Dunmore Offers Freedom: Slaves Join British Forces

Lord Dunmore's offer of emancipation was military pragmatism, not abolitionism. John Murray, the Royal Governor of Virginia, did not care about freedom. He needed soldiers. By November 1775, the American Revolution had driven him from his governor's mansion in Williamsburg, and he was operating from a warship in Norfolk harbor with a handful of loyal troops. His proclamation, issued on November 7, offered freedom to any enslaved person owned by a rebel who could reach British lines and bear arms. The limitations were deliberate: the offer applied only to enslaved people owned by patriots, not loyalists, protecting the property rights of Virginia's Tory planters while destabilizing the rebel economy. Roughly eight hundred men joined his Ethiopian Regiment within weeks, wearing sashes embroidered with "Liberty to Slaves." The regiment fought at the Battle of Great Bridge in December 1775, where they were defeated by Virginia militia. Smallpox devastated the regiment in the following months, killing hundreds. Dunmore's proclamation terrified slaveholders across the colonies and may have pushed undecided Virginia planters toward independence. The fear that the British would arm enslaved people became a powerful recruitment tool for the Continental cause. George Washington, himself a slaveholder, initially resisted enlisting Black soldiers before reversing course in part to prevent them from joining the British. When the war ended, most of the enslaved people who had reached British lines were abandoned, re-enslaved, or transported to Nova Scotia, Sierra Leone, or the Caribbean. The first mass emancipation in North American history was a military recruitment advertisement, and its broken promises foreshadowed the betrayals that would follow every subsequent offer of freedom in exchange for service.