Background
As tensions increased between prominent white Virginians and Governor Dunmore in the run-up to the Revolution, wealthy enslavers began to worry that the besieged Crown appointee might turn to working-class whites or even enslaved Africans and African Americans to keep the colony loyal to the British empire. That was not an outlandish concern as Virginia had an enslaved Black population of roughly 220,000 compared to the white population of approximately 538,000—making the colony 41 percent Black. By November 1774, young James Madison had learned that Virginia bondsmen in a neighboring county had already met and chosen a leader to “conduct them when the English troops should arrive.” He had no doubt that should “America & Britain come to a hostile rupture,” an “Insurrection among the slaves may & will be promoted.”
Southern Patriots cast Black Americans in the passive role of people whose lives would be acted upon by distant white authorities. None could imagine that Black Americans might see opportunities of their own in the coming imperial rupture, much less that they would make overtures that Dunmore would eventually accept.
Such concerns were hardly the irrational apprehensions of whites. Should the dissent of the late 1760s erupt into open warfare, many Virginia Loyalists thought Britain would be foolish not to employ every means possible to subdue the rebellion. In fact, had Madison been privy to the private correspondence of King George’s administrators, he might have been more anxious. Due to the precarious nature of peace following the end of the Seven Years’ War in 1763, Britain had long weighed the impact of large numbers of enslaved people in its southern colonies. In “case of a war,” Dunmore informed his superiors in 1772, just one year into his governorship, “the people [of Virginia], with great reason, tremble at the facility that an enemy would find in procuring Such a body of men, attached by no tye to their Masters or to the Country.” In North Carolina, Governor Josiah Martin, a Loyalist but also a man who sided with his colony’s wealthy planters, complained to London of rumors that Britain “had formed a design of Arming the Negroes, and proclaiming freedom to all such as should resort to the King’s Standard.” Martin was no alarmist, he insisted, but he had heard that enslaved people in the eastern counties of Pitt and Beaufort had begun to discuss a “Tragick Plan” to burn their owners’ plantations before heading west and turning themselves over to the royal “Government for their Protection.”
The Proclamation
White southerners preferred to believe that the king’s men lurked behind unrest in enslaved communities, but the truth was that politicized Black Americans aggressively advanced their own cause. In April 1775, Dunmore, hoping to squash any movement toward armed independence, ordered the seizure of gunpowder held in Williamsburg. When members of the House of Burgesses publicly condemned the act, an “exceedingly exasperated” Dunmore exploded. He “swore by the living God” that if white Virginians did not alter their behavior, “he would declare Freedom to the Slaves & reduce the City of Williamsburg to ashes.” If war came, Dunmore lectured a group of startled enslavers, “all the Slaves” would fight “on the side of the [royal] Government.” The governor hoped only to scare the Burgesses, but several days later he awoke to find a delegation of Black Virginians requesting an audience. Having heard of Dunmore’s tirade from one of his enslaved servants, they boldly “offered to join him and take up arms.” The stunned governor ordered them “to go about their business” and “threatened them with his severest punishment, should they presume to renew their application.”
Perhaps Dunmore’s reaction was designed to placate nervous enslavers, but most likely it was the honest response of an affronted Scots-born aristocrat who personally enslaved dozens of Africans in Virginia and the Caribbean. Nevertheless, the enslaved people’s offer of service clearly set Dunmore to thinking. As his administration grew increasingly alienated from white Virginians, it was logical to search elsewhere for support. On May 1, Dunmore wrote to William Legge, the second earl of Dartmouth and the secretary of state for the colonies, suggesting that if given arms enough, he could “collect from among the Indians, negroes and other persons” an army sufficient to maintain control of the colony. Word of Dunmore’s ruminations spread quickly. Only two weeks later, British General Thomas Gage wrote to Dartmouth from Boston: “We hear that a Declaration his Lordship has made, of proclaiming all the Negroes free, who should join him, has Startled the Insurgents.”
