This charge lay at the door of Dunmore himself; and there is strong evidence that Dunmore personally fomented the war, ostensibly in support of Virginia's charter rights, but actually in order to further his own speculative designs." Dunmore's agent, Dr.Connolly, heading a party posing as Virginia militia, fired without provocation upon a delegation of Shawanoe chiefs assembled at Fort Pitt (January, 1774).

Taking advantage of the alarming situation created by the conflict of the claims of Virginia and Pennsylvania, Connolly, inspired by Dunmore without doubt, then issued an incendiary circular (April 21, 1774), declaring a state of war to exist.
Just two weeks before the Battle of the Great Kanawha, Patrick Henry categorically stated, in conversation with Thomas Wharton: "that he was at Williamsburg with Ld.

D.when Dr.Conolly first came there, that Conolly is a chatty, sensible man, and informed Ld.

Dunmore of the extreme richness of the lands which lay on both sides of the Ohio; that the prohibitory orders which had been sent him relative to the land on the hither side (or Vandalia) had caused him to turn his thoughts to the opposite shore, and that as his Lordship was determined to settle his family in America he was really pursueing this war, in order to obtain by purchase or treaty from the natives a tract of territory on that side; he then told me that he was convinced from every authority that the law knew, that a purchase from the natives was as full and ample a title as could be obtained, that they had Lord Camden and Mr.York's opinion on that head, which opinion with some others that Ld.

Dunmore had consulted, and with the knowledge Conolly had given him of the quality of the country and his determined resolution to settle his family on this continent, were the real motives or springs of the present expedition." At this very time, Patrick Henry, in conjunction with William Byrd 3d and others, was negotiating for a private purchase of lands from the Cherokees; and when Wharton, after answering Henry's inquiry as to where he might buy Indian goods, remarked: "It's not possible you mean to enter the Indian trade at this period," Henry laughingly replied: "The wish-world is my hobby horse." "From whence I conclude," adds Wharton, "he has some prospect of making a purchase of the natives, but where I know not." The war, thus promulgated, we believe, at Dunmore's secret instigation and heralded by a series of ghastly atrocities, came on apace.