Trouble on Freedom's Road
From the Archives of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle
During the American Revolution, British generals were searching for a way to sap the strength of the colonies.
One device they used was offering freedom to the colonists' slaves in exchange for their fighting on the Loyalist's
side.
John Murray, Lord Dunmore, the last British governor of Virginia issued a proclamation on November 7, 1775 declaring
freedom to all indentured servants and "…negroes…willing to serve His Majesty's forces to end the present
rebellion."
Slave owners on Long Island were so angered they burned Lord Dunmore in effigy, saying their slaves had become
"too fond of British troops" according to historian Graham Russell Hodges.
Thousands of slaves and free blacks and gravitated to New York during the British occupation. Slave owners from
other colonies turned up in the city looking for their property. Es-slave Boston King of South Carolina remembered
how he and other runaways were filled "with inexpressible anguish and terror… when we saw our old master coming
from Virginia, North Carolina and other parts, and seizing upon their slaves in the streets of New York, or even
dragging them from their beds."
George Washington himself, a major slave holder in 1783 wrote to a British commissioner in New York, requesting
that he block the departure of former slaves noting that "…some of my own slaves… may probably be in New York
but I am unable to give you their Descriptions, (and) their Names being so easily changed will be fruitless to
give you."
The freedom offered by the British eventually attracted thousands of blacks to Loyalists' side throughout the colonies,
shouldering muskets during the Battle of Long Island, building fortifications in Jamaica and serving as teamsters,
spies, cooks and seamen. In return the British offered black Loyalists military pay, passports and 20 acres of
land in Nova Scotia.
More than 3,000 black Loyalists were transported to Nova Scotia during the 1783 British retreat from New York,
forming what once was the largest concentrations of free blacks outside of Africa.
The ultimate fate of these black refugees was not a happy one. In Nova Scotia they were faced with discrimination.
The British had reserved the best acreage for white Loyalist, leaving black settlers to scratch al living out
of the poorest land far from town. Many were forced to run for their lives. In an effort to hang on, former members
of the Black Pioneers and Guides, regiment founded Birchtown in Nova Scotia (named after the British commander
who signed their passports to freedom) and stuck it out a few years longer but in 1790 over one thousand of them
decamped for Sierra Leone. Bill Richmond was one who fared better. He escaped his Staten Island master in 1776
sailed to England with General Percy and became a celebrated prize fighter.
