Holt argues that the greatly outnumbered colonial ruling class of Virginia was moved to revolt against the combined political and economic forces of the British government, middling and lower-status Virginians, Scottish merchants and the threat of rebellion of their own slaves. These combined forces inadvertently threatened to dislodge them from their position at the top of the Virginia establishment. The Virginia gentry ultimately concluded that the only way to maintain their established order was independence from Great Britain.

Before the war, Native Americans in the Ohio River Valley militarily defended the area from encroachment by Virginia land speculation companies wishing to purchase land and open it up to British American settlement. The Proclamation of 1763—issued by an indebted British government weary from the French and Indian Wars—sided with Native Americans against Virginians by banning American settlements to the west of the Appalachians. This naturally angered the gentry that had already invested in the stock of these land companies and was counting on new land investment returns to shore up their fortunes. Native American resistance to westward expansion thus played a significant role in tipping the Virginia gentry into revolt.

Slave insurrection was another serious concern of the Virginia gentry—even to the point where they wanted to end further importation of slaves (a measure that London and lower-class Virginians resisted). When the Virginia gentry then sided with rebellious Massachusetts against new British impositions on the colonial elite’s perceived right to govern and tax themselves with minimal interference, the loyalist Virginia governor, Lord Dunmore, threatened to release their slaves in a ploy calculated to cause the gentry to reverse course. The strategy backfired and the threatened slave insurrection only further enraged the Virginia gentry.