Dunmore's New World

The Extraordinary Life of a Royal Governor in Revolutionary America--with Jacobites, Counterfeiters, Land Schemes, Shipwrecks, Scalping, Indian Politics, Runaway Slaves, and Two Illegal Royal Weddings

James Corbett David

• Publisher: University of Virginia Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9780813934242
• eBook ISBN:
  9780813934259
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Early American History
• Index: History

Dunmore's New World tells the stranger-than-fiction story of Lord Dunmore, the last royal governor of Virginia, whose long-neglected life boasts a measure of scandal and intrigue rare in the annals of the colonial world. Dunmore not only issued the first formal proclamation of emancipation in American history; he also undertook an unauthorized Indian war in the Ohio Valley, now known as Dunmore's War, that was instrumental in opening the Kentucky country to white settlement. In this entertaining biography, James Corbett David brings together a rich cast of characters as he follows Dunmore on his perilous path through the Atlantic world from 1745 to 1809.

Dunmore was a Scots aristocrat who, even with a family history of treason, managed to obtain a commission in the British army, a seat in the House of Lords, and three executive appointments in the American colonies. He was an unusual figure, deeply invested in the imperial system but quick to break with convention. Despite his 1775 proclamation promising freedom to slaves of Virginia rebels, Dunmore was himself a slaveholder at a time when the African slave trade was facing tremendous popular opposition in Great Britain. He also supported his daughter throughout the scandal that followed her secret, illegal marriage to the youngest son of George III—a relationship that produced two illegitimate children, both first cousins of Queen Victoria.

Within this single narrative, Dunmore interacts with Jacobites, slaves, land speculators, frontiersmen, Scots merchants, poor white fishermen, the French, the Spanish, Shawnees, Creeks, patriots, loyalists, princes, kings, and a host of others. This history captures the vibrant diversity of the political universe that Dunmore inhabited alongside the likes of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. A transgressive imperialist, Dunmore had an astounding career that charts the boundaries of what was possible in the Atlantic world in the Age of Revolution.

Notes

Abbreviations

AA	[Peter Force], ed. American Archives. 4th ser., vols. 1, 3, 4. Washington, D.C.: M. St. Clair Clarke and Peter Force, 1837, 1840, 1843
A.O.	Great Britain, Audit Office Papers, Records of the American Loyalist Claims Commission, 1776–1831
C.O.	Great Britain, Colonial Office Papers
DC	“Dunmore Correspondence, 1771–1778,” Special Collections, John D. Rockefeller Jr. Library, Williamsburg, Va.
DFP	Dunmore Family Papers, National Records of Scotland, Edinburgh
DHDW	Reuben Gold Thwaites and Louise Phelps Kellogg, eds. Documentary History of Dunmore’s War, 1774. Madison: Wisconsin Historical Society, 1905
Documents Relative	E. B. O’Callaghan, ed. Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New-York. Vol. 8. Albany: Weed, Parsons, 1857
HNP	Hamond Naval Papers, Accession #680, Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia, Charlottesville
LPCC	Cadwallader Colden. Letters and Papers of Cadwallader Colden, vols. 7, 9. Collections of the New-York Historical Society 56, 68 (1923, 1937)
NDAR	William Bell Clark et al., eds. Naval Documents of the American Revolution. Vols. 1–8. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1964–80
NRAS	National Register of Archives for Scotland
NRS	National Records of Scotland
PGWC	George Washington. The Papers of George Washington, Colonial Series. Vols. 8–10. Edited by W. W. Abbot et al. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1993–95
PGWR	George Washington. The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series. Vols. 1–15. Edited by W. W. Abbot et al. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1985–2006
PWJ	William Johnson. The Papers of Sir William Johnson. Vols. 7, 8, 12, 13. Edited by Milton Hamilton. Albany: University of the State of New York, Division of Archives and History, 1931–62
RV	William J. Van Schreeven and Robert L. Scribner, eds. Revolutionary Virginia: The Road to Independence. Vols. 1–7. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1973–83
VG	Virginia Gazette (with editor information)

Introduction

1. Privy Council Minutes, 27, 28 January 1794, George III, Later Correspondence, 2:154, 157, 166.

2. George Washington to Joseph Reed, 15 December 1775, George Washington to Richard Henry Lee, 26 December 1775, PGWR, 2:553, 611.

3. For the case against Dunmore, see [Wylly], Short Account. The quotation is from an unnamed source in Craton, History of the Bahamas, 174.

4. Quoted in Hamilton, Biography, 93.

5. Quoted in Mark Lawrence McPhail, “Dunmore’s Proclamation (November 7, 1775),” in Blanco, ed., American Revolution, 1:490. For demonization of Dunmore, see Holton, Forced Founders, 158; McDonnell, Politics of War, 135.

6. Freneau, “Lord Dunmore’s Petition to the Legislature of Virginia,” in Freneau, Poems, 199–200.

7. Lendrum, Concise and Impartial History, 2:64–67. According to David Ramsay, another early chronicler of the Revolution, Dunmore’s “headstrong passions” led him into all sorts of “follies”: History of the American Revolution, 1:319.

