Meeting Notes: July 15, 2026

The July meeting, of the American Revolution Round Table of Richmond, was held on July 15, 2026, in the Heilman Dining Center, at the University of Richmond.

The evening’s presentation “Prisoner Administration During the Revolutionary War” was made by Susan Brynne Long, Ph.D. Susan is an instructor of history whose research and teaching focus on early America and military history. Her current research is about the American administration of British allied prisoners of war in the Revolution. She is interested in how prisoner management offers a window into the contested development of federalism in revolutionary America.

She is in the process of revising her dissertation into a book, tentatively titled The Disagreeable Situation: American Prisoner Administration in the Revolutionary War. She is co-author of forthcoming monograph, The Frontier War, 1775–1783, which will be published by the Center of Military History in winter 2026. She has taught at numerous institutions, including the University of Delaware and the University of the Cumberlands. Her scholarly writings have appeared in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History and Transactions of the American Philosophical Society. A prolific public historian, her op-eds connecting early America with modern domestic and foreign policy issues have appeared in the Washington Post and Real Clear Defense. Dr. Long has spoken for audiences on topics related to the American founding for the American Revolution Institute at the Society of the Cincinnati, the George Washington Masonic National Memorial, the Society of the First Families of New York, and more.^[1]

During the American Revolution, authority over British-allied prisoners became a hotly contested issue. This contest reflected clashes between early Americans and their governments to secure political and military authority in the new nation. At the start of the conflict, provisional wartime governments including Committees of Safety assumed responsibility for the first prisoners of the war. The radical democratic spirit of the Revolution afforded early Americans significant power over prisoner allowances and restrictions through their revolutionary governments. In 1777, Congress established the Department of Prisoners to better pursue its interests regarding captive populations. Inhabitants in and around detention centers resisted this increase in Continental authority at the peril of their own. This resistance reflected the endurance of the early war’s radical democracy, notwithstanding the recent dissolution of the revolutionary governments that provided a legal avenue for it. The nation’s first Commissary General of Prisoners, Elias Boudinot, had to contend with popular opposition to his supremacy in prisoner affairs, as well as with the jealous pursuit of state interests regarding both American and enemy prisoners. Reacting alongside Congress to the democratic impulse of the early revolutionary years, conservative lawmakers endowed state governments with coercive governing authorities that enabled them to pursue interests distinct from those of their constituents. The pursuit of state interests respecting prisoners manifested in various activities that conflicted with the efforts of the Department of Prisoners to standardize prisoner administration under its auspices, including, most obtrusively, state-initiated prisoner exchanges. As Commander-in-Chief, George Washington acted alongside the American public, the states, and Congress during the war to establish the contours of his authority. Boudinot’s tenure coincided with a cautionary phase of Washington’s negotiations, forestalling the general’s intervention to protect the Department of Prisoners against the intrusive actions of the states. This hesitance, combined with Congress’s failure to assert Boudinot’s authority, compounded the difficulties of his administration. The irresolution of Congress to assert the superintendency of the Department of Prisoners over prisoner affairs, born of a dual fear of standing armies and centralized authority, poorly equipped Boudinot to advocate for Continental interests with prisoners. By the time Washington, and to a lesser extent Congress, shifted to curtail state-initiated prisoner exchanges, they had hardened into assumed authorities of the new state governments. The confusion and overlapping authorities that characterized America’s first sprawling system of prisoner management represented a contested negotiation over the distribution of authorities in the new nation. But even as early Americans and their governments variously justified their claims to power based on traditional and emerging ideological imperatives, they also acted in self-interest. Prisoners of war offered personal and economic benefits to early Americans and financial and reputational benefits to Congress and state governments. Selfish jealousies and ideological motivations would continue to shape the contours of the American political system after the war, informing the imperatives of the Constitutional Convention and beyond.^[2]

Dr. Long’s presentation included:

 ·         How roughly 17,000 British and their allied soldiers, prisoners of war, were managed by Americans during the Revolutionary War.

·         The Revolutionary War was not a war between nations but was a civil war.

·         The British military did not treat Americans well. Patriots were viewed by the British as traitors which was different than how the British viewed and treated French prisoners who were considered combatants subject to the rule of war.

·         An example is the HMS Jersey and other British abandoned and decommissioned warships that were used as floating prisons where captured Continental Army soldiers were imprisoned and received the cruelest maltreatments.

·         There were no British prisoners of war until July 4,1776, as there had been no declaration of war.

