The Royal Ethiopian Regiment, also known as Lord Dunmore's Ethiopian Regiment, was a British military unit formed of "indentured servants, negros or others" organized after the April 1775 outbreak of the American Revolution by the Earl of Dunmore, last Royal Governor of Virginia. In 1775, Lord Dunmore, Royal Governor of Virginia, issued a proclamation offering freedom to all slaves of revolutionaries who were willing to join him under arms against the rebels in the American Revolutionary War. The Ethiopian Regiment saw service from 1775 to 1776. The Ethiopians perhaps saw action for the first time at the Battle of Kemp's Landing in November 1775. The Earl of Dunmore defeated the rebellious colonial militia. Dunmore's defeat was the first significant engagement of the American Revolutionary War in the South. Dunmore's Ethiopian Regiment was formed under white officers and noncommissioned, although it is probable that some of the black recruits later became sergeants. Dunmore disbanded the Ethiopian Regiment in 1776 on Staten Island, although many of its members likely served as Black Pioneers during the occupation of New York.