With dim light spilling into the back room of his apothecary shop, Dr. Hugh Mercer shared a sneer and some tea yesterday morning with one of the city's top merchants, Charles Dick.

"They're taking away our right to defend ourselves!" said Mercer, reacting to the news that Virginia's royal governor, John Murray, fourth earl of Dunmore, had ordered royal marines to remove the gunpowder from the magazines at Williamsburg.

It was all part of a daylong re-enactment organized by the Hugh Mercer Apothecary Shop in downtown Fredericksburg, a retelling of the events that unfolded in the Colonial town in April of 1775.

That's when word filtered into town, "via a rider from Williamsburg, or maybe a messenger off a ship up the Rappahannock," that the Brits' unilateral actions roiling New England were spreading southward into Virginia.

"Britain has to be taught a lesson!" replied Dick, "They can't take our gunpowder and expect there will be no reaction on our part."

Indeed, events were already in motion, as the local militia was mustering nearby, with the expectation that 600 or more men would soon be ready to march to Williamsburg in response to Dunmore's actions.

"Or course, we may not be able to send all 600," noted Mercer, the Colonial town's doctor. "We've had an outbreak of pox locally and I would be very surprised to find that some portion of our forces won't be taken down with it."

Moments later, word came that more than 50 of the men who mustered had been quarantined and couldn't march.

"They all show up, you know, because they get paid just for mustering out," said Mercer with a smile.

As they munched scones, the Fredericksburg physician who would later become a Revolutionary War hero appealed to Dick to provide gunpowder and other supplies to help the local militia get to Williamsburg.

His anger up at the British actions, the merchant was glad to help.

Eyeing the member of the 1st Virginia Regiment of the Continental Army guarding the door, Dick said he hoped the men and rifles might help convince the British that Dunmore's actions had been hasty.