Gage thought the policy a sound one. By mid-June, he warned Secretary at War William Barrington that if tensions in Massachusetts grew much worse, “we must avail ourselves of every resource, even to raise the Negros, in our cause.” For their part, African Americans around the Chesapeake Bay had no intention of waiting for British policy to solidify. When British troops from St. Augustine arrived in Norfolk that July, enslaved people from the low country began to flock toward English lines. The presence of foreign soldiers, one white Virginian fretted, created “exceeding bad effects” upon enslaved laborers in the nearby counties. Heightened patrols were no match for Black resolve, as “Slaves eloped from their Masters.” Norfolk residents appointed a deputation to call upon captains John McCartney and Matthew Squire, the respective British commanders of the HMS Mercury and the HMS Otter, who assured the group that they would never encourage runaways. Despite these promises, not only did both men welcome enslaved people aboard their vessels, but Squire also found employment for fugitives who paddled out to the Otter while it lay in the York River.
Not surprisingly, white Loyalists in the southern tidewater found themselves suspect in the eyes of their Patriot neighbors. Samuel Kemp went so far as to publish a statement in the Williamsburg Virginia Gazette (Dixon and Hunter) denying reports that he “had endeavoured to exasperate the Negroes to rise.” But even as Kemp was drafting his denial, far across the Atlantic the king’s government was planning an “expedition against the Southern Provinces in North America.” On October 15, 1775, Lord Frederick North, the prime minister, advised King George on “the perilous situation” of Virginia and the Carolinas due to “the great number of their negro slaves, and the small proportion of white inhabitants.” Eleven days later, William Henry Lyttelton, the former royal governor of both South Carolina and Jamaica, rose in the House of Commons with “a proposal for encouraging the negroes in that part of America to rise against their masters.” Angry members—particularly those with financial interests in the Caribbean—shouted down Lyttelton’s idea as “horrid and wicked,” and Parliament voted against his motion. Even so, a policy of Black freedom in the name of military exigency was coalescing at the highest levels of the British government. Dunmore’s thinking on this matter hardly existed within a vacuum.
Within weeks, an enslaved man named Joseph Harris who had escaped to the British in July would play a decisive role in the skirmish at Hampton, helping Squire to escape after the Otter’s tender was driven ashore in a storm.
On November 7, Dunmore acted, drafting a proclamation of martial law that promised freedom to enslaved people and indentured servants owned by Patriots who would fight for the Crown. During the previous June, Dunmore had quit Williamsburg and taken refuge aboard the HMS Fowey, a twenty-four-gun warship. Realizing that the majority of the gentry stood against him, the governor decided to make good on his threat. “Lord Dunmore sails up and down the river,” wrote a horrified Norfolk resident, “and where he finds a defenseless place, he lands, plunders the plantation and carries off the negroes.” Dunmore organized these escaped enslaved people into an army dubbed the Ethiopian Regiment. Following a victory for the Ethiopian Regiment at the Battle of Kemp’s Landing, Dunmore’s proclamation that he would free “all indentured servants, Negroes, or others, (appertaining to Rebels), that are able and willing to bear Arms” with “His Majesty’s Troops” was publicly announced on November 15. As the caveat that he would free only those enslaved by rebels implied, his proclamation was inspired by the expediency of war rather than by humanitarian concern, but that meant nothing to enslaved Virginians or their frantic enslavers.
As enslaved people sought to turn the political chaos in the colony to their advantage, some white Patriots assured one another that their enslaved servants remained faithful, blaming the Loyalists for those who decamped to the British. Writing from Williamsburg, Robert Carter Nicholas reported that white “Tories of Norfolk are said to be the Ringleaders” of any movement to arm Virginia’s enslaved laborers. Although rumors held that “great Numbers of Slaves from different Quarters have graced their Corps,” Nicholas insisted that Dunmore was “using every Art to seduce the Negroes.” Collective self-deception, however, could not disguise the fact that many bondsmen within distance of British lines “flocked” to them. In early December, Virginia militiamen captured “Negro George,” who had fled his enslaver’s plantation near Suffolk. Under questioning, George confessed that “there are 400 Blacks” in Norfolk and that the runaways had been busy building an entrenchment.
