Lord Dunmore's Scheme
The royal governor of Virginia, at the head of an army of freed slaves, launches a civil war amid the Revolution
This continues my series marking the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the American Revolution. Previously was “The Lost Fourteenth Colony” on September 13, 1775; next is “The Battle of Quebec” on 27 December 1775.
On this day in 1775 - November 15th - Lord Dunmore, the last royal colonial governor of Virginia, defeated the Patriots at the Battle of Kemp’s Landing in Virginia.
What was more, he won the battle at the head of a mostly-locally-recruited army, including many white Loyalists and many freed slaves who’d joined him with the promise of liberty.
From what I’ve written earlier in this series, one might get the impression that the Patriots were in complete control of the Thirteen Colonies by 1775, and Loyalists were keeping their heads down and doing nothing. That was the case in New England - but further south, things were different.
Some historians have called the American Revolution a civil war, and they weren’t wrong. In Massachusetts, this struggle was fought on a local level through fall and winter 1774, where the Patriots coerced Tories into staying silent or fleeing to British lines in Boston. But further south, without such an overwhelming Patriot majority, things were messier and took longer.
In New York, Patriots and Loyalists jockeyed for position in the state legislature for months well into 1775; it was a technically-unofficial Patriot convention in heavily-Patriot New York City which sent delegates to the Continental Congress. New York’s tardiness in raising troops hurt the Canadian Campaign, and caused some awkwardness with Congress trying to arm the Green Mountain Boys (since New York continued to claim Vermont.)
Further south still, the fight went longer and went beyond mere jockeying.
In the spring of 1775, Lord Dunmore, the colonial governor of Virginia, had finally come out firmly against the Patriot movement. Virginia wasn’t in arms or organized anywhere near the same degree as Massachusetts, but Patriot ideas were strong in the House of Burgesses and the countryside. So, Dunmore removed the powder from the Williamsburg powder magazine - which provoked Patrick Henry to gather the Patriot militia. That’d been defused; the war had not yet quite spread to Virginia then. But the threat was very much there.
A month later, after news of Bunker Hill came from Massachusetts, there came a rumor that the Patriots were going to kidnap Dunmore - so Dunmore withdrew to the nearby port of Yorktown, where some Royal Navy ships were sitting offshore. But, he quickly realized Yorktown was a trap vulnerable to siege... so he embarked on the ships.
(Some years later, another British commander at Yorktown would learn that lesson too late, to his cost.)
Dunmore and his small fleet - which would be increased by impressed merchant ships, and eventually a few reinforcements from England - quickly ruled the Chesapeake.
Virginia was founded upon the sea; most major plantations had their own docks on a river large enough for oceangoing ships. There were very few good roads, because the wide rivers of the Tidewater served as roads. For more than a century, no hostile ship had entered Virginian waters. But the colony had no navy of its own; no American colony did. So now, Virginia was wide open to Dunmore’s raids on Patriot plantations.
Dunmore, short on ships and men, kept writing England for reinforcements. A sizeable force, he pleaded correctly, could easily conquer Virginia. New England had been drilling and recruiting an army; Virginia only had comparatively-small poorly-organized militia. Or if England didn’t send reinforcements, Dunmore talked about plans to recruit local help. He could ally with the American Indians! He could free the Patriots’ slaves and recruit them into an army!
Rumors got out. They’d run rampant from the first moments in Williamsburg when Dunmore had threatened to arm his house slaves to defend the governor’s mansion if the Patriots attacked it. That’d never actually happened... but the very idea was anathema to Virginian planters.
And then the rumors started coming true. When Dunmore raided Patriot plantations, he’d regularly invite slaves to leave with him and - in practice if not in theory - be free1. The Patriots were incensed. This was overturning the foundation of Virginian society!
The Continental Congress in Philadelphia - on October 13th - founded the Continental Navy, but that would take months to actually be able to fight. What truly delayed Dunmore’s scheme was when local Patriots in Maryland captured Dunmore’s messenger to the Indians.
With no alliance concluded with the Indians, and with reinforcements from England delayed, Dunmore pressed on further. On 7th November, he issued a proclamation freeing all slaves of Patriot masters who would leave their masters, and inviting them to take up arms for him and the King.
Over the next months, hundreds would join his “Lord Dunmore’s Ethiopian2 Regiment.” Perhaps 2,000 slaves in all enlisted for their freedom, plus women and children - not precisely included in his proclamation, but they came anyway, and were given freedom for it.
Dunmore didn’t do this out of morality. At least, I don’t see any sign of it. He didn’t show any opposition to slavery before the Revolution, and afterwards, he’d be reassigned as Governor of the Bahamas and buy a slave-run plantation there with no apparent moral qualms. As far as I can tell, this was just a point of expediency for him.
But thousands of slaves were eager to seize at the chance anyway. They would risk their lives - most of them would die, in battle or of smallpox or of other diseases - but they would live and die free. And, Dunmore did have a firm sense of justice to them; he rightly insisted that he and other British commanders would honor the promise he’d made to them.
Dunmore set up his base in Norfolk. It was a good move. It was Virginia’s largest city and chief port at the time, and more firmly Loyalist than the rest of the colony. Quickly, it became more firmly Loyalist as Loyalists flocked to the protection of Dunmore and his forces, and Patriots left.
