One of the most overlooked but pivotal battles in the American War for Independence was fought at Great Bridge, Virginia on December 9, 1775. Significantly, it was also the first recognized battle in the colony. While the scale was small in comparison with other major battles during the Revolution, the impact on the war going forward was enormous. As it was in New England, biblical faith animated the participants in their steps toward war, and it was evident in the men who fought in the Battle of Great Bridge.
Escalating Tensions
The Battle of Great Bridge came at the end of a long train of events. The conflict in Virginia had been brewing for over a year. When the British military Governor Thomas Gage prepared to close the port of Boston on June 1, 1774, several patriot members of the Virginia House of Burgesses, including Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee, and Francis Lightfoot Lee, huddled in Williamsburg for a response. They decided that a colony-wide Fast Day proclamation would show solidarity with beleaguered Boston. Jefferson took the lead in rummaging through some of the documents from the English Civil War in the 1640s, as well as recalling some of the Puritan prayer proclamations, then drafted a document, and ultimately convinced Robert Carter Nicholas, the respected Treasurer, to propose the proclamation in the House on May 24.[i] The proclamation for a “Day of Fasting, Humiliation and Prayer” was set for June 1 to coincide with the closure of Boston harbor and contained the recommendation that a sermon be preached at the Bruton Parish Church to the Burgesses.[ii] The measure passed with a lone dissent among nearly 100 members and was printed in the newspaper.[iii]
When the Royal Governor John Murray, the fourth Earl of Dunmore, known as “Lord Dunmore,” read it, he was highly offended at the proclamation, which claimed that the British government had perpetrated a “hostile invasion” of Boston and threatened the “destruction to our Civil Rights, and the Evils of Civil War.”[iv] Indeed, the Burgesses called on Virginians to observe the Fast Day by pleading for God’s “Divine interposition” to avert “the heavy calamity” and “to give us one heart and mind firmly opposed, by all just and proper means, every injury to American rights” and “that the minds of His Majesty and his Parliament, may be inspired from above with wisdom, moderation and justice.”[v] Dunmore perceived that this proclamation reflected negatively on his Majesty, King George III, as well as on the Parliament. Consequently, Dunmore called the Burgesses together on May 26 and declared that such an inflammatory proclamation “makes it necessary for me to dissolve you; and you are dissolved accordingly.”[vi]
However, the disbanded Burgesses remained undaunted. On May 27, a group of 89 met at Raleigh Tavern, voting to form an association that, among other things, directed the Virginia Committee of Correspondence to reach out to sister committees in an effort to call for a “general congress” made up of representatives from the colonies.[vii] This led to the gathering of the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia in September of 1775.
According to Thomas Jefferson, the group then left Williamsburg, returned to their respective counties, and “invited the clergy to meet assemblies of the people on the 1st of June, to perform the ceremonies of the day, & to address to them discourses suited to the occasion.”[viii] Then on Wednesday, June 1, 1774, the same day the British blockade of the Boston Harbor was to take effect, disbanded members of the House “went in procession, with the Speaker at their head, to the church.” The “Fast Sermon” was delivered by the House Chaplain, the Rev. Mr. Thomas Price, and the message was to be published under the title of “The Doctrine of a Providence Considered,” the text from Genesis 18:23, “Wilt thou also destroy the righteous with the wicked?”[ix] Additionally, Jefferson reports regarding the Fast Day that all across Virginia, “The people met generally, with anxiety & alarm in their countenances, and the effect of the day thro’ the whole colony was like a shock of electricity, arousing every man & placing him erect & solidly on his centre.”[x] George Washington’s diary entry for that day noted that he “Went to church and fasted all day.”[xi]
In essence, the Fast Day proclamation and observance on June 1, 1774 represented a watershed moment in Virginia. The disbanded representatives publicly defied the Royal Governor. Lord Dunmore responded by dissolving the assembly. Many Virginians chose to join the patriot cause by observing the Fast Day. Consequently, the patriot leaders gathered for a series of “extralegal” Virginia Conventions that eventually guided the colony toward preparing for war. That Fast Day and the fallout was a spark that lit the fuse for many Virginians to join the “rebellion.”
On March 23, 1775, at the second session of the Viginia Convention in what is known as St. John’s Church in Richmond, Patrick Henry gave his celebrated “Liberty of Death” speech, which “relied heavily upon biblical references for its persuasive power.”[xii] Since he learned his oratorical skills by listening to the Rev. Samuel Davies, a Great Awakening Presbyterian preacher, it is not surprising that Henry either quoted parts of, alluded to, or echoed truths from nearly a dozen biblical texts.[xiii] The effect of the Scripture-laced and passionate speech ignited the flames of patriotism. Yet his fiery rhetoric was paired with practical proposals for the colony to prepare to defend itself against armed British aggression. The Convention adopted Henry’s resolutions and made him chair of a committee that crafted the strategy to form and arm volunteer militia companies in every county. Each militiaman was to be clothed in a “hunting shirt by way of uniform” and was to muster with a firearm, ammunition, and a tomahawk.[xiv]
In view of the growing unrest, London had instructed its colonial governors in late 1774 to restrict access to gunpowder.[xv] In the pre-dawn hours of Friday, April 21 and under Governor Dunmore’s orders, Captain Henry Collins and nearly 20 Marines from the HMS Magdalen executed their clandestine operation by cleaning out 15 half-barrels of gunpowder and then disabling the guns stored in the Powder Magazine by removing the firelocks.[xvi] The gunpowder was loaded on a wagon Dunmore provided and carted off to the ship, causing an uproar in Williamsburg. Then came news a week later of the battles at Lexington and Concord outside of Boston. In his celebrated speech just a month earlier, Patrick Henry had warned that “the next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms!” Events had proven him right. Consequently, Dunmore’s heist of the colony’s gunpowder, together with the news from Boston of bloodshed at the hands of British troops, pushed the colony to the edge of a bloody civil war.
