After Yorktown

by Don Glickstein

  Just as the rebel’s chain of command frustrated Carleton, the British strategy of conciliation struck Washington as inexplicable and possibly dangerous. “I hardly know what to think or believe,” he wrote Nathanael Greene in August 1782. “I confess, I am induced to doubt everything—to suspect everything.” Now more than ever, the Continental army needed to be on guard “whatever the real intention of the enemy may be.” Two months later, he was still convinced that the British had ulterior motives. “Notwithstanding all the pacific declarations of the British, it has constantly been my prevailing sentiment [that their] principal design was to gain time by lulling us into security . . . and in the interim to augment their naval force and wait the chance of some fortunate event to decide their future line of conduct.”23

  Carleton’s delay in evacuating New York because of inadequate transports might have been an excuse. Washington thought that “nothing short of a military force would ever free the city.”24

  42. Refugees and the Book of Negroes

  MEANWHILE, TORY AND REBEL MILITIAS AND GANGS FOUGHT A vicious civil war in the New York area. One historian documented nineteen skirmishes in New Jersey, Long Island, Connecticut, and the Hudson River Valley in 1782 and 1783. Another found thirty-five. A third lists forty-nine. Counting small-party incidents of terrorism, there were many more.1

  In May 1782, for example, a Loyalist whaleboat off Mattituck, Long Island, attacked Whig militia killing one and wounding one. Later that month, off Sandy Hook, New Jersey, Whig militia attacked 25 enemy, killing or wounding thirteen. In September, near Morristown, New Jersey, Whig militia killed one Loyalist and captured another.

  As late as spring 1783, the enemies fought. Loyalist captain John Bacon’s band of about two dozen men had regularly raided Whig property in central New Jersey, sometimes fighting heated battles with enemy militia. In early 1782, the Whigs captured him, but he escaped. In October, he reputedly killed nearly all of a crew of Whig privateers sleeping on a beach after unloading a captured cargo. With the help of local residents, Bacon fought off militia two months later. Another militia posse caught up with him on April 3, 1783, in an Egg Harbor tavern. After a scuffle, he surrendered and was granted quarter. That didn’t stop one of the Whigs, who believed Bacon had killed a brother, from running him through with a bayonet. Wounded, Bacon tried to escape and was shot dead.2

  One series of revenge killings became an international incident. In the early hours of March 24, 1782, a Loyalist militia force of 120 men attacked two dozen Whig militia in Toms River, New Jersey, led by Captain Joshua Huddy. The Loyalists suffered eight casualties; the Whigs, eleven, with thirteen captured—including Huddy, whom the Loyalists took to a New York jail. Six days later, Whigs captured Philip White, a Loyalist and former Huddy neighbor. He was shot trying to escape, although Loyalists believed it was a setup and revenge killing because White had previously killed one of the Whigs’ fathers. Now the Loyalists demanded revenge. They got permission to remove Huddy from New York, ostensibly as part of a prisoner exchange. Loyalist militia Captain Richard Lippincott commanded the group that took Huddy back to New Jersey where they hung him. They pinned a note on his chest: “Up goes Huddy for Philip White,” and cited “the cruel murders of our brethren.” Local residents now petitioned Washington to take action. Washington demanded Lippincott’s extradition. Clinton, who still commanded in New York, refused, saying Lippincott would receive a British court-martial. Washington then ordered a British officer chosen by lot for execution. The unlucky officer was Captain Charles Asgill, 19, son of a former London mayor. A month after Carleton arrived, Lippincott’s court-martial acquitted him. Washington was cornered by his pledge to execute an innocent man. Asgill’s mother appealed to the French king, who asked Congress for clemency. Congress acceded to its ally’s request; Washington released Asgill in December.3