·    Prisoners captured at Fort Ticonderoga were not treated as POWs but “were sent to households in the countryside near Hartford, Connecticut. The prisoners labored for farmers or artisans there; in return, the people they worked for provided lodging, clothing, food, and wages. Prisoners who refused to work were housed in Hartford jails. This system, which had been used in America in prior wars, saved the colony money and helped alleviate a labor shortage. However, the practice of coercing prisoners into a labor resource broke European norms for treatment of prisoners of war which deeply disturbed the British.” ^[3]

·    After the Battle of Trenton, George Washington ordered his troops to take the prisoners in and "treat them with humanity," which they did. "Let them have no reason to complain of our copying the brutal example of the British army in their treatment of our unfortunate brethren who have fallen into their hands." ^[4]

·    The British were unwilling to negotiate with Americans over prisoner exchanges and paroles, to do so would recognize the independence of the United States.

·    Larger groups of British, and related prisoners, were incarcerated at Lancaster, York, Reading and Carlisle, Pennsylvania, Cambridge and Rutland, Massachusetts, Albemarle Barracks and Winchester, Virginia, and Fort Frederick, Maryland.

·    The Continental Congress in due course claimed the sole authority to decide where the prisoners went, and the local towns had little forewarning and no say in the matter. Prison towns found themselves with the burden of providing for hundreds or thousands of prisoners at a time. In towns that could not afford to feed prisoners, the prisoners were put to work to feed themselves. British and German prisoners cultivated gardens; worked on farms and for craftsmen; and found other forms of unskilled labor.

·    In his letters Joshua Mersereau, Deputy Commissary General of Prisoners for the Continental Army, complained of the difficult circumstances created by the threats of locals against prisoners. The Quartermaster of the Rutland barracks in his letters described his difficulties with local populations in the deliberately slow manner in which construction materials were provided and other hostile acts calling the locals “Sharks” and “Devils” for steeply inflating materials pricing.^[5]

·    Local committees of safety and provisional governments had more legitimacy to hold prisoners than the Continental Congress because they were the first to address the disagreeable situation.

·    British Major Christopher French's correspondence, with George Washington, during his captivity demonstrates the contemptuous and privileged attitude held by a British army officer towards Americans. French was unwittingly taken prisoner. It seems that French ran afoul with all Americans by taking out advertisements instructing British troops to not cooperate with American authorities, insisting he be allowed to possess weapons, insulting his local committee’s powers to hold him and Washington’s instructions to do so, and escaping his captivity multiple times and causing many other trifling distractions.

·    Rutland’s Rebellion was a series of struggles that pitted long-established local town meeting government authorities and newly created federal authorities over contested authority.

·    The Continental Congress’ wanted to standardize how British prisoners were kept and American prisoners were supplied. Elias Boudinot IV was appointed Commissary General of Prisoners and served for 14 months before resigning to take a seat in the Continental Congress for New Jersey.

 SUMMARY

Decentralized Beginnings: Early prisoner care was an ad hoc process overseen by local communities, state governments, and town meetings (such as Rutland, Massachusetts) rather than a unified national policy. 

Crisis of Authority: As the Continental Army tried to formalize control—prompted by leaders like George Washington—local towns often clashed with military authorities over who held ultimate power and responsibility for the captives. 

Militarization and Civic Alienation: the war effort centralized and militarized prisoner management, ordinary citizens lost their direct role in local defense and community-based captivity management. 

Humane Standards vs. Retaliation: While American leadership initially tried to follow European martial traditions of humane treatment, harsh realities, and reports of suffering on British prison ships frequently strained these standards.

 _________________________________________________________

 ^[1] University of Nebraska at Omaha, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of History (July 31, 2026) Faculty Biography Susan Brynne Long, Ph.D., https://www.unomaha.edu/college-of-arts-and-sciences/history/about-us/directory/faculty/brynne-long.php

 ^[2] Long, Susan Brynne (2026-05-27) University of Delaware Doctoral Dissertation Abstract, “THE DISAGREEABLE SITUATION”: PRISONER OF WAR ADMINISTRATION IN THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION https://udspace.udel.edu/items/1a58a260-65e1-4000-85df-040180451bc4

 ^[3] The Northern Department (August 8, 2026) Webpage: Ticonderoga’s British Garrison Imprisoned in Connecticut https://northerndepartment.org/news/ticonderogas-british-garrison-imprisoned-in-connecticut/

 ^[4] Wikipedia contributors (August 3, 2026) Webpage: Prisoners of war in the American Revolutionary War: American laws of war Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoners_of_war_in_the_American_Revolutionary_War

