Gunpowder Incident - Background

Background

Military tensions began to rise in the British colonies of North America in 1774 when a series of legislative acts by the British Parliament known as the Intolerable Acts began to be implemented in the colonies. The colonies, in solidarity with the Province of Massachusetts Bay, which had been singled out for punishment by those acts in the wake of the Boston Tea Party, had organized a Congress to meet in September 1774. During the meeting of the First Continental Congress word arrived of a militia uprising in Massachusetts that became known as the Powder Alarm. In early September, General Thomas Gage, the royal governor of Massachusetts, had removed gunpowder from a powder magazine in Charlestown (in a location now in Somerville), and militia from all over New England had flocked to the area in response to false rumors that violence had been involved. One consequence of this action was that the Congress called for the colonies to organize militia companies for their defense. Another was that Lord Dartmouth, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, advised the colonial governors to secure their military supplies, and prohibited importation of further supplies of powder.

In early 1775, Virginians began to organize militia companies and seek out military supplies (weapons, ammunition, and gunpowder) to arm and equip them. Lord Dunmore, Virginia's royal governor, saw this rising unrest in his colony and sought to deprive Virginia militia of these supplies. It was not until after Patrick Henry's "Give me liberty or give me death" speech at the Second Virginia Convention on March 23 that Dunmore " it prudent to remove some Gunpowder which was in a Magazine in this place." Although British Army troops had been withdrawn from Virginia in the wake of the Powder Alarm, there were several Royal Navy ships in the Virginia waters of Chesapeake Bay. On April 19, Lord Dunmore quietly brought a company of British sailors into Williamsburg and quartered them in the governor's mansion. Dunmore then ordered Captain Henry Collins, commander of HMS Magdalen, to remove the gunpowder from the magazine in Williamsburg.