Lord Dunmore

Unfortunately for Washington, fighting for the British was a more compelling prospect for the majority of Black people.

On November 7, 1775, Royal Governor Lord Dunmore promised freedom to enslaved Black people if they ran away from their Virginia enslavers and fought for the British in the war.

Dunmore's proclamation announced martial law in the colony.

declaring, The proclamation sparked outrage in the colony and ignited a fierce rebuke from the colonists.

But even though Dunmore was hoping to receive droves of men anxious to jump into battle, historian Woody Holton tells us that The Ethiopian Regiment, as Lord Dunmar's military unit would be called, was composed of around 300 Black men who fled their enslavers in Virginia.

Unfortunately, this unit went on to lose the only major battle they fought, the Battle of Great Bridge on December 9, 1775.

Still, this unit of Black soldiers fighting for the British against the slaveholding colonists had profound symbolic importance.

Blood has already been spilled in Massachusetts, at Lexington, Concord, at Bunker Hill.

In Williamsburg, Lord Dunmore seized the colony's gunpowder.

And on New Year's Day, British warships bombarded Norfolk, ignited fires that spread as patriot forces joined in the destruction.

Much of the port city was left in ruins.

He recognized that when government overreaches Silence becomes complicity.

In 1774, he was elected to Virginia's House of Burgesses.

He chaired the local committee of safety in Dunmore County, and he became involved in the same revolutionary movement led by Virginians like George Washington and Patrick Henry.

Because by the end of 1775, Virginia was at war.