Lord Dunmore and the Proclamation That Ignited Revolution (with Bob Crawford of The Avett Brothers)

Bob Crawford is a musician with a historian's heart. Bassist and founding member of The Avett Brothers, his expertise on the Founding Fathers of the United States comes in handy on today's SNAFU, where Ed and Bob delve into the folly of Lord Dunmore, a Scottish-born supporter of the King and assigned royal Governor of Virginia in the 1770s. When whispers of revolution were building to an insurmountable roar, Lord Dunmore inadvertently mobilized the revolutionary war cries with one massive misstep after another. Watch this week's episode on the SNAFU YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/@SNAFUPod http://www.youtube.com/@SNAFUPod See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Virginia, they'll be like, "Oh, you dissolved our Burgess's." Exactly. "Well, can we discuss this?" Not in Boston. No, you're so right. The vibe was so different. Sam Adams, of course, he's part of all this. Sure. You know, he's just brewing beer and they're drinking it and they're getting pissed off and, you know, they're ready to go. Yeah, they're riled up.

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• 1:52Speaker 04

  Welcome to Snafu, your favorite podcast about history's greatest screw ups, or more precisely, a show about what our failures and foibles say about humanity as a whole. And spoiler alert, it's mostly not very good. I'm your host, Ed Helms, and my guest today is the definition of a multi hyphenate. He is the bassist and a founding member of one of my all time favorite bands, The Avett Brothers. He also is an historian. I love this. He hosts American History Hotline for iHeart Podcasts and The Road to Now on Sirius XM. And now, his first book is coming out. It's called America's Founding Son: John

• 2:37Speaker 04

  Quincy Adams: From President to Political Maverick. I'm super excited to have him on Snafu this week. Welcome, Bob Crawford.

• 2:47Speaker 00

  Thank you, Ed. It's a, it's a joy to be here.

• 2:51Speaker 04

  Heck, yeah. I mean, I have to say, I, I don't even remember when we met, long, long time ago, but I have only very recently learned of your history nerdiness. And this might be my new favorite thing about you.

• 3:04Speaker 00

  It's one of the better things about me. So yes, pick that one and go with it. Yeah, and it kind of comes out of the band. You know, we've been together for 25 years, maybe gone on 26. And all those years, driving around in a 15 passenger van for eight hours a day, read, read, read, you know, was it the perfect time to read? And I got really curious about American history in the, around the time of the Iraq war. How did we get here?

• 3:33Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 3:34Speaker 00

  From 1776 to Abu Ghraib, if you remember.

• 3:36Speaker 04

  Okay, yeah.

• 3:37Speaker 00

  Iraqi prison.

• 3:38Speaker 04

  That's a crooked line.

• 3:40Speaker 00

  It's a croo- it is a crooked line. And I want, and so I started with the David McCullough books. This is 2004, 2005.

• 3:47Speaker 04

  Oh, great.

• 3:48Speaker 00

  The John Adams 1776 led me to Sean Wilent's The Rise of American Democracy: From Jefferson to Lincoln. Highly recommend it. And that, I was kind of on and on from there.

• 3:58Speaker 04

  Very cool. Now, are you a, are you a, like a heavy paper book guy? Are you a Kindle guy? Audio books? Like, what's your, what's your book game?

• 4:10Speaker 00

  I am, my book game is all and everything. It is seriously, because like, you know, for- Wrote an hour American History Hotline, you're trying to absorb someone's book sometimes in two weeks. So I'll be reading the book and listening if it's on the audio.

• 4:27Speaker 04

  I do that, too.

• 4:28Speaker 00

  You know, I wrote this book on the road. Much of it I wrote on the road.

• 4:32Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 4:33Speaker 00

  Because again, you know, you've got sound check at two, stage at eight, sometimes later.

• 4:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 4:40Speaker 00

  A lot of hours to write a book.

• 4:42Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 4:42Speaker 00

  And then, you know, a lot of this research, we can, you can read the Congressional Record, going back to the first Congress, it's all online.

• 4:51Speaker 04

  So cool.

• 4:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:52Speaker 04

  Oh, man. You are a giant nerd. I love this.

• 4:56Speaker 00

  The biggest, yeah.

• 4:56Speaker 04

  Now, I can't help but connect these dots because I know it's true for me. I don't know exactly how, but I know that my interest in history is connected to my love of more traditional music forms. So like, I'm very into folk music and, and obviously I'm a banjo player, bluegrass music. And to me, I feel like those, those music forms have, have been a, like a vessel or a connection to history in a, in a way, almost in a subconscious way. I love the music, like, very sort of on a superficial level, it just makes me

• 5:37Speaker 04

  feel good. But there's also something about it that feels connected to an earlier time and to like, a deeper sort of historical meaning. And I wonder if that's true for you, because the Avett Brothers' sound is so rooted in so many of these great old music traditions.

• 5:54Speaker 00

  Right. Well, for the Avett's, it's, it's, it's Charlie Poole, or it's, you know, the songs that Doc Watson popularized in the 60s that, that really are turn of the century, if not before. And the short answer is yes. And I'm always trying to, I'm always amazed by some American songs and how far they go back.

• 6:14Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 6:15Speaker 00

  Yes. Music connects us to the past. And sometimes it connects us more directly than, than we previously imagined.

