Liberty's Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World Read online

  ALSO BY MAYA JASANOFF

  Edge of Empire

  THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK

  PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

  Copyright © 2011 by Maya Jasanoff

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

  www.aaknopf.com

  Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Jasanoff, Maya, [date]

  Liberty’s exiles : American loyalists in the revolutionary world / Maya Jasanoff.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-59530-0

  1. American loyalists—History. 2. Exiles—United States—History—18th century. 3. Exiles—United States—History—19th century. 4. Refugees—United States—History. 5. Colonists—United States—History. 6. United States—History—Revolution, 1775–1783—Refugees. 7. United States—History—Revolution, 1775–1783—Social aspects. 8. United States—History—Revolution, 1775–1783—Influence. 9. Great Britain—Colonies—History—18th century. 10. Great Britain—Colonies—History—19th century. I. Title.

  E277.J37 2011

  973.3—dc22 2010023514

  Maps on this page–this page created by Robert Bull

  Jacket illustration: The Death of Major Peirson, January 6, 1781 (detail)

  by John Singleton Copley, 1783.

  Tate Gallery, London / Art Resource, N.Y.

  Jacket design by Carol Devine Carson

  v3.1

  In memory of Kamala Sen (1914–2005) and

  Edith Jasanoff (1913–2007),

  emigrants and storytellers

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  List of Maps

  Cast of Characters

  Illustrations

  Introduction: The Spirit of 1783

  PART I: REFUGEES

  1. Civil War

  2. An Unsettling Peace

  3. A New World Disorder

  PART II: SETTLERS

  4. The Heart of Empire

  5. A World in the Wilderness

  6. Loyal Americas

  PART III: SUBJECTS

  7. Islands in a Storm

  8. False Refuge

  9. Promised Land

  10. Empires of Liberty

  Conclusion: Losers and Founders

  Appendix: Measuring the Exodus

  Acknowledgments

  Notes

  Bibliography

  Illustrations Credits

  A Note About the Author

  MAPS

  The Loyalist Diaspora

  The Loyalists’ North America

  The Thirteen Colonies in 1776

  The Battle of Yorktown

  The Southern Colonies During the War

  North America After the Peace of Paris

  The British Isles

  The Maritimes After the Loyalist Influx

  Port Roseway, Nova Scotia

  Loyalist Settlements on the Saint John River

  The Bahamas and the Coast of East Florida

  Jamaica

  Freetown and the Mouth of the Sierra Leone River

  North America in the War of 1812

  Northern India

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  (in order of appearance)

  BEVERLEY ROBINSON AND FAMILY

  A native Virginian, Beverley Robinson (1722–1792) moved to New York and married the wealthy heiress Susanna Philipse in 1748. He raised the Loyal American Regiment in 1777. After the evacuation of New York, Robinson settled in England, where he died in 1792. His widow and two daughters, Susan and Joanna, remained in England until their deaths. His five sons enjoyed profitable careers in different parts of the British Empire. The eldest, BEVERLEY ROBINSON JR. (1754–1816), lieutenant colonel of the Loyal American Regiment, settled outside Fredericton in 1787 and became a member of the New Brunswick provincial elite. FREDERICK PHILIPSE “PHIL” ROBINSON (1763–1852) was a career soldier who attained considerable prominence as a general in the Peninsular War and War of 1812, for which services he earned a knighthood. At the time of his death, General Robinson was the “grandfather” of the British army, the longest-serving officer on its books. The youngest son, WILLIAM HENRY ROBINSON (1765–1836), distinguished himself in the British army’s commissariat department, for which he also received a knighthood. He married Catherine Skinner, daughter of loyalist general Cortlandt Skinner, and sister of Maria Skinner Nugent.

