Liberty's Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World

by Maya Jasanoff

  To ministers in London, Peters’s petitions actually looked fair enough: it seemed to them that the metropolitan initiative to award freedom and land to black loyalists had been distorted by provincial practice—a familiar discrepancy by now in loyalist settlements. Lord Grenville forwarded Peters’s petition to Governors Parr and Thomas Carleton, instructing them to investigate his complaints and make the blacks “some atonement” for the “unaccountable delay” in getting their lands.22 Lobbied by Sharp and the Sierra Leone Company, Grenville went one step further. If the blacks were fed up with Nova Scotia, they would find a ready welcome in the Province of Freedom: the Sierra Leone Company would give them land, and the British government would pay for their passage to West Africa—a notable reiteration of their promises to loyalists in the United States nearly a decade before. None of this, to be sure, demonstrated a government commitment to abolitionism as such. William Wilberforce was on the verge of suffering a serious parliamentary defeat in the spring of 1791 when he tried to introduce a bill to abolish the slave trade. But when Peters secured these concessions from the ministry, the French Revolution had already set into motion dynamic new concepts of liberty, equality, and fraternity—while the slave rebellion on Saint Domingue would soon provide a frightening demonstration (to a British Empire dependent on slavery) of just how violent the French version of liberty could be. Peters’s complaints gave ministers a good chance to showcase Britain’s more contained version of liberty instead, by underwriting a specific grant of freedom to a specific group of former slaves.

  Now that the government had authorized a new expedition to Africa, who would actually organize it? Thomas Peters could help recruit settlers from among the disgruntled black loyalists, but some Sierra Leone Company official would have to manage the logistics of transporting them across the Atlantic. Abolitionist Thomas Clarkson proposed the perfect candidate: his own younger brother John. Twenty-seven years old, John Clarkson had spent half his life in the navy, serving through the American war; he had been in the West Indies under Admiral Rodney and seen plantation society up close. Recruited to the abolitionist cause in the 1780s, he spent six months in France in the heady days before the revolution gathering testimony against the slave trade. An officer and an abolitionist, John Clarkson was also a consummate gentleman: Wilberforce praised him as “a young man of very great merit & a thousand good qualities both professional & personal.”23 Clarkson’s integrity mattered a great deal. Loyalist refugees of all stripes shared a tendency to malign the authority figures above them. Sir Guy Carleton was a rare exception, garnering widespread respect for his efforts to do right by the refugees. John Clarkson would be another. No matter what grievances they harbored toward other white officials, most black loyalists—with the significant exception of Thomas Peters—came to see gentle John, full of conviction and competence, as their Moses. Given what an improbable exodus he was to lead them on, such confidence in his leadership would be a vital ingredient for success.

  In August 1791, Clarkson sailed for Nova Scotia in the aptly named Ark. His brother and Wilberforce sent long lists of instructions to guide him into the unknown. “Don’t talk about the abolition of the Slave Trade, except where you are sure of your Company.” Don’t call the loyalists “Blacks or Negroes,” but “Africans as a more respectable way of speaking of them.” Watch out for Falconbridge, the commercial agent, “hot, rash, & impetuous.” Watch out for Thomas Peters, so “you will not be implicated in any Errors he may fall into.” “In the Rivers in Africa take Care of the Alligators and in the Land of the Snakes.” Write notes on local customs and practices. Write regular letters home—if necessary in code. Keep an eye on public morals. Keep a diary.24 The last piece of advice proved particularly well taken: Clarkson’s journal provides a wonderfully intimate record of how this final British government–sponsored migration of American loyalists unfolded.

