From Slavery to Freetown: Black Loyalists After the American Revolution

During the American Revolution, over 3,000 persons of African descent were promised freedom by the British if they would desert their American rebel masters and serve the loyalist cause. Those who responded to this promise found refuge in New York. In 1783, after Britain lost the war, they were evacuated to Nova Scotia, where for a decade they were treated as cheap labor by the white loyalists. In 1792, they were finally offered a new home in West Africa; over 1,200 responded, and became the founders of Freetown in Sierra Leone. This history follows ten of these freed slaves from their escape from masters in Virginia and the Carolinas to their sojourn in wartime New York, their evacuation to Nova Scotia, and finally their exodus to Freetown, where they struggled for another decade for not only freedom and dignity, but the right to worship as they choose, make an honest living, and govern themselves.