The Great Stain

by Noel Rae

  Lord Dunmore, Virginia’s last royal governor and author of this country’s first emancipation proclamation. Issued in November, 1775, and offering freedom to slaves who enlisted under the royal banner, the proclamation shocked and alienated Loyalists as well as Patriots—a major contribution to the American cause. About a thousand slaves enlisted in the “Ethiopian Regiment” and bore the insignia “Liberty to Slaves.” Some were killed at the Battle of Great Bridge; some deserted; many died of smallpox while on board ships evacuating them to New York; and some eventually went with Dunmore to the Bahamas, where it appears that most were re-enslaved.

  CHAPTER 6

  THE REVOLUTION

  IN 1770, WRITING TO LORD HILLSBOROUGH, THE MINISTER RESPONSIBLE for Britain’s colonies, Governor William Bull painted a rosy picture of how things were going in South Carolina. “Agriculture is in a very prosperous state,” he wrote. “The introducing rice hath proved a very fortunate circumstance to this province as it is a grain which yields the most plentiful harvest when the ground is overflowed with water. Many large swamps, otherwise useless and affording inaccessible shelter for deserting slaves and wild beasts, have been drained and cultivated.” Indigo, hemp, flour and tobacco were also doing well. “The number of dwelling-houses in town [Charleston] taken this summer was one thousand two hundred and ninety-two, and the white inhabitants five thousand and thirty, and the black five thousand and eight hundred and thirty-one, employed as domestic servants and mechanics [workmen].” Trade was brisk. “We employ near five hundred sail of vessels to carry off the superfluous produce and import supplies for the wants of the province. Though by the annual importation of three or four thousand Negroes the balance of trade may be against us, yet we cannot be considered in debt as the Negroes remain part of our stock and are the means of increasing our riches.” Their number now totaled seventy-five thousand, one hundred and seventy-eight.

  The fact that blacks slightly outnumbered whites in Charleston, and greatly outnumbered them in the rest of the colony, did not create a security problem. “The defense of our province as far as our own power can avail is provided for by our militia against foreign, and patrols against domestic enemies.” In times of great danger the militia was to be reinforced “with a number of trusty Negroes (and we have many such) not exceeding one-third of the corps they are to join.”

  Five years later, the next—and last—royal governor of South Carolina was also writing a report. This was Lord William Campbell, who had arrived at Charleston on board the Scorpion in June, 1775. By then fighting had broken out in New England, and the government of South Carolina was in the hands of the Committee and Council of Safety, headed by the merchant and slave-trader Henry Laurens. The topic of Lord Campbell’s letter to Lord Dartmouth was “the accursed politics of this country” and “the dreadful tragedy acted here on Friday the 18th of this month [August, 1775].”

  As Dartmouth must already know, “numberless arts have been used and the most notorious falsehoods propagated to work up the people in every part of America to that pitch of madness and fury to which they are arrived.” These falsehoods included a letter “from a Mr. Lee in London to a leading man in this place in which he boldly asserted the ministry had in agitation not only to bring down the Indians on the inhabitants of this province, but also to instigate and encourage an insurrection amongst their slaves. It was also reported, and universally believed, that to effect this plan 14,000 stand of arms were actually on board the Scorpion, the sloop of war I came out in. Words, I am told, cannot express the flame that this occasioned amongst all ranks and degrees; the cruelty and savage barbarity of the scheme was the conversation of all companies.”

