances Norton Mason, ed., John Norton & Sons; Merchants of London and Virginia .. (Richmond, Va., 1937), 391
122. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (New York, 1975), Book IV.
123. Walter Jones to Landon Carter, 14 Oct. 1775, Sabine Hall Papers, UVA. Jones made the comment in the midst of another more local political upheaval - that of the new elections for County Committee members in the fall of 1775 in which there was also a good deal of change and a loss of power among wealthier candidates (see McDonnell, Popular Mobilization and Political Culture, Ch. 5).
124. Francis Lee to Landon Carter, 21 May 1776, Letters of Delegates to Congress, 4, 57.
125. Lund Washington to George Washington, 29 Feb. 1776, Papers of George Washington, 3, J95-96.
126. Dixon & Hunter's Virginia Gazette, 6 Apr. 1776. For shortages of lead and powder, domestic efforts at producing them, and the French unwillingness to supply them unless independence was declared, see Donald E. Reynolds, " Ammunition Supply in Revolutionary Virginia," VMHB, 73 (Jan. 1965), 56-62.
127. "A planter," Dixon & Hunter's Virginia Gazette, 13 Apr. 1776.
128. Lee to Carter, 9 Apr. and 21 May 1776, Letters of Delegates to Congress, 3, 500-1 and 4, 57
129. Page to Thomas Jefferson, 26 Apr. 1776, in Julian P. Boyd et al., eds., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson (25 vols, to date; Princeton, 1950-), 1, 288.
130. Lee to Nicholas, 30 Apr. 1776, Richard Henry Lee Letters, 1, 184.
131. Braxton, " An Address to the Convention .. of Virginia," Revolutionary Virginia, 6, 518.
132. Braxton to Carter, 17 May 1776, Letters of Delegates to Congress, 4, 19.
133. See, for example, Rosswurm, Arms, Country, and Class, passim
134. and McDonnell, " The Politics of Mobilization," esp. Chs. 5-7.
135. Lund Washington to George Washington, 29 Feb. 1776 and 30 Dec. 1775, Papers of George Washington, 3, 396 and 2, 621 (emphasis added).
136. Lund Washington to George Washington, 30 Dec. 1775, Papers of George Washington, ibid., 2, 621.
137. James Hendricks to Leven Powell, 5 [June] 1776, Leven Powell Sketch, 95.
138. 19, 22, and 26 Jan. 1776, Nicholas Cresswell Journal, 136.
139. Most historians also acknowledge the decisive impact of Common Sense: " Prior to January 1776, when Thomas Paine launched a furious assault on monarchy in Common Sense, neither republicanism nor democracy had been in good odor." Paul A. Rahe, Republics, Ancient and Modern: Classical Republicanism and the American Revolution (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1992), 575. However, the degree to which Paine's thoughts reflected a more widespread point of view amongst the lower and middling sorts and was popular for this reason, rather than advanced a particularly new viewpoint, needs further examination.
140. I May 1776, entry in Diary of Landon Carter, 2, 1031.
141. Josiah Parker to Landon Carter, 14 Apr. 1776, Sabine Hall Papers, UVA; Robert Brent to Richard Henry Lee, 28 Apr. 1776
142. In Lee Family Papers, ed. Hoffman. On the relatively quiet prerevolutionary elections, see John G. Kolp, " The Dynamics of Electoral Competition in Pre-Revolutionary Virginia," WMO, 3rd ser., 49 (Oct. 1992), 652-674
143. Such an interpretation also helps to better explain Edmund Morgan's question of how such a conservative and almost aristocratic society could be at the forefront of a radical move towards secession and republicanism. His answer was racial solidarity, but it seems clearer now that it was conflict and division that propelled Virginia into Revolution (see Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom, Book IV).
144. For a discussion of this developing " ideology of disaffection," see Hoffman and McDonnell, " The Ideology of Disaffection."