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Updated: May 6, 2025
I wish to God we had it!" "You are going back to Botetourt?" "As soon as it is dawn. The company will at once offer its services to the governor. Every moment now is important." "At dawn.... You will be its captain?" "I suppose so. We will hold immediately an election of officers and that's as pernicious a method of officering companies and regiments as can be imagined!
The Virginian legislators penetrated the intention of this pompous ceremonial, and regarded it with a depreciating smile. Sterner matters occupied their thoughts; they had come prepared to battle for their rights, and their proceedings soon showed Lord Botetourt how much he had mistaken them.
With this intent, he wrote to Colonel Andrew Lewis of Botetourt County, Commander of the Southwest Militia, instructing him to raise a respectable body of troops and "join me either at the mouth of the Great Kanawha or Wheeling, or such other part of the Ohio as may be most convenient for you to meet me."
Two brothers, James and Robert, emigrated from the county of Botetourt, Virginia, and settled on Salt river, six miles from Harrodsburgh. Having revisited their parent country, on their return they brought with them William and George McAffee. In 1777, the Indians destroyed the whole of their valuable stock of cattle, while they were absent from Kentucky.
As I neared the Botetourt men I could hear between volleys the Indians shouting in unison: "Drive the white dogs over!" meaning across the river. The Botetourt men were well posted and considerably in advance of the right column, as they had given but little ground while the right was retiring after Lewis was shot.
He led Augusta and Botetourt men, for it was no longer possible to keep the two lines under their respective commanders, nor did any captain for the rest of the day command his own company as a unit. With the coming up of Colonel Field the Indians immediately gave ground, then charged most viciously as our men pursued.
On the eighth there arrived more letters from Governor Dunmore, in which His Lordship expressed his surprise and annoyance because of our failure to appear at the Hockhocking. This time Colonel Lewis was quite open in expressing his disgust at the governor's lack of strategy. The Kanawha was the gate to Augusta, Botetourt and Fincastle Counties.
Some had volunteered from this place or its neighbourhood, others had kinsmen and associates, not one was so forlorn as to be without a host. The village was in a high fever of hospitality; had the companies marching from Botetourt been so many brigades, it would still have done its utmost.
In view therefore of the present condition of our country, and the causes of it, we declare almost in the words of our fathers, contained in an address of the freeholders of Botetourt, in February, 1775, to the delegates from Virginia to the Continental Congress, "That we desire no change in our government whilst left to the free enjoyment of our equal privileges secured by the CONSTITUTION; but that should a tyrannical SECTIONAL MAJORITY, under the sanction of the forms of the CONSTITUTION, persist in acts of injustice and violence toward us, they only must be answerable for the consequences."
Red brick and white pillars, set on rising ground and encircled by trees, the court house rose like a guidon, planted there by English stock. Around it gathered a great crowd, breathlessly listening. It listened to the reading of the Botetourt Resolutions, offered by the President of the Supreme Court of Virginia, and now delivered in a solemn and a ringing voice.
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