by Taylor, Alan
Embarrassed by his failure to preserve his employer’s property, King denounced the runaways in angry letters to Butler. On February 12, King declared, “God cursed the Negroe by making him Black. I Curse the Man that brot the first from Africa, and the Curse of God is still on them, to send them away to die a miserable death.” Four days later, he worked himself into a further rage: “I have these twelve years past taken all means to make these ungrateful wretches comfortable but it is all nonsense and folly. To treat Negroes with humanity is like giving Pearls to swine, it is . . . giting insult and ingratitude in return.” Then to culminate his outrage, on March 4 he indulged in a vengeful fantasy of recapturing the runaways: “How will it please me to have the pleasure to git your Negroes back and pick out one husband, one wife, one fellow, one wench and sell them—leaving their children or parents behind, as it may happen, to reflect on their wanton, impudent folly.” Recognizing the value of family ties to the slaves, King knew the ultimate way to punish them. His rant revealed an addiction to domination over others, his illusion of doing right by them, and his rage at losing that power over 138 people who called his paternalism a lie.35
By mid-March, Cockburn had drawn 1,700 refugees to Cumberland Island. The women, children, elderly, and lame he enrolled as supernumeraries, who received food and clothing and did some work until the British could ship them on transports to Bermuda. The young men he recruited as Marines. By early March, Cockburn had organized two additional companies of Colonial Marines, increasing their overall strength to 450 men. One terrified planter recalled “the magical transformation of his own negroes, whom he left in the field but a few hours before, into regular soldiers, of good discipline and appearance.” He saw a mortal threat to the South in the growing numbers of black troops trained by the British.36
Some of the runaways came from nearby East Florida, a Spanish colony. Because Spain allied with the British in Europe and remained neutral in the war with America, Florida’s governor, Sebastián Kindelán, expected Cockburn to respect the property of the colonists. In the course of the war, however, Cockburn had become committed to freeing any slaves who sought haven under the British flag, whether from a weak ally or the despised enemy. Cockburn defined Cumberland Island and every British warship as extensions of British territory subject to British law, including the Somerset decision. Therefore, “every Idea of the People in Question being considered as Private Property is at an End.”37
Cockburn assured Kindelán that masters could visit their former slaves and retrieve those who consented to return, but no British officer would force anyone back into slavery. Cockburn explained that no Spanish subject could “have the slightest claim to my Services to drive back for them the People in question.” Kindelán retorted, “Where is the Slave who will voluntarily return to Slavery if left to his own election?” Cochrane was uneasy with Cockburn’s emancipation of an ally’s slaves but agreed that “they should not, for humanity’s sake, be sent back to their former Masters, who would not fail to inflict upon them the greatest cruelties.” After the war a Florida colonist (but British subject), John Forbes, sued Cockburn for damages from the loss of runaway slaves. In 1824 the Court of King’s Bench ruled in favor of Cockburn that “the plaintiff ceased to have any right or title to the slaves the moment they threw themselves upon the protection of the British flag.”38
News
On February 8, Cockburn received disturbing news: “an ugly account of peace being signed.” At Ghent on December 24, 1814, British diplomats had concluded a peace treaty with American negotiators. Worried about a renewed blowup in Europe, the imperial government sought to get out of the American war by offering generous terms. “It was fortunate for us that London is not as near to Washington as to Paris,” St. George Tucker noted. The peace treaty restored the prewar boundaries in North America: a great gain for the United States given that victorious British forces had occupied eastern Maine, northern Michigan, a corner of western New York, Tangier Island in the Chesapeake, and Cumberland Island on the coast of Georgia. Although British impressment of American sailors had been a major cause of the war, the treaty ignored that issue, which seemed moot to both sides after Napoléon’s defeat had reduced the Royal Navy’s demand for hands.39
Eager to press their military advantage over the Americans, British officers felt frustrated by the sudden peace on terms so favorable to their enemy. Cockburn complained, “This Peace . . . has knocked all my Schemes on the Head.” He insisted that a proper treaty would have made the enemy “pay dearer for their unjust and unprincipled Aggression.” Using a British nickname for Americans, Captain Barrie declared, “This Peace is a sad Damper to many of us who most sincerely wished to have fought [Jo]nathan into complete humiliation.” Barrie had sought “a disunion of the states, which would most certainly have taken place had the war been kept up for eight months longer.”40