  In June 1782, Shelburne wrote Carleton that the government had agreed to American independence as a basis for peace negotiations. Carleton’s efforts, he said, should be focused only on evacuation and treating Loyalists with “the tenderest and most honorable care, giving them every assistance.” Carleton got the news in late July. He submitted his resignation on August 14, saying he had accepted the New York command from “an ardent desire to see these colonies reconciled to Great Britain.” Now, he could no longer render “any considerable service.” To a cabinet member, he confided that he was not prepared to be a “mere inspector of embarkations.” But the government persuaded Carleton to do exactly that.4

  He notified Washington of the policy change on August 2. The king would support “the independency of the Thirteen Provinces,” and hope that Loyalists would be allowed to return home or be fully compensated for “whatever confiscation may have taken place.” The next day, Carleton announced the news publicly. There would be a cessation of hostilities.5

  It shocked and angered the Loyalists, some of whom refused to believe it. “This information struck me as the loss of all I had in the world and my family with it,” said the chief justice.6 The Reverend Schaukirk said it was impossible to describe “what an alarming effect this so unexpected news has upon the minds of the people; they were enraged against the Ministry. Some were for defending themselves to the last extremity and make their own conditions.”7

  Outside the city proper, Loyalists faced a grim situation. Between 1776 and the war’s end, the states passed 213 laws against Tories—including fifty-three from 1782 to 1785—limiting their freedom of speech and action; requiring loyalty oaths; removing them from office and disenfranchising them; quarantining, banishing, or exiling them; making it treason to support Britain in any way; and taxing or confiscating their property.8

  Now, Whig militia, gangs, and bandits increased their terrorism, while their Loyalist counterparts responded with diminished efforts. The Whigs “have cast off all appearance of a desire to be reconciled to the Loyalists who remained among them,” Carleton told London. “Almost all those [Loyalists] who have attempted to return to their homes have been exceedingly ill-treated, many beaten, robbed of their money and clothing, and sent back.”9

  One Connecticut refugee said he was “secured and dragged by a licentious and bloodthirsty mob and hung up by the neck . . . taken down, stripped, and whipped with a cat o’ nine tails in a most inhuman manner and then tarred and feathered and again hung up at the yard arm as a public spectacle.” They sent him to New York with a warning to never return, or he would be killed.10

  Loyalist militia, who had provided some protection, now deserted en masse. In May 1782, a Bergen Point, New Jersey, Loyalist unit of 350 whites and two hundred blacks (presumably escaped slaves) helped supply New York. Four months later, the unit was down to forty-nine whites.11

  Tens of thousands of refugees filled New York. Food was scarce. People scuffled in the streets, with too few troops to police them. In mid-December, the “greatest snow storm in 30 years” fell. “The rebels breathe the most rancorous and malignant spirit everywhere. Committees and associations are formed in every colony, and resolves passed, that no refugees shall return nor have their estates restored. . . . In short, the mob now reigns,” one Loyalist wrote.12

  In mid-1783, Carleton told Congress that it should blame itself for delaying the evacuation. “The violence in the Americans, which broke out soon after the cessation of hostilities, increased the number of their countrymen who look to me for escape from threatened destruction. But these terrors have of late been so considerably augmented that almost all within these lines conceive the safety both of their property and of their lives depend upon their being removed by me, which renders it impossible to say when the evacuation can be completed.”13

  He protested to Washington about “the shedding of American blood by American hands.”14 A Whig writer acknowledged the situation. Loyalists “had everything to fear if the British troops withdrew and left them to the clemency of their countrymen, now elated by success, and more hardened against the feelings of humanity by the cruel s
cenes of war they had witnessed.”15

  The chancellor of New York (who, in 1789, would administer the oath of office to President-elect Washington) observed a “violent spirit of persecution which prevails here . . . In some few, it is a blind spirit of revenge and resentment, but in more, it is the most sordid interest. One wishes to possess the house of some wretched Tory. Another fears him as a rival in his trade or commerce, and a fourth wishes to get rid of his debts by shaking off his creditor.”16

  Timothy Dwight, 25, a Continental army chaplain (and future Yale University president) served “for some time” in New York’s Westchester County. He later remembered the civilians he saw caught between the two armies:

  They feared everybody who they saw and loved nobody. . . . Fear was, apparently, the only passion by which they were animated. The power of volition seemed to have deserted them. They were not civil, but obsequious; not obliging, but subservient. . . . Both their countenances and motions had lost every trace of animation and feeling. . . . Their houses, in the meantime, were, in a great measure, scenes of desolation. Their furniture was extensively plundered or broken to pieces. The walls, floors, and windows were injured both by violence and decay, and were not repaired because they had not the means of repairing them, and because they were exposed to the repetition of the same injuries. Their cattle were gone. Their enclosures were burnt where they were capable of becoming fuel, and in many cases thrown down, where they were not. Their fields were covered with a rank growth of weeds and wild grass.17

  Washington replied skeptically to Carleton’s August 2, 1782, announcement that the British would suspend hostilities. Why didn’t it extend to naval operations? Why were Indian-Loyalist raids continuing on the frontier? Such raids, fueled by British arms, certainly weren’t happening “without directions from the commander-in-chief in Canada.”18

  Carleton replied that since American independence—the issue of contention—is now a given, “I disapprove of all hostilities both by land and sea.” As for “the savages,” Carleton said he had sent messengers to end raids; subsequent fights, such as those in Ohio, were “necessary for self-defense.”19

  Proof of good intentions came on March 19, 1783. Carleton wrote Washington that he received the news that a preliminary peace treaty was signed on November 30 in Paris. What was the best way, Carleton asked, to communicate that news to Congress? But Congress already had the news, courtesy of Captain Joshua Barney who arrived in Philadelphia on March 12. Washington learned of it the day Carleton wrote. Now, even the American general believed it. “The news of peace (tho’ not official) is nevertheless so positive and the certainty that hostilities were to cease . . . is so great” that he ordered everything his army had captured “be given up and returned to the British Lines, without the least injury or delay.”20

  The next month, Carleton shared more news with Washington. The American allies, France and Spain, had signed their respective preliminary peace treaties in January. Accordingly, he would announce the peace publicly in two days, April 8, 1783, end all further hostilities, and release remaining prisoners. Moreover, he expected Congress to abide by the treaty’s provision for restitution of the Loyalists’ confiscated estates so that “the blessings of peace should universally prevail.”21

  Washington agreed to the cessation of hostilities, but deferred on the release of prisoners he held until he got the official word from Congress, which came shortly thereafter. “I beg, sir,” he told Carleton, “that you will please to accept a tender from me of reciprocal goodwill . . . and with an earnest wish that . . . it may prove as lasting as it is happy.”22

  But the generals’ war wasn’t over. When Loyalists heard the news read to them in front of City Hall, they responded with “groans and hisses . . . bitter reproaches and curses upon their king for having deserted them,” a paper reported. “It is surprising what England gives up,” said the Reverend Schaukirk. “It is shameful how the Loyalists are abandoned.” (The king acknowledged his own bitterness in a speech before Parliament. In conceding American independence, “I have sacrificed every consideration of my own to the wishes and opinion of my people.” After the speech, he asked an observer, “Did I lower my voice when I came to that part of my speech?”)23

  For Carleton, months would pass before his work was done: the logistics of transporting an army to new assignments, and resettling a refugee city in other colonies, primarily Atlantic Canada.

  Washington’s work was to furlough most of his army—without pay—and keep a core to observe the British and maintain order until civilian authorities took over. “No disorder or licentiousness must be tolerated,” he warned his army. “No military neglects or excesses shall go unpunished.” He urged patience. You are “gallant and persevering men . . . with well-earned laurels.” You have “shared in the toils and dangers of effecting this glorious revolution, of rescuing millions from the hand of oppression . . . and establishing an asylum for the poor and oppressed of all nations and religions.”24

  When Washington talked about an asylum for the oppressed, he made one exception—an exception Carleton refused to accept.

