BOOK AUTHOR | MAGAZINE WRITER | TRAVELER
ANDREW LAWLER
BOOK AUTHOR | MAGAZINE WRITER | TRAVELER
ANDREW LAWLER
“A Perfect Frenzy” is a sharp-eyed look at the messy, sometimes absurd, often cruel birth pangs of a nation.”
—The New York Times
“Andrew Lawler finds fresh voices and novel ways of looking at the start of the Revolution—and, best of all, he offers the historian’s holy grail of an original argument.”
–Woody Holton, author of Liberty is Sweet
“A riveting and illuminating account of a pivotal episode in American history – a polished gem of a book.”
–David Zucchino, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of Wilmington’s Lie
“Elegantly written and impeccably researched, this pathbreaking book is a gift this troubled nation needs as it approaches its 250th anniversary.”
–Gerald Horne, author of The Counter-Revolution of 1776
Pre-Order A Perfect Frenzy now, or visit your local bookstore!
A Perfect Fenzy
Order A Perfect Frenzy at these booksellers, or visit your local bookstore!
“A Perfect Frenzy” is a sharp-eyed look at the messy, sometimes absurd, often cruel birth pangs of a nation.”
—The New York Times
“Andrew Lawler finds fresh voices and novel ways of looking at the start of the Revolution—and, best of all, he offers the historian’s holy grail of an original argument.”
–Woody Holton, author of Liberty is Sweet
“A riveting and illuminating account of a pivotal episode in American history – a polished gem of a book.”
–David Zucchino, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of Wilmington’s Lie
“Elegantly written and impeccably researched, this pathbreaking book is a gift this troubled nation needs as it approaches its 250th anniversary.”
–Gerald Horne, author of The Counter-Revolution of 1776
Pre-Order A Perfect Frenzy now, or visit your local bookstore!
A Perfect Fenzy
Order A Perfect Frenzy at these booksellers, or visit your local bookstore!
“A Perfect Frenzy” is a sharp-eyed look at the messy, sometimes absurd, often cruel birth pangs of a nation.”
— The New York Times
“Andrew Lawler finds fresh voices and novel ways of looking at the start of the Revolution—and, best of all, he offers the historian’s holy grail of an original argument.”
–Woody Holton, author of Liberty is Sweet
“A riveting and illuminating account of a pivotal episode in American history – a polished gem of a book.”
–David Zucchino, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of Wilmington’s Lie
“Elegantly written and impeccably researched, this pathbreaking book is a gift this troubled nation needs as it approaches its 250th anniversary.”
–Gerald Horne, author of The Counter-Revolution of 1776
Pre-Order A Perfect Frenzy now, or visit your local bookstore!
A Perfect Fenzy
Order A Perfect Frenzy at these booksellers, or visit your local bookstore!
REVIEWS
Editor’s Choice — New York Times
EDITOR'S CHOICE -- THE NEW YORK TIMES
New Books We Recommend This Week
Suggested reading from critics and editors at The New York Times.
Feb. 6, 2025, 4:04 p.m. ET
A PERFECT FRENZY:
A Royal Governor, His Black Allies, and the Crisis That Spurred the American Revolution
Andrew Lawler
Lawler recounts the story of John Murray, the Earl of Dunmore, a Scotsman installed as the governor of colonial Virginia shortly before the American Revolution who, among other efforts on Britain’s behalf, created a regiment of formerly enslaved Black soldiers to help fight the war. The author — a journalist who proves himself at home in historical archives — deftly dissects Dunmore’s choices in the midst of mounting revolutionary crises, revealing a man caught between competing loyalties and a rapidly shifting political landscape.
“A sharp-eyed look at the messy, sometimes absurd, often cruel birth pangs of a nation. It prompts readers to question the simplistic narratives that have shaped our understanding of this pivotal period.”
From Alexis Coe’s review
New York Times
THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Alexis Coe
The Ironic Fight Against Liberty in the American Revolution
In “A Perfect Frenzy,” Andrew Lawler reveals the hypocrisies of the patriots on the battleground of colonial Virginia.
“Damn Virginia,” thundered John Murray, the Earl of Dunmore, at news of his gubernatorial reassignment in the American colonies. The reluctant Scottish aristocrat saw no advantage to his relocation from cosmopolitan New York to the “torpid and sickly rural backwater” of Virginia. The year was 1771. It ended up being so much worse than he imagined.
