The Revolution's First Battle Outside the Northeast was in Virginia

Art Ritter shared the following link from the "Cardinal News." An interesting story that I'm sure not many are familiar with.

The revolution's first battle outside Northeast was in Virginia. It started with a dispute over a runaway slave. - Cardinal News

Chesterfield County Revolutionary War 250 Commemorative Brick Project

Chesterfield Historical Society is sponsoring a 250 Commemorative project to honor the brave men and boys who trained at the Chesterfield Camp in the bitter cold winter of 1780-81.  These Patriots were from multiple counties throughout the State of Virginia and other states.

Attached is information on the Chesterfield County, Virginia Revolutionary War 250 Commemorative Brick Project honoring the Patriots and a list of soldiers who trained at the Chesterfield Camp.

Click here to see the brochure

Click here to see a listing of soldiers who trained at the Chesterfield Camp

Click here for additional information on the proposed site

Next Meeting: November 19, 2025 **Location Change**

Elizabeth Reese is a public historian and writer living in the Washington, D.C. area. She has previously worked at a variety of museums and historic sites, including Hamilton Grange National Memorial and the United States Capitol Visitor Center. She has developed interpretive programs on civil rights, women’s history and Founding America and was a Scott Hartwig Public History Fellow at the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg. She currently serves as the chair for the American Friends of Lafayette Bicentennial Committee for Washington, D.C. She will speak on her book, Marquis de Lafayette Returns: A Tour of America's National Capital Region.

This in-person meeting will be in the Gottwald Science Center in the lower lecture hall (we've met there previously) at the University of Richmond. You may still have dinner at the dining hall but must eat in the main room with everyone else. The meeting will begin at 6:30 p.m.

Meeting Notes: September 17, 2025

The September meeting of the American Revolution Round Table of Richmond was held on September 17, 2025, in the Heilman Dining Center, at the University of Richmond.

The evening’s presentation was made by Robert F. Smith, author of Manufacturing Independence: Industrial Innovation in the American Revolution, Westholme Publishing, 2021. Dr. Smith is Provost of the Valley Forge Military College in Wayne, Pennsylvania. He received an MA in American History from Villanova University and a PhD in Early American History and Technology from Lehigh University. He is the author of numerous articles on military history and the history of technology. Manufacturing relies heavily on the documents of the Department of the Commissary General of Military Stores, a resource not extensively used by previous historians on the topic of manufacturing and is consequently rich with historical information.

“The nation had embarked on a war for independence without the domestic availability of weapons, the productive design to make weapons, or the trade connections to import well-made weapons.” [Manufacturing, p. xii]

America did not have the capacity to manufacture weapons to wage war against the world’s most powerful military force; guns, ammunition, bayonets, cartridge boxes, gunpowder, wagons, and every other accoutrement of war. The range of fighting equipment was vast. It is estimated that there were 350 gunsmiths in the colonies when war was declared against the British. They were craftsmen in the art of making rifles and were mostly located on the western frontier. There were no centralized manufactories for creating all the products necessary to support the fight for independence. There had been no need to mass produce the products necessary for warfare.

“When the revolution began, the family was the production team, with wife and children assisting the artisan in a shop either in or attached to his house. A master craftsman took on an apprentice or two if finances allowed. Yet a craftsman and his workers could make no more than a handful of items per week, depending on the nature of the craft. It took a gunsmith three days to make one weapon from scratch with some of the more intricate parts premade. Building an entire musket could take up to a week and required the gunsmith to have the ironworking skills of a blacksmith, the woodworking skills of a carpenter, and the crafting skills of a clockmaker and engraver. There was little division of labor in gunsmithing in particular and craftsmanship in general in America. An artisan worked on all aspects of a single product, because colonial markets were not large enough to call forth the development of large-scale production, general craftsmen were specialty producers. Thus, most gunsmiths were also blacksmiths and often produced rifles as well as muskets. With no requirement from the market to produce on a large scale, craftsmen never developed the means to do so. And, as will be seen in chapter 6, large-scale producers that did exist, like ironmongers, had no experience in making military stores. The American Revolution changed the nature of craft production, but in 1776, craftsmen were in no position to serve the military market on their own. And the nation's need for craftsmen skilled in military stores production exacerbated the limits of craft production in that particular industry.” [Manufacturing, p. 12]

Trade networks were destroyed, inflation undermined the economy, and American artisans could not produce or repair enough weapons to keep the Continental Army in the field. The Continental Congress responded to this crisis by mobilizing the nation’s manufacturing resources for war. The Continental Congress became familiar with the latest manufacturing techniques and processes of the expanding European industrial revolution. The Congress, therefore, initiated a program of munitions manufacturing under the newly created Department of the Commissary General of Military Stores. The department gathered craftsmen and workers into three national arsenals located in Philadelphia, Carlisle, and Springfield. They were trained in the large-scale production of weapons using groups of workers who were organized on their individualized skills and made components. For example, a gunsmith is not needed to produce a gun stock when a carpenter can be used to do that. A barrel can be made by a blacksmith. It is the gunsmith’s highly-skilled talent that is required for putting all the pieces together. The department also engaged private manufacturers, providing them with materials through bartering, cross-training their workers in marketable skills, and instituting programs of inspecting finished products to ensure consistent quality and uniformity.

Dr. Smith spoke about how the colonies were able to provide their military with the arms and accoutrements needed to fight, survive, and outlast the enemy—supplying weapons for the victory at Saratoga, rearming their armies in the South on three different occasions, and providing munitions to sustain the siege at Yorktown. These actions dispelled the general opinion that Americans and their Continental government did very little to manufacture stores for their own army. [Manufacturing, p. xvi] But this manufacturing system not only successfully supported the Continental Army, it also demonstrated new production ideas to the nation as implemented by the Department of the Commissary General. Through this system, the government went on to promote domestic manufacturing after the war, becoming a model for how the nation could produce goods for its own needs. “Americans imported the Industrial Revolution to mobilize the resources they had available. The short-term result was the effective arming of the nation, but the long-term implications involved placing the government at the forefront of industrialization in the United States.” [Manufacturing, p. xv] The War for Independence was not just a political revolution; it was an integral part of the Industrial Revolution in America.

--Fred Sorrell