Short Stuff: Black Loyalists

to talk about black loyalists? I do, man, So you pick this one, Hats off to you, try cornered hat with a big old Yankee doodle feather off to you. Um, because I've never heard anything about this, and I majored in history colonial history, and I didn't even pick up on this one. Yeah, so this is uh this. We did a regular long form episode for Black History Month on Tuskegee Airmen, and now we're doing a shorty version

for the Black Loyalists for Black History Month. And it goes a little something like this one and the two. So the Black loyalists, Chuck, yes, are in a very much overlooked um group in American history. And they were African Americans, or I guess African African slaves who lived in the colonies. Uh, some of whom were free too, but mostly were slaves that ended up fighting for Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War. Yeah, so it's important

to kind of set the stage here. What's going on in seventeen seventy six, Um, African slaves were all over the place, and well, not all over the place, but you know, basically east of the Mississippi River at this point. Um Or am I wrong about that? No? No, you're right. I was gonna I was gonna support you, like a lot of people think, well, yes, slavery was just southern, no, man, and the colony. Slavery was everywhere, and slaves made up

of the population. In some states they were more concentrated than in other states. And I think they might have never been in Rhode Island or Pennsylvania. I'm not sure, but they You could find states in the North as well as the South at the time, for sure, because the South was a lot of the commerce was based on the plantation model. Obviously a lot more slaves in the South, to the tune of like fort in Virginia. South Carolina was sixty percent slaves, but even up in Boston,

slaves made up of the population. So before the War for Independence even started, there was an effort by the British to get American slaves on their side and basically say, hey, be a loyalist and take up arms against your plantation owner and we will grant you freedom. Yep. Not only are we gonna grant you freedom, we're going to give you some land after we uh kick the rebels. Butts uh. Yeah.

There was a governor, the British Royal Governor of Virginia, Lord Dunmore, said this was sort of the first um, I guess, the first emancipation proclamation where he said, you know, you guys can be free take up arms against your oppressors. Because they were looking for for people to fight, Like every time this happened a couple of times, it's because they needed men to fight on their side. It wasn't I mean, I wish it was just some altruistic move, but it was like we need feed on the ground

with guns. Right. That first proclamation by dunn More was was um I guess, proclaimed before the Declaration of Independence was ever signed. This is yeah, this is while the rebellion is just starting up and it's kind of isolated and sporadic. And there was an armed rebellion in Virginia that done more the governor of Virginia it was trying

to put down. And so that's why he said, you come fight for us, Rise up against your um, your plantation owners, and the the the what were the guys who like the overseers, You rise up against these guys, the rebels, we will we will give you your freedom. And I mean, at this point, it's not even clear that the colonies are going to form an armed, um organized revolt like the Revolutionary War. So it just seemed

like this was a rebellion, local rebellion that needed putting down. Yeah, and they even, uh, I believe between about eight hundred and two thousand slaves and servants, uh, indentured servants fled their plantations, took up arms. That was one regiment named dun Moore's Ethiopian Regiment, which had a on their uniform the insignia Liberty to Slaves, which is pretty cool. Uh. And this was, like I said, the first big mass emancipation um close a hundred years before Abraham Lincoln signed

the official Emancipation Proclamation. Yeah, and what was cool about it was these these um, the slaves who took up the British offer. Um, We're not just like fighting for their own freedom. They were fighting to free the slaves who were you know, left behind. It was really um. It was pretty cool. I had not heard about the

Ethiopian regiment before, but um. As the as the American Revolution goes into full swing and by uh, I think seventeen seventy nine, when the tide is turning against the British, the British released a second Emancipation Proclamation and said, hey, if you just leave and come over to British held territory,

we'll we'll you'll be free. You don't even have to fight, which is this is a cool idea because this this basically was like they think they can get more people to do that if they don't think they have to fight. And what it does is is it leaks all these workers from the plantations. And then in order to guard their plantations, now the plantation owners had to you know, use people that would have been fighting in the war

to stay at home and guard that plantation. So it was it was known as economic warfare basically, right, which is pretty smart. And for the African slaves who took them up on their offer. There was win win for them, so um, I think a total of twelve thousand African descended slaves fought for the British during the Revolutionary War, and at the end of the war um which the American colonies won, there was a there was a problem because I mean, it wasn't like the Brits were like,

