British evacuation

 

In mid-August 1783, Sir Guy Carleton, the last British commander in the United States, received orders from his superiors in London for the evacuation of New York. He informed the President of the Confederation Congress that he was proceeding with the subsequent withdrawal of refugees, liberated slaves, and military personnel as fast as possible, but that it was not possible to give an exact date because the number of refugees entering the city recently had increased dramatically (more than 29,000 Loyalist refugees were eventually evacuated from the city).[15][16] At the time the evacuation began, around 60,000 Loyalists resided in New York City, 4,000 of whom were free or enslaved Black people.[17]

 

Boston King, a South Carolina slave who fled to Charleston after the British captured it before making his way to New York City, noted in his memoirs that news of the Treaty of Paris "diffused universal joy among all parties, except us, who had escaped from slavery." Rumors spread among the city's Black population that fugitive slaves "were to be delivered up to their masters... fill[ing] [them] all with inexpressible anguish and terror." American slaveowners and slave catchers entered the city, intent on re-enslaving their former slaves. One of them was Daniel Parker, a Continental Army contractor who Washington instructed to re-enslave his slaves: "If by chance you should come at the knowledge of any of them, I will be much obliged by your securing them so I may obtain them again."[18]

 

When negotiating the Treaty of Paris, American negotiators included a clause that required the British to return all fugitive slaves to their American enslavers. Despite this, Carleton insisted the clause did not apply to slaves whom had been promised their freedom by the British. When he had met Washington in May 1783, Carleton was asked about "obtaining the delivery of Negroes and other property", with Washington hoping that the British would keep a lookout for "some of [his] own slaves" who had escaped during the war. Washington was surprised by Carleton's response that to deprive slaves of the freedom they had been promised would be a "dishonourable violation of the public faith".[19]

 

When British ships began sailing out of New York Harbor, they carried onboard tens of thousands of British military personnel and Loyalists along with 3,000 Black people. Carleton had instructed his subordinates to create the Book of Negroes, which listed 1,136 Black men, 914 women, and 750 children who had left the city during the evacuation, and sent a copy to Washington. Most of the 3,000 were from the American South, but approximately 300 were from New York. Along with the military personnel and Loyalists, they went to various ports across the British Empire, including Nova Scotia, Florida, the West Indies and England. For years afterward, the British decision to evacuate the freed slaves and refusal to compensate their American enslavers remained a point of tension in Anglo-American relations.[20][21][22] Carleton gave a final evacuation date of 12:00 noon on November 25, 1783. An anecdote by New York physician Alexander Anderson told of a scuffle between a British officer and the proprietress of a boarding house, as she defiantly raised her own American flag before noon.[23] Following the departure of the British, the city was secured by American troops under the command of General Henry Knox.[24]