Later that year Dunmore indeed issued a royal proclamation declaring martial law and promising freedom to slaves who joined the royal forces. This concern about freeing the slaves, concludes the historian Jill Lepore, was the factor that, more than the issues of taxation and representation, or the fighting in Massachusetts, “tipped the scales in favor of American independence.”42 Washington, learning about the proclamation from his encampment outside Boston, was alarmed. “That Arch Traitor to the Rights of Humanity, Lord Dunmore, should be instantly crushd,” he warned, without irony.
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