by Simon Schama
37 Shelburne County Court of General Sessions, 5th August 1786; Walker, op. cit., p. 51.
38 Shelburne County Court of General Sessions, 5th August 1786.
39 Ibid., July 1791.
40 Wilson, op. cit., p. 96.
41 Ibid., p. 94.
42 Some of these artifacts, together with a speculative reconstruction of the settlers’ cabins, are on display in the modest Birchtown Museum run by the Black Loyalist Heritage Association. See Niven and Davis, op. cit.
43 A petition from Stephen Blucke to the Shelburne magistrates on 6th July 1791 asks for improvements on the Birchtown-Shelburne road to make travelling to market easier, especially in winter, when wares had to be carried either on backs or on sleighs. Shelburne County Court of General Sessions, PANS.
44 Wilson, op. cit., pp. 95–96.
45 Boston King, op. cit., pp. 208–12.
46 Winks, op. cit., p. 44.
47 See, for example, the petition on 18th April 1790 for relief from the Poor Tax, PANB, Land Petitions, 1790, RS 108, F1037.
48 Ibid.
49 This is Thomas Clarkson’s account of how Peters first heard of the Sierra Leone project, but, as Wilson, op. cit., p. 178, rightly points out, Peters is known to have had long conversations with both Clarkson brothers, and since the story was published soon afterwards by the impeccable Thomas Clarkson in The American Museum or Universal Magazine, 11 (1792), it is certain to have been true, or at least taken from Peters himself.
CHAPTER IX
1 This is according to Thomas Clarkson, who was watching from the gallery, as recounted by him to Katherine Plymley of Longnor House, Staffordshire, the sister of an ardent abolitionist. Her diary, preserved in the Shropshire Record Office, is a superlatively vivid source for the progress and endurance of the campaign from October 1791. See the entry for 20–21st October (Book One).
2 Judith Jennings, The Business of Abolishing Slavery 1783–1807 (London, 1997), p. 65.
3 Ibid., p. 55.
4 Plymley, op. cit., 24th October 1791.
5 Folarin Shyllon, James Ramsay: The Unknown Abolitionist (Edinburgh, 1977) p. 111.
6 Ibid.
7 For the demolition site as a place of festivity, see Simon Schama, Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution (London, 2004), pp. 347–48.
8 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); Ellen Gibson Wilson, Thomas Clarkson: A Biography (York, 1989), p. 56.
9 Clarkson, op. cit., II, p. 252 (in US 1836 edition).
10 Ibid., p. 251.
11 Ibid., p. 58.
12 Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation 1707–1837 (New Haven, Conn., 1992), p. 278.
13 Anna Maria Falconbridge (ed. Christopher Fyfe), Narrative of Two Voyages to the River Sierra Leone During the Years 1791–1792–1793 (Liverpool, 2000), pp. 24–40.
14 Ibid., pp. 24–40.
15 He did this, for example, for the Plymleys at Longnor, where Katherine declared that the coffee “smelt quite well.”
16 PRO CO 217/63; Ellen Gibson Wilson, The Loyal Blacks (New York, 1976), p. 186.
17 Ellen Gibson Wilson, John Clarkson and the African Adventure (London, 1980), pp. 15–42 contains a rich chronicle of the naval engagements John Clarkson would have witnessed and fought in.
18 Ibid., p. 30. This action took place while John Clarkson was serving on the Proserpine near Montserrat in November 1779.
19 Ibid., p. 53; Plymley, op. cit., SRO 567.
20 Wilson, op. cit., Loyal Blacks, pp. 186–87.
21 Thomas Clarkson’s instruction to his brother resulted in one of the great confessional documents of the late eighteenth century, John’s three-volume journal of his “Mission to America” (JCAM) and “Mission to Africa” ( JCAF). A complete copy is in the hands of his descendants, the Maynard family, and was used by Ellen Gibson Wilson in her excellent history (op. cit., Loyal Blacks). Two further manuscript copies of the first two volumes were subsequently made for and by his daughters; one of these copies, in a fine hand, is preserved in NYHS and is my principal source for the following chapters. An additional copy is in the library of the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle. A substantial part of vol. 3 was published in Sierra Leone Studies, 8 (1927).
22 Thomas Clarkson to John Clarkson, 28th August 1791, Clarkson Papers, BL Add. MS 1262A, vol. 1, 41262–41267.
23 Wilson, op. cit., Loyal Blacks, p. 198; Wilberforce to Clarkson, 8th August 1791, Clarkson Papers, BL Add. MSS 41, 262A.
