by Simon Schama
23 All the cases mentioned are taken from the Book of Negroes, drawn up in New York in 1783. Copy in NYPL. See Hodges, BLD.
24 Allan Kulikoff, Tobacco and Slaves: The Development of Southern Cultures in the Chesapeake 1680–1800 (Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and London, 1986), pp. 418–19.
25 PRO CO 5/1353/321. Although written in early December 1775, Dunmore was unable to find a ship to take his dispatches to the Secretary of State until the following February, by which time his position had deteriorated. Rather than supply Dartmouth and Lord George Germain with a revised summary of events, Dunmore preferred to send his letters as written, doubtless in archival self-justification.
26 PRO CO 5/1353/335; see also Francis Berkeley, Dunmore’s Proclamation of Emancipation (Charlottesville, Virginia, 1941).
27 Quarles, op. cit., “Lord Dunmore,” p. 501.
28 Pennsylvania Gazette, 17th July 1776.
29 Louis Morton, Robert Carter of Nomini Hall: A Virginia Tobacco Planter of the Eighteenth Century (Williamsburg, Virginia, 1945), pp. 55–56; Kulikoff, p. 419.
30 The most detailed account is Dunmore’s own, in his letter of 6th December to Dartmouth, PRO CO 5/1353/321.
31 William J. Schreeven and Robert L. Scribner (eds.), Revolutionary Virginia, the Road to Independence, 7 vols. (Charlottesville, Virginia, 1973–83), vol. V, p. 9.
32 Dunmore to Dartmouth, 18th February 1776; PRO CO 5/1353/321.
33 Gerald W. Mullin, Flight and Rebellion: Slave Resistance in Eighteenth Century Virginia (New York, 1972) p. 134.
34 Ibid.
35 Ibid., p. 133.
36 On the Black Pioneers, see Todd W. Braisted, “The Black Pioneers and Others: The Military Role of Black Loyalists in the American War of Independence” in John W. Pulis (ed.), Moving On: Black Loyalists in the Afro-Atlantic World (New York and London, 1999), pp. 3–38.
37 Ibid., p. 13; Clinton Papers (William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan), vol. 263.
38 Ibid., pp. 11–12; Clinton to Martin, 12th May 1776, Clinton Papers, vol. 263.
39 Frey, op. cit., Water, p. 67.
40 Ibid., pp. 64–65; Peter H. Wood, “‘Taking Care of Business’—Revolutionary South Carolina: Republicanism and Slave Society” in Jeffery J. Crow and Larry E. Tise (eds.), The Southern Experience in the American Revolution (Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1978), pp. 284–85, gives a much higher figure (disputed by Frey) of fifty fugitive blacks killed in the raid.
41 Pauline Maier, American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence (New York, 1997), p. 37.
42 For the history of the epidemic, see the excellent account in Elizabeth Fenn, Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775–1782 (New York, 2001), especially pp. 57–61.
43 “Particular Account of the Attack and Rout of Lord Dunmore,” Peter Force (ed.), American Archives, 6 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1837–53), I, p. 151; see also Fenn, op. cit., p. 60.
44 John Thornton Posey, General Thomas Posey: Son of the American Revolution (East Lansing, Michigan, 1992), p. 32.
CHAPTER IV
1 Prince Hoare, The Memoirs of Granville Sharp Esq. Composed from his own Manuscripts, 2 vols. (London, 1828), I, p. 184.
2 Ibid., pp. 185–86; E.C.P. Lascelles, Granville Sharp and the Freedom of Slaves in England (Oxford, 1928), pp. 39–40.
3 Hoare, op. cit., I, pp. 189–90.
4 Hansard, The Parliamentary History of England (London, 1813), XVIII, pp. 695 ff.
5 Hoare, op. cit., I, pp. 211–12.
6 Charles Stuart, A Memoir of Granville Sharp (New York, 1836) p. 21.
7 Sylvia R. Frey, Water from the Rock: Black Resistance in a Revolutionary Age (Princeton, New Jersey, 1991), p. 147.
8 Hansard, op. cit., XVIII, p. 733.
9 Ibid., p. 747.
10 Hoare, op. cit., I, pp. 216–17.
11 The most detailed description of the action is found in Campbell to Lord George Germain, 16th January 1779, PRO CO/5/182/31. Benjamin Quarles, The Negro in the American Revolution (Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1961) describes Quamino Dolly as an “aged slave,” although the letter from Campbell says nothing about the black guide’s age.
