The marker stands near the area where Cheney Clow and a group of Loyalists built a fortified position in Kent County during 1778. The fort has not survived, and the exact wartime landscape crossed what is now the Maryland–Delaware border region. The episode known as Clow’s Rebellion reveals that the Revolution in Delaware was also an internal civil conflict, not simply a struggle between American and British armies.

Delaware declared independence, but opinion remained divided. Some inhabitants supported the new state, others remained loyal to the Crown, and many tried to avoid choosing sides. Military requisitions intensified resentment. In early 1778, Continental forces gathering provisions for Washington’s army at Valley Forge took food and supplies from the region. Such demands could appear necessary to Patriot officials and coercive to families already facing scarcity and disrupted trade.

Clow gathered armed Loyalists around his property northwest of Dover. Contemporary reports and later accounts differ about the force’s exact size, but officials feared that it might raid farms, threaten communications, or move against Dover. The group constructed an earth-and-timber fortification near the border. Clow’s own disputed relationship to the boundary—he claimed Maryland residence although his house apparently stood just inside Delaware—added another layer to his resistance to state authority.

Lieutenant Colonel Charles Pope led Delaware militia to investigate. On April 14, 1778, Pope’s men exchanged fire with Clow’s force. At least one man on each side was killed in the fighting. Unable to reduce the position immediately, Pope withdrew and sought reinforcements from Delaware and Maryland. When the militia returned about two days later, the Loyalists had abandoned the fort. Pope’s men destroyed it, ending the organized concentration though Clow escaped.

Clow remained at large for several years. He was arrested in 1782 after a separate armed encounter in which a man was killed. Authorities prosecuted him for murder rather than simply for Loyalism. His legal case extended well beyond the war and involved petitions and controversy before his execution in 1788. Later retellings have debated whether political hostility influenced his fate.

The marker’s phrase “rebellion” reflects the victorious state government’s viewpoint; Clow’s followers considered themselves loyal to the established Crown. At this site, neighbors confronted neighbors under competing claims of lawful authority. The episode demonstrates how supply pressures, local grievances, boundary disputes, allegiance, and personal conflict combined during the Revolution. Although the fort was small and the action did not alter a major campaign, it exposes the war’s intimate violence within a community divided over independence.