Replies

“Don’t forget that we don’t know who penned the phrase “domestic insurrection” or what it means.”

Historians and students of history of all political stripes largely agree on what it means.

http://edu.lva.virginia.gov/online_classroom/shaping_the_constitution/doc/dunmores_proclamation

http://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history-primary-documents

http://colonialhall.com/histdocs/declaration/declarationanalysis27.php

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part2/2h33.html

https://theamericanscholar.org/domestic-insurrection/

https://pdjeliclark.wordpress.com/2012/07/04/he-has-excited-domestic-insurrections-amongst-us-american-slavery-on-the-4th-of-july/

It’s nice that you’ve managed to find someone to be wrong with you.

The answer to the question you didn't answer, "What happened in Britain in 1745?" was the Jacobite Rising for Bonnie Prince Charlie (mostly in Scotland, but certainly a concern for the British government). That, according to Google books ngrams is where "domestic insurrection" became a commonly used phrase. The '45 would still have been on many people's minds twenty years later, and no slaves involved in that uprising (though maybe the Scots would disagree).

I clicked on several of the sites you cited and got this about Lord Dunmore: "He issued his proclamation, and authoritatively summoned to his standard all capable of bearing arms ..." I suspect that thing about calling on people to take up arms for king and country or else be labeled traitors may have constituted "exciting domestic insurrections."

Sure, his lordship did also "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, foe the more speedily reducing this Colony to a proper Sense of their Duty, to His MAJESTY'S Crown and Dignity," and told subjects not to pay taxes to the rebel government. Nowadays we focus on that part about slaves, but that may or may not have been on everybody's mind at the time.

I still don't get why you keep going on about this, though.