First, a mob threatened to attack the governor’s palace. On Sunday, April 23, Dunmore raged that he would “declare Freedom to the Slaves, and reduce the City of Williamsburg to Ashes” if the mob attacked. He declared: “I once fought for the Virginians. By God, I would let them see that I could fight against them!”[xvii] On April 27, hundreds of militiamen from western counties rendezvoused in Fredericksburg, purposing to march on the capital. Henry’s more moderate colleague in the House, Peyton Randolph, sent an express rider with a message to stand down with assurances that a deal would be struck for the stolen gunpowder.[xviii]
However, Patrick Henry was itching for a fight. On May 2, 1775, he rallied the Hanover County Militia and urged the Committee of Safety to vote in favor of marching on Williamsburg. His biographer, William Wirt, relates this lesser-known narrative:
“When assembled, he addressed them with all the powers his eloquence; laid open the plan on which the British ministry had fallen to reduce the colonies to subjection, by robbing them of all the means of defending their rights; spread before their eyes, in colours of vivid description, the fields of Lexington and Concord, still floating with the blood of their countrymen, gloriously shed in the general cause; showed them that the recent plunder of the magazine in Williamsburg was nothing more than a part of the general system of subjugation; that the moment was now come in which they were called upon to decide, whether they chose to live free, and hand down the noble inheritance to their children, or to become hewers of wood, and drawers of water [Josh. 9:23] to those lordlings, who were themselves the tools of a corrupt and tyrannical ministry (i.e., government).”[xix]
After describing what the American colonies would look like in a “state of subjugation” if they stood by and did nothing to defend their liberties, he then turned to what America could become if they took a stand:
“On the other hand, he carried them, by the powers of his eloquence, to an eminence like Mount Pisgah; showed them the land of promise [Deut. 34:1-4], which was to be won by their valour, under the support and guidance of heaven, and sketched a vision of America, enjoying the smiles of liberty and peace, the rich productions of her agriculture waving on every field, her commerce whitening every sea, in tints so bright, so strong, so glowing, as set the souls of his hearers on fire.
“He had no doubt, he said, that that God, who in former ages had hardened Pharaoh’s heart, that he might show forth his power and glory in the redemption of his chosen people [e.g., Exod. 7:3; 9:12, 10:1, 14:8; Rom. 9:17-18], had, for similar purposes, permitted the flagrant outrages which had occurred in Williamsburg, and throughout the continent. It was for them now to determine, whether they were worthy of this divine interference; whether they would accept the high boon now held out to them by heaven.”[xx]
Yet Patrick Henry was under no illusions of an easy victory. He knew the costs. Yet he also expressed his confidence in God:
“[T]hat if they would, though it might lead them through a sea of blood, they were to remember that the same God whose power divided the Red Sea for the deliverance of Israel [Exodus 14:21-31], still reigned in all his glory, unchanged and unchangeable ?” was still the enemy of the oppressor, and the friend of the oppressed ?” that he would cover them from their enemies by a pillar of fire [Exod. 14:19-20]… [And] that for his own part, he was anxious that his native county should distinguish itself in this grand career of liberty and glory, and snatch the noble prize which was now offered to their grasp…”[xxi]
He then called on the militia “to compel the restoration of the powder which had been carried off, or to make a reprisal on the king’s revenues in the hands of the receiver general, which would fairly balance the account.” Henry concluded, “That the Hanover volunteers would thus have an opportunity of striking the first blow in this colony, in the great cause of American liberty, and would cover themselves with never-fading laurels.”[xxii] Wirt reports that “The effect was equal to his wishes. The meeting was in a flame, and the decision immediately taken, that the powder should be retrieved, or counterbalanced by a reprisal.”[xxiii] After Henry had spun up those assembled with his fiery speech, they took a vote and then marched toward Williamsburg. Fearful that Henry and his militia would suddenly descend upon in the capital, Dunmore made preparations for battle.
Thankfully, wiser and cooler heads among the disbanded Burgesses persuaded Dunmore to reimburse the colony for the arsenal and successfully talked Henry into backing down upon receipt of the funds. Otherwise, bloodshed would have taken place then and there. Yet the proverbial Rubicon had been crossed. On May 6, Dunmore issued a proclamation condemning the outlaw Patrick Henry and his “deluded followers,”[xxiv] then on June 8, he removed his family from the governor’s palace in Williamsburg, retreating to the HMS Fowey anchored off Yorktown. In late June, Dunmore put his family on the HMS Magdalen, and they set sail for England.
Preparing for War
From the safety of the British ships in Norfolk, Lord Dunmore worked to gather Loyalist support and began to build his own military force. He received welcome news from Lt. Gen. Thomas Gage that a couple of British warships were sailing to his aid, as well as a small detachment from the Fourteenth Regiment of Foot at Fort Augustine, Florida. He later successfully lobbied Gage’s successor, Major General William Howe, to send the remainder of that regiment from St. Augustine, bolstering Loyalists forces in the fall. While Dunmore continued to make plans to bring the rebels to heel, Henry and fellow patriots continued to meet in Conventions to make plans for defending themselves against an increasingly hostile Mother Country.
