The First American Army - Bruce Chadwick [138]
All of that changed toward the end of that year thanks to two former acquaintances, Virginia’s royal governor, John Murray, the Earl of Dunmore, and George Washington. The two men had dined together, played cards, and gone hunting for several years before the outbreak of the war. Washington became the head of the American army and Dunmore found himself an embattled royal governor.
As 1776 approached, Lord Dunmore felt threatened as his entire colony appeared to be in rebellion. He was so apprehensive that he fled the lavish brick governor’s palace in Williamsburg, with its impressive courtyard and lovely gardens, and took refuge on a British warship in nearby Norfolk harbor. He needed troops, lots of them, to protect the Crown’s stake in Virginia.
On November 7, 1775, Dunmore stunned the colonists by issuing a proclamation guaranteeing immediate freedom to all slaves who ran away from their masters and joined his British forces. This was the worst possible event for slaveholders in Virginia and nearby states, whose populations consisted predominantly of black slaves. Not only would the British forces swell tenfold and grow into a slave army, but the planters would be ruined economically without slave labor. And, worse, angry slaves in uniform might kill their former owners, whom all assumed they despised.
Congress, too, was appalled. It was encountering great difficulty raising troops and keeping soldiers in the army. Now Dunmore was giving thousands of slaves a chance to win freedom by soldiering muskets for the enemy. Virginia alone had some two hundred thousand slaves. Congress ordered the committee of safety in Virginia to do all it could to resist Dunmore.18 Congress asked the same of Washington, who wrote that “if that man [Dunmore] is not crushed before spring, he will become the most formidable enemy America has.”19
The Virginia slaves fled their plantations and fought for the king in return for freedom, everyone knew but few admitted, because if they stayed where they were they would remain in bondage. Rev. Henry Muhlenberg wrote in his diary of a conversation he overhead between two black servants who worked for an English family leaving Philadelphia. “They secretly wished that the British army might win, for then all Negro slaves will gain their freedom. It is said that this sentiment is almost universal among the Negroes in America.”20
The patriots in Virginia reacted swiftly, using the pages of the Virginia Gazette to carry out a campaign of intimidation against any slaves thinking of joining forces with Lord Dunmore. Slaves were told in a series of letters to the editor that only able-bodied young adult males would be accepted as soldiers and any others who volunteered but were unfit would remain slaves, but now to the British, who would sell them to British planters in the West Indies. Their families might be held hostage. Letter writers reminded slaves, too, that the punishment for running away could be death and that any slave captured in a British uniform would be executed.21
Despite these threats, hundreds of slaves fled and traveled to Norfolk to join the British army to gain their freedom. It was worth the risk. Along with them came some twenty thousand other slaves. These men, women, and children were not interested in military service; they simply wanted the Redcoats to protect them. Their departure crippled the labor forces at southern plantations, but the number of refugees dramatically slowed down the Redcoats as they followed the British during the campaign in the southern states.22
Dunmore’s slaves were honored by the British. They were given an official title, the Ethiopian Regiment, and had a motto: “Liberty for slaves.” They fought hard in engagements against local militia and in one engagement two slaves in British