A Man of the People? Lord Dunmore and “Our” “Defenceless,” “Laudable,” “Lower Class,” “People of the Back Parts”
An Examination of Lord Dunmore’s Characterizations of the Frontier Folk, and What They Reveal about His Politics
Introduction
1774 was an unstable time in the Virginia backcountry. 1763 had seen the conclusion of the Seven Years War, a war of world powers that had seen the American frontier transformed into a battlefield, in what Americans call the French and Indian War. The Seven Years War was shockingly decisive, especially in North America.[1] For a century and a half, France and Britain had jockeyed for power in the region, and it was now undoubtedly over. France was ejected from the continent, and Britain officially had zero colonial rivals in the region. The British Crown, hoping to stabilize the region that had given them so much stress, drew the Proclamation Line of 1763 along the Appalachian Mountains, which served to divide the settlers from their only remaining threat: the American Indians.
But there would be many problems with this line, some immediately obvious, and some soon to come. For one, thousands of settlers already lived west of it, as many as 50,000.[2] Another problem: colonial elites, like George Washington, did not believe in it. He wrote to his land agent William Crawford in 1767: “I can never look upon that Proclamation in any other light (but this I say between ourselves) than as a temporary expedient to quiet the Minds of the Indians.”[3] The other immediately obvious problem was Dinwiddie’s 1754 Proclamation, which had promised 200,000 acres of western land to veterans of the French and Indian War effort, half of which were to be contiguous with Fort Pitt (now Pittsburgh) and the other half of which were to be along the Ohio River. Both locations were west of the newly drawn Proclamation Line.[4]
Soon there would be even more threats to the line. There was the 1768 Fort Stanwix Treaty, negotiated by Sir William Johnson, the British Superintendent of Indian Affairs and an avid land speculator, in which the Line was effectively moved 400 miles west by simply buying the land from the Iroquois without asking the Crown for permission (or the Shawnees and Delaware who hunted in the land nominally controlled by the Iroquois). When chastised, Johnson insisted it would be rude to the Iroquois to re-negotiate.[5] In 1771, another threat emerged. John Donelson, a successful frontiersman of humble origins did what many successful frontiersmen did: he took advantage of Indian rivalries to buy vast amounts of land for virtually nothing—buying millions of acres west of the Proclamation Line from the Cherokee chief Attakullakulla, who had hoped to deflect white settlement northwest, for a mere five hundred pounds.[6] Another year, another threat to the Line: in 1772, the corporate project known as Vandalia, which was to be entirely west of the line in what is now West Virginia, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania, was approved by the Privy Council.[7]
By 1774, though the Proclamation Line looked incredibly weak, the frontier folk who lived along it looked strong. These frontiersmen were not like the elites in Philadelphia and Williamsburg. They were usually not English at all—they were mostly Scots-Irish or German. They were less likely to be Anglican, and more likely to be Presbyterian. They were yeoman farmers, not as rich as the coastal elites, and they often could not read.[8] But though the people on the frontier were so different, they had seemed to learn to speak the elites’ language, with political violence. Frontiersmen in Pennsylvania known as the Paxton Boys marched to Philadelphia in 1764 to demand protection from the Indians. Frontiersmen in North Carolina revolted in the Regulator Movement of 1766-1771. These two political acts of resistance were unquestionably on the mind of political elites as they contemplated what to do about the continuing failures of the Proclamation Line.[9]
Yet, if you parachuted into the 1774 Virginia backcountry during Lord Dunmore’s War, a brief and decisive war fought and won by the Virginia colony over the Shawnee and Mingo tribes, you probably would not notice all these divisions between frontier and center, between rich and poor, between English and not. You likely would not foreshadow the American Revolution, and if you did, you would not foreshadow Dunmore—who would become a loyalist—and his foot soldiers’ being on opposite sides. Instead, you would see in Dunmore’s War a rapid and decisive victory of the united forces of the British Empire over weaker Indian tribes. You would see the Northern Irish commander Andrew Lewis lead an army alongside Scottish military officer Angus McDonald, all under the command of Lord Dunmore, the Scottish representative of the English throne, in a war started by the provocations of Irish doctor John Connolly, English frontiersman Michael Cresap and the violent German frontiersman Daniel Greathouse. Why would a region so wracked by divisions and out-of-touch laws handed down from the Crown so totally unite in a powerful representation of it?