  Clarkson arrived in Halifax in the first week of October 1791, pleased with the city’s “pretty appearance from the sea,” and dined with Governor Parr. Though Parr had been instructed to give his support to Clarkson’s mission, he seemed more interested in “pushing about the Bottle, a favourite employ of his” than in encouraging the earnest young man. Neither Parr nor Thomas Carleton, in New Brunswick, had taken kindly to Thomas Peters’s complaints—especially once he carried them to London. Replying testily to Whitehall’s instructions that he remedy the black loyalists’ situation, Carleton insisted that they had “been allowed every privilege of free British subjects,” that they had been given their land but failed to cultivate it, and that “none of the Blacks in this province” had deputed Peters to speak on their behalf.25 Parr also vigorously defended his administration’s actions. Clarkson “could plainly see that the governor would rather I should not succeed in my business than otherwise, probably from an Idea that if the People were averse to leaving the Province it would be a good argument to prove that they were content, and that their complaints were groundless.”26

  But such obstructions if anything fortified Clarkson’s resolve. He distributed a handbill declaring the terms of the Sierra Leone Company’s “FREE SETTLEMENT on the COAST OF AFRICA.” Every free black man, it promised, would get twenty acres of land, ten for his wife, and five for every child; as well as food rations to tide them over until they could support themselves. It was understood that the land would be free of charges and quitrents for at least some period of time (as it had also been offered in Nova Scotia).27 Clarkson traveled around the black townships of Nova Scotia to sell the plan. When Boston King, now living in the black village of Preston, near Halifax, heard about the emigration scheme his own first thought—unusually among his peers—was that he had no reason to go. He had finally found himself a well-paying job (as a domestic servant) and he was making great inroads as a Methodist preacher. But King had bigger ambitions in life. “Recollecting the concern I had felt in years past, for the conversion of the Africans, I resolved to embrace the opportunity.” He volunteered himself to the recruiters and explained his desire to preach in Africa—which of course the devout Clarkson was only too delighted to hear.28

  With more than two hundred names already on his rolls, Clarkson sailed to Birchtown, still the largest black town in British North America. Here he again encountered official resistance to the scheme, in the form of the very man appointed by Parr to help him, Stephen Skinner, a New Jersey loyalist. A younger brother of Cortlandt Skinner, Stephen had emerged as one of the leading merchants in Shelburne: a signal recuperation of his fortunes after years as a patriot prisoner, and after a notorious prewar career as treasurer of New Jersey, during which he was accused of embezzling thousands of pounds.29 Skinner objected to the Sierra Leone scheme, he said, on the grounds that the settlers “will suffer as the first did who embarked for the same place in 1786.” But his deeper worry was that the emigration plan “has had such an Effect on the minds of the Blacks that I am fearfull the whole to the amount of 12 or 15 hundred will leave the province a loss that I think will be severely felt.”30 The departure of so many cheap laborers would have a serious impact on the Shelburne economy. Skinner apparently declared that “he would give the Blacks two [years’] provisions himself if they would stay in this Country and shd [do] everything in his Power to prevent their going.”31 At the same time he helped circulate rumors about the horrors awaiting emigrants in Africa: murder by savages, death by disease, or that perennial threat, as David George heard it, “that if we went away we should be made slaves again.”32

  No sooner had Clarkson disembarked at Birchtown than a black man, about fifty years old, came enthusiastically over to greet him. Spring had worked its miracles and now David George’s legs had healed, and a new form of deliverance seemed to be at hand. He launched into a passionate description of the “abject state of servitude” free blacks were living in and the malign tales whites were spreading about Sierra Leone; “if it was known in the town that he [George] had conversed with us in private,” George portentou
sly told Clarkson, “his Life would not be safe, he cautioned us from appearing in the Town or Country after it was dark.”33 But such threats did not dissuade George from the emigration plan any more than they did Clarkson. He handed Clarkson a long list of names of people who had already expressed interest in going, and recommended that Clarkson hold a public meeting in Birchtown the next day. By addressing the nasty reports head-on, George said, he could assuage black concerns and win countless volunteers.

