Who Were the Black Loyalists of the American Revolution?

a better life. And it's a nearly forgotten chapter in North American history. When the American colonies declared independence in seventeen seventy six, enslaved Africans and their descendants made up twenty percent of the colonial population. The population of South Carolina was sixty enslaved people, and Virginia was due to the large plantations in those states, though slavery was not

just a Southern institution. In some northern cities like Boston, and enslaved people made up twenty percent of the population. Even before the War for Independence officially began, the British tried to recruit the enslaved to rise up and fight against their rebel plantation owners. Loyalist was the term given to people who still supported Britain in the American colonies.

In seventeen seventy five, the British Royal Governor of Virginia, Lord Dunmore, issued a stunning emancipation proclamation, promising freedom and land to all enslaved people who would take up arms against their rebel masters. Dunmore was looking for manpower to put down an armed rebellion in Virginia, and he found it.

Between eight hundred and two thousand enslaved people and indentured servants fled their plantations and joined with the British, including a hard fighting militia that would become known as Dunmore's Ethiopian Regiment. This militia marched to battle in uniforms inscribed with the insignia Liberty to Slaves. Dun Moore's proclamation was quote the first mass emancipation in American history. That's according to one Isaac Saaney, a history professor at St. Mary's

University in Nova Scotia. It happened nearly ninety years before Abraham Lincoln signed the US Emancipation Proclamation, which ended slavery in areas not under the control of the United States government. When the tides turned against the British in seventeen seventy nine, they issued a second emancipation called the Phillipsburg Proclamation, which extended the promise of freedom and land to any enslaved person who would cross the British lines without the requirement

to fight. The move was a form of economic warfare against the colonies, Saney said. Escaping Africans would weaken the rebel economy. You'd have this mass emancipation taking place, and the colonists would now have to expend resources to guard the plantations instead of using them in battle. An estimated twelve thousand emancipated people fought for the British, but the war was lost when the British surrendered in seventeen eighty three.

One of the central points of contention, Saaney says, was quote the return of what George Washington deems us property, which are the enslaved Africans. The British commander in Chief, Guy Carlton, kept his word and negotiated certificates of freedom for all so called black loyalists who had joined the British ranks before the surrender. Under one condition, they had

to leave the country. Carlaton's men carefully recorded the names of three thousand newly freed men and women in what's known as the Book of Negroes, which was an accepted term for black people at that time. The freedmen were then put on ships heading to Nova Scotia, which was a British ruled Canadian province, but Nova Scotia in the late seventeen hundreds was sometimes known as Nova Scarcity. In sight.

Three forty thousand loyalists, both black and white, fled to Nova Scotia, including one thousand and two hundred and thirty two black people who were still enslaved by white loyalists. All of these people tripled the native population and completely overwhelmed the province's meager resources. The newly freed black loyalists, far from receiving their just rewards in a new home, found themselves last in line for land and exploited as

cheap labor. Widespread poverty and underemployment across Nova Scotia brewed ugly discontent among white people, some of whom blamed the black laborers for working for two little pay and thus stealing their jobs. Racial tensions erupted into violence in four, when a black preacher by the name of David George baptized a white woman. The riots and massacres raged for months, claiming many black homes and lives, until troops were finally

sent in from the capital, Halifax. The Black loyalists repeatedly petitioned the crown to keep its promises from the war, eventually sending the emissary Thomas Peters, all the way to London to make the case in person. Peter's got nowhere with royal officials, but did meet with a group of British abolitionists who were launching a social experiment in Sierra Leone, West Africa, a sanctuary for victims of the slave trade. They convinced Peters that the best place for the emancipated

people was back in Africa. In fifteen, ships sailed from Halifax Harbor in Nova Scotia to Sierra Leone carrying one thousand, one d and ninety six Black loyalists, who had Sandy said quote voted with their feet against broken promises of land and freedom. Sandy calls it the maiden voyage of the Back to Africa movement. Those who stayed behind in Nova Scotia largely settled in the village of birch Town, named for Samuel Birch, one of the British generals who

signed the original Certificates of Freedom. Today, Jason Farmer is a ninth generation descendant of the Black Loyalists who first settled birch Town. Farmer can traces roots back to Jupiter Farmer, an enslaved person who escaped from Brunswick, New Jersey. Jupiter married a woman named Venus Yes and established a continuous line of the Farmer family that's remained in the Birchtown

area for more than two hundred and thirty years. Farmer is an interpreter at the Black Loyalist Heritage Center and Historical Site in Nova Scotia, where he's proud to share the remarkable story of his ancestors who dared to escape the plantations and join with an occupying army to win their freedom, only to continue to fight for true freedom and equality in a new land. The Farmer said, it's an unknown history right here in Nova Scotia. They're amazed.

It's powerful. Some of them can't even sit there and listen to it. All. They have to take breaks, some of them cry. Some twenty thousand black people live in Nova Scotia today, most of whom are descended from the Black Loyalists the same He says that the legacy of the Black Loyalists is of a persecuted people exercising black agency. He said, these are people who took their fate and their destiny into their own hands. Just to get to the British side took a lot of courage, skill and ingenuity.

The fact that so many of them chose to fight and saw themselves is not only defending their freedom, but participating in the liberation of others, speaks to the breadth and depth of their conception of agency, but also as part of a collective struggle for freedom. Today's episode was written by Dave Ruse and produced by Tyler Klang. For more on this and lots of other topics, visit how Stuff works dot com. Brain Stuff is production of I

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