  It was true that a few people in London had toyed with the idea of recruiting various Indian tribes, but so half-hearted was the British conduct of the war that little was actually done. As to encouraging a slave insurrection, this was hardly likely to be even considered by George III’s aristocratic ministers, several of whom were absentee owners of sugar plantations in the West Indies. However, according to Campbell, it was not long before someone claimed to have overheard some slaves talking about why the militia was drilling so often, whereupon “several of those poor ignorant creatures [were] taken up, who, terrified at the recollection of former cruelties, were easily induced to accuse themselves and others to escape punishment. Among the rest one Thomas Jeremiah, a free black commonly called Jerry, was taken into custody on the accusation of one of those wretches. This unfortunate man, my lord, has by his industry acquired a property of upwards of £1000 sterling, was in a very thriving situation, had several slaves of his own who he employed in fishing, and was one of the best pilots in the harbour … It was needless to urge the improbability of a fellow in affluent circumstances who was universally acknowledged to be remarkably sensible and sagacious, possessed of slaves of his own, entering into so wild a scheme as to instigate an insurrection without support, without encouragement (for happily not a shadow of evidence appeared that any white man was concerned)—it was needless to urge this or any other argument in his favour. To trial he was brought a few days after my arrival before two justices and five freeholders according to the Negro Act, and after sitting a week and taking uncommon pains to get evidence, no proof could be produced to convict him or give sufficient grounds to believe any attempt of the kind they pretended to fear was ever intended.” But instead of being released “Jerry was ordered to be remanded to prison, and his trial resumed two months afterwards, by which time they hoped to procure more evidence. It is with horror, my lord, I relate the remainder of the story. On Friday the 11th of this month this unhappy man was brought to trial, if such a process deserved that name, and was sentenced to be hanged and afterwards burned.”

  Campbell demanded to see the trial record and “I assure you, my lord, my blood run cold when I read on what grounds they had doomed a fellow creature to death.” He then, as governor, proposed clemency, but this “raised such a clamour amongst the people as is incredible, and they openly and loudly declared if I granted the man a pardon they would hang him at my door.” The Rev. Mr. Smith, a Patriot clergyman, visited Jerry several times in prison and came away convinced of his innocence. The “wretched slave” who had been the main witness against him retracted his testimony. But although Jerry himself “was perfectly resigned to his unhappy, his undeserved fate,” Campbell “determined on one more effort” and appealed to Henry Laurens, the chairman of the Committee and Council of Safety, which had more or less taken over the government. But Laurens, who disliked Jerry, calling him “puffed up by prosperity” and “grown to an amazing pitch of vanity and ambition,” refused to interfere; and so, “to conclude this heartrending story, the man was murdered, I can call it nothing else.”

  Jerry was not the only black troublemaker Laurens had to deal with. In March of 1776 he received a letter from Colonel Stephen Bull about the situation in Savannah, where an English attack was expected and where some two hundred escaped slaves had taken refuge on nearby Tybee Island. In a postscript which he asked Laurens to keep confidential, Bull wrote: “The matter is this: It is far better for the public and the owners if the deserted Negroes on Tybee Island …be shot, if they cannot be taken.” But rather than use his own troops for this purpose, Bull recommended that the runaways “had better be shot by the Creek Indians, as it perhaps may deter other Negroes from deserting, and will establish a hatred or aversion between the Indians and the Negroes.” He did not, however, want to take sole responsibility for the proposed massacre, and asked for the Council’s backing. In their reply Laurens and the others agreed on the need “to destroy all those rebellious Negroes” and “if Indians are the most proper hands, let them be employed on this Service.”

  Virginia also had a Scottish lord for its last royal governor. This was John Murray, Earl of Dunmore, reviled by Patriots for his notorious Proclamation of November 7, 1775, issued, he claimed, with great reluctance but forced into it “by a body of men unlawfully assemb
led and … now on its march to attack His Majesty’s troops, and destroy the well-disposed of this colony. To defeat such treasonable purposes,” he was not only declaring martial law but also requiring “every person capable of bearing arms to resort to His Majesty’s standard or be looked upon as traitors to His Majesty’s crown and government, and thereby become liable to the penalty the law inflicts upon such offenses, such as forfeiture of life, confiscation of lands, etc.” This was bad enough, but worse was to come: “And I do hereby further declare all indented servants, Negroes, or others (appertaining to rebels) free, that are able and willing to bear arms, they joining His Majesty’s troops as soon as may be, for the more speedily reducing this colony to a proper sense of their duty to His Majesty’s crown and dignity.”