 ^[5] Journal of the American Revolution (August 6, 2026) Webpage: Politics During the War (1775-1783) Rutland’s Rebellion: Defending Local Governance during the Revolution by Susan Long, Posted February 27, 2020 https://allthingsliberty.com/2020/02/rutlands-rebellion-defending-local-governance-during-the-revolution/ 

Fred Sorrell

Secretary

Next Meeting: September 16, 2026

 "Paul Revere's Ride: An Illustrated History"

Our speaker will be Courtney Skinner
 

Cortney Skinner has been a professional, full-time freelance illustrator for over four decades. His expertise spans traditional media and digital illustration, his work appearing in books, magazines, and film. His landscapes, still lifes, and portraits have found their way into numerous private collections. 

During the Bicentennial, Cort’s deep fascination with Revolutionary War history led him to establish the First Massachusetts Regiment, a Continental Line living history unit.

Skinner’s journey into historical illustration began in 1999 when he illustrated for Ben Edwards’ ongoing One April in Boston project. In 2017, he embarked on a research, writing, and painting project entitled Paul Revere’s Ride, An Illustrated History, culminating in the publication of the 250th Anniversary book by the Paul Revere Memorial Association in 2025.  You'll definitely enjoy this wonderfully illustrated work, which will be available for purchase.

The regular September meeting is in-person, beginning with dinner at 5:30 in the Heilman Dining Center.   The meeting begins at 6:30. 

There has been ongoing construction near the Heilman Center, with fences in place.  We suggest that you avoid that area and exit the parking lot by the path through the hedges near the top of the lot.

Meeting Notes: May 27, 2026

The May meeting of the American Revolution Round Table of Richmond was held on May 27, 2026, in the Heilman Dining Center, at the University of Richmond.

 

The evening’s presentation by speaker John R. Maass centered on John’s latest book about the Battle of Spencer’s Ordinary, which occurred on June 26, 1781, and the Battle of Green Spring which occurred on July 6, 1781. Both engagements were direct preludes to the final major land engagement of the American Revolutionary War, the Battle at Yorktown.

 

John is an education specialist at the National Museum of the United States Army. He received a BA in history from Washington and Lee University, and a Ph.D. from the Ohio State University in early U.S. history and military history. His most recent books are From Trenton to Yorktown: Turning Points of the Revolutionary War published by Osprey Publishing and The Battles of Spencer's Ordinary and Green Spring, 1781 published by Westholme Publishing. The books are available on Amazon.

 

Henry Clinton, the British Commander-in-Chief in America from 1778 to 1782, had given British Army Lieutenant-General Charles Cornwallis instructions to, first and foremost, preserve the gains made by taking Charleston, and only then engage in offensive moves. After pacifying both South and North Carolina, Clinton expected Cornwallis, as the lead commander of the British "Southern strategy," to move into Virginia, subdue American resistance, and cutoff the sources of supplies being provided to American troops by their French allies.

 

Nathanael Greene was appointed commander in chief of the Continental Army in the South in December 1780. He was tasked with luring Cornwallis away from his coastal bases. His strategy was to engage the British in small skirmish guerrilla warfare and, if possible, get Cornwallis to divide his forces.

 

Daniel Morgan took command of a corps aiming at slowing Cornwallis’ advance to the north. Morgan gradually moved northward hoping to draw Cornwallis’ following troops closer. On January 17, 1781, Morgan turned his troops to confront the British troops at Cowpens, South Carolina and were victorious over the force under British Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton, Commandant of the British Legion of cavalry and light troops.

 

Outraged by the loss at Cowpens, Cornwallis and Tarleton began to chase Nathaniel Greene and Daniel Morgan’s troops to free hundreds of British prisoners and to keep them from reuniting in what became known as the “Race to the Dan” River in Virginia.  Cornwallis failed to reach the American forces in time, and his failure ultimately led to a battle between Cornwallis and Greene at Guildford Court House on March 15, 1781.Guilford Courthouse is considered a victory for the British because Greene’s forces eventually retreated from the battlefield, but Greene’s army inflicted such heavy casualties (estimated to be 25%) on Cornwallis’ troops that Greene won a strategic victory with casualties estimated to be 30%. As a result, Cornwallis was no longer in a position to pursue Greene further north and he withdrew toward Wilmington, North Carolina to rest and resupply his army.