Historiography offers us two mutually exclusive answers to this question. The first of these is by Patrick Griffin in his book American Leviathan. Griffin writes of Lord Dunmore’s War: “Dunmore had vanquished the Indians and the hopes of rival claimants with the support of the common settlers. Yet, he had not done so for their benefit.”[10] Of the frontier folk, many of whom fought in Lord Dunmore’s War, Griffin writes, “Unwittingly, common men and women had a hand in remaking a fallen world and redrawing a more impermeable line between whites and Indians, but they would not claim land on their own terms. In the struggle to remake society out of a competitive state of nature, the strongest and most unscrupulous had won.”[11] In Griffin’s world, the frontier crisis that started the war was “engineered” and the men who fought in the war were tricked by Lord Dunmore and his cronies.[12]
James Corbett David offers us a different answer in his book Dunmore’s New World. Characterizing, and then responding to, Griffin’s argument, David writes “Here [in Griffin’s book], Dunmore is not a hapless blunderer but the mastermind of a grand conspiracy in which settlers were duped into fomenting an Indian war on behalf of elite land speculators. Try as he might, Dunmore could not have controlled events in northwestern Virginia with anywhere near this level of precision.”[13] According to David, rather than a trick on the lower classes, Lord Dunmore’s War was caused by a massive land dispute, one that caused shared interests to emerge: “Dunmore’s War resulted not from a shadowy conspiracy but from the convergence of a number of relatively powerful North American interests—the Virginia government, the Six Nations, independent settlers—in opposition to a loosely connected collection of weaker interests, including proprietary Pennsylvania, the Shawnees and Mingoes, and the ministry in London.”[14]
A cartel’s conspiracy or the convergence of interests? This paper will get at this question indirectly. To investigate the reasons for Lord Dunmore’s War, this paper will examine the words of its general (or conspirator), Lord Dunmore. How did Lord Dunmore talk and write about the frontiersmen? Do his words offer us any answers on why—for a single year in the 1770s on the eve of revolution—Virginia united in war?
This paper argues that, by examining Lord Dunmore’s specific language about the frontiersmen, we can conclude that the answer is simpler than Griffin and David imagine. Lord Dunmore had an earnest political opinion that the Proclamation Line was a charade, westward expansion was inevitable, and that the frontier should be protected. These opinions were not formed just by economic self-interests that happened to align with the frontiersmen, and they were not imbued with the evil of a class villain. Rather, they were formed by the lives of the frontiersmen, those Dunmore observed and seemed to care about.
Undoubtedly, Dunmore was opportunistic and ambitious, and of course, he spoke quite condescendingly about the frontiersmen to other elites. But ultimately, Dunmore’s efforts were in service of expansion and defense—goals shared by the people on the frontier. In other words, Dunmore was neither a mastermind class villain, nor merely the representative of stronger interests over weaker ones. Instead, he was a man of the people, a pre- “populism” populist, a governor whose ideology mirrored his citizens’ deeply held anxieties and political beliefs, even and especially when they differed from other elites’ political beliefs. He lobbied for the Proclamation Line to be moved, for land to be given to veterans, for land purchases to be ratified, and ultimately for an expansionist war he had exactly zero trouble raising an army for. In Griffin’s world, the person of interest is the squatter, endowed with vaguely anarcho-leftist beliefs, ones that would make him hate a man of immense wealth and fealty to order, a man like Dunmore. And in David’s conception, Dunmore is “a man of average ability and extraordinary confidence,” lucky enough to have his profiteering interests align with other powerful interests.[15] But it is neither evil nor ordinariness that causes Dunmore to thrust the frontier into Lord Dunmore’s War—it is ideology. Dunmore, though he did frequently speak condescendingly about frontiersmen to other elites, unquestionably sided with the frontier when he led Lord Dunmore’s War, doing so because of his earnest, coherent, and popular belief that the Proclamation Line was a charade, the imperial project was a good one, and the empire should expand West even if it meant war with relatively weak Indian tribes.
This conclusion can be reached by examining Dunmore’s exact, specific language about the frontiersmen, which, though condescending, reveals his ideology to be coherent and not just a personal enrichment effort. While he was governor of New York in 1770, he predicted to royal elites that the lives of settlers on the Ohio in a hypothetical new colony would be economically depressed. When he was appointed governor of Virginia, after the Donelson Purchase, he came around to western settlement and lobbied for the Purchase’s ratification under the argument that it would economically benefit the frontiersmen and prevent them from losing lives in war. When Lord Dunmore’s War became inevitable, Dunmore sent letters to prominent frontiersmen, asking them to raise an army to put a stop to their “uneasiness,” needing to offer neither reward nor punishment, and then he promised to lead the war effort himself, to put a stop to their “unhappy situation.”[16] When the war ended, Dunmore was mocked by John Penn for how much he respected the frontiersmen, while hundreds of miles away, Dunmore argued to powerful Indian tribes that the war was justified because his frontiersmen deserved safety. Finally, in Dunmore’s most famous quote about the frontiersmen, he derided them while ultimately seeking to affirm the gains they made in the popular war they fought. While each of Dunmore’s mentions of the frontiersmen could be picked apart or taken out of context, when one looks at the entire catalog, it becomes clear that Dunmore, as governor of Virginia, observed his frontiersmen’s lives and tried to act in their best interests in the era of Lord Dunmore’s War, even when other elites ignored them.
