A Perfect Frenzy

At the same time as the American Revolution gathered momentum in 1775 in Massachusetts at Lexington and Concord and Bunker Hill, a series of dramatic events in Virginia proved just as important in uniting the colonies against Britain albeit for very different reasons. As redcoats squared off against New England farmers, the royal governor of Virginia, Lord Dunmore close friend to George Washington and other Virginia elites, but feeling the heat of revolutionary fervor in his colony publicly threatened, unless the rebellion abated, to offer freedom to any Black enslaved people who came to his side in the leading port city of Norfolk.

The Virginia elite, especially Washington until then still desirous of peace with Britain was outraged at the potential theft of their human property. By November, with rebellion growing, Dunmore made his emancipation formal and sent Black men into battle against their former owners. "Lord Dunmore has commenced hostilities in Virginia, Thomas Jefferson wrote John Randolph. "It has raised our countrymen into a perfect frenzy. ” Dunmore's actions aimed to snuff out the rebellion in the wealthiest and most populous colony, without whose backing independence from Britain would have been unlikely. At Jefferson's insistence, on the night of January 1, 1776, the Virginia militia burned Norfolk to the ground and blamed it on Dunmore a false accusation that finally persuaded Virginia's delegation to sign the Declaration of Independence.

Chronicling these stunning events in full for the first time, revealing the vastly different motivations that drove Virginia into rebellion, A Perfect Frenzy offers striking new perspective on the American Revolution that reorients our understanding of its causes and reveals the seeds of racial tensions we feel to this day.