 

Lord Charles Cornwallis came to the decision to abandon the Carolinas and make an unauthorized move into Virginia. He decided to carry the war north into Virginia’s Lower Peninsula: to destroy the American’s logistics support, that was centered around Richmond, Petersburg (Blandford), and Prince George County Court House; and, move his resupply point to Virginia’s Tidewater region on April 25.

 

Washington had ordered the Marquis de Lafayette to re-form his force to go south to Virginia to link up with troops commanded by Major General Steuben, to keep an eye on Cornwallis’ movements. Lafayette reached Richmond with a Continental Army detachment of about 1,200 troops on April 29, 1781. The combined force was to try and trap British forces commanded by Benedict Arnold, with French ships preventing his escape by sea. This became known as the Yorktown Campaign.

 

Cornwallis reached Petersburg on May 20, coming from Wilmington, North Carolina, bringing the British force up to 5,300 men.

 

Lafayette shadowed Cornwallis as he moved his army of redcoats and Hessians toward Williamsburg from central Virginia. Lafayette avoided fighting a battle against Cornwallis far superior force. After being reinforced in early June, he followed the redcoats more closely, looking for long awaited opportunities to strike.

 

In June 1781, Cornwallis received orders from London to proceed to the Chesapeake Bay and to oversee construction of a port that would establish a military base of operations in the region.

 

On June 11 and 15, apparently in reaction to the Franco-American threat to New York City, Clinton requested Cornwallis to fortify either Yorktown or Williamsburg and establish a base of operations there, while sending any troops he could spare back to New York. Cornwallis received these letters at Williamsburg on June 26. He and an engineer had inspected Yorktown, which he initially found to be defensively inadequate, until he learned that French ships were unloaded supplies to the Americans in exchange for tobacco as payment. At that time, Yorktown was the number one tobacco port in the colonies. He wrote a letter to Clinton indicating that he would move troops to Portsmouth in order to send them north with transports available there.

 

 

The Battle of Spencer's Ordinary took place on June 26, 1781 when light detachments from both armies clashed near a tavern at a road intersection not far from Williamsburg. British Lieutenant Colonel John Graves Simcoe and his Loyalist regiment of Queen's Rangers with Hessian Jägers were returning from a raid to destroy boats and forage for supplies on the Chickahominy River. Simcoe was convoying seized cattle and decided to rest before joining Cornwallis’ main army. An advance guard under Captain William McPherson of Pennsylvania Continentals caught up with advance companies of Simcoe's force near Spencer's Ordinary. In the ensuing action, Simcoe's cavalry charged McPherson's formation, breaking it up. Simcoe ordered Jägers and light infantry into the woods on the right to flank the arriving enemy column. When the advance guard under Colonel Richard Butler arrived, Simcoe ordered an infantry charge. Butler's men scattered into the nearby woods. A cavalry charge was ordered by Simcoe and a field cannon was fired. Butler's men were forced back believing a larger British force was arriving. Both sides, concerned that the other might be reinforced by its main army, eventually broke off the battle. Reported losses of wounded, killed and captured varied considerably.

 

The location of the battle is now within the grounds of James City County's Freedom Park in Williamsburg.

 

 

The Battle of Green Spring took place near the Green Spring Plantation in James City County, Virginia, on July 6, 1781. American Brigadier General "Mad" Anthony Wayne, leading the advance forces of the Marquis de Lafayette, was ambushed near the plantation by Cornwallis’ army in the last major land battle of the Virginia campaign prior to the Siege of Yorktown.

 

British forces were considerably hampered by the delay in communications between Clinton and Cornwallis and their lack of clarity. On July 4, Cornwallis began moving his army toward the Jamestown ferry, to cross the James River and march to Portsmouth. Lafayette's scouts observed the motion, and Lafayette thought the British force would be vulnerable during the crossing. Lafayette advanced his army to the Green Spring Plantation, and, based on intelligence that only the British rear guard was left at the crossing, he sent General Anthony Wayne forward to attack the rear guard on July 6. They skirmished all afternoon with the British. But Cornwallis had laid a clever trap. Sending only his baggage and some troops to guard it, he sent "deserters" to falsely inform Lafayette of the situation while concealing his main force near the crossing point.

 

American reinforcements arrived in the late afternoon. Only a portion of these reinforcements were sent to join Wayne. Lafayette rode to the river where a tongue of land enabled him to see the true strength of the British force. Wayne's troops advanced towards the trap's trigger, an abandoned British cannon, that Cornwallis had left in the road. Wayne’s seizure of the gun was the signal for the British counterattack, which began with a barrage of canister and grape shot, and was followed by an infantry charge. The sudden appearance of the British army stunned Wayne's command. Lafayette was not able to reach Wayne in time to recall him. The British line overlapped both flanks of the Americans. Wayne was concerned that a retreat would turn into a disorderly rout. He reformed his line, ordered his artillery to fire a blast of grape shot, and then had the line charge the numerically overwhelming British with bayonets fixed.

