Operating under the royal governor’s aegis, the regiment spread a contagion of hope through the enslaved population. Dunmore’s Black regiment reportedly wore uniforms that bore the phrase “Liberty for Slaves” — a nod to the revolutionary cry of “Liberty or Death.” For the patriots, it was a nightmare made flesh: armed, free Black men empowered to fight back. Dunmore’s proclamation, which was echoed and amplified by other British generals, became a catalyst rivaling the Boston Tea Party and the Battles of Lexington and Concord in its power to galvanize the patriots. “Lord Dunmore has commenced hostilities in Virginia,” wrote Jefferson, who enslaved over 600 people during his lifetime. “It has raised our country into a perfect frenzy.”
The irony of the rebel position apparently occasioned some thought but little deep reflection. As Lund Washington wrote to his now world-famous cousin George in December 1775, the “dreaded proclamation” might lead some of those enslaved at Mount Vernon to escape. Who could blame them, he went on: “Liberty is sweet.”
Indeed, while General Washington, commander in chief of the Continental Army, waxed poetic about freedom on far-flung battlefields, more than a dozen of the hundreds of people he held in perpetual bondage would eventually vote with their feet, fleeing his five farms for a sworn enemy. They ran to the British lines even after pragmatism trumped prejudice and Washington’s ban on Black soldiers in the fight for independence was lifted. (When the war was over, the general demanded that the men who had taken refuge with the British Army be returned to him. The request was denied.)
Ignited by a resolve forged in defiance, the patriots were ready to burn it all down. On Jan. 1, 1776, Dunmore’s forces unleashed a cannonade on Norfolk, a loyalist stronghold overtaken by patriots. But it was the patriots themselves, spurred on by Jefferson and colonial authorities, who transformed this military action into wholesale destruction. After plundering the town, they set it aflame, leaving not a single church standing. In three days, Norfolk was reduced to ashes.
Lawler calls this “the greatest single war crime of the conflict,” a dubious honor long pinned on Dunmore, though it needn’t be. A 1777 patriot investigation revealed the stark truth: Of 1,333 buildings razed, patriots torched 1,279 to Dunmore’s 54. Yet this report was buried for six decades, allowing the myth of Dunmore’s villainy to make its merry way into our collective memory.