But first, there was a honeymoon. The tartan-clad royal import went full Virginian, buying two forced labor camps and enough enslaved people to work them. He cut a wide swath through colonial high society, discussing architecture with Thomas Jefferson and planter concerns with George Washington.
Then came the revolutionary tempest that had been brewing beneath the surface of every genteel exchange. By June 1775, Dunmore stood at the helm of a collapsing system of governance: Patriots ignored orders, courts closed and dissolved the General Assembly after Virginia’s colonists pledged support for Massachusetts’s tea-tossers. Dunmore removed gunpowder from the Williamsburg magazine to a British ship. The revolutionaries called him a liar, a rapist and a dunce. Washington condemned him as “that arch-traitor to the rights of humanity.”
That’s the story the journalist Andrew Lawler learned as a boy in Virginia, but after a Black History Month assignment for National Geographic sent him poking around old historic haunts, he stumbled upon the Ethiopian Regiment; in 1775, Dunmore armed hundreds of Black volunteers who’d fled their patriot enslavers in exchange for freedom. Lawler began to wonder if the crown’s maligned minion was actually a complex figure caught in the maelstrom of revolutionary fervor.
The absorbing result of his meticulous research is “A Perfect Frenzy,” a new exploration of the crucible of colonial America. The author deftly dissects Dunmore’s choices in the midst of mounting revolutionary crises, revealing a man caught between competing loyalties and a rapidly shifting political landscape.
Lawler is especially good at casting a spotlight on the hypocrisy of the early insurrectionists as well as the double bind of Black Americans forced to navigate the treacheries of the Revolution. Fleeing an alarming number of men who were nearing the capital by land, Lord Dunmore established a “floating town” of 100 vessels off the coast of Virginia that became less a fief and more a purgatory, desperately cruising the Chesapeake in search of a friendly shore. A patriot-leaning Williamsburg newspaper chronicled his alleged “promiscuous ball” with “Black ladies” as guests but the grim reality was far from festive. These ships were floating petri dishes where typhus and smallpox played a deadly duet in the crowded holds. The Black passengers, already trying to escape one form of oppression, found themselves trapped in another, suffering disproportionately from cold, hunger and abysmal sanitation. More than 100 people died.
To underscore how intense the tension was on deck and on ground, the “crisis” in Lawler’s subtitle hasn’t even happened yet. It was “Dunmore’s Proclamation,” in November 1775, that promised freedom to enslaved people who joined the British military, that struck terror into the hearts of Virginia’s patriots. There was one exception: Enslaved people belonging to loyalists were promptly returned; the nearly 100 people Dunmore held in bondage fell in that category and he did nothing to help them out.
The proclamation wasn’t just an announcement and the Ethiopian Regiment wasn’t just a military unit; they were glitches in the colonial matrix, a paradox that short-circuited the Enlightenment narrative. “How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negroes,” mused the English moralist Samuel Johnson.
Operating under the royal governor’s aegis, the regiment spread a contagion of hope through the enslaved population. Dunmore’s Black regiment reportedly wore uniforms that bore the phrase “Liberty for Slaves” — a nod to the revolutionary cry of “Liberty or Death.” For the patriots, it was a nightmare made flesh: armed, free Black men empowered to fight back. Dunmore’s proclamation, which was echoed and amplified by other British generals, became a catalyst rivaling the Boston Tea Party and the Battles of Lexington and Concord in its power to galvanize the patriots. “Lord Dunmore has commenced hostilities in Virginia,” wrote Jefferson, who enslaved over 600 people during his lifetime. “It has raised our country into a perfect frenzy.”
The irony of the rebel position apparently occasioned some thought but little deep reflection. As Lund Washington wrote to his now world-famous cousin George in December 1775, the “dreaded proclamation” might lead some of those enslaved at Mount Vernon to escape. Who could blame them, he went on: “Liberty is sweet.”
Indeed, while General Washington, commander in chief of the Continental Army, waxed poetic about freedom on far-flung battlefields, more than a dozen of the hundreds of people he held in perpetual bondage would eventually vote with their feet, fleeing his five farms for a sworn enemy. They ran to the British lines even after pragmatism trumped prejudice and Washington’s ban on Black soldiers in the fight for independence was lifted. (When the war was over, the general demanded that the men who had taken refuge with the British Army be returned to him. The request was denied.)
