Liberty's Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World

by Maya Jasanoff

  While middle-class loyalists successfully impressed their problems on the power brokers of Westminster and Whitehall, the striking spectacle of black loyalists like a Yorktown veteran called Peter Anderson—in his own words, “realy starving about the Streets Havin Nobody to give me a morsel of bread & dare not go home to my Own Country again”—gave many Britons pause.57 To some, these blacks “begging about the streets of London, and suffering all those evils, and inconveniences, consequent on idleness and poverty,” fueled only racist hostility.58 But for a number of do-gooders, the “Black Poor,” as this community became known, invited a different response. The most sustained efforts to help the Black Poor would be spearheaded by the well-known philanthropist Jonas Hanway, who had earned a fortune in the Russia trade and used it to imprint thousands of neglected lives. His earlier projects had included the Marine Society, which he established to train up poor lads for naval service; the Foundling Hospital, where he served as governor; and a crusade on behalf of abused and stunted little chimney sweeps. Hanway could not stomach the prospect of the Black Poor shivering through another London winter—any more than he could stand to drink tea, a “pernicious custom” that he devoted his least successful campaign to trying to eradicate.59

  In the first weeks of 1786, Hanway summoned a group of his wealthy businessman friends to form a “Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor.” Taking up their headquarters in a coffee house opposite the Royal Exchange, the committee launched a fund-raising effort to help the black loyalists and their hungry peers. “The greater part of them, have served Britain, have fought under her colours,” one newspaper appeal ran, “and … depending on the promise of protection held out to them by British Governors and Commanders, are now left to perish by famine and cold, in the sight of that people for whom they have hazarded their lives, and even (many of them) spilt their blood.” How could Christian, patriotic sensibilities stand unmoved? Contributions quickly flowed in to the committee, from benevolent grandees like the Duchess of Devonshire and Prime Minister William Pitt, right through to humbler well-wishers who could afford only a sixpence or a donation of wooden bowls and spoons. By the end of January 1786, more than two hundred poor blacks had queued up outside the committee’s three soup kitchens to receive simple meals. Two hundred and fifty of them sloshed back home in newly issued shoes and stockings.60

  Like many humanitarian initiatives of the era, this one owed its success in part to human empathy and the tug of Christian kindness. But it explicitly tapped into another, widespread feeling as well: the sense of collective responsibility for loyal subjects, the sense of national honor, that was enshrined in the Loyalist Claims Commission. It simply wasn’t fair, the reasoning went, for black loyalists who had served Britain to end up penniless on British streets—any more than it was fair for loyalists to go uncompensated for their losses; any more than it was fair for black loyalists to be deprived of their promised freedom; or any more than it was fair, growing numbers of Britons thought, to ship black captives around the Atlantic as slaves to begin with. It was no coincidence that the committee received its largest single donation from a group of Quaker abolitionists, or that Granville Sharp, Britain’s leading antislavery campaigner, kept in close touch with the committee’s activities. The participation of abolitionists in this relief effort would have vital long-term consequences for black loyalist refugees.

  For as needy blacks formed ever longer lines at the White Raven and Yorkshire Stingo taverns, waiting for broth, bread, and a sixpence to take home, committee members recognized that soup kitchens and clinics could only be a stopgap measure. The navy might employ some, but with postwar depression producing high levels of white unemployment, the prospects for jobless throngs of blacks seemed especially bleak. Some of the Black Poor volunteered their own solution. Perhaps their best chances for success did not lie in Britain at all, but in other British domains. Maybe they could go to Nova Scotia, where thousands of other black loyalists like David George and Boston King were settling? Or somewhere warmer, where all shivering would cease—such as the very place from which their forebears had been stolen, the west coast of Africa? This intriguing possibility found an enthusiastic champion in the person of Henry Smeathman, an entomologist who had spent four years in Sierra Leone. Smeathman had for some time advocated British colonization at the mouth of the Sierra Leone River, one of the largest natural harbors in the world—and the site of Bunce Island, one of Britain’s largest slaving stations. In an impressive piece of salesmanship, Smeathman rapidly persuaded the committee to send the Black Poor to Sierra Leone as pioneer colonists. By spring 1786, the committee secured support from the British Treasury and Navy Board to transport the Black Poor overseas, equipped with supplies for a new settlement.61

