Lord Dunmore (John Murray)
John Murray, fourth Earl of Dunmore, was the last royal governor of Virginia and issued the proclamation that first offered freedom to enslaved Americans who would fight for the crown. Born in Scotland in 1730 into a Jacobite family — his father was imprisoned after the 1745 rising — he sat in the House of Lords as a representative peer and was appointed governor of New York in 1770 and of Virginia in 1771. He was an aggressive expansionist. In 1774 he led an expedition against the Shawnee and Mingo over the Ohio country in what became known as Dunmore's War, forcing a treaty that opened Kentucky to settlement — a policy that pleased Virginian land speculators, including Washington, and defied imperial policy limiting westward settlement. Relations collapsed in 1775. He dissolved the House of Burgesses, removed the colony's gunpowder from the Williamsburg magazine to a warship, and eventually abandoned the capital for a ship in the York River. In November 1775 he issued Dunmore's Proclamation, declaring martial law and offering freedom to any indentured servant or enslaved person belonging to a rebel who would bear arms for the king. It was a military measure rather than an abolitionist one, and it did not apply to those held by loyalists. Around eight hundred reached his lines and formed the Ethiopian Regiment, wearing sashes reading liberty to slaves; most died of smallpox. The proclamation terrified Virginia's planters and pushed wavering slaveholders towards independence. He was driven from Virginia in 1776, later served as governor of the Bahamas, and died in 1809.
- Lived: 1730 CE – 1809 CE
- Nationality: British
- Roles: ruler
