[BroJoeK]

jeffersondem quoting: "And note well the author's findings: 'Who had the king of England 'excited?'
What 'domestic' rebellion did Jefferson and the colonists so fear could erupt in their midst?
It turned out that my earlier history classes had omitted something from the American Revolution, key players whose significance was enough to warrant mention and concern in the fledgling nation’s premiere document–slaves.” "

Thanks for you links, they confirmed my previous opinions.
So let's see if we can increase the fact-base in what has until now been a mostly fact-free zone.
Just so we're clear on these things:

1. Lord Dunmore, the British governor of Virginia, whose 1775 proclamation promised freedom for slaves joining the British army, Dunmore was himself a slave-holder who had no moral objections to slavery, only military objectives in offering them freedom.

2. The dictionary definition of "domestic insurrection" is:
   "An insurrection is an uprising against government or civil authority.
   Inasmuch as local officials are always charged with intervening to curb behavior understood to be outside the law, the broadest conception of the term would include race and ethnic revolts, such as slave revolts, lynchings..."
   But note the first definition is: "an uprising against government or civil authority".
   That describes 1775 & 1776 loyalist battles against patriot governments.
   It does not describe the actions of slaves responding to Dunmore's proclamation by joining the British army.

3. Dunmore's Proclamation does not call for "domestic insurrection" but rather:
   "I do hereby further declare all indented Servants, Negroes, or others, (appertaining to Rebels,) free that are able and willing to bear Arms, they joining His MAJESTY’S Troops as soon as may be"

4. "Schama goes so far as to say of Southern patriots:
   'Theirs was a revolution, first and foremost, mobilized to protect slavery'.
   But even if this were true — and Schama’s evidence, though well chosen, is too impressionistic to be wholly convincing — it still would not imply, of course, that the British were fighting a war to destroy slavery."

5. This list of slave-revolts shows none during the Revolutionary War period.

6. This list of Revolutionary War battles shows five loyalist domestic insurrections against local patriot governments in Virginia, & Carolinas.

7. None of the quotes equating "domestic insurrections" with slave-revolts come from Jefferson himself, or others of that time.
   Instead they come from modern historians & bloggers.

8. The US 1807 Insurrection Act covers:
   "insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy"
   
   None of these terms describe Lord Dunmore's call for slaves to join the British army.

9. Jefferson's direct reference to Dunmore's Proclamation in the DOI's famous deleted paragraph reads:
   "...he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he also obtruded them..." "

The bottom line fact is that Dunmore did not call for "domestic insurrections" among slaves, but did support domestic insurrections of loyalists against patriot governments in Virginia and Carolinas, in 1775 - 1776.
And that is what Jefferson certainly refers to in the DOI.
If others read "slave revolts" into it, they are adding something that's not really there.

[jeffersondem]

“The bottom line fact is that Dunmore did not call for “domestic insurrections” among slaves, but did support domestic insurrections of loyalists against patriot governments in Virginia and Carolinas, in 1775 - 1776.
And that is what Jefferson certainly refers to in the DOI.”

If Jefferson, and the 13 slave states whose representatives signed the DOI, had wanted to put loyalists and their backers in England on the spot, they would have included a reference to “treasonable insurrections”, not "domestic insurrections."

[jeffersondem]

“None of the quotes (that Jeffersondem supplied) equating “domestic insurrections” with slave-revolts come from Jefferson himself, or others of that time. Instead they come from modern historians & bloggers.”

I thought it would be alright to cite modern historians because in your post 343 you cite an article written in 2003 as the single source of support for your claim that . . . well, I'm losing track of what you do claim.

Anyway, the article you cited was named “Insurrections, Domestic” and contained this sentence that ostensibly relates to Thomas Jefferson's “domestic insurrections:”

“No section of the country was spared the largely urban anti-abortion rioting that began in the mid-1980s and continued at the start of the twenty-first century.”

Why is it you can cite modern sources that do not relate in any sensible way to Jefferson's writings but I can not cite modern historians that do?