The Language of a Lord
Though there are not endless examples, Lord Dunmore did at many times feel the need to talk about the people of the frontier, and this paper focuses on those instances. As governor, Lord Dunmore had a role to play in politics, and he embraced that role. In letters, treaties, and in conversation, Dunmore discussed with other elites what should be done with and to the frontier. In such correspondences, all with relatively rich and powerful men, there is but the occasional mention of those mostly Scots-Irish and German, mostly illiterate poor people who populated the region. But there are some mentions, and by examining these mentions, we can see that Dunmore is extremely inconsistent in the ways he talks about them. In Dunmore’s written imagination, the frontier folk move from “laudable adventurers” to “Lower Class” “people of the back parts” who squat “without any formalities,” to “defenceless,” to impossible to “restrain,” all within a four-year span. But amid the inconsistent tone, explained by the context of each mention, there is a real ideological progression here: Lord Dunmore, upon becoming the governor of Virginia, became convinced that the Proclamation Line was weak, the frontiersmen were strong, and the West should belong to the frontiersmen who obtain legal rights to the land, not the Indians, not the squatters, and not a corporation.
To begin a systematic analysis, it is best to start in 1770, when Lord Dunmore was the colonial governor of New York, not Virginia. A letter from Dunmore, sent to the Earl of Hillsborough, at the time the Secretary of State for the Colonies, represents a starting point for Dunmore’s ideological growth. In 1770, after hearing rumors about Vandalia—a corporate effort to charter a colony on the Ohio—Dunmore wrote to Hillsborough to advise against the idea. Notably, at the time, Vandalia was in its early stages, and Dunmore would later deny his knowledge of the idea.[17] Additionally, Dunmore’s advice to Hillsborough also predated the Donelson Purchase by a year, and even predated George Washington’s first letter to Lord Dunmore requesting that Dunmore be sure to grant land to the veterans of the French and Indian War as per the Dinwiddie Proclamation, with or without Vandalia’s approval.[18] In Dunmore’s expression to Hillsborough of his discontent with the corporate proposal for a new colony, one of the reasons for his sentiment was explicitly and derogatorily class-based:
“The scheme [a new corporate colony on the Ohio River] alarms extremely all the settled parts of America, the people of property being justly apprehensive of consequences that must inevitably ensue; that such a Colony will only become a drain to them (now but thinly peopled) of an infinite number of the lower Class of inhabitants, who, the desire of novelty alone will induce to change their situation; and the withdrawing of those Inhabitants will reduce the value of Lands in the provinces even to nothing, and make it impossible for the Patentees to pay the Quit Rents; by which, it is evident, His Majty’s interest must be very much prejudiced.”[19]
There is no doubt that the depiction here of the frontier folk is negative—not only are they the “lower Class of inhabitants,” but they are also unreliable, prone to moving constantly from “the desire of novelty alone.” Though unquestionably condescending (not unusual for an 18th century lord), one should pay close attention here to why the frontiersmen’s moving patterns were even relevant. To Dunmore in this letter, the problem is not the class makeup of the hypothetical Ohio frontier per se, but rather what this would mean for the British throne. Dunmore’s concern was not that the “lower Class of inhabitants” would be dirty, sinful, or incapable of being governed; his concern was that they would move frequently, causing the land values to be too low for the colony’s grantees to pay quit-rent to the throne. This is an important difference because it reflects that, though Dunmore was of course willing to make derogatory class distinctions, he was willing to do so in service of political ends, not for the sadistic fun of it. However, because it was 1770, and Dunmore was the governor of New York and not Virginia, and the Proclamation Line was not as weak as it would soon become (after the Donelson Purchase and the Privy Council’s approval of Vandalia), the political end Dunmore sought was different than what it would become—first, he was against settlement on the Ohio, but soon, he would be for it.
Moreover, if his derogatory words for the “lower Class” were based in genuine revulsion and hatred, as Griffin’s argument might imply, why did he, in the same exact letter, voice so much concern for the lower classes? As Dunmore puts it, one of the major concerns he had with the hypothetical colony on the Ohio is that the settlers there would have a genuinely difficult time affording survival:
“I find, all who have any knowledge of such affairs concurr in condemning the project; they alledge among a variety of reasons, that a Colony, at such an immense distance from the settled parts of America and from the Ocean, can neither benefit either those settled parts or the mother Country; that they must become immediately a lost people to both, & all communication of a commercial nature with them, be a vain attempt, from the difficulty and expence attending the Transport of commodities to them, which would so enhance the price thereof, as to make it utterly impossible for them to purchase such commodities, for they could not raise a produce of any kind, that would answer so difficult and expensive transport back.”[20]
If Dunmore were a robber-baron, or even if he was just a selfish man with some shared frontier interests, he would not feel the need to tell the Earl of Hillsborough that he was worried that prices would spike beyond the ability of the frontiersmen to pay. Though Dunmore was no saint, it is clear that rather than seeking only economic gain, he had a genuine interest in the lives of the frontiersmen and a genuine ideology (albeit one that would change) that a colony on the Ohio river would not be a good idea.