  Clarkson walked into Daddy Moses’s Methodist meeting house that October morning and climbed into the pulpit to find between three and four hundred people packed onto the humble benches before him. Here they were, the living, breathing results of a British imperial promise, skeptical, angry, jaded, desperate, and yet just possibly hopeful. And despite his convictions and his faith, he felt his resolve for a moment falter. Who was he to influence “the future Happiness, welfare, and perhaps Life of these poor Creatures”? Who was he to tell them to abandon their hard-won homes and follow him to a place none of them had ever seen? But as they looked expectantly at him, so many focused eyes in so many worn, tired faces, his confidence that he could offer them something better returned. He laid it all out from the beginning, as clearly as possible. Thomas Peters had delivered their grievances to London, and the government had listened. The black loyalists had three options. They could get their local land claims resolved, as the king had commanded, and stay in Nova Scotia. They could join another black regiment and serve in the West Indies, with all the usual benefits attending military service. (Not surprisingly, this option did not hold much appeal.) Or they could choose what Peters had opted for himself, the course that Clarkson undertook to lead, the project that so many aspirations had already been invested in: they could establish a settlement in Sierra Leone and, under the clearly outlined terms, live there in freedom and farm on free land without any attached fees or rents. Weigh it well, he told them; do not sign up unless you are absolutely sure. This journey will be no easy thing. But I give you my word I will see to it you get your land, and I will stay until every one of you is satisfied.34

  At the end of Clarkson’s speech in Birchtown, even Stephen Skinner had to admit the fairness of the proposals, and “wholly acquitted” Clarkson of the aspersions he had cast on him before. For the next few days the two men received family after family in Clarkson’s Shelburne lodgings, and inscribed their names into the ledger of recruits.35 Are you quite sure, Clarkson asked each one, you are ready to leave everything behind? Do you understand the terms being offered you? He was startled when one black man, born in Africa and speaking only broken English, candidly admitted, “No, Massa me no hear, nor no mind, me work like slave, cannot do worse Massa in any part of the world; therefore am determined to go with you Massa if you please.” “You must consider that this is a new settlement & should you keep your health, must expect to meet with many difficulties if You engage in it,” Clarkson reminded him. “Me well know that Massa, me can work much, and care not for Climate, if me die me die, had rather die in my own country than this cold Place.”36 In the most poignant case of all, a slave came to register his wife and children, who were free. “With Tears streaming down his Cheecks he said tho’ this seperation would be as death to himself, yet he had come to a resolution of resigning them up for ever.” Clarkson was so moved by the man’s story that he tried to purchase the slave’s freedom so he could come to Africa too.37

  Within three days, five hundred men, women, and children had signed up to go. From Birchtown and the other Nova Scotia settlements to New Brunswick, where Thomas Peters was rounding up emigrants, about twelve hundred people gave in their names. Together they represented fully a third of the entire free black community in these provinces. And every one, it seemed, came with a story of woe—summarized by Clarkson in a list of “reasons given by the free Blacks for wishing to leave Nova Scotia.” While the Book of Negroes, listing black departures from New York, represents the most complete register of loyalist emigration from the thirteen colonies, the documents surrounding the black loyalist migration to Sierra Leone yield the most systematic record of why loyalist refugees chose to journey on. There was also a larger structural explanation for the black loyalists’ readiness to emigrate once more. Displacement from America marked a new phase in the longer series of movements many had already undergone as slaves. Their second collective exodus speaks to the recurring logic of dislocation within a community of people used to being on the move.38

  It may seem strange that these most marginal of British subjects generated the longest paper trails. In part it reflected their unusual status. As a group of people who also at various points might have been considered property, they did double duty in the archives of an empire obsessed with recordkeeping. In part, too, it reflected their absolute clarity of purpose. Black loyalists in British North America had explicit grievances with their provincial governments, and even more serious complaints with the behavior of white loyalists, their fellow American refugees. Yet as their participation in this scheme signaled, they preserved their faith in the word of the king and the promises of the British Empire. Or at least in such promises as they were embodied in the likable, trustworthy form of John Clarkson.

