Lord Dunmore’s Proclamation
The British imperial government abolished colonial slave statutes and hereditary slave laws within the American colonies in 1766. Following the Somerset decision in 1772, where the Twelve Judges of His Majesty’s King’s Bench affirmed Parliament’s supreme legislative authority throughout the Kingdom and declared slavery was not “allowed or approved by the law in the Kingdom” and could only be legalized through positive law, a legislative power that colonial legislatures never possessed—the slaveholding Americans in the southern colonies became anxious and concerned about facing the possibility of criminal charges for their continued involvement in colonial slavery.
The Somerset decision was a self-executing decree in a modern context, as His Majesty’s King’s Bench resolved the habeas corpus case through the Twelve Judges Process. The panel ruled slavery was not “allowed or approved by the law in the Kingdom” and only an act of Parliament could authorize slavery within the Kingdom. Since Parliament had never authorized slavery in the Kingdom—slavery became unlawful throughout the British Empire. This decision struck down all forms of de facto slavery laws throughout the Kingdom, making all colonial-born blacks suffering as slaves in colonial America “free black Englishmen.”
The British imperial government was aware of the financial involvement of prominent Englishmen and influential British officials in the sale and exploitation of colonial blacks in England’s American and Caribbean colonies. To protect these interests, colonial governors were directed by the King’s ministers not to enforce the Somerset decision in colonial courts. They propagated the misleading interpretation that the Somerset decision only meant “a person, regardless of being a slave, could not be forcibly removed from England against his will and be carried abroad.”
Despite this, Massachusetts’ assembly attempted to enact laws freeing blacks in 1773 and 1774, and successive colonial governors vetoed this legislation. However, King George III’s ministers, slaveholding American colonists, and Massachusetts assemblymen understood that the vetoes of colonial governors and their failure to enforce the English rule of law did not diminish the legal impact of the Somerset decision. As a self-executing judicial decree, the Somerset decision required no affirmative action from colonial officials to be the law of the land. All colonies were bound by their colonial charters to adhere to English law as interpreted by this English highest court, whether a crown or a proprietary colony.
On December 16, 1773, American colonists took a bold stand against Parliament’s Tea Act of 1773 by boarding three British ships in the colony of Massachusetts and dumping 342 chests of tea into Boston Harbor. In retaliation, the British imperial government escalated tensions by closing the Boston Port, dispatching occupation troops, altering the Massachusetts charter, and requiring colonial assemblies to house and supply British troops. These draconian measures, known as the “Intolerable Acts,” galvanized the northern colonies, shattering any remaining illusions about colonial Americans’ rights as Englishmen. This crisis presented slaveholding Americans in the southern colonies with a strategic opportunity to align with Massachusetts’ leadership—embed themselves in the rebellion and to provide support for Massachusetts’ cause.
Massachusetts Governors Thomas Hutchinson and then Sir Thomas Gage, adhering to the British imperial government’s directive, steadfastly refused to enforce the Somerset decision, as both vetoed the Massachusetts assembly’s legislative actions favoring the emancipation of black colonials in 1773 and 1774. The British imperial government feared that the Massachusetts assembly’s legislative actions would spread—nullifying their status quo protection narrative, and by destabilizing the financial underpinning of its southern colonies, it would cause an outright rebellion.
The Somerset decision in 1772 was a pivotal event that led to the creation of the Continental Congress, as it exposed deeply seeded trust issues between King George III’s colonial governors and the slaveholding colonial elites in the southern American colonies. The British imperial government’s handling of the Somerset decision united the American colonies in a common grievance, albeit for different reasons.
Northern colonials, such as Samuel Adams, clamored that the gubernatorial vetoes of the Massachusetts assembly’s legislative actions to liberate black suffering as colonial slaves according to English law—by successive colonial governors demonstrated the British imperial government’s blatant disregard for the rule of law established by the Somerset decision, proving corruption and tyranny. Conversely, southern colonials, while pleased by the vetoes of Massachusetts governors Hutchinson and Gage, feared that the British imperial government’s overall approach to the Somerset case and colonial slavery indicated a sinister plot to strip them of their wealth—wealth derived from the enslavement and exploitation of colonial-born black Englishmen, including their value as capital and the value of what they produced, even their offspring.
