[BroJoeK]

rustbucket: "Sounds like “domestic insurrections” to me."

Not to me, for two reasons:

1. The one example you cite, a Colonel Tye, black loyalist soldier, is clearly a military commander with title and up to 800 men.
   He was apparently supported by the Brits and given a guerilla mission -- to steal property and capture patriots.
   That is not "domestic insurrection".

2. But even if we admit that your point is at least arguable, here's what's not: the time frame beginning in 1779 puts Col. Tye three years after the Declaration, and therefore cannot be what the Declaration refers to in the past tense.

So, I'll repeat my argument: there were indeed many "domestic insurrections" beginning long before the Declaration in 1776.
These were not slave revolts, because there were none, but rather uprisings of British loyalists against patriots.
Indeed, the old estimate of loyalist numbers was about 1/3 of whites, or 750,000 a larger number even than America's 700,000 slaves, and the two combined about 1/2 the total population.
Now newer estimates of loyalists are about half that, or 400,000 but still a huge number and as it turned out, more dangerous to the Revolution than slave revolts.

Finally, Lord Dunmore did not offer slaves freedom in exchange for slave revolts, but rather in exchange for military service in the British Army.
The result was thousands of runaway slaves did serve the Brits, but there were no slave revolts -- aka "domestic insurrections" -- in 1776 or later.

[rustbucket]

BJK,

There is an interesting article entitled, “The “Domestic Insurrections” of the Declaration of Independence” by Sidney Kaplan in “The Journal of Negro History”, Vol. 61, No. 3 (July 1976), pp 243-255, which I highly recommend to you. I will quote a few sentences from the article, which can be accessed through JSTOR.

“It is now time to repeat the opening question: What did Congress mean by “domestic Insurrections”? The answer: slave revolt.”

The article quotes from a number of sources considering slave revolts and other possible interpretations of “domestic insurrections” including insurrections by Tories counter to the revolution. The article notes that an argument could be made from Jefferson’s original draft that “treasonable insurrections in our fellow-citizens” must refer to Tories as slaves were not fellow citizens and thus not treasonous. However, a footnote states that

“a reasonable case might be made from Jefferson’s writings that the dominant note in his thinking about Blacks was his fear of “domestic insurrections” …

Another footnote states:

Boyd, I, 212. The word “domestic,” in connection with slave resistance, had earlier and later usage. Of South Carolina, during the winter of 1766, Pauline Maier writes: “The most serious menace came from the slaves, whom Bull called a ‘numerous domestic Enemy’

Yet another footnote states:

In their efforts to win France to an alliance, the American negotiators, including Benjamin Franklin, repeated the twenty-seventh charge against George III (spelling out “domestic insurrections") “of exciting slaves to rise against their Masters, and Savages to assassinate and massacre …” (American Commissioners to the Count de Vergennes, Jan. 5, 1777 …)

[rustbucket]

BJK

Thank you for having opened up a new subject to research, "domestic insurrections." I did some more searching and came up with some 1775 documents that refer to domestic insurrections in response to Lord Dunmore's Proclamation:

From the following 1835 book: The Military and Naval Magazine of the United States, Volume 5, pages 323 to 326. The book cites a 1775 letter written after Lord Dumore's Proclamation. I excerpt the following from the letter:

”But enough of this. Independent of these arguments, we may urge, that we have a right to take up arms in self-defense, since we have been threatened with an invasion of savages, and insurrection of slaves, and have had our negroes and stocks piratically taken from us. The laws of God and nature, and the principles of the Constitution [rb: i.e., the British Constitution], justify it; and at present, all the feelings of humanity – every suggestion of policy – and the cries of our insulted and imprisoned countrymen, loudly call TO ARMS.”

The book continued with

The proclamation [rb: Dunmore's] was also noticed and answered by the Convention. Their declaration, (published after the battle at the Great Bridge,) is in the following words:

Virginia, December 13, 1775
By the Representatives of the people of the Colony and Dominion of Virginia, assembled in General Convention:
A DECLARATION.

Whereas Lord Dunmore, by his proclamation, dated on Board the ship William, the 7th of November, 1775, hath presumed, in direct violation of the Constitution [rb: the British Constitution] and laws of the country, to declare martial law in force, and to be executed throughout this Colony, whereby our lives, our liberty, and property, are arbitrarily subjected to his power and direction : And whereas the said Lord Dunmore, assuming powers which the King himself cannot exercise, to intimidate the good people of this Colony into compliance with his arbitrary will, hath declared those who do not immediately repair to his standard, to be in actual rebellion, and submit in all things to a government not warranted to the Constitution, [rb: the British Constitution again] to be in actual rebellion, and thereby to have incurred the penalties inflicted by the laws for such offenses; and hath offered freedom to the servants and slaves of those he is pleased to term REBELS, arming them against their masters, and destroying the peace and happiness of his Majesty’s good and faithful subjects, whose property is rendered insecure, and whose lives are exposed to the dangers of a general insurrection: …

…


EDMUND PENDLETON, President

[jeffersondem]

“Finally, Lord Dunmore did not offer slaves freedom in exchange for slave revolts, but rather in exchange for military service in the British Army.”

For the purpose of evaluating Brother Joe's offering, let's stipulate that the King's representative, Lord Dunmore, never used the term slave revolts in his proclamation.

It follows then - using BJO (Brother Joe Orthodoxy) - that it is wrong for anyone to accuse Lord Dunmore of doing something that he never said he would do.

Brother Joe rejects Jefferson's unambiguous claim in the rough draft of the DOI: “he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms against us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them.”

I have to wonder what Brother Joe thinks of Jefferson's other charges: “For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States”

“For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences.”

“He has abdicated Government here . . .”

“He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts . . .”

Where, Brother Joe asks, did the King ever say he would protect murderers? Where did the King say he would try people for pretend offences? Where did the King say he would abdicate government? Where did he say he would plunder our seas? Where did the King actually say he was a Tyrant unfit to be the ruler of a free people?

If he didn't say it, Brother Joe reasons, it didn't happen and can't be claimed to have happened.

Question: who has pressured Brother Joe, once levelheaded, to adopt and advocate positions that are not supportable?

Mostly I just blame myself.