Dunmore's Proclamation

On November 7, 1775, Virginia's last royal governor, John Murray, Lord Dunmore, signed the proclamation that Questors find in the cellar of his former residence, the Governor's Palace. Among other things, it promised freedom to all slaves and indentured servants who escaped from "Rebels" and could serve in some sort of military capacity with his British army. He issued it a week later, on November 15 — the first Emancipation Proclamation to free slaves in British or American history. Dunmore's superior officers not only approved the offer of freedom to slaves and servants as official policy but they also expanded it to include women and children. It also made Dunmore a hero to generations of Americans, Canadians, and Britons of African descent whose ancestors owed their freedom to him.

Dunmore's Proclamation was also significant because it pushed many moderate Virginians, and even a few loyalists, into the Patriot camp and virtually destroyed any support in the colony for compromise. One Virginian labeled it an "infernal, Diabolical proclamation," while George Washington called Dunmore "that arch traitor to the rights of humanity" for issuing it. Patriot leaders did all they could to stop it, including publishing advice in the Virginia Gazette for masters about what to tell their slaves to dissuade them from leaving. One piece suggested that slaves be told that the offer was nothing more than a trick of Dunmore's to capture them and sell them back into slavery in the West Indies for his own profit.

Historians disagree as to the number of slaves who took immediate advantage of Dunmore's offer. Estimates range from 800 to thousands. Many became part of Dunmore's famous Ethiopian Regiment who fought for him at Great Bridge and Gwynn's Island. Robert Carter Nicholas worried that "great Numbers of Slaves from different Quarters have graced [Dunmore's] Corps." John Page wrote to Thomas Jefferson that high "Numbers of Negroes and Cowardly Scoundrels flock" to Dunmore. What is certain is that tens of thousands of slaves sought — and received — freedom by reaching the British lines during the Revolutionary War as a direct result of the proclamation and the way in which it was embraced by the British government. One historian has called it "the greatest exodus from bondage in African-American history until the Civil War and Emancipation."