by Taylor, Alan
During 1814, Barbour sought more militia from the interior to defend the Tidewater, provoking greater protests from the Piedmont. The Caroline County magistrates insisted that their slaves had “uttered threats” and committed “in one instance an outrage,” when they heard that the local militia had been ordered to march away to the Northern Neck. Similarly, the bankers of Lynchburg demanded the retention of their militia after discovering a plot for “a general rising of the blacks in this quarter.” The bankers conceded that “a plot was not actually developed, yet it . . . has lately been the subject of frequent conversations among them.”49
Ruing the crippling dread of his constituents, Barbour doubted that the slaves would rebel when so many militiamen were moving about the region under arms. Slave revolts, he insisted, would “never manifest themselves at a time like the present when all are on the alert and every man with an efficient arm in his hand.” But the governor reluctantly conceded that “a sufficient number of the militia should be left in each County to secure the police & quiet of the people against internal disturbance.” That political restraint reduced the reinforcements desperately needed to defend the beleaguered Tidewater counties.50
Barbour also faced angry protests from the militiamen posted at Norfork, who bristled at the rigorous drills and severe punishments imposed by their commander, General Taylor. A friend noted that Taylor sought “to reclaim the character of the Virginia Militia. . . . The Task is Herculean and, I fear, with the Habits & Genius of our people, next to impossible.” During the spring, Taylor made some progress in training his men, but disease depleted and demoralized his force over the summer. Scores ran away to tend their farms and reassure their wives. In July, Taylor warned that desertion had “become so frequent as to threaten the dissolution of the army.”51
Taylor and Barbour also took heat for rearranging militia companies under new officers chosen for their merit rather than their local popularity. Although officers disdained serving at Norfolk, they felt dishonored when sent home in favor of some rival. And the militiamen disliked the strange new officers who demanded extra drill and inflicted more punishments than did their familiar, neighborly officers. Disgruntled officers denounced Taylor’s system as a threat to republican principles of equality and local control. In early December 1813, to secure reelection as governor, Barbour abandoned Taylor’s unpopular militia reforms. Feeling undercut, Taylor resigned his command, sadly concluding “that the hope of introducing skill, regularity, & economy among militia troops is idle & illusory.”52
County
In March 1814, Governor Barbour commiserated with Colonel Leaven Gayle over the failure of the United States to defend Mathews County from British raids: “Our situation is to the last degree unpleasant and embarrassing. The constitution of the United States has very wisely confided the General Defence to the General Government,” but because the administration had repeatedly “refused its interposition,” the “People of Mathews have been doomed to feel more than their proportion of the evils of war.” Those evils included the burglary, a year before, by restive slaves posing as “Englishmen.”53
Intersected by many streams and small rivers, Mathews County presented a cluster of peninsulas exposed to the enemy’s amphibious raids. Land-bound by the enemy’s control of the bay, the militiamen struggled to cope with their more mobile enemy. “After they have Landed & laid their destructive hands on our property [it] will be too late,” lamented Colonel Gayle. To fend off the powerful warships, Gayle’s men had only two small cannon, and lacked ammunition for them.54
The Mathews militia also suffered from a political and class division among the officers, pitting those with higher external status against those with deeper local roots. Governor Barbour and the Council of State worried that the Mathews militia regiment lacked energetic leadership. Colonel Gayle was a genial mediocrity, privately derided by the county clerk as “the most uninformed man upon earth” and possessing “no military talent whatever.” His major, John Billups, was even worse: an elderly drunk who rarely showed up for duty. In March 1813 the council pushed Billups to resign and eventually elevated Captain Christopher Tompkins to fill the vacancy. While keeping Gayle on as a figurehead, the state leaders relied on Tompkins to manage the defense of Mathews County.55