Later in the same letter, Dunmore (presciently) predicted an Indian war if the colony on the Ohio was allowed to go forward. Like earlier parts of the letter, Dunmore’s concern was not that his personal estate would suffer, but rather that the areas near to the frontier (where nobody considered high-class would have lived) would be put in danger. In addition, Dunmore also predicted that the frontiersmen would demand the government look after and protect them, likely alluding to the Paxton Boys and the Regulators. Dunmore wrote,
“Add to this the great probability, I may venture to say (with) certainty, that the attempting a settlement on the Ohio, will draw on, an Indian war; it being well known, how ill affected the Ohio Indians have always been to our interest, and their jealousy of such a settlement, so near them, must be easily foreseen; therefore, as such a war would affect, at least, the nearest provinces, as well as the new Colony. Your Lord must expect those provinces, will not fail to make heavy complaints of the inattention of Govern’ to their interest.”[21]
Dunmore was not selfish in having such a concern for war—he faced no personal risk from war in a hypothetical new colony. But his concerns were political, reflecting a seemingly earnest view of what was best for the empire, but also what was best for those in “the new Colony,” the same “infinite number of the lower Class of inhabitants” that he had referenced earlier in the letter. By the end of the letter, one can see that despite his derogatory words, Dunmore showed genuine concern for the likely poor residents of this hypothetical colony, and this concern animated his legitimate political opinion that a colony should not be founded on the Ohio.
Virginia’s Expansionist Governor
Soon enough, Dunmore became the governor of the Virginia colony. Just a few months before Dunmore took office, John Donelson and Cherokee chief Attakullakullah set out to survey the lands recently acquired and divided by the Treaty of Lochaber (itself a kind of haphazard follow-up to the accidentally-too-favorable Treaty of Fort Stanwix). Along this journey, Attakullakullah complained that the lands were being divided rather randomly, instead of along natural borders. Donelson agreed, and as they surveyed, they began to deviate from the Lochaber line until Attakullakullah finally suggested they move it altogether to the eastern banks of the Kentucky River. The chief likely suggested this in an effort to push white settlement northwest, away from the heart of Cherokee country, towards the Shawnee and Delaware tribes. Unauthorized to do so, Donelson instantly agreed, offering 500 pounds as a reward.[22]
The Ohio Valley, 1771[23]
As the governor of a colony that was about to expand by millions of acres, Dunmore wrote again to the Earl of Hillsborough, still the Secretary of State for the Colonies, to request that the purchase be ratified. Yet again, in his effort to convince Hillsborough that his genuine political beliefs were correct (that the purchase should be ratified and that the colony should be expanded), Dunmore reached for derogatory language to describe the frontier folk. He wrote,
“the people of the back parts of these and of the neighbouring Colonies finding that Grants are not to be obtained, do seat themselves without any formalities, wherever they like the best, by which means, the good lands will be all occupied, and shortly, nothing but the bad remain; whereas, if restrictions did not prevent it, the good and the bad would be granted together and the people well satisfied, to the great improvement of the whole country and increase of His Majesty's quitrents.”[24]
This was no doubt an ungenerous tone to describe the frontier, not just as squatters, but ones who do so “without any formalities, wherever they like the best,” which condescends as much as it understates the difficult task of building a family and carving out a livelihood on the frontier. But again, the opinion that a colony would be better served by an economically diverse populace rather than by an entirely poor, squatting populace was a legitimate and popular political opinion. The language is condescending, but it seems to be that way out of antiquity rather than malice, with Dunmore explicitly stating that a more economically mixed community would wind up with “the people well satisfied.”
Once again, we can look at other parts of the letter to further get at how Dunmore might have felt towards the people of the frontier. Earlier in the very same letter, Dunmore voiced seemingly genuine concern for the frontiersmen he spoke so condescendingly of:
“if it should be reversed, there is the strongest reason to fear, that it will occasion the renewal of much confusion and bloodshed in that part of the country; as a boundary, which Indians of several nations do so frequently pass, marked only by trees, must cause eternal disputes between them and our people who are hunters, like them, and at best but on a very bad footing together. Moreover, it would necessarily be attended with great expence to the Colony, and very considerable loss to a number of poor people” [25]
Here, it is evident that the tone used by Dunmore to describe the frontiersmen changed not just depending on audience or time, but on the section of the same letter. That said, there is no contradiction between condescension and caring, and one can see that in this letter. Though the frontier people are informal squatters who hoover up all the best land, they are also “a number of poor people,” and they are “our people who are hunters,” and the elites ought to protect them from bloodshed with good policies that include the ratification of the Donelson Purchase and the allowing of grants beyond the Proclamation Line. This is a letter from one fabulously elite man to another on the subject of imperial policy; it would be possible not to discuss the people of the frontier at all. And yet, not only did Dunmore insist on talking about them, he insisted on worrying about them, and whether “our” “poor people” would be killed in an Indian war was of serious importance to him.
