Enslaved people’s flight to the British provoked Dunmore’s proclamation, which itself incited more rebellion

Evidence

An enslaver himself, Dunmore was no abolitionist. He issued his proclamation as a war tactic, an approach Abraham Lincoln used again nearly ninety years later. Just as enslaved people during the Civil War fled to the side they thought offered the best chance of freedom and inspired the Emancipation Proclamation, enslaved people running away to the British during the American Revolution inspired Dunmore’s proclamation, which, in turn, further provoked the actions of enslaved people in Virginia and elsewhere. Rumors of rebellions spread across the colony, many of them true as enslaved people plotted and sought their freedom. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 96

Categorization

• XREF: Directly parallels the Civil War dynamics Hannah-Jones draws, and connects to the book’s core reframing that enslaved agency drove American revolutionary events, not just white patriot grievances. — connects to: Dunmore’s emancipation offer drove white Virginians toward destroying Norfolk — Edward J. Larson, Declaring Independence, 19