by Tom Ewing
November 13, 2025
In November 1775, Lord Dunmore, royal governor of the Virginia colony, issued a proclamation that enraged America’s elite and contributed to an open break with the English king. Issued on November 7, while Dunmore was taking sanctuary on a royal ship on the York River, the proclamation announced that martial law was being imposed on the Virginia colony and all those who did not obey were considered “Traitors to His Majesty’s Crown and Government,” subject to all penalties imposed on such acts, including “forfeiture of Life, confiscation of Lands, &c. &.” Lord Dunmore also declared “all indented Servants, Negroes, or others, (appertaining to Rebels,) free that are able and willing to bear Arms, they joining His Majesty’s Troops as soon as may be, for the more speedily reducing this Colony to a proper Sense of their Duty, to His Majesty’s Crown and Dignity.” In other words, Dunmore offered freedom to any enslaved or indentured person who escaped from a rebel and joined the British forces.
Lord Dunmore’s promise to free enslaved and indentured persons resulted from a position of desperation, rather than an idealistic commitment to liberty. For enslaved persons in Virginia, however, this promise seemed to offer the opportunity to escape bondage and gain a measure of freedom. Hundreds of men, women, and children attempted to join the royal forces, although these efforts were often thwarted by the increasingly precarious position of British forces as the Americans moved toward open rebellion.
For Virginia’s white elite, however, this promise of freedom for enslaved or indentured persons was a direct threat to their sense of order and sources of power. Thomas Jefferson warned his wife Martha to take precautions to avoid the threat of liberated slaves, while George Washington wrote, that if Lord Dunmore “is not crushed before Spring, he will become the most dangerous man in America,” adding this prediction: “Success will depend on which side can arm the Negroes the faster.” Richard Henry Lee stated that Lord Dunmore’s “unparalled conduct in Virginia has…united every Man” in the colony. The Virginia Gazette responded on November 24 with an editorial statement: “If there are loyal subjects in the world, they are in America; they are in Virginia. But enough of this. Independent of these arguments, my countrymen, we may urge, that we have a right to take up arms in self-defence, since we have been threatened with an invasion of savages, and an insurrection of slaves, and we have had our negroes [sic] and stocks piratically taken from us. The laws of God and nature, and the principles of the constitution, justify it; and, at present, all the feelings of humanity, every suggestion of policy, and the cries of our insulted and imprisoned countrymen, loudly call you TO ARM.”
In recent years, Lord Dunmore’s proclamation has received considerably more attention from scholars and the public as part of a more general debate about the meaning of freedom, slavery, and ideas at the time of the revolution. Fifty years ago, however, these issues attracted less scholarly and especially public attention. In fact, an advertisement in September 1975 from Colonial Williamsburg features the banner headline: “In 1775 Lord Dunmore fled the Palace, leaving the town seeting with rebellion.” Yet the attraction outlined in the advertisement suggests a different view of Dunmore’s historical meaning, as visitors were encouraged to view “elegant rooms” full of “reminders of an aristocratic way of life” and palace gardens that “reflect the regal splendor.”
Bikecentennial cyclists fifty years ago began their westward journal on the banks of the York River, where Lord Dunmore and his family fled from the Governor’s Mansion in the summer of 1775. A historical marker for the Transamerica Bike Trail at the Yorktown waterfront marks the eastern terminus of the route, but no historical marker indicates where Lord Dunmore fled, never to return to Virginia.
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