  The exception was African Americans. The British had promised freedom to those blacks who deserted the rebel army or escaped from rebel slavery.25 But the preliminary peace treaty prohibited the British from “carrying away Negroes or other property” that belonged to Whigs. At stake were significant quantities of such “property.” In New Jersey alone before the war, about 11,000 slaves accounted for 8 percent of the population. In New York and its four adjacent counties, more than 7,700 African Americans—some free, but most enslaved—represented fifteen percent of the whole.26

  Returning the escaped slaves was on Washington’s agenda at his only face-to-face meeting with Carleton. The May 6, 1783, conference was held on the west bank of the Hudson River about twenty-five miles north of New York near what is now Piermont. The generals talked about prisoner releases, and evacuation of the city and frontier posts. According to one Whig account, when Washington asked about “obtaining the delivery of all Negroes and other property,” Carleton mentioned that among the six thousand Loyalists already evacuated, some of them were blacks. Washington “expressed his surprise” that this had happened in contradiction to the terms of the treaty. Carleton explained that it couldn’t have been the intention of the British government to violate its “faith to the Negroes who came into the British lines” and deliver them to their former masters for punishment or even execution. This would be “a dishonorable violation of the public faith pledged to the Negroes.”

  Besides, if the two governments concluded that his position contradicted the treaty, Britain would compensate the American owners for their loss, Carleton said. To facilitate this, the British kept a register—the Book of Negroes—of all former slaves who were evacuated. Washington replied that “it was impossible to ascertain the value of the slaves” from such a register.27

  To make sure Carleton understood how unhappy he was, Washington followed up with a letter to him that same day. “I cannot, however, conceal from your excellency, that my private opinion is that the measure is totally different from the letter and spirit of the Treaty.” But Carleton wouldn’t budge. He told Washington that although he has stopped future emigration of blacks, for those who escaped across the lines prior to the treaty, “I had no right to deprive them of that liberty I found them possessed of.”28

  Lord North, who had returned to the British cabinet, backed up Carleton. Not only did the evacuation not violate the treaty, but “the removal of the Negroes . . . is certainly an act of justice due to them from us.”29

  The Book of Negroes register would grow to three thousand people, two-thirds of them escapees from the South. The British also evacuated 1,200 additional African Americans; as slaves owned by Loyalists, they remained slaves. Some criminal Britons captured escaped slaves and resold them to their Whig owners. In other cases, British military courts ordered escapees returned to their owners. Another
group—the sick, frail, and aging—were abandoned to the Whigs. Still, the British evacuated thousands of formerly enslaved African Americans throughout North America to freedom, the common estimate being about twenty thousand. Hundreds more escaped in private ships.30

  43. Evacuation Day

  AS TRANSPORTS ARRIVED THROUGHOUT 1783, CARLETON EVACUATED refugees, their slaves and servants, and Loyalist and British troops, but it wasn’t fast enough for Washington. In May, shortly after their conference, Carleton told him that “it is impossible to tell when the evacuation of this city can be completed; in truth, I cannot guess the quantity of shipping that will be sent me, nor the number of persons that will be forced to abandon this place.”1

  When the British left Westchester County, immediately north of Manhattan, civil authorities couldn’t maintain order, and robberies and violence against Loyalists spiked. Washington sent in Continental troops. In mid-June, he was able to reassure a Congressman that “no outrages . . . have been experienced—and I hope e’er long that good order and regularity of government may prevail in that distressed county.”2

  The colonel in charge of these advance troops reported to Washington in early July that not only was all calm, but he and his British counterpart across the lines engaged in “a friendly intercourse,” and conducted reciprocal visits. Washington immediately ordered the colonel to stop the visits, something “I have carefully endeavored to avoid.”3

  Still, Loyalists were hounded. In August, a British intelligence report said sarcastically: “The spirit of doing equal justice seems to prevail in the country: from tarring and feathering Tories, the remedial administration are now turned to the officers who have retired from our service, of which some are beat, others mobbed, and others compelled to fly from the rage of an ungrateful race of miscreants.”4