• 6:22Speaker 04

  Amen. Well said. This is a cool episode today. You obviously have a deep knowledge of sort of colonial and post-independence America. You're gonna have some room to flex today because we're dipping into a great snafu right in the pre-American revolution pressure cooker. We're heading to British-run Virginia where a Scottish aristocrat with elite nepo baby energy, John Murray, the fourth Earl of Dunmore, aka Lord Dunmore, was serving as the crown-appointed governor while the whispers of rebellion were slowly

• 7:02Speaker 04

  building into a roar. And in true snafu fashion, our Lord Dunmore managed to take a tense situation and just absolutely douse it with kerosene with a spectacularly ill-timed proclamation that fully supercharged Revolutionary War fervor up and down the colonies. Bob, are you ready to snafu?

• 7:26Speaker 00

  I am ready to snafu.

• 7:33Speaker 04

  All right. Now, does Lord Dunmore set off any alarm bells for you?

• 7:38Speaker 00

  Well, so I'm thinking Williamsburg, Virginia.

• 7:42Speaker 04

  Yes. Lord Dunmore is the crown-appointed governor of the colony Virginia.

• 7:48Speaker 00

  What year are we in?

• 7:49Speaker 04

  Right in the pre-Revolutionary War period, the 1770s, like early 1770s. But we're gonna start by going back a bit further. So here's a little backstory on our main man Dunmore. Born in Tamworth, Scotland in 1730, his father, the third Earl of Dunmore, actually fought against King George II as a member of the Jacobite army in 1746. His father was imprisoned but was eventually freed in 1750. That very same year, John, perhaps motivated by his father's failures, joined the British Army, cementing his allegiance to the Crown forevermore. We have a portrait of Lord Dunmore. Here it is.

• 8:33Speaker 00

  Oh, yes.

• 8:34Speaker 04

  Yeah, very, very sharp.

• 8:36Speaker 00

  Oh, yes.

• 8:37Speaker 04

  He's leaning hard. I mean, there's a, there's a, I count at least three different plads going on in this portrait. Uh, the socks, the kilt, um.

• 8:47Speaker 00

  Very fashion forward.

• 8:49Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 8:49Speaker 00

  Would he be a dandy?

• 8:51Speaker 04

  This painting does give dandy vibes, but I, I think we'll learn, uh, that he's, he's actually a pretty tough cookie.

• 8:59Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 9:00Speaker 04

  All right. So he served the king very well, and in 1770, he was rewarded with a new appointment as the royal governor of New York. He left his wife Charlotte and their eight children back in Britain. Uh, now leaving your family is always tough, um, but maybe with eight kids, it's like, get me the hell out of here.

• 9:20Speaker 00

  Maybe, maybe.

• 9:22Speaker 04

  Uh, we both travel a lot, right? Chutes and I go on chutes, you go on tour and, and, uh, whatever chaos is on the calendar. What's your road dad playbook?

• 9:32Speaker 00

  Oh, man, I have two kids. I have 14 year old Samuel, who's 14 year old, like that, this.

• 9:40Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 9:40Speaker 00

  Everything that comes with that.

• 9:41Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 9:41Speaker 00

  Then I have a, a 16 year old special needs daughter named Hallie, who is a three time brain tumor survivor and a St. Jude kid.

• 9:50Speaker 04

  Oh, wow.

• 9:51Speaker 00

  She is amazing. Um, but you can imagine how complicated our home life is.

• 9:56Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 9:57Speaker 00

  So that just, and then my wife is incredible. And so she's dealing, I'm gone and we, we have crafted our, over the, you know, quarter century of Ava Brothers touring, we have finally crafted it to where we don't go for more than two weeks. We often don't go for more than 10 days.

• 10:18Speaker 04

  Amazing.

• 10:18Speaker 00

  But, uh, I always come home and mess up everything. My wife has everything running just smooth and great. And then I come home and I just, everything just goes to, goes to hell.

• 10:28Speaker 04

  As we like to say, there's friction on reentry.

• 10:31Speaker 00

  There is.

• 10:32Speaker 04

  Well, no matter how he felt about leaving his family behind, Lord Dunmore eventually grew to enjoy his gig in the States. Despite being known as, and I quote, "a gamester and a drunkard," he somehow thrived in New York. By 1771, the British government decided to relocate him further south as governor of Virginia. Now, this was supposedly a promotion, going to Virginia. The Crown considered Virginia to be sort of the shining jewel of the colonies, you know, massive tobacco exports and...

• 11:05Speaker 00

  Right.

• 11:06Speaker 04

  But, surprise, Dunmore hated it. He truly despised Virginia, especially the weather and the, quote, "little or no society." You know, he was a bit of a...

• 11:17Speaker 00

  It's a backwater at this point.

• 11:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, it is. You're right, very much. Unlike New York City, which is a pretty serious little metropolis. It's not, nothing, obviously, like it is now, but at least there's, there's some society, there's culture, and he didn't think there was any of that in Virginia, so. I grew up in the South. You grew up in where?

• 11:38Speaker 00

  I grew up in South Jersey.

• 11:39Speaker 04

  South Jersey?

• 11:40Speaker 00

  I grew up in the South.