Enslavers more realistic than Nicholas feared the worst. From Philadelphia, Thomas Jefferson wrote to his wife, Martha, warning her to remain as far inland as possible. Jefferson begged his brother-in-law Francis Eppes to take charge and ensure that his wife and their three-year-old daughter, Patsy, kept at “a distance from the alarms of Ld. Dunmore.” Jefferson’s anxiety about his wife and daughter appeared to reflect longstanding concerns that enslaved men sought not only liberty but white women. For his part, George Washington feared the impact of Dunmore’s proclamation on the emerging military situation. “If that Man is not crushed before Spring, he will become the most dangerous man in America,” he warned fellow Virginia planter Henry Lee. “Success will depend on which side can arm the Negroes the faster.”
As word of Dunmore’s proclamation rapidly spread beyond the Chesapeake, Washington’s concerns were proven accurate. In Monmouth County, New Jersey, Titus, a twenty-one-year-old farmhand enslaved by John Corlies, threw down his hoe and began walking toward Williamsburg only days after Dunmore issued his proclamation. He joined the Ethiopian Regiment before returning to New Jersey, where he became a feared guerrilla fighter going by the name of Colonel Tye. Operating out of a forested base called Refugeetown on Sandy Hook, Tye led a series of surprise raids across northern New Jersey that targeted wealthy, slaveholding Patriots.
Dunmore’s proclamation had other effects, pushing some Virginians who had been on the fence toward the Patriot cause. Richard Henry Lee wrote, “Lord Dunmore’s unparalleled conduct in Virginia has, a few Scotch excepted, united every Man in that large Colony.”
By early December, “the king of the blacks,” as Pinkney’s Virginia Gazette branded Dunmore, sent his forces, including the Ethiopian Regiment, marching south to Great Bridge, a chokepoint on the road from the Virginia interior to Norfolk. There they faced off against Patriot troops in the Battle of Great Bridge on December 9, which resulted in a stunning defeat for British and Loyalist forces. Most of the Ethiopian Regiment did not participate in the battle, having been deployed to another nearby crossing. According to some reports, the few former bondsmen present wore sashes emblazoned with the words “Liberty to Slaves.”
With Black refugees flooding out of the counties near Norfolk, enslavers tried a variety of measures, including propaganda, to curtail the nightly disappearances. Robert Carter, one of the largest enslavers in the colony, assembled his human property at his Coles Point quarters and warned them of Dunmore’s perfidy. The governor promised freedom for those who fought, Carter cautioned, but actually schemed to sell them to enslavers in the West Indies. According to Carter, the Black men uniformly vowed to take their wives and children and flee into the woods at the first sight of a British vessel. Pleased by this response, Carter was later stunned to learn that the moment a British privateer landed near Coles Point, thirty-two enslaved people placed themselves under the care of Dunmore’s forces.
Try as they might, enslavers were unable to prevent news of the larger world from reaching their enslaved workers, in part because they craved information, but also because their plantations were not as isolated as they appeared. Because of the need to roll the enormous hogsheads of tobacco onto waiting vessels, most large estates were situated along Virginia’s inland waterways, where enslaved people heard stories of foreign affairs. In light of the 1772 Somerset case—in which the English Court of King’s Bench ruled that an enslaved person on English soil could not be forcibly removed from Britain—it was not difficult for enslaved people to believe that Dunmore’s offer of freedom was sincere. Nine enslaved people from southern Maryland set sail for Norfolk in an open boat and three more boarded what they erroneously took for a British vessel, swearing to shed “the last drop of their blood in Dunmore’s service.” In early January 1776, Pinkney’s Virginia Gazette reported that Virginia militiamen had captured “upwards of thirty of Jack Dunmore’s hopeful gang.” When returned to their enslavers, many simply tried again. The fact that British soldiers were increasingly willing to encourage enslaved people “to leave their masters, and take up arms against them,” as “An American” wrote in Purdie’s Virginia Gazette in late March 1776, only convinced irresolute enslavers of the need to take up arms in what the writer called this “most just and holy war.”
By the time that Dunmore abandoned the Norfolk area for New York City in early 1776, roughly 300 liberated Black Virginians sailed with him. Three years later, British general Henry Clinton issued the Philipsburg Proclamation, which freed people enslaved by white Patriots throughout the rebellious colonies including the wives and children of Black combatants. At the war’s end in November 1783, the British Navy ferried precisely 3,000 African Americans from Manhattan to Novia Scotia. Roughly half of the refugees had fled the coastal areas between Maryland and South Carolina, largely due to Dunmore’s proclamation.
