[106] _History of Shenandoah Valley of Virginia_, by Samuel Kercheval, 149.
As the war continued, Virginia faced difficulties in raising her quota of Continental troops. We have read Cresswell's record of these troubles in Loudoun as early as October, 1776. In 1778 the Assembly passed an act recognizing as inadequate prior laws on the subject, calling for 2,216 men, rank and file, and offering for eighteen months enlistment $300; while to those who enlisted for three years, or the duration of the war, $400 was to be given "together with the continental bounty of land and shall be entitled to receive the pay and rations which are allowed to soldiers in the continental army from the day of their enlistment and shall be furnished annually, at the public expense with the following articles, a coat, waistcoat and breeches, two shirts, one hat, two pairs of stockings, one pair of shoes and a blanket...."[107] In the same year the Legislature was obliged to pass an act against "forestallers and engrossers"--in other words what we today call war profiteers, authorizing the governor to seize grain and flour for the army in the hands of those gentry.[108]
The objection to enlistment seems to have been directed against the longer term rather than to military service itself. Also there was confusion and lack of that complete authority necessary in such a crisis. We find Colonel Josias Clapham writing to the Council of Virginia on the 11th September, 1778, asking to be permitted to send a company of volunteers, which had been raised in Loudoun, to the assistance of General McIntosh's Brigade, but his request was declined on the ground that the "Executive power" had no right to send volunteers to join any corps whatsoever.[109]
[109] 23 Virginia Magazine History and Biography, 261.
The lot of the Loyalist or "Tories" as they were popularly termed, was not a happy one. There was one James White who indiscreetly "spoke many disrespectful words of his Excellency G. Washington and that he was not fit to be the son of a Stewart dog." White appears to have been indicted in Loudoun as a Tory and thereupon to have fled the county. There is the suggestion that he was a man of some property and that to avoid its confiscation he later saw the error of his ways, returned to Loudoun, apologized to the court for his behavior, took the oath of allegiance to the new State of Virginia and so succeeded in having his indictment dismissed.[110]