• 11:41Speaker 04

  Amazing.

• 11:42Speaker 00

  About three miles from Atlantic City.

• 11:44Speaker 04

  Oh, that's so funny.

• 11:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, and there was society. It was kind of rough.

• 11:49Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 11:49Speaker 00

  At times, in some places, but, uh, yeah, yeah, there was, uh, we had Philly 45 minutes and New York City two hours, you know, so.

• 11:57Speaker 04

  I feel like, in, in modern terms, like, you can find so much culture anywhere now.

• 12:05Speaker 00

  Absolutely, yeah.

• 12:07Speaker 04

  There's so much going on everywhere, but at that, at this time, I have to think maybe, maybe he's right. They probably, Virginia at the time, the colony of Virginia, may not have had the artistic community that New York had.

• 12:20Speaker 00

  No, and, and everybody's spread out there, you know, like, you have a plantation, and then you got 20 miles, another plantation.

• 12:27Speaker 04

  Like I said, they thought this was a promotion. I think he, I think he was doing okay by, uh, by the Crown's estimation, but, once he settled into Williamsburg, uh, which was Virginia's Capitol at the time Richmond would come later.

• 12:41Speaker 00

  Right.

• 12:41Speaker 04

  Seventeen eighty. Lord Dunmore wasted no time stirring the pot. He allegedly had an affair with a woman who was in court battling her estranged husband. Which might sound like just some regular old spicy colonial gossip, except for one tiny detail. Dunmore was actually the chief justice presiding over this case. Uh, so real statesman energy here.

• 13:01Speaker 00

  Right. Well, these days, the, these days he would.

• 13:04Speaker 04

  Oh yeah, you're right.

• 13:05Speaker 00

  He would fit, he would fit right in, right?

• 13:06Speaker 04

  I'm making a joke, but I'm.

• 13:08Speaker 00

  Who can bring, who can bring accountability?

• 13:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly. I'm being ironic, but it might, the irony is lost on today's society.

• 13:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, we've, we've given that up.

• 13:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, it sounds less like he was governing a colony and more like he was workshopping a reality show.

• 13:23Speaker 00

  Which is what Williamsburg became.

• 13:25Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 13:25Speaker 00

  A reality show.

• 13:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, for real.

• 13:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 13:28Speaker 04

  Colonial Williamsburg, indeed. So fast forward to seventeen seventy four, a banner year for Lord Dunmore and not in a fun way. This is when his storyline shifts from colonial gossip column to hold my powdered wig. The entire colonial world is already vibrating with tension. Britain and the colonies are locked in that passive aggressive relationship phase where everyone says they're fine, but someone's about to flip a table. The patriots are furious over Parliament's power grabs, especially the whole taxation without representation thing. And this tension sparked events like the Boston massacre in seventeen seventy and of course, the famous Boston Tea Party in seventeen seventy three. So people were mad. Tea was soggy.

• 14:12Speaker 00

  Right. This is the moment of critical mass.

• 14:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, muskets are getting dusted off here. Open warfare has not officially started, but the vibe is revolutionary. Let's put it that way. We're about to dive more specifically into Dunmore. Any other, any more color on this sort of time period you want to share? Just from your insight, what do you love about it?

• 14:31Speaker 00

  Well, yeah, right. This is when everything's about to, about to hit the fan. And so we think of the Revolutionary War as a revolutionary war, but as Ken Burns recently pointed out with his, his massive series that came out about the American Revolution, the Revolutionary War was actually a civil war. And the civil war was a revolution. And so if you think about that, you had, you probably at this point in Virginia, in the Tidewater, you had probably had one plantation where they were ready to, you know, cast off the crown and, and seeking independence because people who lived in,

• 15:12Speaker 00

  in, in the colonies for many years, they were left alone and they wanted to be left alone. So they were happy with the king as long as he wasn't taxing the paper or, or the tea or, or all of that kind of stuff. So, but then you had those people, probably neighbors, who were diehard crown, like they were ride or die crown. So this is probably where we are, where there's, the tensions are building and it's a which side are you on moment.

• 15:40Speaker 04

  It's a real mixed bag. You're exactly right. There, there are plenty of people, most people are kind of in a more libertarian camp of just kind of, hey, leave me alone. Let me make my money. And, and we're about to see how Dunmore just kind of totally steps in it in this whole situation.

• 16:02Speaker 04

  How did he become central to this growing crisis? Well, he was first and foremost a representative of the British Crown, obviously, appointed by London. His duty was to enforce imperial policy in Virginia. So by 1774, he was operating within Virginia's established political framework. This was the House of Burgess's founded in 1619. The Burgess's was the colony's elected assembly, largely made up of influential landowners and planters. They met with the royal governor and his council to manage colonial affairs. Now, as tensions between Britain and the colonies intensified, that working relationship would steadily unravel. Fun fact, the House of Burgess's was actually kind of like the farm

• 16:46Speaker 04

  team for the American Revolution. This is where guys like George Washington, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, and of course, Richard Henry Lee, they all sharpened their political teeth. So there was, let's just say, there are a lot of

• 17:03Speaker 04

  fumes in the tank and all it needs is a spark.

• 17:06Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 17:07Speaker 04

  Yeah. Um, yeah, these are some of the most.

