even threats that any assistance at all was
sent, and then it was miserably insufficient. In 1696 the burgesses
were shameless enough to assert that an attempt to impress men for
service in New York would probably be the means of frightening most of
the young freemen from the colony, even causing many to desert their
wives and children.[77] Governor Spotswood met with great opposition
in his attempt to aid South Carolina and North Carolina when those
colonies were threatened with extermination by the savage attacks of
the Indians. And in later years, when there was imminent danger of an
invasion of Virginia itself by the French with their savage allies,
Governor Dinwiddie was never able to persuade the Assembly to provide
adequate means of defence. Not until the news of massacres of
defenceless women and children upon the frontier struck terror to
every family in Virginia did the legislators vote money for a body of
men to drive back the enemy. And even then so niggardly were they in
their appropriations that with the insufficient means granted him even
the patient and frugal Washington was unable to prevent the
continuance of the murderous raids of the Indians. In the
Revolutionary War the same spirit prevailed. Virginia was not willing
to raise and equip a standing army to defend her soil from the English
invaders and as a consequence fell an easy victim to the first hostile
army that entered her borders. The resistance offered to Cornwallis
was shamefully weak, and the Virginians had the mortification of
seeing their plantations and their towns devastated by an army that
should have been driven back with ease. The militia to which the
safety of Virginia was entrusted, like similar troops from the other
states, proved ill disciplined, ill armed and cowardly.[78]

Although it was the House of Burgesses that offered the most strenuous
opposition at all periods to the improvement of the military
organization, a large measure of blame must be placed upon that
wealthy clique of men represented by the Council. The commissioned
officers were invariably selected from the wealthiest and most
influential planters, and it was they alone that could keep alive the
military spirit, that could drill the companies, that could enforce
the discipline that was so essential to efficiency. It is true that
the Council usually favored the measures proposed by various governors
for bettering the militia and for giving aid to neighboring colo