With it, the British occupation of the United States officially ended. Henceforth the story of loyalist refugees would continue in other parts of the British world, from Halifax to Nassau, to London and to cities yet to be founded. But even with New York City formally surrendered, the loyalist exodus was not finished. For at the southern tip of British North America, on the beaches of East Florida, loyalists were about to perform the last, least expected, and most vigorously contested evacuation of all, as they learned in horror that their asylum was to be ceded to Spain. From hopeful place of refuge to last point of departure, East Florida bridged two phases of the refugee experience, linking the displacements initiated by war to the ongoing quest for a haven in peace.
IT HAD TAKEN Elizabeth Johnston three tedious weeks to travel down the Georgia coast to St. Augustine, boxed up on shipboard, always in motion, even in her sleep. When at last they turned into the St. Augustine inlet, they felt a stomach-dropping thud as their boat struck a sandbar. Fortunately, they managed to clear the obstruction, which was more than could be said for another Charleston convoy, wrecked against the shoals and ruining many refugees’ carefully exported property. Half a dozen ships keeled askew on the sand, sentinels of loss. Johnston’s first impressions of this flat, foreign place were not good. She found all her in-laws “much dissatisfied with their situation,” grumbling over their future prospects. Little Andrew had been sick; the weather seemed “constantly wet or cloudy,” and as she wrote her husband, she “repent[ed] sincerely of not going with you to New York … for what is life when separated from my kind William.”36
But a touch of sun and time to settle in soon awakened Johnston to the charms and curiosities of this “very salubrious” spot. She would have recognized dozens of familiar faces from Savannah there, though Georgia this was not: she could see that much in the compressed shells of the coquina stone houses, the balustrades of the former Convento de San Francisco, now the army barracks, and the colorful presence of Minorcans and other Mediterranean islanders who had been recruited a decade earlier as laborers for the settlement of New Smyrna, farther south. Now and then she glimpsed the exotic wife of Andrew Turnbull, the entrepreneur behind that scheme, a “lady of Smyrna, who always retained the costume of her country, a majestic, noble-looking woman.” Johnston enjoyed promenades along the broad, pointed ramparts ringing the city, the breeze slapping against her skirts. And what a pleasure it was, after the supply shortages of wartime Savannah and Charleston, to feast on fish caught fresh from the sea! “I never was in better health and indeed never was so fleshy as during my … residence there,” she later remembered. Best of all, William got leave for a brief visit from New York, and they could plan their future face-to-face.37
By the start of 1783, twelve thousand loyalists and slaves had settled in East Florida.38 Although the governor, Patrick Tonyn, struggled to support so many refugees “without provisions, money, cloathing, or implements of agriculture, and in the most deplorable circumstances,” he welcomed their arrival as the commencement of “a happy Era to this province.”39 Tonyn glowingly forecasted the expansion of his realm to the south and north, augmenting the growing communities on the St. John’s and St. Mary’s rivers. Britain had acquired the territory from Spain at the end of the Seven Years’ War, and it had been rapidly carved up in a speculative frenzy with a few hundred British landlords, many of them aristocrats and grandees, claiming more than 2.8 million acres among them. The peace commissioner, Richard Oswald, secured a grant for twenty thousand acres. Governor Tonyn’s “dear friend” Henry Strachey, the deputy British peace commissioner, owned ten thousand acres, while Tonyn himself bagged another twenty thousand.40 But few landlords had actually settled their lands (Strachey and Tonyn were exceptions), leaving the province’s potential largely untapped.
The vast claims already staked on East Florida’s most attractive land was surely one reason wealthy new colonists like Dr. Lewis Johnston, Elizabeth Johnston’s father-in-law, were “much dissatisfied” on first arriving in the province; other fertile prospects lay still less accessibly in Indian country.41 Another cause for dissatisfaction may have been the knowledge that so few British plantations had met with any success. New Smyrna presented a frightful spectacle of how things could go wrong. This palmetto-fringed eden became a latter-day heart of darkness. Malaria and malnutrition killed off colonists by the hundreds, while its founder, Andrew Turnbull, turned slave driver, enforcing a deadly labor regime by whips and chains.