The result of the Third Virginia Convention in August 1775 was a detailed, three-tiered plan to raise and maintain a vital fighting force. The first tier consisted of two regiments of regular troops, similar to those raised in the French and Indian War, who were paid and commissioned for one year. The 1st Virginia Regiment would be comprised of eight companies of 68 men each, totaling 544 men.[xxv] The 2nd Virginia Regiment would be comprised of seven companies totaling 476 men.[xxvi] In order to raise this force, the Convention divided Virginia into 16 districts, requiring each district to recruit, supply, and send a company of regulars to Williamsburg as soon as possible.
A second tier of service was in one of 16 district minute battalions called for by the Convention. Each district was ordered to raise a 500-man battalion of minutemen “from the age of sixteen to fifty, to be divided into ten companies of fifty men each.”[xxvii] These men were drawn from the local county militias, but they were “more strictly trained to proper discipline.”[xxviii] Like the regiment regulars, these minutemen were provided with proper arms as well as a hunting shirt and leggings.[xxix] Consequently, hundreds of minutemen were ordered to march to the capital along with the regulars.
The third tier in the Convention’s new military plan consisted of traditional county militia. Essentially, if you were an able-bodied male over 16 and under 50, you must serve in the militia.[xxx] County militia companies were to hold private musters every two weeks excluding in winter. These men were pressed into service as needed but were unpaid.
A hard lobbying Patrick Henry was sworn in as a Colonel and selected to command the 1st Virginia Regiment but was disappointed to be relegated to what amounted to guarding the capital. [xxxi] However, it was Col. William Woodford of Caroline County who was selected to lead the 2nd Virginia Regiment, and the first to engage Dunmore’s British forces in battle.
Woodford was connected to George Washington in a couple of ways. His wife’s grandmother, Mildred Washington Gregory, was George Washington’s aunt and godmother. He also served under Washington during the French and Indian War (1754?”1763). When the French threatened to take over lands claimed by Virginia in the Ohio Valley, Royal Governor Robert Dinwidee sent young Washington to lead a force to halt the advance of French troops and marauding Indians in the frontier. Within that force was a unit from Caroline commanded by William Woodford, who acquitted himself well as a leader.
When Woodford was appointed to lead the 2nd Virginia Regiment, Rev. Mr. Abner Waugh volunteered to serve as its chaplain. Waugh served as the Anglican priest for St. Mary’s Parish in Caroline County, where Woodford served as a church Warden as well as a Vestryman. Basically, Woodford served his church sort of like an administrative pastor but without the clerical duties, managing church finances, which included paying the parish priest, overseeing maintenance of church property, and ensuring order both inside and outside the church during divine services. The colonel and the chaplain not only served the church together, they were also personal friends. Rev. Waugh ended up serving as regimental chaplain from October 24, 1775 until March 2, 1776, accompanying the troops in the field and serving twice as a courier between Woodford and Edmund Pendleton in the Fourth Virginia Convention.[xxxii]
Those serving under Colonel Woodford were also engaged in their respective congregations. For example, his second in command, Lt. Colonel Charles Scott, another French and Indian War veteran, was a part of the Tar Wallett Church in Cumberland County, part of the Anglican St. James Southam Parish, where Rev. Mr. Robert McLaurine ministered to the Scott family as their rector until his death in 1773.[xxxiii] Charles’ dad, Major Samuel Scott, was a member of the House of Burgesses and served as a Vestryman with the Southam Parish until his death in 1755.[xxxiv] Captain Richard Kidder Meade, who commanded the 6th company and went on to serve as an aide to General Washington and later attended Christ Church in Alexandria, was the father of Rev. William Meade, who became the third Episcopal Bishop of Virginia and an ardent opponent of slavery.[xxxv] Interestingly, Captain James Wilson, who led the Norfolk Militia, fell out with his Anglican rector, Rev. Mr. John Rowland, who began serving in early 1775 at St. Brides Parish Church, which was about eight miles south of Great Bridge. Not only was Rowland a Loyalist, but he was also an informant to Lord Dunmore, reporting on patriot parishioners like Cap. Wilson. Having served St. Brides as a Vestryman since 1761, Wilson decided to leave that church and gave land for the building of Hickory Ground Methodist Church.[xxxvi]
Lt. Colonel Edward Stevens, who commanded the Culpeper Minute Battalion, which also mustered to support the 2nd Regiment, was a member of Little Fork Church in Culpeper, and donated the land for a new church, St. Stephen’s Episcopal.[xxxvii] Major Thomas Marshall was another officer who helped lead these minutemen. His eldest son John served as a lieutenant in one of the companies and eventually became the longest-serving chief justice of the Supreme Court. Justice Marshall wrote Rev. Jasper Adams, president of the College of Charleston, South Carolina, regarding his pamphlet “The Relation of Christianity to Civil Government in the United States,” commenting: “The American population is entirely Christian, and with us, Christianity and Religion are identified. It would be strange, indeed, if with such a people, our institutions did not presuppose Christianity, and did not often refer to it, and exhibit relations with it.”[xxxviii] Under their command, Captain Joseph Spencer raised a company of riflemen in Orange, presumably from his own congregation since he was a Baptist preacher. In fact, he was jailed in Orange back in 1773 because such preaching was against the law in Anglican Virginia where that church was the officially sanctioned, established, denomination.[xxxix] There were nine other Baptist ministers who, like Captain Joseph Spencer, had suffered varying levels of persecution for their “unlicensed preaching” and yet fought in the Revolutionary War.[xl]
