‘My dissertation traces the movement, both voluntary and involuntary, of enslaved and freed people in the American Revolution. This paper is envisaged as part of my first chapter. I focus here on places of refuge for enslaved people in Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia between 1775-1776. I seek to explore how enslaved and freed people envisioned the presence and purpose of British forces and how the freedom-seeking people influenced British policy toward refugees. My project endeavours to recover the diversity of the experiences of refugees from slavery as they declared their independence. In Virginia, I explore enslaved people’s flight to freedom both before and after Lord Dunmore’s proclamation in November 1775. I assess the extent to which the proclamation changed the pattern of flight and how enslaved people’s actions prior to the proclamation motivated Dunmore. I build on scholarship that has looked at how enslaved people interpreted the proclamation and imbued it with an altogether different meaning from its author’s original intent. The flight of women, men, and children made Dunmore’s ‘‘Floating Town’’ and Gwynn’s Island on the Chesapeake sites of sanctuary. Although Virginia was the only colony where a British governor issued a formal document of emancipation through enlistment, enslaved people’s flight meant the result for enslavers in the Carolinas and Georgia was not dissimilar. Enslaved people drew upon their previous experiences of navigating terrain and waterways to similarly turn Fort Johnston on the banks of the Cape Fear, Sullivan’s Island at the mouth of Charlestown harbour and Tybee Island off Savannah into places of refuge. By drawing upon the pioneering scholarship on enslaved people in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, and the Civil War and employing the methodologies used in work on slavery in the Atlantic world, I seek to make visible the black refugee experience.’