  JOSEPH BRANT (THAYENDANEGEA) (1743–1807)

  As a teenager in colonial New York, the Mohawk Indian Joseph Brant—or Thayendanegea in Mohawk—fell under the patronage of British superintendent of Indian affairs Sir William Johnson, who had married Brant’s elder sister MOLLY (ca. 1736–1796). Brant was educated at Wheelock’s Indian school in Connecticut, and fought for the British in both the Seven Years’ War and Pontiac’s War. During the American Revolution, Joseph and Molly Brant helped recruit Iroquois to the British cause. In 1783 Brant initiated the resettlement of dislocated Mohawks in Canada. From his new home on the Grand River (today’s Brantford, Ontario), Brant tried to reunite Iroquois nations divided by the Canadian-U.S. border, and to establish a new Indian confederacy reaching to the west. He visited Britain twice, in 1775 and 1785, to advance Mohawk land claims; but as the 1790s wore on he found himself increasingly at odds with British colonial officials and saw his hopes for a western confederacy dashed. He died in 1807 and is buried next to the Mohawk Chapel in Brantford.

  ELIZABETH LICHTENSTEIN JOHNSTON (1764–1848)

  Elizabeth Johnston spent almost half her life on the move. An only child, she lost her mother at the age of ten and spent the early years of the revolution in seclusion while her father, John Lichtenstein, fought in a loyalist regiment. In 1779, she married WILLIAM MARTIN JOHNSTON (1754–1807), a loyalist army captain, medical student, and son of prominent Georgia loyalist Dr. Lewis Johnston. Johnston evacuated with the British from Savannah, Charleston, and East Florida, settling in 1784 in Edinburgh. In 1786 the Johnstons moved to Jamaica, where William worked as a doctor. The years in Jamaica were trying ones for Johnston; she went back to Edinburgh from 1796 to 1802, and in 1806 relocated to Nova Scotia (returning to Jamaica from 1807 to 1810 to wrap up business following William’s death in 1807). She spent her last four decades far more rooted than her first, surrounded by her adult children and her father, who died in Annapolis Royal in 1813. Six of Johnston’s ten children predeceased her, including her eldest son Andrew, of yellow fever in Jamaica in 1805, and her eldest daughter Catherine, in a Boston madhouse in 1819.

  DAVID GEORGE (ca. 1743–1810)

  David George was born a slave in Virginia. He ran away from his master in 1762, eventually ending up in the custody of Indian trader George Galphin at Silver Bluff, South Carolina. There, partly under the influence of George Liele, George converted to the Baptist faith and became an elder of the Silver Bluff Baptist Church. In 1778, George followed British forces to Savannah, where he worked as a butcher and continued to preach with Liele. With the British evacuations, George and his family traveled to Nova Scotia as free black loyalists. There George became an active evangelist, establishing a church at Shelburne and preaching to white and black audiences around the Maritimes. In 1791 George emerged as a leading supporter of the Sierra Leone Company’s project to relocate black loyalists to Africa, and he
lped John Clarkson recruit colonists for the scheme. He was among the founding settlers of Freetown in 1792. George visited England in 1792–93, but otherwise spent the rest of his life in Sierra Leone, where he set up another Baptist church (the first in Africa) and died in 1810.

  JOHN MURRAY, FOURTH EARL OF DUNMORE (1732–1809)

  Dunmore was a Scottish peer whose father supported the Young Pretender in 1745. Despite their Jacobite sympathies, the family retained their title, and Dunmore served for nearly thirty years as a representative peer for Scotland in the House of Lords. He went to North America in 1770 as governor of New York, and became governor of Virginia in 1771. He achieved considerable notoriety for his proclamation of 1775, which granted freedom to patriot-owned slaves who joined British military service. Dunmore became a notable advocate of loyalist interests, promoting numerous schemes to continue the war (including those of John Cruden), and championing loyalist efforts to win financial compensation. He was appointed governor of the Bahamas in 1786, in which capacity he supported William Augustus Bowles’s bids to establish the state of Muskogee. Dunmore was recalled from the governorship in 1796 and remained in Britain until his death.

