Liberty’s Exiles: The Loss of America and the Remaking of the British Empire.. Maya Jasanoff
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that he could not abide by anything in the treaty “inconsistent with prior Engagements binding the National Honor, which must be kept with all Colours.”12
That evening, from his quarters in Orange, Washington wrote Carle ton a letter bristling with rebuke:
I was surprized to hear you mention that an Embarkation had already taken place in which a large Number of Negroes had been carried away. Whether this conduct is consonant or not to, or how far it may be deemed an Infraction of the Treaty, is not for me to decide. I cannot however conceal from your Excellency, that my private opinion is that the measure is totally different from the Letter & Spirit of the Treaty.
He demanded to hear from Carleton exactly what procedures had been put in place to prevent such miscarriages in future. But Carleton could match his counterpart’s accusations point for point, meeting outrage with moral superiority. It was odd that Washington should be “surprized” by the news, Carleton dryly observed, when everything had been conducted in the most open manner. All the ships for Nova Scotia had been inspected, and the only disputes “arose over negroes who had been declared free previous to my arrival. As I had no right to deprive them of that liberty . . . , an accurate register was taken of every circumstance respecting them.” Besides, he concluded, “Had these negroes been denied permission to embark, they wou’d, in spite of every means to prevent it, have found various methods of quitting this place, so that the former owner wou’d no longer have been able to trace them, and of course wou’d have lost, in every way, all chance of compensation.” In short, he had acted entirely in keeping with the spirit and letter of British law. “The negroes in question . . . I found free when I arrived in New York, I had therefore no right . . . to prevent their going to any part of the world they thought proper.”13
Back on Pearl Street, the commission continued its weekly work under the hospitable roof of Samuel Fraunces—reputedly part black himself. They handed out certificates of freedom by the hundreds, and at the waterfront the register of names grew apace, with the particulars of “stout” and sometimes “sickly wenches,” “likely girls,” “fellows” both “feeble” and “fine.” By the time the commissioners finished, more than two thousand names had been entered into the Book of Negroes. Boston King sailed for Port Roseway with his certificate in hand and his new wife, Violet, twelve years his senior, by his side, among the 132 free blacks (Harry Washington included) looking for a new life beginning on L’Abondance. Members of the Black Pioneers, including Murphy Stiele, who had been haunted by voices about a great black army winning the war, and Thomas Peters, a future leader of black loyalist refugees, took their tickets to freedom on the Joseph bound for Annapolis Royal.
Carleton’s principled defense of the black loyalists stands out for its clarity of conviction, and highlights an emerging contrast between certain American and British attitudes toward slavery. Carleton’s hand-picked personal secretary, Maurice Morgann, was an articulate abolitionist, who in 1772 published Britain’s first proposal for a gradual emancipation of slaves in the West Indies.14 Carleton himself was not an abolitionist as such; he had not explicitly set out to free the slaves. His actions spoke in part to a sense of personal honor. Promises had been made, promises must be kept. But they also reflected his commitment to a concept of national honor—and the paternalistic government’s responsibility to uphold it—that would rapidly gain momentum among the rulers of the postwar British Empire. His time as governor of Quebec had honed his belief, in common with a number of his fellow administrators, that an empire of diverse subjects was best ruled by a strong executive. After all, he might well have thought, what was imperial power for, if not to be exercised by the rulers who had it on behalf of those subjects who did not?
FEW OF THE thirty-five thousand or so loyalist civilians in New York City could have expected their lives would ever come down to a choice between emigration and endangerment. Through the spring and summer of 1783, they sifted through a competing series of promises and threats, deciding if, when, and where to go. In the words of “The Tory’s Soliloquy,” a satirical patriot verse published in various American newspapers: “To go or not to go—is that the question? / Whether ’tis best to trust the inclement sky / That scowls indignant o’er the dreary Bay / of Fundy...or stay among the Rebels! / And, by our stay rouse up their keenest rage, / That, bursting o’er our now defenceless heads, / Will crush us.”15
News of the peace brought patriots back into New York City to reclaim their property, but loyalists making the reverse journey found conciliatory feelings in notably short supply. “Almost all those who have attempted to return to their homes have been exceedingly ill treated, many beaten, robbed of their money and clothing, and sent back,” Carleton told the British ministry.16 In Westchester County, an elderly member of the prominent loyalist DeLancey family had been beaten “in a most violent manner” and told to “run to Halifax, or to his damned King, for that neither he nor one of his breed should be suffered to remain in the Country.”17 Another town announced that loyalists “shall not be permitted to continue longer than seven days, after being duly warned to retire, on pain of experiencing the just punishment due to such infamous parricides.” Citizens of Poughkeepsie declared that loyalists deserved nothing “from this country but detestation and chastizement. The spirit of 75 still beats high, and must beat high, or American freedom is no more.”18 An author calling himself “Brutus” issued a sinister warning, widely reproduced in regional newspapers, “TO All Adherents to the British Government and Followers of the British Army Commonly called TORIES.” “Flee then while it is in your power,” he ordered, “for the day is at hand, when, to your confusion and dismay; such of you as reject this seasonable admonition, will have nothing to deliver them from the just vengeance of the collected citizens.”19
Offsetting such worrying reports, positive propaganda appeared in the New York press under the signature of loyal emigrants, boasting about their new climes. A settler at Port Roseway described quantities of fish veritably leaping from the water: trout, salmon, cod, “hollaboat (a most delicate fish indeed),” and herring so numerous that “I am told that a single person with a scoop net, may take twenty barrels in one day.”20 “Often I thank God I came to this place,” said another, “and I sincerely think Port Roseway, in a little time, will be one of the most flourishing capital places in North America.”21 From Saint John, on the Bay of Fundy, an emigrant boasted of the bracing climate, fertile soil, and a toothsome menagerie of “Moose, (which I think excels any beef ) Hares, Rabbits, Partridges, Pidgeons.”22 Loyalists on St. John’s Island (today called Prince Edward Island) declared, “We were told, as perhaps you may be, the worst Things possible of the Country; such as, that the People were Starving; We should get nothing to eat, and should ourselves be eaten up by Insects. . . . We have found the Reverse too true. . . . Come and see, and depend on the Evidence of your own senses.”23 And if none of these northern locales appealed, there were also the turquoise-bordered islands of the Bahamas, an archipelago that “wants only inhabitants, and a small degree of cultivation, to render it as flourishing as any of the West-India Islands.”24
By late summer 1783, New York City witnessed a continuous parade of loyalist departures, and some patriot returns. It must have been an eerie thing to watch one of the largest cities in America turning inside out. “No News here but that of Evacuation,” one bemused (undoubtedly patriot) commentator wrote, “This . . . occasions a Variety of physiognomic, laughable Appearances.—Some look smiling, others melancholy, a third Class mad. To hear their Conversation would make you feel merry: Some . . . represent the cold