• 17:11Speaker 00

  By the way, if you're listening to this, you can go see the Capitol building where Dunmore, the, the, the royal, whatever they call it.

• 17:18Speaker 04

  Governor's Palace.

• 17:19Speaker 00

  Governor's Palace.

• 17:20Speaker 04

  Dunmore's Palace.

• 17:21Speaker 00

  It's all, it's all there. Yeah.

• 17:23Speaker 04

  Wow. I have never been.

• 17:24Speaker 00

  Disney World for this conversation.

• 17:26Speaker 04

  Oh, perfect. Listeners, get out there.

• 17:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:29Speaker 04

  Uh, I am yet to get to Colonial Williamsburg and I can't wait. When I do get there, I'm just gonna geek out. I'm gonna drive all the employees crazy like, hey, wait, what, what was this? Where did you get this?

• 17:38Speaker 00

  I make a confession. I go yearly. I, I really, truly enjoy it. And yes, it is complete geek fest.

• 17:45Speaker 04

  Oh, I love it.

• 17:46Speaker 00

  Uh, but by the way, the music is great.

• 17:48Speaker 04

  I believe it. This brings us to May 26th, 1774, when Dunmore had breakfast with George Washington. Uh, this seemed to go well. These, these guys had a lot in common. They had similar sort of societal tastes and aspirations. According to Washington, this was a, a good meeting. Uh, and who knows? And maybe in another life, they could have been besties. But later that very day, Dunmore received orders from the Crown to stop the troublesome House of Burgesses from making such a stink over British policies. Dunmore's solution? Dissolve the House of Burgesses. Just break it up. Get everyone out of there. This is a really fascinating detail. This sort of straw that broke the camel's back with the

• 18:33Speaker 04

  House of Burgesses was that they wanted to commemorate, uh, the Boston Tea Party with a, with a day of fasting or something like that. And this was a decree that only the Crown would normally be, have the power to decree. And so, uh, this was seen as a sort of subtle affront to the Crown.

• 18:55Speaker 00

  I, it doesn't seem like there's anything subtle about it.

• 18:58Speaker 04

  Well, the subtlety is that it's such a genteel thing, right? To have a day of fasting and prayer in commemoration of something. But to sort of take that mantle themselves was just a tiny little fuck you to the crown. And so that's why they kind of forced Dunmore's hand. He had to be like, "God, you can't do that. You're broken up." So, yeah, every last member, including Washington, the very guy he'd shared breakfast with just hours earlier, was basically sent home. What message does this send to the people, to the colonists? When an unelected governor can just unilaterally dissolve an elected body? And then how long can people just like, stop asking politely to be ruled?

• 19:43Speaker 00

  So this moment in 1774 is when people realize, "We're subjects. That's all we are. We're just subjects. He can dissolve whatever the hell he wants to dissolve. If he wants to send an army here and kill us all, he can do that. Unless we say no more. That's it. No, we're going to take matters into our own hands."

• 20:06Speaker 04

  Oh, very cool. I like the way that you framed that. Despite all this political tension, Dunmore was actually strengthening his standing with many wealthy Virginians by supporting Western expansion. So tensions between colonial settlers and the Shawnee, the Native American tribes in Appalachia there, had escalated into what became known as Dunmore's War in 1774. So after a series of battles, including the Battle of Point Pleasant, the Shawnee agreed to cede claims south of Ohio River, effectively opening up what is now present-day Kentucky to colonial settlement.

• 20:46Speaker 04

  So for many land-hungry Virginians, this was a great victory and something that they appreciated in Lord Dunmore and earned him a lot of goodwill. Unfortunately, this goodwill would not last. Things are about to go real bad for Dunmore.

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• 23:20Speaker 04

  Let's broaden out a little bit, just for some additional context. We're going to go up to Massachusetts. Royal authorities are suddenly dealing with a situation so chaotic it earned its own dramatic title, the Powder Alarm of 1774. So after the Boston Tea Party, Parliament passed the deeply unpopular coercive acts dubbed the Intolerable Acts by colonists. And one of these acts barred Boston colonists from choosing who represented them in the council, the Massachusetts government's upper house. Naturally, they weren't too thrilled about this, and they prepared for possible conflict

• 24:01Speaker 04

  by moving munitions and gunpowder from their usual storage locations to more secretive storehouses.

• 24:09Speaker 00

  Right, in Boston, it was like, it's Boston, right? It's Boston in 2026, and you know how Boston is in 2026? It was Boston in 1774, and they're not taking any shit from anybody.

• 24:23Speaker 04

  No, they were, they were riled up.

• 24:25Speaker 00

  No, Virginia, they'll be like, oh, you dissolved our burgesses.

• 24:29Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 24:30Speaker 00

  Well, can we discuss this?

• 24:31Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 24:32Speaker 00

  Is there another way? So, my good sir? No, no, not in Boston.

• 24:36Speaker 04

  No, you're so right. The vibe was so different.

• 24:39Speaker 00

  Drinking, they are just, you know, Sam Adams, of course, he's part of all this.

• 24:44Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 24:45Speaker 00

  You know, he's just brewing beer and they're drinking it and they're getting pissed off and, you know, they're ready to go.

