Lord Dunmore’s Proclamation

Context

Africans who arrived in the colony, starting in 1619, were not originally slaves. Most of them worked as servants, with the same rights, duties, and treatment as indentured servants. Like indentured servants, these Africans worked for a master a certain number of years, after which they could be released and were free to buy land. Black men could even have white servants and testify in court against white people.

Before long, however, white Virginians began to draw a more distinct line—in life and in law—between themselves and black Africans. By 1662, Virginia had introduced Act XII: Negro Women’s Children to Serve according to the Condition of the Mother, implementing the possibility of life servitude—slavery—for blacks, with the conferral of slave status through the mother, thus guaranteeing that the children of unions between white masters and female slaves would be born into slavery. In 1667, Act III declared that the legal status of slaves would not change as a result of baptism. In 1670, Virginia law specified that free blacks could no longer have Christian servants, thus ruling out all whites and even some fellow blacks. A year earlier Virginia had ruled that if a black slave should die while being punished, the master would not be charged with a crime.

In the 1680s the laws regulating slavery and the separation of whites and blacks became even more rigid. The laws about trials for blacks grew much stricter, and slaves were punished more severely. The conferral of permanent slave status on all imported black servants was solidified at this time. Punishments for runaways worsened. At the end of this decade, in 1691, any white person who married a black or a mulatto was subject to banishment from the colony, and systematic procedures for the capture of runaway slaves had been approved. In 1705 Virginia declared that all black, mulatto, and Indian slaves were to be treated as “real estate.” This same year, the punishment of disorderly slaves by dismemberment was made legal. Gone were the days—less than a century previous—when blacks could testify in court against whites or when black servants would be given freedom and allowed to buy land or keep servants of their own after their term of service. For almost one hundred years—since a law enacted in 1691—the manumission of slaves was not allowed in Virginia. It was not until 1782 that Virginia passed a law permitting slaveholders to free their slaves if they wished. Clearly, in Dunmore’s time, it can be imagined that anyone who tried to emancipate any slaves—whether their own or someone else’s—would be seen as the worst of villains.

In 1775, however, Lord Dunmore, royal governor of Virginia, found himself in an increasingly desperate position. The Patriots in Virginia were numerous and powerful, and they threatened British government of the colony. Tension had been rising since before Dunmore was assigned the governorship in 1771, and he did little to alleviate it, disbanding the Virginia House of Burgesses as soon as he arrived. By April 1775, the atmosphere had become so heavy that, as a preventive measure, Dunmore decided to remove the gunpowder stored in the public magazine. This move further angered the colonials, to the point that Dunmore fled the capital of Williamsburg on June 8, bound for the man-of-war Fowey near Yorktown. His forces had been diminished both by harassment from rebels and by desertion to approximately three hundred troops.

In April, a group of slaves had visited Dunmore at the governor’s mansion, sensing that things were about to change. They volunteered their services, despite the punishment they risked in running away from their masters. The time was not right for a public rift with the Patriots, however, so Dunmore had the slaves sent away. Dunmore had contemplated enlisting African Americans held in bondage as early as 1772 and said as much in a May 1775 letter to William Legge, 2nd Earl of Dartmouth, who was British secretary of state for the colonies. Slaves and Native Americans, if armed, could supplement the dwindling numbers of British troops. Dunmore also knew that if the British did not arm the slaves, the rebels might; as he says in his letter to Dartmouth, “Whoever promises freedom to the slaves shall have all of them at his disposal.”

After fleeing Williamsburg in June for the Fowey, Dunmore started, unofficially, to act on his scheme, reinforcing his ranks with raids and inviting anyone not against them to join them. This led to the practice of enlisting African Americans of “uncertain origins” (that is, free or slave), with no questions asked. To increase the yield of potential troops, Dunmore decided that he would issue an official proclamation promising freedom to slaves in return for service. He drafted this proclamation on November 7, 1775, but he knew he needed to wait for the right moment to issue it.

The moment came a week later with the defeat of the rebel forces at a skirmish at Kemp’s Landing along the Elizabeth River. Dunmore had learned that a group of about 150 militiamen were on their way to join Colonel William Woodford. Taking about 350 British—regulars, Loyalists, and runaway slaves—he left from Norfolk, a port town along the southeast coast of Chesapeake Bay and the home of Loyalist Scottish merchants, to intercept them. On November 14, the colonial militia was routed, and two commanding colonels were captured—one of them by African American privates who had joined Dunmore’s forces. This success encouraged Dunmore to trust his decision to use African American soldiers. When he entered Kemp’s Landing on November 15, he ordered the proclamation to be published.