[3] However, tensions with Britain were mounting, and although usher of the grammar school, he rallied students in order to secure military stores which Governor Dunmore was trying to take out to a ship in the Chesapeake Bay.

[5] At General Washington's urging, Innes recruited a regiment for home defense in Williamsburg, and in 1781 commanded it at the Siege of Yorktown, which ended the British threat to the Hampton Roads area, although peace negotiations would take several additional years.

In 1780, voters in James City County near Williamsburg elected him as one of their two representatives in the Virginia House of Delegates, where he served alongside William Norvell.

[9] Fellow legislators elected Innes to succeed Edmund Randolph as Virginia's Attorney General, and he served a decade before resigning for health reasons.

Nonetheless, Innes accepted a federal appointment which President Washington offered as one of the commissioners under Jay's treaty.