A Wartime Governor
In 1774, tensions erupted, and the predictable Indian war arrived. Skirmishes were common on the frontier, but they came to a head when Indian opposition to further encroachment clashed with frontiersmen’s frustration with Indian raids and ambushes. Though multiple killings and robberies preceded it, the turning point clearly came with the Yellow Creek Massacre. Little is agreed upon about exactly what precipitated the massacre, but unquestionably it was Daniel Greathouse and his associates who committed it at a farm where Indians and whites had gathered. Likely preceded by a drunken Mingo donning a white man’s coat and hat and mocking him, Greathouse’s party of men, who had been hiding, emerged and killed the four Mingoes in their presence before killing several more (the exact number is debated, as many as thirteen total) who came to investigate the ruckus.[26] The massacre was gruesome, the victims were scalped to send a message, and the Mingo who were killed had powerful connections—two of the victims were the adult children of Shikellamy, an Iroquois chief and one of those children was the wife of John Gibson, a Scots-Irish Indian trader and veteran of the French and Indian War.[27] Understanding the severity of the massacre and the likelihood of war, white settlers retreated east, and elites convened with Indians to attempt to prevent war.[28] Council after council was called, but despite many efforts at diplomacy, it was too little too late. By June, Logan—another child of Shikellamy who had lost his two siblings in the Yellow Creek Massacre—had commenced his massacring warpath, the Shawnees had joined along in the fight, and Dunmore and his frontiersmen allies had begun to raise armies.[29] War would prove inevitable.
Just before the battles began, Dunmore sent a letter to Andrew Lewis, at the time a Virginia politician, a French and Indian War veteran, and a frequent explorer and hunter in the West. The letter’s purpose was to talk strategy in the case of what seemed to be an impending war, but in it, Dunmore once again seemed to display a real concern for the white settlers of the Ohio, writing,
“[I] advise you by no means to wait any longer for them to Attack you, but to raise all the Men you think willing & Able, & go down immediately to the mouth of the great Kanhaway & there build a Fort, and if you think you have forsc enough (that are willing to follow you) to proceed derectly to their Towns & if possible destroy their Towns & Magazines and distress them in every other way that is possible. And if you can keep a Communication open between you, Wheeling Fort, & Fort Dunmore I am well persuaded you will prevent them from crossing the Ohio any more & Consequcntly from Giving any further Uneasiness to the Inhabitants on the Waters of the Ohio.”[30]
Notably, Dunmore offered no threats in this message, nor anything that would resemble conscription. Dunmore asked a lot, advising this powerful frontiersman to raise an army, destroy Indian towns, and thus prevent “any further Uneasiness to the Inhabitants of the Waters of the Ohio,” yet Dunmore offered no land as a reward and no punishment as a threat. The assumption here was that not only was Lewis partial to war, but that he would not have a great deal of trouble finding many more frontiersmen to join the war effort. This reflects that the war was not one where the frontiersmen were duped, but rather one that took advantage of the fact that the frontiersmen had their own earnest frustration with their lack of safety on the frontier and wanted to find a solution to their “Uneasiness.” The word “Uneasiness” also seems to be reflective of an effort on Dunmore’s part to sympathize with the frontiersmen with emotional language, rather than merely say that they should go on the offensive for the glory of Virginia or the Crown or the white man or the Christian (or any of the many reasons Britons gave for their imperial expansion).
Twelve days later, after Dunmore heard about another massacre by the Indians, he wrote another letter to Andrew Lewis. This letter, written more urgently than the first, told Lewis that Dunmore himself would be joining the war effort, raising an army and expecting to rendezvous with forces led by Andrew Lewis and his brother Charles Lewis. By this point, war seemed inevitable, and Dunmore sought to make sure Lewis knew that their wartime expenses were “sure of being reimbersed” because they were “Acting on the Defensive.” To explain Dunmore’s decision to enter the war effort directly, he once again offered an emotional understanding of the frontiersmen’s feelings, writing,
“the general Confederacy of Different Indian Nations their repeated Hostilities (there were six Men Murdered on Dunkard Creek on the 18th instant) the Discovery of Indians & universal Alarm throughout all the frontiers of the Colony & the unhappy situation of the Divided People settled over the Alagany Mountain’s makes it necessary for [me to] go in Person to Fort Dunmore to put Matters under the best Regulation to Support that Country for a Barrier [and] give the Enemies a Blow that will Breake the Confederacy & render their plans abortive.”[31]
Dunmore reaches for emotional language here, motivating his voyage to Fort Dunmore (once Fort Pitt, now Pittsburgh) with the “universal Alarm throughout all the frontiers of the Colony” and “the unhappy situation of the Divided People settled all over the Alagany Mountain’s.” This does not seem like a man careless for the frontier, nor does it even seem like a man who selfishly wanted land and just so happened to share an interest with the frontier folk. If he were just duping the settlers to make war (after many of them have been massacred), why was it so easy to raise an army? And if it is just shared interests, why lead the war effort himself? Dunmore could have been content to stay in Williamsburg and condemn the fighting on the frontier, but Dunmore’s sincere view was that the fighting on the frontier was just, and he, as governor, ought to ensure that the frontiersmen were victorious as representatives of Virginia.