Yet even as New Smyrna failed—its survivors had all withdrawn to St. Augustine by 1777—the rewards of colonization in East Florida seemed closer than ever.42 Governor Tonyn knew that the influx of loyalist and slave workers might be just what the province needed to tip over into prosperity. To cater to loyalists’ demands for land he devised a scheme to escheat smaller plots from within large grants. Thomas Brown, a member (with Dr. Johnston) of Tonyn’s governing council, settled many of his old soldiers around the St. John’s River—and earned ten tracts in the region for himself amounting to 100,000 acres, dwarfing the fifty-six hundred acres he had lost in Augusta.43 While rich loyalists hired out their slaves for money, poorer settlers built themselves thatched huts and log cabins and got to work girdling trees and clearing ground for corn and rice.44 St. Augustine took on cosmopolitan trappings such as Tonyn had not enjoyed in a decade of living there, thanks to refugees like the entrepreneurial South Carolina printer William Charles Wells. Wells had dismantled his family’s printing press in Charleston (used to print Charleston’s leading prewar newspaper) and brought it with him to St. Augustine. There he successfully reassembled it—thanks to invaluable diagrams in a book called The Printer’s Grammar and “the assistance of a common negro carpenter”—to publish Florida’s first newspaper in early 1783. In his spare time, Wells managed and acted in a troupe of theatrically minded army officers, who staged amateur productions “for the benefit of the distressed Refugees.”45
Could it be that loyalists would achieve in East Florida what two decades of imaginative British colonization efforts had not: making profitable plantations out of subtropical swamps, flourishing towns from struggling outposts? Tonyn certainly hoped so, as one of many officials who embraced this refugee crisis as an opportunity for colonial expansion. John Cruden, the onetime commissioner for sequestered estates in Charleston, was another. Now a displaced refugee in Florida, Cruden enthusiastically shared Tonyn’s visions for East Florida’s future. The difference was that Cruden’s enthusiasm had begun to border on mania. Still committed to his mandate as commissioner, he made a point of tracking down slaves whom loyalists had illegally removed from South Carolina. March 1783 found him on the Caribbean island of Tortola, well known as a clearinghouse for slaves, where he discovered that “many Negroes the property of the inhabitants of the Southern Provinces, have been offered for sale, and by people who have no right to dispose of them.”46 From Tortola he returned to St. Augustine but found his efforts to retrieve sequestered slaves thwarted by obstructions from the governor and council.47 Governor Tonyn did not understand Cruden’s passion to restore property to patriots who, in Tonyn’s view, had done loyalists such wrong. Equally important, the land speculator in Tonyn, “whose chief study is to inrich himself at the Expence of many,” had no desire to compromise his province’s invaluable labor force.48 By May, Cruden was in New York seeking Carleton’s support instead. In June he proceeded on to London to solicit the endorsement of government ministers.49
This cause might seem an odd preoccupation for an ardent loyalist—and, judging from his writings, a quasi-abolitionist too—but it was in keeping with both Cruden’s sense of justice and his personal ambitions. His transatlantic peregrinations undoubtedly involved genuine outrage at the capture of so many slaves by loyalists who had never legally owned them. They also reflected an aggressive desire for self-advancement and official recognition. Cruden stands out as an example of how adverse circumstances encouraged some refugees to think up creative alternati
ves, even when those involved unusual alliances and causes.50 However peace turned out, Cruden could see some way for himself and his fellow loyalists to profit from it. His ideas would only grow more grandiose with time.
In the event, in April 1783 the news of the peace treaty hit East Florida loyalists like a hurricane. Article V of the peace with the United States, which neutered the possibility of receiving compensation from the states, paled for them next to Article V of Britain’s peace treaty with Spain and France, by which Britain agreed to cede East and West Florida to Spain, with no strings attached. It had seemed like a reasonable arrangement to British diplomats, who were more committed to keeping the strategically valuable Gibraltar than the economically disappointing Floridas. But the treaty yanked the ground from beneath the refugees’ feet. They had already undergone the ordeal of leaving their homes under duress, often more than once, and accepted the challenge of starting over in an underdeveloped land. Now even this hard-won asylum was denied them—and by their own government at that. Unless loyalists were prepared to swear allegiance to the king of Spain and practice Catholicism, they had eighteen months to gather up their possessions and go.