all right, fine, we're going home. There was a negotiated treaty, like there was an end to hostilities. The there was. It was like a formal war, and in formal wars, things come up, things happen in war that um need to be settled. After the war, one of the main points of contention was the status of the African slaves who had defected or just gone over to the British side and said, hey, we're here to fight. What was

to be done with them? And the Brits could have very easily been like, ha ha, suckers, we're not We're not gonna keep our word on any of this. But they didn't do that. They didn't keep their word on all of it, but they kept their word on some of it. And let's just take a quick break Chuck, and we'll come back and fill everybody in on the rest of the details. All right, So when we left

the war is over. George Washington is negotiated to have quote unquote US property return, which included these enslaved Africa ends. And on the other side you have a commander in chief named Guy Carlton who said, well, you know, we gave our word and negotiated these certificates of freedom for these loyalists. Um, but here's what we're gonna do everyone. Uh, we I think you need to leave the country, and we think you should go to Nova Scotia, which is

a province in Canada that we rule. And I'm sure they were like Nova Scotia, this is not what I signed up for, um, But they went there anyway. And in the eighteenth century, in the late eighteenth century, forty thousand uh loyalists, both white and black went to Nova Scotia, um, including more than twelve slaves of these white loyalists, And all of a sudden, Nova Scotia was like, we don't

have resources for all these people. It was called Nova scarcity at the time, which I'm guessing you knew, yes, So, um, this is kind of a big problem, Chuck, because the population of Nova Scotia at the time was like like maybe twelve or something thirteen thousand people and all of a sudden showed up. And when that happens, just common economics means that you have a really really big labor supply and probably not very not nearly enough demand. And

so when that happens, people start to fight with one another. Yeah, and you know, uh, like you would imagine even in Nova Scotia, these um new arrivals were kind of kicked to the back of the line and things got tents. Uh. Finally, at one point there was a black creature named David George baptize a white woman and that sparked what people basically say is the first race riot in North America. In yeah, the Shelburne Riot. Um, the white showed up

and they beat David George pretty bad. They went through the Shelburne Settlement, which is largely UM African uh freed slaves and literally pulled their houses over, just trash the place. And this riot went on for months and it was it sounds pretty familiar. It's you're you're you're selling your labor for too cheap and stealing our jobs. So we're going to take all of our ankst out on you. So the riot was finally put down Um when troops came in from Halifax, the capital of Nova Scotia, and

restored order. But by this point, Um the Black loyalists who had been promised not just freedom but remember land and are now ending up in Nova Scotia where things are really really tense. They're like, we've got to We've got to get the crown to do something about this. So they sent a guy named Um Thomas Peters to go petition the crown in London or Parliament, at least one of them, and Um say, hey, you know, can

we get our land now? We we did everything we were asked of and uh, he didn't get anywhere with the Crown at least no. They they said, well, we've got another idea. We've got this, Uh, we've got this area in West Africa and Sierra Leone, and what we think is a good idea is to make this like a sanctuary for for you folks, and we can send you over there and it'll be great. You're gonna love it. That's the best place for freed slaves to be back

in Africa. Uh, it became basically in se when fifteen ships sailed from Halifax Harbor, the very first voyage of the Back to Africa movement. And there were some that um stayed back in Nova Scotia and they settled a place called Birch Town named after Samuel Birch. But a lot of them left and went to Sierra Leone, and um, that was sort of the you know, the end dish of that story. The cool thing is is you can

still trace. Uh, there are twenty thousand black people living in Nova Scotia today and you can trace a lot of those back to these Black Loyalists. Yeah, there's one guy that shows up in this article named Jason Farmer. He's a ninth generation descendant of a Black loyalist named Jupiter Farmer, and Jupiter married a woman named Venus if you can believe that, and his family has been living in Birchtown for about two d and thirty years. Yeah,

it's pretty cool. He works at the Black Loyalist Heritage Center and Historical site, and he said a lot of people in Nova Scotia, even descendants, don't even realize that this is their history. And so when I tell the story. He said. It's it's pretty powerful stuff. Yeah. Well, good pick Chuck. I'm glad we did this one. Yeah. Uh. If you want to know more about black loyalists, go check it out on the internet and send us an email. In the meantime to Stuff podcast how Stuff works dot com.