With a concealed agenda, Virginia’s legislative assembly members successfully lobbied other southern colonies to form colonial committees, and the southern colonies collectively joined the Continental Congress committed to their universal protection. However, the British imperial government became aware of Virginia’s committee actions, which included financing the burgeoning Massachusetts rebellion with wealth amassed from their chattel slavery operations. The British imperial government also recognized Virginia’s and other slaveholding southern colonies’ pivotal roles in forming the Continental Congress. This awareness severed and terminated the British imperial government’s concerns about causing outright rebellion if the colonial government enforced the Somerset decision.
This perceived betrayal by Virginia’s legislative assembly prompted the British imperial government to instruct Virginia’s governor, Lord Dunmore, to dissolve Virginia’s House of Burgesses, which he did in June 1774. In the aftermath, rumors spread about a British imperial government plan to enforce the Somerset decision and conscript former slaves into the military. These rumors reached such a pitch that a group of black slaves presented themselves to Lord Dunmore in early April, volunteering their services.
Lord Dunmore postponed any decision by ordering the group pf black recruits to leave, but this did little to alleviate the suspicions of Virginia’s slaveholding colonists. The literature circulating from London further fueled theses suspicions, as rumors persisted that an emancipation bill was imminent to reach the floor of England’s Parliament. This bill did not materialize until the 1807 Slave Trade Act.
The British imperial government’s abolition of colonial slave statute and hereditary slave laws in 1766 served as the catalyst for organizing America’s thirteen colonies, rather than a rising democratic spirit. The slaveholding colonists understood that their grievances about losing wealth generated from now-abolished slave statutes would not resonate as a rallying cry to mobilize the masses for open rebellion. Recognizing this, the Founding Generation framed their conflict with King George III around the natural rights of all colonial subjects and common welfare. This framing breathed life into the idea that governments are derived from the consent of the governed. Adopting the political philosophies of liberalism and republicanism, they asserted that all men were created equal under English law, thereby providing a more compelling and unifying justification for their cause.
The increasing tension between England and the American colonies led to an order for all colonial governors to secure gunpowder to deprive potential rebels of this crucial military supply. Moreover, on April 20, 1775, Lord Dunmore, the governor of Virginia, ordered Lieutenant Henry Colins to remove the gunpowder from the public magazine in Williamsburg and to transport them to a British warship.
Having previously served as governor of New York and now Virginia, Lord Dunmore believed he well understood how to respond to the colonists complaining about his removal of the gunpowder. Thus, when confronted by colonists who believed he was exposing them to their slaves, he threatened to free and arm slaves to defend the cause of the British imperial government. Dunmore thought that the prospect of armed former slaves running throughout Virginia would make the loss of gunpowder less upsetting to the colonists, but he was proven wrong.
On May 3, 1775, the Hanover militia, led by Patrick Henry, arrived outside of Williamsburg, prompting Lord Dunmore to abandon the Governor’s Palace and relocate to his hunting lodge in Porto Bello—York County. Dunmore issued a proclamation on May 6 against “a certain Patrick Henry… and a Number of deluded Followers” who put themselves in a Posture of War”.
Virginia’s militias laid siege to Lord Dunmore’s hunting lodge, wounding him and forcing him to flee to the man-of-war Fowey at Yorktown. Aboard the ship, Dunmore declared:
“My Declaration that I would arm and set free such Slaves as should assist me if I was attacked has stirred up fears in them which cannot easily subside as they know how vulnerable they are in that particular, and therefore they have cause in this complaint of which their others are totally unsupported.”
On November 7, 1775, the British imperial government had Lord Dunmore issue a proclamation, dubbed the Southern Strategy, that adjudged America’s Patriots as traitors to the Crown and declared
“all indentured servants, Negroes, or others… free that are able and willing to bear arms.”
All black colonials and African slaves in the American colonies were liberated under Dunmore’s Proclamation. This proclamation was self-executing, as the condition called slave was not legally recognized nor referenced in the Proclamation. The black individuals suffering as crime victims in the American colonies had their liberty rights fully restored as a matter of English law by way of Mansfield’s Somerset decision.
