Link to the story.<\/a><\/p>\nThe Declaration of Independence condemns King George III for having \u201cburnt our towns.\u201d But the British were not to blame for one of the war\u2019s most infamous conflagrations.<\/h3>\n
WE ALL KNOW THAT THE DECLARATION of Independence, adopted 249 years ago today, proclaims that \u201call men are created equal,\u201d and that the brave members of the Second Continental Congress pledged \u201cour Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor\u201d to the cause of separation from Britain.<\/p>\n
But largely forgotten amid the Declaration\u2019s historically consequential opening and its stirring conclusion is the true heart of the document: its laundry list of twenty-seven grievances against King George III. The representatives in Philadelphia sought to explain to Britain and the world why Americans demanded independence. This catalogue assembled by the Declaration\u2019s drafter, 33-year-old Virginia delegate Thomas Jefferson, was designed to clinch the case.<\/p>\n
Most of the points detail the monarch\u2019s interference with the colonists\u2019 courts and assemblies, but perhaps the most serious charge was that he \u201cravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.\u201d Within these short phrases lies the biggest patriot coverup of the war, one in which Jefferson was intimately involved\u2014and one perpetuated long after the Revolutionary War was won.<\/p>\n
THERE IS NO DISPUTING that King George III\u2019s military forces treated New England\u2019s coastal towns harshly at the start of the conflict. At the Battle of\u00a0Bunker Hill\u00a0in June 1775, redcoats torched the Boston suburb of Charlestown to prevent patriot snipers from targeting their troops during the bloody fight.<\/p>\n
That fall, in retaliation for a deadly patriot attack on a Royal Navy ship in Maine, Admiral Samuel Graves, writing from Boston Harbor on July 6,\u00a0ordered\u00a0a fleet under Captain Henry Mowat \u201cto lay waste burn and destroy such Sea Port towns as are accessible to His Majesty\u2019s ships\u201d in the northern province. On October 17, Mowat gave the residents of Falmouth\u2014today\u2019s Portland\u2014two hours to evacuate. The subsequent bombardment and landing parties left most of its four hundred buildings in ruin and nearly half the population of 2,500 homeless.<\/p>\n
But the fates of Charlestown and Falmouth paled in comparison with the annihilation of the port of Norfolk\u2014Virginia\u2019s largest city and the eighth-largest settlement in the thirteen colonies\u2014which lay five hundred miles to the south. With its fine harbor and recent influx of Scottish merchants, the port had burgeoned from a regional trading center into an important node in the expanding Atlantic trade. As the largest port between Philadelphia and Charleston, it boasted a population triple that of the capital of Williamsburg. Half were enslaved people, many of whom were highly skilled laborers in the Scottish-owned factories, at the shipyards, on the docks, and aboard the many vessels plying the waters.<\/p>\n
Virginia\u2019s royal governor, Lord Dunmore, had fled Williamsburg in the summer of 1775 and made a Norfolk shipyard his base of operations to defeat the rebels. By year\u2019s end, however, the patriots had seized the town, pushing his troops and civilian loyalists onto ships in the harbor. On New Year\u2019s Day 1776, after a bombardment by four Royal Navy warships to destroy sniper posts, an enormous fire swept the port that burned for three days. Soon not a single building was left standing. Dunmore was immediately fingered as the villain.<\/p>\n
The news shocked and outraged Americans. John Hancock, presiding over the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia,\u00a0called\u00a0the act \u201ccontrary to the rules of war . . . by all civilized nations.\u201d George Washington, commander of the young Continental Army,\u00a0decried\u00a0British leaders who behaved like \u201cthe most barbarous Savages,\u201d and predicted \u201cthe destruction of Norfolk, & threatned devastation of other places, will have no other effect than to unite the whole Country.\u201d<\/p>\n
By the spring of 1776, moderates found themselves hard put to argue for accommodation with Britain as ships of war laid waste to defenseless American cities. What had long been a radical notion\u2014independence\u2014quickly found favor among colonists. Even members of Parliament were appalled by the actions. Speaking in the House of Lords on March 5, 1776, the Duke of Richmond lambasted \u201cdevastation hitherto unprecedented in the annals of mankind\u201d that \u201cwould render us despised and abhorred.\u201d He predicted the disaster in Virginia would \u201cturn the whole continent . . . into the most implacable and inveterate enemies.\u201d In response, the Duke of Manchester\u00a0suggested\u00a0that the colonists, despite their own wishes, might be \u201cforced into independency.\u201d That is precisely what happened.<\/p>\n