 

Wayne's audacious bayonet charge worked; it successfully halted the British advance long enough for Lafayette's covering force to approach. Lafayette rode forward to assist in managing the American retreat, which began to crumble after Cornwallis personally led a counter-charge. Wayne's men, against heavy numbers, made a brave fight. General Wayne’s troops managed to escape the trap, but with significant casualties and the loss of two field pieces.

 

With darkness falling upon the field, and in spite of Tarleton's urgings, Cornwallis declined to pursue the fleeing Americans. Instead, he resumed his movement to Portsmouth, still looking for an appropriate base of operations.

 

After Cornwallis reached Portsmouth, new orders arrived from Clinton that countermanded the previous ones which, in the most direct terms, ordered him to establish a fortified deep-water port, using as much of his army as he thought necessary. Nevertheless, having inspected Portsmouth and finding it even less favorable than Yorktown, Cornwallis wrote to Clinton informing him that he would fortify Yorktown.

 

Lafayette had blockaded the land routes out of Yorktown while the French fleet prevented the arrival of British relief fleets into the York River setting the scene for the Battle at Yorktown.

 

Communications between the British Commander-in-Chief and his lead commander can be read at Clinton's and Cornwallis' correspondence during the Campaign in North America 1781.

 

 

Fred Sorrell

Secretary

Next Meeting: July 15, 2026

Susan Brynne Long will present “The Disagreeable Situation: American Prisoner Management during the Revolutionary War.”

Byrnne is currently Instructor of History at the University of Nebraska in Omaha.  Graduating from Georgetown University with Bachelor of Arts Degree in 2019, Brynne earned her PhD. in American Studies from the University of Delaware in 2024. From 2024 to 2025 she was the Charles Young Postdoctoral Fellow at the United States Army Center of Military History, where she is under contract in book manuscript preparation for a book entitled The Frontier War, 1775-1783.

This will be a regular, in-person meeting, beginning with dinner at 5:30 in the Heilman Dining Center at the University of Richmond.  The meeting begins at 6:30. 

Revolutionary War Naval Breakthrough, John Millar

[A fine article authored by our member, John Millar, concerning Benedict Arnold, Virginia, and the Continental Navy. Enjoy!]

   Benedict Arnold established the fresh-water Continental Navy on Lake Champlain at the end of April 1775, only ten days after the events at Concord and Lexington. Most of the various states established their own navies, Rhode Island being the first on 12 June 1775. The salt-water Continental Navy was founded as a result of Rhode Island’s intercession with Congress on 13 October 1775. Virginia, arguably the wealthiest of all the original states, established her own navy close to Christmas 1775.

   Virginia may have been the wealthiest state, but most of that value was in real estate, which was very difficult to tax. As a result, the vessels of the Virginia Navy at first were small – schooners about 50 feet long on deck with only swivel-guns. Finally, in 1780, Governor Thomas Jefferson was able to finance the construction of a naval force that looked quite formidable, at least on paper. Four frigates of 20 to 24 carriage guns (essentially, the same size as the British frigate Rose that had plagued Rhode Island 1774-6, or the ancient Fowey that had served as the British flagship in Virginia at that same time). These four Virginia frigates each measured about 100 to 105 feet long on deck, 30 feet in breadth, and needed about 13 feet of water to float. Each could set about 30,000 square feet of sail with 10 square sails plus 10 fore-and-aft sails. These four ships sported classical Greek names (as one might expect from Jefferson): Thetis, Poseidon, Nereus, and Artemis, of which only Thetis was able to get under sail.

   The four frigates were backed up by 18-gun corvettes, about 90 feet long on deck, Apollo and American Fabius, to which was added the corvette Cormorant captured from the British. Still less expensive were five 16-gun corvettes, about 75 feet long on deck, Renown, Tartar, Tempest, Gloucester, and Morningstar.  A few additional smaller ships, rigged as 14-gun brigs, were added to the mix. Tidewater Virginia is riven by a number of substantial rivers on which these ships could be constructed in part-time shipyards: the James, the Chickahominy, the York, the Rappahannock, and the Potomac.