12 PRO CO 5/182/31.
13 David George’s narrative on this page and elsewhere in the book is taken directly from “An Account of the life of Mr David George, from Sierra Leone in Africa, given by himself in a Conversation with Brother Rippon in London and Brother Pearce of Birmingham,” Annual Baptist Register (1793), pp. 473–84; it is one of the earliest slave narratives and African-American autobiographies.
14 Quarles, op. cit., Negro, p. 145.
15 Prevost to Clinton, 2nd November 1779, PRO CO 30/55/20, 2042.
16 Todd W. Braisted, “The Black Pioneers and Others: The Military Role of Black Loyalists in the American War of Independence” in John W. Pulis (ed.) Moving On: Black Loyalists in the Afro-Atlantic World (New York and London, 1999), p. 21; Royal Georgia Gazette, 18th November 1779.
17 Allan Kulikoff, Tobacco and Slaves: The Development of Southern Cultures in the Chesapeake 1680–1800 (Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and London, 1986), p. 419.
18 Gregory D. Massey, John Laurens and the American Revolution (Columbia, South Carolina, 2000), p. 155.
19 Sidney Kaplan and Emma Nogrady Kaplan, The Black Presence in the Era of the American Revolution (Amherst, Mass., 1989), pp. 64–65; Quarles, Negro, p. 80.
20 Massey, op. cit., p. 93.
21 Henry Laurens to John Laurens, 26th January 1778, The Papers of Henry Laurens (eds. Philip H. Hamer, David R. Chesnutt et al.), 15 vols. (Columbia, South Carolina, 1968–), 12, pp. 367–68. In September Henry Laurens warned his son “it is certainly a great task effectually to persuade Rich Men to part willingly with the very source of their wealth and, as they suppose, their tranquility,” ibid., vol. 15, p. 169.
22 Massey, op. cit., p. 131; John Laurens to Henry Laurens, 17th February 1779; Hamer et al., op. cit., vol. 19, p. 60.
23 Quarles, op. cit., Negro, p. 63; Massey, op. cit., p. 141.
24 Massey, op. cit., p. 143.
25 Ibid., p. 162.
26 Quarles, op. cit., Negro, pp. 108–10.
27 John Marrant, A Narrative of the Lord’s wonderful dealing with John Marrant, a black (Now gone to preach the gospel in Nova Scotia) (London, 1788).
28 Sylvia R. Frey, op. cit., Water, p. 142.
29 Ibid., p. 120.
30 “Memorandum for the Commandant of Charlestown and Lieutenant General Earl Cornwallis,” 3rd June 1780, PRO 30/55/23, 2800.
31 “Memoirs of the life of Boston King, a Black Preacher, written by himself during his residence at Kingswood-School,” Methodist Magazine, XXI (1798), p. 106; see also Phyllis R. Blakeley, “Boston King: A Negro Loyalist Who Sought Refuge in Nova Scotia,” Dalhousie Review, 48, no. 3 (August 1968), pp. 347–56.
32 Boston King, “Memoirs…,” op. cit., p. 107.
33 11th December 1779; PANS RG1, vol. 170, pp. 332–33.
34 George, op. cit., p. 477.
35 For this incident and those following it, see King, op. cit., pp. 107–11.
36 Ibid.
37 Graham Russell Hodges, “Black Revolt in New York City and the Neutral Zone 1775–1783,” in Paul A. Gilje and William Pencak (eds.), New York in the Age of the Constitution 1775–1800 (Cranbury, New Jersey, 1992), p. 43, n. 26; see also Leslie M. Harris, In the Shadow of Slavery: African-Americans in New York City 1626–1963 (Chicago and London, 2003), pp. 54–55.
