Liberty's Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World

by Maya Jasanoff

  Together, the evacuations of Savannah and Charleston set more than twenty thousand loyalists, slaves, and soldiers on the move: so many people separated, so much left behind, so many lives bent on unpredictable routes. What unfolded during these evacuations exposed contradictions that would follow the refugees into exile. Loyalists left for reasons of pique as much as principle, primed to find fault with the administrators they nonetheless relied on. Free blacks and slaves traveled on the same ships, leaving their status open to confusion and abuse. The Johnstons and the Georges, who had been evacuated twice, pointed to another recurring phenomenon: many of these refugees would end up moving again and again. Yet for all that their emigration, with its many uncertainties, could make loyalists worry about the worst, it could also promise change for the better—a chance to rebuild fresh lives as British imperial subjects. Though less frequently voiced than anxieties and laments, some refugees offered more optimistic assessments of evacuation. Out of so much loss, one might find something new. That was how John Cruden saw things when he sailed for St. Augustine, his dreaming not yet done. “This moment,” he felt, was “perhaps the most important the World Ever beheld.”84 And what was the value of being on earth at such a time as this, if not to capitalize on its opportunities?

  AS THE SHIPS sailed out of Charleston, one year after Yorktown, loyalists had come to terms with the reality of defeat and begun, literally, to move on. The war was over, U.S. independence assured. At least eight thousand white and black refugees had already settled in other British colonies, notably East Florida. But there were still some loyalist hopes hanging in the balance. What would the United States provide for loyalists by way of protection against retaliation and compensation for their losses? It was up to the peace commissioners in Paris to hash out the answers, which would have great bearing on the decisions of loyalists still uncertain about whether to stay or go.

  The terms of Anglo-American peace rested in the hands of a mere five men, each of whose personal attitudes would carry significant weight. The seniormost member of the American peace commission was Benjamin Franklin, who was joined in Paris by the New York lawyer John Jay and John Adams of Massachusetts. A fourth American commissioner, South Carolina planter Henry Laurens, would come to meet them later. The British side in the negotiations was superintended by just one man, Richard Oswald, appointed to the post by the prime minister, Lord Shelburne. Oswald had striking, not to say surprising, credentials for the job. Nearly eighty years old, the Glasgow-based merchant had built a fortune in the Atlantic trade, primarily shipping tobacco to Britain from the Chesapeake and slaves to America from a trading fort he and his associates owned on Bunce Island, in Sierra Leone. Oswald had invested significantly in East Florida land. Above all, he had many close American friends, including Franklin and Laurens. Indeed he was so much a “friend of America,” in this sense, that many did not think he could be trusted to speak loudly enough for British interests. Other government ministers sent a deputy to keep tabs on him, Henry Strachey, a deft civil servant who had cut his teeth as secretary to East India Company commander Robert Clive, and who, like Oswald, owned a sprawling estate in East Florida and had close ties with Laurens.85

  In hotel suites, over dinner tables, and in letters crisscrossing the quarters of Paris, the negotiators wrangled over how to disentangle the thirteen colonies from the British Empire. By the late fall of 1782, only a few sticking points remained. Americans wanted access to the cod-rich shores of Newfoundland, and to clarify the western and northern boundaries of the United States. Many Americans owed money to British creditors, and there was some debate over how these debts should be resolved. But the most nagging outstanding question concerned the loyalists: what, if anything, would the United States do to compensate them? Bit by bit solutions were brokered. Oswald conceded the fishing rights. The two sides agreed to mark the western border of the United States at the Mississippi River. John Adams then helpfully observed that the question of debts should be treated separately from the question of loyalist property—a decision that “struck Mr. Strachey with peculiar pleasure; I saw it instantly smiling in every line of his face”—and insisted, as a point of Yankee honor, that all American prewar debts be paid.86