“The war never occasioned half the distress, which this peace has done to the unfortunate Loyalists,” Elizabeth Johnston wrote, “no other provision made than just recommending them to the clemency of Congress, which is in fact casting them off altogether.” Her father-in-law Lewis became “unwell both in body and mind as he lets this news of a peace prey too much on his spirits but how can it be avoided, with such a Family, and such prospects enough to distract him.”51 At a dinner a few nights after the terrible news arrived, John Cruden recalled the emotional reaction when the assembled refugees drank to the king’s health: “How he [the king] must have felt had he seen the Company; two of the Gentlemen were so much agitated that they covert their faces with their handkerchiefs, but they could not conceal the Tears that trickled down their Loyal Cheeks.”52 For another young Georgia loyalist, news of the peace was
the severest shock our Feelings have ever had to struggle with. Deserted as we are by our King, banished by our Country, what Recourse is left us in this Combination of Calamities.… Heavens! What distress! That men who not only possessed the Necessaries, but all the Luxuries of Life … should become Vagrant, & be plunged in the Torrent of Misery & Despair by the Parliament of Britain, who having no further Occasion for their Services, treat them with Contempt and mock their sorrows.
“We are all cast off,” he opined. “I shall ever tho’ remember with satisfaction that it was not I deserted my King, but my King that deserted me.”53
This plaint captured the essence of loyalist anguish. The doors of “our Country,” America, were bolted to them. And now, far worse, their own king had shunned them. After so “many scenes and passages through and during the late war,” one loyalist “could not put any faith” in the news until he “saw the King’s speech” in print: it was only on reading his sovereign’s words, endorsing the peace, that he accepted the reality of this outrageous betrayal.54 The deeply emotional, almost histrionic character of East Florida loyalist outpourings suggests what a profound attachment imperial subjects felt to the figure of the king. They also gave voice to the psychological power of a blow by which thousands of individuals already traumatized by many years of war and migration were forced to move once more. This further displacement carved mental wounds that flared up in years and destinations to come.
White loyalists were not the only Floridians who felt traduced by their sovereign. Talk of East Florida’s cession swirled into Indian country, where Creeks long allied with the British could not believe what they were hearing. Aghast at the news, they held a conference with Governor Tonyn and Thomas Brown, the superintendent of Indian affairs. “We took up the Hatchett for the English at a time we could scarce distinguish our friends from our Foes,” remembered one Creek chief:
The King and his Warriors have told us they would never forsake us. Is the Great King conquered? Or does he mean to abandon Us? Or does he intend to sell his friends as Slaves, or only to give our Lands to his and our Enemies? Do you think we can turn our faces to our Enemies, and ask a favour from them? No. If he has any Land to receive us (We will not turn to our Enemies) but go [to] it with our friends in such ships as he may send for us.
Another chief recalled how he had learned at his father’s knee about his people’s bonds with the British, a connection so deep the two groups intermarried “and became one flesh.” For him, too, a life in exile seemed better than one overshadowed by the United States or Spain: “If the English mean to abandon the Land, we will accompany them. We cannot take a Virginian or Spaniard by the hand. We cannot look them in the face.”55 These protests were reinforced by the new leader of the Creeks, Alexander McGillivray. As his unlikely name suggested, McGillivray was part Scottish: his father was a prominent loyalist Indian trader in Augusta; his mother was half French, half Creek. McGillivray held a position among the Creeks analogous to Joseph Brant among the Mohawks, an Indian leader with strong links to white society, committed to guarding his nation’s interests in the face of white empires.56 “I conceive we have a right to protection & support from the Nation whose cause has drawn the vengeance of an enraged multitude upon us,” he wrote to Brown. The Creeks had fought “from principles of Gratitude & Friendship to the British Nation,” and it was both “cruel & unjust” after eight years of loyal service “to find ourselves & country betrayed to our Enemies & divided between the Spaniards & Americans.”57