  GUY CARLETON, FIRST BARON DORCHESTER (1724–1808)

  A career soldier, the Anglo-Irish Carleton joined the army in 1742 and assisted in the 1759 capture of Quebec, a place he would remain involved with for almost forty years. Carleton served as governor of Quebec from 1766 to 1778, and is best known for his role in authoring the 1774 Quebec Act. Loyalists knew Carleton best, however, in his position as commander in chief of British forces from 1782 to 1783, in which capacity he superintended the evacuations of British-held cities and helped organize the loyalist exodus. Carleton returned to Quebec as governor in chief of British North America in 1786 (and newly ennobled as Lord Dorchester). Though beloved by loyalists, Dorchester found himself at odds with developments in British imperial policy enshrined in the 1791 Canada Act. As at other points in his career, Dorchester clashed repeatedly with his colleagues, and resigned his position in chagrin in 1794. He retired to England in 1796 and lived in comfort as a country squire. His younger brother THOMAS CARLETON (ca. 1735–1817) was governor of New Brunswick from 1784 to 1817, though from 1803 until his death he governed in absentia from England.

  GEORGE LIELE (ca. 1750–1820)

  Liele grew up in Georgia as a slave. He was baptized in 1772 and became an itinerant Baptist preacher, serving as a spiritual mentor to David George. Liele was granted freedom by his loyalist master and spent much of the war in British-occupied Savannah. He there baptized Andrew Bryan, who went on to found the First African Baptist Church in Savannah. On the evacuation of Savannah in 1782, Liele traveled to Jamaica as an indentured servant to loyalist planter Moses Kirkland. He established the island’s first Baptist church in Kingston, but during the 1790s became the subject of increasing persecution for his religious activities. After a charge of sedition failed to stick, Liele was imprisoned for three years for debt. Though he continued to be active in a range of commercial ventures, he never returned to public preaching after 1800, and his last years remain obscure.

  JOHN CRUDEN (1754–1787)

  Cruden emigrated from Scotland to Wilmington, North Carolina, sometime before 1770, where he joined his uncle (and namesake) in the trading firm of John Cruden and Company. During the war, Cruden served in a loyalist regiment and was appointed commissioner of sequestered estates in Charleston in 1780, which required him to manage numerous patriot-owned plantations and a labor force of several thousand slaves to produce supplies for the British military and for commercial sale. After Charleston was evacuated Cruden moved to East Florida, where he attempted to block the province’s cession to Spain. In 1785, like many East Florida refugees, Cruden immigrated to the Bahamas, where he lived with his uncle on the island of Exuma. He continued to promote plans for the renewal of the British American empire. Cruden died, insane, in the Bahamas in 1787.

  WILLIAM AUGUSTUS BOWLES (1763–1805)

  Bowles was the most flamboyant loyalist adventurer of his period. He joined a loyalist regiment in 1777 but deserted in 1779 to settle with the Creek Indians. He married the daughter of a Creek chief and spent several years living in her village. After the revolution, Bowles began plotting to unseat political and commercial rivals in Creek country (which had become part of Spanish Florida). He was supported in these aims by Lord Dunmore and various other imperial officials. A first foray into Florida in 1788 ended in fiasco. A second, more ambitious expedition in 1791 brought Bowles closer to his dream of founding a pro-British Creek state, called Muskogee—but he was captured by the Spanish in 1792 and imprisoned in Havana, Cádiz, and the Philippines in turn. In 1798 Bowles escaped, via Sierra Leone, and returned to Florida for a final effort to establish Muskogee. Though this was the most successful bid of all—he built a capital in 1800 near present-day Tallahassee and presided over his domain for several years—he was betrayed in 1803 by Creeks under U.S. influence. He died in Havana, a Spanish prisoner, in 1805.

  SUPPORTING FIGURES

  Thirteen Colonies

  Thomas Brown, loyalist commander, superintendent of Indian affairs. Joseph Galloway, advocate of imperial union and loyalist lobbyist. Charles Inglis, clergyman, loyalist pamphleteer, later bishop of Nova Scotia.