The Culpeper minutemen bearing long rifles, fowling pieces, and squirrel guns, were apparently a fearsome lot. When they arrived in the capital, clad in “strong brown linen bunting shirts, dyed with leaves, and the words ‘Liberty or Death’ worked in large white letters on the breast, buck-tails in each hat, and a leather belt about the shoulders with tomahawk and scalping-knife,” it caused some alarm. One of their number who arrived in the capital on October 20 was 17-year-old Philip Slaughter, who would later become the Episcopal rector of Emmanuel Church in Culpeper. He reflected on the reaction his unit received in genteel Williamsburg: “The people hearing that we came from the backwoods, and seeing our savage-looking equipments, seemed as much afraid of us as if we had been Indians.”[xli] In fact, Edmund Pendelton, president of Virginia’s Committee of Safety, reported to the Second Continental Congress during mid-October 1775: “Lord Dunmore, it is said, is very much afraid of the riflemen, and has all his vessels calked up on the sides. Above a man’s height, however, they may perhaps pay him a visit, ere long.”[xlii]
Skirmishes Culminating in the Battle of Great Bridge
On October 26, British Captain Matthew Squires, commanding the HMS Otter, intended to bombard Hampton as punishment for patriot forces commandeering one of his small craft tenders, confiscating the contents, detaining his sailors, and burning the boat. He assembled a flotilla of longboats carrying marines and sailors and attempted a predawn amphibious assault on the town. However, Colonel Woodford and a detachment of Culpeper Minute Battalion riflemen led by Captain Abraham Buford marched all night through a driving rain from Williamsburg to Hampton and proceeded to menace the flotilla from elevated and concealed positions onshore, using their rifles to pick off the British sailors and gunners, forcing the flotilla to retreat.[xliii] Rifles gave the patriot forces an advantage because of their effective range of 200 to 300 yards, which was at least two to three times that of a musket. This was the first well-documented use of rifles to successfully defend against well-armed landing parties equipped with artillery. In fact, the skirmish resulted in the first reported British and Loyalist casualties in Virginia.[xliv] Not surprisingly, John Page wrote to Thomas Jefferson, “It is incredible how much they dread a Rifle.”[xlv]
Yet on the evening of November 14, there was another skirmish. Dunmore led a force consisting of British regulars, marines, Loyalist volunteers, and members of the newly formed Ethiopian Regiment toward Kemp’s Landing.[xlvi] Local Princess Anne County militia, dubbed “shirtmen” for their hunting shirt uniforms, had assembled in hopes of ambushing Dunmore’s column. However, as Dunmore’s troops approached Kemp’s Landing in the darkness, patriot sentries opened fire prematurely. The British responded immediately with a coordinated volley and pressed forward with bayonets fixed. Only about 10% of the militia fired a single volley, then they all broke ranks and retreated in confusion.[xlvii] The skirmish was brief, just minutes in duration, but it was decisive. Patriot casualties were light, a few were taken prisoner, but the psychological impact was severe. Loyalist morale surged across the region. A prideful Lord Dunmore bragged in his report to General Howe that the “Enemy immediately fled on all quarters,” proving (in his view) the weakness of patriot resolve, confidently claiming: “I make no doubt we shall now be able to maintain our ground” and adding, “I really believe we should reduce this Colony to a proper sense of their Duty.”[xlviii] Yet as the Scripture teaches, pride goes before a fall (Proverbs 16:18).
Dunmore raised the King’s Standard and called for all loyal subjects to help suppress the rebellion. He established martial law, freeing slaves who could fight for the crown to gain their freedom, and enlisting everybody capable of bearing arms.[xlix] By this time in November, his forces numbered about 300 or so but grew after the skirmish at Kemp’s Landing. Norfolk was fortified and cannon were mounted on the entrenchments. Hundreds of newly emancipated slaves were put to work on the fortifications to hold back patriots until work could be finished. A detachment was sent to build a stockade fort near the tiny village of Great Bridge, almost 20 miles from Norfolk. There, the British could block the main road between Virginia and North Carolina and impede not only troop movements but the entire supply chain. Constructed out of planks, rotting logs, and mounds of earth, Dunmore’s “Fort Murray” was derisively dubbed as the “hog pen” by the patriots.
This development in late November prompted Edmond Pendleton and the Committee of Safety to order Col. Woodford to deploy the 2nd Virginia regiment and five companies of the Culpeper Minute Battalion, drive the British out of their defensive positions, and secure Norfolk. Woodford had been delayed by the lack of military materiel to properly supply his men, but he had marched his force from Hampton to Suffolk and finally arrived in the vicinity of the Great Bridge on Saturday, December 2, some 12 miles southeast of Norfolk. The bridge crossed the southern Branch of the Elizabeth River, which was surrounded by a marsh-filled swamp that stretched out for a considerable distance on either side of the bridge, except for two pieces of land that might “not improperly be called islands, being surrounded entirely by water and marsh, and joined to the main land by causeways.”[l]
On the northern end of the causeways on one “island” stood Fort Murray and a four-pounder cannon to cover the bridge and both causeways. The southern causeway ran the 150-yard length of the second “island” and contained several houses. From that point, the road extended 400 yards past a dozen houses to where it forked in front of the Southern Branch Chapel of Ease for St. Brides Parish, which stood on the high ground. Woodford and his men bivouacked there on the church grounds. The patriots had made their camp essentially within cannon shot of the British fort, but they proceeded to construct a breastwork.
The matter of entrenching was left to Colonel Thomas Bullit of Prince William County, the adjutant general of Virginia’s regular forces. Though he was a staff officer, Bullit had some military engineering experience. At the southern end of the street, Colonel Bullit directed the construction of a breastwork in the form of a staggered “W,” in order to maximize effective crossfire. It was built seven feet high, 150 feet long, fronted with a six-foot wide parapet of earth, complete with mounting platforms and loopholes, providing protective firing lanes. Then Bullit had two flanking earthworks constructed on a peninsula west of the village intended for artillery batteries. Behind that breastwork in a strong defensive position were the 60 or so men commanded by Lieutenant Edward Travis.