A Lord Defends His War
The war, though it had been brewing for years, was short and decisive, with only one major battle, the Battle of Point Pleasant. Though the details of the war are interesting and complex, this paper will not detail them.[32] As the war wound down after Virginia’s decisive victory at the Battle of Point Pleasant, Pennsylvania governor John Penn issued a proclamation, demanding that the western settlers (mainly those at Fort Pitt/Fort Dunmore) recognize the fact that they are citizens of the colony of Pennsylvania, not Virginia, despite Dunmore’s repeated efforts. The war, having gone so well for Virginia, made Penn fear that those in the western part of his state would pledge allegiance to Virginia rather than Pennsylvania (which they unquestionably resided within according to Pennsylvania’s charter). The proclamation is revealing because Penn, in his own insecurity, effectively admits that Dunmore has won over the frontiersmen, while making fun of how Dunmore so positively talks about the frontier. Despite the fact that the proclamation’s sole purpose was to demand frontiersmen recognize his authority, Penn barely ever talks about them, instead focusing on how ridiculous Dunmore is and how the charter’s boundaries for Pennsylvania were always clear. In the voice of Dunmore, Penn mocked Dunmore’s claims to western Pennsylvania, writing that Dunmore complained that the
“the Province of Pennsylvania had unduly laid claim to a very valuable and extensive quantity of his Majesty’s territory; and the Executive part of that Government, in consequence thereof, had most arbitrarily and unwarrantably proceeded to abuse the laudable adventurers in that part of his Majesty’s Dominions, by many oppressive and illegal measures, in discharge of their imaginary authority[.]”[33]
John Penn, another governor of a colony with a long frontier, serves as a foil to Dunmore that can be used to compare how the two thought of their frontier folk. Dunmore leads a popular and decisive war effort, while John Penn makes fun of Dunmore from Philadelphia and how he considers the frontiersmen to be “laudable adventurers.” Dunmore’s ideology, shared with the frontiersmen, was that the indefensible Proclamation Line could not be continued and that the frontier massacres required a war to finally cease. For this, Penn made fun of Dunmore’s unbecomingly close relationship with the frontiersmen. And, of the idea that those on the frontier have the right to self-determination, Penn decried this as their “imaginary authority.” By comparing with John Penn, and examining his parody of Dunmore, one can see that at least by 18th century frontier governor standards, Dunmore was a man of the people. So much so, in fact, that John Penn lambasted him for it in an official proclamation.
While John Penn mocked him, Lord Dunmore met with leaders of the Lenape (Delaware) tribe and the Iroquois to discuss what the postwar borderlands would look like after Virginia had defeated the Shawnee and Mingo tribes in Lord Dunmore’s War. Lenape chief White Eyes spoke first, appealing for friendship and cooperation between his tribe and Virginia, in spite of the “foolish young men” who started the war.[34] After accepting and reciprocating White Eyes’ call for friendship with the Lenape, Dunmore began to rant about “how little the Shawanese deserve the treatment or appellation of brethren from me,” listing seven different instances of murder, massacre, or robbery committed by the Shawnee against the frontiersmen.[35] Dunmore then wrapped up the list: “All these, with many other murders, they have committed upon my people before a drop of Shawanese blood was spilt by them; and have continually perpetrated robberies upon my defenceless Frontier inhabitants, which at length irritated them so far that they began to retaliate.”[36] Though Dunmore’s speech concluded pleasantly and respectfully with many more calls for “fresh strength” to the “ancient friendship” between Indians (Delaware and Iroquois) and whites, the anger that Dunmore expressed towards the Shawnees is revealing.[37] Though Dunmore unquestionably sought leverage and sympathy in this interaction, it is nonetheless notable that Dunmore described the frontiersmen as “my people,” indicating that he does not exclusively govern for elites in the east, but for frontiersmen in the west too. Moreover, Dunmore’s description of the “Frontier inhabitants” as “defenceless,” though obviously a bit exaggerated, highlights that Dunmore sees it as his job to defend those on the frontier. To Dunmore, the frontier folk are not dumb, backwards troublemakers unworthy of the crown’s attention, but to the contrary, they are his people, and they deserve to be protected.
A few months after explaining himself to John Penn, the Iroquois and the Lenape, Dunmore once more wrote his own defense, this time to his most important audience: the Crown and its representatives. For months, while Dunmore was overseeing the war effort in Lord Dunmore’s War, the Earl of Dartmouth, the new Secretary of State for the Colonies (appointed after Hillsborough’s resignation), wrote letter after letter to Dunmore, accusing him of violating the Proclamation Line, violating Indian treaties, abusing Indians, and threatening Dunmore with “such Steps [as] may be taken as the King’s Dignity and Justice shall dictate.”[38] These accusations and threats undoubtedly came as rumors rolled into Dartmouth’s office, many from John Penn, detailing the war underway. Dunmore, forced to defend himself, launched into his most famous quote about the frontier in a letter to Dartmouth, a detailed description of just what makes the frontiersmen so hard to govern:
“My Lord I have learnt from experience that the established Authority of any Government in America, and the Policy of Government at home, are both insufficient to restrain the Americans; and that they do and will remove as their avidity and restlessness incite them. They acquire no Attachment to Place. But wandering about seems engrafted in their nature; and it is a weakness…[They are] impressed from their earliest infancy with Sentiments and habits, very different from those acquired by persons of a similar condition in England, they do not conceive that Government has any right to forbid their taking possession of a vast tract of Country, either uninhabited, or which serves only as a Shelter to a few Scattered Tribes of Indians. Nor can they be easily brought to entertain any belief of the permanent obligation of Treaties made with those People, whom they consider, as but little removed from the brute Creation.”[39]
In an effort to defend himself and his war, Dunmore engaged in many negative stereotypes about the frontiersmen, that they “acquire no Attachment to Place,” and that they view Indians “as but little removed from the brute Creation.” However, it should be noted, this was a private correspondence, and Dunmore participated in the intra-elite exercise of frontier demonization in order to justify a war fought entirely by frontiersmen. The goal here was to preserve the gains made by frontiersmen on the frontier, though the methods were to blame, condescend and villainize them. Though this may seem counterintuitive, it was in fact quite wise. If Dunmore was to preserve the frontiersmen’s gains, he could not say that the war was an organized effort to violate all royal orders (in fact, it was); instead, he must say he was forced into it by the reckless, disorganized, “wandering” frontiersmen.