  That left the loyalists. Moral responsibility aside, Lord Shelburne and his ministers knew that failing to secure concessions for the loyalists would open them up to attack from their political opponents, and he instructed Oswald and Strachey to take the issue seriously.87 But as they sat down to negotiate this last point—the only diplomatic obstacle left between war and peace—they may not have realized what firm resistance they would face in one of their American counterparts. Benjamin Franklin adamantly opposed granting anything to the loyalists. Even Jay and Adams were surprised by Franklin’s passion on the subject: “Dr. Franklin is very staunch against the Tories, more decided on this point than Mr. Jay or myself,” Adams noted.88 And as the weeks wore on, Franklin’s resolve seemed only to harden. If Britain demanded compensation for loyalist property, Franklin threatened, then he would demand that Britain pay reparations to the United States for all the damages of war. Loyalists had spent years “wantonly burning and destroying farm houses, villages, towns,” he said, and he flatly refused to give them anything back. “It is best for you to drop all mention of the refugees,” he declared to Oswald.89 Either accept his terms, or keep fighting the war. It was easier, apparently, for two nations to agree on every major issue defining their relationship than it was for one father to forgive betrayal by his son. Franklin’s resistance to compensating loyalists would be reflected in his own last act toward William. In his will, Franklin pointedly left William only the land he owned in Nova Scotia (the premier loyalist haven) and a clutch of books and papers. “The part he acted against me in the late war will account for my leaving him no more of an estate he endeavoured to deprive me of,” explained the embittered father.90

  Franklin’s challenge worked. The preliminary articles of peace included only a limp nod in the loyalists’ direction. Article V stated that “Congress shall earnestly recommend it to the legislatures of the respective states to provide for the restitution of all estates, rights, and properties, which have been belonging to real British subjects.” That is, Congress would ask the states nicely to give loyalists their property back—but it was entirely up to the states to act as they saw fit. At Franklin’s insistence, the article was phrased only to extend to those loyalists “who had not borne arms against the said United States,” in a stroke excluding thousands of loyalist military veterans from consideration.91 The phrase “real British subjects” would also later cause friction among loyalists who saw it as setting up an invidious hierarchy among British subjects, instead of presuming them all to be equally “real.”

  In late November 1782, as the final draft of the treaty was being drawn up, the fourth American peace commissioner arrived in Paris just in time to introduce one last self-interested clause. Henry Laurens had sailed for Europe two years earlier to negotiate a loan with Holland when his ship was intercepted by the Royal Navy and he was imprisoned in the Tower of London on a charge of treason. He endured fifteen months of confinement in a tiny stone cell, intermittently sick, closely monitored, taunted by guards who played “The Tune of Yankee Doodle … I suppose in derision of me.”92 He ultimately secured his release thanks to the lobbying—and bail money—of none other than Richard Oswald, his old friend and associate. Joining his colleagues on the eve of the treaty’s signing, Laurens proposed a further detail to be inserted into the text. Britain, he said, must agree to evacuate “without causing any Destruction or carrying away any Negroes, or other Property of the American Inhabitants.” Oswald, who had traded slaves with Laurens for decades, had no objections, and the phrase went in—with considerable consequences to come for black loyalists.

  On November 30, 1782, the five commissioners gathered in Oswald’s suite at the Grand Hotel Muscovite to sign the preliminary articles of peace. Many contemporaries were surp
rised by Britain’s generosity toward the former colonies—but prognosticators saw things differently. At a gathering at Franklin’s house afterward, a Frenchman taunted the British delegation with the prospect that “the Thirteen United States would form the greatest empire in the world.” “Yes,” Oswald’s secretary proudly replied, “and they will all speak English, every one of ’em.”93 Whatever greatness the future might hold for the United States, language itself ensured that it would share with Britain a connection that no other major foreign power could match. In British eyes, the peace achieved an all-important goal, namely to secure the United States in a British sphere of influence, against its rival France. And there was something more. For if, as many then expected, the United States failed to cohere as a single nation, the treaty put Britain in a good position to pick up the pieces. The months of fighting after Yorktown had shown how surrender alone did not end a war. To those in the know, the generous terms of the treaty hinted that it would take more than this peace to end British ambitions in and around the United States.