Yet Woodford was growing concerned about their circumstances, writing Patrick Henry that “our stock of ammunition much reduced” and on top of that, his men were ill-equipped to deal with the damp ground in the raw December weather.[li] On December 4, Lt. Col. Scott welcomed the arrival of a company of men from North Carolina with the promise of reinforcements as well as artillery coming behind them.[lii] Skirmishes continued with a few casualties on either side. So, there was an uneasy stalemate until Dunmore had gotten wind of the promised arrival of reinforcements with artillery. Captain Samuel Leslie had been told by an informant, Thomas Marshall’s slave who purportedly defected to Dunmore but whom Woodford claimed as a spy, that only about 300 of the “shirtmen” were encamped across the Great Bridge, and that the British could defeat them with ease.[liii] That planted intel prompted Dunmore to expedite the attack on Woodford’s position before the North Carolina troops arrived.
On Friday night, December 8, Captain Leslie moved his command out of Norfolk and arrived undetected at Fort Murray the next morning around 3:30 a.m. With him were members of the 14 Regiment of Foot that Dunmore had available, including both the grenadier and light company. Their force amounted to 121 rank and file, and 32 officers, sergeants, and drummers. Captain Matthew Squire had also sent a detachment of marine gunners from the Otter to man two cannon. Add to this about 60 Loyalist volunteers and runaway slaves already in Fort Murray, for a combined force of about 672 men.[liv]
Captain Leslie purposed to send out Captain Fordyce first with the grenadiers, convinced that their tall hats and bristling with bayonets would unnerve Woodford’s unseasoned recruits, and they would break and run as they had at Kemp’s Landing. At dawn on December 9, Lt. Batut moved out of the fort with the light troops and began replacing planks that had been removed from the bridge. After crossing the northern causeway and running into the rebel pickets, they set fire to the remaining buildings. Captain Squire’s marine gunners wheeled the two cannon to the bridge, where a natural bend in the road allowed the cannon to rake the rebel breastworks without endangering the attacking force.
While the British forces were replacing planking, reveille was beating in the rebel camp. Then behind the advance led by Lt. Batut, through the billowing smoke-obscured dawn appeared the grenadiers of the 14th Regiment, marching six abreast across the causeways south toward the patriot defenses with Captain Charles Fordyce at their head. One of the patriot sentries, William “Billy” Flora, a free black man from Portsmouth who served with the Princess Anne District Minute Battalion, witnessed the approaching force and sprang into action. He raised his musket from behind the stack of shingles he was using as cover and fired. Other sentries joined in but then retreated to sound the alarm. Yet Billy held his ground, reloading and firing into the British ranks eight times, with musket volleys being fired back at him before he was finally forced to give way and retreat to the defensive position behind the breastworks.[lv] He single-handedly caused the British force to delay their advance in order to fire at him and that bought precious time for Woodford’s forces to assemble into their positions.
At first, Colonel Woodford and Major Alexander Spotswood supposed the exchange of gunfire only to be the usual “morning salute” they had engaged in for over a week with the British. Before a messenger from the breastworks could reach them, they heard Adjutant Christopher Blackburn shout “Boys, stand to your arms!” Quickly equipping themselves, the two officers scampered out of their tent and saw that the enemy was attacking. Rallying Culpeper riflemen, Woodford pushed north to the breastwork, and Spotswood sprinted to his alarm post.[lvi]
From the breastwork, Lt. Edward Travis and his 60 men could see Batut’s advance guard coming through the dense smoke from the burning buildings. Behind it followed the van and the grenadier company commanded by Captain Fordyce, a tall, homely, “very genteel” man. Behind Fordice came Leslie with over 300 Tories and former slaves who halted behind the artillery, waiting to exploit rebel gaps once the grenadiers had broken through.[lvii] The redcoats with their Union Jack unfurled made for a perfect parade array as they marched across the causeway to the beating of two drums. They alternated the firing of volleys by platoons and paused only to reload, a matter of only 15 seconds to these seasoned troops. However, the narrow causeway restricted the British into an extremely tight formation of just six men abreast with an impassable marshy swamp on either side.
Lt. Travis had ordered his men to reload and hold their fire until the enemy was within 50 yards ?” the range marker being the small creek in front of the entrenchment.[lviii] When the patriots finally fired their volley from their defensive positions, the “bullets whistled on every side.” The result was devastating. Lt. Batut was hit in the leg. Fordice fell from a bullet wound to the knee, wrapped it in his handkerchief only to rise and brush it off. He doffed his hat, waved it high above his head, and shouted, “The day is our own!”[lix]
However, the riflemen from the Culpeper Minute Battalion were now filling into the flanking entrenchment to the west. They proceeded to pour a hail of bullets into the British column’s right flank. Between the ingeniously staggered breastworks and the flanking entrenchments, the British were caught in a perfect crossfire kill-box. Yet they bravely attacked again. However, brave Captain Fordyce went down within 15 feet of patriot defenses, his lifeless body riddled by buck and ball and lying in his own blood. Twelve grenadiers fell dead from the withering fire, 19 were wounded. Two or three reached the breastwork only to fall against it.