  Naturally, there was a counter-proclamation, this one issued by the Virginia Convention on January 25, 1776: “Whereas Lord Dunmore … hath offered freedom to such able-bodied slaves as are willing to join him, and take up arms against the good people of this colony, giving thereby encouragement to a general insurrection, which may induce a necessity of inflicting the severest punishments upon those unhappy people already deluded by his base and insidious arts; and whereas by an act of the general assembly now in force in this colony it is enacted that all Negro, or other slaves, conspiring to rebel or make insurrection, shall suffer death …” nevertheless, as yet another example of “the favorable and kind dispositions shewn by the convention and the natives of this colony,” it was resolved that “to the end that all such who have taken this unlawful and wicked step may return in safety to their duty and escape the punishment due to their crimes, we hereby promise pardon to them, they surrendering themselves to Colonel William Woodford or any other commander of our troops, and not appearing in arms after the publication hereof. And we do further earnestly recommend it to all humane and benevolent persons in this colony to explain and make known this our offer of mercy to those unfortunate people.”

  Reporting back to London, Dunmore was pleased with how things were going. “There are between two and three hundred come in, and those I form into corps as they come in, giving them white officers and non-commissioners in proportion.” The unit was called Lord Dunmore’s Ethiopian Regiment and their flag bore the motto “Liberty to Slaves.” Among those who enlisted were several slaves belonging to Colonel Landon Carter, the perpetually disgruntled lord of Sabine Hall, passages from whose diary appeared earlier. Since then things had continued to get worse.

  “June 26 [1776]. Last night after going to bed, Moses, my son’s man, Joe, Billy, Postillion John, Mulatto Peter, Tom, Panticove, Manuel and Lancaster Sam, ran away, to be sure, to Lord Dunmore, for they got privately into Beale’s room before dark and took away my son’s gun and one I had there, took out of his drawer in my passage all his ammunition furniture, Landon’s bag of bullets and all the Powder, and went off in my Petty Auger [canoe] new trimmed, and it is supposed that Mr. Robinson’s People are gone with them, for a skow they came down in is, it seems, at my Landing. These accursed villains have stolen Landon’s silver buckles, George’s shirts, Tom Parker’s new waistcoat and breeches.

  “June 29. At 7 in the morning after their departure some minute men at Mousquito Point saw the Petty Auger with ten stout men in her going very fast on the Middlesex shore. They pursued and fired at them, whereupon the Negroes left the boat and took to the shore where they were followed by the minute men.

  “July 3. Monday at Court we heard that the King and Queen [counties] men below had killed a mulatto and two of the blacks out of the 8 of my people who ran away, and the remaining 5 surrendered; how true it is I don’t know.” And indeed news was hard to come by. Six days later a shopkeeper “who I have a long time known to be an egregious liar,” reported “that some runaways told him they saw some slaves who had run away from Dunmore, who told him that they saw Moses on the Island [Gwynn’s Island, Dunmore’s base in Chesapeake Bay;] who swore to them if he could get back he would return to his master; for Dunmore had deceived all the poor slaves and he never met so barbarous or so vile a fellow in all his life.” Beale, Carter’s steward, also reported that a militia captain had told him that “the slaves were returning daily, most miserably.”

  Following Beale’s report, Carter had this consoling dream:

  “July 25. A strange dream this day about these runaway people. One of them I dreamt awakened me, and appeared most wretchedly meager and wan. He told me of their great sorrow, that all of them had been wounded by the minutemen, had hid themselves in a cave they had dug and lived ever since on what roots they could grabble, and he had come to ask if I would endeavour to get them pardoned, should they come in, for they knew they should be hanged for what they had done.”