   Jefferson had been able to come by enough money to construct and fit out these warships, but crewing them was a different matter. Each of the frigates was expected to have a crew of 150 men, and the corvettes appropriately smaller numbers, but Jefferson was unable to recruit more than 150 men in total to be spread between all the ships, by the time that General Benedict Arnold arrived in Virginia in January 1781 with almost 2000 British troops. Arnold, who carefully picked Portsmouth as his base, across the Elizabeth River from Norfolk (which the Patriots had burned to the ground on New Year’s Eve 1775-6 so that the British would not be able to use it as a base), had been issued clear orders. He was not to bother any peaceable Virginians, but if he encountered warlike supplies, he was to destroy them, and then he was to capture the Virginia House of Burgesses without harming anyone (the idea being that the captured legislators could then be talked into signing a generous peace treaty with the British). The House of Burgesses was meeting in a tobacco warehouse in the tiny village of Richmond when Arnold made two unsuccessful attempts to capture the legislators there in January and May 1781, and he made a third almost successful attempt in June with the help of 300 cavalry under Colonel Banastre Tarleton, after the House of Burgesses had hurriedly moved 60 miles west to Charlottesville.

   Of course, Arnold could not ignore all the newly-constructed Virginia warships. Some of the ships (including three of the frigates) had not yet been launched at their shipyard on the Chickahominy River, so Arnold made quick work of burning them in place. Most of the rest of the ships, with their greatly under-strength crews, were drawn up at anchor across the James River with their guns loaded and run out. Arnold sent detachments of troops with field-guns to the bluffs at each end of the line of ships, and they systematically destroyed or captured almost the entire fleet.

   In Richmond, Arnold destroyed a wealth of naval stores, including some freshly-harvested hemp for making cordage, and there is anecdotal evidence of resulting wild hemp plants growing out of cracks in the sidewalks of the Shockoe Bottom district of Richmond well into the twentieth century!

   The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City owns a folk-art painting of a frigate the size of Thetis, #63-201-3, which used to be called The Plantation. According to Met Curator Ashley Williams, their staff believes the painting to have been executed in the 1820s. However, evidence in the ship herself suggests strongly that it was painted early in the 1780s. First, the ship lacks a ‘dolphin-striker’ below the bowsprit, invented in 1792, and almost all images of ships after 1792 contain that spar. Second, the stars-and-stripes ensign is flown from an [outrageously tall] ensign staff, whereas from the mid-1780s on, the ensign was flown from the gaff. Third, the color of the ship’s hull is mostly buff or yellow-ocher, as it would have been in the 1780s, not mostly black as it would have been in the 1820s.

   Is it possible to identify the ship depicted? Assuming a date from the early 1780s, it may be possible. First of all, the ensign flown by the ship is the Stars-and-Stripes, a flag that was limited by law to ships of the Continental Navy or the various state navies. Privateers and merchant ships were required to use a flag of thirteen red and white stripes, with no stars, although some ship owners and captains may have been indifferent to or unaware of those rules. At this stage of its life, The Continental Navy lacked the money to acquire such ships, so this ship is not in the Continental Navy. Of the state navies, those in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and South Carolina had ships of this size, but the painting shows the frigate under way close to shore. Virginia, with its powerful rivers, was the only state where a ship could sail that close to a river bank.

   Ms. Williams remarked that the substantial building behind the frigate looks Germanic, and that may indeed be a clue to the identity of the painting. German-born and educated Revolutionary War scholar Dr Robert A Selig came across a remarkable document in Germany. It was the journal account in German of the career of Private Georg Daniel Flohr (1756-1826) in the Royal Deux-Ponts or Zweibrucken German-speaking French regiment that was brought to America in 1780 by General Donatien de Vimeur, Comte de Rochambeau. Flohr illustrated his journal with folk-art paintings, many of them showing towns that he visited, including Boston, Providence, Newport, Philadelphia, Annapolis, Yorktown, and Williamsburg. Dr Selig published many of Flohr’s illustrations in the October 1994 issue of American Heritage Magazine (vol. 45, #6). Flohr made notes about the buildings shown in each town, so that he generally got the sizes and numbers of windows correct, but he waited until he had returned to Europe before finishing the paintings. Of course, the only buildings that he could see in the German section of France were German buildings, so his paintings of American towns were populated with Germanic buildings, even if they had the correct numbers of windows.

