The Politics of War: Race, Class, and Conflict in Revolutionary Virginia. By Michael A. McDonnell. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007. xx, 544 pp. $45.00, ISBN 978-0-8078-3108-3.)

Abstract

In this volume, Michael A. McDonnell succeeds more fully than earlier neoprogressive historians in displacing the prevailing consensus view that a stable, well-supported planter elite led Virginia through the revolutionary era with little change to the commonwealth's hierarchical social and political order. Instead, he suggests that leading planters struggled with ordinary Virginians who held very different ideas on how to organize their society and to fight and finance the war. Those ordinary Virginians refused to fight or make other sacrifices when they perceived that doing so simply served the interests of their “betters” or that they were carrying a disproportionate share of the human or financial costs. They wanted to fight on their own terms rather than those dictated by traditional forms of military discipline. McDonnell recognizes important divisions within Virginia's non-elite population. The struggle of black Virginians against enslavement provoked fear among poorer whites, as well as resentment of the rich who profited from that dangerous human property. Equally important, poorer white landowners initially joined the gentry in imposing on landless whites much of the burden of military service. By the war's closing years, the need for more soldiers to defend Virginia and the ability of the “lower sort” to extract greater compensation for enlistments led state leaders to demand more military service and financial sacrifice from middle-class Virginians. The resulting, often violent, resistance of the “middling sort” crippled military mobilization and induced county-level leaders to ignore state authorities and accede to their neighbors' demands. Beginning in the late war years, the strength of such popular sentiments compelled county officials and state legislators to impose on Virginia's wealthiest citizens a greater share of the costs of raising troops and other government services.