by Simon Schama
25 “Precis relative to Negroes in No. America,” PRO CO 5/8/112–114.
26 Hodges, op. cit., BLD introduction, p. xviii.
27 These and all the micro-biographies described subsequently are taken directly from the Book of Negroes in the BLD (see Hodges, op. cit.). The lists for L’Abondance, sailing for Port Roseway, Nova Scotia, on 31st July 1783, are on pp. 81–88 and 103–17. L’Abondance, which also made one of the later autumn sailings, carried more blacks to Nova Scotia than any other single vessel leaving New York. See also Esther Clark Wright, “The Evacuation of Loyalists from New York in 1783,” Nova Scotia Historical Review, 5 (1984), p. 25.
CHAPTER VI
1 Details taken from contemporary accounts, in particular that of Alexander Falconbridge, who served as surgeon on four slaving voyages between 1783 and 1787; An Account of the Slave Trade on the Coast of Africa (London, 1788).
2 He is so described in the manuscript transcript of the hearing for a retrial preserved in the National Maritime Museum archive, Greenwich (hereafter NMM/Zong).
3 Falconbridge, op. cit., p. 25, makes clear that this was the normal condition of the slave decks, the floor “so covered in blood and mucus that it resembled a slaughterhouse. It is not in the power of the human imagination to picture to itself a situation more dreadful or more disgusting.”
4 NMM/Zong.
5 According to Davenport, one of the lawyers appearing for the insurers, in NMM/Zong.
6 Ibid. The phrase comes directly from Kensal’s deposition (now lost) to the court and quoted by counsel for the insurers. 7 “Swivels” were guns mounted on a platform allowing for 180-degree rotation, and were used on slave ships to police slaves when they were brought on deck. See Jay Coughtry, The Notorious Triangle: Rhode Island and the African Slave Trade 1700–1807 (Philadelphia, 1981), p. 73. The Sandown, for which a log survives for a voyage in 1793–94, had just such swivels. See Bruce L. Mousser, A Slaving Voyage to Africa and Jamaica: The Log of the Sandown 1793–94 (Bloomington, Indiana, 2002), p. 7, n. 31.
8 NMM/Zong.
9 The Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African (London, 1789); facsimile reprint (London, 1969). The discovery of baptismal and naval documents recording Equiano’s birthplace at South Carolina was made by Vincent Carretta, whose Equiano the African, Biography of a Self-Made Man (Athens, Georgia) is the most recent and critically sophisticated of the biographies.
10 Charles Stuart, A Memoir of Granville Sharp (New York, 1836), p. 30.
11 Prince Hoare, The Memoirs of Granville Sharp Esq. Composed from his own Manuscripts, 2 vols. (London, 1828), I, appendix, p. xxxiii.
12 For details of Ramsay’s career, see Folarin Shyllon, James Ramsay: The Unknown Abolitionist (Edinburgh, 1977).
13 Ibid., p. 33.
14 For the early Quaker abolitionists see Judith Jennings, The Business of Abolishing Slavery 1783–1807 (London, 1997), especially pp. 22–32.
15 Ibid., p. 27. For the gathering momentum of the campaign against the slave trade following the Zong case, see Robin Blackburn, The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery 1776–1988 (London, 1988), pp. 136 ff.
16 Ellen Gibson Wilson, Thomas Clarkson: A Biography (York, 1980), pp. 25 ff.
17 Thomas Clarkson, History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament, 2 vols. (London, 1808; published in the USA, 1836, as The Cabinet of Freedom), I, p. 203.
18 J.R. Oldfield, Popular Politics and British Anti-Slavery: The Mobilization of Public Opinion Against the Slave Trade 1787–1807 (Manchester and New York, 1995), p. 71.
19 Thomas Clarkson, An Essay on the Commerce and Slavery of the Human Species particularly the African… (Philadelphia, 1786), p. 90.