Brown, for his part, found it difficult to look his Indian friends in the face: “The situation of our poor unfortunate allies most sensibly affects me. They were ever faithful to me. I never deceived them.” They had fought side by side since the very beginning of the war, and he felt his own personal honor undercut by the decision to abandon them to Spanish rule.58 Brown understood that some chiefs had sworn to resist, and worried that “through rage and disappointment they will wreak their vengeance on the unfortunate unhappy residents in their land.” “However chimerical” it might seem that the Creek “very seriously proposed to abandon their country and accompany us,” there were in fact some precedents for such movements. When the Spanish left Florida in 1763, the Yamassee Indians followed them to Cuba; and now in Canada a Mohawk loyalist settlement was taking shape under British sponsorship. Brown suggested to Carleton that the Creeks “might be conveyed to the Bahamas,” where they could start afresh under British protection.59
But the Creeks were not black loyalists: Carleton did not feel that British promises had been breached with “those deceived Indians as you are all so fond to stile them.” If they wanted to go to the Bahamas, then he would provide the ships to take them, but it would be much better to “dissuade them from a measure destructive of their happiness.”60 Instead, Brown and his colleagues tried to soften relations between the Indians and the Spanish, and preserve Indian goodwill toward Britain as a bulwark against the Americans. On Brown’s urging, Alexander McGillivray accepted a commission in Spanish service, and became a silent partner with the Scottish merchant firm that retained the valuable monopoly on the Florida Indian trade.61 Governor Tonyn prided himself on the thought that “in the Breasts of these unenlightened Savages, there remains deeply rooted, an unextinguishable spark of ardent Love, and faithfull attachment, to the British name; which may rise into a Flame, and be improved to advantage, on some future occasion.”62 How valuable such enduring loyalty might prove remained for later British officials to discover.
For all that East Florida loyalists hoped against hope that something in the treaty might yet be reversed, the eighteen months allotted for their departure were fast vanishing, along with any semblance of civic order. The northern frontier between Florida and Georgia had become a bandit-ridden no-man’s-land, raided by Americans coming south and ravaged by lawless quasi-loyalist gangs. Loyalists lived in fear of attack by disgruntled Indians. “The whole of the People in the Province are
in the utmost Confusion, nothing going on but robbing and plundering,” reported one refugee.63 And where on earth were they to go? Tonyn remained “perfectly in the dark” until the spring of 1784 about what the arrangements for evacuation would actually be.64 Tonyn described the loyalists as
quite at a loss how to dispose themselves. The West India Islands are stocked, and it requires a greater capital than in general they are possessed of to form settlements in them.… [T]he Bahama Islands are mere rocks, fit only for fishermen, and the Inhabitants live chiefly by wrecking. Nova Scotia is too cold a climate for those who have lived in the southern Colonies, and intirely unfit for an outlet, and comfortable habitation for owners of slaves.65
Dr. Lewis Johnston set off on an exploratory mission to the Bahamas to size up the possibilities for settlement there. Johnston had lived briefly in St. Kitts before his immigration to Georgia, so he had some experience of the West Indies. But the Atlantic archipelago of the Bahamas was quite different. What “they reckon here their best lands,” he reported, were merely “poor sandy soil,” holding little promise for long-term rewards. “My Expectations tho’ by no means sanguine being so cruelly disappointed,” Dr. Johnston returned to St. Augustine “as much at a loss as ever where to direct my steps with my unfortunate Family.”66
On his father’s instructions, William Johnston traveled to Britain (probably with an evacuation fleet from New York) to resume his medical studies in Edinburgh. His departure left Elizabeth emotionally overwrought, brooding alone in her room, spinning anxious fantasies of what might become of him, of them. She scrawled plaintive screeds begging, “May this bitter separation be our last.” William’s half-pay as a loyalist captain would not be enough to support them all in Britain, so Elizabeth and the children continued to depend on his father’s protection. Yet month after month Lewis Johnston remained “still in suspence where his next route will be,” while he tried to sell his slaves in a suddenly glutted market. “Probably if your Father disposes of his Negroes,” Elizabeth wrote to William in early 1784, “he may go to Scotland tho’ I have my fears on that head, as he seems to have an Idea of Jamaica, from the Flattering accounts the Loyalists there give of their large crops of Indigo.” To add to her worries, she was pregnant again—“I have grown lusty in every sense of the word”—and “the uncertain state we are in at present makes me unhappy in the dread of my near Lying in when your Father leaves … and I will remain here, rather than go to sea so near my time, in short, we are all distracted not knowing how to resolve.”67
Liberty's Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World Page 13