A prosperous merchant, Tompkins had a better education and wider horizons than any other captain in the county, but those qualities exposed him to populist charges of elitism. Claiming to uphold the revolution, a critic adopted the pseudonym “Seventy-Six” to warn the governor that Tompkins was one “of the most gainsaying, hard-hearted, stiff-necked, rebellious Federalists that ever disgraced the unsullied soil of the U.S. of America.” The critic insisted that “a very large majority” of the Mathews militia were “Whigs & Republicans” who despised Tompkins and would defy his orders.56
By choosing Tompkins as major, the Council of State rejected the competing nomination by the county magistrates of Langley B. Eddins, the most senior captain. A poorly educated and hard-drinking good-old-boy, Eddins owned a substantial farm of 165 acres worked by five mature slaves, but that property compared poorly to Tompkins’s 330 acres and sixteen slaves. At a time when a carriage was an expensive status symbol, Tompkins owned one but Eddins did not. Captain Eddins did, however, enjoy the patronage of the county’s leading magistrate, Houlder Hudgins (who had lost his white slaves in the famous case of Wrights v. Hudgins in 1806). Hudgins had considerable local clout thanks to his 811 acres, thirty-six adult slaves, carriage, and his especially extensive family network, for “Hudgins” was the most abundant surname in Mathews County. In 1812 only one other taxpayer had the last name Tompkins—compared to the four Eddinses and the fifty-two Hudginses. As a relative newcomer, Tompkins had broader external connections to Richmond but shallower family roots in Mathews County.57
Fiercely defending their traditional power over local appointments, the Mathews Magistrates resented the governor and council as dangerous innovators and centralizers for imposing Tompkins as the major. Tompkins reported, “Mr. Houlder Hudgins addressed the other members with considerable warmth, observing by the way that it was the greatest insult that could be offered to our Bench, that the Executive should take upon themselves to dictate to the Court.” Hudgins added, “Captain Eddins sometimes got merry with his friends, which for his part, was considered rather a Virtue than a Vice.”58
By commissioning Tompkins, the council outraged the Eddins family and their Hudgins connections. One of the captain’s relatives refused to perform guard duty “& said that he would kill the first man that dared attempt to carry him.” Despite enemy warships nearby, Captain Eddins told the assembled militiamen “that they were not bound to obey any officer except Col. Gayle.” Delighted to avoid duty, the men dispersed until Gayle ordered them to reassemble, but he refused to arrest Eddins for mutiny, as Tompkins demanded. Eddins then headed to Richmond, bearing a remonstrance signed by most of the county’s magistrates and militia officers who insisted that by overriding seniority the executive had dishonored the bypassed officers. But the council stood firm, so Eddins resigned his captain’s commission in a huff. In April 1814, however, the Hudgins faction reaffirmed its local popularity by winning both Mathews County seats in the state legislature.59
The turmoil in the militia came at a bad time, for in early 1814 the Royal Navy seized New Point Comfort at the southeastern tip of Mathews County as a watering station. The crew on a frigate or ship-of-the-line consumed two to three tons of water per day. Landing at New Point Comfort, the British dug wells to procure water. The local militia could neither defend nor retake the isolated point because attackers from the mainland had to cross a long, sandy spit exposed to naval fire. Barges mounted with a small cannon at each bow hovered along the spit to support a shore party of 200 men, a mix of working sailors and guarding marines. From the top of the point’s lighthouse, a British officer could watch for any threatening movements within three miles. Occasionally, from the far side of the
sandy spit, the militia fired at the occupiers, but the long shots fell short. Having filled their casks, the British departed, after posting a placard on the lighthouse with a doggerel poem to mock the impotence of the Virginians, known as “Buckskins”: “Let the Buckskins do as they will, We will get a plenty of water still.”60
The militia watched the British from a guard post on the far side of the sandy spit. The guards served primarily to keep slaves from running across to freedom and to entice British deserters to bolt across the spit to America. Fear of desertion discouraged the British officers from venturing their men beyond the point, a restraint that, Major Tompkins explained, “affords us more serenity than anything else.”61