8. Quoted in McPhail, “Dunmore’s Proclamation,” 1:492.

9. Bancroft, History of the United States, 4:215.

10. Caley, “Dunmore,” ch. 30. John Selby’s bicentennial pamphlet on Dunmore in Virginia, entitled Dunmore, is one of the few treatments that reflects Caley’s influence.

11. Andrew O’Shaughnessy sets out to address this problem in his forthcoming book, The Men Who Lost the War. I am grateful to Andrew for lending me portions of this work while in progress. Some recent biographies of the founding generation include Joseph J. Ellis, Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation (New York: Knopf, 2000); David McCullough, John Adams (New York: Touchstone, 2001); Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2003); Ron Chernow, Alexander Hamilton (New York: Penguin, 2004); Joseph J. Ellis, His Excellency: George Washington (New York: Knopf, 2004).

12. For example, see Philip D. Morgan and Andrew Jackson O’Shaughnessy, “Arming Slaves in the American Revolution,” in Brown and Morgan, eds., Arming Slaves, 180–207; Brown, Moral Capital; Holton, Forced Founders; Craton and Saunders, Islanders; Frey, Water from the Rock, 114, 186. More balanced treatments are Jasanoff, Liberty’s Exiles; McDonnell, Politics of War; Pybus, Epic Journeys of Freedom.

13. Williams, History of the Negro Troops, 16–21; Quarles, “Lord Dunmore as Liberator”; Quarles, Negro in the American Revolution. Eager to underscore blacks’ contributions to the revolutionary cause, Luther Porter Jackson, another pioneering black historian, underestimates the importance of Dunmore’s proclamation: “Virginia Negro Soldiers and Seamen,” 249.

14. Schama, Rough Crossings, 70, 74.

15. Griffin, American Leviathan, ch. 4, esp. 98, 123.

16. For examples in the same period, see Countryman, People in Revolution, 47–48, 81.

17. Stephen Conway argues that this imperial paternalism, which in some ways began with the introduction of foreigners and new Indian nations into the empire after the Seven Years’ War, was based more on authority than liberty: British Isles, 334.

18. Lawlor and Lawlor, Harbour Island, 78.

19. This conclusion runs counter to a group of studies that emphasizes affective bonds between colonial subjects and the monarch, even on the eve of the American Revolution: McConville, King’s Three Faces; Price, Nursing Fathers; Bushman, King and People.

20. John Brewer has noted the need for further inquiry into political consent: “Eighteenth-Century British State,” in Stone, ed., Imperial State, 68.

21. Egerton, Death or Liberty, 84; Morgan and O’Shaughnessy, “Arming Slaves,” 184; Brown, Moral Capital, 309; Holton, Forced Founders, 152–61; Frey, “Between Slavery and Freedom,” 387–88; Frey, Water from the Rock, 63, 78–79, 114, 141, 326. Frey notes how unusual it was for Dunmore to use slaves in combat: “Between Slavery and Freedom,” 388.

22. I am indebted to Richard Buel for this analogy.

23. Williamson to Dundas, 13 September 1794, quoted in Buckley, Slaves in Red Coats, 16; see also 143 for views of blacks among British officials.

24. Privy Council Minutes, 27, 28 January 1794, George III, Later Correspondence, 2:163–65; “Marriages,” Gentleman’s Magazine 64 (1794): 87–88; Gillen, Royal Duke, 76.

25. George III, Later Correspondence, 2:155.

26. “Marriages,” 87–88.

27. George III, Later Correspondence, 2:150n2.

28. Prince of Wales to Prince Augustus Frederick, 4 September 1799, George, Prince of Wales, Correspondence, 4:74.

29. “Marriages,” 87.

ONE. Family Politics, 1745–1770

1. On the Rebellion of 1745, see Plank, Rebellion and Savagery; Duffy, The ’45 (troop estimate on 193); Black, Culloden; Lenman, Jacobite Risings.

2. On the Murray family history, see Paul, ed., Scots Peerage, 3:383–96. Charles Murray’s honors and positions are also in “History of the Dunmore Branch of the Murrays of Atholl and Tullibardine,” DFP, NRAS3253/Bundle 29, 356–57, 651 (hereafter “HDB”). HDB consists of miscellaneous typescript chapters of an incomplete family history. See also Paul Hopkins, “Murray, Charles, First Earl of Dunmore (1661–1710),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Online, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/19593. The second earl was made general in April 1745: London Gazette, 2–6 April 1745, 1. On the second earl, see also William C. Lowe, “Murray, John, Second Earl of Dunmore (1685–1752),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Online, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/40431.

3. “Contract of Marriage betwixt William M...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• One Family Politics, 1745–1770
• Two The Absence of Empire, 1770–1773
• Three Promised Land, 1773–1774
• Four A Refugee’s Revolution, 1775–1781
• Five Abiding Ambitions, 1781–1796
• Conclusion, 1796–1809
• A Note on Method: Biography and Empire
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index