38 Graham Russell Hodges (ed.), The Black Loyalist Directory: African Americans in Exile After the American Revolution (New York and London, 1996), p. 16 (hereafter BLD).
39 Ibid., pp. 34–35.
40 Graham Russell Hodges, Root and Branch: African Americans in New York and East Jersey, 1613–1863 (Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1999), p. 143. 41 Hodges, op. cit., BLD, p. 16.
42 Ibid., p. 146.
43 Ibid., p. 151.
44 Although Tye’s “Colonel” was an honorific title given to
him by the British army rather than a formal rank, there was no question that his exploits and his ruthlessness commanded a good deal of admiration from the regular officer corps.
45 For Tye’s exploits, see Hodges, op. cit., “Black Revolt,” pp. 36–38.
46 All these case histories are from the Book of Negroes in Hodges, op. cit., BLD.
47 Frey, op. cit., Water, p. 165.
48 Ibid., p. 169; the description is based on the diary of a Hessian officer who encountered such a train in the later stages of the war: Johann Ewald (trans. and ed. Joseph P. Tustin), Diary of the American War (New Haven, Conn., 1979), p. 305.
49 A Moravian diarist in Bethania, North Carolina, recorded in February 1781 Cornwallis’s army leaving two wagons of meat behind while in pursuit of Nathanael Greene. See Elizabeth Fenn, Pox Americana: The Great Smallpox Epidemic of 1775–1782 (New York, 2001), p. 124.
50 Fenn, op. cit., p. 132.
51 Frey, op. cit., Water, pp. 147–48.
52 The evidence sometimes cited, that slaves from Patriot plantations formed part of the spoils and traffic of the British army, was made a lot of by Patriot propaganda (as it had been ever since the Dunmore proclamation), but is overwhelmingly circumstantial and not altogether credible. The “market” referred to in a letter to Cornwallis from General Alexander Leslie, that the smallpox epidemic at Portsmouth would ruin “our market,” ought not to be taken to mean a market in humans. Had there been a clandestine slave trade in the army, expressly violating Clinton’s orders in the Philipsburgh Proclamation, it would hardly be likely that one general would have alluded to it in formal dispatches to another.
53 Governor John Rutledge to General Francis Marion, 2nd September 1781, in Robert Wilson Gibbes, Documentary History of the American Revolution (New York, 1855–57), vol. 3, p. 131.
54 PRO 30/11/110.
55 Frey, op. cit., Water, p. 167; Fenn, op. cit., p. 129.
56 This extraordinary, haunting document was discovered by Todd Braisted in the Clinton Papers, vol. 170, p. 27, and is reproduced in his invaluable essay “The Black Pioneers,” op. cit., p. 17.
57 Fenn, op. cit., p. 130.
58 Daniel Stevens to John Wendell, 20th February 1782, in Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, XLVIII, October 1914–June 1915, pp. 342–43.
59 Cruden to Dunmore, 5th January 1782, PRO CO 5/175/267.
60 Dunmore to Clinton, 2nd February 1782, PRO CO 5/175/264.
61 Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, XLVIII, March 1915, p. 342.
62 Leslie to Clinton, 30th March 1782, PRO 30/55/9957; for the abstract of “Pay for the Black Dragoons,” PRO, Treasury Office, Class 50/2/372; for Wadboo, see Frey, op. cit., pp. 138–39.
63 Moncrief to Clinton, 13th March 1782, PRO 30/55/90/9955.
64 For details of the raid on Bear Creek, see Charles C. Jones, The Life and Services of the Honourable Major General Samuel Elbert of Georgia (Cambridge, Mass., 1887), p. 47; Kaplan and Kaplan, op. cit., p. 85.
CHAPTER V
1 In his journal, one of the primary sources for the meeting at Tappan, Chief Justice William Smith describes the Greyhound as a “yacht,” but elsewhere in his memoirs, as Isabelle K. Savelle points out in Wine and Bitters: An account of the meetings in 1783 at Tappan NY and aboard HMS Perseverance (Rockland County Historical Society, 1975), p. 20, the vessel is identified as a frigate. The two ships took an unusual (not to say extraordinary) thirty hours to sail from lower New York to Dobb’s Ferry, a distance of hardly more than twenty miles, so, as Savelle rightly concludes, they must necessarily have been beating against adverse tides and winds of the kind that regularly give a rough edge to the Hudson Valley spring.
