Lord Dunmore's Proclamation
On 7 November 1775, aboard the warship HMS William in Norfolk harbour, John Murray, Lord Dunmore — Virginia's last royal governor — issued a proclamation that declared martial law and offered freedom to 'all indented Servants, Negroes, or others (appertaining to Rebels)' who were able and willing to bear arms in His Majesty's service. The proclamation was a calculated act of political warfare. Dunmore had been driven from the Governor's Palace in Williamsburg months earlier by patriot pressure; lacking the forces to retake Virginia by conventional means, he struck at the revolutionary movement's most fundamental vulnerability. Virginia's planter class — the Washingtons, Jeffersons, and Lees who led the rebellion — rested their wealth and political power on enslaved labour. A proclamation offering freedom to those people was both a military recruiting tool and an existential threat. Between 800 and 1,000 enslaved men escaped to Dunmore's forces and were organised into a unit styled the 'Ethiopian Regiment', whose uniform reportedly bore the motto 'Liberty to Slaves'. The regiment saw action at the Battle of Kemp's Landing (November 1775) before Dunmore's force was decisively defeated at the Battle of Great Bridge (December 1775), after which his fleet withdrew from Virginia. The proclamation's military impact was limited — smallpox devastated the Ethiopian Regiment, and most of its members did not survive the war. Its political and intellectual impact was enormous. It forced patriot leaders to confront the contradiction between their rhetoric of universal liberty and their dependence on enslaved labour. Several Virginia delegates to the Continental Congress cited Dunmore's proclamation as a reason for supporting independence. Thomas Jefferson originally included the instigation of slave rebellion as a charge against George III in the Declaration of Independence (later removed at the insistence of Southern delegations). The proclamation was also a direct precedent for the British strategy throughout the Southern campaign and for Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, which deployed the same logic: offer freedom to enslaved people of the enemy to undermine the enemy's war-making capacity.
- Year: 1775 CE
- Category: Political