20 Norma Myers, Reconstructing the Black Past: Blacks in Britain, 1780–1830, p. 72.
21 PRO AO 12/19.
22 Ellen Gibson Wilson, The Loyal Blacks (New York, 1976), p. 138.
23 PRO AO 13/29.
24 PRO AO 12/102; PRO AO 13/119; Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina, “Black Loyalists in London after the American Revolution,” in John W. Pulis (ed.), Moving On: Black Loyalists in the Afro-Atlantic World (New York and London, 1999), p. 92.
25 Mary Beth Norton, “The Fate of Some Black Loyalists of the American Revolution,” Journal of Negro History, LXVIII, 4 (October 1973), p. 404. For comparative treatment of white loyalists, see the same author’s The British Americans: The Loyalist Exiles in England 1774–1789 (Boston, 1972).
26 PRO AO 12/99.
27 Ibid.
28 PRO AO 12/19.
29 AO 12/99; PRO AO 13/27; Norton, op. cit., p. 406; Wilson, op. cit., Loyal Blacks, p. 139.
30 Steven J. Braidwood, Black Poor and White Philanthropists: London’s Blacks and the Foundation of the Sierra Leone Settlement 1786–1791 (Liverpool, 1994), p. 25.
31 James S. Taylor, Jonas Hanway, Founder of the Marine Society: Charity and Policy in Eighteenth Century Britain (Berkeley, California, 1985).
32 It is possible, as Steven Braidwood suggests, that slaveowners could participate in the work of the committee, precisely to demonstrate that they were not as devoid of humane feeling as the abolitionists claimed. But Angerstein, a personal friend of Hanway’s, was part of a network of active philanthropy that was ready to mobilize sentiment and money for almost any worthy cause.
33 Braidwood, op. cit., p. 67.
34 Ibid., p. 68.
35 Henry Smeathman, Some account of the Termites which are found in Africa and other hot climates (London, 1781), p. 33; idem, Plan of a settlement to be made near Sierra Leone on the Grain Coast of Africa (London, 1786).
36 In particular, Folarin Shyllon, Black People in Britain 1555–1833 (London and New York, 1977), p. 128, who writes that “It was now only a question of time until the Government and the liberal and reactionary Establishment would coalesce in patriotic enthusiasm to preserve the purity of the English bloodstream by expelling from England the ‘lesser breeds without the law.’ “Mary Beth Norton (op. cit.) takes a similar view, although less adamantly stated. For a more balanced assessment of the evidence, see Braidwood, op. cit., pp. 72–107.
37 Copy of letter from Hopkins to Sharp, Rufus King Papers, NYHS.
38 Hoare, op. cit., II, pp. 3–17.
39 Ibid., I, p. 370; see also the MSS version in Sharp’s commonplace book, GRO, Hardwicke Court Muniments, MSS, H:36.
40 Braidwood, op. cit., pp. 88–89.
41 Wilson, op. cit., Loyal Blacks, p. 144.
42 Ibid., p. 98.
43 The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa: The African Written by Himself (Leeds, 1874) in Henry Louis Gates (ed.), The Classic Slave Narratives (New York, 1987).
44 PRO T1/643–487. See the helpful commentary by Christopher Fyfe (ed.), Anna Maria Falconbridge, Narrative of Two Voyages to the River Sierra Leone During the Years 1791–1792–1793 (Liverpool, 2000), p. 40, n. 38.
45 Much the most thorough investigation of the evidence surrounding the white women is Braidwood, op. cit., pp. 281–86.
46 Wilson, op. cit., Loyal Blacks, p. 149.
47 Ibid., p. 151.
CHAPTER VII
1 Anna Maria Falconbridge (ed. Christopher Fyfe), Narrative of Two Voyages to the River Sierra Leone During the Years 1791–1792–1793 (Liverpool, 2000), p. 24 reports the Naimbana repeatedly calling the Europeans “rogues,” but smiling as he did so and adding that he thought the English the “honestest” among them.