• 24:50Speaker 04

  Yeah, they're riled up. So they hide a bunch of these munitions and gunpowder, and the British clocked it, and they were like, oh, that's not cool, guys. They reacted swiftly. On September 1st, 1774, General Thomas Gage ordered British troops to seize the weapons and gunpowder from a Charlestown storehouse. Now, news spread, and suddenly more than- Four thousand patriot militiamen mobilized to protest. This shocked the Brits. They were like, whoa, we had no idea colonists were not only so mad, but also alarmingly good at organizing on short notice. You know, they had set up these networks already. I mean, what did British officials think was gonna happen when they stripped people of

• 25:35Speaker 04

  representation and just started confiscating their guns? It's like a thank you note? I don't know.

• 25:41Speaker 00

  Basically, Britain at this point had been in charge for so long.

• 25:46Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 25:46Speaker 00

  And had been so, they were, they had the greatest army in the world at this point. So.

• 25:52Speaker 04

  They're getting cocky.

• 25:53Speaker 00

  They don't like it, they, they'll shut it down. And they must have thought that people did not have the, uh, the, the fortitude and the perseverance.

• 26:03Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 26:03Speaker 00

  To engage, I mean, who would mess with, these guys, they've got a couple muskets, like, we've got cannons, you know, it's, why would they challenge Great Britain?

• 26:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, they just massively underestimated the, the moxie of these, of these New Englanders. This, as I mentioned, became known as the Powder Alarm, and it turned out to be a huge game changer. It sparked the creation of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, it sped up the rise of the Minutemen militia, and even kicked off secret intelligence networks keeping a watchful eye on the Brits' movements all around Boston. But, General Gage was not done. After British spies located colonial munitions and conquered Massachusetts, he sent troops to destroy them on April 18th, 1775. That little operation would, of course,

• 26:55Speaker 04

  lead to the famous shot heard round the world, officially lighting the fuse on the Revolutionary War.

• 27:01Speaker 00

  Lexington and Concord.

• 27:03Speaker 04

  Now, that, I have been there, and that is very, very cool. Um, that feels like a very visceral connection to history there. It's so interesting. How often in history does authority escalate a situation in the name of trying to suppress it, right? Like, they, like, like, they're trying to exert control, but they really only just manifest their worst fears?

• 27:25Speaker 00

  It's pretty common, right?

• 27:27Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 27:28Speaker 00

  Like, nothing is inevitable in history, right? But, it, it does feel like...

• 27:34Speaker 00

  Americans, when they were colonists, they didn't like being told what to do or what not to do, where to assemble, where not to assemble. Like, they didn't want to be pushed around as colonists. And I'm getting the sense, and I'm not, I'm not talking about violence here, or, you know, anything like Civil War, Revolution, I'm not talking about any of that in this moment. But I, I am sensing from people that the people will have the final say. And we were kind of seeing it already, that, that people, the collective, they're pushing back. And even if it's, uh, bad poll numbers, it's registering disapproval

• 28:19Speaker 00

  in a state special election, or, or by answering upholsterers' questions. Those pieces of honesty and, and fortitude and standing your ground, they are showing that, that there can be some pushback. And it can have an impact.

• 28:35Speaker 04

  Yeah, absolutely. All right, back to Dunmore, because of course, he wouldn't be left out of the colonial chaos. He got a mandate very similar to, uh, General Gages up in Massachusetts, to suppress the unrest down in Virginia. And being a loyal redcoat as he was, he dove right in. In April 1775, he grabbed the gunpowder from the public magazine in Williamsburg and sent it, uh, on a ship offshore. Uh, you know, just to keep it safe from those pesky colonists. Of course, patriot forces quickly learned of this and mobilized in outrage, because shocker, people get a little grumpy when you move their explosives without asking.

• 29:13Speaker 00

  People don't like that.

• 29:14Speaker 04

  They don't like it. Dunmore, ever the spin doctor, claimed he was acting in the colonists' best interest. He said he was simply preventing a slave revolt. None of this went over very well. So, news spread quickly and local militia began mobilizing. Faced with rising tensions and threats to the governor's palace, as you mentioned there in Williamsburg, Dunmore withdrew his family and, uh, by June, took refuge aboard the HMS Fowey in the York River. From there, he attempted to govern Virginia from the relative safety of a warship, which is rarely a sign that things are going smoothly.

• 29:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, in exile, a leader in exile doesn't govern very well.

• 29:57Speaker 04

  We have an artistic rendering of Lord Dunmore's flight to the warship Fowey. And There it is. There it is. Uh, is that who's got his fist up? Is that Dunmore with his fist up? I think he's like, he's just saying like, ahoy, we're coming aboard. I'm really impressed by this staircase that comes down off the side of a battleship like that. Yes. The French had a big navy at this time. Did they have stairs?

