The American Revolution and Enslaved People’s Claims to Liberty

Lord Dunmore’s 1775 proclamation in Virginia offers a specific development that supports Annette Gordon-Reed’s interpretation of the American Revolution. As conflict between Britain and its colonies grew, Virginia’s royal governor, Lord Dunmore, declared martial law and offered freedom to enslaved people who escaped their enslavers and joined the British. The offer was limited and self-interested: Dunmore sought to strengthen the British position, not to advance racial equality. Yet enslaved people’s response gives the episode its historical significance. Some joined his forces, and many others later sought freedom with the British during the war. Their choices suggest that at least some enslaved people understood the conflict as a possible route out of bondage. The proclamation did not prove that all enslaved people interpreted Revolutionary language in the same way, but it made the struggle over liberty a tangible question of their own circumstances.

The political context made the offer more than an isolated military recruitment measure. Revolutionary arguments increasingly treated liberty and consent as central questions of legitimate government, while enslaved people were denied control over their labor and movement. Gordon-Reed’s interpretation focuses on the connection enslaved people could see between colonists’ complaints about being ruled and their own experience of enslavement. Dunmore’s proclamation created a concrete wartime choice within that contradiction: people held in bondage could try to leave and seek freedom by aligning themselves with Britain. The proclamation itself does not record what each person thought about colonial rhetoric. But it shows that the conflict opened a possibility that could be understood in relation to liberty, and that enslaved people had reason to consider what the competing sides might offer them.

Dunmore issued his proclamation in 1775, as the rebellion was becoming a war, and promised freedom to enslaved people who escaped their enslavers and joined the British cause. The offer was not universal: it was directed at people enslaved by rebels, and freedom depended on taking a dangerous step into a military conflict. Nevertheless, its terms connected the war directly to slavery. Freedom was not merely an abstract principle discussed by political leaders; for a person who might escape, it was a possible consequence of choosing a side. The British motive was practical, since recruiting people who could weaken rebel households and support British forces served military aims. That self-interest qualifies the meaning of the proclamation, but does not erase the opportunity enslaved people could perceive in it.

The response to the proclamation supplies evidence that enslaved people acted on the opening it created. Approximately five hundred to one thousand people joined Dunmore’s Ethiopian regiment, while thousands more later fled to British lines during the war. Those figures do not establish the motives of every person who left, and the number who enlisted directly under Dunmore was smaller than the broader wartime movement. Still, the scale of escape indicates that the possibility of freedom mattered to many people, enough for them to risk capture and punishment. Their actions support Gordon-Reed’s interpretation because they show enslaved people responding to the political and military crisis in ways tied to their own liberation. They were not simply objects of the conflict: they made choices within it, even under severe constraints.

The proclamation also helps explain how the Revolution could extend political participation beyond the leaders who initiated resistance to Britain. Enslaved people who fled to British forces did not necessarily share the colonists’ goals, and their actions should not be treated as support for either side’s entire political program. Their immediate aim could be freedom for themselves and their families. Yet the upheaval gave them an opening to influence events through escape, military service, and other forms of assistance. Some formerly enslaved people served in units such as the Black Pioneers, doing labor, skilled work, and intelligence gathering. This evidence supports a qualified version of Gordon-Reed’s interpretation: revolutionary conflict could make liberty politically consequential for enslaved people, even when their pursuit of it did not fit the revolutionaries’ own definition of the cause.

The episode also reveals why this connection should not be confused with the Revolution’s fulfillment of equality. Dunmore’s offer came from a British governor seeking military advantage, not from a general commitment to ending slavery. The American side, meanwhile, did not consistently extend its language of liberty to Black people. George Washington initially resisted allowing Black men to serve in the Continental Army, though he later permitted their enlistment. Enslaved people therefore faced constrained choices between competing powers, neither of which can be assumed to have guaranteed their rights. This tension strengthens rather than weakens the historical analysis: people could recognize an opportunity in the language and disruption of war without believing that either government had secured justice for them.

Dunmore’s proclamation is thus a persuasive example of a development from 1763 to 1800 that supports Gordon-Reed’s interpretation. Its terms linked wartime service to freedom, and the substantial movement of enslaved people toward British lines shows that many treated the war as an opportunity to change their condition. These facts do not prove that every person who fled was responding specifically to Revolutionary rhetoric, nor do they establish a single shared political consciousness among enslaved African Americans. They do show that the Revolution’s language and upheaval could intersect with enslaved people’s aspirations in practical, consequential ways. By choosing to seek freedom amid the conflict, enslaved people made the struggle over liberty relevant to their lives, while exposing the limits of a revolution that proclaimed freedom but left slavery intact.

Why this example supports the interpretation

The essay uses Dunmore’s 1775 proclamation as the specific development. It first explains the proclamation’s purpose and limits, then connects its conditional offer of freedom to enslaved people’s circumstances. Evidence of enlistment and flight supports an inference that some people saw the war as an opportunity for freedom. The conclusion keeps that inference bounded: these actions support Gordon-Reed’s interpretation, but do not prove that every enslaved person shared the same motives or political outlook.