   Many commentators over the years have remarked that the Met’s painting represents Turkey Island Plantation House, which had been built in the late 1760s for the prestigious Randolph family on the east bank of the James River a short distance upriver from the well-known Shirley Plantation. Turkey Island had been destroyed in the American Civil War in the 1860s, but it is described in insurance documents and travel diaries. Its foundations have also been investigated, and, allowing for the folk artist’s exuberance, the painting matches the foundation. The house was crowned, we are told, by a particularly large cupola that was popularly known as ‘the bird-cage,’ and in fact the painting shows the cupola as looking like a giant period bird cage.

   Flohr was based at Williamsburg for about a year, so it would have been simple for him to have sailed up the James River and seen Turkey Island Plantation House. The frigate Thetis, however, is another matter, because she was no longer in the James River after Arnold’s raid on the ships. The only thing I can think of is that some local artist painted the ship while she was sailing in the James, and donated his little work to Flohr when he saw Flohr making such detailed notes about the buildings and vegetation of Virginia; Flohr then painted his copy of the portrait of the ship into the painting of the plantation house.

   As for Flohr, he returned home to his German-speaking district of France when his regiment was no longer needed (and you can imagine that he was not permitted to serve even another day after he arrived home, because the French government was found to be insolvent). The insolvency led to the King’s arrest and imprisonment. Flohr was in Paris and witnessed the guillotining of Louis XVI on 21 January 1793. The incident turned his stomach, so he packed his bags and moved back to Virginia. There, he managed to be ordained as a German-Lutheran pastor. He was assigned to St John’s Lutheran Church, Wytheville, Virginia, where many of the parishioners were German-speaking, and where he spent the rest of his life.

   Thomas Jefferson wanted the world to know that he had written the national Declaration of Independence and the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, and that he had founded the University of Virginia in 1819, and those three things are the only achievements inscribed on his gravestone. His having served as Governor of Virginia, Ambassador to France, Secretary of State, President of the United States, and purchaser of Louisiana were not mentioned. If this paper’s supposition about the ship in the Met’s painting being the frigate Thetis is true, this is the only surviving period image of any ship of the Virginia Navy in the entire Revolution, those ships being, in spite of their sad fate, yet another feather in Jefferson’s cap. While several period images have survived of ships in the Continental Navy, very few images survive of ships of state navies (New Hampshire, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina, and now Virginia, are all that come to mind). A handful of period images of privateers are also known.

Meeting Notes: March 18, 2026

The March meeting, of the American Revolution Round Table of Richmond, was held on March 18, 2026, in the Heilman Dining Center, at the University of Richmond.

The evening’s presentation “The Illinois Campaign, Kaskaskia, Cahokia, Vincennes 1778-1779” was made by Glenn F. Williams. Glenn is a retired Army officer who recently retired from federal civilian service as a Senior Historian at the U.S. Army Center of Military History, Fort McNair, DC. He has also served as Historian of the American Battlefield Protection Program of the National Park Service, Curator / Historian of the USS Constellation Museum, and Assistant Curator of the Baltimore Civil War Museum – President Street Station. Beyond his publications for Center for Military History, he is the author of several books, including Year of the Hangman: George Washington’s Campaign Against the Iroquois (Westholme 2005), recipient of the Thomas J. Fleming Award for the Outstanding Revolutionary War Book of 2005, and named one of “The 100 Best American Revolution Books of All Time” by the Journal of the American Revolution in the spring 2017 issue. For his book, Dunmore’s War: The Last Conflict of America’s Colonial Era (Westholme 2017), Glenn was recognized for contributions to the study of 18th Century American military history with the Shelby Cullom Davis Award of the Ohio Society of Colonial Wars and the Judge Robert K. Woltz Award of the French and Indian War Foundation. He holds a Ph.D. in History from the University of Maryland, College Park.

The British were initiating the southern strategy to regain control of the rebellious Southern Colonies by appealing to the relatively strong Loyalist sentiment there. George Germain, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, wrote to General Sir Henry Clinton that capturing the Southern Colonies was "considered by the King as an object of great importance in the scale of the war." Germain's instructions to Clinton, framed as recommendations, were that he should abandon Philadelphia and then embark upon operations to recover Georgia and the Carolinas. At the beginning of winter 1778-1779, Washington was at the Middlebrook Cantonment for the winter and Knox was at Pluckemin Continental Artillery Cantonment Site. British occupied Fort Detroit which served as a staging area for attacks on frontier settlements by British regulars, Butler's Rangers and Britain's Indigenous allies

Shortly after the Revolutionary War began, Kentucky County, Virginia (which then encompassed the entire Commonwealth of Kentucky, bounded on the west by the Ohio River) was being organized as part of Virginia, with George Rogers Clark as head of its local militia. Clark’s mission was to secure the forts in Virginia and Kentucky County, Virginia; secure Illinois County, Virginia; and, attack Fort Detroit.