• 30:26Speaker 04

  This is a good question. Um, yeah, it was a huge point of contention between the two navies, like we've got stairs. We have what we call an elevator. Yeah. An escalator. Exactly. Um, it's so interesting the things artists choose to render. Dunmore's Flight to the Fauway. Why did this particular thing? I mean, if you're Leonardo da Vinci, painting the Last Supper feels like, yeah, that's a cool thing. You want to capture that. I don't know about this moment where he just happens to be getting on a boat like, oh, okay. Uh, anyway, Dunmore used the 24 cannon HMS Fauway as his base for two to three months, though it was reported that he moved from ship to ship in the Chesapeake Bay

• 31:10Speaker 04

  as he commanded small raids on patriot affiliated towns and plantations. He and his loyalist forces eventually settled on Gwynn's Island, about 30 miles northeast of Williamsburg. By November 1775, however, even a private island couldn't solve all his problems. Dunmore needed reinforcements, so he turned to the very people his opponents had been trying to control all along. And this, drumroll please, is Dunmore's snafu with massive historical repercussions. Dunmore issued a royal proclamation offering freedom to any indentured servants or enslaved people

• 31:54Speaker 04

  willing and able to fight for the king. Oh, the irony. The same guy who'd earlier moved the colony's gunpowder to prevent a supposed slave uprising was now dangling liberty like it was candy at Halloween.

• 32:11Speaker 04

  About 300 former enslaved men joined what became known as Dunmore's Royal Ethiopian Regiment. This proclamation spread through newspapers across the colonies and the regiment eventually swelled to around 800 men. It also inspired thousands more to consider seeking freedom by siding with the British, or just to escape amid the chaos. This is such a wild moment, and because it's so close to the just full-on outbreak of war, the Revolutionary War, this particular moment doesn't get as much historical attention as I think it deserves. It's really striking.

• 32:54Speaker 00

  It really is, and this will become, when we get into the 1820s and 1830s in the South, this is what they fear the most.

• 33:04Speaker 04

  Exactly. And by the way, that fear, the fear of slave uprising goes way back, of course. I mean, if you're going to enslave a population, there's part of you that knows, this is horrible. This is so horrible, what we're doing. Karmas might be swinging back at us any minute.

• 33:22Speaker 00

  Man, you are sitting on a powder keg of humanity.

• 33:25Speaker 04

  Exactly.

• 33:26Speaker 00

  It is a not, not.

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• 36:01Speaker 04

  So, he's offering freedom, but primarily as a military strategy, aiming to weaken the rebel economy and labor force. He's using liberty as a tactical weapon. It's very cynical, and yet, there's something, obviously, noble in freeing slaves.

• 36:20Speaker 00

  Right.

• 36:20Speaker 04

  Whatever his motives, it marked a pivotal moment in the history of slavery in America. It is remarkable how often major turning points emerge less from moral intention than from unintended consequences.

• 36:32Speaker 00

  Wasn't it, Washington didn't want to arm enslaved people?

• 36:37Speaker 04

  Correct.

• 36:37Speaker 00

  He refused to arm enslaved people, even when the British were doing it. And he had, then some people were saying, "We need to do this."

• 36:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 36:44Speaker 00

  He didn't want to do that, because... What happens, once they defeat the British, they will turn on us, right? That's probably the paranoia.

• 36:52Speaker 04

  I believe this was a turning point for the revolutionary forces as well. That's when they started to enlist former slaves or slaves into the ranks. Because they saw that it was, that Dunmore was doing this and they were like, we need to do this too. Well, it turns out, this decision of Dunmore's to invite the rebellion of slaves to his own benefit was the ultimate backfire. His proclamation meant to bolster loyalist forces, uh, did the exact opposite. It unexpectedly united Virginians and supercharged the patriot cause. Even folks who were kind of like on the fence, undecided, or even quietly rooting for the king, they were outraged.

• 37:36Speaker 04

  Uh, and they, you know, the Virginian economy was so based entirely on slavery that, that everyone was, regardless of their loyalty before this, was just pissed off at Lord Dunmore. And they threw themselves into the rebellion moving forward. So, losing enslaved laborers, it wasn't just an inconvenience, it threatened, uh, their social status, their whole economic system. One historian even noted, no other document, not even Thomas Paine's Common Sense or the Declaration of Independence, did more than Dunmore's proclamation to convert white residents of Britain's most popular colony to the cause of independence.

• 38:18Speaker 00

  You and I love history, you know, we're just fascinated by it. And the deeper you get into American history, like, you need to learn to embrace somehow, what united these guys to fight the British was the threat of being attacked by former slaves, their slaves. And so it's, it's like, there are some people that don't want to teach certain parts of American history, but you know, I say it's like, you need to accept it all. You like, I like to say the good, bad, and the ugly. You gotta, you gotta be able to like, take it all in and hold it all in together, the good, the bad, and the ugly. You know,

• 39:00Speaker 00

  George Washington, amazing. No one else ever like him. The man gave away power. The man had absolute power, served two terms as president, and said, you know what? I'm, I'm going home. I'm going, I'm gonna go sand my floors. I'm gonna go grow hemp. I'm gonna, you know, whatever. But also, when, when he was president, he had an enslaved woman named Ona Judge, escape, and he obstructed justice to try to get her back. He never got her back, but he tried to obstruct the fugitive slave law that he signed into law, that he, he signed, you know, he, so it's like, we gotta-

• 39:39Speaker 04

  The good, bad, and the ugly.

• 39:41Speaker 00

  We gotta hold both. We gotta hold both. Yeah.