Crucially, this explanation worked, not just for Dunmore, but also for the frontiersmen and for the British Empire. Dartmouth wrote Dunmore months later to tell him that there “no Room in the Royal Breast to doubt of the uprightness of your Lordship’s Intentions.”[40] As for the frontiersmen, the gains made by their war efforts were allowed to stand and the Shawnees that had given them so much trouble had been subdued. For the British Empire, the Treaty of Fort Stanwix was upheld, and the alliance with Indians was shored up enough to prevent the Indians from all joining with the Patriot side in the Revolutionary War. So, while this famously condescending letter would have undoubtedly offended the frontiersmen, it only served their interests and furthered the ideology shared by Dunmore and them, the ideology that would prevail in the new country the frontiersmen would help found: that the frontier ought to be “settled” and protected, and that arbitrary lines should not stand in their way.
Throughout Dunmore’s career as a colonial governor, he spoke ill of the frontiersmen on many occasions. At the beginning of his career, he called them lower class, and by the end of his governor career, they were still restless, racist wanderers. And yet, despite this derogatory tone, Dunmore unquestionably fought for the frontier in Lord Dunmore’s War, which is why he had no trouble gaining the support of frontiersmen in his quest to defeat the Shawnee and Mingo tribes. Dunmore sided so powerfully with the frontiersmen, so contrary to the wishes of other colonial governors and royal officials, that he faced the ire of other elites for doing so. His language is important, but in its contradictions, we can find clarity. While each different audience demanded different rhetoric, Dunmore’s politics as governor of Virginia were consistent and popular with the people who lived on the frontier—he believed westward expansion was inevitable and ideal, and that the frontier should be protected.
The Measure of a Man
Dunmore was no saint, and this paper is not intended to be an apologia for him; he spoke for himself too often to necessitate that. But the current explanations for Lord Dunmore’s War as an “engineered” crisis or a coincidental interest alignment do not suffice, and the measurements of Dunmore as either exceptionally selfish or averagely selfish miss the mark. Lord Dunmore’s War was fought over the land between the weak Proclamation Line of 1763 and the Ohio River, and the political debate over who was to control it was a raging one, and Dunmore took a side in that debate. When Dunmore arrived in Virginia prepared to be her governor, he observed the challenges to the line, and the violence underway in the region, and he took the side of the frontiersmen in the land dispute, joining forces with them and commanding their efforts in a victorious, brief war with the Shawnee and Mingo tribes. If Dunmore were selfish, it would be more likely he would have done what Penn did and sat in his colonial capital, condemned the fighting, and lobbied for the frontiersmen to be disciplined and for their gains to be invalidated. A selfish Dunmore would not have gone to the frontier himself and led a war effort that he knew risked his governorship. Only a politically motivated Dunmore would do that.
The role of class on the frontier has been a popular topic for historians working since the midpoint of the 20th century. Many of these works have focused on the wrongdoings of the elites or the ways in which the lower classes played a bigger role in frontier politics than previously imagined.[41] These two themes are important to this paper, and the work of these historians animates its story. The sins of the elites in the frontier were numerous, and the lower classes no doubt used their agency to play a large role in the development of the frontier. But the inevitable inadequacy of elites should not prevent us from making distinctions in their political receptiveness to the people on the frontier, and this paper seeks to draw such a distinction. Dunmore was an especially politically receptive 18th century colonial governor, and his politics, genuine though hard to parse at times, were coherent and reflective of the sentiments of the frontier folk. Dunmore wanted his frontier protected, his colony expanding, and his frontiersmen victorious in their battles with Indians. These were not goals he merely pontificated about from his Williamsburg estate, but rather goals he traveled across the frontier, personally risking his safety and his position as governor to try to achieve. Though Dunmore was no angel and would unquestionably fail today’s moral standards, it is worth remembering exactly what kind of an 18th century governor of Virginia he was: a receptive, courageous, and intensely political man of the people.
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[1] Eric Hinderaker, At the Edge of Empire: The Backcountry in British North America, Regional Perspectives on Early America. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), 99.