  With the American agreement in hand, British negotiators promptly concluded peace with France and Spain, swapping territories in a familiar eighteenth-century game of diplomatic poker. France and Britain agreed to return more or less to the status quo ante bellum. Of greater consequence to loyalists, Britain arranged to cede East and West Florida to Spain in exchange for continued possession of Gibraltar. In September 1783, Britain signed the definitive peace treaties with the United States, France, and Spain collectively known as the Peace of Paris. On parchment, the American Revolutionary War was over. But on the ground in North America, the evacuations were far from finished.

  William Faden, The United States of North America with the British and Spanish Territories According to the Treaty of 1783, 1785. (illustration credit 1.4)

  CHAPTER THREE

  A New World Disorder

  ON MARCH 25, 1783, American newspapers published the preliminary articles of peace among the belligerent powers. Patriots tolled bells, raised toasts, and set off fireworks to celebrate the formal end of an eight-year war. To the forty to fifty thousand loyalists remaining under British protection in New York City and East Florida, however, the news might as well have been printed on black-edged paper, as death announcements usually were. The thirteen British colonies were no more. And on what terms! Even the British home secretary must have realized how much he was asking when he urged Sir Guy Carleton to “use every conciliatory Effort in your power to obtain the full Effect of the 5th Article”—Benjamin Franklin’s noncommittal nod toward property compensation—“whereby so much was necessarily trusted to the good Faith of the Congress.”1 Entrusted to faith indeed. The war was over, U.S. independence granted, and now no compensation guaranteed for loyalists at all—Article V of the peace would go down in infamy among loyalists as the greatest betrayal of their interests yet. And loyalists in East Florida would face still worse news when they learned that Britain had agreed to hand their haven over to Spain. Yet to whom else but the British government could these loyalists turn for help? Such was the climate of frustration in which the last and largest British evacuations took place, from New York City and East Florida.

  Carleton himself had always resented that the peace negotiations took place in Paris, not in New York—and, by extension, that he had been prevented from playing a major role in them. In New York he had become fast friends with leading loyalists who embraced him as a guardian of their interests. Carleton formed an especially close connection with William Smith, and had long shared Smith’s hopes for some kind of imperial federation with America. Right up to the eve of peace, he told Smith he was “convinced that the Reunion is at our Command, and that if there is a Rent of the Empire it will be our own Folly.”2 He felt the treaty to be almost a personal blow, and was “much affected by the dishonorable Terms” respecting loyalists. Adding insult to injury, the feeble provisions now placed on his shoulders the burden of trying, as Whitehall instructed him, to refresh “Harmony and Union between the Two Countries.” He had resisted American independence in the first place; now he had to use his “judgment” and “humanity … to effect the conciliation of Individuals, and a cordial oblivion of all personal Injuries committed, or supposed to have been committed on either Side.”3 But all those years in Quebec had taught Carleton much about colonial governance, and out of the wreckage of this civil war he envisioned creative ways forward. He would do all he could for American loyalists, because his own sense of loyalty—and his own vision of empire—depended on it.

  Up till now, Carleton had managed evacuations of American cities from a distance. Now by far the largest and most complex surrounded him, on a scale totally overshadowing those of the south. Withdrawing from New York City posed an awesome set of logistical challenges. Winding down a military garrison twenty thousand men strong, entrenched for seven years, was daunting enough. There were cannon and ordnance for a whole fortified city to be packed and loaded, stablefuls of horses to be shipped, forage and provisions for thousands to be located and sent. And this was only half Carleton’s job. Also in New York there were some thirty-five thousand loyalist civilians, almost all of whom, if Savannah and Charleston offered any example, would probably seek to leave. Where would he find the ships to carry them, or rations to feed them? Where would they go and what equipment did they need to get settled? In his New York headquarters Carleton found himself pulled in as many directions as the refugees would travel. He managed a constant stream of entreaties from the disabled and dispossessed. He monitored Indian diplomacy and persisting hinterland violence. He processed requests for aid from Florida, from Jamaica, from Quebec and Nova Scotia. He corresponded with British officials, urging them to adopt generous policies toward the migrants. Yet under these extraordinarily pressured conditions, Carleton and his staff improvised a series of measures that laid the foundations for an Atlantic-wide program of refugee relief.