• 39:43Speaker 04

  Amen. Amen. We're in a very weird moment where, where a lot of forces are trying to kinda only cling to the good and say, that's our history. That's all of it. That's in it. But no, we contain multitudes. We're, we're a mess and there's beauty. It's, it's a-

• 40:01Speaker 00

  We contain multitudes. Alexis Coe says, you are not, you're not guilty of anything unless you deny it.

• 40:10Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 40:11Speaker 00

  All we can do is be the best people we can today to each other.

• 40:15Speaker 04

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• 40:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:18Speaker 04

  Right? We need the most, the most honest accounting of the world and the history and, and science and whatever else. We need the most and best data to be the best versions of ourselves.

• 40:33Speaker 04

  With this action of Dunmore's, Virginian rebels reached a breaking point and Washington even called him out for this treacherous behavior. In a letter written on December 15th, 1775, to Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Reed, Washington wrote, "If Virginians are wise, that arch traitor to the rights of humanity, Lord Dunmore, should be instantly crushed." Uh-oh. You pissed off George Washington. I don't think this is going to go well for you moving forward, Dunmore. All right, so now it's December of 1775. Lord Dunmore launched one last major offensive. He fled to Norfolk to rally his troops, including

• 41:15Speaker 04

  the Ethiopian regiment. Norfolk was a key economic and military hub and the main entry point, Great Bridge, was quickly fortified with a stockade called Fort Murray. During the Battle of Great Bridge, however, the Patriot militia easily overran the British forces. Only one patriot was wounded while the British suffered about 100 casualties. By 1776, the revolution was in full swing and Dunmore's attempts at reinforcements had spectacularly failed, helping the very people he was supposed to be fighting. No matter how hard he tried, regaining control of Virginia was off the table. He packed it up, left the colonies, back to Great Britain, joined Parliament, and threw himself into

• 42:00Speaker 04

  supporting the loyalist cause for the rest of the war, but now from across the pond. You would think leaving the colonies and getting all the way back to England would be the end of Dunmore's drama. Well, not quite. In the 1790s, scandal found to begin, this time through his daughter Augusta, who secretly married Prince Augustus Frederick, was actually the king's son, so the King of England's son, in defiance of the Royal Marriage Act of 1772. This marriage was declared void, but the couple stayed together for years anyway. Even off the colonial stage, the Dunmore just kept things messy. Dunmore himself died in 1809 at the ripe old age of 79, leaving behind a legacy that

• 42:41Speaker 04

  As chaotic as it is fascinating, he freed slaves long before Lincoln, but let's be real, mostly for strategic reasons and inadvertently sparked revolution in Virginia. All in all, John Murray, fourth Earl of Dunmore, was the kind of historical figure you'd love to watch on reality TV, dramatic, scheming, and always one step away from disaster.

• 43:04Speaker 00

  I heard he's gonna be on the next season of Traitors.

• 43:07Speaker 04

  Yeah, or Survivor or something. Final interesting note, many of the black men and women who joined Dunmore's Ethiopian regiment were later transferred north with the 1783 British evacuation of New York. Fearing re-enslavement, they escaped to Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone, forming enduring communities whose descendants remain today. That's our story. Can you wrap up today's snafu in three words, Bob Crawford?

• 43:39Speaker 00

  Hmm, don't mess up.

• 43:45Speaker 04

  I think that works. Yeah, I mean, that could apply to a lot of things, but yeah, it certainly applies to today.

• 43:53Speaker 00

  Don't F up.

• 43:54Speaker 04

  Yeah, perfect. Well, I'm wondering, any final thoughts on this, this story? You know, most people, when we think of the emancipation of slaves, we think of the Civil War. I think a lot of historians actually point to this moment as, even if Dunmore's motives were, were not sort of like morally based, they point to this moment as a, as a kind of turning point in the perception of the value of freedom for the enslaved population and the sort of consideration of freedom for the enslaved population in the colonies and what became the United States, and that this was in many ways a precursor to Lincoln's

• 44:38Speaker 04

  Emancipation Proclamation.

• 44:40Speaker 00

  Right. The freedom was only for those enslaved in the states that were in rebellion.

• 44:45Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 44:46Speaker 00

  With the Emancipation Proclamation. It wasn't this amazing, everybody's free.

• 44:52Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 44:53Speaker 00

  Like, if you and I were average Americans... In that period, 1820 to 1850, we couldn't really conceive of a way or a time that slavery would not exist. You talk about big tech, big slavery. Like, that was an industry that benefited the South and the North. If you lived in Boston, there would be ma-- and you were at like an abolitionist meeting, a mob may surround the building and throw rocks through the building because the abolition was messing with the status quo.

• 45:28Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 45:29Speaker 00

  At the time. So I would be interested to go back and look at this moment that we talked about today and see, what did the abolitionists think of this, you know, 20, 30, 40 years after it happened? And how did it play into thinking about what, what freedom could be obtained and how freedom could be obtained?

• 45:50Speaker 04

  Absolutely. There's a very interesting governmental strategic consideration here. Bad leadership doesn't just fail at leadership. It can often mobilize the opposition, right?

• 46:03Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 46:04Speaker 04

  So, so Dunmore, he didn't just make these unpopular decisions. He actively radicalized his opponents.

• 46:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, he manifested his downfall.