  A year later he made this final diary entry on the subject: “July 10. [1777.] I am glad when I reflect on my own conduct to Moses and his gang of runaways that I have no kind of severity in the least to accuse myself of to one of them; but on the contrary a behaviour on my part that should have taught them gratitude if there ever was a virtue of the sort in such creatures.” He then lists some of the benefits that, thanks largely to his knowledge of medicine, he had conferred on these ungrateful wretches:

  “1st, Mr. Moses, before I lent him to my son, was so very subject to worms as to be at times almost in the jaws of death. And yet by God’s blessing my care constantly saved him. 2nd, Mr. Manuel I really obliged by bringing Suky, his wife; he then took a fancy from a distant quarter. And at last I purchased the rascal’s life condemned by the law, and at the expense of £16. 3rd, Mr. Panticove run a sharpened tobacco stick at his calf almost into his body, and he, to the astonishment of Dr. Jones, I saved by God’s permission.” (Mrs. Panticove, by the way, was “a jade so fiery in her temper and her lusts that the children are oft left by her whilst she is running about to satiate her desires.”) “4th, Mr. Peter was so accustomed to bleed at the nose that though often given over by the doctors I entirely cured, by the favour of heaven. 5th, Mr. Joe to appearance struck dead with lightning for some days, and yet by God’s grace I alone saved and restored him. 6th, Mr. Sam, a sheep stealer under a process below which never reached him. I endeavoured to protect him. 7th, Mr. Tom I ever used with the greatest respect.” (This although Mr. Tom was “a rogue that sold everything,” and “too impudent and, saucy to follow orders.”) “8th, Mr. Billy, a fellow too honest and mild in temper, who would not have gone away but to please his father Manuel, who ever was a villain.”

  Things did not go well for Dunmore’s Ethiopian Regiment. As was often to happen to black troops, their lives were thrown away in a suicidal frontal assault, this one at the battle of Long Bridge. Those survivors who did not then die of dysentery and fever were transferred to pioneer units. But the real effect of Dunmore’s Proclamation was political rather than military. “Hell itself could not have vomited any thing more black than his design of emancipating our slaves,” wrote an outraged Philadelphian. In the opinion of Edward Rutledge, nothing did more “to work an eternal separation between Great Britain and the Colonies.” The Continental Congress described it as “tearing up the foundations of civil authority and government.” Also, as a letter writer to the Virginia Gazettte, pointed out, “to none is freedom promised but to such as are able to do Lord Dunmore’s service. The aged, the infirm, the women and children, are still to remain the property of their masters, of masters who will be provoked to severity should part of their slaves desert them … But should there be any amongst the Negroes weak enough to believe that Lord Dunmore intends to do them a kindness, and wicked enough to provoke the fury of the Americans against their defenseless fathers and mothers, their wives, their women and children, let them only consider the difficulty of effecting their escape, and what they must expect to suffer if they fall into the hands of the Americans. Let them farther consider what must be their fate should the English prove conquerors in this dispute. If we can judge of the future from the past, it will not be much mended. Long have the American
s, moved by compassion, and actuated by sound policy, endeavoured to stop the progress of slavery. Our assemblies have repeatedly passed acts laying heavy duties upon imported Negroes, by which they meant altogether to prevent the horrid traffick; but their humane intentions have been as often frustrated by the cruelty and covetousness of a set of English merchants who prevailed upon the king to repeal our kind and merciful acts, little indeed to the credit of his humanity. Can it then be supposed that the Negroes will be better used by the English, who have always encouraged and upheld this slavery, than by their present masters, who pity their condition, who wish in general to make it as easy and comfortable as possible, and who would willingly, were it in their power, or were they permitted, not only prevent any more Negroes from losing their freedom, but restore it to such as have already unhappily lost it? No, the ends of Lord Dunmore and his party being answered, they will either give up the offending Negroes to the rigour of the laws they have broken, or sell them in the West Indies, where every year they sell many thousands of their miserable brethren, to perish either by the inclemency of the weather, or the cruelty of barbarous masters. Be not then, ye Negroes, tempted by this proclamation to ruin yourselves! I have given you a faithful view of what you are to expect; and I declare before God, in doing it, I have considered your welfare, as well as that of the country. Whether you will profit by my advice, I cannot tell; but this I know, that whether we suffer or not, if you desert us, you most certainly will.” (These last few sentences seem rather odd, addressed as they are directly to Negro slaves, few of whom can have been regular readers of the Virginia Gazette.)