2 A View of the “Province of Freedom,” done in 1791, shows the flag still flying from its tree-pole on St George’s Hill immediately above the huts of settlers (which in fact had been burned by King Jimmy the year before). Thompson also sketched a fine map of the immediate area of the settlement at the mouth of the Sierra Leone River. See Ellen Gibson Wilson, The Loyal Blacks (New York, 1976), between pp. 226 and 227.
3 Granville Sharp to James Sharp, 31st October 1787, Sharp Papers, NYHS; see also Prince Hoare, The Memoirs o
f Granville Sharp Esq. Composed from his own Manuscripts, 2 vols. (London, 1828), II, p. 83.
4 John Matthews, A Voyage to the River Sierra-Leone (London, 1788), reprinted in The British Transatlantic Slave Trade (ed. Robin Law), 4 vols. (London, 2003), 1, p. 79. Matthews’s account was based on three years’ experience in Sierra Leone between 1785 and 1787. He was a staunch defender of the slave trade, but his account of the topography, natural history, social economy and customs of the region (from descriptions of clitoral circumcision to the all-important palaver) is still rich and invaluably detailed, and my own account draws extensively from it.
5 The description of the Naimbana’s style of dress is from Falconbridge, op. cit., pp. 24–25.
6 Steven J. Braidwood, Black Poor and White Philanthropists: London’s Blacks and the Foundation of the Sierra Leone Settlement 1786–1791 (Liverpool, 1994), p. 183.
7 On the fauna and the local Temne, Bullom and Mende names, see Matthews, op. cit., pp. 82–93.
8 Hoare, op. cit., II, p. 108.
9 Ibid., pp. 132–33.
10 J.R. Oldfield, Popular Politics and British Anti-Slavery: The Mobilization of Public Opinion against the Slave Trade 1787–1807 (Manchester, 1995), pp. 155 ff; for the active involvement of women in the campaign see Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation 1707–1837 (New Haven, Conn., 1992), pp. 254, 260.
11 Judith Jennings, The Business of Abolishing Slavery 1783–1807 (London, 1997), p. 54. For the importance of the print, see Oldfield, op. cit., pp. 164–65.
12 On this vexed issue see, most recently, Gary Wills, The Negro President: Jefferson and the Slave Power (New York, 2003), especially pp. 1–15.
13 See his long letters to Franklin and Rufus King (Rufus King Papers, NYHS), intended for copying and wider circulation.
14 Hoare, op. cit., II, p. 83.
15 Ibid., pp. 95–96.
16 Weaver to Sharp, 23rd April 1788, in Hoare, op. cit., II, p. 96.
17 Ibid., p. 98.
18 Ibid., p. 99.
19 Ibid., appendix xi, pp. xxviii–xxix; Braidwood, op. cit., pp. 195, 192–291.
20 Hoare, op. cit., II, p. 112.
21 Ibid., pp. 114–15.
22 Braidwood, op. cit., pp. 196–97.
23 PRO, Adm 1/2488, Savage’s report, 27th May 1790.
24 Hoare, op. cit., II, p. 98.
25 For Falconbridge and the account of their 1791 stay in Sierra Leone, see Falconbridge, op. cit.; Alexander Falconbridge’s An Account of the Slave Trade on the Coast of Africa is collected in the same volume.
CHAPTER VIII
1 Peters’s second petition is in PRO FO 4/1 f 419; see also Ellen Gibson Wilson, The Loyal Blacks (New York, 1976), pp. 180–81.
2 Passenger list from Graham Russell Hodges (ed.), The Black Loyalist Directory, African Americans in Exile After the American Revolution (New York and London, 1996), pp. 177–80.