[2] Dunmore’s New World, 57 but it’s a citation so should chase further
[3] George Washington, Sep 17, 1767. In George Washington, “The Papers of George Washington Digital Edition,” The Papers of George Washington, accessed May 14, 2023, https://rotunda.upress.virginia.edu/founders/GEWN.html.
[4] Robert Dinwiddie, “Governor Robert Dinwiddie’s Proclamation of 1754” (Secretary of State of Kentucky, February 19, 1754), https://www.sos.ky.gov/land/resources/legislation/Documents/Proclamation%20of%201754.pdf.
[5] James Corbett David, 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, Early American Histories (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2013), 61.
[6] Richard Douglas Spence, “John Donelson and the Opening of the Old Southwest,” Tennessee Historical Quarterly 50, no. 3 (1991): 157–72, 160; David, Dunmore’s New World, 63.
[7] David, Dunmore’s New World, 74.
[8] Warren R. Hofstra, “‘The Extention of His Majesties Dominions’: The Virginia Backcountry and the Reconfiguration of Imperial Frontiers,” The Journal of American History 84, no. 4 (1998): 1281–1312, https://doi.org/10.2307/2568082.
[9] David, Dunmore’s New World,84.
[10] Patrick Griffin, American Leviathan: Empire, Nation, and Revolutionary Frontier, 1st ed. (New York: Hill and Wang, 2007), 122.
[11] Ibid, 123.
[12] Ibid, 122.
[13] David, Dunmore’s New World, 4.
[14] Ibid, 92.
[15] Ibid, 4.
[16] John Murray Dunmore, July 12, 1774. In John Murray Dunmore, “Correspondence, 1771-1778.” (John D Rockefeller Jr. Library, Williamsburg, VA, 1784), 399, 401.
[17] David, Dunmore’s New World, 74.
[18] George Washington, June 15, 1767. In “The Papers of George Washington Digital Edition.”
[19] John Murray Dunmore, Nov 12, 1770. In John Romeyn Brodhead et al., Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New York (Albany, N.Y. : Weed, Parsons and Co., 1853), http://archive.org/details/documentsrelativ08brod, 253.
[20] Ibid.
[21] Ibid.
[22] Richard Douglas Spence, “John Donelson and the Opening of the Old Southwest,” 160.
[23] Map taken in its entirety from David, Dunmore’s New World, 64.
[24] John Murray Dunmore, March 20, 1772. In John Murray Dunmore, “Correspondence, 1771-1778,” 103.
[25] Ibid.
[26] Gary S. Williams, No Man Knows This Country Better: The Frontier Life of John Gibson, First edition., Ohio History and Culture (Akron, Ohio: University of Akron Press, 2022), 31.
[27] The Mingo, living along the Ohio River, were a tribe made up of many former members and descendants of other tribes including the Iroquois.
[28] David, Dunmore’s New World, 78-81.
[29] Glenn F. Williams, Dunmore’s War: The Last Conflict of America’s Colonial Era, 1st edition (Westholme Publishing, 2017), 127.
[30] John Murray Dunmore, July 12, 1774. In John Murray Dunmore, “Correspondence, 1771-1778,” 399.
[31] John Murray Dunmore, July 24, 1774. In John Murray Dunmore, “Correspondence, 1771-1778,” 401-402. Any text placed into this quote in between brackets was added by the original transcribers, not me.
[32] The most careful and systematic detailing of Dunmore’s War can be found in Glenn F. Williams, Dunmore’s War: The Last Conflict of America’s Colonial Era.
[33] John Penn, October 1774. In Peter Force, American Archives: Consisting of a Collection of Authentick Records, State Papers, Debates, and Letters and Other Notices of Publick Affairs, the Whole Forming a Documentary History of the Origin and Progress of the North American Colonies; of the Causes and Accomplishment of the American Revolution; and of the Constitution of Government for the United States, to the Final Ratification Thereof. In Six Series ... (Washington, 1837), https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000346548, 856.
[34] White Eyes, October 1774. In Peter Force, American Archives (Washington, 1837), 872.
[35] John Murray Dunmore, October 1774. In Peter Force, American Archives (Washington, 1837), 873.
[36] Ibid.
[37] Ibid.
[38] William Legge, Earl of Dartmouth, September 8, 1774. In John Murray Dunmore, “Correspondence, 1771-1778,” 409.
[39] John Murray Dunmore, December 24, 1774. In John Murray Dunmore, “Correspondence, 1771-1778.” (John D Rockefeller Jr. Library, Williamsburg, VA, 1784), 422-423.
[40] William Legge, Earl of Dartmouth, March 3, 1775. In John Murray Dunmore, “Correspondence, 1771-1778.” (John D Rockefeller Jr. Library, Williamsburg, VA, 1784), 476– 77.
[41] Patrick Griffin, American Leviathan; Stephen Aron, How the West Was Lost: The Transformation of Kentucky from Daniel Boone to Henry Clay (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996); Woody Holton, Forced Founders: Indians, Debtors, Slaves, and the Making of the American Revolution in Virginia (Chapel Hill: Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture by the University of North Carolina Press, 1999).