While depressing to British officers, the news thrilled Americans, for it saved their nation from collapse. On February 13 in Baltimore, a man reported, “We have just received information of peace. Peace is in every one’s mouth, and, altho the streets are full of People whose mouths are wide open like snuff boxes, yet they cannot hold their peace, but run about grinning and chattering like so many monkies.” In Richmond, William H. Cabell assured his brother Joseph that the “glorious peace for America . . . has come exactly when we least expected but when we most wanted it. . . . You cannot form too extravagant an idea of the real joy which it has diffused through every circle here.”41
On February 15, 1815, the news came to Williamsburg, triggering a giddy celebration driven by a profound relief at escaping a national disaster. St. George Tucker reported, “It set us all in tip top spirits.” Just two months before, Tucker had noted the nation’s “horrid prospects” as he prepared to move his family and slaves into the interior, away from the danger of a British raid. He had then noted, “A happy new year to us all. We are all sadly in need of it.” That happiness came to Williamsburg in mid-February. Tucker “could hardly persuade myself [that] the news of peace was true, so unlooked for was it by us all.” Exulting in “the blessed news of Peace,” Tucker expressed a patriarch’s relief: “Heaven be prais’d for it! I hope henceforth to feel as if my house was my own & my wife & my children not in danger of being taken from me.” Peace would “not only put an end to the horrors of a foreign war, but postpone those of a civil war, the flames of which I think were preparing.” Anticipating New England’s secession to ally with the British, Tucker had expected a war between the states.42
A few minutes after the news arrived, the public celebration began. A drummer played on “the old palace ground” and the inhabitants placed candles in their windows as an “illumination.” Tucker noted, “The Detachment of Militia paraded the streets, every Man with a lighted Candle at the End of his Musket. The sight was the most picturesque I ever saw. When performing their Evolutions, it appeared a perfect Galaxy of Stars as bright as Venus herself, revolving round one Center.” The militiamen stopped in front of Tucker’s door to give three cheers, so he treated them to “Antique Spirits to drink the health of General [Andrew] Jackson & his army.” A month before, Jackson’s army had a won a sensational victory, crushing a British force near New Orleans.43
As Tucker saw it, liberty had been saved by sparing the republic from destruction, but slaves must have felt differently. In early January in Williamsburg, a militiaman named Pleasants Murphy had recorded, “Hundreds of People [had] Collected at the Raleigh [Tavern] at a negro hanging.” Murphy concluded, “At Night we Borrowed a fiddle and had a dance in Our Barracks.” One man’s freedom was another’s slavery in Virginia, so the peace that saved the republic also shut down a war that had freed thousands of slaves. While Virginians loudly celebrated, many of their slaves privately mourned the passing of an opportunity.44
The official copy of the treaty reached Washington, D.C., on February 16. A day later, the Senate unanimously consented to the treaty and the presi
dent hastily ratified it. The attending British diplomat, Anthony St. John Baker, marveled, “The impatience of the Govt. to ratify it was so great” that the American document “consisted only of a few Sheets of Paper blotted and in many places ill spelt which were corrected on Mr. Monroe & myself comparing our copies.”45
Luck rather than genius had saved the administration from disaster. Colonel John Taylor assured Monroe, “A succession of lucky accidents enabled the administration to get the nation out of the war, for which no one rejoices more than myself. Had it lasted two years longer, the republican party and our form of government itself would have been blown up.” General Charles Fenton Mercer of the Virginia militia agreed that the peace had saved the United States from “bankruptcy, disunion, and civil war, combined with foreign invasion; in fine, from national dishonor and ruin.”46
But the Republicans quickly spun the peace treaty as culminating a glorious war that had exalted the United States. After failing to conquer Canada or compel British maritime concessions, the Republicans redefined national survival as victory. Monroe assured the Senate that “our Union has gained strength, our troops honor, and the nation character, by the contest.” The Richmond Enquirer agreed: “We have waged a War which has covered us with glory.” Americans had displayed “as much public spirit, as much heroic courage, as much devotion to country as ever distinguished any people.” Talk of desertions, disunion, national bankruptcy, and the failure of republicanism suddenly vanished beneath a crescendo of celebration.47