With Fordyce and many in the vanguard dead or wounded, the regulars broke, retreated, and Captain Leslie tried to rally them under the cover of their cannon fire. While British troops attempted to regroup, Col. Woodford led more of the regiment from the main camp through heavy artillery fire to reinforce the breastworks. Major Spotswood also noted the severity of the enemy cannon fire: “The [enemy] field pieces raked the whole length of the street, and absolutely threw double-headed shot as far as the church, and afterwords, as our troops approached, cannonaded them heavily with grapeshot.”[lx]
Bullitt urged Woodford to make a countercharge, but instead Woodford directed Lt. Colonel Edward Stevens and the Culpeper riflemen to take the battery entrenchments on the eastern peninsula. After a sprint to the position without a single loss, the long rifles of Culpeper began to do their deadly work. Captain Leslie’s position was now completely compromised and the sharpshooters began picking off Loyalist and Ethiopian forces at the bridge, which then induced Leslie to withdraw to the fort. Little wonder, since they were already reeling from their losses, which included the Captain’s own nephew, Lieutenant Peter Leslie, who died in his arms. The Virginia Gazette reported:
“From the beginning of the attack till the repulse from the breast work might be about fourteen or fifteen minutes; till the total defeat upwards of half an hour. It is said that some of the enemy preferred death to captivity, from fear of being scalped, which lord Dunmore inhumanly told them would be their fate should they be taken alive. Thirty one, killed and wounded, fell into our hands, and the number borne off was much greater.”[lxi]
Captain Richard Kidder Meade wrote of the battle in graphic terms: “[I]n short, the like is not to be equall’d in history; they fought, bled, and died, like Englishmen, and, I have the pleasure to say, were treated as such. The scene, when the dead and wounded were bro’t off, was too much; I then saw the horrors of war in perfection, worse than can be imagin’d; 10 and 12 bullets thro’ many; limbs broke in 2 or 3 places; brains turning out. Good God, what a sight!” At the end of his letter he added: “Apologise to all those who had a right to expect letters from me; I have been on guard 6 nights out of 7. But, thank God, well.”[lxii]
Colonel Woodford would hear that the enemy losses totaled 102. By Dunmore’s own account, which he limited to the regulars, there were 17 killed and 49 wounded, nearly 40% of those who had charged the breastwork.[lxiii] Only a single patriot, Private Thomas Nash, was slightly wounded in the hand.[lxiv] Giving credit to God’s providential protection, Major Spotswood wrote a friend in Williamsburg: “It would appear that Providence was on our side; for during the whole engagement, we lost not a man…”[lxv]
Aftermath
Gracious in victory, Colonel Woodford sent forward a flag of truce and procured a ceasefire while the remaining dead and wounded were removed by the British. He also saw to it that brave Captain Fordyce was buried with full military honors. He wrote Edmund Pendleton of the victory at Great Bridge, describing it as, “a second Bunker’s Hill affair, in miniature; with this difference, that we kept our post, and had only one man wounded in the hand.”[lxvi]
When news of the battle at Great Bridge raced along the coast, the Loyalists became panicked. Those who had rallied to the King’s standard only a month ago, now suddenly had second thoughts. Dunmore was forced to evacuate Norfolk, his last foothold in the colony. He took his troops and many Loyalist supporters aboard ship. Devastated by his losses and unable to regain momentum, Dunmore attempted to regroup at Portsmouth and later on Gwynn’s Island in the Chesapeake. For months, he carried out small raids, seized supplies where he could, and sought reinforcements that never came. He still hoped the British high command would send troops, ships, and material to restore royal authority in the colony, but it became impossible after the battle for Dunmore to get any support from either those still loyal to the crown or slaves that he sought to turn against the colony. His days were numbered in Virginia.
The victory also secured the passage between the colonies of North Carolina and Virginia. With the British expelled from Virginia after July 1776, the commonwealth became a secure base for Continental Army recruitment as well as supply. It also provided capable field commanders to Washington. Without Virginia’s relative security during these years, the Continental Army would have struggled to maintain field strength. The victory at Great Bridge was the hinge upon which this all swung.
The Battle of Great Bridge was the culmination of a conflict that began when the House of Burgesses called for a day of fasting, humiliation, and prayer. Though there were skirmishes leading up to it, Great Bridge was the first decisive battle fought in the South. In that battle, patriot forces withstood an artillery-supported attack by some of the finest professional soldiers in the world and effectively decimated their force without a loss. As was attested by battlefield commanders and the soldiers who served under them, God’s providence provided the victory.
AUTHOR
Dr. Kenyn Cureton is Vice President for Christian Resources at Family Research Council.
Notes:
[i] Paul Leicester Ford, ed., The Works of Thomas Jefferson, 12 vols., (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904-5), 1:11-12. Jefferson says they consulted John Rushworth, Mr. Rushworth’s Historical Collections, 8 vols., (London, 1703).
[ii] See the Fast Day proclamation in John P. Kennedy, ed., Journals of the House of Burgesses of Virginia 1773-76, (Richmond: Virginia State Library, 1913), 124.
[iii] However, Robert Carter Nicholas wrote that there was “not above one Dissentient appearing amongst near an Hundred Members” as reported in Earl Gregg Swann, ed., Considerations on the Present State of Virginia, Attributed to John Randolph, Attorney General, and Considerations on the Present State of Virginia Examined by Robert Carter Nicholas (New York: Charles F. Heartman, 1919), 80. However, Jefferson claimed that it passed “without opposition” as recorded by Paul Leicester Ford, ed., Autobiography of Thomas Jefferson, 1743-1790, (New York and London, G. P. Putnam’s sons, 1914), 12.
