Next
Chapter
"I do not mean to say, that the scenes of the revolution are now or ever will be entirely forgotten; but that like every thing else, they must fade upon the memory of the world, and grow more and more dim by the lapse of time. . . . At the close of that struggle, nearly every adult male had been a participator in some of its scenes. The consequence was, that of those scenes, in the form of a husband, a father, a son or a brother, a living history was to be found in every family-a history bearing the indubitable testimonies of its own authenticity, in the limbs mangled, in the scars of wounds received, in the midst of the very scenes related-a history, too, that could be read and understood alike by all, the wise and the ignorant, the learned and the unlearned. But those histories are gone. They can be read no more forever. They were a fortress of strength; but, what invading foemen could never do, the silent artillery of time has done; the levelling of its walls. They are gone. They were a forest of giant oaks; but the all restless hurricane has swept over them, and left only, here and there, a lonely trunk, despoiled of its verdure, shorn of its foliage; unshading and unshaded, to murmur in a few more gentle breezes, and to combat with its mutilated limbs, a few more ruder storms, then to sink, and be no more. They were the pillars of the temple of liberty; and now, that they have crumbled away, that temple must fall."ABRAHAM LINCOLN: Address to the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois, January 27, 1838
Thomas Gaskins was a native of Northumberland County, Virginia, and lived from the early 1740s to 1800. His only real two claims to fame were his service during the Revolutionary War as an officer in the Virginia Continental Line, and his vote in favor of the 1787 constitution at the Virginia ratification convention. He was also my direct ancestor, seven generations distant.
I became interested in Gaskins many years ago because he had played a small part in the drama that shaped our country's history. Initially I merely wished to learn more about his role at the victorious siege of Yorktown, which effectively brought the military conflict with Britain to an end. But I was soon launched on a full-scale biography that sought to establish the chronology of his life and explore the larger context in which his career played out. Along the way, I took detours to learn more about Northumberland County itself, the growing and marketing of tobacco, the "radical country" ideology that animated the American resistance to British imperial polices after 1763, the conduct of the Revolutionary War itself, the problems of sustaining American armies, the strains that the conflict placed on Gaskins's home county, the constitution of 1787 and its ratification, the ideological struggles of the 1790s, and the impact of disease in rural Virginia. This study, I think, is richer as a result of those detours.
Learning about Thomas Gaskins also became more than an effort to satisfy a very personal curiosity. The more that I studied the Revolutionary War, the more I was struck by dearth of material on middle-level officers like Gaskins. We know a lot about the lives of the general officers, those who led the political and military struggle. But we have much less on the field officers, the majors and colonels those who tried to carry out the generals' orders. And what we have tends to be the analysis of a class of men; there are virtually no detailed biographies. [1] This volume is a modest effort to fill that gap. Thomas Gaskins's life is a useful mirror on men like him precisely because his career was so unremarkable. True, a biography has the limitation of a case study, in that the idiosyncratic elements of the single case can distort our understanding of the larger group. I would argue, however, that Thomas Gaskins has enough in common with other Virginia officers - gentry background, a shared wartime experience, and so on - that the record of his life is still worth reclaiming.
Some aspects of Gaskins's life are well documented but others are not. In those latter cases I have tried to recreate the situation in which he found himself and then make inferences about his own role. For his military career, for example, I draw on information about his unit's role in battles and maneuvers, descriptions about camp life, orders that he was required to carry out, information about disputes to which Virginia officers were a party, and letters home from his comrades. For his civilian career, I mine what we know about developments in his family, Northumberland County, and the statewide bodies in which he served. Through such devices, I hope to give the reader a feel for Gaskins's career and the arenas in which it was played out.
Chapter 1 provides background on the Gaskins family and Northumberland County up until around 1750. Chapters 2 and 3 present the events that led up to the break with Britain. Chapter 4 covers Gaskins's recruitment of his company in Northumberland County and Chapter 5 its movements during 1776. Chapters 6 through 9 describe what Gaskins was doing both in Washington's army and in Virginia in the years 1777, 1778, 1779, and 1780. Chapters 10 through 12 detail his participation in the defense of Virginia in 1781 and the victory at Yorktown. Chapter 13 describes his activities through 1787, Chapter 14 the effort to ratify the constitution in Virginia, and Chapter 15 the final eleven years of his life. Chapter 16 offers an assessment of his military and political career and of the American Revolution as it affected Northumberland County.
In the process of learning more about Thomas Gaskins, I incurred a number of debts. The first is to my wife, Marty, and my children, Sharmon and Andrew, who indulged my countless trips to one library or another in search of information about events more than two hundred years old. The second is to W. Preston Haynie, the long-time editor of Bulletin of the Northumberland County Historical Society, who has been unfailing in his encouragement of my efforts and who published initial versions of some of the chapters of this book. Third, Chris Nelson tried hard to find a publisher for me until I decided to use the Internet to make my study more accessible. Fourth, I deeply appreciate the assistance of the staff of institutions where I have conducted my research: the Library of Congress, the Virginia State Library, the Virginia Historical Society, the Genealogical Center of the Mormon Temple in Kensington, Maryland, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and the New York Historical Society. Fifth, my work was made easier by efforts of many residents of Northumberland County and Northern Neck write the history of their region. And finally I owe a profound debt to the many outstanding historians of Virginia's early history and of the American Revolution, whose student I have become.
NOTE: A full citation to each source is given in the endnotes of the chapter where it is first cited, and again in the bibliography. The full citations for abbreviated titles are provided on the page facing the beginning of the bibliography. Spelling of eighteenth century sources is preserved.