Along the Atlantic seaboard, the myth of the glorious war got a boost when the peace news arrived at the same time that Americans learned of the sensational American victory near New Orleans. On January 8, in the war’s most lopsided battle, Jackson’s army had routed 6,000 British regulars. At a cost of only thirty minutes and seventy-one casualties, the Americans killed 290 Britons, wounded 1,262, and captured 484. Before dying in the battle, the overconfident British commander had marched his men across open ground in a frontal assault on entrenched Americans who could readily blast away at the exposed attackers. The Battle of New Orleans nicely fit the cherished stereotype of bungling Britons unsuited for war in North America, so it became celebrated in American story and song. The Americans quickly repressed from memory their many earlier defeats suffered while invading Canada.48
Withdrawal
Contrary to a popular myth, the Treaty of Ghent did not end the war on December 24, 1814; instead, per the terms of that treaty, war persisted until the United States ratified the treaty on February 17, 1815. Upon learning of the peace treaty in early February, Cockburn suspended his raids, but he continued to welcome runaways from the coasts of Florida and Georgia. He delayed evacuating his force from Cumberland Island until he was officially notified that the United States had ratified the treaty. That notification did not reach the admiral until early March, allowing three more weeks for exporting plunder and liberating slaves.49
On March 6, 1815, two American officials, Captain Thomas M. Newell of the army and Thomas Spalding, a Sea Island planter, visited Cumberland Island to press Cockburn for an immediate transfer of control to the Georgians. Newell and Spalding insisted that the first article of the peace treaty barred the British from taking away any American slaves, who, instead, should be restored to their owners. Cockburn offered a much narrower reading of the article and a far broader mandate for the liberating power of the British flag. He argued that the treaty obligated him only to restore slaves who had been captured at Dungeness on Cumberland Island: a mere 81 of the 1,700 refugees from Georgia and Florida. On March 8, Cochrane arrived at Cumberland Island and endorsed Cockburn’s position.50
The admirals did allow Newell, Spalding, and other planters to visit the warships to address the runaways in hopes of persuading them to return to slavery. Instead, the visitors got an earful, for Newell complained that the British officers “permitted the Slaves to be insulting, without ever checking them.” The most “insolent” runaways came from the Chesapeake and served as Colonial Marines. Despite the admirals’ orders, many British captains refused to cooperate and made excuses to keep the American officials away from their warships. Only thirteen runaways, all Georgians, agreed to go back. Bound by his interpretation of the treaty, Cockburn also forcibly returned the eighty-one slaves who had been captured at Dungeness, which the British had fortified. Meanwhile, Cockburn sent transports, heavily laden with refugees, away to Bermuda. On March 13, Cockburn completed his withdrawal from the island, but several warships remained in the harbor for another five days, before the admiral sailed away on the last one. Until their departure, the British captains continued to take on board runaways, further infuriating the Georgians. The last-minute refugees included at least two of the eighty-one that Cockburn had forced back to their owner at Dungeness.51
In the Chesapeake the Royal Navy officers also sought to preserve the freedom of the runaways. On February 20, 1815, three days after the ratification of peace, the British staged one last raid. A barge with a lieutenant and ten armed men visited the plantation of George Loker in St. Mary’s County, Maryland. They came to liberate four enslaved children, and three women, including the “wife of a negro man” who guided the raid. When Loker protested that the war was over, the British lieutenant replied “that he would take all that would come to him until he received an official account” of ratification.52
On February 27, Loker and another master visited HMS Havannah to demand the return of their slaves. Captain William Hamilton responded “that having once been received on board a British Ship, [the fugitives] could no longer bear the Character of Slave, and that I could not be justified in using force to make them return, but that they might . . . endeavor to persuade them to do so.” Hamilton assembled the slaves, assured them that “they were as free as any people,” and asked if any wished to return to slavery, but none did.53
