Please note this is a hybrid event - you have the option to attend in person or virtually. Registrations are required for all attendees. For in-person attendees, the event will run from 12 - 2 pm and will include lunch. The live stream will begin around 12:55 pm (virtual attendees will be sent a link for the event via email).
Join DACOR for a discussion with author Andrew Lawler about his latest book A Perfect Frenzy: A Royal Governor, His Black Allies, and the Crisis that Spurred the American Revolution. Focusing on Lord Dunmore, ancestor of the last private owner of the DACOR Bacon House, Virginia Murray Bacon, and whose portrait is displayed on the second floor of the House, and his Black allies, Lawler will share the largely untold story of rebellion in Virginia that will forever change our understanding of the American Revolution. This program is particularly apt now, days after the 250th anniversary of the publication of Dunmore's Proclamation (November 7, 1775) and in the 200th year of the historic DACOR Bacon House.
As the American Revolution broke out in New England in the spring of 1775, dramatic events unfolded in Virginia that proved every bit as decisive as the battles of Lexington and Concord and Bunker Hill in uniting the colonies against Britain. Virginia, the largest, wealthiest, and most populous province in British North America, was led by Lord Dunmore, who counted George Washington as his close friend. But the Scottish earl lacked troops, so when patriots imperiled the capital of Williamsburg, he threatened to free and arm enslaved Africans—two of every five Virginians—to fight for the Crown.
Virginia’s tobacco elite was reluctant to go to war with Britain but outraged at this threat to their human property. Dunmore fled the capital to build a stronghold in the colony’s largest city, the port of Norfolk. As enslaved people flocked to his camp, skirmishes broke out. “Lord Dunmore has commenced hostilities in Virginia,” wrote Thomas Jefferson. “It has raised our countrymen into a perfect frenzy.” With a patriot army marching on Norfolk, the royal governor freed those enslaved and sent them into battle against their former owners. In retribution, and with Jefferson’s encouragement, furious rebels burned Norfolk to the ground on January 1, 1776, blaming the crime on Dunmore.
The port’s destruction and Dunmore’s emancipation prompted Virginia’s patriot leaders to urge the Continental Congress to split from Britain, breaking the deadlock among the colonies and leading to adoption of the Declaration of Independence. Days later, Dunmore and his Black allies withdrew from Virginia, but the legacy of their fight would lead, ultimately, to Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation Proclamation.
Chronicling these stunning and widely overlooked events in full for the first time, A Perfect Frenzy offers a striking new perspective on the American Revolution that reorients our understanding of its causes, highlights the radically different motivations between patriots in the North and South, and reveals the seeds of the nation’s racial divide.
Andrew Lawler is a journalist and author who has written about history, science, religion, and politics from dozens of countries. He is author of four books: A Perfect Frenzy: A Royal Governor, His Black Allies, and the Crisis That Spurred the American Revolution; the prize-winning Under Jerusalem: The Buried History of the World’s Most Contested City; the national bestseller The Secret Token: Myth, Obsession, and the Search for the Lost Colony of Roanoke; and the acclaimed Why Did The Chicken Cross The World: The Epic Saga Of The Bird That Powers Civilization.
Andrew’s byline has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, National Geographic, Smithsonian, and many other publications. He is a contributing writer for Science and contributing editor for Archaeology, as well as a National Geographic Explorer and a Pulitzer Center grantee. His work has won a number of journalism awards, and appeared several times in The Best of Science and Nature Writing.
Location
Setting: Hybrid DACOR Bacon House OR Online 1801 F Street, NW Washington, DC 20006 UNITED STATES
Dunmore's Proclamation Declaration by John Murray, Earl of Dunmore and the royal governor of Virginia, that established martial law and offered freedom to enslaved people who joined the British army. A Perfect Frenzy Andrew Lawler