Ignited by a resolve forged in defiance, the patriots were ready to burn it all down. On Jan. 1, 1776, Dunmore’s forces unleashed a cannonade on Norfolk, a loyalist stronghold overtaken by patriots. But it was the patriots themselves, spurred on by Jefferson and colonial authorities, who transformed this military action into wholesale destruction. After plundering the town, they set it aflame, leaving not a single church standing. In three days, Norfolk was reduced to ashes.
Lawler calls this “the greatest single war crime of the conflict,” a dubious honor long pinned on Dunmore, though it needn’t be. A 1777 patriot investigation revealed the stark truth: Of 1,333 buildings razed, patriots torched 1,279 to Dunmore’s 54. Yet this report was buried for six decades, allowing the myth of Dunmore’s villainy to make its merry way into our collective memory.
Just about every early American historian — yours truly included — has touched on Virginia’s last royal governor’s last year in America, distilling the highlights into our broader narratives. And there have been excellent books on free and enslaved Black people in Virginia. Still, Lawler’s laser focus on Dunmore’s tumultuous swan song stands out as a rare, if not singular, feat. He isn’t a historian but when it comes to research, he does an excellent impression of one. (There are some tells along the way: I clutched imaginary pearls at a chapter titled “Dunmore’s Dunkirk,” but in the end, such moments were few and far between.)
“A Perfect Frenzy” is a sharp-eyed look at the messy, sometimes absurd, often cruel birth pangs of a nation. It prompts readers to question the simplistic narratives that have shaped our understanding of this pivotal period in American history. “We can feel revulsion for the acts of patriots,” Lawler argues, “and respect their enemy without betraying the founders’ call for a more just and equitable society.”
The struggle for racial justice, the ever-contentious role of government and the moral failures behind the pursuit of freedom are specters that continue to haunt us today. As we approach America’s 250th in 2026, Lawler’s history offers us the kind of challenge we should be posing to our revolutionary mythology. In Dunmore’s story, we find an uncomfortable truth: Our most cherished narratives can cast the deepest shadows.
Kirkus
Kirkus
Accounts of the American Revolution’s outbreak often focus on Massachusetts, but there was plenty of action in Virginia, the largest colony.
Journalist and historian Lawler, author of The Secret Token: Myth, Obsession, and the Search for the Lost Colony of Roanoke, introduces John Murray, the Earl of Dunmore (1730-1809), Virginia’s royal governor from 1771 until he fled in 1775. As governor he represented British authority but could make no laws and possessed no police or military force. This caused no problems at first because he and Virginia’s elite shared the same goal—to enrich themselves by acquiring huge lands beyond the Appalachians by expelling the Indians (already expelled from Virginia itself). After a few years, his popularity plummeted as he tried to discourage opposition to new parliamentary taxes and then suppress an increasingly organized rebellion. To strengthen his minuscule forces, he issued the famous Dunmore’s Proclamation in November 1775, promising freedom to slaves who volunteered to bear arms for the crown. This produced—in addition to outrage among Virginia patriots—a few thousand Black volunteers. Formed into fighting units, they skirmished with rebels and didn’t do badly. But preoccupied elsewhere, Britain gave Dunmore little help. After a year of steady retreating, he abandoned Virginia, sailing off with ships packed with loyalists and escaped slaves. He continued to urge superiors to recruit enslaved people. Many considered it a good idea, but it was never official policy. Lawler joins a new generation of scholars who have determined that the earl’s proclamation makes him a pioneering hero in the campaign against slavery. He also gives Britain high marks for refusing to return the former slaves. This infuriated America’s leaders, Washington and Jefferson included, who maintained that they were stolen property who rightfully belonged to their owners.
A convincing rehabilitation of Dunmore, plus another dollop of clay added to the feet of our Founding Fathers.