• 46:13Speaker 04

  Right. He radicalized people who might have otherwise just been neutral. So like his dissolving of the House of Burgesses, the seizure of gunpowder, his emancipation proclamation, they weren't just tactical blunders. They were accelerants against his, his interests. The blowback can just be so much more consequential than simply the failure to advance your cause.

• 46:40Speaker 00

  Absolutely. It happens in history time and again.

• 46:43Speaker 04

  Yeah, they're just stepping on rakes. The rake, the handle flies up and just breaks your nose.

• 46:49Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 46:50Speaker 04

  Come on. This was really fun. Bob Crawford, thank you so much for coming on board Snafu. I want to know about your book, Bob, and I want to know a couple of things. First of all, you have a very broad interest in history, but what is it about this particular subject that pulled you in? And, and then I want to know a little bit about your process of how you brought this book to life.

• 47:13Speaker 00

  Well, the process is, is, is being a touring musician.

• 47:18Speaker 00

  And having hours of downtime and you know traditionally musicians, they use those those lonely hours off the stage to self-destruct, right? To do things that destroy them. I think, I think we're living in a different time and everybody I know, they got projects going on, they got a lot going on, but it did offer me.

• 47:40Speaker 04

  Well, we got Wi-Fi now.

• 47:41Speaker 00

  We have Wi-Fi, right? And so we can read the Congressional Globe from 1836. I mean, we have the time to do that and the ability, so we can do that. I've always been fascinated fascinated with John Quincy Adams as a president and really as a his post-presidency. And, you know, I've got a complicated family life. I did work on the book a lot at home, but man, being on the road really it's just, it's like, you can write books and be a bass player of all things.

• 48:10Speaker 04

  So cool. What makes this book a sort of a special insight into the story of John Quincy Adams?

• 48:16Speaker 00

  So it is, it tells the story of Adams between 1820 and 1848. And this is, he was a failed one-term president who went into Congress and served in Congress for 17 years after his presidency. He's the only one, only president who's done that. And when he was president, he was the establishment, right? Like, so he, he lost reelection to Andrew Jackson, who was the populist. Think back to 2016, right? Hillary Clinton, on paper, man, first lady, senator, secretary of state, oh, man, on paper, yeah, perfect president, she'd be great. But the times changed.

• 48:58Speaker 00

  When it was her turn, the times changed and people were feeling something different. And so they elected Trump, the populist. We think of Trump as a populist, and which is he was. Adams, you know, it was John Adams' son, Washington appoints him to a diplomatic post. He's a senator during Jefferson's administration. Madison appoints him to diplomatic post. He's the secretary of state under James Monroe. He gets, he negotiates Florida into the Union, Oregon territory. And he basically writes the, what we think of as the Monroe Doctrine. So you think 1824, this guy's going to walk in. He was born and raised to be president.

• 49:42Speaker 00

  Not the case. The founding generation were leaving the, leaving the stage. And young Americans, they wanted something else. They wanted a common man for the common man. And that's how they thought of Andrew Jackson. So he has a failed one-term presidency. And then he does something extraordinary. He goes into Congress and in Congress, he, he's not an abolitionist, but he begins to align with the abolitionists. And he becomes this anti-slavery crusader.

• 50:13Speaker 04

  Fascinating. And is it out yet?

• 50:16Speaker 00

  March 10th.

• 50:18Speaker 04

  Oh, hold up the book for us. Do you have a copy? Let's take a look at this thing. America's founding son. There he is.

• 50:27Speaker 00

  And this is what's really cool about it. There's this guy Garrett Moreland. And he does concert posters for us. He's just a really great guy and a great illustrator. And he did, he did illustrations for the book.

• 50:44Speaker 04

  Oh, cool.

• 50:45Speaker 00

  Just really.

• 50:46Speaker 04

  Oh, those are gorgeous.

• 50:47Speaker 00

  Really, really great. Really, really awesome.

• 50:50Speaker 04

  Congratulations on the book. Congratulations on a just epic career in music. I love the Avett brothers and I love all the music that you make. And I can't wait to dive into this book. It just sounds awesome. Congratulations.

• 51:05Speaker 00

  Thank you, Ed.

• 51:07Speaker 04

  Yeah. Snafu is a production of iHeart Podcasts and Snafu Media, a partnership between Film Nation Entertainment and Pacific Electric Picture Company. Post-production and creative support from Good Egg Audio. Our executive producers are me, Ed Helms, Mike Falbo, Glenn Basner, Andy Kim, and Dylan Fagan. This episode was produced by Alyssa Martino and Tori Smith. Our managing producer is Carl Nellis. Our video editor is Jared Smith, technical direction and engineering from Nick Dooley. Additional story editing from Carl Nellis. Our creative executive is Brett Harris. Logo and branding by Matt Gosson and The Collected Works. Legal review from Dan Welsh, Megan Halson, and Caroline Johnson.

• 51:52Speaker 04

  Special thanks to Isaac Dunham, Adam Horn, Lane Klein, and everyone at iHeart Podcasts, but especially Will Pearson, Carrie Lieberman, and Nikki Ator. While I have you, don't forget to pick up a copy of my book, Snafu: The Definitive Guide to History's Greatest Screw-Ups. It's available now from any book retailer. Just go to snafu-book.com. Thanks for listening and see you next week.

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