  William Franklin, son of Benjamin Franklin, former governor of Pennsylvania, loyalist organizer.

  William Smith, chief justice of New York and later Quebec, confidant of Sir Guy Carleton.

  Patrick Tonyn, governor of East Florida, 1774–85.

  Britain

  Samuel Shoemaker, Pennsylvania refugee and friend of painter Benjamin West.

  John Eardley Wilmot, MP and loyalist claims commissioner.

  Isaac Low, former New York congressman and merchant.

  Granville Sharp, abolitionist and sponsor of Sierra Leone settlement.

  Nova Scotia

  Jacob Bailey, clergyman and author.

  John Parr, governor of Nova Scotia, 1782–91.

  Benjamin Marston, surveyor of Shelburne.

  Boston King, black loyalist carpenter.

  “Daddy” Moses Wilkinson, black Methodist preacher.

  New Brunswick and Quebec

  Edward Winslow, lobbyist for creation of New Brunswick.

  Frederick Haldimand, governor of Quebec, 1777–85.

  John Graves Simcoe, governor of Upper Canada, 1791–98.

  The Bahamas

  John Maxwell, governor of the Bahamas, 1780–85 (active).

  John Wells, printer and critic of government.

  William Wylly, solicitor-general and opponent of Lord Dunmore.

  Jamaica

  Louisa Wells Aikman, member of loyalist printer family. Maria Skinner Nugent, diarist, governor’s wife.

  Sierra Leone

  Thomas Peters, Black Pioneer veteran, leader of resettlement project.

  John Clarkson, organizer of loyalist migration, superintendent of Freetown, 1791–92.

  Zacharay Macaulay, governor of Sierra Leone, 1794–99.

  India

  David Ochterlony, East India Company general, conqueror of Nepal.

  William Linnaeus Gardner, military adventurer.

  Beverley Robinson’s house in the Hudson Highlands. After the Robinsons left in 1777, the house was used as a Continental Army headquarters. It burned down in 1892, not long after this drawing was published. (illustration credit 1.1)

  George Romney, Joseph Brant (Thayendanegea), 1776. Brant sat for this portrait on his visit to London in 1775–76. (illustration credit 1.2)

  Elizabeth Lichtenstein Johnston around the time of her marriage, ca. 1780. (illustration credit 1.3)

  Dunmore Proclamation, 1775. This document, promising freedom to patriot-owned slaves who joined British forces, launched the emancipation of black loyalists. (illustration credit 1.4)

  Sir Guy Carleton, ca. 1780. (illustration credit 1.5)

  Black loyalist certificate, 1783. These certificates
were issued to black loyalists at the evacuation of New York City, guaranteeing their protection by British officials and licensing their emigration. (illustration credit 1.6)

  William Booth, A Black Wood Cutter at Shelburne, 1788. This may be the only surviving contemporary image of a black refugee. The black loyalist Boston King worked as a carpenter around Shelburne, not unlike the figure shown here. (illustration credit 1.7)

  William Booth, Part of the Town of Shelburne, 1789. This watercolor depicts the Nova Scotia loyalist metropolis at its height. (illustration credit 1.8)

  James Peachey, Encampment of the Loyalists at Johnstown, a New Settlement, on the Banks of the River St. Laurence in Canada, 1785. An unusual glimpse of a loyalist refugee camp. (illustration credit 1.9)

  Elizabeth Simcoe, Mohawk Village on the Grand River, ca. 1793. Brant’s Town as seen by the Upper Canada governor’s wife. The Mohawk Chapel is at the right of the image, and the large house at the left, with the British flag in front, is likely to have been Joseph Brant’s. (illustration credit 1.10)

  Mohawk Chapel, Brantford. This was the first Anglican church established in the province of Quebec. Joseph Brant is buried next to it. (illustration credit 1.11)

  William Augustus Bowles, 1791. (illustration credit 1.12)