Journal of the American Revolution
Journal of the American Revolution
by Patrick H. Hannum
Andrew Lawler’s recent text artfully focuses on an important and understudied American Revolutionary period, Virginia in 1775 and 1776, and topic, slavery. The title, A Perfect Frenzy: A Royal Governor, His Black Allies, and the Crisis that Spurred the American Revolution, describes his theme. His text follows the story of John Murray, Lord Dunmore, the last royal governor of the Colony of Virginia, and his efforts to build an army to counter Virginia’s Patriots and retain royal authority in the colony in the early years of the American Revolution. Dunmore’s most loyal and reliable allies in this effort were the thousands of enslaved Virginians that made up one third of the colony’s population.
This is an important work because Lawler gives a voice to thousands of unnamed individuals as he describes events unfolding in Virginia. He follows Dunmore with his assignment as Virginia’s royal governor in 1771 that ends with his first departure from North America in 1776. Although he returned to Great Britian, Dunmore did not relinquish his position as royal governor. The author includes a discussion of Dunmore’s return to North America late in the war in an attempt to regain royal control of Virginia, again advocating for the recruitment and training of Black soldiers. He also explains how effective Patriot propaganda and messaging influenced the negative characterization of Dunmore that continues to this day.
While describing an extensive series of political and military events, the author weaves in his overarching theme addressing the enslaved Virginians that rallied to Dunmore in search of freedom. Lawler includes discussion of all the key military and political events including but not limited to engagements at Hampton, Kemp’s Landing, Great Bridge, Norfolk, Gwynn’s Island and St. George’s Island, Maryland. Dunmore formally announced his policy to liberate the enslaved and indentured servants in an emancipation proclamation issued in November 1775 in Princess Anne County, now the City of Virginia Beach, following the engagement at Kemp’s Landing.
Dunmore’s story and that of his Black allies is not a particularly happy one; there are few winners, at best mostly survivors. Slavery was a brutal system of human control and war only made it uglier. Many of Dunmore’s Black supporters died from disease, and some were captured, executed or returned to slavery. With a lack of land forces, support from the British Navy was a critical component in keeping Dunmore in the fight and assisting his allies. Lawler does not overstate the importance of slavery; the author provides a balanced and thoughtful discussion and analysis on the impact slavery had on the Revolution in Virginia. Virginia’s history of slave labor is a sensitive subject for many but Lawler mindfully describes Dunmore’s careful balancing act with emancipation, citing its wartime necessity to preserve British colonial rule in the hemisphere and crush the rebellion.
Anyone who attempts to research and report on individuals of color, free, enslaved, native, Patriot and Loyalist will become frustrated with the lack of surviving individual Revolutionary era records, similar to the challenges faced in African-American genealogy. With a few exceptions, individual stories are very difficult to document because of the lack of written records. Lawler solves this challenge by using surviving records from the period. Simply based on proximity, numbers and other surviving records, Lawler documents that individuals of color were active participants in the Revolution. In 1775, 200,000 of Virginia’s 600,000 residents were Black, most enslaved. The author brings life to the story of thousands without knowing their names. Most were not literate but Lawler uses surviving official government accounts and personal records naming Dunmore and his allies to explain their roles and contributions.
Andrew Lawler is an accomplished writer and conducted extensive research for this text. He identified and referenced an impressive list of primary sources in his endnotes. He clearly consulted a wide body of secondary material. More importantly, his analysis provides contemporary relevance to the enduring issues he identifies. He draws parallels between Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of 1862 and Dunmore’s of 1775. He also describes Dunmore’s role in helping 8,000 formerly enslaved people leave the United States for freedom in other parts of the world as the Revolution ended. Interestingly, he describes how Virginia’s insistence on the authority and control of individual colony or state legislatures influenced the development and authority of the federal government, highlighting the concept of states’ rights. He brings relevance to contemporary issues of state vs. federal control.
Anyone with an interest in Virginia or Revolutionary history will find something of value to take from this text. Those who study slavery, government, or civil rights will find Lawler’s work insightful. Although dense with information on events and scholarly research, the text is neatly organized, well written and easy to read. Recreational readers or historians will enjoy the read. The release of this book in early 2025 makes it a valuable resource for Revolution 250 activities and events.
INTERVIEWS
Mountain Express Asheville.
Local author’s latest book sheds new light on early U.S. history
PODCASTS
Expanding Horizons, Air Date: 2/2/25
Historian and journalist Andrew Lawler reveals how Virginia’s complex revolution story challenges our traditional understanding of America’s founding.
VIDEOS