Reviews - A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum: Murder in Ancient Rome

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A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum: Murder in Ancient Rome

Emma Southon

4.12 AVERAGE

saradawn's review against another edition

3.5

funny informative slow-paced

jeffburns's review against another edition

5.0

funny informative fast-paced

A Perfect Frenzy: A Royal Governor, His Black Allies and the Crisis That Spurred the American Revolution. Andrew Lawler. Atlantic Monthly Press, 2025. 544 pages.

While the American Revolution officially began in April 1775 at Lexington and Concord, two major events occurred in January 1776 that were pivotal in fueling the Patriot cause. Thomas Paine published his pamphlet "Common Sense" laying out the arguments for independence. The other event is perhaps less known today, but it was perhaps even more effective: On January 1, 1776, the city of Norfolk, Virginia was burned to the ground. No other American city in history has been completely and utterly destroyed as Norfolk was. Twenty years later, visitors were still stunned by the vast ruins and fields of debris. For 250 years, the Norfolk fire has been blamed on the British, specifically the royal governor Lord Dunmore. As a result of the fire, Dunmore was vilified on both sides of the Atlantic and labeled a war criminal. Patriot propaganda painted him as a cruel and witless libertine who hosted huge orgies with enslaved women in the Governor's Palace when he wasn't wantonly destroying the lives of his subjects. Following the Norfolk fire, Dunmore was even shunned by his peers in the House of Lords who believed that he had gone too far. Dunmore died in a state of ignominy, and his family was reduced to relative poverty, ostracized by the British upper class.

The kicker? Dunmore and the British didn't destroy Norfolk. THE PATRIOTS INTENTIONALLY BURNED THE CITY TO THE GROUND, and this fact was always known. The Patriot propaganda machine used the destruction to maximum advantage to stir patriotic fervor. The fact is that Norfolk was a Loyalist stronghold, and British warships did destroy a few dozen structures, mainly warehouses and docks, but 95% of the buildings destroyed were intentionally ignited by Patriot troops under orders from Patriot officers and political figures. Why? They wanted to punish Norfolk for being strongly Loyalist, and Dunmore, once extremely popular and respected governor among the landed gentry and yeoman farmers alike, had crossed the line. He recruited and armed free and enslaved black Virginians to fight for Britain, promising freedom in return. This book tells a great, formerly untold, story and illustrates that history is extremely complicated and never just black and white. In this situation, you have black and white Patriots wearing engraved brass breastplates or embroidered shirts saying "Liberty or Death" going into battle against Dunmore's black Ethiopian Regiment troops wearing breastplates engraved with "Liberty For Slaves."