It's November 5th 1774. American Independence is 607 days away.

On the banks of the Ohio river, a weary but victorious group of Virginia Militia fighters have arrived back at a base camp set up weeks earlier called Fort Gower.

These colonial soldiers are on the road back home after securing a victory in a frontier war against the native tribes that had raged in the Ohio Territory since the previous May.

These men, who had seen months of battle and death in the Virginia woodlands, decided that they could not disperse for home without ddrafting a final statement on the meaning of their victory. In it they dared to call out to the mightiest empire on earth with a challenge - that the men of Virginia were ready for War.

This month’s episode is covering a bit of a wider timeline, focusing on the frontier war that raged in the Ohio country from early 1774 all the way through October, before culminating in the dramatic statement made by the militiamen at Fort Gower.

Sources:

1774: The Long Year of Revolution by Mary Beth Norton

American Revolutions: A Continental History, 1750-1804 by Alan Taylor

American Insurgents, American Patriots by T.H. Breen

Dunmore's War: The Last Conflict of America's Colonial Era by Glenn F. Williams

American Leviathan: Empire, Nation, and Revolutionary Frontier by Patrick Griffin

The Battle of Point Pleasant: Its Relation to the American Revolution and to Tennessee by Elizabeth Meek Fels