2 On Carleton, see Paul David Nelson, General Sir Guy Carleton, Lord Dorchester, Soldier-Statesman of Early Canada (Cranbury, New Jersey, 2000); Paul R. Reynolds, Guy Carleton: A Biography (New York, 1980); Paul H. Smith, “Sir Guy Carleton, Peace Negotiations and the Evacuation of New York,” Canadian Historical Review, 1969, pp. 245–64.
3 Smith, op. cit., pp. 251 ff.
4 Marion Robertson, King’s Bounty: A History of Early Shelburne, Nova Scotia (Halifax, 1983), p. 69.
5 Ellen Gibson Wilson, The Loyal Blacks (New York, 1976), p. 42.
6 Sylvia R. Frey, Water from the Rock: Black Resistance in a Revolutionary Age (Princeton, New Jersey, 1991), p. 176.
7 Ibid.; also George Smith McCowen Jr., The British Occupation of Charleston 1780–82 (Columbia, South Carolina, 1972), pp. 106–7.
8 Cruden to Nibbs, 16th March 1783, PRO CO 5/109/379.
9 See also PRO CO 5/109/375 and 377.
10 Frey, op. cit., Water, p. 178. Cruden, as Frey makes clear, was equally eager to help Southern loyalists recover their escaped slaves where he could.
11 Gregory D. Massey, John Laurens and the American Revolution (Columbia, South Carolina, 2000), p. 228.
12 Laurens’s “Journal and Narrative of Capture and Confinement in the Tower of London” is in Papers of Henry Laurens, vol. 15, pp. 330 ff. The original is in the Rare Books and Manuscripts Division of the NYPL.
13 In his powerful The Negro President: Jefferson and the Slave Power (New York, 2003) Gary Wills argues that the entire early constitutional apparatus was constructed with an eye to maintaining the dominance of the South and its indispensable social and economic system.
14 Carleton was evidently so nervous about the consequences of the verdict that he waited some weeks to inform Washington, and then another five weeks before transmitting a full account of the court martial proceedings. See Smith, op. cit., p. 200.
15 An engraving by Jordan and Halpin, after a nineteenth-century painting said to describe faithfully the appearance of the de Wint House in 1783, apparently exists in the collection of the NYHS. Savelle, op. cit., p. 13.
16 Graham Russell Hodges (ed.), The Black Loyalist Directory, African Americans in Exile After the American Revolution (New York and London, 1996), introduction, p. xl, n. 1 (hereafter BLD); for the 20th October 1782 sailing, see PRO CO 30/55/5938.
17 W.H.W. Sabine (ed.), The Historical Memoirs of William Smith (New York, 1971), p. 586.
18 Ibid., p. 587.
19 Sir Guy Carleton to General Washington, 12th May 1783, PRO CO 5/109/313.
20 Wilson, op. cit., p. 52; Washington to Harrison, 6th May 1783, The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, 1745–1799 (ed. John C. Fitzpatrick), 39 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1931–44), vol. 26.
21 Wilson, op. cit., p. 51.
22 Hodges, op. cit., BLD introduction, p. xvii.
23 “Memoirs of the life of Boston King, a Black Preacher, written by himself during his residence at Kingswood-School,” Methodist Magazine, XXI (1798), p. 157; Phyllis R. Blakeley, “Boston King: A Negro Loyalist Who Sought Refuge in Nova Scotia,” Dalhousie Review, 48, no. 3 (August 1968), p. 350.
24 There are, in fact, two Cato Ramseys inscribed in the Book of Negroes, the other being a fifty-year-old from Maryland, the former slave of a Benjamin Ramsey of Cecil County. This Cato had served as an orderly in the General Hospital Department of the army since 1778 and now had a wife, Sukey, and a five-year-old son, also called Cato. But it was Cato Ramsey of Virginia who is marked “GBC” (General Birch Certificate). Hodges, op. cit., BLD, pp.39, 204.