George Bancroft, History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent, Vol. 10

[223] carriage to Albemarle Sound. On the ninth of May,

Chap. X.} 1779 May 9.

two thousand men under General Matthew, with fivehundred marines, anchored in Hampton Roads. The next day, after occupying Portsmouth and Norfolk, they burned every house but one in Suffolk county, and plundered or ruined all perishable property. The women and unarmed men were given over to violence and death. Parties from a sloop of war and privateers entered the principal waters of the Chesapeake, carried off or wasted stores of tobacco heaped on their banks, and burned the dwellings of the planters. Before the end of the month, the predatory expedition, having destroyed more than a hundred vessels, arrived at New York with seventeen prizes, and three thousand hogsheads of tobacco.

The legislature of Virginia, which was in session at Williamsburg during the invasion, retaliated by confiscating the property of British subjects within the commonwealth. An act of a previous session had directed debts due to British subjects to be paid into the loan office of the state. To meet the public exigencies, a heavy poll-tax was laid on all servants or slaves, as well as a tax payable in cereals, hemp, inspected tobacco, or the like commodities; and the issue of one million pounds in paper money was authorized. Every one who would serve at home or in the continental army during the war was promised a bounty of seven hundred and fifty dollars, an annual supply of clothing, and one hundred acres of land at the end of the war; pensions were promised to disabled soldiers and to the widows of those who should find their death in the service; half-pay for life was voted to the officers. Each division of the