For those who wonder whether Virginia is at peace or at war, the marketplace provides us with a possible answer: While there is at present no fighting in Virginia, Virginians seem to be preparing for that eventuality — both officially and unofficially.
Officially, the Third Virginia Convention — essentially our House of Burgesses in a different form — has now moved to put Virginia on a war footing. Unofficially, we see Virginians snapping up military manuals as summer reading. One Virginian already is at war; the Continental Congress has put George Washington of Fairfax County in charge of the makeshift army now in the field outside Boston. Almost every day brings some shocking report about unprecedented events convulsing the Colonies. Let’s review.
Our royal governor has fled
In early June, Lord Dunmore and his family snuck out of Williamsburg for the safety of a British naval vessel in the James River. We can now confirm that Dunmore’s family is en route to Britain. Rumors that the governor himself had fled to Boston have proved untrue, alas, based on the most recent sightings. He is, instead, aboard H.M.S. Fowey and was most recently sighted on the James near Yorktown, lurking about, as it were.
Virginians seem eager to make Dunmore’s exile to the water a permanent one. In late June, a group of Williamsburg Patriots took it upon themselves to break into the Governor’s Palace, where they liberated 300 swords and 200 muskets, which they donated to the local militia. We understand that these Patriots included quite a few young scholars from the College at William & Mary, among them a strapping young lad named James Monroe, who stands six feet in height and perhaps taller in the estimation of his elders…