  From a committee meeting in a London coffee house to a fleet of ships ready to sail from Greenwich, all in a matter of months: this big, expensive, and frankly nebulous scheme advanced astonishingly quickly. It provides stunning evidence of the capacity and willingness of both the British state and private investors to launch colonial undertakings on the basis of little more than an interesting idea. Still, it is hard to imagine the scheme moving ahead with quite the same speed if the British government were not already so well practiced in transporting and supporting thousands of loyalists around the world—or if the British public were not already primed to sympathize with loyalist sufferings. Hanway himself would not live to see the results of the plan: he died in September 1786 with the destination and contours of the expedition yet to be finalized. (A month before his death, Hanway recanted on the merits of Sierra Leone, anticipating conflict with the Bunce Island slave traders, and tried to persuade the committee to settle the Black Poor in Nova Scotia instead.)62 But henceforth taken over by Granville Sharp and the abolitionists, the project he set in motion evolved into one of the strangest and most enduring utopian experiments of its era.

  MEANWHILE, thousands of loyalists, black and white, female and male, still waited to hear the result of their official claims. The submission deadline for the Loyalist Claims Commission had originally been set for March 25, 1784. By then, the commissioners had already received 2,063 claims, which when tallied up sought compensation for lost property valued at £7,046,278, and for unrecoverable debts totaling £2,354,135. “This was an alarming sum,” gasped John Eardley Wilmot—approaching one billion pounds in current terms—and thousands more loyalists still hoped to file.63 To accommodate further claims, Parliament extended the deadline to 1786, and renewed the commission’s mandate annually until its work was finished. A total of 5,072 individuals submitted memorials of some kind and the commission examined 3,225 claims in full.64

  The records of the Loyalist Claims Commission form the largest single archive of evidence about the loyalist side of the American Revolution.65 Within these thousands of bundles lurk extraordinary stories of wartime devastation, adventure, and personal trauma. It was here, for instance, that Thomas Brown told of his torture; that John Lichtenstein explained how he had been chased off his plantation; and that Molly Brant described the seizure of her property and flight to Niagara. The claims yield up arresting images of the American Revolution as civil war. They also give unusual insight into colonists’ material worlds, forming a sort of unsystematic colonial Domesday Book. From these pages tumble forth the vanished goods of American households: rum puncheons, damask bedspreads, carpenter’s tools, old brass coffee pots, slick new saddles, favorite garnet earrings. These inventories of objects may seem at first blush to have little in common with the personal narratives of hardship that accompany them, but together they make a powerful statement about the nature of the American Revolution. Though some historians have portrayed the revolution as a rather staid affair, lacking the violence and mass property transfers of later revolutions in France and Russia, the record provided by displaced loyalists shows that, for at least one substantial group of Americans, this was an unequivocally turbulent event.

  All these records mus
t of course be read in light of the specific circumstances for which they were produced—that is, read with caution. Nor does this mass of documents, subjective and unrepresentative as it is, form a reliable basis for drawing statistical conclusions about the composition or distribution of the loyalist population during the war.66 What it does show, however, is not only that loyalism extended right across the American social spectrum, but that loyalists of all profiles, on both sides of the Atlantic, successfully made their plight known to the commission.67 Four hundred and sixty-eight of the 3,225 claims preferred were filed by women, and forty-seven by black men.68 Some three hundred claims were lodged by people who could not even sign their own names.69 The numbers are especially noteworthy when one considers the logistical challenges involved in filing a claim. Though the commissioners put announcements in major British and Irish newspapers and informed government officials in North America, many loyalists only found out about the commission by word of mouth, sometimes too late.70 Pursuing a claim required a considerable investment of time and money. It did not help that claimants were initially required to testify in person, which could entail costly trips to London. Hundreds relied on attorneys, agents, or family members to advance their cases for them. William Johnston submitted memorials on behalf of his brother Lewis Johnston Jr., who had moved to the Bahamas, while Dr. Lewis Johnston Sr. traveled down personally from his new residence in Edinburgh to present evidence.71