Through the winter of 1813–1814, the militia guards suffered from exposure to the biting winds and driving rains, for they lacked decent clothing and proper tents. At best, the men could huddle around fires in front of their brush huts. Most of the guards became too sick for duty, reducing the county’s able-bodied militia to just 100 men. Reverend Armistead Smith reported, “Our poor Militia are worn out with fatigue, constant Duty day & Night.” He considered them “cowed and dispirited.62
Feeling abandoned by their state and national governments, the Mathews men despaired of resisting the British. In February, Smith reported, “Every thing has been in a constant state of confusion & alarm. Every Business of every kind has been at a stand & I never laid myself down to rest at night but expected before the morning to be alarmed with the horrid raps & thunderings of the Enemy at the doors.” John Patterson predicted that “the [militia] camp in a short time will become depopulated & the whole Country left to the free will of an invading foe.” Patterson warned that the Mathews people soon would “tamely submit & place ourselves at the mercy of our old Masters & instead of looking up to our own Government for protection take the Oath of allegiance & ask a safeguard of [our] invading Foe.” In mid-March, Barbour belatedly ordered eighty-two men, drawn from two other counties, to march to the partial relief of Mathews County.63
Despite the militia guards, some local slaves escaped to the enemy in stolen boats. A few runaways bolted in January and February 1814, and seventy did so in March, as the weather warmed and the waves stilled. On March 12, Colonel Gayle reported, “The desertion of our slaves have increased within the last ten days to an astonishing degree & in a short time all the lower Country immediately connected with this place must be ruin’d. They comprise the principal capital of this Section of the State & the chief dependence of the widow & orphan.” A slave or two provided social security for many of the common white people in Mathews County. Averse to working his own fields, Reverend Smith worried that the British would “pillage & plunder me . . . of every species of property, particularly our negroe property on which our principal Dependance rests.”64
The runaways compromised the county’s security by identifying militia weak points and hidden shipping to the British. Visiting a warship under a flag of truce, a Mathews militia officer discovered “that they knew our force very well, and could at any time land double our number and take the County, if there was an object for doing so.” On the night of May 1, three barges filled with Britons dodged the militia guards and ascended the East River to capture an especially valuable schooner, the Grecian. Tompkins lamented “that some Negro had got off to the Brig in the early part of the Night & gave information as to the position of the schooner.”65
The runaways stole the ubiquitous canoes and small boats of the watery county, where so many people lived by seeking fish, crabs, and oysters in the rivers and bay. Tompkins explained, “Tis a curious fact that no spot can be found in this county more than a mile from tidewater; hence the impossibility of securing the canoes without guarding them, and I expect that one Thousand is the smallest number we have in the County, for not only every white person but almost every negro has a canoe.” Empowered by a new state law passed in January 1814, Tompkins divided the county into districts, each with a compound guarded by five sentries to watch the boats every night. The owners could borrow their boats by day, but had to return them at dusk. When a negligent owner kept his canoe one night, nine slaves stole it and escaped to the British.66
In October 1814, more than 300 men signed petitions protesting the local enforcement of the boat law: “Manifest Oppressions and injustices have been done to your Petitioners” who “have been deprived of their Canoes, which were a means of the greater part of their Support during the greater part of the Summer and fall.” Fiercely libertarian, common Virginians resented any new exercise of government power to restrict their freedom.67
A month later, the Mathews County proponents of the boat law sent a counterpetition to the legislature. Although only eighty-four men signed the pro-restriction petition, they included Tompkins, Gayle, and Reverend Smith (whose daughter had married Tompkins). They cited the great exception to the state’s libertarian tradition: the laws requiring all white men to cooperate in keeping the slaves in order. The signers reasoned, “The principal capital of Virginia consists of Land & Slaves and upon this capital the payment of Taxes to support the Government both in time of War and Peace is predicated.” Therefore, they concluded, “Every man in the community subject to the payment of Taxes has an interest in the security of the slaves.” Rather than weaken the boat law, the Tompkins faction sought the authority for militia officers “to destroy any canoe or light vessel” belonging to anyone who ignored the regulations.68