24 John Clarkson, “Mission to America” (hereafter JCAM), MS, NYHS, 6th October 1791.
25 A copy of this instruction is included in JCAM.
26 Ibid., pp. 47–48.
27 Ibid., pp. 51 ff.
28 Ibid.
29 Ibid.
30 James W. St G. Walker, The Black Loyalists: The Search for a Promised Land in Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone 1783–1870 (Halifax, 1976), p 84.
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. 213.
32 JCAM, p. 41.
33 Ibid., p. 57.
34 Ibid., p. 65.
35 Ibid., pp. 65–82.
36 Ibid., p. 82.
37 Wilson, op. cit., Loyal Blacks, p. 217.
38 Ibid., pp. 95–96.
39 Ibid., pp. 86–87.
40 Ibid., p. 93.
41 Ibid., p. 204.
42 JCAM, p. 113.
43 Ibid., p. 186.
44 Ibid., pp. 136–37; Clarkson’s romanticism was confirmed by his taking time to endorse in his journal the commonplace that the “irregular scenes of Nature” he saw from the Windsor road were incomparably superior to “the laboured and methodical beauties of Art.”
45 Ibid., p. 198.
46 Ibid., p. 131.
47 Wilson, op. cit., p. 217.
48 Wilson, op. cit., pp. 191–92.
49 Falconbridge, op. cit., pp. 54 ff.
50 Falconbridge, pp. 53–68, 69.
51 Sharp Papers, NYHS.
52 Falconbridge, op. cit., p. 69.
53 Prince Hoare, The Memoirs of Granville Sharp Esq. Composed from his own Manuscripts, 2 vols. (London, 1828), II, p. 167.
54 Clarkson to Wilberforce, 27th November 1791, Clarkson Papers, BL Add. MSS.
55 JCAM, pp. 188–89.
56 Ibid., p. 247.
57 Ibid.
58 Ibid., p. 262.
59 Ibid., p. 250.
60 Ibid., p. 290.
61 Ibid., p. 341.
62 Ibid., pp. 387 ff.
63 Ibid.
64 Ibid., p. 203.
65 Wilson, op. cit., Loyal Blacks, p. 224.
66 Wilson, op. cit., Loyal Blacks, p. 226.
67 Wilson, op. cit., Loyal Blacks, p. 228.
CHAPTER X
1 Details of both the physical conditions of the sailing, and of Clarkson’s own condition are taken from the continuation of his Journal “Mission to America” (JCAM), which, after he fell seriously ill, became a more summary nautical log, but with vivid reports of the meteorological and marine conditions. After he recovered somewhat, Clarkson himself had to reconstruct what had happened to him from the account of others aboard the Lucretia, including his doctor Samuel Wickham, Charles Taylor and, until his own death, the master of the Lucretia, Captain Jonathan Coffin.
2 “Memoirs of the life of Boston King, a Black Preacher, written by himself during his residence at Kingswood-School,” Methodist Magazine, XXI (1798), pp. 262–63.
3 Ellen Gibson Wilson, John Clarkson and the African Adventure (London, 1980), p. 76.
4 JCAM, p. 417. The account of what happened on 29th January was reconstructed by Clarkson from Coffin’s tale before his own death.
5 Ibid., p. 422.
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid., p. 430.
8 Ibid., p
. 433.
9 Ibid., p. 436.
10 “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. 483–84.
CHAPTER XI
1 The identification of the hymn and description is from J.B. Elliott, Lady Huntingdon’s Connexion in Sierra Leone: A Narrative of its History and Present State (London, 1851), pp. 14–15; Elliott’s account was received from his father Anthony Elliott, who was a boy of fifteen in March 1792. See also Christopher Fyfe, Sierra Leone Inheritance (Oxford, 1964), p. 120; Ellen Gibson Wilson, The Loyal Blacks (New York, 1976), p. 233.
2 Mary Louise Clifford, From Slavery to Freedom: Black Loyalists after the American Revolution (Jefferson, North Carolina), p. 25.
3 John Clarkson’s Journal, vol. I, “Mission to America” (JCAM), 24th March 1792; Frank Peters went back to his ancestral village with his wife, Nancy, and his mother, but after being accused of witchcraft, returned to live in Freetown.
4 Ibid., p. 452.
5 Ibid., p. 446.
6 Ibid., p. 447.
7 Ellen Gibson Wilson, John Clarkson and the African Adventure (London, 1980), pp. 79–80.
8 Ibid., p. 80.
9 JCAM, p. 455.
10 Ibid., p. 458.
11 Ibid., p. 461.
12 Ibid., p. 477.
13 Ibid., p. 165.
14 “Memoirs of the life of Boston King, a Black Preacher, written by himself during his residence at Kingswood-School,” Methodist Magazine, XXI (1798), pp. 262–63.