  The wording of the commission’s brief, to investigate losses suffered “in consequence of … loyalty”—and not merely through the depredations of war—meant that claimants had to establish a direct link between their allegiance and losses. Though claims varied significantly in length and detail, they tended to follow a formula. A 1783 pamphlet called Directions to the American Loyalists in Order to Enable Them to State Their Cases by Way of Memorial to the Honourable the Commissioners provided loyalists with a helpful fill-in-the-blank template:

  To the Honourable Commissioners … The MEMORIAL of A—B—, late of the Province of C—in America … Humbly Sheweth … That on the breaking out of the Civil War in the said province of C—, the Memorialist exerted himself in opposing the people who usurped the powers of Government, and was imprisoned by them, and in great danger of losing his life, until he made his escape from prison, and got on board his Majesty’s ship of war D—, commanded by E—F—, Esq., lying at G—in the said Province of C—.72

  And so on. After a précis of the claimant’s experiences and sufferings as a loyalist, a claim typically continued with a description of lost property, income, and debts. (The pamphlet even provided specific forms for loyalists to claim compensation for runaway slaves who had been granted freedom by British troops.) The crucial final component to every case consisted of testimonials from character witnesses, who could vouch for the strength of the claimant’s loyalty, and from neighbors, business partners, or family friends who could attest to the value of lost property.

  In their Lincoln’s Inn Fields headquarters, the five claims commissioners confronted mountains of paper and a monumental task. Vetting thousands of personal stories, usually heavier on hearsay than hard evidence, challenged even their experienced administrative minds. Before they started their hearings, the commissioners met with the loyalist agents in London to learn about values and prices in America. How much was an acre of cultivated land worth in Tryon County, New York, or Bucks County, Pennsylvania, or Ninety-Six District, South Carolina? How much did a bushel of Indian corn fetch in New Jersey in 1778, or a hefty Virginia hog ready for slaughter, or the mahogany furniture in a Boston house? As their inquiries proceeded, the commissioners realized that some of the information they needed could never be reliably obtained at thousands of miles’ remove, so they dispatched an agent, a lawyer named John Anstey, to the United States to make inquiries on the spot. Anstey spent nearly two years in the United States gathering records in situ and interrogating loyalists’ neighbors, relatives, and deputies. In 1785, two of the commissioners personally traveled to British North America to take evidence from claimants and witnesses settled there.73

  The commission quickly developed a bureaucratic apparatus to handle the cases—and a bureaucratic attitude to match, as William Smith discovered to his annoyance when he went to submit his papers. He handed over his “bundle” to the secretary, who promptly found flaws in Smith’s presentation and “said it ought to conform to the printed Instructions.” Smith, who was of course a distinguished lawyer, insisted that it did, on which the secretary “pettishly observed that the Instructions must be complied with and asked me what I thought they were given for. I answered doubtless to instruct the Ignorant.” After some further bickering, the secretary officiously accepted the papers, told Smith that probably “it would not be taken into Consideration for 2 years,” and sent him away.74

