We’ve done several episodes about the Battle of Great Bridge, and there’s a reason for that. Bunker Hill gets all the press, but remember we LOST that battle.

Great Bridge was the first real Patriot victory, it was the first major battle in Virginia, and therefore it poked the Virginia Convention into adopting the first public declaration expressing a spirit of independence.

Also of note is that, according to the Great Bridge Battlefield Museum, the last Patriot to retreat before the battle began in earnest was named Billy Flora, a free black man. He came under heavy fire but he managed to remove a plank from near the end of the bridge, thus slowing the British advance.

The shorter version of all this is that Great Bridge gave us the possibility of actually winning this thing. And oddly enough, Independence still really wasn’t on the table.

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