15 Anna Maria Falconbridge (ed. Christopher Fyfe), Narrative of Two Voyages to the River Sierra Leone During the Years 1791–1792–1793 (Liverpool, 2000), p. 82.
16 Wilson, op. cit., Loyal Blacks, p. 247.
17 John Clarkson’s Journal, vol. II, “Mission to Africa” (JCAF), p. 37.
18 Ibid., p. 48.
19 Ibid., p. 7.
20 Christopher Fyfe (ed.), Our Children Free and Happy: Letters from Black Settlers in Africa in the 1790s, with contribution by Charles Jones (Edinburgh, 1991), p. 24.
21 JCAF, p. 20.
22 Ibid., p. 21.
23 Peters to Dundas, April 1792, PRO CO 267/9; Wilson, op. cit., Loyal Blacks, p. 232.
24 JCAF, p. 81.
25 Ibid., p. 82.
26 Ibid., p. 84.
27 Ibid., p. 89.
28 Ibid., p. 91.
29 Ibid., p. 95.
30 Ibid., p. 108.
31 Ibid., p. 110.
32 Ibid., pp. 112–13.
33 Ibid., p. 114.
34 Ibid., p. 138.
35 Ibid., p. 145.
36 Ibid., p. 154.
37 Ibid., p. 157.
38 Ibid., p. 163.
39 Ibid., p. 165.
40 Fyfe, op. cit., Our Children, pp. 25–26 for a text with the original pidgin spelling. In the same book Charles Jones’s essay is an invaluable guide to the character of the black language and diction.
41 Ibid., p. 26. The original is in the Clarkson Papers, University of Illinois at Chicago Circle.
42 JCAF, p. 324.
43 Ibid., p. 325.
44 Wilson, op. cit., John Clarkson, p. 105.
45 From the entry of 5th August 1792, JCAF II, p. 17, refers to the transcript published in Sierra Leone Studies, 8 (1927), pp. 1–114.
46 Ellen Gibson Wilson, Loyal Blacks (New York, 1976), p. 264.
47 JCAF II, p. 51 (21st September 1792).
48 Quoted in Wilson, op. cit., Loyal Blacks, p. 275.
49 JCAF II, p. 100 (12th November 1792).
50 Ibid., p. 102.
51 Both petitions in Fyfe, op. cit., Our Children, pp. 28–29.
52 Wilson, op. cit., Loyal Blacks, p. 277.
53 Wilson, op. cit., John Clarkson, p. 117.
54 Falconbridge, op. cit., p. 95.
55 Wilson, op. cit., John Clarkson, p. 124.
56 Ibid., p. 126.
57 The original is in the Clarkson/Sierra Leone Papers at the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle; see also Fyfe, op. cit., Our Children, pp. 30–32.
CHAPTER XII
1 Clarkson Papers, BL, Add. MS 41263, ff 1–17; also reproduced in Anna Maria Falconbridge (ed. Christopher Fyfe), Narrative of Two Voyages to the River Sierra Leone During the Years 1791–1792–1793 (Liverpool, 2000), pp. 134–35.
2 Falconbridge, op. cit., p. 172.
3 Ellen Gibson Wilson, The Loyal Blacks (New York, 1976), p. 354.
4 John Clive, Macaulay: The Shaping of the Historian (New York, 1974), p. 4.
5 Ibid.
6 Falconbridge, op. cit., p. 105.
7 Journal of DuBois, 6th February 1793; Falconbridge, op. cit., p. 182.
8 Falconbridge, op. cit., p. 113.
9 Ibid.
10 Journal of DuBois, 7th February 1793, p. 183.
11 Clarkson to DuBois, 1st July 1793, BL, Add. MS 41263; Falconbridge, op. cit., “Editor’s Comment,” p. 126.
12 Ellen Gibson Wilson, Thomas Clarkson: A Biography (York, 1989), p. 81.
13 Ibid., p. 82.
14 See “Editor’s Comment” in Falconbridge, op. cit., p. 126.
15 Wilson, op. cit., Loyal Blacks, p. 288.
16 Falconbridge, op. cit., p. 129, n. 110.
17 Corankapone to Clarkson, 13th June 1793, in Christopher Fyfe (ed.), Our Children Free and Happy: Letters from Black Settlers in Africa in the 1790s, with contribution by Charles Jones (Edinburgh, 1991), p. 33.
18 Wilson, op. cit., Loyal Blacks, p. 289.
19 Fyfe, op. cit., Our Children, p. 37.