  IT WAS HARD to play Moses, Clarkson felt, as the dimensions of his task kept expanding. In Halifax, he almost single-handedly managed a rerun in miniature of the British evacuations from Savannah, Charleston, and New York. The total number of emigrants was much higher than he had originally anticipated, which made it hard to assemble enough ships and provisions. Back in Britain, Clarkson’s brother Thomas had been busily circulating a diagram of a slave ship, every inch of white space dense with little human figures to show the appalling crowding on board. The image was one of the most effective weapons in the abolitionist arsenal, and John Clarkson was especially sensitive about ensuring that conditions for the black passengers on his ships bore no resemblance to it. He rejected vessels that didn’t have enough space between the decks, and insisted that ventilation shafts be cut into others; he mandated a strict hygienic regimen of fumigation and multiple cleanings per day. He took equal care over the passengers’ diet, plotting a nutritious weekly rotation of salt fish, beef, pork, and vegetables—not just the horrid weevily hardtack that sustained the Royal Navy.39

  In December 1791, the emigrants assembled in Halifax, organized by village into temporary barracks. With Christmas just a few days away, Thomas Peters sent in another petition requesting that “as it is the larst Christmas day that we ever shall see in the amaraca” they be granted “one days alowance of frish Beef for a Christmas diner.”40 At least this was an easy enough request to fulfill; but when the embarkations began that same week Clarkson struggled to keep up with all the rest. Could they bring pets? Could they bring pigs? (Yes, and no.) Could they travel on the same ship as this family or that? Clarkson was so “greatly teazed in arranging them” it left him “dread[ing] what anxiety and trouble I shall have in fixing these people on our arrival in Africa.”41 To the mental pressure of accommodating all these demands came the physical strains of rushing about the icy streets, checking in on the stuffy barracks, and rowing among the ships in an open boat, as snow fell from above and the sea chilled him from below. Clarkson got headaches, a violent cold, and then a raging fever he could not shake for months.

  While the white Moses wrestled with logistics, black leaders kept up morale among the emigrants. After Clarkson’s Birchtown speech, David George had led his parishioners en masse to sign up for the expedition. All but a handful joined the project. Testament to George’s own eagerness to be gone, he sold his meeting house and lot, site of so much hard work, for a mere £7. He never missed a chance to keep preaching, though, and while they waited in Halifax to depart he spoke in chapels and houses across the city, and led his congregation in hymns that filled the barracks with some of the finest harmonies that Clarkson could ever recall hearing.42 Birchtown’s Methodist preacher Daddy Moses, living up to his name, had
gathered his spiritual children behind Clarkson as well. He preached to them so passionately that when Clarkson wandered into the barracks one day and heard him, Daddy Moses “worked himself up to such a pitch that I was fearful, something would happen to him.”43 For these devout black loyalists the journey at hand really did appear to be an exodus of biblical proportions, from their Egypt of North American bondage to an Israel in Africa.

  It was good they had their faith to reassure them once their voyage got under way, on January 15, 1792. For the next seven weeks they retched, ached, and shivered, tossed by tempests the likes of which even the veteran sailors among them had never seen. Boston King watched the swell smack up over the decks and wash a man overboard. Seasickness and fever ravaged the passengers below, King’s wife Violet among them. She recovered, an answer to her husband’s fervent prayers, though sixty others did not, including three of David George’s church elders and Clarkson’s personal manservant.44 Other nightmares may have haunted them too. More than fifty had been born in Africa—Thomas Peters included—which meant that they had almost certainly made a previous Atlantic crossing in chains, shoved belowdecks on slave ships.

  “There was great joy to see the land,” said David George, when at last it appeared before them.45 They disembarked at the overgrown site of the original Granville Town and promptly busied themselves “clearing away the wood to build the town which is to be called Free Town.” On the first Sunday ashore, the Sierra Leone Company’s Anglican minister delivered a sermon on the text of Psalm 127, “Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it,” while not far away, David George’s followers gathered around to hear him preach “the first Lord’s day, it was a blessed time,” under a canvas sail stretched for cover. In due course they built a proper meeting house with wooden poles and thatch.46 This was the first Baptist church in Sierra Leone, and the last node in what was now a transatlantic network of spiritual communities created by black migrants who once had worshipped together in the glades at Silver Bluff.