[iv] Kennedy, Journals, 124. Here is the full proclamation: “This House, being deeply impressed with apprehension of the great dangers to be derived to British America from the hostile invasion of the city of Boston in our Sister Colony of Massachusetts Bay, whose commerce and harbor are, on the first day of June next, to be stopped by an armed force, deem it highly necessary that the said first day of June be set apart, by the members of this House, as a Day of Fasting, Humiliation and Prayer, devoutly to implore the Divine interposition, for averting the heavy calamity which threatens destruction to our civil rights and the evils of civil war; to give us one heart and mind firmly opposed, by all just and proper means, every injury to American rights; and that the minds of His Majesty and his Parliament, may be inspired from above with wisdom, moderation and justice, to remove from the loyal people of America all cause of danger from a continued pursuit of measures pregnant with their ruin. Ordered, therefore, that the Members of this House do attend in their Places, at the hour of Ten in the forenoon, on the said first day of June next, in Order to proceed with the Speaker, and the Mace, to the Church in this City, for the purposes aforesaid; and that the Reverend Mr Price be appointed to read Prayers, and the Reverend Mr Gwatkin, to preach a Sermon, suitable to the Occasion.”
[v] Ibid.
[vi] Kennedy, Journals, 132.
[vii] See the Broadside and the transcript chronicling the results of the meeting posted by Colonial Williamsburg here.
[viii] Works. 1:12. Indeed Jefferson, one of the instigators of the Day of Fasting, Humiliation, and Prayer, urged observance at “the new church on Hardware River” near his home at Monticello, where the Rev. Charles Clay presided.
[ix] The advertisement for the printed sermon appeared in Alexander Purdie and John Dixon, eds., Virginia Gazette, on June 16, 1774, page 2. See further commentary on this Fast Day by Colonial Williamsburg: https://www.ouramericanrevolution.org/index.cfm/page/view/p0206#:~:text=The%20American%20Revolution,the%20Evils%20of%20civil%20War.%22.
[x] Works, 1:13.
[xi] Jared Sparks, ed., The Writings of George Washington; Being His Correspondence, Addresses, Messages, And Other Papers, Official And Private, Selected and Published From The Original Manuscripts; With a Life of the Author, Notes, and Illustrations, 12 vols., (Boston: American Stationers Company, 1837), 12:400.
[xii] Thomas S. Kidd, Patrick Henry: First Among Patriots, (New York: Basic Books, 2011), 98.
[xiii] Tradition holds that his mother Sarah took young Patrick to hear Rev. Davies preach then asked him to repeat the text and gist of the sermon on the wagon ride home. See Kidd, 30. Furthermore, Patrick Henry would have been present for Rev. Davies artillery sermon to the Hanover County Militia on May 8, 1758, titled “The Curse of Cowardice,” which can be found here. It is striking to compare that sermon with Henry’s “Liberty or Death” speech, which was reconstructed mainly from remembrances of eyewitnesses, such as St. George Tucker. See the reconstructed speech in William Wirt, Sketches of the Life and Character of Patrick Henry, 2d ed., (Philadelphia: J. Webster, 1818), 120-23. Finally, here is a list of the Scriptures that may have been in Henry’s mind and heart:
- “Majesty of Heaven….” 1 Chronicles 29:11
- “Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, ‘having eyes, see not, and, having ears, hear not.’” Jeremiah 5:21 (see also Ezek. 12:2)
- “it will prove a ‘snare to your feet.’” Jeremiah 18:22
- “Suffer not yourselves to be ‘betrayed with a kiss.’” Matthew 26:48
- “God of Hosts…” 2 Samuel 5:10 et al.
- “There is a just God…” Deuteronomy 32:4
- “God who presides over the destinies of nations…” Daniel 4:17
- “and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us….” 2 Chronicles 32:8
- “The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone…” Ecclesiastes 9:11-12
- “Gentlemen may cry, ‘Peace, Peace– but there is no peace.’” Jeremiah 6:14
- “I know not what course others may take, but as for me….” Joshua 24:15
However, his “Liberty or Death” climax came from the popular play Cato, A Tragedy. See Kidd, 99.
[xiv] William Van Schreeven, Robert L. Scribner and Brent Tarter, eds., Revolutionary Virginia: The Road to Independence: A Documentary Record, 7 vols., (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1973), 2:374-75.
[xv] “Newport, Dec. 12,” in Virginia Gazette (J. Dixon and W. Hunter), no. 1223, Jan. 14, 1775, p. 1. Here is a link provided by Colonial Williamsburg.
[xvi] Kennedy, Journals, 223.
[xvii] Ibid., 231.
[xviii] Kidd, 103.
[xix] Wirt, Sketches, 138.
[xx] Ibid., 138-39.
[xxi] Ibid., 139.
[xxii] Ibid., 139.
[xxiii] Ibid., 139-40.
[xxiv] Lord Dunmore, “A Proclamation,” May 6, 1775, in Scribner, Revolutionary Virginia, 3:100-01.
[xxv] William W. Hening, ed., The Statutes at Large Being a Collection of all the Laws of Virginia, 13 vols., (Richmond: J. & G. Cochran, 1821), 9:9.
[xxvi] Ibid., 9:10.
[xxvii] Ibid., 9:16-17.
[xxviii] Ibid., 9:16.
[xxix] Ibid., 20.
[xxx] Ibid., 27-28.
[xxxi] Ibid., 9:36.
[xxxii] Otto Lohrenz, “The Reverend Abner Waugh: The “Best Dancer of the Minuet in the State of Virginia” in Kentucky Review, vol. 15 : no. 2 , article 3, p. 34. Available online here. He cites Brent Tarter, ed., “The Orderly Book of the Second Virginia Regiment,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 85 (1977): 172, 326-27.
[xxxiii] https://clanmclaurin.blogspot.com/p/rev-robert-mclaurine-18th-c-cumberland.html.