  When the southern evacuations commenced, Carleton had proposed that the British government grant tracts of land to loyalist refugees, free of charges and quitrents, in Nova Scotia, Florida, and other relatively sparsely settled provinces. Some precedent for this could be found in mid-eighteenth-century Nova Scotia, when land confiscated from French Acadians had been redistributed to Anglophone settlers; similar offers of land had also been extended to veterans after the Seven Years’ War, as a good way simultaneously to encourage colonization and provide gainful employment for demobilized soldiers, who were seen as a potential source of social instability. But Carleton’s land-for-loyalists scheme fitted into a larger plan for imperial reconstruction. The loss in America, he felt, had made it “indispensably necessary to establish the most close & cordial connection with the provinces which have preserved their allegiance.” Giving land to loyalists in British North America and elsewhere would ensure that “every man will readily take arms for its defence, & by these means only they can be preserved. Not only quit rents and fees of office of every sort shou’d be dispensed with, but no taxes shou’d be imposed in future by Great Britain.”4 The policy thus had a twofold purpose: it rewarded a population whose loyalty had already been confirmed, while reinforcing loyalty and security elsewhere in the British Empire.

  In January 1783, an association of New York loyalists dispatched agents to Nova Scotia to scout out a settlement at a place called Port Roseway, an undeveloped harbor about a hundred miles south of Halifax. Although Nova Scotia governor John Parr had not yet received instructions from London about land grants, he offered to provide the refugees with 400,000 wooden boards to build new houses. The planks would be the beginnings of a veritable loyalist metropolis. Initially about six hundred loyalists had joined the Port Roseway Association intending to emigrate. When their fleet prepared to sail at the end of April 1783, “upwards of seven thousand” people had signed on to go.5 Carleton’s commissary-general, the able London merchant Brook Watson, processed an imposing list of goods for the pioneers: adzes and saws, water buck
ets and grease buckets, calipers and pincers, cartridges, powder, shot and shell, lanterns, locks, and ladles.6 Ships from Britain set out to meet the settlers, heavy with hatchets and hoes, and all the shingles, “gimblets,” and “wimble bits” they might need.7 As the first New York evacuation fleet sat well-stocked and ready to sail in the harbor before him, Carleton wrote to Governor Parr expressing his pleasure that “we are able to give these deserving people, some refuge, which I trust they will amply repay by that increase of wealth, and commerce and power, which they may give in future to a greatly diminished Empire.”8 A few months later, Carleton learned that British ministers had approved his recommendations about land grants. The key elements of loyalist resettlement—free passage, provisions and supplies, and access to land—were all in place.

  Carleton did not mention another, equally significant dimension of the loyalist exodus to Nova Scotia that he worked hard to facilitate: the emigration of black loyalists. While white loyalists had been devastated by Article V of the preliminary peace treaty, it was Article VII—Henry Laurens’s stipulation forbidding Britain from “carrying away any Negroes, or other Property”—that terrified the blacks. News of the peace, remembered Boston King, a former slave from South Carolina, “diffused universal joy among all parties, except us, who had escaped from slavery and taken refuge in the English army; for a report prevailed at New-York, that all the slaves … were to be delivered up to their masters.” King had already endured much to “feel the happiness of liberty, of which I knew nothing before.” He had run away to Charleston from a cruel master, and survived the physical ravages of smallpox and the discomforts of military service. Toward the end of 1781 King had made his way to New York, where, unable to find the tools to resume his trade as a carpenter, he moved from master to master in domestic service, struggling just to keep clothes on his back. At least he had his freedom. But King and his peers spent the spring of 1783 haunted by the spectacle of “our old masters coming from Virginia, North-Carolina, and other parts, and seizing upon their slaves in the streets of New-York, or even dragging them out of their beds.” Consumed by “inexpressible anguish and terror,” some black loyalists in New York were too frightened to eat, and “sleep departed from our eyes.”9