  The claims office became a hub of activity as loyalists cycled in and out, presenting their own cases or giving evidence in support of others. Here was Dr. Lewis Johnston, testifying about his and his son’s lost income and property; there was Benjamin Whitecuffe, to describe his near death in the noose.75 Reading the notebooks of Commissioner Daniel Parker Coke is like reading a loyalist who’s who, as prominent loyalist advocates all took their place before the commission’s desk: officials like Lord Dunmore and Lord Cornwallis; loyalist leaders like William Franklin and Joseph Galloway; loyalist military officers like Beverley Robinson and New Jersey general Cortlandt Skinner. Going into the office to testify for a fellow New Yorker, William Smith bumped into Sir Henry Clinton coming out, and they chatted about the peace settlement. (Clinton thought that “America would belong to England yet.”)76 Samuel Shoemaker spent several long sessions giving the commissioners “some information respecting several of my Countrymen which I did very candidly.”77 The day he presented his own case, with Joseph Galloway as his primary witness, Shoemaker saw another friend in the foyer and summoned him in to offer extra information.78 These personal hearings were the claimants’ best chance to impress their case on the commissioners, and they presented whatever testimony they could muster. One loyalist explained “to the Commissioners in the fullest manner, the sufferings of the whole Fam[il]y for our Loyalty, Shewd them my Scars, & they were pleased to reply that, such merit certainly ought not to go unrewarded by Government.”79

  Though Shoemaker was distressed to discover that some of his acquaintances had dishonestly inflated their losses (“since the commencement of the late troubles, it seems as if honesty and virtue had almost left us,” he complained), only a handful of claims would be dismissed as outright frauds.80 At the same time, the high standards of evidence required to prove a claim, with its emphasis on good connections and detailed documentation, made it incredibly difficult actually to win compensation. Proving a case was no mean feat even for well-positioned claimants. Isaac Low was told that he had to produce “the Certificates of the actual Sales of our confiscated Estates”—documents that could only be procured by his brother in New York.81 Shoemaker had to return “with a list of debts owing to me in Pennsylva[nia] that I apprehended would be lost, or any other addition to my acct. of losses that I could support.”82 Testifying for Beverley Robinson and Robinson’s brother-in-law Roger Morris, William Smith was quizzed minutely on matters such as the provisions of the Morrises’ marriage settlement.83 The structure of the commission especially marginalized the illiterate, the poor, and the poorly connected even while it opened up for them the tantalizing prospect of aid.

  Given these standards, it was hardly to be wondered at that most of the black claimants received paltry payments of five, ten, or twenty pounds—if they received anything at all. The commissioner’s response to one William Cooper, who said he had lost a house and land worth £500, was not atypical. They dismissed his claim out of hand, deciding that “in all probability not a single fact as stated is true; all these blacks say that they were free born and that they had property, two things that are not very probable; we did not believe one syl
lable of his case.”84 Implicit in the commission’s judgment, in several of these cases, was the notion that black loyalists had already received freedom and thus did not really merit any further reward. A little more than half the black claimants received relief payments, usually thanks to testimonials they could provide from respected commanding officers. Only one black claimant successfully won compensation for his property losses. Charleston fishmonger Scipio Handley told how he had escaped hanging as a spy (a common experience for these black men, who had often been deployed as messengers and informants) and nearly lost his leg to a war wound; he provided a written schedule of losses, and produced a reliable witness. For all his sufferings and for his carefully produced claim, Handley received a grand total of £20.85

  Female claimants also tended to be disadvantaged by the system. Few of them possessed the legal documents sought by the commissioners, or could rehearse the particulars of livestock, merchandise, or land values in as great detail as their male peers—although they were generally much more specific than men at itemizing their household goods.86 One Jane Gibbes of South Carolina, who had been married to no fewer than three loyalists in succession, appeared before the commissioners to claim compensation for her second husband’s estate. Though witnesses confirmed that Gibbes’s late husband “was a grand Loyalist”—slaughtered on his own land by a mob of 163 men—the value of his holdings and proof of its confiscation could not be demonstrated to the commissioners’ satisfaction, and much of the claim was disallowed.87 Still harder to prove was the claim of a woman like Jane Stanhouse, a modest Scottish-born spinster who supplemented her income as a schoolmistress by taking in needlework. Known to have sheltered loyalist soldiers in North Carolina, Stanhouse had to flee to New York, losing what small property she had. In England, “an entire stranger,” Stanhouse could produce no witnesses, and her claim was rejected “as there is no reference from the Treasury.”88