Meanwhile, the Patriots’ government, a newly-elected Virginia Convention, was sitting in Williamsburg and quickly raising militia. Some went to join the Continental Army besieging Boston and attacking Canada, but others were quickly sent to fight Dunmore.
On November 7th, as Dunmore issued his proclamation, the first Patriot attack force left Williamsburg. It was perhaps 250 men, led by Colonel William Woodford, a planter and member of the Convention, who would later join the Continental Army and continue serving till he was captured at the Siege of Charleston in 1780. Leaving from Williamsburg, they crossed the James River at Jamestown and - the Royal Navy commanding the seas further downriver - started (on 10 November) the long march down the James River and around the Elizabeth River to Norfolk.
The only bridge over the main branch of the Elizabeth River was at the town of Great Bridge. (Downriver, it was too wide to be bridged; upriver, it widened again into the Great Dismal Swamp.) Then after that, the road wound over the eastern branch of the Elizabeth at Kemp’s Landing, before turning west again to Norfolk. On November 14th, as Dunmore was arguing with his officers about how or whether to defend Norfolk, he heard the Patriots were at Great Bridge3. Quickly, he ordered his troops to assemble and marched south to battle. We don’t know how many he had - we know of 131 white men, plus an unknown number of black volunteers. But just before dawn on the 15th, Dunmore and his men reached Kemp’s Landing4 to find the Patriots were nearing the river but hadn’t yet crossed that bridge.
Dunmore quickly built fortifications and advanced on the Patriots. The Patriots started firing too early, missed, and quickly (as Dunmore put it) “fled on all quarters.” The Ethiopian Regiment pursued in good order. As a Norfolk loyalist put it, Dunmore “could have easily surrounded and cut off most of these people, but he was satisfied with taking some prisoners.”
Dunmore marched back into Norfolk in triumph, and immediately issued a proclamation offering pardon to everyone who would swear allegiance to King George. His Ethiopian Regiment had proven themselves in combat. He was confident that - with volunteers both black and white, with time to train them, and with ships and arms from England - he would quickly be able to reclaim Virginia for the king.
The Patriots were, indeed, frightened by this.
But Patriot reinforcements were already gathering. Dunmore’s schemes would come to naught in the end.
Meanwhile…
At the same time, the Revolution continued elsewhere in America. At Boston, George Washington and the Continental Army continued to besiege the British troops in the city. The British commander, General Gage, finally received orders recalling him home (issued when news of the Battle of Bunker Hill had reached England); on 11 October, he set sail for England leaving General William Howe in command.
In Canada, the Patriot army of invasion captured Montreal on November 13, without a battle. The royal governor, General Carlton, had evacuated it, concluding he didn’t have enough forces to withstand an attack by the full Patriot army, especially given the citizens’ dissatisfaction and unwillingness to fight.
In South Carolina, the royal governor - William Campbell - was, like Dunmore, sitting in a Royal Navy ship offshore while the Patriots held the capitol. Local Loyalists were organizing in the backcountry, but fighting had not yet broken out.
In North Carolina, Loyalists were laying preparations for a campaign that would break out in early 1776.
And in London, on October 26th, King George opened the new session of Parliament with a speech declaring the American colonies in rebellion.
Dunmore’s grand schemes would fail. The difficulties of organizing raw recruits into an army, the Patriots’ greater preexisting organization, a lack of British support, and - above all - a smallpox outbreak, would drive him away and secure Virginia for the Patriots. The few survivors of the Ethiopian Regiment, with Dunmore himself, would sail north to join the British attack on New York in mid-1776 and win their freedom or die free there.
The Battle of Kemp’s Landing did not accomplish anything in the end, except for the individual slaves who won their liberty.
But Dunmore’s plan had a chance of working. If his naval ships had been able to keep raiding plantations, he would have at least forced the Patriots to spend troops garrisoning Virginia rather than in the Continental Army. Or, perhaps - if enough slaves had flocked to his promise of freedom - he could have cemented British control over Virginia. That would have given them a secure base for future campaigns, and probably kept royal control over the entire South and possibly West. The United States might have nothing south of Maryland or west of Pennsylvania.
This shows us that the American Revolution was more complicated than a simple list of battles, and the narrative of events less clear outside New England. The Patriot grip on the South was looser than one might think. Dunmore’s plan was quite plausible, and if he had succeeded in Virginia it could have easily led to more British success in the South.
Knowing that, we can imagine what the victory at Kemp’s Landing might have meant to the British; and what the defeat there might have meant to the embattled Patriots in Williamsburg or South Carolina. And we can see the uncertainties of history in the making.
This was the same thing some Union generals did early in the American Civil War.
Dunmore’s contemporaries would have considered this a respectable classically-derived name for black people.
Great Bridge is near modern VA 168, south of downtown Norfolk.
Kemp’s Landing is near the modern intersection of VA 165 and VA 190 in the western outskirts of Virginia Beach. The road from Norfolk, to cross rivers at narrow points, wound east past Kemp’s Landing and then south to Great Bridge.
I think it might have worked if the black troops had not died of fever. George MacDonald Fraser's 'Black Ajax' claimed Dunmore later tried to make a black boxer champion of England, and the boxer later trained the hero boxer of 'Black Ajax'.
Very nice as always. You can watch the first episode of the Ken Burns documentary online. https://www.pbs.org/video/the-american-revolution-episode-1-in-order-to-be-free/