Clark asked Virginia Governor Patrick Henry for permission to lead a secret expedition to capture the nearest British posts located in the Illinois country. This area had been ceded to the British as a consequence of the French defeat in the French and Indian War and became part of the British Province of Quebec. George Rogers Clark led, in what is named, the Illinois Campaign against the British. Illinois Country east of the Mississippi River along with what was then much of Ohio Country became part of Illinois County, Virginia, when claimed by right of conquest. Virginia Governor Patrick Henry commissioned Clark, a lieutenant colonel, and authorized him to raise troops for an expedition to seize the British outposts of Kaskaskia and Cahokia on the Mississippi River.  The Illinois Campaign began in July 1778, when Clark and about 175 men crossed the Ohio River at Fort Massac and marched to Kaskaskia (on the western side of the Mississippi River) taking it on the night of July 4. Cahokia was taken two days later (near Saint Louis), and Vincennes (on the Wabash River 180 miles east of Kaskaskia) was occupied by the end of the month and was renamed Fort Sackville. Several other villages and forts in British territory were subsequently captured without firing a shot, because most of the French-speaking and American Indian inhabitants were unwilling to take up arms on behalf of the British.

To counter Clark's advance, Henry Hamilton, Lieutenant Governor of the Province of Quebec, set out from Detroit on October 7 with 125 militia and 60 Lakes' Nation warriors. They were later joined by a 34-man detachment from the 8th Regiment. Hamilton surprised Fort Sackville's small garrison and retook Vincennes on December 17. He decided to winter at Vincennes with the British regulars, while most of the militia, volunteers, and Lakes' Nations warriors returned to Detroit.

In February 1779, Clark’s force set out on an unusual winter expedition in frigid and wet conditions on an eighteen-day trek from Kaskaskia. Clark returned to the Vincennes settlement (in the Illinois Country). Clark’s force retook the town, forced Hamilton's unconditional surrender of Fort Sackville, and captured Hamilton in the process. The winter expedition was Clark's most significant military achievement as it secured the western frontier from attacks and served as a temporary deterrent to British and native incursions into Kentucky, and the U.S. acquiring the Northwest Territory that included Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota (an area nearly as large as the original 13 states).

Hamilton was taken to Williamsburg, Virginia, was falsely accused of paying for scalps and was treated as a criminal rather than a prisoner of war. The Virginia Council, headed by Thomas Jefferson, ordered Hamilton placed in irons and confined to the Williamsburg jail until October, 1780, when he was paroled and was exchanged in the spring of 1781.

 

 

Routes to Vincennes by Henry Hamilton and George Rogers Clark

NPS Image

Following Clark's victory, the Virginia General Assembly gave official status to the region northwest of the Ohio River and named it Illinois County. Illinois County, Virginia, was formed in 1778 to govern Virginia's claims to present-day Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin and eastern Minnesota. Illinois County was abolished 5 January 1782 and the territory ceded by Virginia to the Congress of the Confederation in March 1784. Three years later, Congress passed the Northwest Ordinance, creating the Northwest Territory.

George Rogers Clark was subsequently promoted to brigadier general in command of all the militia in the Kentucky and Illinois counties. His older brother William Clark, was co-leader of the Lewis and Clark Expedition that explored the Louisiana Purchase with Meriwether Lewis and who was subsequently made brigadier general of the Louisiana militia.

--Fred Sorrell, Secretary

Next Meeting: May 27, 2026

"The Battles of Spencer's Ordinary and Green Spring, 1781," John Maass

John is an educational staff member of the new National Museum of the U.S. Army at Fort Belvoir, VA, who received his B.A. degree in History from Washington & Lee University. Receiving his PhD in Early American History at Ohio State University, John is the author of several books and numerous articles on early US military history, including North Carolina and the French and Indian War: The Spreading Flames of War; Defending a New Nation, 1783-1811; The Road to Yorktown: Jefferson, Lafayette and the British Invasion of Virginia; George Washington's Virginia; and The Battle of Guilford Courthouse: A Most Desperate Engagement. John's latest book is "From Trenton to Yorktown: Turning Points of the Revolutionary War." He also served as an officer in the US Army Reserve.

This will be a regular, in-person meeting, beginning with dinner at 5:30 in the Heilman Dining Center at the University of Richmond.  The meeting begins at 6:30.