Dunmore’s proclamation was well-publicized, and enslaved colonials throughout the thirteen American colonies separated themselves from their masters to join England’s military. The British imperial government had made good on its threat, as it liberated enslaved black colonials by operation of law before the Founding Generation declared themselves to be a free nation of people.
Importantly, under English common law, enslaved black colonials were already legally free subjects on November 7, 1775, due to the Somerset decision, which rendered the state of slavery in colonial America a legal fiction. Dunmore’s proclamation thus served as a letter of patent. Slaveholding colonials attempted to discredit the proclamation by calling it “conditional.” However, the British imperial government’s proclamation was anything but conditional, as the legal foundation for slavery in colonial America had been definitively nullified. This nullification arose from the abolition of pretended colonial slave statutes and hereditary slave laws following the Declaratory Act of 1766 and the 1772 declaration in the Somerset case that slavery was not “allowed or approved by the law of the Kingdom.”
Colonial newspapers published Lord Dunmore’s proclamation in full, with The Virginia Gazette warning slaves to “Be not then… tempted by the proclamation to ruin your selves.” In addition, the newspapers urged enslaved black colonials to “cling to their kind master.” Claims that the proclamation was a ploy did not work, and as the British imperial government had already dismantled the legal foundation for slavery in colonial America, each and every enslaved blacks from all thirteen colonies were emancipated.
The British imperial government’s Southern Strategy created an egalitarian society in colonial America, as it made all slaves “free blacks” and socially equal to white colonials. But this Southern Strategy was not altruistic in nature, nor was it a social experiment; instead, it was economic warfare, done to financially ruin the Founding Generation’s slaveholding leadership., whose wealth was based upon slavery that was being used to finance rebellion in colonial America.
Lord Dunmore’s proclamation was a focused pre-Declaration of Independence emancipation of the enslaved black colonials living in colonial America. This proclamation made the Founding Generation nervous and unsettled since, by late November 1775, countless “free blacks” enlisted for military service. Furthermore, Lord Dunmore was able to form an all-black regiment with former slaves called Dunmore’s Ethiopian Regiment by the end of November 1775, within a month of him issuing his proclamation.
The formation of Dunmore’s Ethiopian Regiment marked a significant turn in British policy and American race relations. Its recruits were the first of an estimated 12,000 blacks who served with British forces during the American Revolution. Their regimental uniforms had sashes inscribed with “Liberty to Slaves.” Further, by December 1775, Dunmore’s Ethiopian Regiment had nearly 300 black recruits. They saw service in Virginia at the battles of Kemp’s Landing and Great Bridge in 1775.
The British acceptance of “free blacks” in its military was a significant factor that prompted the Continental Congress by 1777 to reverse its November 1775 declaration that blacks were ineligible to serve in the Continental Army, which led to the first significant enrollment of “free blacks” and slaves in the patriot forces, who the Founding Generation promised U.S. citizenship.
America’s Patriots knew the vast slave population, if militarized, could topple the rebellion. When the British provided black recruits with weapons and taught them how to use them, this alarmed them. Washington, in his capacity as the commander-in-chief of the Patriots’ forces and a concerned slaveholding colonial, felt that it was necessary to crush Britain’s slave recruitment initiative, or the momentum of slave recruitment would be “like a snowball rolling” down a hill.
Founding Father James Madison expressed the belief that the British imperial government’s Southern Strategy of recruiting former slaves was the kind of “tampering with the slaves” he had most feared. “To say the truth,” he confided in a friend, “that is the only part in which this colony is vulnerable… we shall fall like Achilles by the hand of one that knows that secret.” But, in having been the slaveholding colonials’ silent partner-in-crime for a century, the British imperial government knew all too well the colony of Virginia’s “secret.” Further, black colonials were emancipated and recruited because of this shared secret.
The Founding Fathers responded by instituting restrictions upon slave meetings and activated militias to patrol the roads and waterways throughout the southern colonies, looking for black colonials who were legally free individuals under the English rule of law and returning them to bondage.
Although their risks in running away had never been greater, massive numbers of enslaved black colonials in search of liberty and dignity continued. This caused the Virginia Convention to issue its own proclamation in December 1775. The proclamation began with a reminder that the penalty for slave insurrection was death without the benefit of clergy and went on to declare that runaways to the British would either be pardoned if they returned in ten days or severely punished—if they did not.