The dueling petitions revealed a class division between the opponents and the proponents of the boat law. According to the Mathews County tax list for 1812, the pro-restriction men had more slaves to lose than did their opponents: 7.2 per proponent versus 1.5 per opponent. Indeed, most of the opponents owned no taxable slaves, while over four-fifths of the proponents owned at least one. The proponents had also suffered greater losses to wartime escapes: thirteen of them had lost a total of thirty-three slaves, compared to the eighteen runaways lost by just eight of the opponents. Perhaps most telling of all, 37 percent of the proponents owned a carriage, but only 3 percent of the opponents owned one, which attested to their lower status and greater reliance on canoes.69
The exceptional opponent who proved the rule was Houlder Hudgins, who had lost ten wartime runaways and owned a carriage and thirty-six taxable slaves. But Hudgins resented Tompkins’s rising power, so the old judge rallied the local majority with a populist appeal meant to embarrass his younger rival. Hudgins had also moved his remaining slaves west to Kentucky, far from harm’s way for the duration of the war, so he neither needed nor wanted the interfering protection offered by Tompkins and the boat law.70
Relatively wealthy, the proponents of the boat law denounced their local opponents as “a few restless men residing immediately on those water courses, owning little or no property except a Canoe & giving nothing in support of the Government, extending their Ideas no farther than their own convenience.” Such men lacked any “immediate interest in the Security of the Slaves,” and some of them were even “disposed rather to favour than prevent their escape” because “influenced by what they call a leveling principle,” deemed essential to defend “their rights and privileges as free men.” Under the duress of war in a slave society, common whites worried that poverty might compromise their freedom. As the war dragged on, class fissures widened among the whites of Virginia.71
By failing to defend the long, exposed Atlantic seaboard, the federal government unwittingly cast the apple of discord into Virginia, exposing an array of internal divisions. The hinterland people dreaded militia service at Norfolk, while the rest of the Tidewater felt abandoned to British raids by a state government beholden to the Piedmont. For want of federal troops, Virginia had to rely on militiamen called out by the hundreds whenever the British threatened a particular county. The repeated emergencies strained the politics, finances, and economy of the state. Striving to bring order to the chaos, Governor Barbour sought greater state control over a better-trained militia. But his r
eforms aroused fierce resistance from traditionalists who preferred the laxer and more decentralized ways of Old Virginia. Lying behind all the friction lay the dread of an internal enemy prone to become “Englishmen” to fight the “American Buggers.”72
Admiral Sir John Borlase Warren, R.N., an engraving by R. N. Stipple, from The Naval Chronicle (London, 1800), vol. 3. (Courtesy of the Navy Department Library, Washington, D.C.)
6
LESSONS
It was now that the slaves began to desert to us, and by their local knowledge we were afterwards enabled to carry on a system of harassing warfare which, in the end, obliged the inhabitants to throw themselves upon our mercy, instead of the protection of their militiamen.
—LIEUTENANT JAMES SCOTT, MAY 18131
IN JULY 1807 a fourteen-year-old slave named Willis fled from his master in Princess Anne County by stealing a boat and rowing out to a British warship anchored in nearby Lynnhaven Bay. Willis expected a warm welcome, for war seemed imminent after the recent British attack on the USS Chesapeake. Initially, the British took in, fed, and clothed Willis and four other fugitives, but in early August the Royal Navy Commodore sent them back to their masters in a bid to defuse tensions with the Virginians. Instead of dwelling on that betrayal, Willis later recalled that “he had been to the British once & that they treated him well & he wished his master had let him remain.” In 1814, Willis escaped again to a British ship along with “many other negroes in the neighbourhood.”2