Ed Helms

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 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.

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.

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.

Karma might be swinging back at us any minute.

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.

Right.