Patrick Henry delivered the Caesar-Brutus speech in the Capitol in 1765. A decade later, on the night of April 20, 1775 — one day after Lexington and Concord — Lord Dunmore ordered the secret removal of gunpowder from the octagonal brick magazine on Market Square. The colonists found out. Patrick Henry led militia toward Williamsburg in response, and Virginia's revolution had its opening shot. The Governor's Palace, seat of royal authority for seventy years, became a hospital after Yorktown and burned in 1781 — Washington and Rochambeau had both passed through. Eight thousand British troops surrendered at Yorktown in October 1781. Thomas Nelson Jr. — governor, Declaration signer, militia commander — reportedly directed French cannon fire at his own home during the siege because British officers had quartered there. The cannonball damage is still in the east wall. The ground held the argument before anyone had words for it.