Despite the peace, Hamilton would do no more for Americans so long as they continued to entice and harbor British deserters, including two sailors and two marines, all of them white, who had escaped during the last raid. Loker’s companion reported that Hamilton declared, “No Negros would be restored unless we caused the Seamen to be given up who had recently deserted from his Ship.” Once again, the desertion of white sailors from British ships promoted the liberation of slaves by naval officers.54
Meanwhile, on February 23, three American commissioners had contacted Hamilton’s commander, Captain John Clavell, with an official notice of the peace. They demanded the return of all of the runaways in British hands within American territorial waters, which included Chesapeake Bay. Clavell refused to relinquish any runaways “now serving on board His Brittanic Majesty’s ships, as by entering into the service, they made themselves free men.” One of the commissioners, Thomas M. Bayly of Virginia, retorted that Americans would “never believe that their Slaves can make themselves free by entering into His Britannic Majesty’s Sea or Land Service.” Clavell soon received Cockburn’s orders to withdraw from Tangier Island, but “On no account [is] a Single Negro [to] be left, except by his own request, if he joined you prior to the Ratification of the Treaty” at 11:00 p.m. on February 17.55
In early March, Bayly went to Tangier with Clavell’s permission to take a list of the runaways there. During that month, many slaveholders, including Charles Carter of Corotoman, flocked to the island to cajole the refugees to return home. The masters discovered, however, that most of the runaways had already sailed away, and the few who remained clung to freedom. On March 21, Clavell completed the evacuation of the island, burning the fort and barracks and taking away the last refugees. Replenishing their water supply from wells on St. George’s Island in the Potomac, Clavell and his ships lingered in the bay until April 14, when they sailed away bound for Bermuda. To pressure the British to return the runaways, the Madison administration refused, in the postwar prisoner exchanges, to include about sixty British-owned slaves captured by American privateers from British merchant ships. But
the British officers and their government stood firm in protecting the refugees.56
Many British officers had developed an empathy for the runaways and a conviction that naval honor required strict adherence to the protection offered by the British flag. Captain Hamilton reported that his officers so opposed returning Loker’s runaways to his “cruel punishment,” that they offered to spend their own funds to compensate the master. Instead, Clavell ordered Hamilton to sail for Bermuda, saving the runaways and the officers’ money. But Hamilton’s offer revealed the surprising ties that had emerged between naval officers and runaways during the war.57
Initially reluctant and grudging, many British officers had grown into their role as liberators. The transition appears in the words of an officer who recalled, “The ‘niggers’ soon made themselves prime favourites amongst our soldiers and sailors, whom they amused every evening with their songs and dances, of which they performed a regular ‘round,’ beginning with
Who ‘tole de pigeon pie
An’ hid ‘im in de bag o’rye?”
A song of defying the master by stealing and hiding a pie helped the soldiers and sailors to see the runaways in a new light as fellow people engaged in a common struggle against the Americans. Some officers formed friendships with blacks, such as Cockburn’s affection for Sergeant Johnson. In September 1814, Lieutenant G. R. Gleig went on shore to visit “an old negro couple,” in the Patuxent Valley: “We carried as a present for our old friends, the Negroes, a bottle of rum and some dose of salts for which they were very grateful.” Although many local whites had also helped the British, Gleig never referred to them as “old friends” or gave presents to them.58
National honor and naval duty had become invested in promises made to the runaways. By defying masters’ invitations to break those promises, the British claimed moral superiority over the crass Americans. The contrast vindicated the British insistence that they practiced and protected a more authentic and consistent brand of freedom. After the peace, Lieutenant John Fraser of the Royal Marines explained, “No British officer ever entertained the most distant opinion that those Negroes, who had come in under the Commander in Chief’s Proclamation, could under any circumstances be ever given up.” Cockburn urged his government scrupulously to honor the pledges made to the refugees, in order to preserve, among American slaves, a reputation “highly favourable to the British character & interest.” Exulting in their own rectitude, the naval officers sought to do right by the refugees.59
