Liberty’s Exiles: The Loss of America and the Remaking of the British Empire.. Maya Jasanoff
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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 surprised 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.
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