Virginia planter Edmund Ruffin Jr. wrote this petition to the Virginia House of Delegates on November 10, 1777, seeking compensation for an enslaved man named Dick who was captured and died in jail while trying to join the forces of John Murray, fourth earl of Dunmore. Six enslaved men had escaped Ruffin’s plantation in Bedford County in November 1775, after Dunmore issued a proclamation promising freedom to enslaved people and indentured servants belonging to Patriots who joined his ranks.
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