WHAT NEITHER THE AMERICAN PUBLIC nor Parliament knew was that the man who would go on to draft the Declaration had secretly encouraged Norfolk\u2019s ruin shortly before it happened. Nor did they know that the colony\u2019s patriots perpetrated the deed themselves and successfully blamed it on the enemy. Later historians continued to consider Dunmore the culprit in what was arguably the greatest war crime of the American Revolution.<\/p>\n
The truth only came out sixty years later, when a 1777 report on Norfolk\u2019s destruction, long hidden, came to light. The careful study of the blaze by a committee of Virginia patriots determined that 96 percent of the destruction was caused\u2014on purpose\u2014by the patriots themselves. They had used Dunmore\u2019s bombardment, which by itself had caused limited damage, as an opportunity to set fire to and loot the town. They did not even spare the Anglican church, Masonic Hall, or homes of fervent patriots.<\/p>\n
This was not, however, the result of raw troops running amok. According to eyewitnesses deposed by the committee, officers urged them on. Letters from patriot leaders also reveal that there was a secret plan to destroy the town, despite their public insistence that they would protect all property. Just weeks before the blaze, a pseudonymous newspaper writer urged the patriotic residents of Norfolk to take action for \u201cthe general good,\u201d even if it \u201ccost the lives of a few\u201d and resulted in \u201ceither the partial or total destruction\u201d of the town. A few days after that, Jefferson\u00a0wrote\u00a0a letter to John Page, a senior Virginia patriot, that concluded on an intriguing line, rendered in capital letters: \u201cDELENDA EST NORFOLK\u201d\u2014Latin for \u201cNorfolk must be destroyed,\u201d an allusion to the famous\u00a0declamation\u00a0about Carthage with which Cato the Elder ended all his speeches while calling for war.<\/p>\n
THE PERPLEXING QUESTION IS WHY Virginia\u2019s patriot leaders would want to burn the leading city in their own colony. Other ports like Philadelphia and New York had large loyalist factions, but no one proposed demolition as a solution. Some have argued that Norfolk\u2019s destruction was a simple move to deny the British a strategic harbor. Yet after the Royal Navy abandoned Boston in the spring of 1776, no one seriously proposed leveling that town.<\/p>\n
A major reason has little to do with tea or taxes and a lot to do with immigrants and race. The rich tobacco planters of English descent who led Virginia\u2019s rebellion had long viewed Norfolk\u2019s prosperous Scottish merchants with suspicion. Many also owed them a good deal of money. As Jews were (and often still are), these savvy Scots were viewed as wealthy and untrustworthy cosmopolitans.<\/p>\n
The port posed another threat to tobacco planters, since it had long been a magnet for the enslaved people who made their lives easy. In the crowded alleys and dark taverns along the waterfront, those who had fled plantations could hide, forge papers, and even find a measure of liberty in servitude rare in Virginia\u2019s plantations, which were tightly controlled forced-labor camps. Then, in November 1775, Lord Dunmore freed those in bondage if they would fight for the king. This emancipation proclamation, and the resulting black regiment, terrified the patriots. Norfolk\u2019s destruction promised to snuff out this dual threat to their wealth and power.<\/p>\n
By the end of 1776, Virginia\u2019s patriot assembly ordered deportation of all Scottish merchants, crippling the young state\u2019s economy. New restrictions were placed on those in bondage to prevent them from seeking liberty. Their freedom only came ninety years later, after an even bloodier war. Meanwhile, the myth of Dunmore\u2019s villainy can still be found in textbooks.<\/p>\n
We still struggle with Jefferson\u2019s challenging call in the Declaration to treat all people as equals under the law. But we can at least face up to the often-ugly facts of our founding, whether the senseless demolition of a city, the tragic deportation of valuable residents, or the inhumanity of lifetime servitude. Surely, we are old enough now\u2014nearly a quarter of millennium\u2014to handle the self-evident truths of our beginnings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Andrew Lawler July 04, 2025 Link to the story. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":20681,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[75],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bullwark"],"yoast_head":"\n
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