The Fate of the Black Loyalists
In October of 1781, an allied Franco-American force trapped, besieged, and forced the surrender of general Cornwallis’ British army at Yorktown. It was to be the war’s final major pitched battle, as the British, exhausted by years of fruitless fighting and the mounting costs in blood and treasure, threw in the towel. Defeat at Yorktown led to the fall of the pro war government in London, and its replacement with one that sued for peace.
From the Black Loyalists’ perspective, that was calamitous news, because it meant that the side that had offered them freedom had lost, and their former masters had prevailed. Thousands of slaves-turned-freedom-fighters found themselves bottled up with the British in enclaves such as Charleston and New York, unsure whether the Crown would actually honor its promises to them. They had good reason to worry: American negotiators had added a last minute clause to the 1783 Treaty of Paris, forbidding the British from “carrying away” American property. That “property” included the runaway slaves who had fought for the British.
After the war ended with the signing of the peace treaty in 1783, the fate of the Black Loyalist escaped slaves became a bone of contention between the Patriots and British military commanders. According to the terms of the treaty, the British were bound to deliver their black comrades in arms to their former masters, but the British on the ground refused to do so.
In addition to basic decency and honor, the contest over the fate of the escaped slaves offered the British an opportunity to demonstrate moral superiority over the victorious Patriots. As the British commander in South Carolina put it: “those who have voluntarily come in under the faith of our protection, cannot in justice be abandoned to the merciless resentment of their former masters“. The British commander in chief concurred, and directed that: “such that have been promised their freedom, to have it“.
That incensed George Washington, and it was touch and go for a while whether hostilities would erupt anew over the issue. The British in New York finally resolved the issue, to the ire of the slave owners, by issuing thousands of “Certificates of Freedom” to Black Loyalists. The documents entitled their bearers to decamp to British colonies such as Nova Scotia “or wherever else He/She may think proper.” In South Carolina, the British also honored their commitment to Black Loyalists, taking them with them when they evacuated the state.
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Where Did We Find This Stuff? Some Sources & Further Reading
Black Loyalist – Washington’s Revolution (Harry, that is, not George)
Black Past – Peters, Thomas, (1738-1792)
Black Then – Stephen Blucke: Black Loyalist and Birchtown Founder
Bright Hub Education – Famous African Americans Of the Revolutionary War
Canada’s Digital Collections – The Black Pioneers
Kolchin, Peter – American Slavery: 1619-1877 (1993)
Online Institute For Advanced Loyalist Studies – A History of the Black Pioneers
PBS – George Washington’s Runaway Slave, Harry
Selig, Robert A. Colonial Williamsburg, Summer, 1997 – The Revolution’s Black Soldiers