Less eloquent but more active was Leven Powell. He with Mason, in that same year of 1774, was urging his neighbors to resistance. In 1775 he received a commission as major in a battalion of Minute Men from Loudoun, in 1777 was made by General Washington a lieutenant colonel of the 16th Regiment of Virginia Continentals, spent the greater part of that year in raising and equipping his command and saw much active service until invalided home from the vigours of the following terrible winter at Valley Forge. His impaired health forced him to resign his commission in the autumn of 1778. By way of sharp contrast to the other people of Loudoun, the Quakers refused to aid or abet the Revolution in any way. Through their industry and frugality they had, by that time, acquired some influence in the County but when they refused to aid their fellow-Virginians in the great struggle, all that was changed. Non-resistance was a cardinal principle of their faith and come weal or woe they stuck to it. They refused to serve in the army. They refused to pay muster-fines. "Not even the scourge" writes Kercheval of the Quakers of the Valley, "would compel them to submit to discipline. The practice of coercion was therefore abandoned and the legislature enacted a law to levy a tax upon their property to hire substitutes to perform militia duty in their stead."[106] Refusing to pay these taxes their property was sold and many were reduced to great distress. Others, taking advantage of these tax sales, bought up their properties and profited largely by their shrewdness. [106] _History of Shenandoah Valley of Virginia_, by Samuel Kercheval, 149. As the war continued, Virginia faced difficulties in raising her quota of Continental troops. We have read Cresswell's record of these troubles in Loudoun as early as October, 1776. In 1778 the Assembly passed an act recognizing as inadequate prior laws on the subject, calling for 2,216 men, rank and file, and offering for eighteen months enlistment $300; while to those who enlisted for three years, or the duration of the war, $400 was to be given "together with the continental bounty of land and shall be entitled to receive the pay and rations which are allowed to soldiers in the continental army from the day of their enlistment and shall be furnished annually, at the public expense with the following articles, a coat, waistcoat and breeches, two shirts, one hat, two pairs of stockings, one pair of shoes and a blanket...."[107] In the same year the Legislature was obliged to pass an act against "forestallers and engrossers"--in other words what we today call war profiteers, authorizing the governor to seize grain and flour for the army in the hands of those gentry.[108] [107] 9 Hening, 586. [108] 9 Hening, 584.