3 James W. St G. Walker, “Myth, History and Revisionism: The Black Loyalists Revisited,” Acadiensis, XXIX, no. 1 (Autumn 1999), p. 89. Walker argues forcefully against Barry Cahill, “The Black Loyalist Myth in Atlantic Canada,” Acadiensis, XXIX (Autumn 1999), pp. 76–87, that men like Peters were both conscious of their loyalism and their right to freedom.
4 This is, for example, how Boston King survives the worst years: see “Memoirs of the life of Boston King, a Black Preacher, written by himself during his residence at Kingswood-School,” Methodist Magazine, XXI (1798), pp. 209–12.
5 Walker, op. cit.
6 Wilson, op. cit., p. 72.
7 Ibid., p. 21.
8 PANS.
9 Millidge to Parr, PANS MG, 15, vol. 19.
10 Ibid.
11 On Wallace, see Caroline Troxler, “The Migration of Carolina and Georgia Loyalists to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick,” Ph.D. dissertation (UMI edns, Michigan, 1974), p. 134.
12 Parr to Carleton, 5th October 1782, PRO FO 3/ Provisions…for Loyalists; Mary Louise Clifford, From Slavery to Freedom: Black Loyalists after the American Revolution (Jefferson, North Carolina), pp. 43-44.
13 Wilson, op. cit., Loyal Blacks, p. 82.
14 See Marion Robertson, King’s Bounty: A History of Early Shelburne, Nova Scotia (Halifax, 1983), pp. 64–66.
15 Of the 4,700 inhabitants of Shelburne in January 1784, 1,191 were white soldiers, 1,488 free blacks and 1,269 the euphemistically designated black “servants.” Robin W. Winks, The Blacks in Canada: A History (Montreal, and New Haven, Conn., 1971), p. 38.
16 Robertson, op. cit., pp. 182–85.
17 See Benjamin Marston, Journal, 26th May 1783.
18 Ibid., 4th June 1783.
19 Shelburne County, Court of General Sessions, 1784–86.
20 Diary of Captain William Booth, Shelburne Historical Society, Shelburne, Nova Scotia, transcript, p. 52.
21 This according to Millidge; see PANS MG, 15, vol. 19.
22 The Blucke house never got beyond a fairly rudimentary stage, according to a later witness who saw it some time before Blucke’s death in 1795.
23 Sarah Acker and Lewis Jackson, Historic Shelburne, 1870–1950 (Halifax, 2001), pp. vi–vii.
24 Marston, op. cit., 28th August 1783.
25 Ibid., 4th August 1784.
26 D.C. Harvey (ed.), The Diary of Simeon Perkins, 1780–1789 (Toronto, 1958), p.238; Winks, op. cit., p. 38.
27 “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. 478 ff, for the verbatim text that follows.
28 Ibid., p. 478.
29 Ibid.
30 Ibid., p. 479.
31 Ibid., pp. 480–82.
32 Walker, op. cit., p. 77.
33 Recent excavations at Birchtown, the results of which can be seen on the excellent Black Loyalist Heritage Society Web site, part of the Canadian Digital Collections, or in situ at Birchtown itself, have convincingly shown just how desperately rudimentary the shelters were. See also Laird Niven and Stephen A. Davis, “Birchtown: The History and Material Culture of an Expatriate African American Community,” in John W. Pulis (ed.), Moving On: Black Loyalists in the Afro-Atlantic World (New York and London, 1999), pp. 60–83. Boston King mentions in his “Memoirs” going into the woods in winter “when the snow lay on the ground three or four feet deep.”
34 Wilson, op. cit., p. 104.
35 Caroline Watterson Troxler, “Hidden from History: Black Loyalists at Country Harbour, Nova Scotia,” in John W. Pulis (ed.), op. cit., p. 43. For the Guysborough County loyalists, see G.A. Rawlik, “The Guysborough Negroes: a study in isolation,” Dalhousie Review, 48 (Spring 1968), pp. 24–36.
36 Shelburne County Court of General Sessions, August 1786; see also Troxler, op. cit., “Hidden from History,” pp. 46–48.