Careful not to alienate Britain’s white Loyalist allies, the measure applied only to enslaved workers whose masters were in rebellion against the Crown. Much like Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, however, Dunmore’s Proclamation was limited in scope. The document not only provided the British with an immediate source of manpower, it weakened Virginia’s patriots by depriving them of their main source of labor. Nash in The Unknown American Revolution: The Unruly Birth of Democracy and the Struggle to Create America.
Dunmore’s Proclamation Pledges Freedom in Return for ServiceĪ copy of Dunmore’s Proclamation, issued November 7, 1775.ĭunmore’s Proclamation was “more an announcement of military strategy than a pronouncement of abolitionist principles,” according to author Gary B. For the first time in public he formally read a proclamation that he had issued the previous week granting freedom to the enslaved workers of rebels who escaped to British custody. They captured an enemy commanding officer and proved pivotal in securing the victory-for the British.Īfter the battle, Lord Dunmore, the royal governor of Virginia who had been forced to flee the capital of Williamsburg and form a government in exile aboard the warship HMS Fowey, ordered the British standard raised before making a startling announcement. Two days after the patriots’ military leader banned African Americans from joining his ranks, however, Black soldiers proved their mettle at the Battle of Kemp’s Landing along the Virginia coast. On November 12, 1775, General George Washington decreed in his orders that “neither negroes, boys unable to bear arms, nor old men” could enlist in the Continental Army. When American colonists took up arms in a battle for independence starting in 1775, that fight for freedom excluded an entire race of people-African Americans.
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