[xxxiv] See https://www.geni.com/people/Samuel-Scott/6000000007848722373.
[xxxv] See https://scrc-kb.libraries.wm.edu/william-meade.
[xxxvi] Elizabeth Wingo and Elizabeth B. Hanbury, The Battle of Great Bridge, (Chesapeake, VA: The Norfolk County Historical Society of Chesapeake, Virginia, and The Chesapeake Public Schools, 1998), 21.
[xxxvii] See https://www.dhr.virginia.gov/historic-registers/204-0003/.
[xxxviii] Charles Hobson, ed., The Papers of John Marshall, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 278
[xxxix] W.W. Scott, A History of Orange County Virginia from Its Formation in 1734 (O.S.) to the end of Reconstruction in 1870; Compiled Mainly from Original Records with a Brief Sketch of the Beginnings of Virginia, a Summary of Local Events to 1907, and a Map (Richmond, VA: Everett Waddey Co.,1907), 50. He reports the following from court records:
In 1773 Joseph Spencer, being brought before the court by a warrant under the hand of Rowland Thomas, Gent., for a breach of his good behavior in teaching and preaching the gospel as a Baptist not having a license; and it appearing that he did teach and preach as aforesaid, he at the same time insisting that he decented [dissented] from the principles of an Anabaptist; ordered, that he be committed to the custody of the sheriff until he give bond conditioned not to teach or preach without first obtaining a license as the law directs. Bond was required in a penalty of one hundred pounds, and he was allowed the liberty of the prison bounds on giving security.
At the next term leave was given him to live in the courthouse, he indemnifying the County against loss, and on his petition, his bond was reduced to twenty pounds, and William Morton and Jonathan Davis became his sureties for his good behavior.
See also Lewis Peyton Little, Imprisoned Preachers and Religious Liberty in Virginia (Lynchburg, Va., 1938), 380?”83.
[xl] John Ragosta, Wellspring of Liberty: How Virginia’s Religious Dissenters Helped Win the American Revolution and Secured Religious Liberty (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 93.
[xli] See Reverend Philip Slaughter, A History of St. Mark’s Parish: Culpeper County Virginia. with Notes of Old Churches and Old Families, and Illustrations of the Manners and Customs of the Olden Time (Baltimore: Innes & Company, 1877), 107.
[xlii] See Patrick Hannum, “It is Incredible How Much They Dread a Rifle” in Journal of the American Revolution, September 1, 2025, which can be accessed here. He cites Edmund Pendleton to Richard Henry Lee, October 15, 1775, in David John Mays, ed., The Letters and Papers of Edmund Pendleton, 1734-1803, (Charlotteville: University of Virginia Press, 1967), 1:121-23.
[xliii] Michael Cecere, March to Independence: The American Revolution in the Southern Colonies, 1775?”1776 (Yardley, PA: Westholme Publishing, 2021), 68-70.
[xliv] Hannum, Rifle. He cites Pinkney’s Virginia Gazette, November 2, 1775, p. 2.
[xlv] Ibid. He cites John Page to Thomas Jefferson, November 11, 1775, in William Bell Clark, ed., Naval Documents of the American Revolution, (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1966), 1:991.
[xlvi] John E. Selby, The Revolution in Virginia 1775-1783, (Williamsburg, VA: Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 1988), 64?”66.
[xlvii] Ibid.
[xlviii] Lord Dunmore to William Howe, Nov. 30, 1775, in Naval Documents of the American Revolution, 2:1209.
[xlix] Force, Archives, 3:1385
[l] Scribner, Revolutionary Virginia, 5:10.
[li] Ibid., 77-78.
[lii] “Letter from Colonel Scott to a Friend in Williamsburg, December 4, 1775,” in Force, American Archives, 4:171.
[liii] “Colonel Woodford to Edmund Pendleton, December 9, 1775,” Naval Documents of the American Revolution, 3:28.
[liv] Ibid., 7.
[lv] See Pinkney’s Viginia Gazette, December 20, 1775, 3, which reports: “The conduct of our centinals I cannot pass over in silence. Before they quitted their stations they fired at least three rounds as the enemy were crossing the bridge, and one of them, who was posted behind some shingles, kept his ground till he had fired eight times; and after receiving [the fire of] a whole platoon, made his escape over the causeway into our breastwork.” See also Norman Fuss, “Billy Flora Hero of Great Bridge,” in Journal of the American Revolution, October 14, 2014. See online here.
[lvi] Force, American Archives, 4:224.
[lvii] Scribner, Revolutionary Virginia, 5:8.
[lviii] Cecere, March to Independence, 97.
[lix] “Letter to Pinkney,” in Pinkney’s Virginia Gazette, December 20, 1775, 2-3.
[lx] Force, American Archives, 4:224.
[lxi] “Letter to Pinkney,” in Pinkney’s Virginia Gazette, December 20, 1775, 2-3.
[lxii] “From Richard Kidder Meade to Theodorick Bland, Jr. ,18 December 1775,” in Charles Campbell, ed., The Bland Papers: Being a Selection from the Manuscripts of Colonel Theodorick Bland, Jr. of Prince George County, Virginia… (Petersburg: Printed by Edmund & Julian C. Ruffin, 1840), 38-39.
[lxiii] Scribner and Tarter, Vol. V, p. 9.
[lxiv] Colonel William H. Stewart, History of Norfolk County, Virginia, and Representative Citizens, (Chicago: Biographical Printing Co., 1902) 34, 54.
[lxv] Force, American Archives, 4:224.
[lxvi] “Colonel Woodford to Edmund Pendleton, December 10, 1775,” Naval Documents of the American Revolution, 3:39-40.
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