Major funding for backstory is provided by an anonymous donor, the National Endowment

for the Humanities and the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation.

From Virginia Humanities, this is backstory.

Welcome to backstory, the show that explains the history behind today's headlines.

I'm Ed Ayers.

I'm Joanne Freeman.

I'm Brian Balla.

Each week on the podcast, Ed, Joanne, our colleague Nathan Connelly, and yours truly, explore

the history of a topic that's been in the news.

This week we're gearing up for Veterans Day by bringing you a previous episode that looks

at some of the reasons why people have enlisted in the Armed Forces throughout American history.

Let's go back to the winner of 1781.

That was the middle of the Revolutionary War.

The conflict was in its sixth year and things didn't look good for the Patriot cause.

British troops had invaded Virginia and burned Richmond.

Historic Michael McDonald says that by this point, patriots struggled to find colonists

who were willing to enlist or even keep fighting.

There's a real problem of morale.

So even as the British were invading, in some places in the state, people were riding

against their own local officials and saying, we've had enough.

Virginia and other states tried to enforce conscription.

But as the war ground on McDonald's says, many colonists simply refused.

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